Michael Saylor has proposed a “bill of digital rights” for digital assets, including the right to issue tokens, choose a custodian, transfer assets and use them for payments, investment or borrowing. For Bitcoin holders, the main effect would be greater access to banking, not a change in the law today.
The proposal, reported by Cointelegraph, appeared in an essay Saylor posted on X. It sets out five rights:
- The freedom to create digital assets.
- The right to issue them to raise capital.
- The right to hold them or choose a custodian.
- The right to transfer them between people, companies, wallets and service providers.
- The right to use them to spend, invest, earn income or borrow against them.
No legislation, regulation or agency action has adopted this framework. The actual X post and the full essay were not independently checked, so the available sourcing is limited to news reports quoting and paraphrasing it.
What changes for Bitcoin holders
The most concrete proposal concerns banks. Saylor wants banks to custody Bitcoin for customers and offer loans backed by it under workable rules. Wider access could allow owners to borrow against their Bitcoin without selling it, although the proposal does not set loan standards, interest rates or eligibility rules.
He also wants customers to choose between self-custody and a third-party custodian without giving up ownership or control. That language sets a policy direction, but it does not guarantee that every bank will offer Bitcoin services or that a depositor will retain the same legal protections as with cash.
Saylor is using the Basel framework to argue that current policy is too restrictive. Its riskiest class of crypto holdings carries a 1,250% risk weight, according to BeInCrypto. Saylor wants policymakers to reconsider that treatment. A risk weight affects how much capital a bank must hold against an exposure, so lowering it could make Bitcoin custody and lending more practical for some institutions.
Banks and fintechs would compete for deposits
Saylor also wants banks, financial technology companies and technology platforms to offer digital dollars through devices and applications people already use. He argues that these products should compete on yield, while disclosing their risks.
His wider policy package includes tokenized securities that investors can hold directly and move between providers. It also calls for larger de minimis thresholds for routine transactions, tax relief for small digital asset payments and reuse of identity checks between institutions.
The practical test is whether these proposals give people meaningful control without removing the compliance checks banks need. Higher yields are useful only if investors understand the risks, and direct ownership through a token is not the same as legal ownership of the underlying asset. The available reports do not explain how Saylor would address those distinctions.
Congress has not adopted the framework
Saylor presented the plan after speaking at a Freedom Tech DC event organised by the Bitcoin Policy Institute. He says the next two years of progress should run through the SEC, CFTC, Treasury, the White House and banking regulators, while lawmakers replace the CLARITY Act.
BeInCrypto reported that the Senate voted 49-50 against advancing CLARITY on September 15. The brief did not include a primary legislative record confirming that vote, and the report’s dates could not be checked against one. Saylor’s plan therefore remains a policy proposal, not enacted law.
Saylor’s ambition is to help 10 million new companies raise capital. Strategy’s Bitcoin Banking Adoption Index put major-bank uptake at 32% in July, according to BeInCrypto. That figure describes reported adoption, not the terms, profitability or legal treatment of any bank’s service.
His broader argument is straightforward: an asset is more useful when its owner can use, transfer and borrow against it. Whether that argument changes Bitcoin banking depends on regulators and banks writing rules that permit those activities, rather than on the essay itself.
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