A flagship corporate Bitcoin holder, Strategy, has never disclosed its Bitcoin addresses, which has led many people to wonder if the company actually owns the amount it claims to hold. On May 26, 2025, Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor explained why the company would not disclose its addresses.
As of May 27, after the latest $427 million purchase, Strategy claims to hold 580,250 bitcoins. On several occasions, Michael Saylor suggested that Strategy would not sell any of its bitcoins. The lack of full disclosure of Strategy’s addresses raises doubts among skeptics about whether the company fully adheres to Saylor’s words and holds the exact amount it claims to own. Some of them repeatedly demanded that Saylor show the addresses, but he never did. Finally, he took eight minutes to explain why Strategy wouldn’t do that.
Aren’t Strategy’s addresses already well-known?
Arkham Intelligence reported in January 2025 that it had identified 96% of Strategy’s Bitcoin addresses and published them. The company didn’t confirm if these addresses actually belong to it.
Approximately 4% of the BTC funds in Strategy are not located at any of these addresses. Given the BTC price, this tiny particle is a multi-billion-dollar loophole that raises concerns among strategy skeptics who want Strategy to make a full disclosure of addresses.
How does Saylor explain the reluctance to show Strategy’s addresses?
In a speech published on X on May 27, Saylor admits that Mt. Gox and FTX were the hard lessons, but he believes that “the current conventional way to publish proof of reserves is an insecure proof of reserves.” According to Saylor, disclosure of public addresses simultaneously jeopardizes several groups of stakeholders: the issuer, the custodians, the exchanges, and the investors.
“It’s like publishing the address and the bank accounts of all your kids and [the] phone numbers of all your kids and then thinking somehow that makes your family better.”
While Strategy’s holdings, one’s kids are not subjected to investments by third parties, Saylor continued to elaborate on why he sees publishing proof of reserves as not secure. It’s safe to say that in his speech, Saylor distanced Strategy from Bitcoin purists, emphasizing that Strategy is a publicly traded company and its investors are institutional investors while the demand to reveal the wallets is rather something dictated by a Bitcoin maximalist logic.
The Strategy chair says that in contrast to proof of liabilities, safe proof of reserves is simply impossible. He recommended all the Bitcoin maxis to hold bitcoins in self-custody instead of relying on Strategy. For securities investors, he says, it’s safer to rely on proof of assets and proof of liabilities, and “the best practice is not to publish the wallet.” It is the responsibility of the Big Four auditors to ensure the solvency and soundness of the company. The data should be confirmed on multiple levels, including by the custodians and the exchanges. In the case of Strategy, the audits are conducted by KPMG LLP, a Big Four audit company. Furthermore, he emphasized that as an American company, Strategy cannot lie about its finances, as its personnel would face jail time due to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which protects investors from inaccurate disclosures and statements.
Saylor added that in the future, he may implement zero-knowledge proof of reserves that would not reveal the wallet addresses publicly. However, this possibility won’t free Strategy from confirming all the data independently by the involved parties and Big Four auditors.
According to Saylor, the lesson learned from the failures of FTX and Mt. Gox was not that the missing proof of reserves is bad, but rather not to do business with “shaky offshore exchanges run by juvenile tweakers.”
Saylor finished his speech by saying that the wallets, once they are published, are “the intact vector for hackers, nation-state actors, every type of troll imaginable. It creates so much liability that you should think twice before you do it.” However, Saylor admitted that there is nothing wrong with publishing addresses at a small level.
It is unclear whether Bitwise, whose BTC addresses are disclosed, is on a small scale, according to Saylor’s opinion. Somehow, Bitwise manages to maintain transparency and safety simultaneously. However, there is no other such big company holding bitcoins. In this regard, Bitwise is the only corporation to do so, and others don’t follow in its footsteps.
Public reaction
Some found Saylor’s speech convincing, while others saw it as just a baseless excuse to hide the shady operations.
Seemingly responding to Saylor’s speech, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao jokingly tweeted, “he probably sold bitcoins.”
The skeptics believe that Bitcoin wallets are unhackable. Therefore, Saylor has no good excuse for not publishing proof of reserves. People who defend the Strategy chair’s stance claim that, as the disclosure involves several parties, there is a risk of key leaks at some level, so disclosing the wallets is not secure.
If hackers associate the addresses of Strategy with certain institutions, they may use social engineering or other sophisticated tactics to obtain private keys.
Trust in Strategy continues to an extent to which we can trust public companies. As Saylor puts it, if you like to have full control over addresses, it is vital to hold bitcoins yourself. Why trust a public company?
