Phong Le & Adam Back: Creating Bitcoin's Infrastructure For Maximum Adoption | Bitcoin 2026

All right, I get to share the stage with Fong and Satoshi. Fong, I'd love to start with you. Stretch has allowed you to buy 10 times more Bitcoin than every ETF combined this year and 80% of holders are retail. What is happening with Stretch? It is so fetch. You know, it's it's uh I'll start with there's only one individual entity with more Bitcoin than strategy at this point in time, and it's Nakamoto. Uh and so if you're going to be second to anybody, we are second best to Satoshi Nakamoto. Um Stretch is amazing. It addresses a $300 trillion uh credit market and it appeals to everybody. uh from retail individuals who own 80% of stretch to corporations and institutions who own the other 20%. And when you create a product that literally everybody can be benefited by, it grows like wildfire faster than we had hoped for, faster than we expected. And if Bitcoin, invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, was potentially the most important capital product ever invented in the history of the world. I like to think that Stretch, invented by Michael Sailor and strategy, is the most important potentially credit product in the history of the world. >> It's a completely new asset class. Um, Adam, you are stepping into the capital markets with BSTR and then with Blockstream, you're building a full stack for Bitcoin finance from self-custody to institutional grade products. How is that shaping the next phase of Bitcoin adoption? Um so last year I was on stage at this at this event uh with some announcements about blockstream building enterprise wallets for small businesses and then also entering the technology that custodians use for cold storage at the custody level. So whether that's a company self-custodying their Bitcoin or uh professional custodians, licensed custodians doing the same thing, they need technology to do that. So we're then in the market to provide that technology. >> Fong strategy, as you mentioned, is quickly approaching a million Bitcoin, which is pretty crazy. I think you're going to hit that in the next couple of months. What does it feel like to be running this company? And what are the challenges that come with a product that has grown so quickly? You know, seldom in your life are you able to contribute to a product that by the time we're sitting here a year from now will hopefully be acknowledged as one of the most important and fastest growing products in the history of the world. So that in of itself is awesome and amazing. And then realizing that it's a product that does good, right? Like you know it's not uh high fructose corn syrup. It's not uh soda. It's not, you know, it's not cigarettes. It's something that actually helps individuals. Uh I think that's all fantastic and and great, but more importantly, right, like and and those who buy Stretch realize the uh advantages of it in terms of a place to put your short-term money, I'll call it. Uh but the other piece is stretch has actually opened up other channels for people to get into Bitcoin, right? And so someone who wouldn't necessarily buy Bitcoin because of its volatility or just because it's still somewhat difficult to on-ramp into can on-ramp into Stretch. So I think the contribution of Stretch to the Bitcoin community is great. I think the other thing we're starting to see happen is a bunch of layer 2 products being built on top of Stretch, right? Think of Stretch as now not just a digital credit product, but it's a digital credit platform, right? People are building products on top of this digital credit platform and not only Bitcoin products, but decentralized finance products, right? And tokenized products. And so, it's also now just not bringing people together to Bitcoin, but I think it's starting to bring DeFi and Bitcoin together, which I think is pretty exciting. So, Stretch is this sort of cool uh product that is doing so many good things uh for the community, for individuals, for wealth generators, and for uh Bitcoin and uh digital assets. >> You brought up tokenization. I'd love to hear from both of you about that because we sort of hear that catch word now, but a lot of people still feel like they don't understand what it is. Is it built on Bitcoin? Can you talk about that for both of you? Yeah. So, Blockstream is um Bitcoin infrastructure company started in 2014 and we are active in at least two Bitcoin layer 2. Obviously, Lightning, we have uh core lightning which is one of the main implementations, but also liquid which is a side chain and a side chain is able to add new features that Bitcoin doesn't have. So it has confidential transactions and it has native support for assets and the assets can be stable coins and there are a number of stable coins on there. There's about 5 billion of value on the network and included in those securitiz tokenized um products is a Luxembourg securitization vehicle with a number of treasury companies in them. So there's been one for Micro Strategy shares held by an underlying custodian bank uh for a couple of years. The advantage is 24x7 trading priced in Bitcoin. So that's interesting way to trade micro strategy and more recently uh Metaplanet Capital B and H100. The last two being two European treasury companies. I think the other thing that tokenization does other than provide 24 by7 trading is it can then more easily be used as collateral in a in a Bitcoin exchange uh it can lend itself to having leverage applied so that could bring more liquidity to the midsize treasury companies and make it easier to access them because even though there's no regulatory barrier typically for you know somebody in one country to buy European share it can be quite hard to get to these small cap markets because the brokers haven't uh optimized for that and so it kind of provides more universal access and then I think the real value unlock is tokenizing currently unlisted instruments. So some of the European treasury companies have bitcoin bases convertible notes and euro convertible notes which are private contracts. So there's nothing precluding you from selling them but there's no mechanism to find a price to find a buyer and so on. So by tokenizing them and having these kind of um non-custodial exchange mechanisms, you can have a price formation and get, you know, be able to trade them or to use them as collateral where currently they're kind of dead collateral when they're out of the money. >> Yeah. You know, the other one way I'd think about it is tokenization is the digitization of the securities market. So if you think about phone lines, they used to be copper, right? And the digitization was fiber, right? If you think about what Bitcoin did, it took an asset, a capital asset like gold and it created a digital version of it. Now, if you think about how do you trade stocks today and equity securities, right? Regulated by the SEC in the US, it is an analog process. And how do we digitize that? An analog process to Adam's point runs every day 9:30 to 4. A digitized process runs 24/7. An analog process means you need to go to through a broker dealer before you can buy and sell his security. A digitized process means that I could tap Adam's phone and buy one share of stretch from him at the market prevailing price instantaneously. And now that share a stretch sits on my phone, right, with a blockchain also providing the transparency. Uh so it's it makes a lot of sense that Bitcoin and DeFi in general are the backbone of tokenized securities and the fact that you can go to a Starbucks, tap your phone, and there's a lot of analog processes behind it, buy a coffee for what is it now 10 bucks or something a lot, right? Like why can't you do that with a stock peerto-peer? And and I think that's what tokenization does. And that's why it's pretty exciting is you're all sitting here looking for the digital transformation of capital, of equity, of the credit market. Now talk about the digital transformation of the securities market. And it's a huge innovation that we're looking at happening sort of uh right now outside the US off of sort of uh the current regulated rails. And I think in the next two years you'll see it come to the US and the world on regulated rails. So it's very exciting. >> Adam, you're one of the original cipher punks. Why did you decide to move into the institutional side of Bitcoin and what do you say to the skeptics of the institutionalization of this asset? >> Yeah, I get that question. So, of course, Bitcoin is um both a bearer asset that is hard to seize, hard to freeze, and that is empowering for the individual. And so, it's important that that remains the case. But, of course, I think it's a sign of success that Bitcoin, the asset class, is adopted over time by private companies, public companies, pension funds, sovereigns, and we've seen all of that happen at this point. and and there's much, you know, much further to for that to grow. And so, you know, the cipher punks were interested in um, you know, bearer electronic cash with privacy in that kind of area, but they were also free market advocates, anarchical capitalists. And so they very much believed in capital formation you know public markets and the role that that plays in uh the wealth generation in the world and the development of products. So I think you know people are kind of sort of surprised or many people are not traders don't never invested in an IPO or in a public stock where for myself I was an active trader you know before Bitcoin in the early 90s. So for me, you know, the fact that Bitcoin is being included in portfolios is useful because, you know, the ETFs and public treasury companies, the the phenomena that Michael Sailor started are easier. It's a form of access for some people. So think about it as accessibility. And then many people in the world don't do self-directed investment. And so the main way that they're going to get exposure to Bitcoin is via these model portfolio recommendations. and managed funds inside annuities and pension funds and things like that. So I think that when people talk about um institutional adoption, I think a lot of that is still in the future because you have the model portfolios but not that much of that capital has landed yet and those are enormous pools of capital and the reason it hasn't landed is those entities are very procedural and it takes them a while to get things deployed. You know, I'll just add one thing and sometimes the cyber funks or Adam people think about the cryptographic skills and the software engineering skills, but the capital markets and the understanding of finance, it comes handinand uh and I had the pleasure of meeting Adam, I think it was in 2021 at a dinner in New York and and even at that point in time, I learned a lot about Bitcoin and capital markets from Adam. And I mention that because it's this intersection of these two things, right? Michael Sailor uh you know started as an engineer who ran a public company, right? I started as a computer programmer who was the CFO of a public company, right? You find that intersection and you find these individuals who are able to bring those two things together. Uh and it's wondrous in terms of its capability. That's what Bitcoin was and that's what Satoshi Nakamoto was. So, uh, you have here a a very gifted mind that understands the capital markets very well. Uh, and and and that's why we're able to build what we're able to build. >> You know what I think is really interesting? Over the last few decades, there seems to have been this demonization of corporations, especially the really massive ones, because in the fiat system, it sometimes feels like they're getting larger and larger, not by actual value or merit, but just because of sort of the money printer machine and, you know, the the liquidity just flowing to the biggest companies. And Bitcoin sort of imposes consequences and and responsibilities and new rules. Can you talk a little bit about how it's shifting just corporate management and um and and the way that companies should be structured which is to provide value and service to us right >> yeah I mean I think it's natural that corporations would adopt Bitcoin and so I was you know quite interested when Michael Sailor started the treasury company phenomena and it was actually a relatively early shareholder because I thought that one way to support the initiative was if a lot Bitcoin has bought a little bit of his shares, then because the company is much smaller than Bitcoin, they could start to own a meaningful proportion of the shares collectively and support the mission basically. And um I think ultimately in in this kind of bitcoinized future that Bitcoin is the hurdle rate, which for people who know about finance means that you you know if you can't exceed this kind of baseline then you're not really creating a positive return. And so that means in a Bitcoin mindset, the portfolios are all denominated in Bitcoin and you're looking for Bitcoin plus some return on top of Bitcoin. And so a treasury company, it's its central objective is to increase Bitcoin per share. And so that has a Bitcoin plus obviously with you know there's no risk. There's no reward without risk. So some volatility around that. But I think it's natural that that's the case. And of course, you know, the the public companies and the ETFs are ultimately fiduciaries for other people's money, right? So when treasury companies grow via ATMs and other instruments, they're adding shareholders. So it's not, you know, people will say Black Rockck bought Bitcoin, but not really. you know the the individuals that bought ETF shares and the fund managers that allocates to Bitcoin via the ETF or via micro strategy like the Swiss National Bank has they are you know increasing the capital under management but the ownership is is a lot of people underneath. Ultimately, Bitcoin is technology. And if you look at the last h 100red years, you go back to the 1920s and 30s, 40s, the largest companies in America were tech or were technology companies, oil companies, electric companies, car companies. They were building great technology. And we went somewhere arai where you go back to the 1980s and the 1990s and the biggest company companies in America were services companies, financial services companies, healthc care services companies, insurance companies. And now what's amazing is post 2000 we're back to the world where the biggest companies in the world are technology companies, the Mag 7, maybe at some point the mag 10. And so we're back to we've normalized this world where those who are rewarded, the biggest companies in the world are the inventors, the creators, the technologists. And that's what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is a neutral technology that is winning because it is the best product, not anything else. And of course, as the best product with the highest return, it would make sense that a public company would amass the best products. Yeah, I mean I think with the uh Mac 7 perhaps we'll see the Bitcoin 21 like the global 21 most successful uh Bitcoin companies over time because Bitcoin is such a huge advantage for a public company to preserve its assets and then you know run a business on top of that. So to you know restructure the way a business thinks in a bitcoin denominated way developing products and services. Could we ever see the big banks move into this space and compete with some of the products that are coming out in the Bitcoin securities market, including digital credit? >> I hope so. Right? You just saw Amy from Morgan Stanley on stage before this. We know City Bank is creating products. We know other big banks are starting to create products, right? They they will. And just like anything else, you know, let's take e-commerce as an example, right? Amazon was really the first and biggest or one of the first and the biggest and every other company even Walmart had to capitulate and create similar capabilities. Will Walmart ever be the e-commerce engine that Amazon is? Well, Amazon just passed Walmart in terms of total revenue as the biggest revenue company in the world. But, you know, so if we have a Bitcoin 21 and we're number one with, you can imagine, a million, 2 million Bitcoin or whatever it is, could I see Morgan Stanley on that list? I'd love to see him on that list. I'd love to see the big banks on that list, too. >> Well, we're running out of time. I have to ask, Adam, the New York Times spent 12,000 words trying to prove that you're Satoshi. We'll set aside whether that's true. I know it's not. Um but what does the story tell us about where we are in Bitcoin in 2026? >> Well, I think in we are in a very good place in terms of regulatory clarity in institutional adoption, you know, finally starting to happen. Um in the pace of innovation in the technology, lots of new innovation at at the level layer one. Um lots of work going on in the background to preemptively address potential future quantum risks. Um and you know lots of product development to make ease of use and a very interesting financialization instruments which you know stretch is a key part of and I think that is ultimately you know forming part of a huge arbitrage between the fiat current and the bit hyper bitcoinized future. All right, one last question to each of you. Fong, what's next? You have five preferreds. Stretch is obviously the darling. What can we expect? >> You know, we've said and and and Michael has said stretch is the iPhone moment. Um, after the iPhone were the AirPods, which were products built on top of the iPhone platform. I think you'll see layer 2 products created by hundreds of companies around the world on top of Stretch and they will be as successful as Stretch and make Stretch even better. Uh I was talking to Adam behind the stage. I don't think we're going to create a VR headset version of Stretch. I think we'll let the iPhone persist and succeed and grow and take over the world. And Adam, what is one principle from the cipher punk ethos that has to survive Bitcoin's institutionalization? >> Well, I think it's key that people manage their own keys, like do their own storage and retain the option to do that and run their own nodes so they're proactively forming part of the Bitcoin bearer and keep keep the network honest, keep it secure. that's uh it's decentralized and it it benefits from staying that way. >> Not your keys, not your coins and fix the money, fix the capital markets. Everyone give it up for Adam Back and Fong Lee. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Every year, this community comes together to celebrate, to debate, to build what comes next. And every year the stage gets bigger. Sound money center stage. So where do you go to celebrate the next chapter in Bitcoin history? You come home. Nashville. July 2027.