Arkham Exposes “97% of Strategy’s Bitcoin Wallets” Amid Saylor’s Anti-PoR Remarks

Transparency, Risk, and the Collision of Institutional and On-Chain Values

Michael Saylor reignited the long-standing debate around crypto transparency this week, forcefully rejecting on-chain proof-of-reserves (PoR) as both inadequate and dangerously naive. Speaking on May 27 at a side event during Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, the Strategy chairman characterized PoR as a "bad idea," criticizing the practice of publishing wallet addresses as a reckless exposure of sensitive data. “It’s like publishing the addresses and bank accounts of all your kids,” he told the audience, warning that such disclosures create attack vectors for hackers, nation-state actors, and malicious trolls. 

From his perspective, institutions should never accept this level of risk, especially when PoR fails to account for liabilities. “It’s a proof of assets that is insecure and not a proof of liabilities,” he said. “If you've incurred $50 billion in liabilities via fiat contracts, the security's no good.” Saylor dismissed the crypto-native obsession with PoR as misplaced reverence: “People give too much credence to it. It isn’t God’s gift.”

Instead, he advocated for traditional financial audits conducted by Big Four firms, signed and certified by CFOs, CEOs, and boards under U.S. regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley. For serious investors, he argued, audited filings like 10-Ks and 10-Qs carry far more credibility than a list of wallet balances. Still, Saylor left the door open for technical innovation, saying he sees theoretical promise in zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to deliver secure, private PoR — but only if such systems are approved by custodians, exchanges, auditors, and corporate directors.

His comments drew a quick jab from Binance’s ex-CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), who responded on X with: “He probably sold bitcoins.” CZ’s mocking tone hinted at the tension between Saylor’s institutional-first ideology and crypto’s decentralized roots. 

That ideological clash escalated when Arkham Intelligence publicly disclosed wallet addresses linked to Strategy, directly contradicting Saylor’s statements about never revealing such information. “Saylor said he would never reveal his addresses… so we did,” Arkham posted on X, revealing wallets holding 70,816 BTC, or about 87.5% of Strategy’s known holdings. The wallets reportedly include coins held via Fidelity Digital’s omnibus custody service and were valued at $54.5 billion at the time of disclosure.

The exposure didn’t stop there. Arkham later claimed to have identified an additional 53,833 BTC — worth around $5.75 billion — raising the total to $59.92 billion in BTC now publicly attributed to Strategy. That means Arkham has linked roughly 97% of Strategy’s known Bitcoin reserves, a move that stirred controversy across the industry. As of May 29, Strategy holds 580,250 BTC, acquired at an average price of $69,979. The total acquisition cost is estimated at $40.6 billion, giving the company over $23 billion in unrealized gains. This holding represents more than 2.7% of Bitcoin’s fixed supply of 21 million.

The backlash was swift. Market observers voiced fears that publicly tying such a large BTC concentration to known wallet addresses invites systemic risk. “If they ever move that BTC from the wallets, expect a market collapse,” one trader warned on X. 

A meme coin trader known as MadPunk echoed the sentiment: “If he ever tried to sell a bitcoin, the whole market will crash.” Others saw the move as violating Bitcoin’s core principles, with critics arguing that this level of transparency undermines personal sovereignty and turns a decentralized asset into a centralized risk.

Still, a segment of the community rallied behind Arkham. To them, transparency is essential for accountability, especially when entities boast about multibillion-dollar holdings. “If you boast about buying $60 billion worth of bitcoin… show the receipts,” one user posted. Arkham stood by its disclosures, calling itself the first platform to enable public, free access to proof-of-reserves data and framing the release as part of a broader campaign for financial openness.

Despite the noise, Strategy continues to treat Bitcoin as its central treasury reserve asset, managed not through on-chain DeFi mechanisms, but through traditional capital markets infrastructure. The firm’s structure and disclosures remain rooted in legacy financial norms, even as crypto-native actors like Arkham continue to challenge those norms with transparency campaigns that blur the line between security risk and accountability.

This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.