Source: Michael Saylor https://www.michael.com/digital-assets-framework

1. Taxonomy: Defining Digital Asset Classes

Investor Opportunities: Enable access to thousands of digital assets, including:

Tokenized commodities, real estate, art, businesses, teams, collectibles, IP, and brands.

Financial instruments like equity, debt, derivatives, and currencies.

Products, services, and projects that provide value to customers, investors, and fans.

5. Opportunity: Establishing the United States as the Global Digital Leader

A strategic digital asset policy can strengthen the US dollar, neutralize the national debt, and position America as the global leader in the 21st-century digital economy.

USD as the Global Reserve Digital Currency: Grow digital currency markets from $25 billion to $10 trillion, creating massive demand for US Treasuries.

Digital Capital Growth: Expand global digital capital markets from $2 trillion to $280 trillion, with US investors capturing the majority of this wealth.

Digital Assets Leadership: Drive growth in digital assets (beyond Bitcoin) from $1 trillion to $590 trillion, with the United States dominating this industry.

Strategic Bitcoin Reserve: Establish a Bitcoin reserve capable of creating $16–81 trillion in wealth for the US Treasury, providing a pathway to offset national debt.

Conclusion: Seizing the Digital Assets Opportunity

By establishing a clear taxonomy, a legitimate rights-based framework, and practical compliance obligations, the United States can lead the global digital economy. A capital markets renaissance fueled by digital assets will unlock trillions in wealth, empower millions of businesses, and solidify the US dollar as the foundation of the 21st-century digital financial system.

Establishing a clear, universally understood taxonomy of digital assets is critical to advancing policy and fostering innovation.

Digital Commodity – An asset without an issuer, backed by digital power (e.g., Bitcoin).

Digital Security – An asset with an issuer, backed by a security (e.g., equity, debt, derivatives).

Digital Currency – An asset with an issuer, backed by fiat currency.

Digital Token – A fungible asset with an issuer, offering digital utility.

Digital NFT – A non-fungible asset with an issuer, offering digital utility (NonFungible Token).

Digital ABT – An asset with an issuer, backed by a physical asset (e.g., gold, oil, agricultural commodities).

2. Legitimacy: Establishing Rights and Responsibilities

Creating a robust framework of rights and responsibilities is essential for issuers, exchanges, and owners to engage in digital asset markets with confidence.

Path to Legitimacy: Establish a global, real-time, and uninterrupted process for issuing, trading, and owning digital assets by individuals, corporations, and machines.

Issuers:

Rights: The right to create and issue digital assets.

Responsibilities: Ensure fair disclosure and ethical behavior.

Exchanges:

Rights: The right to custody, trade, and transfer assets between clients and other exchanges.

Responsibilities: Publish asset disclosures, protect client assets, and avoid conflicts of interest.

Owners:

Rights: Self-custody, trade, and transfer their assets.

Responsibilities: Comply with applicable local laws.

Foundational Principle: No one has the right to lie, cheat, or steal. All participants are civilly and criminally responsible for their actions.

3. Practicality: Rational Compliance to Empower Innovation

Digital asset regulation must prioritize efficiency and innovation over friction and bureaucracy.

Standardized Disclosures: Define a data structure for each digital asset class to constitute fair public disclosure.

Industry-Led Compliance: Allow exchanges to collect and publish asset data as a service to the industry and investors.

Cost Limits:

Issuance Compliance: Limit costs to no more than 1% of AUM to issue an asset.

Maintenance Compliance: Limit costs to no more than 10 basis points annually to maintain an asset listing.

Streamlined Issuance: Remove regulators from the critical path of digital asset issuance. Empower exchanges to deliver integrated services to issuers, owners, and other exchanges.

Goal: Enable exponential improvements in cost, speed, quality, and accessibility via freemarket competition and innovation.

4. Vision: A Capital Markets Renaissance

The United States has an opportunity to catalyze a 21st-century capital markets renaissance, unleashing trillions of dollars in value creation.

Rapid Issuance: Allow issuers to create and issue digital assets in hours or days instead of months or years.

Cost Reduction: Drive the cost of issuance from $10–100 million to $10–100 thousand.

Access Expansion: Open capital markets to 40 million businesses (up from the current 4,000 public companies).

Broader Participation: Empower small businesses, artists, celebrities, and mid-sized enterprises to raise capital through tokenized assets.