During his keynote at the Bitcoin MENA conference in Abu Dhabi, MicroStrategy executive chairman Michael Saylor framed Bitcoin as a hard asset comparable to crude oil and outlined plans some described as a Bitcoin-focused banking model. Economist Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard, argued that this asset-focused approach does not change Bitcoin's monetary nature and expects growing use of fiat-based financial tools built on top of BTC as adoption expands.