Scottie Pippen says Michael Saylor warned him about Satoshi chatter

One of the greatest NBA basketball players of all time, Scottie Pippen recently got a stern warning from Strategy’s executive chairman, Michael Saylor.

This wasn’t just any ask; it’s tied to one of the biggest mysteries in Bitcoin.

“My guy, Michael Saylor, asked me not to speak on my conversations with Satoshi,” Pippen tells Magazine.

“No more talk about Satoshi,” the LA-based, six-time NBA champion says.

The 59-year-old Chicago Bulls Hall of Famer claims he has been speaking with Satoshi Nakamoto in his dreams for some time. He says their first encounter was in real life back in 1993 — though the details are unclear, as they didn’t talk about Bitcoin, which didn’t exist for another 15 years. 

Saylor took Scottie Pippen out on his yacht

While it may sound outlandish, Pippen claims the same person identifying himself as Satoshi has been popping up in his dreams ever since. According to Pippen, Satoshi even gives him Bitcoin price predictions in his dreams, which he then shares online.

When he brought this up during a panel with Saylor at the Cantor Crypto Conference in November 2024, Saylor looked… well, amazed.

At the time, Saylor said, “I envy Scottie.” 

On a podcast just a few weeks later, Saylor revealed they’ve been hanging out since. “Look, I like Scottie,” Saylor said. 

He explained how he had Pippen over at his house, treated him to dinner on his yacht, and they spent the night geeking out over Bitcoin. Saylor even defended Pippen over his huge Satoshi claims.

“I think the interviewer asked him an unfair question, and I was a little bit uncomfortable because we Bitcoin maximalists are very protective of Satoshi; we don’t talk about Satoshi,” Saylor said.

“I think it is constructive that Scottie Pippen, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, has a relationship with Satoshi and talks about Satoshi,” Saylor said.

The dreams that forecast the market

To be fair, whatever Satoshi has been telling Pippen in his dreams has not been too far off the mark. 

Pippen’s dream conversations with Satoshi don’t just stay in his head; he shares them with his 730,000 X followers.

In a September 2024 X post, when Bitcoin was trading at around $57,000, Pippen took to X to share one of his dream-born predictions, this one tied to US election day in November.

“Satoshi Nakamoto visited me in my dream last night and predicted that Bitcoin would be at $84,650 on November 5, 2024. Not financial advice,” Pippen said.

The price didn’t land on that date, but it hit two weeks later. The post accumulated 9.7 million views.

Then, on December 28, with Bitcoin hovering around $94,160, came another dream prophecy:

“Just took a nap and Satoshi whispered, ‘Bitcoin will go closer to Black Mamba numbers before it goes back to Chamberlain,” he said.

If that sounds like complete gibberish and you’re not fluent in basketball stats (I’m not either), Bianco Research researcher Jim Bianco broke it down.

“Black Mamba = Kobe Bryant. Most points in a game = 81. Chamberlain = Wilt Chamberlain. Most points in a game = 100.”

If you’re still lost, Bryant and Chamberlain were both NBA players, and it translates to Pippen predicting Bitcoin would reach $81,000 before it hit $100,000 again. 

It came only weeks after Bitcoin surpassed $100,000 for the first time on December 5 before reaching $106,147 on December 18 and retracing back down to $94,160.

He wasn’t entirely accurate, as it reclaimed $100,000 on January 16, just a few days before Donald Trump’s inauguration. However, the $81,000 price tag did come a few months later, on April 4. 

Scottie Pippen asks his followers about the possibility of $233,000 Bitcoin in 2026

Not perfect timing, but even big names like Arthur Hayes admit they miss more predictions than they hit.

Pippen recently asked his followers on July 24 if Bitcoin would hit $233,000 in 2026. He also suggested the possibility of Solana reaching $1,000 and XRP reaching $10.

Pippen says his predictions aren’t calculated in advance. “I think it’s all feel. I can’t just do it sporadically,” Pippen says.

“I’ve got to have a feel of what I’m doing. So it’s, it’s all a feel. And again, I got a great team that I work with. So, it definitely helps to have great people and smart people around,” Pippen says.

Pippen doesn’t yet have a forecast for Bitcoin’s price in 2025. “I gotta get some more sleep. I need Satoshi to tell me,” he laughs.

Who is Scottie Pippen?

Pippen isn’t your run-of-the-mill crypto influencer, of course; he’s an NBA legend. 

He’s played 17 seasons in the NBA, racked up six championships with the Chicago Bulls and is known as one of basketball’s all-time greats. 

In the 1990s, he helped push the NBA into the mainstream and turned his name into a staple on jerseys and merchandise around the world.

Pippen made seven NBA All-Star appearances, earned the All-Star Game MVP title in 1994, and was honored as one of the league’s 50 Greatest Players in the 1996-97 season. 

Pippen announced his retirement in 2004, and the Bulls honored him by retiring his number 33 in 2005, a rare honor shared with just Jerry Sloan, Bob Love and Michael Jordan.

In 2010, Jordan inducted Pippen into the Hall of Fame. 

One of Pippen’s early championship moments now shapes his newest crypto venture. 

In 1991, when the Bulls won their first title against the LA Lakers, Pippen was the last one holding the ball when the final buzzer sounded. 

He’s kept that ball for 34 years, and now it’s the foundation of his latest crypto project, The Ball Foundation.

Scottie Pippen hopes The Ball will hold its value for generations

The idea is simple but ambitious. Pippen hopes the championship ball will carry its value across the blockchain for generations.

The project’s token, BALL, holds a market capitalization of $2 million with a total supply of 1 billion tokens and is a real-world asset backed by the physical basketball Pippen still owns today.

“We’re giving it to the community, so it’s in the hands of the community, for the people, and they’re going to have the opportunity to run with it, to grow it,” he claims.

Pippen says The Ball Foundation was dreamed up during a chat with his friend and social media creative director, Kiarash Behain, who now leads the foundation. One day, they were hanging out when Pippen began talking about his memorabilia and pointed to that famous championship ball.

“He just was saying, ‘That’s considered a real-world asset, you know,’” Pippen says, explaining that his friend grew up in LA and vividly remembers when Pippen and the Bulls came through in 1991 to defeat the LA Lakers.

“I realized that I had a very valuable piece of asset that I had kept for 33 years, and it was the Game 5 ball,” he says.

“I think I recognized that it could be a real-world asset, knowing that millions of people that know about the Chicago Bulls, millions of people that know about the ball as a whole. I thought that we had something there.”

Pippen doesn’t just want to leave a legacy in basketball; he wants to do so in crypto, too.

“I think I want to be a trailblazer, to kind of be the one that introduced people to the crypto world,” Pippen says.

“I feel that what I’m doing is kind of bridging the gap, keeping people from being afraid, but also giving them an opportunity to get involved in the crypto world,” Pippen says.

Scottie Pippen says the fear of missing out is real

This isn’t his first project. In 2022, Pippen launched his own digital sneakers NFT collection, which ended up selling out fast. 

The launch also included “mystery boxes” where NFT buyers had the chance to win real, signed pairs of Pippen sneakers.

Pippen’s not the only NBA star turning into a crypto advocate: Tristan Thompson and Spencer Dinwiddie have gotten involved in crypto, too.

“I think their experience has been a lot like my experience. It’s still new to them,” he says.

“They’re still learning, but it’s the future, and so everyone is afraid of that missing out, as you know most people did when Bitcoin came out,” he explains.

“So, the fear of missing out has got a lot of people really focusing,” he adds.

Pippen wants to bring people to crypto and has no interest in launching a dodgy celebrity memecoin token. “You have to pick the right things that’s put in front of you. You get a lot of stuff put out there, but you got to make the right decisions,” Pippen says.

“I’ve put myself in a situation with a great team around me, and I believe in what we have and what we’re doing,” he adds.

Pippen hopes his work in crypto will lead to a handshake with pro-crypto President Donald Trump before his term ends.

“That’s a possibility. You know, he’s going to be in office for another three years, so I definitely hope and expect to cross paths with him,” he says.

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Ciaran Lyons

Ciaran Lyons is an Australian crypto journalist. He’s also a standup comedian and has been a radio and TV presenter on Triple J, SBS and The Project.