056 - Michael Tanguma/Onramp: Bitcoin Custody as the Missing Piece for Mass Adoption

In this episode, Michael Tanguma, founder and CEO of Onramp and Early Riders, discusses the evolution of Bitcoin as a financial asset, the challenges of custody solutions, and the innovative approaches his companies are taking to address these issues.

He shares his personal journey into the Bitcoin space, the importance of multi-institutional custody, and how Onramp is positioning itself to meet the needs of both individual and institutional investors. The conversation also touches on the future of Bitcoin as a unit of account and the changing landscape of venture capital in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

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⚡  Get personalized onboarding at River for Bitcoin-only financial services: https://partner.river.com/buildwithbitcoin
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Michael Tanguma and His Journey
04:11 Transitioning from Tech to Bitcoin
06:54 The Challenges of Bitcoin Custody
10:00 Onramp: Building a Multi-Institutional Custody Solution
13:02 The Evolution of Onramp's Services
16:07 Understanding Collaborative Custody
20:21 The Future of Bitcoin Custody and Onramp's Role
23:00 Expanding Product Offerings
33:20 Transitioning to Early Bitcoin Ventures
40:40 The Role of Bitcoin in Business Models
54:20 The Future of Bitcoin and Venture Capital

References
https://x.com/MTanguma
https://www.onrampbitcoin.com/
https://www.earlyriders.com/

https://www.buildwithbitcoin.xyz/
https://x.com/BuildwBitcoin
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❗ DISCLAIMER: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions consult a professional.

Transcript

Michael: 0:00

Multi institution custody is this unique balance, the way I like to think about it. Is it like 10 to 100x is the security with 110 to 1/100 of the friction?

Israel: 0:18

What are the benefits to multi institutional custody, and why use Bitcoin as a unit of account inside of an investment fund? We get into these topics and more with onramp and early writers. Founder and CEO, Michael tengoma, we hope you enjoy and as a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only. If you enjoy the content, please remember to subscribe, share or comment as This all helps us greatly. Lynne and Israel are partners at bayslayer advisors, where they employ their strong network of Venture Capital Partners and startups to connect investors with unique opportunities within the Bitcoin innovation space. Alongside this, they support founders with their strategic growth and fundraising goals. Visit our website's advisory section to learn more. Welcome to build with Bitcoin. I'm co host Yvonne Munoz joined with co host Lynne Bairstow. Today we welcome Michael tanguma, founder and CEO of onramp and early riders. Michael, welcome glad to be here. Excited to chat with you all. We have quite a bit to get through today, of course, we want to get into the weeds of what you're working on at OnRamp, the full financial services platform that you've built, as well as early riders, which is a very unique Investment Fund. But before we get into all of that, which we have plenty to talk about there, maybe we start off with your background. Michael, you had some experience at some well known Bitcoin companies before founding these, these two projects, but maybe even before that, you know, as far back as you want or comfortable sharing, what's your background and what got you into bitcoin in the first place?

Michael: 1:50

Yeah, for sure. I'm glad you asked that, because I think there'll be some things that will be either controversial or shared here that when heard, may make a lot of sense, but aren't talked about publicly. And I think it does stem from my background, because I think in the Bitcoin space, because we're so early, I have a unique background in that. I was in traditional technology and a professional at a pretty high level for a while before grokking or coming into Bitcoin. So my background was a native Texan, which I think helps in the quasi libertarian, quasi like, just never really trusting. I always had this notion. I didn't realize how arrogant it was until I said it out loud recently, and somebody told me was like, I always thought I if I needed a 401, K or an IRA, I messed up deeply in life. So I just never had any money in the financial system. I was always like, you know, made money, saved it in dollars. I was at Google. I was in SaaS based sales transition over to Google, a small startup within Google called Google Fiber. Was a hyper growth firm. There transition from Texas to New York City, and meanwhile, I was investing Google, just selling all that stock into dollars. I thought I was going to invest in real estate or a business. I just knew you couldn't hold dollars long term. But this is like 1415, 2014, 15, and randomly ended up in New York City with Adam Newman at WeWork, pre the Softbank $4 billion investment. And so my story goes that I was learning about money while I was lighting money on fire. So I was like, viscerally, remember going home at night reading the Bitcoin standard while we were just building this business at WeWork. And generally, like individuals will think about we work as just as crazy Ponzi and all marketing, and there was a lot of like, obvious fluff there. But the thing that I remember is it was the highest level of operating, operational excellence, like the best people in the world. When you think about it, kind of makes sense, because in traditional tech, traditional the traditional world, that's the highest level the best builders, the best operators, are gravitating towards. So they're either founding these companies, or what you start to see is the investment bankers and these individuals that are best performers at the other tech companies are always jumping to the next ones. And so this was always like grounding for me, because when I came into the Bitcoin space, I was always missing this, like I just saw at the highest level, and it was like lacking. So that kind of informs a little bit of like, what we're doing. Like, what we're doing today. But that was, like, the journey pre Bitcoin was, was just being in technology 17, the price is running with, you know, all coins, ICOs, going down the rabbit hole. And we just had Tad Smith on our podcast. And it was interesting, because I wanted to bring this up. Ted Smith is a former CEO of Sotheby's, and when I was in college, I worked at a high end Auction House. And previous to that, I was like a, you know, like most kids, like Pokemon and, you know, basketball, baseball cards. And so I kind of already understood scarcity and why things had value in that sense that there's limited supply. So I had reference, because my journey, when I found Bitcoin in that 17 market, it was like, very quickly, if there's only 21 million, like, holy crap, this has to have some value. And so it wasn't very hard to understand. And I asked tad that as well, because he was the CEO of the largest auction house in the world. And he was like, that was exactly it. Like, he already understood that things have finite supply, and then it's all about, you know, all the other. Properties to it, where you underwrite what's the ultimate value. And so he clicked very much for him, in the same way that it did for me, as far as just thinking about scarcity in

Lynne Bairstow: 5:08

Bitcoin. Michael, so how did you get from there to starting a company in Bitcoin? You were in the Bitcoin space. You left tech and you wanted, once you discovered Bitcoin, you realized that you wanted to spend your time and energy working in it, and would love to hear your trajectory of how you went to found a company.

Michael: 5:27

Yeah, and this plays a lot into what we're doing today, and for listeners to either get in touch or just to act on inspiration. So as one does, it's a one way street, right? We were talking before recording about our allocation sizing being pretty material into Bitcoin. And it's the same way from a mental mind share, right? You guys start in the pod, and the focus you have on it's like, once it just gets you, it gets you. And so in 2017 got in 18, it's all I could think about. Um, but I was lucky, like I was at we we work. We were making serious money. And there wasn't many Bitcoin only companies at the time. So I was kind of doing the thing that most people do, right? You mine Fiat, and you're you're allocating, but I kept trying to figure out, how do you get into the space? The problem is specifically somebody with, like, a growth, business development, sales background. In 2018 there was very few Bitcoin only companies. Everything was a scam. Ico, there was, like maybe three. Cash App had just launched. There was casa, and then unchained. And so in parallel to building a material position, what most people end up having to do is figure out, well, what do I do with custody? So I had been buying Bitcoin On Gemini, and I knew not your keys, not your coins. And again, eventually you wake up and you have a position, and you can't afford to wake up and the exchange be gone or cut you off. And so I didn't want to be alone on an island with a little hardware device, because I just couldn't risk, I couldn't wrap my head around that. And so being a native Texan, unchained had been on my radar because they were based in Austin, and they were one of the first, you know, older Bitcoin only firms. So I naturally went down that rabbit hole of Casa unchained. And during that time frame, I actually met Parker Lewis. I ended up transitioning, I want to say, like started to doing diligence. Was one of the first clients of Unchained, when they pivoted from the lending product, which was because most people don't know this, but unchained started as a lending product, and then naturally, via Parker's vision, saw, for every you know, one person that needs a loan, there's an email between 10 to 100 to 1000 at any 1000 at any better custody. And so as they were pivoting to that, I had met them, and was kind of like, almost R and D and are helping them out with, like, let me test this out. And so that was over the course of months, and I had randomly, it's a small part of the story I don't really talk about. I joined this firm called the block at the time, it's the block crypto, and I was like, one of the first hires was with all those guys and and I found out very quickly, you know, how most companies aren't Bitcoin companies. And so it didn't work out for for long, but I got into my space, and I always cherish that, because when I was at the block, I that's where I really built a relationship with Parker. And I was helping him out with some stuff when I was in New York, and he was always like, Hey, if you come back, you know, home, we got to get you plugged in to to the ecosystem, like get you in. And it was astute on his side. Because what I think he recognized is that if you're going to really sell financial services in Bitcoin, you ultimately have to, you have to feel it like you have to understand it, and you have to use it, because the market will always understand if you don't use that. It's the same way when you're raising capital for venture, unless you fully buy it, can walk backwards and forwards on the thesis the market. Thesis, the market will always sniff out if you don't know your stuff. And because I was applying already, and had to go through all the process like I was using on chain, pre caravan and wallet config, and I was like, telling them, I need this, because how can I trust a third party if I can't recover it because I'm not technical, and so that's kind of how my transition into building in this space was that I moved back to Texas. Got insanely lucky in November of 19 from New York, and then me and Parker had been chatting. And ultimately it took a little longer, because covid happened, the market downturn, and so everything kind of paused when it came to capital formation. But I ultimately joined Unchained was as one of the first employees and previous first clients in 2020?

Lynne Bairstow: 9:00

Yeah, I think it's true. I think that you know the evolution of Bitcoin. I mean, the original people who started adapting Bitcoin and using it were tech people, and they were programmers or or into security. And so as more people grew into the into Bitcoin, it's like, what is the level of comfort of holding it, and what is your financial situation overall. So having infrastructure, and I still think that that's a hurdle in the adoption today, is that there are, you know, it still gets a little complicated for people who are who have been brought into the who have been in the traditional financial system, and then for them to get their head around keys and writing it down and holding it yourself. I mean, it's the beauty of Bitcoin, is peer to peer and self custody, but it's also very intimidating by for people who have been in traditional finance or for institutions that just require a different level of it. So you identified this need and.

Michael: 10:00

Yeah, well, and it's super astute, because I'll make the case that it is the reason why Bitcoin is not, let's call it a $10 trillion asset today. Because, yes, obvious, like, custody is hard. But there's another notion, and there's a lot of things that I've learned, because I've been lucky now I could say, like, half a decade, all I've done is talk about this professionally, with investors help onboard 1000s of clients, billions of dollars, and so there's a lot of like, pattern recognition, and one of the biggest ones is, right? Like, when we talk with individuals, we all have peers that don't get this, and they think this is all speculative and that this is all a Ponzi. And what they're really telling you is there's a common trope that if I even get this, so you get a few if I get that this is valuable. Now I kind of have a problem on my hands, because now I got to figure it out, and all I know is that if I buy bitcoin, it ends up in a landfill in the United Kingdom on a zip drive, or it ends up taken by North Koreans, because the last 15 years have been mired by insolvencies, rehypothecation and bad actors because of centralized custody, or just the loss of keys. And so the underlying not being bulletproof has is kept people out. And so a great example just easy is like startup culture, right? Product Market Fit, Bitcoin. Product Market Fit is so tremendous that we got to $2 trillion market cap without actually figuring out custody. Because nobody on the planet Earth, in my opinion, like we could talk about multi institution, but nobody on planet Earth can say tomorrow their Bitcoin with 100% certainty will be there without a single point of failure, whether it's in self custody, because there's always a point of failure there or third party custody, and it's still got to$2 trillion and so that's just a testament to, again, how great of a product it is. Because, you know, everyone needs to store their value. Store their value in a better money. And so you hit the nail on the head that this is, like a foundational thing. And it's like, you know, spent the past half decade working on,

Israel: 11:49

so maybe now is a good point to transition to on ramp, Michael, and exactly what, what you guys are working on at on ramp, for this infrastructure side, the custody solutions, on and off ramps. Can you maybe just start off with giving us an overview of what on ramp is and what your multi institutional custody model looks like?

Unknown: 12:09

Yeah, for sure. So we spent about two and a half three years building unchained we went from, you know, couple couple people for sales higher to over 100 people. Raised over $100 million added, you know, close to $10 billion plus in capital, like real scale. But over those calls, you know, really started to pick up on from a high net worth perspective, it got really difficult, the larger amounts of capital and uncomfortable nature of an individual, and also, ultimately at scale, you start to build a brand. But like in the early days of adopting multi SIG, collaborative custody, you really get somebody that's just a tinker. They're very deep in the weeds, and they understand X, pubs, derivation paths, wallet, config, how do they update, recover, but at a certain point, it kind of ends up being a negative where people list, just do the thing without understanding the underlying meaning, like, how to recover, how to do it. And that's ultimately kind of a recipe for some kind of discomfort, because if you don't do it properly, this stuff's like, it's the way I like, and it's is almost like firearms, you got to use it a lot, or this time you do need it, you may not be ready for it, or you're going to freak out. And so that was one aspect, but the other one to be transparent, was that it was really on the institutional fiduciary side that we would talk with individuals. Like, imagine all of us sitting on the other side of a corporate anybody that we were managing money that wasn't just purely ours. And there were very evangelical they understand holding their keys, but we would have the call. They would go to their board, and then we either never hear from them, or they would come back with, like, their telex, like, can't do it. And it's like, man, because they couldn't wrap their heads around, you know, the keys, the backups you have, turnover in an organization, you have all these complexities. And so 2022, hit, and everything kind of blows up in the market, right? It was a most transformative time, probably my life, because it was a lot of reflecting. Ultimately, you kind of find out this will tie into some of the venture stuff, you know, where Bitcoin companies haven't necessarily been built, in my mind, in the best way, because they are told to go run and grow as fast as possible and raise traditional dollars. But in Bitcoin, it's like an accelerated business cycle. So most people like outpace their coverage when they hire, and then the market just crashes. And now you got to figure out, what do you do with these people? And there's layoffs, there's layoffs, there's all and then all the fissures start to show up in an organization. So this is all happening. And then I'm sitting back, and I'm like, man, you know the smartest people in the room weren't the smartest people in the room, because you think, as you grow up that everyone knows what they're doing, and the reality is nobody knows what they're doing. And you look at grayscale on three AC and Celsius and FTX, and I was and I was looking, I was like, man, May, I don't know if we had the best business model from $1 perspective, but we were very conservative, and we never lost anybody's money. And so I think we know, I think I know what to do, or have a fighting chance at what to do. If this market and the other side of that was, if you guys show slides, I can pull something up, or I can just talk through it. But ultimately. But the thing that's has sit wrong on my side for the for a very long time was that everyone assumed there's only two forms of custody of Bitcoin. And I couldn't, like reconcile that, because in my mind, it meant that Bitcoin would fail, meaning that there was only self custody or third party custody. So coin to be again, directionally, like over generalistic, it was either Coinbase or like this little plastic device. And that didn't feel right, because I knew that all the institutional and the trillions of dollars we all want to come in to pump our bags and do all the things that needs to do, we're going to come in the plastic device, and then if it went into Coinbase and Coinbase proxies, well, we know where gold failed. And nobody ever talks about this. They still don't. And I'm convinced that it's not because they don't want to talk about it's like they don't want to talk about it's like they don't have a solution. So why bring up something if you don't actually have a solution? And so in between all of that was this, like multi institution, where it's like, man, we need to do this. And the I'll share that I didn't know all of this at the time. I just knew that there needed to be multi institution, custody for a singular product. And very few people know this, but what we launched, when honor it first started, it was the honor at Bitcoin trust. And why was that was because I looked at grayscale and the grayscale trust, and I simply, and this is important, because it ties into the early writers stuff is I looked at grayscale and I said, Man, grayscale, objectively has product market fit. They have 600,000 Bitcoin. They're printing 10,000 Bitcoin a year. They're getting people exposure to this alien technology. But they objectively have a horrible product, right? Like every like. And these are the three pillars. Is they have multiple layers of counterparty risk from the underlying custodian that the Bitcoin sits at, the intermediary brokerage you buy it from, and then the issuer who did everything under the sun to kind of ruin their brand and business. They don't focus only on Bitcoin, which is insanely important, because most investors end up as exit liquidity in this space. Because when they buy bitcoin, they're buying a meme event. Effectively, the price is running, so they love it. But then when the price crashes, nobody can explain why it's crashing. They blame it on Bitcoin versus all the other pondies that exist and the de leveraging of the system. So that's an important function, because if you do this right, you're educating the investor on the way up. Because when the price crashes, now they're buying the dip versus selling and then getting burned. And then the last part, which is probably one of the most important, was that these ETFs, and this is pre ETS, mind you, this is in 22 that these products are kneecapping bitcoins properties. So as a Bitcoin or as somebody that appreciates the value, probably Bitcoin, it's like, this isn't even Bitcoin. They're just buying proxy. And so I started doing some some research and diligence and talking to lawyers, and realized that, like, Bitcoin is just a commodity, which is obvious, but it's like soybeans. You can just take delivery of commodity. It's not a big deal. And so that's where the onramp Bitcoin Trust, which was multi institution custody, so three institutions holding the keys allowed for in kind, redemptions and delivery. And then Bitcoin only education. And so that's how the business started. But like everything in life, when you have a technological wedge that is like a fulcrum that can really move it. You need very little money or capital to do. And so when we launched this via like, I'll tie into that, but we launched it, and ultimately we had demand from the OGS all the way to net new people. We're like, this is what I've been waiting for. And so I could share more about that story and some of the capital side, but that's kind of how onramp came about.

Israel: 18:20

Build with Bitcoin as a proud affiliate partner of river, a Bitcoin only financial services company that I've personally been using for years. I really enjoy the strong folks they have on security and reliability, which ultimately leads to peace of mind. I know you. You're a big fan as well.

Lynne Bairstow: 18:36

Lynne, I am, I am. I feel so confident referring people to River. In addition to what you mentioned, also they've got us based phone support, which I think for somebody who's less familiar with the space or used to personal service, is really helpful. In addition, they have a private client services division, so if you're looking to invest 100,000 or more, they have a special suite of services designed for you, whether you're a high net worth individual, a family office or trust. I also really appreciate the continued improvements they make in the back end, so that that reliability and security continues to be really apparent.

Israel: 19:08

They additionally also have US dollar cash deposits paid out in Bitcoin. They have a yield product for that, which is an interesting alternative way of accumulating Bitcoin. Overall, fantastic suite of services. If you're interested in onboarding or opening up an account at River use partner.river.com/build, with Bitcoin for personalized custody. Is a spectrum, right? And I think anyone who was in the space back then, as you were alluding to the kind of early grayscale days and all of that knows that. I mean, it was, it was difficult to even point someone to some trustworthy solutions. To be quite honest, you were either on the, you know, full self sovereign side, where you were comfortable, but that's very few people who, you know, know how to buy a hardware wallet and take self custody, or. Or the exchange extreme right and and now, luckily, we're at a much more mature stage in the market where you you have an array of solutions in between. So maybe for the listener who's not as familiar with the custody setups, can you explain this collaborative approach a little more deeply?

Unknown: 20:20

Michael, yeah, is it okay to pull up slides, or will that work? That works? I'll pull up a few things. So the first one is, this is kind of like the slide I was referencing, and just that the market historically has only looked at, you know, this notion of self custody and third party custody. And I think that's important just to call out. We talk about it at some point, but we've already played this out with self custody and third party custody. Again. This might sound controversial, but like, you can self custody a lot of gold, and you can sell custody, and you get third party custody. Now you can obviously put a lot more gold in or Bitcoin in your hand, in gold, but at the end of the day, like, the reason why we ended up with intermediaries and banks was ultimately because if you hold enough of an underlying wherever you do it, a bigger militia or bigger group will come for that. And so there's a natural need for custodial relationships. And so that's the idea of, like, we just continue, I think, as an industry, at least from the hardcore side, believe that self custody is grand, like changing of what Bitcoin is. But like we've done that with it's a bear asset. It's just a digital bear asset versus physical. So that kind of ties into that point where you referenced is that core tenant of like these are, this is the amount of losses. For somebody listening and pulling up a slide that shows the amount of losses in bitcoins 15 years. Doesn't even account for the buy bit hack to really like, anchored to numbers 650, 5 billion is close to the amount of capital that was injected in the GFC and then global financial crisis. Like, that's the amount of capital to help re leverage the system. And the last part, just to like rank how much like losses have occurred, just evaporated, is the bybit Hack, which was $1.2 billion the largest, you know, theft in history. It's about 20x greater than the last theft that was like physical. There was two large like loss of assets, which is a painting, I believe, in Paris that was roughly like 50 to 60 million and then gold in Iraq. So like the notion that also this is just going to go away. We've never experienced digital scarcity, and so the amount of sophisticated hackers right now, they're digital, but they will eventually will be physical. That's the kicker nobody talks about, is once the physical people know that people are digitally having this like device or this thing in their house. That's when things get really ugly, because more and more people, people already break into people's homes for, you know, a watch or a or whatever they have in their safe. Imagine when you know that somebody has $5 million so where this leads into Israel's point is, multi institution custody. Is this unique balance, the way I like to think about it, is it like 10 to 100x is the security with 1/10 to 1/100 of the friction? Because ultimately, self custody, whether it's collaborative custody, your own multi SIG or self custody, requires a lot of time and effort to really, you know, make it bulletproof and resilient and redundant, but you still are a single point of failure yourself to manage those keys. And what multi institution custody does is it has three independent institutions that their whole business model is around safeguarding and cryptographically managing those keys, not only via their brand, their awareness the amount of capital they've had to raise to secure those keys, but then it levers in. So it's technical governance, but then it's legal governance, meaning when somebody onboards, they have a legal relationship with each of those key partners, and so they're only moving at the underlying direction of the client the second they ever do anything different, they ruin their whole business model. But also, they can't do anything because it's only one part of the key. And the only other thing this to share is, what makes this really unique is that it leverages multisig, which multisig is open source and native to the Bitcoin protocol, which is important because this is battle tested technology. There's nothing proprietary. There's nothing that has to be necessarily like audited or it's not a smart contract. This can scale very nicely to the proportion amount of assets being stood up. So I have no question my mind, as ETFs grow as more, you know, malfeasance in the industry happens, and losses that the from an SEC perspective and and regulatory perspective and banking perspective, you'll naturally see this evolve as a standardization across the industry, because it's just best in class, redundancy and fault tolerance around risk management

Lynne Bairstow: 24:37

really also, even if you're dealing with corporate boards of directors, or whoever would hold the keys at a corporation or a family office. You know, this also provides a solution that's a little bit more elegant. You could have different like in a family office, different family office executives hold, you know, hold one key versus the other. But, yeah, it just meets the needs that I think, you know. Know, as Bitcoin evolves from a single person you know, owning it to this now it's such an important financial asset for every entity to consider pension funds you know, all nonprofits, you know that we're going to see more needs for services that offer this sort of of security and comfort level among multi holders of the of the keys of a particular pocket. But I'd like to ask you, like, what you found, what how is on ramps business evolving? Are you seeing a particular demographic or type of an entity that's really, you know, making up the bulk of the business at on ramp, and what does that look

Unknown: 25:41

like? Yeah, so I think that's a key component of like, again, how powerful or maybe disruptive or product market fit a solution has is that we work with pensions. So the first UK pensions publicly have, you know, referenced our solution that we work with all the way down to the individual. So we just onboarded an endowment. We're doing a case study on family offices. But the thing that's really interesting, I think I have it here. I'll pull it up. It's actually referenced from river that our composition of client base, sorry, our composition of client base maps directly to Bitcoin ownership. So very few people actually talk about this, but the majority of Bitcoin is held by individuals in self custody, and it's actually really amazing if you're a Bitcoin builder, because nobody's really serving that market. The people that serve that market, it's not to say nobody, but generalizing nobody, because the only people really serving individuals are the hardware manufacturers, because historically, the most sophisticated people had material exposure. They knew they needed to sever the internet connection and take those keys offline. And so that's just a key aspect of what we focus and have an institutional brand and produce a lot of material for institutions, pensions, endowments, family offices, our core client base is folks like us three, and it's not to say they put 100% of their assets with us. We had a report recently called the barbell approach to custody, and I started to realize. I was like, Oh, my God, my multi SIG setup is not really it used to be the best of both worlds. Now it's the worst of both worlds, because if you travel, well, what do you do with it? Are you taking your stuff with you? Well, if you do that, you have a problem. If you don't do that, you have a problem, right? Who's in your house when you're gone, or who's in your room when your hotel room? And then also, if you do it correctly, you're always having a situation where you can't access it if you put all your multisig set up in your house, well, that's a problem whether somebody breaks in or a house burns down, but if you segregate it, well, now you never really have full access, because you have to go to multiple checks and balances. You know, we've heard horror stories about the California fires where people had the keys in the safety deposit box. And so the barbell approach to custody, in my opinion, is the most sophisticated version of custody to date, because I'm a you know, bitcoiner, like you guys and I love no matter what MBK says, like, I love, you know, my cold card Q and I have a small percentage of my wealth there that I can always, you know, put a 12 words and a seed phrase in my coat jacket, and leave to Mexico, wherever I need to, and have my money, but it's no way for somebody to manage if I'm all in all of my wealth, if I want my family to recover it. And so then I have a bulk of my capital in multi institution, and so that's really resonated with a lot of our client base, and that's how a lot of people use us today, but then others don't want to deal with any of what we just talked about, and they're very happy, like it's been a pleasure talking with our clients. And I swear this sounds like a show, but like they'll jump on and say, My wife has just noticed me. I'm a lot more calmer because I don't have to deal with this anymore, and others, the biggest form, and it kind of sounds funny, but the biggest compliment I've gotten is multiple clients are like, I don't know how any of this shit works. And like, and they're like, I don't know about anything. And it's like, that's my version of compliment, because I think about multi institution custody, and what we're doing is, like, the browser, um, when mosaic came around, it took all the complexity on how do you get a router set up, and you click a button, you get access to the World Wide Web, and you're ready to rock and roll in the same way. Now. Somebody wants to buy material exposure, they click a button, they have multi institutions stood up, and it's all secure. And if something goes wrong with an institution, the assets are still verifiable, and on chain that's just never existed in

Lynne Bairstow: 29:17

Bitcoin move beyond just custody. So as onramp has grown, you've grown with your clients and are offering lending services and IRAs and other other adjacent services, including the exchange services, the trade services that you just launched this week. But Can Can you just talk a little bit about the evolution of how you think about expanding the product offerings for your

Unknown: 29:40

clients? Yeah, so at the end of the day, like, what we do is we provide peace of mind. I want to say we let people's dreams come true, but it sounds too soft, and our chief strategy officer won't let me do it yet. But it really is true, because anybody that's held Bitcoin long enough, and I would say you guys are probably living out your dream of like, doing what you love, it's because you've been afforded to because you've held Bitcoin long enough and. It's appreciated in value, and it gives you optionality on the future. The reality is so that the angle will say we provide peace of mind. And what that means is that where we started was allowing for people to secure the underlying asset and get peace of mind. Because most people don't have peace of mind with their Bitcoin, whether it's 1% or 90% or 90% they think about it. They think about it when they travel. They think about their self custody. I see you kind of smiling, because it resonates, right? But if you take a step back, the peace of mind starts pre Bitcoin, because most people don't have peace of mind because they can feel it when you go to the grocery store and eggs cost more every day, and even if you're wealthy, you still feel it because you retire and you're like, is this retirement gonna go as far as it can, or am I gonna leave as much as I thought I was gonna leave my family? But then once you get bitcoin, you still, again, to the point don't have peace of mind, because you don't know how to custody it. But then once you can custody it, you don't necessarily have full peace of mind, even if you feel good, because you can feel rock solid. But then now you have friends and family that they're counting on you, if you, God forbid, you get hit by a bus, how do they get it? And so that's I share that answer, because that's effectively how we think about our solution. So on ramp multi institution is our core. But then how do you take a step back and provide peace of mind across the board? And so that's what ties into the launch of on ramp trade. It's the on ramp to on ramp where people can come into the ecosystem buy best in class, lowest cost Bitcoin to get exposure to. Right now, it's with qualified custodian DECO, because they're our natural partner. They hold a key. Over the next call, three months, it'll sit in multi institution custody, but in a pooled vehicle. So it's a little bit different than a segregated wallet that would be, you know, a traditional on ramp account. And the reality, and the reason for that is because over long enough time, horizon, exchanges go down, people blow up, all the risk comes back, and nobody ever knows where the risk lies. And so our view is you should be building robust solutions across the board, and multi institution solves for that. Because the thing that doesn't get talked about in the industry is proof of reserves is is a nice it's a nice statement. It's a good direction, but proof reserves doesn't help if you do it the day before and then tomorrow it's gone because there was malfeasance or it was hacked. And inherent to multisig and inherent to multi institution custody is proof of reserves. So that's an aspect to that is building an exchange with embedded multi institution layer.

Israel: 32:21

Well, congrats on the on the launch of the trading services as well. Michael and and, I mean, I applaud what you guys are doing, because I feel like ever since we, since we met, I've been learning of a new product or services that you guys are are kind of adding on or layering onto the platform. And, you know, you mentioned earlier that Bitcoin gives you optionality to your financial future, right? But, but then you once, you start getting into what Bitcoin is as a technology as well, then you start learning that it also gives you a lot of option optionality on that technology side, and just on how to use it as money, right? And so it's, it's fabulous to see you guys adding all these different layers just meeting demanding customers, I guess, where, where, where they are. You know, that sounds like you guys are tackling quite a few different pain points. Yeah, we

Unknown: 33:14

move insanely fast. So, yeah, you see a lot of stuff coming out. We're running and on all cylinders,

Lynne Bairstow: 33:21

maybe we kind of transition over to early writers too. Because, you know, Israel and I, when we first started talking about doing this podcast, my background is venture capital with a fund of my own, and Israel had also startup accelerator, and had a startup in the Bitcoin space early on, before in remittances and and so we looked at the space, and it's like, who's building I mean, you see a need, but who's actually building it, and where are the great technologists that are identifying this opportunity, but then creating companies that have the opportunity for success and scaling and and doing it in a in in the way that I guess we're used to seeing it in Silicon Valley, but and then we're also learning that, you know, Bitcoin, because of its ethos and nature and limited supply, just is creating a whole different way of building a company that I think is a little bit more thoughtful, especially with the opportunity of a Bitcoin treasury. But maybe I would love to see how you went from on ramp to and obviously, your your background with Google and WeWork, you know, made you see some of the same things, like, how do you support companies building on in the Bitcoin arena and and how do you fund them in an appropriate way? Which that was another thing that we heard was a traditional venture capital did not understand a Bitcoin startup and wanted to tokenize them, or wanted, you know, wondered where their their token was instead of Bitcoin. So how did you come to wrap your head around that? Sorry to put so many questions in one.

Unknown: 34:55

Yeah, it makes complete sense. Um, so building. In the in the space I had built Bitcoin companies and also Bitcoin venture firms, and I learned a lot of good things, and also a lot of things that I would do differently. And so ultimately, I took a step back to build a version of the future that I thought would be the winner, or the thing that would, you know, the market would be trending towards, but it wasn't even early riders. Wasn't even a plan to start. What ultimately was the plan is, to your point, I had been I was scared like so you read, we work, you light money on fire, you join the Bitcoin space, and you think everything is all gravy. But the reality is, most Bitcoin companies are kind of see companies with a Bitcoin theme, meaning they're still chasing the old mental models and metrics. Because the reason why we talk about like custody should be zero, or people think about it, it's because it's embedded that the legacy world charges zero for custody, because it's just a ledger for your stocks and bonds. So it's ever reverse, it's like the Robin hoodification, right? Everybody wants you out on the risk curve trading. So then they offset custody. It's kind of the same in Bitcoin and crypto and digital asset exchanges. They just bake in the risk into the trading fee, because if somebody charges for custody, then the other firm, they'll go trade somewhere else. And so I saw a lot of fundamental ideas that were good but effectively get ruined because of the unsoundness of the amount of capital they raised. Right? So the key theme here is that liquidity drowned out all sound economics, unit economics and all business fundamentals. Saw this, that we were saw this come in the Bitcoin space. And so when I had this idea of multi strategic custody and onramp, it scared the living daylight out of me to like, build a business and have that happen to me. So it was literally just out of self preservation that I funded the business myself, my own Bitcoin. And usually that's looked at as crazy, because it's like 22 the market's in a bear cycle. But it was the only way I knew how to, like protect myself until we knew what we were, what we had and what the opportunity set was. And it was also, it was also not just purely altruistic, because I looked at grayscale, we worked, we worked through the economics. Right? That 600,000 BTC, they were printing 10,000 if we could get anywhere near there, right? Kind of ambitious. So, like thought I could get somewhere near there. Well, then any equity I would have given up in the Bitcoin at that time, or any equity I would have given up would actually convert to more Bitcoin in the future if I hold on to it. So it was just like, No, that makes sense. Hold the equity. Fund it yourself. But what happened when funding that business or business with Bitcoin was probably the greatest like learning I'll have, because you start to learn the most efficient outcome for everything you do, whether it's hiring contract to start thinking about all the different heuristics that you learn to just be most efficient, it was right around the inflection of AI becoming major mainstream. So how do you use all the tools at your disposal? How do you think it's like the whole idea of life is constraints are the constraints are like, we're all creativity comes from and so you put those self imposed constraints, and you're always and it's painful. It's like going to the gym, right? Like going to the gym is, it's, it's the old notion of easy choices, hard life, or hard choices, easy life. It's harder to not take the capital, but it's also harder not to go to the buffet. But if you don't do that, you're more than likely to get your goal that you would want. And so while we were doing that, I just had this epiphany. I was like, oh my god, this is how all capital formation is going to happen in the future. Because we're running laps around people when it comes to the speed and our effectiveness and the solutions we're providing. And the way you do that is if you get to the most efficient outcome, the way you get the most efficient outcome is you have the founder and the operating profile, the whole company on a Bitcoin standard, because now everybody's trying to make more Bitcoin and your unit. And again, it's not to say you don't spend a Bitcoin, because that's something that, again, is a fallacy, like money is just an intermediary good to execute on your underlying, you know, view of the world, whether it's spending time with your family or trying to, like, build companies or podcasts or different things like that. It's just to add a layer of discernment and cost of capital. And so have this realization that a all an economy or market is made up of independent actors. So all independent actors will all come to the conclusion we have come to and people listening, that Bitcoin is a hurdle rate, so they're going to naturally want more Bitcoin if they're going to give you their money. And then two is that all these companies have all the people that are filled with, you know, you think about the IBMs of the world, just fat and bureaucracy, and everyone's work there listening. And this resonates. I know this resonates because I talk to people all day long that are investing in joining what we're building is they try the character stick approach, where the carrot is first, everyone's a good employee has a golden handcuffs, wants the company to change, be more efficient, hoping for meritocracy. And it never gets that way, because this is just how centralization and Fiat, you know, corrupts businesses. It just kills all the like, long term value of it. So they try, they try, they try, they try to explain Bitcoin and. Eventually this the stick comes where they're like, all right, screw it. I'm gonna go build the firm 100 times faster, at 1/100 of the cost. I know where all the bodies are buried. So I can, I actually can build it better. And then I'm gonna hold my my capital in BTC. So I'm gonna out compete you when you're having inflation hit your corporate balance sheet. And I'm gonna sweep all the capital into BTC. So when you have margin compression because you have to raise your prices, I'm gonna either lower and add better client services. And it was like, the AHA, like that. We're gonna rebuild the whole world. It's like, less about even touching Bitcoin financial services. That's the first step in our thesis of, like, building out the concentric circle around. How do you execute on this? It's how this is gonna touch the rest of the world that gets me really excited. And so that's where early rider stems from.

Israel: 40:40

Yeah. Yeah. And I guess for the listeners, also just a quick step back. Just to be very clear, early writers, you're using unit Bitcoin as unit of account, as in, you're investing and returning capital and measuring capital all in Bitcoin. And you know, it's, it's interesting. I don't know about you, Lynne and Michael. But in my mind, this was going to be a kind of a stepped approach, as the years went by, where it was first going to prove itself as a store value, then medium of exchange, then unit of account. That's, in my mind, how is going to kind of play out. But lately, I'm kind of feeling that it's, it's all kind of, it's all kind of one, and it's coming. It's coming pretty quick. Lynne and I have been talking to many startups, and we're just seeing this in the in the startup space, and in the industry where startups are, they're injecting Bitcoin at an very early stage, whether that's, you know, allocating a part of the raise to Bitcoin. We just saw, just a recently pre seed company that raised capital, and 15% of it was already being allocated at the pre seed stage to Bitcoin. So my feeling is that it's actually kind of coming quickly this, this kind of future vision that you're alluding to, Michael, so I want to get your take on what's the pulse check on your end, because you, of course, had to raise LP capital on this thesis. And this process started a while back. You're actively talking to, you know, a pipeline of companies, I assume, what? How quickly are we to people actually using, truly using this has the hurdle rate well,

Unknown: 42:22

so part of launching the fund was, I'd previously done a lot of this right. Helped, you know, raise one of the largest, not largest, Bitcoin venture funds. Like, I knew how to do it, and I knew that our client base, as it grew naturally, wants exposure to like the idea is, you know, money at a certain point, you get enough of it, and it's not really meant for hoarding. Like you're investing in yourself, you're investing in a community, you're investing in intellectual capital. So maybe you want to start a business, and you want a seat at the table to start. So I knew that, like, our client base was going to a subset of it would naturally want exposure and the other so all of our clients kind of already leverage or look at Bitcoin as a hurdle rate, because they know that they can just hold the Bitcoin it's going to appreciate a certain amount. And where this kind of re changes a lot of it, or helps in just the explanation is, most people like at face value will think, How can you out compete Bitcoin at 40% CAGR, whatever the numbers are, and it's kind of like a Fiat mental model of like, regurgitating stuff. It's not really how you think about allocating Bitcoin. It's not how individuals think about allocating Bitcoin or building businesses. Like everything we'll talk about here is completely the only term that is venture capital. Is the name venture capital, if anybody, and I was always just like a student of technology, and you look at Fairfield, Fairfield and Sequoia, and like, where venture capital came from, was meant to be a cottage, artisanal industry based on operators, like, full stop, no country. I know it's controversial, but you can't actually be an allocator unless you've built a business. And the reason why is because the ultimate allocator is the entrepreneur, and you can never back test on what they're telling you unless you've done it before, because stories are easy to tell, but understanding the story and then backing into what they sold you is the thing that you need to actually have gotten your hands dirty. And so that's a core tenant of like this whole thing was, if we're going to build this business, we had already done this. So it wasn't theoretical. It was in practice what we were doing, and the way I started the business was not 10% chance of succeeding. I thought it was at least 70, 80% because I knew there was commercial need for what we're talking about. And so it wasn't that I needed to exit or needed a hurdle rate. It was that at a very minimum, my downside protection was Bitcoin dividends, that I was going to make my money back as the shareholder of the business in return, because I was providing value to the world, and then the upside was the enterprise value of the company if I ever decided to sell an acquisition standpoint. And so that's fundamental in how we look at opportunities on both sides. One is we only invest in things that are commercially viable, that aren't like spec. No Becks, maybe we haven't done it to date, but if something just is purely theoretical, I make the case you can get away with a small venture bet today, now with AI tools and testing out MVPs with like, half a Bitcoin, a Bitcoin, but you don't need a million, $10 million where you see a lot of things built in Bitcoin that get venture capital money and then they have to leave, or the government bans them, or they're just like, closing up, or there's never a product market fit with like lightning and terminals like, that's all these like assumptions based on user behavior that nobody ever got to because that's not how people use Bitcoin today. And so when we build or invest, we're building in foundational things that the market needs, and we can talk about those, but that's ultimately how we look at investments, is, what's the downside, or how we also pitch and explain this to investors, because that's a common question, how can you return more Bitcoin? And it's like, well, let's look at it. If we looked at on ramp as an example, X amount of bitcoin I invested in my own personal capital, or another business that's given up five to 15% of their business, because we get very in very early, either pre seed or seed to really help, or even company formation, because we operate a little bit like half venture studio, half pure venture. And the reason why is because all day long, we're spotting gaps in the market, like when you're building. It's kind of a paradox. The definition of access is not when people are pitching you things all day long, because that's what I experienced in my previous life. I just kept talking to people that we shouldn't be giving our money to, and they kept talking to people that never wanted to give us money. And I was like, this is a waste of my time. And so now I get to talk to people that want to give me the money because they get what we're doing. And then I get to talk to the people that need our money because they don't even know they need our money. We're all day long building this business. And so we get to spot all of these gaps in the market that nobody else is spotting, and that, in my view, is the definition of access, because you're actually building and so you're sitting on your hands waiting for the fattest pitches to come. And anybody that's studying investors, they'll best have that's their thesis. It's like Warren Buffett credits jokingly online backgammon on how he just didn't ever move, because he just spends his time reading and playing backgammon. So he's busy not not busy being a venture capitalist, trying to find deals and then raise bigger funds. It's just a fundamentally different approach.

Lynne Bairstow: 47:09

I've got a couple of questions that I want to drill down on based on what you just said, and I'll divide these into two. The first one is the model of venture capital being broken, and you had a front row seat to that with WeWork, but I think in the 10 years, in the past, in the prior 10 years, you know, going back from what you were talking describing as the origins of venture capital, where they were operators and they really were partners with the startup business, to where we are today, where it's just pools of money, and it feels, It felt to me like there was an excess of money flowing into venture capital. Previously, pension funds really didn't invest in venture, and then they saw it as an asset class that was outperforming real estate in other areas. And so this flood of billions of dollars went into venture, and so they had to put it somewhere. WeWork was one of the classic examples. Another one was FTX, which you know, was many of the investments there were made without even basic due diligence, just chasing deals. And so I know you have talked in the past about venture being broken, and I think on early writers, is a great example of how, by shifting the measurements tactics of that into bitcoin standards, that you're really remaking venture and going into it in a second, in a different way. And the second one, which can be, we can talk about later, but I just want to make sure we bookmark it is, you mentioned the concept of dividends and Bitcoin. And I also feel that venture capital kind of forces companies to think about an exit strategy from the early from the very beginning, like, are you going to sell or are you going to go public? And so it creates this difference mindset of an entrepreneur, of a founder, of the entire team, of what are you building toward? Because you have to somehow pay back that venture capital investment. But if you're a Bitcoin company, and if you can generate Bitcoin in your core business, or you have a treasury strategy, can you stay independent and pay a Bitcoin dividend to your investors and repay that capital infusion in a way that we've never really investigated before?

Unknown: 49:18

Yeah, on the first part, on an alignment. Again, like a lot of these things, once you hear and they make complete sense in that there's misalignment from the LP to GP to the ultimate allocator, which is the entrepreneur. Because when you're an LP, again, a lot of these things are subconscious. But everyone knows dollars are inflating, and so everyone knows you got to move, you know, your dollars into somewhere. And even that notion of, you mentioned venture pensions getting involved, like the whole notion of private credit and alternative investments, and that growth is literally just a product of the fiat system, because people are going further and further out on the risk curve, because the benchmark on the S, P doesn't really like meet that bar. And so you have LPS generally trying to get rid of their dollars so they're just. Actually less discerning on the capital allocation, because everyone's making more dollars. And then on the GP side, well there's natural style drift, because when you raise in venture, you naturally want larger and larger funds. You are you have those dollars, they're also inflating away, so you're just faster on the trigger to invest those dollars. And then ultimately your incentives are misaligned, because you want that capital return, you want to go back and mark up deals. You want to go back and explain to LPS whether the fastest growing company, so you basically kind of burn your company invest in because you tell them to grow at all costs. And this is what happened in the Bitcoin space. And people will claim that this has changed now and all the hurdle, but it's like telling somebody I want to I want a six pack, but they're still eating the buffet like the reality is, you tell people to go run as fast as you can in traditional Bitcoin, and then they have to cut half the people, because the market cycle cut off. Because that's what happens in Bitcoin. We're just accelerated business cycles. So it's just this misalignment that exists, whether it's in regular venture or Bitcoin venture. And obviously the answer is like, will you change the game when you have BTC? Because now the LP is the, the most discerning, because that's their their savings technology, that's their hurdle rate. So they're always going to go back forwards and forwards to understand where they're going to invest their capital. And viscerally, again, going back to the custody. Do they this person really can return more money. And again, it's easy to return dollars. They keep making more of them. It's how do you actually return the Bitcoin? Because somebody, you know, invest $100 million today. How much bitcoin is that going to be worth in 10 years from now? And that's the hard hurdle rate. So that's the LP side, the GP. You get the Bitcoin well, your purchasing power actually increases on the amount of a company you can own as the price appreciates. So again, you're happy to sit on your hands and just find the biggest pitches. Well, they're kind of this is our the paradox of, like I see our edges, that we're operators. So we don't have to focus on trying to invest all day long. We again, wait to get to sit on those metaphorical hands, and then once you invest the capital, you have to find the aligned individuals that recognize and grok this, this theme, and this thematic of Bitcoins, the harbor rate, ties into the second part where, so now they're allocating the Bitcoin treasury. It does get to some mechanics on how much of that can be composed in Bitcoin versus others. And that ties into just like an amount of bullets in the chamber, because if it's your only shot, you can't hold it all in Bitcoin, because you might Bitcoin, because you might lose your whole firm if the drawdown. And can talk more about that, but basically, now you have alignment across the board. And I think of like early writers or we put this white paper out, which I'm very proud of in our team for putting out, because it's, in my mind, the reason why we did this is like the it was like the Amazon or Bezos regret minimization framework was like, if I didn't do it, it would have been like, on my deathbed, like, Well, we had the idea, and somebody else, you know, I needed the out in the world, independent of being successful. And I think of, like Bitcoin mining very similar to what we're talking about. Like, mining works because you have this digital token that keeps all the incentives across nodes, the underlying user, holder Bitcoin, and then the miners right everyone's like, trying to chase that token. It's what keeps the incentive. And it's very similar here. It's like the token everyone's trying to chase keeps the incentive all the way down to the allocator. If you get the right allocator, they want more Bitcoin. So it's not about exit, it's not about growth at all costs. About how do I conserve my bitcoin? How do I make sure that whatever I spend it on? Because, again, money's meant to be spent, whatever I spend it on, is going to, at a certain point, accrete more Bitcoin, and then they're chasing the token to get more dividends for themselves, which naturally passed to the investor. And then maybe there's an exit, maybe you leverage the fiat system to get some accretive or, you know, opportunistic capital. But it's just this new way that, like all corporate finance, will be managed, and we're just kind of like Israel, to your point, it's the truest quote of like, the future's here. It's just not evenly distributed, and whoever's early is going to get to reap a lot of the reward.

Israel: 53:52

So we're definitely at a point where bitcoins role in the economy is accelerating, and I think at a quite rapid pace. We're right now at a moment where a lot of the previously talked about headwinds are turning into tailwinds, and then you get into the game theory and the network effect. And personally, I feel like Bitcoin is at that point where it's about to kind of reach that escape velocity, if you will. So congrats on both on ramp and early riders, because it sounds like you've you guys have built the fundamental pieces to really address a lot of of what's coming next. And as we wrap up, Michael, what's I'd love to get your take on. You know what excites you the most right now on both the on ramp side and the and the early rider side?

Unknown: 54:50

Yeah, I appreciate it. I think what excites me the most is they kind of interweave together. They feed off of each other. Like early riders, in my mind, can't be successful unless onramp. Successful, because a lot of the thesis is baked on. You hear about bit bonds and all these different companies coming to life, but in my mind, they can't actually work until they got the custody right, because you're taking executional risk on the thesis of whatever the product is, but you still everyone just, like, absolved, like, the custody will always be there, or, like, assume the custody will be there, and it hasn't until you get something like multi institution. But the thing that's most exciting and relevant for you guys and listeners is for five years, like I've talked to individuals all day long, and it kind of has been sad, but also rewarding, that we're all in the same boat, and that once we get bitcoin, you have your obligations in your life, that you have to take care of family and you send money home, but you kind of feel like you're living alive. You can't leave it, and you get to listen to these pods, and you get to kind of see things happening, and you're not ready. And what's happened is our clients and our investors, and we launched something called the guild, where we have an application for either on rent, private clients or early writers investors, where they're all communicating together in different programming and channeling. And the idea is you're getting the best minds that understand all these concepts, because they're the people that are going to rebuild the future. And so we get to bring them all together. And they may not be ready to ultimately leave their full time job, but they get to get a seat at the table and figure out what's their discipline profession, and there's the most exciting people we're talking to, from filmmakers to real estate, trying to think through like investment banker, just across disciplines that grok this stuff, that have that 10 plus years of professional experience and are waiting for their own at bat to jump in the game, but their first bet is either Investing or being a client, and they're just getting to, like, communicate. And it's just sad, because before talking to them for five years, all I've done is talk about this stuff, and they're so happy to talk on a consultation with our team or us, because they're like, Man, I don't get a chance to talk with anybody about this, right? Because it's hard. And so that's what I'm most excited, because that's how this whole thing works. It all comes down to people. And so that's our moat is that we're building again. Early writers name came from the realization after trying to pitch the largest institutions, multi institution custody, and then learning what really the disruption AI is going to have, similar to Bitcoin, that the incumbents, or there's no way in hell they're going to win this new game, because it's Innovators Dilemma, 101, and it's going to be the early riders that are going to come out and adopt this stuff, the first people to come and realize we're going to rebuild. And so that's the idea, is, like, all the people like us that are coming to join and rebuild that. So that's the most exciting, is just helping people like see their version of what, because that's when this real party starts, is when people actually get to do what they were meant to do on this planet, versus what they were just like having to be forced to do because they got on the rat race post college debt, or having the kids and having to meet those obligations. And that's like the most

Israel: 57:47

rewarding on that note, any any pieces or words of advice for someone just getting into Bitcoin.

Unknown: 57:54

I mean, people that are trying to get involved. It's the same thing I remember doing back in the day. How I built my network was just called outreach to people, and then it's a little, maybe a little tiny harder, because the ecosystem is a bit bigger, but we're still in a bubble within a bubble. So it's really building that network and trying to produce value. If you want to get into space, the best thing, I would say, is reach out to the firms you use for your own Bitcoin journey and see the angle that they're missing and force them to not, you know, ignore it, because if you provide value, they're going to figure out a way, if they're good on if they're a good entrepreneur, to get you involved. And then, yeah, reach out to me at Michael at honor and bitcoin.com or on Twitter, always open to have a chat, put you in touch with the right team, or just be helpful. I like fundamentally, and I think Lynne, you guys have probably seen this. It's like, I just realized if we do the right thing, whether it's helping people preserve their wealth or get involved in the space, like everything else stems from that, from a rewarding perspective. So as long as we keep doing that, I'm happy to make connections or anything that would be helpful for an individual trying to that this stuff resonates with you know,

Lynne Bairstow: 58:52

one thing that we didn't touch on, that it would be remiss if we didn't, is just the tremendous amount of resources and research and community and information that on ramp produces. So the the research on the website, which we'll link to, and you mentioned a white paper, but also the the podcast that you have the final settlement once in species and and, you know, just for anybody who wants to get a little bit more up to speed for our tradition, more traditional tech and investors, you know, it's you guys just do a fantastic job of of sharing what's new in the ecosystem and highlighting new individuals and companies that are that should be on the radar. So thank you for that, and we'll link to that. Michael, I know you mentioned that you were going to be at the Vegas Bitcoin Conference with speaking opportunities there or wherever. Where else might you be coming up that people could connect with you?

Unknown: 59:44

Yeah, so I'm kind of splitting time between Nashville and Austin. So there's a lot of probably listeners that are in each of those cities. If you reach out, I'll be around and then kind of limited to travel. I kind of done the opposite, where there's so much work you can't move this fast if you're on the conference circuit. So kind of have taken a step back and focused more on the business. So Nashville and Austin are generally the two cities, if you're in that, you'll be able to, you know, find us or the team. And I'd be remiss, Lynne, you called it like, I fundamentally, you know, obviously have to say this, but I believe it like we have the best team in the industry. It's how we're able to move this fast. And you guys have had Brian on on the pod. I call him like our secret weapon. It's the realization of, you know, Brian was 10 plus years in traditional finance. He was at a private bank. He was at Coinbase institutional for a year, and that's how you can rebuild all this. He's like, I wouldn't know how to do what you just described. It's that you need the best people on the planet, and those best people are traditionally going to come back, come from the existing world, and then wrap Bitcoin on top of it, not the opposite. And that's a big I think, takeaways as people think about joining firms or building firms, is you want to build the right composition of a team if you're going to execute on the vision.

Lynne Bairstow: 1:00:49

Circling it back to how we started, where you were talking about your experience of the top tech companies you know always had the top talent, because people want to be where the winners are. So obviously on ramp is attracting that talent, and as you're building your team, you've got just a deep bench and great people on your team.

Israel: 1:01:06

Thanks for coming on. We really enjoyed the conversation today.

Unknown: 1:01:08

Yeah, thanks for having me happy to do it anytime. And yeah, appreciate you guys having me on.

Lynne Bairstow: 1:01:12

We'll have, we'll have future editions where we'll circle back and see how on ramp is growing, and also opportunities and early riders and the and the gaps that you're seeing in the industry that you're funding. So thank you.

Unknown: 1:01:23

Yeah, there's an insane amount of ops that we didn't get a chance to chat about that I get you excited about, so we'll definitely have to talk about that, either offline or a different podcast. Great. We'll have you again. Thanks, Michael.

Lynne Bairstow: 1:01:41

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