057 - The Unchained Journey: Joe Kelly on Bitcoin, Business, and Building a Community

In this episode, Joe Kelly, co-founder of Unchained, shares his journey into the Bitcoin space, discussing the founding of Unchained and its focus on providing financial services for Bitcoin holders. He highlights the importance of customer engagement, education, and company culture in building a successful business.

Joe also reflects on the challenges of fundraising and the company's commitment to community engagement and philanthropy. As Unchained continues to expand its services, Joe emphasizes the significance of focusing solely on Bitcoin and the future roadmap for the company.

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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 Joe Kelly and Unchained
06:14 Joe's Journey to Bitcoin and Entrepreneurship
11:10 Founding Unchained: Identifying Market Needs
16:24 Unchained's Services and Clientele
21:34 Customer Engagement and Education Strategies
26:19 Company Culture and Values at Unchained
35:13 Celebrating Ownership and Team Dynamics
39:20 Navigating the Fundraising Journey
47:15 Staying True to Bitcoin
51:12 Innovations in Financial Services
55:40 Community Commitment and Philanthropy
01:01:56 Life Lessons and Entrepreneurial Wisdom

References
https://x.com/josephkelly
https://www.unchained.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

Joe: 0:00

Between those three things you're in on that the customer, the launch from Bitcoin holder. How can you provide valuable financial services for them? I can do it in a way that other incumbents aren't going to see as valuable. You're doing it maybe more technologically native way, ideologically your product set native way. And so that's always that was kind of what was formed, the early intention, the early product strategy for unchained you how

Israel: 0:28

do you provide services such as trading loans, inheritance and retirement, all while maintaining a collaborative custody model? We speak with one of the industry leaders, unchained about what they are working on. It's a fascinating conversation, and if you enjoy, please remember to like, share or subscribe, as This all helps us greatly. As a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only. Lynne and Israel are partners at Base Layer 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 Israel. Munoz joined with co host Lynne Bairstow today we have the pleasure of welcoming Joe Kelly, co founder at Unchained, Joe, welcome Great to have you on we're excited to be here. Pleasure is definitely ours. Joe unchained is one of the first companies that really kind of came to the spotlight in the Bitcoin space. And, of course, long story to be told since its early founding days. But before we get into Unchained, the company and what your business does, the financial services that you provide. We'd like to start with a little background on you, Joe, as a, you know, as a co founder, as much as you'd like to share, as far as what you did before unchained and what got you into bitcoin in the first place. Yeah, I've

Joe: 1:55

really been an entrepreneur all my career. You know, I had the good fortune, actually, after some misfortune, my my family, I lost my my mother to cancer when I was 13. And that was tough, obviously, but my dad, he always had a dream. He always wanted to go sailing. Wanted to sail around the world on a sailboat some day, and he pulled my sister and I aside after his wife had passed, and was like, kids, let's go do this. I want to give this a shot. So we sold everything. We were in Anchorage Alaska at the time, and we moved to we drove down to Florida, bought a sailboat, moved on to that. I lived in that for three years as a teenager, and that was remarkable experience. I learned a lot about self reliance, taking responsibility also the way we do things the United States is not exactly how it's done everywhere else at all levels of society, how kids go to school, how people use money, how people trade, or what lifestyles they choose. So it really opened my mind by the time I turned 18, into just kind of wanting, want to exert some control, or have agency over what I did with my time on this earth and how it was spent. And saw entrepreneurship as, like the path to realize that I thought, you know, maybe a way to learn to be an entrepreneur was to go to business school. So I started at UT, Austin, here as a freshman, and really struggled. It was a tough integration period. And for people who have lived internationally and then come back to the US, I know there's a reverse culture shock, I definitely had that, and so I was depressed that year, and there were challenges or lots of things to not enjoy. UT is done a lot better. Since then, they've embraced entrepreneurship at that at that time, it wasn't so friendly, so I dropped out and tending to start businesses. I actually had a residential contracting company for about a year that I ran with a friend, so kind of working the trades. And I learned that also through that time and through that experience working in trades. And I prefer maybe technology. I'd like to, you know, maybe work in more of a growing field that I could have an impact. I met shortly after leaving UT, some grad students that had started a project called info chimps, and they were doing data analysis aggregation in different data sets. This is now 2008 2009 so just as big data was becoming a term, you know, we had all these technologies for managing data sets that were coming out of the Googles and Yahoos and Facebooks of the world. And that methodology, combined with cloud computing, like distributing data across multiple computers, was part of how new enterprises and new organizations were tackling the problem of large data sets. So that business and info champs was really at the nexus of all those things. And for four years we ran that went through a painful pivot, learned what it's like to start a company that is more bred out of like a technology or. You know, solution oriented vision versus a customer and problem oriented vision. And then we had to reverse our playbook to become more the latter over that company's time and through a lot of the grit endurance and just like, you know, figuring things out, we succeeded. Yeah, I consider it really a base hit. As an entrepreneur, we sold that to Computer Sciences Corporation in 2013 and one of the co founders, their names Drew. He's my co founder here at unchained. He had heard about Bitcoin over the over the years there, and none of us had time to pay attention to it. But after sold that business, and we felt like we had some money we could afford to lose, for the first time in our lives, we bought some bitcoin with it, started get more interested and involved. And I think too Drew was really my Sherpa. I think a lot of us can credit like some friend or some person that helped us up the mountain of understanding of bitcoin and how it works. And he was, he was, well, prying for it was that that same experience with data and distributed systems and how the kind of computer science challenge of getting computers to talk to each other and have a consistency or an understanding about the state of the world, or some data set. Got him to see the practical nature of bitcoins blockchain, what problems is solved, and he was just somebody I could really trust, and kind of asking questions about, what if this works? What if the government decides to do this? Or how does you know these cents kind of get informed or enforced. So that was looking on trade, a Bitcoin on chain came a few years later. But yeah, that was kind of my priming, and at least that way, I think why I mentioned that sailing experience too is such things just about that, that worldview that was open and ready for seeing something different that so much, you know, like the water of our experience, that is money. So thinking that, that that could be done differently,

Lynne Bairstow: 6:49

it's really interesting. I you know, I think living at Mexico at the time that I was introduced to Bitcoin, 2012 2013 I think it does, if you, if you have a worldview that's a little bit outside of the US or or structured financial system. It helps you see some of the problems. It solves a little easier

Joe: 7:10

Venezuela for, you know, six months. And this is like 2005 I want to say. And yeah, just that, the fact that, oh, there's a black market for the money that the government says is worth this. But then, like, I go to this other place and I get it's, you know, they say it's 1500 boulevards per dollar in this place. It's like, three times, you know, just this, you do, you get that experience. And then, yeah, not to mention just your remittances, or the other, the other kind of use cases. Or, what does it mean to exchange value human to human, without, you know, just understanding that, like, governments are just people making stuff up.

Lynne Bairstow: 7:42

Making stuff up. Yeah. I mean, there is, like a natural peer to peer market for money and for, you know, in in countries and in geographies where it's where, yeah, I think it helps see the potential of Bitcoin. Joe, so from 2013 when you and drew were first, you know, involved with it to 2016 when you started unchained. I mean, how did you go about thinking about starting a Bitcoin company? Or did you do something in the interim? Or was there something about your experience with working in Bitcoin that helped you identify what the need was for a business?

Joe: 8:19

Yeah, you know, we'd in one part was, as we sold that business, we'd gotten outreach from people that were advisors at Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, their private wealth business. And so we kind of saw this world, and we were, we done okay, but we're not. We're certainly, we need to go back to work at some point. But it's like, Oh, these are, this is a sales process. We're now of a type of target customer for people at these banks and wealth management companies. So just one, one data point for us. And then when it came we spent a year, year and a half at the acquiring company, the business that bought info chimps that after we we left, and we were triaging, you what to do next, truve and I had a great relationship. We're best friends. By that time, looking at kind of what, what are the projects that start next? We saw that for all the mistakes we made at the former business, the best decision remainders are starting the company in the Right Sector, starting, you know, a big data company in 2008 or 2009 was the one decision that made that business kind of work out. So that was certainly part of the analysis for us as well. In 2015, and 16 of like, it's not even so much about trends, it's just about what, what's going to maximize your chance of success? So what's something that looks like it's going to be bigger tomorrow? It's been much bigger in 10 years than it is is it today or at that time? So that's one lens, and luckily, that's all true for Bitcoin. I think it still holds true, or still a space to start something with even less constraints on it, on it today than there were back then, because we could talk about later what's like to get it was like a checking account for a Bitcoin business in 2016, and 17. But that was just the kind of problems you had then. But the other level analysis was, I'd mentioned that having kind of an inverted business plan early that was like, Oh, we're doing this cool tech. This is cool for these reasons, and let's go find people that want it or that we solve this problem. And we had this very kind of boil the ocean by analogy, you kind of business plan early on for that company. And it actually really gave me a healthy lens to look at what at that time, you know, was the narrative is this, I don't know about Bitcoin, but you know, Blockchain, that's that's cool technology. That was how you started smart, when you were 15, and just 1516, and, you know, still even years since, and that that smelled to me, that was like, so clear to me, that is not how you go about being at building a business I knew because I saw go wrong. And so it's like, well, those people have wrong is they're not starting with the customer. And it was so clear to me that Bitcoin holders are the customers. Bitcoin holders are the number one users of the blockchain. Why are you going looking for new users for the blockchain, or a blockchain, or any that like that's the Bitcoin holders. Man, so we, and we self identified at that. We're we were long term Bitcoin holders, then we intended to hold the asset for a long time. And just thought, Geez, why aren't there people in other many more people, many times wealthier than us, that are holding Bitcoin. And I don't know that anyone at Goldman, Sachs or JP Morgan, these places are going knocking on their doors. Are going through that sales motion to say, Hey, you're now welcome to the world of the wealthy. You know, let me open my doors to you of all the you know, things I can do for you, or great financial products we have at our bank. So we just saw that as as a gap, and then, and then, kind of on a third, third angle, I think, just that, that conviction, and that way you it's written about right, Peter thiel's Pope, zero to one other factors of just kind of startup lore. And like startup strategies, you want to be a contrarian and right? And so knowing, being able to acknowledge for yourself what you believe, what we think is true, and that bunch of these people don't see it. A bunch of these people think it's wrong. Bunch of these people have blockers, impediments or incentives to think something different that then that kind of creates something like that, that early secret, or that early idea, that early strategy for your business that you can, kind of, you can, kind of, really begin working from there. So, yeah, that that was the bridge between those three things you're in on, that the customer launch from Bitcoin holder, how can provide valuable financial services for them. I can do in a way that other incumbents aren't going to see as valuable. You're doing it maybe more technologically native way, ideologically your products that native way. So that's always that was kind of what was formed, the early intention, the early product strategy for unchained figuring that they weren't gonna nobody's gonna care about keys. Nobody's gonna care about like, how Bitcoiners prefer to custody things, the kinds of things that are gonna create trust or build relationships around a client's Bitcoin. Those are just things you had already kind of be Bitcoin or to know so outsiders were so unlikely to grasp.

Israel: 13:09

And the first product, Joe was the collaborative custody offering. Is that correct?

Joe: 13:15

No, actually, yeah. And then that the next level refinement analysis too, which involves the others, was like, yeah. What products to start with? Like, if it's financial service, it's financial services or Bitcoin holders, where do you go first? We we started with lending, actually Bitcoin backed loans. So our first loan we gave out in the summer of 2017 and it was a custodial loan product. Or, like, all the keys were held at unchained but there was infrastructure there to perform multisig or have multiple key holders that would leverage it later. And we got there kind of because naively, as we assumed, like, well, custody is kind of solved, right? People harbor wallets, or they use a bit go, or they use of custodians, but no one's lending. That year you did see also the launch of, like salt, it was barely, or kind of still around you have a block by launch that year, also not around. So it was kind of in the air, or there was this, like lending now is the asset base is big enough, and there's like, enough borrowing demand, and the bitcoin is great, or, like, obviously great collateral, people that know. So we started with the Bitcoin back lending, also thinking that in picking something hard, like lending, which has more regulations than just custody and also requires sourcing capital. So now you gotta, gotta kind of join the dollar capital markets with this Bitcoin market, market of holders for that asset. Then also, just like going through that hard path was going to create some value or knowledge. I was new to financial services, and so it just kind of became a forcing function as well for a lot of other things. I think we would have an easier time, or actually Eliza been a lot simpler if we started with custody and then layered on lending other things later, but even still looking at ourselves first as a lender, that is the first product to then launch future products, we had to consider. Or the worst case scenario, which is the client defaults on the loan, or the price of Bitcoin collapse below the loan. And now we need to make sure we can get the collateral. And that was like, well, if it's at Coinbase or in our account Coinbase, well, they could shut us off. They would have challenges with it being there, like, it's our dollars on the line at first, and then, like, other people's on the line, just as important. But how do we maintain that, that assuredness, that our hands are on this, and that that requires, like being integrated with the Bitcoin network, having actual Bitcoin infrastructure you run and managing keys, so that all that, all that was that kind of doing, it hard forcing function that led to the infrastructure we could take advantage of and build upon for other future products.

Israel: 15:45

You certainly start with the solid foundation. I mean, I've been following you guys for for a few years. I think the first time I heard of you guys, Joe was reading, I believe it was a report by Tur called the Bitcoin reformation. Yeah, quite a few years back, and I remember seeing, you know, there's this company in Texas that's, you know, do I believe he maybe made mention now that you say that you start with lending, the the lending component, but point being, you know, since then, I know you guys have expanded, you know, greatly. So maybe fast forwarding to today, Joe, what are the services that unchained offers and and who are your clients build with Bitcoin? Is a proud affiliate partner of river. River is a financial services company that allows you to purchase, sell and transfer your Bitcoin, all through a great suite of products high security standards, and as of recent, even allowing you to earn a Bitcoin yield on your us, dollar cash deposits for a personalized onboarding experience. Go to partner.river.com/build

Joe: 16:46

with Bitcoin. Goshain has 1000s of clients, mostly in the US, mostly individuals, so that we serve businesses as well and their clients that are long term Bitcoin holders that tend to value holding their own keys. That's how all our products work. Across Unchained, is the clients holding at least one, not two, keys, when it's a vault in their full control. And most of those relationships are started because someone is looking for custody or looking for a secure way to hold their their Bitcoin. And there's a lot of benefits to using a service like Unchained, versus doing it on your own, matters of inheritance, or putting your Bitcoin in something like a trust, you start to you need, maybe statements, or you need, like things that evidence is there's an account here. There's a lot of things in our society and legal system that depend on, like a PDF that shows you have ownership over something. It's way weaker evidence of ownership than a signed transaction or things like that. But it's still, it's a low way the world move moves around and treating and looking at assets that way. So just that, that utility of custody, and we now secure over 100,000 Bitcoin for for clients that use this for for custody now lending. I mentioned we started with that's still one of our flagship products. We have Bitcoin backed loan. We do only work with commercial entities at this point today. So someone has to have an LLC, or can be an operating business. We've originated a billion dollars, of US dollar loans against bitcoins collateral, also knocking on wood again, clean record of no loan losses. So I think really, the longest running lending desk active since 2017 was zero loan losses. I think it's a great testament to just the quality and soundness of Bitcoin. Is collateral when done well and not done with rehypothecation or other other risks that can enter into a lending business, custody, lending, trading. That's one thing that makes our vault set certainly more valuable is we have valuable, is we have MTLS enough to do conduct buy and sell transactions with our clients over for about over 42 states. It's really most of the US so lacking trading capabilities in New York and maybe more to others. But that makes the Baltimore values people are able to trade, and out of them, we have a IRAs so clients can hold their own keys to Bitcoin in an individual retirement account that's available also nationwide, in partnership with the bank of Colorado. It's a unique product there, again, like given the fact you can hold your own keys we have also, about 18 months ago, we started what's called Sound advisory, which is a registered investment advisory. So it's a wholly owned subsidiary, an affiliate to unchained that's registered with the SEC and able to provide financial advice, financial planning, tax prep, tax planning. So that's something we launched really out of the feedback we get from clients and the observation that they're coming in and some of these people, Hey, do you know where I can get work with another advisor? Because my guy keeps telling me to sell my bitcoin, or I can't even, I don't even talk to him about them. It's 80% my net worth over here, but he doesn't even know about it because, like, he just can't talk about it for compliance reasons, or doesn't believe in it. Or there's just some other practicality in the way of, yeah, and still, I mean, there's true. Millions of dollars of assets in the US that are managed or overseen by an RIA, some big companies, some small so it's a really big market. It's a really popular way that people try to kind of remove the problem of having to think about their money or portfolio management, remove that and put that responsibility on someone else. So there's definitely a niche there, and we work with, we cooperate with other RIAs. There are a few outside that actually use on Jane with their clients. That's one kind of cool capability they can they can hold a key along with their client holding a key, and that that shares and spread some of that responsibility. So sound advisor here, yeah, it's grown rapidly, has several advisors on staff, and works with lots of families, a lot of our clients to oversee, basically, do basic portfolio management. Usually, most people are coming to us for financial planning, and like clients that may be in their 50s and have a nice Bitcoin stack they've acquired over the years and want to map out their plan for retirement. Or, you know, should they take a loan here, or should they be selling there? And how to balance this stuff across their their portfolio and have someone they trust who gets Bitcoin and can kind of plug in the same assumptions they have for the growth of Bitcoin portfolio, that that's one of the value adds we provide over there. Gosh. I mean, it's always a growing, growing suite. But those are, those are, those are mostly our core services, and we, across all, are providing education and onboarding support. We have a signature program for clients that want a lot of extra hand holding and white glove support throughout the year. Because really a lot of what some change is selling is that peace of mind if I want to hold my keys, I know I kind of should be doing that, but gosh, can somebody help me make sure I did it right, or that I backed up things in the right way, and that, you know, I can turn to my spouse or a next of kin and say, here's what you do if I pass on, go to this location for this key and call and change that. That kind of simplicity is what we need to provide to make, I think, Bitcoin as a long term holding useful for people.

Lynne Bairstow: 22:01

So really, I mean, you can see that, I mean to your earlier comment about listening to customers and having that drive the growth of the business, the evolution. Because I think, I think what we see, it's been a natural progression where the early Bitcoin holders were people that were in the technical space, that heard about it as a technology, or were somehow, and they tend to be more comfortable with the whole process of private key, public key, holding your own, peer to peer. But as it's become a little bit more popularized or financialized, people are used to having a custodian, or used to having somebody help them with those decisions or, or, you know, so that they don't think about it. Or even as the technical people have gotten older and they're thinking about retirement planning or, or inheritance planning, you know, is their partner equipped to hold, hold self custody Bitcoin in the same way they were? How do you? How do you poll your customers, or how do you? How do you, what is your process for listening to the customers to determine what product roadmap you you progress along?

Joe: 23:11

Gosh, I mean, there's, there's no perfect answer. We we're talking to them. I think that's just one. One. Also fact about unchained and how we're structured or thing about the world is that, especially in that era of when we started and there, there was a big like narrative around Ethereum and smart contracts, or at least the end, that's, that's where this stuff is going. And what I found to be the case, and it's true across financial services, is that people like to transact with other people. People like that. The trust side of things comes from people, and maybe a brand or reputation or something else, but like, that's, that's how people come to feel safe. And so we leverage that in the way our sales team works with clients before their client, and the way our onboarding team will onboard folks or service desks or service staff, as we've grown. I mean, we're now 150 people. We do have more work to do. I think, systematize this stuff. It's just a part of kind of growing up as a business of just as there are 2000 contact points with clients at any given month. Gosh, how do we triage and sort through and sipped out the right things to do next? So it's actually, it is something in transition for us, coming from the instinct driven product management, the like, you know, kind of founder led ideas and things we've switched out, we have kind of filled a lot of that, that void, or like, the big ideas there, and so then the sort of more tacking and tactical ideas we've been building up our basically our basically our voice of customer program, for even just some time now, to have better data collection. And we have product managers and product marketing team will talk to clients instead of a way. They're one framework, obviously, it's like the job, jobs to be done. Framework of just we know what core things we do for clients, and here's what they say about how will we do? Them, and there's the kind of grouping and the taxonomy of those different jobs to be done, like, make the Bitcoin available for my next of kin, or, like, just, like, these kinds of just problem statements and customer viewpoints. It's just about kind of baking that into your DNA and how you structure information from your clients.

Lynne Bairstow: 25:20

Customer service aspect, I think is so important. Because I think as you go higher up and then high net worth, like one of the problems I had even chatting with my friends about Bitcoin, even in the last five or 10 years, they're like, Oh, I'll ask my financial advisor about it. And then, of course, they get shot down with it, or they say not to touch it. And so, you know, sadly, they missed out on my excellent advice to them early on. But anyway, it's just, you know, and then you think about a coin base where you cannot, physically, you cannot reach a person to talk to, you know, to for customer service. So I think people who have grown accustomed to a level of personal service in their financial dealings are looking for, I mean, there you obviously are filling a need between traditional financial services, who, in many cases, still cannot talk to their clients about Bitcoin. I think it's opening up a little bit more. And then Bitcoin exchanges, which don't have the service staff to to have a conversation or see how it fits in a bigger picture, or if there's a problem or a question, and and I guess where I'm leading with that too is you obviously invest a lot in unchained in both customer service and also in education. You guys are also known as as tremendous supporters of research around it and webinars, podcasts, informational How do you view the importance of education, or how do you think about that in terms of the overall perspective of unchained?

Joe: 26:48

Yeah, it's a couple things, certainly, from the standpoint of beginning eight years ago, the market could look small. You just knew there was only so many 1000s of high net worth Bitcoin holders in the US, and maybe for the kind of business unchained is, it's not enough, or you need, you need that market to be bigger. And you know, so we all have kind of a duty, and just as Bitcoin holders generally, not even an operating company, to educate, and it's often for other people's benefit if they do choose to act on it or add some to their portfolio. At any point, it's usually a good idea. So there's some moral imperative, there's some commercial imperative. Let's go to the market. That's that's our biggest risk of failures, that the market doesn't become big enough. It's become big enough now and then, it's now just more of a practical marketing reality, that content marketing is a pillar of a lot of good good marketing strategy. It's a way to look and be and appear credible to your clients that you have high quality content. People like to learn things you know, even at any age, and so having that experience of learning something from from a brand, from a company like Unchained, then possibly positively disposes them, you know, to us, and our ability to help them through their other problems. So it really kind of coheres as a strategy. It's definitely an investment. It's definitely ways, you know, we've tried to navigate between being a company kind of for the community, and like by the community, in some respects, really bringing a lot of people to work here out of the Bitcoin community. But we are business, so, you know, there's never actually been a problem or too hard of a, you know, pivot that we've had to make, at times. We've had to admit to ourselves from clearing. And one of our core values or principles, is bitcoin is our common purpose. And it's not our only purpose. Like our business, we're a founder led company. We have these other stakeholders to serve too. So that kind of thing, intermixes and, yeah, it's just fun. You know, I think it's fun to teach people things too well.

Israel: 28:56

You've, you've done a great job on the, on the community building side of things, John, and it's, it's very much appreciated. I mean, I know even just a few years ago, if you were in in the Bitcoin space, you're like, one out of 100 or something like that. Is how it sometimes felt. And I've personally actually spoken to your customer support team as well, and just watching you guys grow and all of the educational components that you just mentioned, apart from, you know, job creation, etc, all the ripple effects. I mean, the impact on the community that you guys have had is, is very, very much appreciated and admirable. So unchained as a company, just like any business, a big and core component of building any any company is the culture and balancing how you monetize that business as well. So how do you and your executive team view and handle company culture? What are some of kind of your core tenants at unchained and and how do you actually monetize the business? Is,

Joe: 30:03

it's something I've sort of that's frankly, but not even always, like the most public CEO, or somebody who's like, always out there in the market, a lot. That's because my focus is culture. My focus is people, and that that's been something of a point of pride. It's also a point of you build a culture of a bunch of principled Bitcoiners that will are willing to do things by their principles, or else, or they're not here, the kinds of things, you know, that's that's also its own interesting environment and culture. And I would, I would rather though this place be ruled by its culture than ruled by me, to also kind of getting that that culture writer, knowing that like that culture would been well was guaranteed to outlast me, just on assuming a change is successful and beyond my lifetime, kinds of things as it could be. So, I think I shared one of our principles. Was bitcoin is our common purpose. We developed that out of kind of observation. I feel like a lot of the early culture was baked out of that initial 1012, 20 people that were here in the early years. So by about early 2022 is when I with along the executive team, then I really formulated this idea of the three principles. Haven't really needed much more, although there's some ways we, as I mentioned, we added some of those corollaries. But Bitcoins are common purpose, low time preference and Extreme Ownership that like you kind of, you could look around and could see those and how we operated. And it was nice, because I really have a distaste for companies that are like, well, our values are integrity. We value honesty, integrity. And, you know these things. It's just, it always is, like, that's just a word, man. And like, you don't, you don't know how that's clicking or what I could never just, like, read that as, like, value savings from a company. And then, like, know anything. And then, if I'm inside the company, how does that guide my decision? Or if I'm in a decision is, like, is this, am I actually trading against the value of integrity here, the value of something, you know, you just it really, I think, is not very thoughtful. So I think this is kind of more principles, guided direction, and the recognition of, when you say, low time preference, that's very in Bitcoin, you know, kind of term, or that, the idea that, like, we value long term relationships, long term outcome, long term behaviors versus short term gain. And it's cool, because then one way that shows up, and even just practically things like stock options and how startups issue equity to their employees, that's been there as a Silicon Valley and otherwise, broadly, more tech industry centered practice for a long time, part to do instead of alignment. If you are an equity holder or you are earning compensation through equity in the business, then you're hopefully thinking like an owner and acting in a way that builds and compounds long term value, instead of just doing something for like this quarter's commissions or short term gain. So seeing that things like that, we're already here alone. Type of approach, there's a lot of power approach relationships. I mean, just it's hard to have long term relationships with people, and that's also kind or that you like demonstrate care, and that you demonstrate that like you treat people well. So that's that's part of that, how that value is lived. And the corollary is, and we ship with urgency. You know, it's also, it's kind of like, yeah, we're out here. It's like, just wait for Bitcoin succeed, man. You know, it's like, the balance is also this idea of like and but like to be around for the long term. You also got to grind it today. You also got to ship today. You also get like, there's an action or a two component, not just a kind of wait, wait and see, and then that Extreme Ownership idea, some of us had read the chocolate wheeling book about called Extreme Ownership. And that's what a lovely concept. I'm so glad that book exists, because it really just enwrapped something I felt early or and then I experienced early and we some kind of shadow oriented reasons, one could come to think this way, but in a practical, actual minded sense. I mean Extreme Ownership is you're in a team and something goes wrong. It might be easy to blame the person that had that in their lap last but you know, if it's a if there's a bug, that's what this issue is we're diagnosing. How do we get this bug here? Who is it? Oh, who wrote that code? Wait, but, like, the product manager didn't spec it correctly, and then, oh, but the QA person, they didn't, they didn't complete their tests. Their tests need to do better to, like, catch those things. And, you know, just all the intermix of things in terms of the system of a company. How do we all acknowledge our part in failures, and then also if we successes. It's also one way to try to kind of make sure that we're ritualized. It, for instance, is we have been all hands by now every every other week, there's always a segment, usually five to 10 minutes, where people ending with the company, myself included, if there was a if there was a issue or something that we know went wrong. Know, last week or two, we people get to admit that, put in their hand say, oh, you know this, this shipped in the wrong way, or this happened, or there's this customer issue, or we don't know something happened there. That was me, sorry I learned this. And we know other people chime in or add to it, and then also, like a shout out, like, hey, somebody owned that really well. That data report I needed, and I needed it, you know, yesterday, but that they, they came through, worked hard that night for me, like it's just a way to kind of spread, spread some of that love and and talk to it. And this was a hard one to find the corollary for, because what about any of that is there like a thing to mitigate, or where does that go wrong? And so it did take some time to kind of also understand, in a growing company, in a startup, when everyone is so eager to take ownership or work later, these things is that you get something like that problem with like martyrdom, or a failure to delegate, or a failure to say, Yeah, I'm eager to help, but yeah. But that actually may not be my problem, or I might be serving the business by saying, we have a we have a role boundary here that's not being maintained, that's like this. We actually need a new role for this, or knowledge that that needs to be your role to carry this on forward. And so the corollary with celebrating Extreme Ownership is and we prioritize and delegate that. We can't just try to do it all like maximally own it all the time, but you have to trim things down, focus, prioritize, and try to ensure the right people are working on right things and not just saving their friends and teammates all the time.

Lynne Bairstow: 36:30

You know, so many of the Bitcoin companies that we had the pleasure of speaking with, they have almost purely remote teams and distributed teams in the kind of the the ethos of Bitcoin. But you, I know you have an office that has a lot of your employees in Austin, because I've been to it. And how do you think about I mean, is everybody there? Or how many employees do you have now? Or what is the kind of distribution of your of the team members? We have

Joe: 36:56

about 150 people, 40 or so about in Austin, so almost a third and 70, 80% of them come to the office every week. So it's a good number. It's a good Nexus. It's nice to have this kind of HQ that can be like a locus or a central point for US headquarters. And what's ended up working really well, or something. I definitely advise any company that's growing and has kind of diversity of teams and departments is that at least once a year by now, most all departments have, like a full department on site here at HQ. So all the marketing team gets to come out and have their on site a couple days. The production design team can do it, the engineering team can do it compliance. So while everyone else is generally hybrid, and, you know, we bring in cookies, we have cookies here every Friday. Certainly jealousy about that. But that's that's even just the kind of way you also have to play with these things, because, well, there are, like, some HQ center privileges. It's also privilege to work from your home all the time. That's cool, or work for Bitcoin company anywhere in the world. But like we, we do, like, once a quarter, just because we have this, this cookie tradition here, every Friday I have a sweet tooth, but once a quarter, our people team mail. They don't mail it. But like, for every place, a city, or every city in the world where someone is they figure out the cookie delivery service for that person, or like the way, for like them, for them, then to get cookies, you know, once a quarter. So you kind of, like, you have to work the hybrid type of thing. Be mindful of those. Yeah, just like, Austin centric privileges versus being elsewhere kinds of privileges. And that's all. That's all part of the bag too.

Israel: 38:37

It's a happy medium, ultimately. I mean, yeah, we definitely swayed the other way post pandemic to the remote life, and we're not moving away from that. But there is lots to be said as well about actually feeling part of a team and and connect that human aspect is is just so important on on the fundraising journey, Joe, I'd love to get your your takes here, and some you know your approach, some maybe lessons learned, because this can be one of the toughest parts about trying to grow a startup. Is okay, I have my idea. They maybe have proof concept, but of course, need some capital to grow here, and you guys have been around for quite a long time in Bitcoin. Years for Bitcoin standards, you've raised, to date, a little over$100 million in venture capital financing. Can you share a little bit with us about what what your approach has been from day one to fundraising, and if you would change that approach at all looking

Joe: 39:43

back, oh, gosh, you're putting me through some PTSD here, Israel asked me to go back to the beginning on on fundraising. It's like the, I think there's like a Mark Andreessen thing about it. It's like fundraising, like chewing glass, you know. Just have to. To Grow Your teeth at the rejection and, yeah, I mean, it's tough. It was, it's tough any anywhere, anytime, any cycle, any industry, I think it was a there's especially headwinds when you were starting a Bitcoin company through throughout 16 to 2020, 20, even as second time entrepreneurs, you know, it would have been. And there was a moment to my, I talked to Drew about what to start next. And before we were really committed to Bitcoin, I was like, you know, man, what if he's doing other data company, like, all those people fund us again, like, you know, we know that market, you know. We know these, you know. And so like, and there's definitely a sense of, like, false confidence, I think too, of just like, thinking, You know what? Too, of just like, thinking, you know a thing, but, like, you know, really, like the business reality will, that's what will smack you in the face. But, and his quip at the time, which is wise you only get to go to kindergarten again so many times in life. Or just like, when, when you can kind of go, go retool, reschool and learn something new from the ground up. So that's definitely we did here. Back to fundraising and that. And that was just kind of one things. It's like, you know, there weren't many experienced entrepreneurs, or second entrepreneurs, even at Bitcoin in 16 or 17, and none of really, frankly, our investors in our last business did anything with us in this one, because they're, like, Bitcoin, no, or like, yeah, they didn't get it. They weren't, they weren't on that track back then. And in that each way, there was, like, some form of excuse, you know, between, I don't know if the market's big enough, oh yeah, Bitcoin, but, you know, I'm sure the other cryptos, you know, so like, the all, always a lot of this kind of lack of understanding or appreciating or seeing the same opportunity we did. So, you know, how did I fundraise? You by hook and by crook, just like any any way I could get dollars in the door over a lot of that time period we did. I think things I learned, or things that sort of make fundraising either less painful, or at least put me more and I think the camper idea of having appreciating for like the art of fundraising, this came later, and this was just kind of an inversion of Understanding for me between the idea of perfection and the inverse are like a principle of connection, like basically, one of the things that works against you as an entrepreneur and founder is you're trying to be perfect. You want your business to be perfect. You want your pitch deck to be perfect when you get on with the investor and you know percent, you want to be perfect in your delivery, your pitch, your conversation, like you, there's this. Your system is online to say, this has got to be perfect. It's on. This is on the line. But I don't get the yes from this investor. It's been painful, and I might miss like payroll, or I cannot make that higher or expand, and there's a lot wrong with that. I just had to learn, you know, one, perfection doesn't exist. Like, Israel's idea perfect, fewer asset manager running billions of dollars. Or, you know, PC is already gonna be different than my idea perfect was gonna be different than Lynne idea perfect from her. So it's like, there's also no, no bar to meet that is actually perfect. So it's like, Oh, that is definitely logical. And people also, because Perfection doesn't exist. People don't, you know, they don't invest in things that don't exist. It's like to realize what is the thing that motivates, what is the thing that says, like, I gotta, I gotta write that check, I got to wire that money. I got to make that work. It's that's a process done out of a feeling of connection, like I feel connected to this thing. I feel like I understand it. I feel like I can, I can influence it. I feel like I can shape it. I like the person. I like what it's doing, you know? And so that's what I started learning, is, is what you want to index on when you're building relationships with investors, you're going about raising money. Don't think about it as a process that needs to be perfect. Try think about a process centered around the city of connection, and even just like a practical thing, or one of my big piece of advice to anyone fundraising now, it'd be like when I had this realization, too, I shifted for my fundraise cycles in 2022 if, like my investor, CRM, my spreadsheet used to be, you know, name firm, maybe like stage or like, you know, between intro or other, and then, like, maybe some notes and propensity to invest, or odds or things like that at scrap that, instead, just did one column for the person, which was my connection score, which is just a answer from my body. Of like, how connected do I feel that person right now? And you're saying pretty quickly, you're like, oh gosh, yeah. We're like, that that'd be one visa, I don't know I met that guy. Don't be a really good connection. We talked about a bunch of things. Like not put them at like 25 Percent versus the, like, random cold intro you got that was a 10, you know. So it then became a game to, like, how do I increase this connection score? And then, like, sure as heck, the person that just wired your money like they're sitting at 99% you know, like that. There's the correlation. There was almost perfect of just like, you know, we go, we go down this path together. We built a relationship. We're understanding we get these things and like, what do you know? Lo and behold, like, I love you, you love me. And like, you just wired me money, like it's great that that's sort of how, that's all how to come to think about it, to feel even better about it, or feel like it was even just more

Lynne Bairstow: 45:36

something I could control. Yeah, that's that's really important. And I think a lot of times, having been in the VC business myself for so long, I also feel that, you know, when it gets down, from an investor perspective, the founder, and the quality of the founder and their commitment to the idea, it commitment to the idea, but also flexibility to adjust to market conditions or Things like this, but it's it really I would, I learned the hard way, you know, but learned over time and time again. It was like the most successful exits and companies and relationships were, those were the founders. You just did have that, that great connection, and it's so important. But having said that, I mean, when you were first raising, like in I don't know when you're first raising, when you first went out and did it, but you know you're you have a Bitcoin company, but Ethereum is just launching and picking up a lot of attention and steam, and ICOs are popping up and and from the investor perspective, especially Silicon Valley, was there pressure for you to issue a token? And you talked about people wanting, you know, suggesting that you you expand into other cryptos. How difficult was it for you to stay focused on Bitcoin? And I think you did have some Ethereum in the early days of Unchained, which certainly is understandable based on the market at the time. But you know, how, how much did you guys struggle with conviction on what you saw and what was being asked of you in terms of potential investors to expand what you what you were, the market that you were going after, the products that you were servicing,

Joe: 47:14

yeah, yeah. I mean, in part, we were served by even our like, our misadventure there with Ethereum, because we even point about listening to customers. You know, we opened our doors for lending, lending first against Bitcoin as collateral, 2017 and within weeks and months of just having launched, like people were inquiring. Well, okay, I'm taking Bitcoin on that. What about against my theory? Can you lean in lending against my theory, like, we would just get that inbound request that was just, like, seemed clear. Oh, great, great way to, like, go a loan book and make more loans just now to work with Ethereum and, Oh, it's another cryptocurrency that definitely different design that wasn't necessarily my area of expertise, or look at like, how difficult to be a support. But, you know, seemed reasonable that like, okay, let's, let's maybe see if we can support that to get more customers. And it was, it just became an odyssey we did in form and fact of like, our desire to be very real or work with reality, like not, you know. So we also wanted our lending model on an infrastructure basis, work with it similarly, like at the same level our Bitcoin lending model worked with so and you looked at like the smart contracts and things in Ethereum landscape, and they were all very confusing and all these things, no, we want something that there's just a multi SIG thing we need for the Ethereum collateral that's back in the loans. And so that's a lot of engineering hours and running that, or to building that, running Ethereum node, and learned over the year. It's almost a year and a half we supported that product, just just what a pain in the butt it was. And like, just how, you know, kind of little nervous, nerve wracking it is to have your own, like, do it yourself, contract on this as simple as what it was probably safe as it still was, and that your Ethereum node needed updated constantly. It was still not very reliable. And we saw then the market data, like our loan book for Ethereum was only of about 5% of what the Bitcoin loan book was. So there's not enough evidence and things to track stack up on a cost to benefits type thing. But distillation cuts, because I had to tell our board, which, you know, did consist of investors at that time, and guys, we're gonna back out of Ethereum, and we're gonna just focus on Bitcoin. And so it was controversial. And some of them, you know, have investments in exchanges, or, like, see these other things. But yes, we did get that done and and then it served as, like, our story from then on, about, like, anybody asking us about the cryptocurrencies, hey, we tried it, you know. Hey, we did have that for a while. And it's, you know, it's you know, it's different than the custody idea, and different than these other things. But that was definitely there in terms of that story of, like, alt, Lynne, other crypto kinds of pressures. And by now it's just enough success. And I think as well, not only from like a 10. Technological reality, both like just a monetary reality. Bitcoin is the most money of any of the cryptocurrencies, and we're a financial services business, or we're gonna work with, work with the money, and just a brand customer relationship. You know, people, especially when they're engaging with financial service provider, they want to work with one that they believe believes the same things they do, or that, like, operates with within the context, or the reasons for things that they trust. And so, like, there's the idea that unchained would ever support a thing, like, it's like Coke launching, you know, a different flavor, or something like that. Like, the idea that, like, Unchained, whatever support, anything else, would just destroy so

Israel: 50:46

much value. Well, you've you've owned in on, on your specialty, to put it that way. Now, Joe and going forward, you know, as far as product roadmap, are there any particular releases or products expansions that unchanged, is working on what's the next 12 months look like for the company? Let's say

Joe: 51:07

yeah, a lot of our focus is overall, from the standpoint of serving that the financial services needs of a long term Bitcoin holder, like doing more for them. And so I mentioned things like our Registered Investment Advisory subsidiary, sound advisory, that works with folks, traditional assets, traditional portfolios, a lot of micro strategies talking there, but you know otherwise, like, you know, definitely our strategies talking about, like other, like, just traditional stocks, kinds of things. So we're not, I've made Robin Hood, any any day or kind of a thing, but it is about how to be you given we clients already trust us with a Bitcoin how to be their trusted channel for other things. One big piece of news, one exciting thing that we'll be announcing. I know just before that this is released, but is a we've secured a Trust Company charter in the state of Wyoming. It's called Gannett trust can it trust company named after that one of the mountains in Wyoming and the bigger peaks, and it's really cool. It's going to be the first Bitcoin native, like Bitcoin focused Trust Company. There are trust companies out there that do custody. They're usually tucked inside of a bitco or other custodian. You know, having a Trust Company is part and parcel. Are essential to being able to provide qualified custody for funds and fund managers that need a custody option. So in general, those are doing kind of just custody, and then they're doing cross cryptos, or cross cryptocurrency assets in a way that is a native does that made native multi support, for instance, doesn't have a way that trust company can, like, collaborate with their clients, much like unchained today as collaborative custody for across our products. So again, it will be this just kind of exciting new one of its kind trust that can do custody, but also can work with clients that have like that matters around estate planning trusts and personal trusts, as they're putting Bitcoin into a trust vehicle that then they want to work with a third party trustee or an institutional trustee to help ensure that in the amount of their death or just for the overall administration of that trust, that it happens in a way that a trust institution must follow. Like that. That's what they're they're there to do. And it's kind of, it's definitely been a new world for me, even learning out on chain. But again, the amount of assets in a trust, it's kind of, again, I know there's just, like hidden, a lot of people have decided because hidden, but that's right, it's just, I think for especially young people, they're not appreciative of just what, what the importance of trust companies are, just like the backbone to the financial assets of a lot of people, where they're held, where they're held in trust, but then in connection with a Trust Company. And so it's a way we've seen it already on a chain. I mean, one of our most popular account types for our vaults is a trust. So you put your Bitcoin into a trust that, then it's wrapper. You're still holding your keys, but there are certain trusts that you can't also then self custody. It has to be custody elsewhere, but maybe you still like to do it, whereas custodied in a true multisig, a true Bitcoin native fashion, maybe you can still hold a key, or there's multiple parties or multiple constituents holding a key. So again, it's just kind of a really new, exciting piece of our infrastructure here. It's gonna let us do a lot more things. It's going to bring, I think, more credibility to the kind of financial services we have a do. And it will also take on like the wealth management and financial planning that sound already happened at sound advisory will now roll into Canada trust. So we'll be announcing that on, say, the 21st of May, and then we'll be accepting his first customers come summer.

Lynne Bairstow: 54:47

Congratulations on that. That's a I think that's a really important evolution of services and really expands markets too for your customers, even thinking about things like. Nonprofits and other entities beyond you know that use that trust system more more commonly for holding their assets. When you have changing people in charge of the assets, then having a trust company manage that gives a sense of control. And, yeah, that's huge news, really big news, and we'll be sure to spotlight that. And speaking of nonprofits, I do want to just talk a little bit about the commitment that unchained has been making in recent years to support your local community through your effort with the University of Texas endowment fund that you participated in and then also what you announced recently, in April of this year, about a million dollar commitment to a Bitcoin leg to the Bitcoin Legacy Project, which is in support of the Bitcoin ecosystem, and involving that from a developer standpoint and from education standpoint. So it would love to get your thoughts on, number one, how, how you and unchained as a company you have come to this and and what your perspective is on participating in this level.

Joe: 56:13

Yeah, mixes several different things there. You know, the education we talked about that's important. And so not always. We have to be the educators. But if we can use our dollars or expenses towards others that are doing great job at education, that's worth something. Back to the idea that community is both the place where our clients are, where our current and future employees live, where we live, like that's that's just already naturally something to kind of want to support. And one things you mentioned, you know, one minor corrections, the University of Austin, Texas, by easy confusion and but really cool, exciting university project there's been, I think that, like, the idea is, like, there hasn't been a newly chartered university since, like, the 70s, or, like, a new, like, an actual, like, new, say, chart, at least in Texas. I think it might be one or two, a few others nationwide. But like, so rare, very rare for someone to start a new university. And it's sort of a great people, Jim Barry Weiss, you know, Ferguson and Joe Lonsdale, just that, hey, this is a instead of, like, crowing and whining, complaining about the state of higher ed, let's start a new one. Let's start like, build something new. I should think like how Bitcoin is a new institution its own right. So I just saw a lot of great things there their head. Their campus is actually across the street from us here downtown. So they made their announcement a couple years ago, and then they actually first, first accepted their first students last fall. So they'll be their first full academic year. Will be completing here in a couple of weeks. And so I just saw between the can the new institution, spirit and ideologically and just mentally, like where what they're thinking about philosophically, that there was something in there for Bitcoin, and that the people that love that and love you uatx would also love Bitcoin, and vice versa. So it felt like I saw good opportunity, a nice bridge with them, and they were decided to be really the first university with its own Bitcoin endowment. What makes them unique, as well as the Bitcoin they raise, they they're holding for five years or more, that was something important. I gave a personal donation, and just I knew, and like, coach them. It's like, Hey, would only really part of my bitcoin for your endowment, if you agree to hold it. I don't want, you know, a lot of universities will say we accept Bitcoin, reset these things, but then they're selling it, or just, you know, going into some bigger portfolio management strategy, instead of, like, a, maybe a hold through a Bitcoin. So the and that also brought up one of our other products, or think that a wrapper within any part of the Bitcoin Legacy Project is donor advised fund. Some people are familiar with donor advised funds, or so, I think the fastest growing vehicle for making donations to nonprofits. But the idea is, you put assets with cash or stocks, and now, in our case, Bitcoin into a donor advised fund that you get all of your kind of tax write offs, or you may get to make the realize of donation that year. That doesn't mean that you know you have to then give it to the organization that year. It can stay in that fund for some period of time, and then you often you get to administer or choose where it goes to what causes that you can meter out over time. And so we have a DAF product in partnership with a firm called University impact that lets clients move their physical Bitcoin into a donor advised fund. They hold a key. University impact holds a key, and a chain holds a key. You have to forfeit, you know, some control, or it's like, you can't, can't be a self custody type of product, but now that's one way, like our clients are moving Bitcoin into something that they can, like, hold for their church or hold for some other nonprofit that, like, they can't really accept Bitcoin yet, but you're like, oh, you know, but I really want to give gifts, one bitcoin this year or something, put it in my DAF, and then, you know, right? Each quarter is a worth of, like, you know, donation. As I'm doing next year, I'll pull it out of there. So it's way to get physical. Bitcoin have these neat features, leverage multi SIG, be something Bitcoin native, and then as part of the Bitcoin legacy project, you know, I went to an event earlier this year that where I learned a lot more about bitcoin core development and the organizations that support that, and how little or how much monetary support they give. And there are some great I won't see three entities that fund and employ core developers, and so part of the Bitcoin Legacy Project was also doing a matching program for people that would want to match or want to donate through a DAF into one of these organizations, like Brink or other other organization that supports bitcoin core development, and then we'll match that on the corporate side. I think up to one bitcoin is where we set the one initial and we'll see. If that's successful, it will want to do more. But, yeah, we're all, I think the we've leveled up in like how we kind of market things, a lot of these things were done in a scattered way, I think, in previous years and over time, supporting things like the Bitcoin comments now, Bitcoin Park and, like, a lot of the financial support we were doing just kind of happened without, maybe always, like, talking about it. And so really wrapping in this, like, Bitcoin legacy project, was a way to kind of make clear of like, Hey, we're already doing a lot of these things. We're pledging more in different directions. And let's make that clear.

Israel: 1:01:23

It's certainly I mean, first of all, that's That's amazing. All those initiatives are just great to see. It feels like Austin's just so ahead as a from, from, you know, most other cities and communities, you guys definitely have, have created something special there so and great to see Joe. I want to be conscious of time. I know we're getting close to wrapping up, but I want to circle back a little bit to some of the some of the lessons you mentioned in the beginning of the podcast from your sailing experience, and you know, early life, you mentioned the importance that it had on you as a person and as an entrepreneur. Self you mentioned self reliance, taking responsibility, curiosity, having kind of an open mind, plugging that into, into just kind of, kind of general advice, Joe. I mean, what, what would you say to people out there getting interested in this space? I think,

Joe: 1:02:35

you know, gosh. I mean, I credit my dad was so much. I think just, I think there was, there was, there was something in that choice, right of, after my mom died, that he chose to take us sailing, that like a instead of, sort of, I don't know, wallowing in some grief, or just hanging out in my community, or the situation here, that because it's been comfortable, maybe actually wasn't comfortable for him. It was like, you know, I actually can't not think about my wife or things at this point, but that that what was a tragedy became a call to adventure. And I think that a lot of those turning points in life, you know, I had a experience. My wife's family lives. Her parents live in the Dallas area, and we were up there for Mother's Day. I was driving solo back with our two daughters on Sunday. And I've been doing that drive, you know, hundreds of times, many times a year, for almost two decades now, and I got a flat tire for the first time. Oh, damn it. Oh, man, I was so pissed. There's this, all this stuff I need to get back to Austin Ford, or, you know, set up for work on my weekend some things, or, you know, it was just like I was so frustrated, and then it took a second, or just kind of processing that, and then it was just like we had to have a tow truck come. Is our car, just time to spare. But, you know, you got to be an adventure. My daughter's and I got to ride in the front of the cab of the tow truck and bounce up and down for 30 minutes on the way Waco, the cab driver was a amazing, interesting man. He let my daughter operate the levers of his flatbed for his tow truck, kind of a thing. So I just think, yeah, it's a lot, especially in Bitcoin or, like, you always get thrown on those flat tires, or those like curveballs, or somebody quits, or somebody died, or, you know, these, this kind of stuff. And just like that embrace of the the turn the adventure, you know, from that, I think is, is it just an instinct that is always worth cultivating,

Lynne Bairstow: 1:04:39

a beautiful way to look at life. And I think the the low time preference that you also mentioned as part of your company culture just enables Bitcoiners to kind of shift their worldview, to be thinking in those terms too. So instead of thinking about the things that you're not getting done, you just enjoy the the the moment and the adventure and, um. And see that. So yeah, those are beautiful words of advice. As we close out, Joe, you you know, again, congratulations on this announcement that you're making. And then you will also be at Bitcoin 2025 in Vegas this year. And any other can you share with us a little bit about what unchained has planned there and any other upcoming conferences or events that you'll be at.

Joe: 1:05:24

Yeah, so definitely going to be at Bitcoin Vegas. There. We will have a booth, I believe, in the in the well pass area, speaker of a well pass. Please Come guys, see us and we, yeah, I do give on a panel, I believe, on the Thursday up there, and then, gosh, a fun conference. I'm excited for having been from Anchorage Alaska. Is the Bitcoin Alaska conference happening in Juneau, so I will be there speaking as well, but also just really looking forward to, like, being in Alaska talking about Bitcoin. My brother, when he heard I was coming up to Juno, but not Anchorage, where he lives. He was like, oh, you know, we're having a Bitcoin Conference in Anchorage too. You know, Joe, if that's gonna take you know. But like, Well, we'll see him. We'll stop through Anchorage. But, yeah, I'm stoked for that. Luckily, haven't really planned my back half of the year though, yet, so that that one's happening around July 4, and we'll see what's next.

Israel: 1:06:19

Well, perfect. I mean, I think we can maybe end it here. Joe, just really want to thank you for your time. Congrats on everything you're doing at unchained. You guys are one of the more important pillars of the Bitcoin ecosystem. So big admiration there. Thank you for all the advice you shared as well, and maybe just closing off. Where can people find you, I guess, you know, social media or what. What's the best way to get in touch?

Joe: 1:06:48

Yeah, well, I'm on x at Joseph Kelly, our company Twitter handles at our x handle at unchained. And you can find you can email me anytime. Joe@unjained.com Happy to help and happy to I especially love startups, love early stages, love building, love helping. So feel free to reach out if, if you feel called, thank

Israel: 1:07:09

you, Joe. Hope to have you on again in the future. Appreciate it.

Lynne Bairstow: 1:07:12

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