Onramp Webinar Series E004: The Evolution of Bitcoin Custody

At Onramp, we believe that Bitcoin is the most important asset of the 21st century. The hard part is securing it right. There are shortcomings with keeping your coins on an exchange, but also with setting up your own self custody arrangement. Onramp solves for these concerns. Our multi institution custody solution maximizes security and minimizes counterparty risk, ensuring that your Bitcoin remains securely in your possession and provides built in inheritance planning to ensure your family is protected as well. On Ramp provides Peace of Mind for your Bitcoin journey, whether for your whole stack or for part of it as a compliment to your existing self custody set up. For more information, check us out at on rampbitcoin.com. All right. Just in the interest of time, we'll go ahead and get things kicked off here. So thanks again for being here today with us. Just quick reminder that we are recording this session. So we'll share that recording on the On Ramp Media YouTube page and all of the podcast platforms and via e-mail after the fact. So before just jumping in, want to provide a quick introduction for those who may be joining us for the first time for the On Ramp webinar series. And just provide a little bit more context to who we are here at On Ramp. The On Ramp webinar series tends to focus on our research efforts, often covering recent reports as is the case today where we will cover the evolution of Bitcoin custody report. Previous installments of the webinar series include Bitcoin inheritance planning and Bitcoin's full potential valuation, which again, these previous recordings can be available or can be found on YouTube and your podcast players. And so who is on Ramp? We are a Bitcoin financial services company built on the foundation of multi institution custody. We'll be speaking a lot about multi institution today, so don't worry if you're not familiar with that model of custody just yet. We provide Bitcoin custody, private funds and financial services such as inheritance, insurance solutions and trade. And we serve a wide range of clients such as individuals, private clients, enterprises, financial advisors and institutional investors. My name is Jackson Michaelic and I'm the Head of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships here at Onramp. And today I have the pleasure of being joined by our Co Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Jesse Myers, Chief Strategy Officer Brian Cabela's and Head of Private Wealth, Pam Stromi. We have an hour slated for today's call and we'll plan to cover a lot. First, Jesse will provide a quick overview on how we view Bitcoin as an investable asset to frame the conversation that we will have around custody. And then from there, we'll be diving into the recent report, the evolution of Bitcoin custody authored by Brian. And then from there, we'll just open it up to a group conversation. Jessie can myself to discuss the report and really what we're seeing today in the industry and what we're hearing from our clients. And then from there, Campbell walk us through the onboarding process and the client dashboard to highlight what it is like to be an on ramp client. And then finally, we'll wrap with Q&A. So for the presentation piece, we will plan to spend about 40 minutes or so before we open up the Q&A. So Please remember to submit those questions throughout the presentation as you have them. And then we'll just try to hammer through as much as possible toward the end of this call. And then the final note I have before handing it off to Jesse is we've received a lot of feedback from our clients, both individuals and institutions, such as the pension clients that we are on boarding. And at the end of the call, we'll give you a sneak peek about some new product features and pricing that are set to go live at the end of this quarter. So without further ado, Jesse, let's take a look at some of your research and analysis. The one into the Bitcoin full potential piece that you authored last year, which has since been cited by many times by Michael Saylor in his presentations and often referenced within the industry. So maybe you could spend like 5 minutes or so just kind of talking us through how our firm views Bitcoin as an investable asset and what our overarching thesis is. I think it's really just important to, it's important to contextualize this opportunity that we all have ahead of ourselves and why we're even having the conversation around custody in the first place. Yeah, awesome. Thanks for that intro and hand off there Jackson. So I think, you know, first and foremost at on Ramp, we are Bitcoin only. And that's because we deeply understand what Bitcoin is and and what it is on a track to accomplish in the world. And Bitcoin is digital gold. It's it's the invention of digital scarcity. It's the, you know that it's as Michael Saylor has been describing it as it is digital capital. And so this is the current state of of the global asset landscape. Bitcoin now this was from about 1/2 year ago. So Bitcoin now is a is a $1 trillion asset in this sea of $900 trillion of global asset value. So that's 0.1% today. That's how much Bitcoin has has consumed or eaten or chipped away at of all the the value that sits in all of the analog buckets that are out there. So we believe that Bitcoins properties make it a better store value asset than any of these buckets today. These are all all these buckets have their limitations and none of them have absolute scarcity as part of of their value proposition, which Bitcoin does have. In addition to that, Bitcoin has increasing scarcity as part of its value proposition where they're making less, you know, they're making less Bitcoin today than they were six months ago and less than they were five years ago. And that those halvings of newly issued Bitcoin supply will continue every four years into the future, making Bitcoin a savings technology where the there will be less and less supply issued in in the future. And that means that Bitcoin that you squirrel away today as your Bitcoin savings ostensibly will grow in value over time as that supply demand programmatic schedule plays out. The result of that is very recently Michael Saylor's been been using this analysis in this framework for his presentations, including it at at 2024 in Nashville. And very recently with the his HC Wainwright presentation and his perspective. Building off of this analysis and and using these charges, which has been very cool to see is that Bitcoin will eat 7% his base cases, Bitcoin will eat 7% of the world's asset landscape over the next 20 years, which would amount to Bitcoin becoming a $13 million per Bitcoin asset. So from where we are today at $60,000 per Bitcoin, that's a 200X. So you know, if, if Michael Saylor's right and Michael Saylor's analysis is, is based on our analysis here. And, and as a side note, we just had Michael Saylor come on the podcast this week. So we'll, we'll be really releasing that in a few weeks. So keeping an eye out for that. It's a great conversation. So if, if, if bitcoins going to 200X over the next 20 years, what does that mean for you? What does that mean for Bitcoin folders today? Well, if you have, let's say you have $100,000 in Bitcoin, that's 20 million in if, if Bitcoin does go through a 200X over the next 20 years. And we, you know, the reason that on ramp exists is because we feel deeply that custody for that Bitcoin is, you know, you can, you can understand the value proposition of Bitcoin, the investment thesis of Bitcoin, and you could still get it wrong if you don't have the right custody. And what that means is treating the asset today like it's worth 200 X because in 20 years it might be. And you know, there's examples recently there's a seems to be a growing trend of social engineering scammers and phishing attacks. Swann recently had had two phishing emails go out to their users and there's been a you're, you've probably received phone calls from, from scammers trying to social engineering you into giving over your Coinbase credentials or maybe tricking you into plugging in your Ledger into the wrong place and giving over your private keys. Those are the the risks that are out there for custody today. So if you have $100,000 on Coinbase and you're incurring these risks of what could go wrong with custody over between now and 20 years from now, that could jeopardize that could strip you of that future that you have planned on today by becoming an investor in Bitcoin. And, and that's a tragedy because you, you're right, you're early. You just have to wait. And custody could be the thing that undoes a future where you have perhaps an early retirement, perhaps it's generational wealth because maybe you have $500,000 in in, in Bitcoin sitting on a, a single hardware wallet. That's $100 million in this future that Michael Saylor is expecting will happen in 20 years. And that would be a tragedy to have that be taken away from you because a scammer or a hack occurs and you lose that Bitcoin. So that's why on Ramp exists to try to make a better solution for lower risk Bitcoin custody to help propagate your Bitcoin today into the future. And you know, that's, that's a little bit on what we believe is the value proposition of Bitcoin, how big the opportunity is and why custody is so important. So with that in mind, love to hand it off to Brian to take us through his recent report on the evolution of Bitcoin custody, where we've been over the last 15 years. What's out there and what are the viable considerations for you to plan your Bitcoin custody around? Yeah, awesome. Thanks Jesse. And so I think would, would Jesse just walk through really the the long term investment opportunity of Bitcoin is, is critical to set the stage for what we're going to talk about today in terms of, you know, how, how to think critically about how you custody your Bitcoin. Because, as Jesse mentioned, you know, you could be totally right about your investment thesis on Bitcoin. It goes 202 hundred X over the next 20 years. But if you didn't take the time to think critically about how you actually secured and stored the Bitcoin into the future, you may not get to, you know, realize or appreciate those benefits of that 200 X 20 years from now. And, you know, the, the sort of relatively short history of Bitcoin the past 15 years is fraught with examples of, you know, custody solutions going wrong effectively. You know, I, I think in our minds, you know, the, the prudent thing to do over the past 15 years was to buy and hold Bitcoin, But it was a lot harder to do that in reality than it is to just say that just buy and hold the asset. And, and the, the reality is, is that, you know, part of the, the goal and the sort of the overarching aim of this report around the evolution of custody was really to provide a, a comprehensive overview of, you know, how different forms of custody emerged in the traditional asset landscape and how we've sort of tried to map those same tendencies to this new asset called Bitcoin. And it doesn't, it doesn't map super neatly. It is, is one of the takeaways of, of this report. And the reason for that is really, you know, Bitcoin is very unique from a custodial perspective. So it is a digital bearer instrument, meaning that in order to secure and store your Bitcoin, you are securing private keys, essentially a pass phrase that allows you to access that Bitcoin. And so you can do that yourself. You can, you know, hold your Bitcoin in self custody and, and manage those private keys yourself, or you can hold Bitcoin on exchange and in which case you don't hold the private keys. But because, because of this attribute, it being a digital bear and Schmidt and finite in nature, it really means that that custody is the most important thing you could consider when when making a Bitcoin investment. Because again, if you don't secure it right, and if you or a third party mismanages those keys, the Bitcoin could be lost forever. And, and that's, that's a critical differentiator for this asset relative to stocks, bonds in your portfolio that, you know, custody is really an afterthought in the traditional asset landscape. In that sense, in that, you know, whether it's a stock or a bond, there's, there's basically fall backs in place that whether it's recreating shares or reversing a transaction, there's, there's backstops and bailouts in place to basically, you know, ameliorate any problem with the actual custody of the underlying with Bitcoin, that's just not the case there. There aren't those same backstops. And again, if you mismanage the keys, the Bitcoin could be lost forever. And so up until this point, these past 15 years, you know, the, the solutions for custody and Bitcoin, they've been OK. They've, they've been, you know, suitable to a point. But as Bitcoin's price continues to appreciate effectively, you know, we need better solutions. And like any technology, we expect, you know, Bitcoin and, and custody solutions to evolve, evolve as well. And, and, and so you know, the, the real, if, if you think about for the past 15 years, what, what have your options been? Effectively, there's been 22 sort of branches of options. You manage the private keys yourself in some form of self custody or you outsource it to a third party custodian who holds the Bitcoin for you. Now there are issues and trade-offs with both of those solutions. The main one, the main concern is that there's a single point of failure. So if you're holding Bitcoin on an exchange or with a single counterparty, that counterparty, that entity is a single point of failure. If they mismanage the keys, whether through negligence or or malfeasance, that Bitcoin can be lost forever. And there's not a lot of recourse for you as a a client of that entity to, to regain your Bitcoin. So you have single entity risk, failure risk there. On the self custody side, you still have a single point of failure, but it's you yourself, the the end client, which I think is something that you know, is overlooked or, or taken for granted in, in sort of the Bitcoin space, in that, you know, you think you're doing the right thing by taking your coins off exchange. And, and certainly self custody is is better than holding it on exchange in in our view. And I would also just, you know, caveat all of this by saying, you know, there's a time and place and, and use cases for many different types of custody. This is not to say that this is A1 size fits all solution for for your Bitcoin ownership, But again, so so back to the self custody side of things, the the the risk is that you yourself become a single point of failure. It in that set up. And so where we think this moves and really, you know, the impetus for creating on ramp and and launching multi institution custody and really pioneering this as a as an evolution in in Bitcoin custody landscape is that we can eliminate single points of failure, including you yourself, the the end user. And so how we do that is by using something called multi SIG, which is native to the Bitcoin protocol that allows you to basically create 3 keys that are associated with given Bitcoin wallet or address and then you can distribute those keys. So what we do in our model is we distribute private keys to two other entities including that. So on Rampled one key and then we partner with Bitco and coin Cover told the two other keys. So none of the entities including ourselves have unilateral control of the assets, meaning you need two out of the three keys in order to move funds or access funds. So us as on ramp a single entity we cannot move your funds without the express direction of you the end client. And so this is a critical difference in terms of multi institution custody versus something like Coinbase, which to be clear, Coinbase also uses multi say it it's important to call this out. They also use multi say, but they hold all three of the keys. And and that's the key distinction here in that you still have single entity risk, even if Coinbase is is using multi say to store your Bitcoin. And so in order to move the Bitcoin, we need to hear from you, the end client, and you have to, you know, expressly direct us to start a process where we then provide the first signature and then hand it off to our partners to provide the second, second signature in order to move the Bitcoin. So in that model, you, the end client importantly retain control in that note, none of the entities involved in in the custody of your Bitcoin can move it without your express direction. And and the other thing, the other sort of side of the barbell that this solution solves for is you, the end client, again, being the single point of failure and manage keeps yourself. So we abstract away the, the technical acumen needed to, you know, manage a multi sig on your own and you effectively are able to outsource that to professionals who are working on your behalf to, to secure your Bitcoin. But again, you, you retain that control in that the the Bitcoin cannot move without your direction. And you also you, you maintain the optionality to move that Bitcoin in the future and move it into self custody if at some point you would like to do that. And so this is, you know, if there's a few things to to take away from this report, it's that Bitcoin is very unique from a custodial perspective. And because of that, you know, it's really the most important thing to consider when thinking about making a sizeable allocation to the asset. And it's something to store it for the long term, right? So going back to the idea of if you want to see the benefits of, of Bitcoin's price appreciation, you have to, you know, have ownership assurances and, and know that you're going to be able to access that Bitcoin in the future. And so maybe I'll, I'll stop there and and open it up to you guys to see if you have anything to add to that. Yeah, Brian, really appreciate it. And it's such a thorough report that I would encourage anyone who hasn't sat down and downloaded it and read through it to do so. It is available on the website. I think Brian did a phenomenal job. It's really resonated from what I've heard from institutional investors and financial advisors that we've been speaking with, but also private clients, individuals that are looking at this new, newer form of custody that we've pioneered here at Onramp, especially as it relates to their personal holdings. So would encourage you to check out the website, learn more about it. I think before pivoting into some of the some of the stuff that Cam wants to walk us through about what it's like to be an on Ramp client. I think it it would be worthwhile just to pause and and have a conversation, open it up a little bit between the four of us. I'm particularly interested maybe to kick things off, Jesse, you being one of the Co founders of On Ramp with Michael. I'm curious how you kind of came to this conclusion. Of multi institution custody and being able to see around the corner as a related to Bitcoin custody and and why you have conviction in this being a standard of of ways individuals and institutions can secure the asset. Yeah, awesome. Yes. So for me personally, before, before on ramp, I was running a Bitcoin investment fund for the five years prior to that. And so I had this problem myself of I was I'd set up my own multi sig custody that that I was in control of and I had all the keys on behalf of my investors. And I did this because, you know, I've looked at the landscape of custody out there and I decided that I didn't trust a third party custodian more than I trusted myself. And, and I, I understood that, OK, so there's a technical burden here and there's, you know, security. But if I set it up right, that's better than, you know, for example, leaving my coins on, on, on FTX like some other investment funds did. So that was my approach. But that was it was hard to sleep at night at times because I knew that I had a lot of risk on my shoulders that my investors were counting on me to, you know, secure their Bitcoin correctly. And that if I got hit by a bus, I wasn't I wasn't certain that the processes had put in place would be able for somebody else to, you know, to to figure out how to access the coins and distribute to investors. And you know, any other number of of concerns that that one has when, when thinking about the, the, the Bitcoin wealth that is on their shoulders. This was just heightened for me because I had, I had clients. And so it's no different from an individual taking care of the Bitcoin on behalf of their family. It just, it was that, that I was aware that I was doing this on behalf of 20 families. And so talking with Michael, who was working at Unchained onboarding billions of dollars of capital to multi sig collaborative custody, I had this pain point for as a, as a fund manager, he was seeing the challenges of a lot of people who who were on boarding to collaborative custody. And and Cam can certainly speak to this balked at the technical and security responsibility of having the majority of keys be in their control. And so a lot of people end up defaulting to just leaving on Coinbase because it's scary to take that, you know, to take that responsibility on yourself. So you're going to defer to the status quo and leave it with the third party custodian taking more risk than than you then, you know, you should. So that was the genesis of of us talking about, you know, it'd be great if there was a way to have multi sig. And, and again, this is multi sig is a 10 year old technology that the, over the last five 6-7 years, the, the collaborative custody companies have really sort of brought to the mass market and proven out as a, as a reliable and, and better way to do custody because of the inherent fault tolerance that introduces versus having a single sig key set up or one key controls all the funds. Obviously in the multi sig with two of three, you can, you can have a disaster with one of those keys and it's, you're fine. You can still recover those funds. So multi Sig's been around for 10 years and it's been proven out and multi institution custody is is not so much a new technology as it is a, a, an addition to the the multi sig model, where instead of having the individual having to set up their own multi sig keys and security for those keys and maintaining that security indefinitely through time with with perfect fidelity. Instead of that, you hire the best key managers in the world who are Bitco and coin cover and and on ramp, who are who do this for for as their business. And you use them as your, your key, your keys in your multi sig quorum. And so that's all that multi institution custody is. It's taking this concept and saying, let's remove the end user from the responsibility of, of technical and security participation, while while crucially maintaining that the end user has control of their coins because none of the key holders have enough keys to to sign any transaction unilaterally. So, you know, this was a, this came from a place of need for myself personally and and also Michael's frustrations with with the limitations of multi sig and the client experience of that is can achieve because you're still requiring so much of the end user. And we realized, you know what, there's a better way to do this by professionalizing and outsourcing the, the technical and security pieces in multi Sig and we can build a product around that. So that that's what that's where it came from. And and I think it's important context about, you know, how multi institution custody fits into the landscape of of multi sig. Really it's it's more a perfection of multi sig than it is a new form of custody. Yeah, that's, that's really well said, Jesse. I think, you know, one aspect that I would add to that in terms of my own journey and and sort of understanding the importance of, of custody first and foremost, but then how this is evolving over time was if you just think about, you know, Bitcoin today is around a $1 trillion asset. I genuinely believe for us to get to a $10 trillion asset, $50 trillion asset, $100 trillion asset we needed, we need better solutions to incentivize broader adoption. And I think it's unrealistic to think that the next billion users of Bitcoin are going to be fully self sovereign and use their own highly technical multi sig self custody set up. I think we need to broaden the aperture of this great thing called multi sig. So to your point, we didn't really, you know, reinvent the wheel here. We're we're leveraging multi sig this this native feature of the protocol, but we're just broadening the aperture of its of its usage, its ability to be used by effectively outsourcing its professionals, importantly, none of which have unilateral control. So that's, that's one thing that's always been in the back of my head as I've thought through this is I don't think we get to these, these next rungs of, of adoption without better solutions that are highly secure, but importantly easy to use and, and don't require hundreds of hours of, of deep learning around plastic devices and, and private key management, which frankly, you know, a lot of people are not able to do. But a lot of people don't want that, want to do that either. They don't want the the burden of of learning a whole new sort of field of of study, but they also don't want the burden of that they're introducing a physical tax surface to their wealth, which which again is very dissimilar to any of the other assets in their portfolio, right? They're not holding their bond and stock certificates in their basement. So they don't feel that burden of responsibility for their other assets. But with this, you know, new novel asset Bitcoin that is possible, as I was mentioning earlier around it being a digital bearer instrument. But the reality is, is, you know, for meaningful allocations. And again, like Jesse, Jesse said in the beginning, you kind of have to think about this as if it's already at that future target of where you see it's headed. And so that that I think that threat of physical attack is only going to increase. So, so if we're able to move up the rung of adoption and and grow to a $10 trillion asset, the proverbial target on the back of the average Bitcoin holder who holds their own keys and may have seen their wealth just 10X over the past five years. Given all of sort of the rampant data leaks that exist and Bitcoin being an open transparent Ledger, it's not out of the realm of possibility to imagine a world 10 years from now where someone might know how much Bitcoin you own and where you live. And if that's the case, I personally don't want the majority of my Bitcoin held on private keys that I store in my house. I think there's a place for all these different types of custody. And, and I'll, you know, personally, probably always have some amount in, in, you know, pure self custody. But increasingly I want that out of, you know, my own personal responsibility effectively. So that's, that's another way that I've thought about this is just, you know, how do we get to that future reality 10 years from now? We need highly scalable, highly secure and easy to use solutions that can bring in more people. You know who also agrees with you? Michael Saylor was, was talking about this on our podcast recording yesterday. So that'll be coming out in, in a few weeks. But he, he made the point of, you know, for, for Bitcoin to make it to the mainstream. You can't expect a 12 year old to have their savings, you know, on a, on a hardware wallet. You just, you can't, you can't and, and more importantly, you can't expect an 80 year old to have their savings, their pension, you know, their, their livelihood stored on a, on a hardware wallet. So he sees the the importance too, of custody that fits the the technical and security requirements of of making it to the mainstream. You know. What interesting something to know here is that, and I've had the benefit, like Jesse alluded to, of speaking probably with more folks individually who own Bitcoin than than most of the people on the planet by far. That has like got a lot of earned secrets for better, for worse. But I've been able to talk with thousands of people who are interested in Bitcoin, who've onboarded the Bitcoin, who've held material amounts of Bitcoin themselves in every sort of form you can imagine if you've used practically every form myself. And even for the very most technical Bitcoiner, the most diligent Bitcoiner, the one who is running a node, who you know attends bit devs, who is extremely technical, even they have challenges with self custody. So the more I experience that first hand in private conversations with folks, the more is apparent to me that OK, the the multi sig, the collaborative custody options that we've had, those have been the best up until multi institution custody. There was no question about that in my mind. But it was clear that there was still a lot that so much was expected from the end client as some of the the risk that you were pointing out, Brian, there were still concerns that clients were bringing to me. I was trying to help them work through, but that are still very difficult. It inherits as being the biggest one, which is near and dear to my heart. I have a family Bitcoin represents a material portion of my own net worth. It's with onramp, so no one, no one try to, you know, knock down my front door. But I want to make sure that all the time and effort that I have worked hard to preserve in Bitcoin in this finite asset. As Jesse said, that has such an incredible potential that I have a absolute degree of confidence that that's going to be passed down to my wife and kids where I, you know, when I pass that it's, it's possible to do a self custody. It's just very difficult when you're, when you're talking about devices like this that are foreign to everybody when your wife is looking at you and like, OK, how much do we have on these things again? Or like before you leave for a trip. I just went on an adventurous trip with friends way out in the wilderness. No cell phone connection for a week and we talked to the inheritance plan, but now it was very easy. I could just say, you know, call on ramp. Most people in self custody that is as diligent as they are. They get to a point where keys are distributed. There's seed phrases everywhere, there are pins, there are steel plates, there's wall configuration files. That's for the most diligent and and then you kind of have that oh, crap moment of, of inheritance, which is just one of the problems that I, I can see an industry that had yet to be addressed. So we're not trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We're not trying to say there's not a place for plastic devices for using self custody in different forms. But it does change as Bitcoin becomes a greater portion of your net worth. And it does change at the individual level, depending on how technical you are. It changes on how much time you've devoted to think through your setup and how much time you're devoting to maintaining that on a regular basis. Are you doing the key checks? Are you educating your loved ones about how to use them? What's their degree of confidence in those? So the, the point of this conversation, I think broadly, as we've alluded to, is helping to think through core concepts as it relates to custody as a, to providing you as a listener with the framework for how to think through securing your wealth as it moves from dipping your toe in the water. Bitcoins less than 1% of your net worth. Custody doesn't mean a whole lot then that the weight of that, the gravity of the solution you pick is pretty low, right? Of course, as it moves from 5% then to 10 percent, 25%, possibly over 50% and higher. Of course, you need to scale up the security robustness. You need to tighten up all those aspects and make sure that you can enjoy the road over the next two decades of Michael Saylor and Jesse being right. But you, you really have to have this aspect really buttoned up in order to enjoy that. Otherwise it's just going to be unfortunately, as Bitcoin becomes more valuable. All those lingering thoughts in the back of your head, all those pain points around a physical security or making a mistake, whether it's on an exchange or you're using self custody, all those things are only going to become orders of magnitude bigger problems for you. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's right. That's right, Cam. And, and and I think, you know, it's, it's worth underlining that for us at honor of all of us, we we just want Bitcoin to be treated right in, in a person's portfolio and in their and in their life. And you know, security is a part of that. Custody is a part of that, such that the, the Bitcoiner who has been right, can reap the rewards of that for them and their family. And so I think, you know, I, I know that we all feel that the most important thing is to get your coins off of exchanges. So if, if that for you means setting up a single sig hardware wallet, please do that. You know, we think there's limitations to that and risks to that, that, that people aren't always aware of, notably the these, these phishing scammers who these social engineers calling people trying to convince them to plug in their Ledger to, to update, you know, to solve some urgent crisis that they've manufactured out of thin air. And they're actually just trying to steal their funds. Or, or, you know, or the risk of somebody showing up with a, with a big heavy wrench and threatening to, to beat you over the head or your, or your family over the head and until you hand over that hardware wallet. But you know, exchange, the history of exchanges has been terrible for, for people who've stored their, their value there, whether that's Mount Gox or FTX or any of the dozens of other disaster stories. Self custody with a single cig. Maybe that's a paper wallet. Maybe that's on your phone even. That's better. And, and please take that step if you, if you haven't beyond that multi cig opens up, provides so many more benefits then single sig with the fault tolerance that, that that's introduced there and your, the ability to distribute your keys and make sure that you know, if any one of those keys is compromised, an attacker can't take your funds because they don't have a sufficient amount of the cryptographic material. So please take that step and, and then thinking about it personally, you know, I felt uncomfortable with, with the multi sig that I'd set up for my fund. I felt uncomfortable for myself too. And, and I think a big part of that has proven to be that I had all my eggs in one basket for, for myself personally, I had one custody set up where I had all my Bitcoin and, and I always worried that I had screwed something up, that I was vulnerable to some kind of risk or that an attack could, could wipe it out in one go. And so for me, a part of, of the last few years has been adding multi institution custody to what I was already doing. So now I have two baskets. I, I use multi sig collaborative custody and that is part of my holdings. And then the other part is in multi institution custody and I sleep better at night. And that's because I know that I've got two different types of of custody where there, you know, two different key setups and and and those keys are stored in different places in different ways. And that means that, you know, if my multi sig setup that that I maintain control of if I screwed it up somehow, or if it if it screws up for me in my hardware wallets get bricked or something and and some disaster scenario I can't even imagine happens. Well, I still got my multi institution custody portion. So I'm I've reduced my risk personally and and I sleep better at night because of it. That knowing that that I have these two different baskets and they're they're both excellent security in different ways. They're little bit different trade-offs, but I know that my, you know, at least one of those buckets is always going to be safe even if an absolute disaster scenario happens in one of them. And frankly, the one that I'm more worried about is my personal setup because I don't know what I could have screwed up. I don't worry about the multi institution custody setup because because I know. You know, I know what institutional grade key management looks like and I know that an on ramp has done that. I know what Bicco has done. I know that Bicco's key is the same is is the same processes and and security as an entire ETF that Bitcoin Bicco happens to secure. So that one key is an ET FS worth of security and it's 1/3 of the security in in on ramps multi institution custody format and the same with coin cover. So a little bit of color on I, I think it's, it's a good idea to to be moving through the evolution of Bitcoin custody in order to reduce your risk. And I think a valuable thing that that I know a lot of our clients have also felt or, or shared is that having two baskets, you know, having multi institution custody in addition to multi sig that they that they've set up and and controlled brings some Peace of Mind that that people often weren't expecting. So my two cents there. Yeah, really appreciate all your thoughts. I know we just have to be mindful of time. We we could probably go on this topic forever. And for anyone who wants to hear other perspectives as well, we did a podcast with Bradley Chambers. I want to say 3 or 4 weeks ago at this point that for the over a year that we've been doing our flagship podcast, The Last Trade, I want to say we've gotten the most amount of feedback about that one. So check out the episode we did with Bradley Chambers. Bradley brought a wealth of knowledge as it relates to early adoption of of the Internet and technologies and infrastructures and applications that people use the Internet. And it drew a lot of interesting parallels to Bitcoin. So check that out. Does your Bitcoin custody setup keep you up at night? Maybe you still have coins sitting on an exchange worried about hackers. Or maybe you've set up your own self custody but don't feel safe with your Bitcoin savings stashed on a little plastic device in your desk drawer. Gain Peace of Mind with On Ramp and our multi institution custody solution. Here's how it works. On Ramp creates a dedicated multi sig vault just for you. 3 separate institutions each hold a key on ramp bit go and coin cover, but none can move funds unilaterally. Instead, only you have control over your coins with on ramps multi institution custody. You'll sleep better at night knowing your Bitcoin is stored with best in class security on chain with fault tolerant multi sig. If you believe your Bitcoin is going to be worth a lot someday, don't jeopardize that future by exposing your coins to hackers on exchanges, $5 wrench attacks in the real world, or perhaps most importantly, the risk that you might screw something up with a highly technical self custody set up on ramps. Multi institution custody eliminates single points of failure, reduces your personal attack surface and technical burden, and provides access to financial services that allow you to confidently secure your Bitcoin, including inheritance planning, insurance backed warranties for all balances and transactions, low cost trading and more. Bitcoin is a once in a species asset. Secure it right. Learn more at on rampbitcoin.com. You know, we have about 15 minutes, so one thing we wanted to do is we'll pull up the on boarding flow real quick just so everyone get a sense of what it looks like to actually get signed up with on ramp. And then we'll also just quickly demo the client dashboard and, and we'll be sure after the fact to send out links so you can check those videos out separately. And then we'll open it up to questions and answers with the remaining 10 minutes or so. So, Cam, maybe I will pivot to you and then I'll get this pulled up on my screen and we can move through it together here. Perfect. OK, just bear with me for one moment here. We got it. Got it. And we'll move through this fairly quickly so that we can get to the Q and AI. Think the important and powerful take away for anyone who'd like to experience our platform is that it the onboarding process is very simple. It's all within our application. So you think about this concept of multi institution custody. Our clients have direct relationships and legal contracts with all three institutions. But in terms of onboarding, we've consolidated that process of documentation and forms right into one platform that you can go through. And for our clients who are on board, I'm either on the call with you or one of our colleagues or on boarding manager is so that if you have any questions as you go through and you can see it's very self-explanatory, explanatory, but you will have someone on the phone with you to walk through this as well if you'd like. And then behind that, what you're doing is 3 institutions are all coming together to secure your Bitcoin in a segregated account in a segregated vault. It's really quite powerful. Once you kind of get through that process after about 30 minutes and think and reflect on, on what just occurred there. This hasn't happened before anywhere, you know, certainly not in tranfy in, in not in Bitcoin before. But you that that's the beauty of Bitcoin, right? You're, you're bringing together multiple parties here for the benefit of Bitcoin in the ethos of Bitcoin of decentralization and working to provide something that's transparent for you as the end user and and allows you to have maximal control as having legal agreements and recourse with each of the three institutions that are participating. And then this is our dashboard. So you have a beautiful on ramp dashboard unique to you. You have your own segregated wallet, so of course this is a cold storage wallet or a cold storage vault, meaning that all the keys. Of the. Secure this vault held by the institutions are in our offline 100% of the time and you have your own unique wallet on chain. So there your funds are not commingled. If you're a little bit more technical, the funds in your wallet, your address or set of addresses are unique to you. You can independently verify that on a on a node or on a block explorer. But you have a very easy way to be able to deposit, to withdraw, to be able to buy Bitcoin into your vault, to set up an inheritance plan. And you also have dedicated support for myself or others from our team to be able to walk you through any of those functions. Yeah, Appreciate that, Cam. Sorry, I pulled it off a little prematurely, but when I get into the questions, I know that there are a lot of questions coming in here. So let's start with this one we got earlier in the conversation and then we can start to work through these. So MIMIC multi institution model is compelling, especially with inheritance and insurance. What are some of the trade-offs associated with this? So that's a good point. I mean, we talked a lot about the benefits of it, but maybe any of the three of you, if you could speak to just some of the trade-offs associated with this custody solution, how maybe people think about that versus other forms of custody? Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll try to do quick answers for these so we can get through as many as possible. I think that that it's, it's more to acknowledge the the trade-offs with multi institution custody. There's a there's a few and they're frankly rather limited relative to the other ones to the other forms of custody. One is that you have to have some amount of trust in the institutional processes and key management of bit go on ramp and coin cover as companies that do Bitcoin key management. And and part of that is also the the information exchange between between those companies. Another consideration is that, you know, this service has some fees associated with it. You're paying for hiring the best key managers, key holders out there and that comes with a little cost. You could create your own multi sig setup for 0 cost. If you really rolled up your sleeves and got technical with a wallet and understood everything you were doing and assumed all that security and and technical burden on onto yourself. Those are those are the two the two downsides to multi institution custody, but we've already enumerated what I think is a very long list of of of benefits to a multi institution custody. 11 caveat I would make to the the notion of your, your trusting these institutions to to act in good faith on your behalf. That is true and it is trade off that you make. But if you're comparing that relative to trusting a single entity, it's a different level of trust inherently. Because with multi institution custody, there are three participants, none of which have unilateral control. And thus they're, they're all incentivized to act in good faith because the client and all the other parties can audit the funds on chain in real time. And so that's not the case if you're just holding your coins on Coinbase, right? Like that. That is a different level of trust relative to trusting 3 institutions that are working on your behalf, none of which have unilateral. Control and and and that speaks to another question here and in the chat of what happens if one of these key holders ceases to exist? Well, you still have two of the three key holders, which is all you need to move the funds to a new vault. And, and so, and there we have legal processes established and agreed upon with our our key holders for what happens in the event that any of the three key holders was to disappear off the face of the earth. So that, you know, Brian nailed it. It's a. It's a different scale of trust that's required in this format. Yeah, and and good point there too is those processes are well documented within the client dashboard as well. So clients should and for Canon should download the wallet recovery instructions from their dashboard. So in the instance anything not business as usual were to happen, there's a very streamlined and well documented way for for that recovery process to happen. There's another question here in the in the chat of and I suppose this is a potential trade off with engaging with on ramp and multi institution custody. Yes, we do have to collect KYC information and you in theory you don't have to do that if you set up your own Bitcoin solution, Bitcoin custody solution by doing your own multi sig. But that that's that's a trade off. That's a the requirement on us as a as a business in good standing and and realistically if you bought your coins on an exchange, you've already gone through KYC to do that. So yeah. Yeah. What one question that we got that is also fairly common is the question around collusion between key holders. Because people that the model of multi institutional resonate with them that they like the idea of not having any one institution they have to trust that can control their assets or can lose their assets. But then the natural progression of that line of thinking is well, what if two of the three keys that are required collude with each other against the you know best interest of the client. So maybe I can point that to any of you guys if you want to just speak to why that is highly unlikely and just the level of you know in terms of what we can share the level of how keys are managed with an institutional key management that kind of mitigate these risks. Yeah. So I I think first and foremost, it's not like there's a single key being held in somebody's desk drawer for each of these three institutions. These are sharded solutions that involve a number of people having to contribute a piece, you know, an approval in the process for each of these institutions. So collusion in that sense would require, you know, quite a number of people for any one of those institutions to all be on the same, on the same evil page. And and then it and then it comes back to, you know, who are these institutions? Coinbase's securing an entire ETF. I'm sorry, Bicco's securing an entire ETF with their key. It's their entire business. And you know, 20% of all the Bitcoin transactions go through Bicco's infrastructure. They have absolutely no incentive to, to ruin that, that business and to, to collude and, and they've set up their institutional processes to ensure that they can't, you know, that it's, it's not possible for them to ruin their business by, by some sort of collusion on their end. Yeah. And, and I would just add to that one way I, I like to think about it is again, relative to single entity custodians or single entity counterparties. You know, if, if you're a single entity and you're holding a ton of Bitcoin for, for clients, you don't have to convince anyone to quote UN quote collude, right? Like you can act in bad faith, you know, unilaterally because you have that control of the assets. So the sort of threshold or bar for collusion is raised significantly in a multi institution setup because again, it comes back to those incentives and game theory around participation without full control. And that so that shifts the incentives of those participants to act in good faith because it would be plainly obvious to the to the third non colluding actor that that something funny was going on. And so because of that sort of greater level of transparency and auditability of the funds, it's it's much less likely to occur. Yeah, appreciate those thoughts. One other question here. Well, there's several questions, but one other one to get into right now. If two or three of the corporate partners were to suddenly fail somehow, but the Bitcoin is held on chain, what the client have recourse to recover somehow question mark. So I'll kick that over to any of you guys. I do have some thoughts. Just real quick high level, even if you know a company goes into bankruptcy proceedings, it doesn't necessarily mean that those keys have been compromised or impaired in any way. So I guess in terms of what would need to go wrong at it at within two institutions at the same time would ostensibly be some sort of like Black Swan event that would impact not only, you know, these three institutions, but potentially the industry as a whole or you know, wider implications for the economy. But Jesse, sounds like maybe you have some additional thoughts there? Yeah, it's an important distinction here that that our solution is the multi institution custody as a format is an unhosted wallet and and we are not a custodian, we are custody solution and that's important because we don't control your coins, you know client coins, the client does. The client is the only person that has the the authority because of their legal relationship with three separate key holders to affect control on on the coins that are held in their on chain vault. So that's, that's, and then, you know, with regard to companies disappearing, Jackson's right. You know, realistically that would go through bankruptcy proceedings and there there would be an unwind there. It's not like this material would disappear for multiple institutions. And in the course of that, the these coins do not sit on the balance sheet of the company that they these are unhosted wallets. These are the the clients coins. So there's that assurance. In addition to that, what would have to happen for for this sort of disaster scenario to occur is for basically two of these companies to be wiped off the face of the Earth on the same day. And I think that's an important distinction. There was, you know, if if it was 11 day and then one a week later, that would provide enough time to swap out to a new vault and and there'd be no problem. And, and finally, like, you know, the there's no solution is going to be absolutely perfect. You're just looking at orders of magnitude of risk reduction. And I think that that's what that's what we're talking about here. So you're always going to find some edge case scenario where there's where it's possible to have disaster. But I think, you know, to to what Brian did a great job of highlighting here. I think that more often than not, bitcoiners need to look in the mirror to see the their greatest risk when it comes to custody. And you know, because of the inherent risks that come with self custody, you're having your keys at home even if it's in a multi sig setup. Awesome. There's some other questions here. I do want to honor what I said earlier about and just a brief announcement. So appreciate everyone who has stuck around for the entirety of today's webinar. So as I mentioned at the start of the call, we've gotten a lot of great feedback from our existing client base and just from other folks who followed the research and content. And what we're excited about and pleased to share is that over the course of the year, we've made some really, I would say meaningful enhancements on the infrastructure side and the client experience side, which allows us to offer the solution now at scale to the market. So starting at the end of this quarter and into Q4, we're excited to announce that we'll be able to support clients with multi institution custody, inheritance and an insurance solution all baked into the products at a price starting of $150.00 per month. And I wanted to mention this AB as I said it would at the start of the call, but B, it actually it ties into a lot of these questions that are coming up that are more tail risk type of questions, like one that that's also in this queue here is just about live video verification calls, right? And how do we protect our clients against deepfakes? And how do we think about that as a security mechanism as a firm if we're doing video verifications for withdrawals of our when clients want to withdraw funds from their vault. And that actually ties into there'll be more to come with that announcement, but the insurance, the transaction protection that's now going to be baked into our solution even protects our clients from threats such as deepfake video. So there's of course more that we could talk about there just in terms of the different points of authentication. For instance, a client could set a control on their vault that states that you can't have, let's say, more than 5 Bitcoin be withdrawn in a given month, right? Like there's there are ways or there's time delays between key signatures, there's way to mitigate these risks. That are built into the process, but even still really excited about being able to offer this a, at scale to more clients that have been asking for multi institution custody and then B, having a fail safe. Even like with these robust controls that we built, having a fail safe now to be able to point to and say, well, we do have transaction protection. We do have these insurance backed warranties into the product now that are going to protect our clients from all sorts of risks that have been discussed today. So really excited about that one. And to just add to that, this is pretty unique to our product specifically because our products is set up in a way that it was possible to extend this insurance solution to our set up because the underwriters felt it was acceptable because of how robust and risk mitigated multi institution custody format is. So you know, it, the, the depth of what what is covered is, is pretty remarkable. And I think, I think Jackson, Cam and any of us would, would love to share more with you if you're interested in in the insurance side of what we're adding to the product built in with, with the cost structure that Jackson mentioned. Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of depth there. It's very exciting to be able to add that to what is already we believe the best solution for risk mitigation and then have this additional safety net of, you know what, there there's an insurance solution added on top of this because it's so risk mitigated already that the economics made sense to the underwriters. Yeah, appreciate that, Jesse. Well, we are overtime want to be mindful of the attendees time and then also the team's time here as well. Really appreciate everyone who took the time out of their busy schedules to join in Live Today. Those of you who asked questions really appreciate that engagement as well. There were some questions we weren't able to get to. So if if you did, if your name was included in that question, I'll be sure to follow up with you and we'll get those questions addressed. And then the final hand off just to the website on rampbitcoin.com. If anything discussed today was, you know, thought provoking or you have additional questions or you want to sign up with us, feel free to just reach out to schedule a consultation on our website. You can do it straight on the homepage. It's really easy to do and you'll get connected directly with our team. So, you know, thanks again to all of you for joining today. Appreciate it and look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that On Rat Media is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/contact to schedule a consultation with one of our private Client Advisors.