3 Traditional Finance Professionals Became Bitcoin Evangelists

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Investment Management LLC, left, and Michael Saylor, Chairman and CEO of MicroStrategy, at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference in Miami, Florida, U.S., on Thursday, April 7, 2022. The four-day Bitcoin 2022 Conference is presented by the organizers as “the biggest bitcoin event in the world.” Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg 2022 Bloomberg Finance LP

BitcoinsBTC volatility can be confusing to those who don’t understand it, but there are a growing number of fund managers turning to bitcoin as a tool for diversification. For example, multi-billion dollar ETF company ARK Invest found bitcoin important enough to dedicate an entire section of its website research center to it.

ARK CEO Cathie Wood has been one of bitcoin’s most prominent proponents in the traditional financial space. She is pictured above speaking at the annual Bitcoin Conference held in Miami, Florida. The transparency of the Bitcoin network allows for a unique level of analysis not possible with traditional markets.

Analysts like Alpha Zeta, the new CIO of Swan Bitcoins, are also creating tools to help analyze and illustrate the impact of bitcoins on a portfolio. The website is open source, free, and listed in the tweet above.

Whatever your beliefs, there is a cohort of financiers who are beginning to see bitcoin as an integral part of the modern wallet. The following three finance professionals have left their careers in the space and are now focusing on bitcoin full-time.

The bond trader

Greg Foss has worked as a fixed income trader and hedge fund credit expert in Canada and the United States. Foss managed several multi-billion dollar accounts before finally exiting the financial industry after 30 years in the space.

Foss says he found bitcoin in 2016 and quickly fell down the rabbit hole. I invested in bitcoin and was actually a founding shareholder of 3IQ, the first closed-end BTC fund to be approved by the OSC and listed on the TSX, Foss said in our interview about his first experience. of investment. His conviction has only grown since then.

He said his passion for bitcoin prompted him to write a research paper for other credit market analysts and fund managers. Foss’ thesis is that bitcoin is a credit default swap, or insurance, on a basket of fiat currencies and government debt. The thesis made him a popular figure in the Bitcoin space as he toured the space podcasts discussing it.

Bitcoin is the biggest asymmetric investment opportunity I have ever seen, Foss told me in our interview. Although the asymmetry makes the asset volatile, Foss insists that bitcoin is the ultimate portfolio insurance against the growing burden of sovereign debt.

Fosss’ article develops these ideas in more detail and can be found here. He now spends his time focusing on bitcoin education, occasionally publishing with Bitcoin Magazine and speaking on podcasts.

The consultant

Jesse Myers is the COO of Onramp Bitcoin, a company that helps institutions and accredited investors mitigate counterparty risk when buying and holding bitcoin. Myers spent time in consulting at Bain & Company before managing a bitcoin fund at Protocol Capital.

The crypto world is full of unregistered securities with management teams and venture capital funds masquerading as decentralized currencies, Myers said in our interview about their bitcoin-only focus. In contrast, he describes bitcoin as a digital commodity and a store of value, a characterization similar to what SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has previously stated.

Myers told me that he and his partners were fed up with bitcoin custody solutions for accredited investors and institutions. Previously, these groups were forced to use vehicles with high fees or exchanges. Recent revelations of crypto exchange failures over the past year have revealed that depositors qualify as unsecured creditors in the event of bankruptcy. These unsuspecting customers ultimately lost billions of dollars in bitcoins held in supposedly safe institutions.

Myers says Onramp seeks to provide a better product, securing bitcoin with its native technology, negating the risk of such bankruptcy losses. In short, bitcoin is a digital carrier asset; Onramp helps investors take custody of their investment. Onramps’ goal is to make it easy to educate their customers along the way, ultimately allowing them to withdraw their bitcoin on their own when they’re ready to take the plunge.

The wealth manager

Andy Edstrom spent a decade on Wall Street at companies including Goldman Sachs, The Carlyle GroupCG and multi-billion dollar hedge fund Tennenbaum Capital. He eventually left to join his family’s wealth management business where he discovered bitcoin. In 2019, he published a book called Why Buy Bitcoin, before joining the team at Swan, a bitcoin-only exchange.

Edstrom, like many others, was drawn to bitcoin due to price trends. However, after gaining a deeper understanding, he developed a thesis on network effects and the role of money in society. The thesis eventually formed the basis of his book. Edstrom says he wrote the book at the bottom of the 2019 bear market to test his thesis as well as his belief.

After joining Swan, he launched a product for financial advisors called Swan Advisor Services. The first group of advisors on board were already very knowledgeable about bitcoin, the second cohort was broader, Edstrom said of the customer base during our interview. Swan is unique among exchanges because of its commitment to education, a service it provides free online and available to everyone.

Education in bitcoin is essential for the next wave of adoption, which could very well be through proxies such as financial advisors. Edstrom says Swan Advisor Services solves this problem. Although volatile, bitcoin is beginning to show some strength in the face of a growing banking crisis as one of the best performing assets in 2023. Edstrom believes that with each market cycle, bitcoin will play an increasingly important role. in client portfolios. I’m sure the other interviewees certainly agree with his sentiment.

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I’m a freelance writer exploring the Bitcoin ecosystem. My work has been published by Bitcoin Magazine and Bitcoin News. I am personally invested in bitcoin and am fascinated by the emerging bitcoin economy.

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