Something we really do is obsess about the client as a whole, right?
We don't have users.
We don't have customers.
We have clients.
They're real people that have family, that have friends, that have real lives, and we're
helping them build their Bitcoin wealth.
It's not something we take lightly and that responsibility lightly.
I think hopefully that shows through proof of reserves, public financials, force field,
as you mentioned earlier, in terms of helping people protect their Bitcoin.
So I guess long-winded way of saying focused on building the best Bitcoin and Bitcoin-only
exchange in the world and also being and building the most trusted financial institution in the world
like that evolves in that sense bitcoin is a currency on the internet if you don't trust any
other currency this is where you go it's going to outperform everything bitcoin could eventually be
worthless every day is a good day to buy bitcoin bitcoin reached its highest price to date bitcoin
a new high it really has reached escape a lot there's no second best who cares about bitcoin
It's the only secure database that's been invented.
Antisocial.
Bitcoin is the real deal.
Stupid.
Everything is bullish for Bitcoin.
Immoral.
It's going up forever, Warren.
Fix the money.
Fix the world.
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advisor to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific
situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Any statements are
painted as subject to change without notice. Welcome to Bitcoin for Financial Services Media,
the podcast where sound money means professional services. We explore how to build the Bitcoin
financial services industry within the principles, values, and ethos of Bitcoin.
Today we're joined by Ben Epling, Relationship Manager at River.
You're not going to want to miss it.
All righty, guys.
We are guys and gals.
We are back with another episode of Bitcoin for Financial Services.
So thanks for joining us again.
We're quickly approaching episode 20.
I think today is 18, 17, 18, 19, somewhere in that range.
So we're right there on the cusp of getting to the episodes that many podcasts die before ever getting to.
And today we have the pleasure of welcoming Ben Epling from River, one of our favorite partners in the entire Bitcoin space.
So Ben, thanks so much for joining us today.
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on.
Yeah, absolutely.
We met, I think we met at our summit in October last year.
Is that right?
Yes.
I believe that was the first time that we met in person.
We probably had exchanged some emails at some point before, but yeah, I think that was the
first face-to-face meeting.
Beautiful.
Well, I'm sorry it took so long to get you on the podcast since it's, you know, beginning
of March here, but better late than never, right?
I made it within the first 20, so that's a feat.
That's true.
That's very true.
That's true.
It was a very cool.
BFFS, your favorite summit you went to in 2025.
It genuinely was.
I'm not exaggerating.
I'm not just blowing smoke.
I swear.
It actually, it was one of the definitely top, it was up there because the intimacy of it, the small crowd, I love that type of environment.
The space is perfect, obviously, for that.
So, yeah, it was my first time at the space as well.
So that was also part of the benefit of seeing the space as a whole.
But, yeah, it was amazing overall.
So props to you guys for putting that on.
Absolutely.
Thanks for having, yeah, thanks for coming out.
And so last time I saw you in person was actually a Bitcoin park.
And so we've got to ask the question, are you and your local, I know, to to you don't have to disclose which one if you don't want to.
But to a Bitcoin park hub, do you have a strong opinion on the park versus space question?
This is why this is always one of why it has to ask this question is he has a very strong opinion.
I'm non-biased about it, but I'm curious about your your take.
Uh, I'm unbiased and I'm not biased towards either.
I will say since I'm physically close to one of the parks, I think that somewhat has to sway me a little bit just because it's harder to get to, uh, to Denver.
It includes an aircraft, whereas I can typically walk or take a car, you know, to one of the parks.
So, but yeah, no, no, uh, no strong opinions there.
That's weak, Ben.
I expect stronger takes on you the rest of the episode.
I'm assuming you're biased towards the space, right?
Is that, is that, is that what I'm hearing here?
Yeah.
Well, and it's just like I find that most people are after they've been to the space.
That's fair.
I haven't heard too many.
Oh, wow.
Bitcoin Park's actually better, you know.
So I'm open to hearing that.
It just hasn't happened.
Yeah, that's fair.
I'm Switzerland.
I'm unbiased.
I don't know, dude.
I'm going to take the side, the strong side of, I mean, I go to the park much more than I go to the space.
And half of the team works out.
I don't know.
I guess we have one guy who works out of the space.
and then we have we have three people who work out of the park so i don't know rod if you're
listening man i'm a park guy at heart but i love the space too obviously so all right cool well
we've got a lot honestly we've got a long list of things that uh i want to make sure we get to so
uh ben tell us tell us how you got into bitcoin originally i just checked your linkedin just to
make sure you've been at river since it seems like i don't know if it's the exact beginning but
for a long time since 2021 now. So just walk us through your Bitcoin journey. And then how did you
get involved with Alex at River? Yeah, for sure. Bitcoin journey to start with that. It's actually
pretty unconventional in the sense that one of my college professors, so I went to The Ohio State
University. So I studied economics and finance. And one of my econ professors back in 2017,
my macroeconomics professor, she actually was the one who orange-filled me. So it was pretty
fascinating um in her public lectures were a big public university obviously it's not somebody you
would anticipate kind of orange filling um in her lectures which she wouldn't but if you went to her
office hours she was kind of like a speakeasy for like for Austrian economics like uh she wouldn't
put that by any means again in the presentations but if you would go speak to her one-on-one she
was very much so an Austrian economist um and I didn't know what that was at the time but I
obviously learned from her in that sense and this was during the bull run of 2017 so she was
mentioning Bitcoin. She was from abroad. So she actually had used Bitcoin to send
values and money to her family members who lived abroad as well. So it was one of the use cases she
had. But yeah, that's how I initially kind of got down the rabbit hole. The first time she
mentioned it in one of our office hours, I went back to my dorm at the time in Columbus and
something about it just kind of flipped a switch and I just dove down the rabbit hole. And obviously
I'm still in that rabbit hole ever since. So I'm a class 2017-er in that sense, thanks to my
college professor, which funny enough, one of our one of my colleagues at River, who's our director
of finance, he actually the same professor two years before that was actually the one who orange
pilled him as well. So come to find out she's been orange pilling people for generations here.
Basically, his classes come through her econ classes at Ohio State. So pretty interesting,
interesting take there. And yeah, from River's perspective, I've been with the team for over
five years now, approaching five and a half-ish years. So yeah, we didn't have a mobile app at
the time or anything when I had joined. So I've been with the team for quite a while,
for a variety of different roles. Right now, I serve in a relationship management capacity. So I
work a lot with our private clients, our business clients who are adopting Bitcoin on their treasury,
work a lot with financial advisors, family offices, some of our partners as well. So
pretty wide variety in that sense, but currently that relationship management capacity.
i love it man that's a great story so did you have any uh any strong reaction i guess when
what one or two years ago where the the keynote at the ohio state like graduation got all the
booze remember that yes i 100 did have some strong reactions to that because i was in columbus at
the time actually um and yeah it was pretty it's it's it'll be a good uh it'll be a good clip to
have here in about uh five ten years so it's just more more ammo in the tool belt but but yeah it
Definitely was not a great look because, yeah, hopefully we'll see some more commencement speakers like that mention it.
Hopefully the attitude increases over time.
That was funny.
It's a real shame.
I don't know who that guy was, but I thought he gave a good talk.
And I'm not surprised the student body at the Ohio State would react in such a way.
Now it's a different kind of show.
What do you have against the Ohio State?
Are you going to pick a fight about the Ohio State?
university are you a michigan guy or something preface to you preface it with the we sure we
trademarked the word so you almost have to you know what i mean hey you know that's that's my
problem jordan i just win friends i win friends that's what i do here you know
what does it cost me to say the ohio state university you know all right why are you a
michigan guy i didn't know this no no i'm a wisconsin guy so big 10 you know a little
contention um they're not quite in the same league uh right now as a house state so i gotta
take my medicine there but a healthy healthy rivalry as long as the big 10's winning we're
happy true conference over everything i mean i'm just i'm really excited to have you on because
i think a lot of bitcoiners at least the ones we deal with in our firm are they just love river
you know there's obviously a lot of options out there uh there's even a handful of bitcoin only
options at this point uh to acquire bitcoin and um and yeah i just a lot of our a lot of our
customers prefer to use river and uh you know we see we get we get the insight to kind of see their
journey especially as we're building out people's cost basis schedules and all that kind of stuff
and end up having to pull CSV files from all the sources,
but ends up being a lot of them
that they're currently living on your all's platform.
So hats off to you.
I know River is one of the most highly respected
just companies in all of the Bitcoin space.
So seriously, you guys have built a really amazing product
and you offer a great service to your customers as well.
So not a question there, just a hats off.
No, we appreciate that.
And hopefully when they're pulling the CSV files,
hopefully there's some good data for you to to uh input there so if there's any feedback on that
make it make it easier for you let us know well i'll reiterate reiterate that to you ben just in
case you're not tired of of winning yet but i always recommend river to you know all my clients
i use it personally i think you guys have done like a phenomenal job just with like the i would
say maybe just like the core platform bitcoin only proof of reserves you know those are things i
always you know touch on but then just you know even new features i've noticed since i've been a
user um you'll have to remind me of like the do you call it force field or vault or something
force field yep yep yeah so just new features like that you know try to help people you know
keep their bitcoin safe it's it really is awesome and you know always my first recommendation yeah
well we appreciate that very cool well one of the other big pieces that you guys are working on is
like the data you're just pushing out. I feel like you're pushing out reports.
Are you all like, is that, I guess, a big vertical for you all at this point is the research component?
Yeah, research is definitely huge. And that's a huge shout out to Sam Baker, who's our research
analyst and pushes a lot of that data out there and does a lot of the data and research reports.
But yeah, research is definitely something we're focused on. And I think at the core of that also
is education, right? There's a lot of education and research is the core of that education. So
So definitely a priority of ours in terms of getting different research reports out,
educating about Bitcoin, Bitcoin adoption, what's driving it, things of that nature.
So definitely a focus of ours.
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Well, and again, I want to thank you for those because I have continuously cited them and the work I've done.
I know you guys just dropped your most recent report a week or two ago.
What were some of your big takeaways from that?
Yeah, I think in terms of takeaways from that, it's interesting.
something I think a lot of people have seen and know, but the numbers behind it of kind of with
this cycle, where has adoption gone? And obviously it's skewed towards institutions. I don't think
that's a super, I don't think it's a big surprise to most people in that sense, but the actual data
behind it of basically individuals being net sellers of Bitcoin and institutions being net
buyers of Bitcoin over this last cycle is something that's, it's overwhelming the institutions, I
guess, is kind of what was fascinating about that. Right. I think it's also interesting to see a lot
of the banks now are getting involved, as we saw, obviously, in news this week in that sense. But
60% of the top U.S. banks are building Bitcoin products. 52% of the top U.S. hedge funds have
a Bitcoin allocation. Just some of these actual kind of granular stats on the adoption on the
institutional side is very fascinating. Even though 52% of U.S. hedge funds have a Bitcoin
allocation, 90% of the top 50 RAs have a Bitcoin allocation, only 0.006%, I believe, was the number
of assets managed by those advisors are allocated to Bitcoin. So it's obviously a minuscule number.
And also at the same time to getting outside of kind of the Wall Street and more to the Main
Street side of things, which is a lot of what we see and what we have kind of interesting,
unique data on. We more than doubled our business account last year in terms of business accounts
and businesses that are buying Bitcoin on river. So it's a huge growth area for us. We're seeing
huge adoption on the business side of things as a whole. Anything from a hot dog stand to a
cleaning business, to churches, to nonprofits, to publicly traded companies, and really everything
in between. So it's not only kind of these large Wall Street institutions everyone sees in the news,
but it's also these everyday businesses that people use every day, services, products,
these Main Street businesses that are adopting in mass and in numbers that you would ever see in
the public headlines because they private businesses but it is happening that snowball is only getting bigger and bigger which is super bullish in my opinion and super fascinating as well Yeah I guess because I looking at the report that you all put out or at least a graphic two weeks ago where it said the 2025 change in Bitcoin ownership
I guess tell us more about that story of the individuals.
Because obviously that's a drop, a pretty substantial drop, and then governments are up, funds, ETFs are up, businesses are up.
Is that just, you know, signs of the economy where people are having to exit positions to cover liabilities?
Did people get out over their skis based off the research where they had to liquidate things because they didn't listen to Matt O'Dell and stay humble?
I'm just curious what your all stance on.
Because a lot of Bitcoiners, I think, see that chart and they think through, you know, what everyone like the hardcore Bitcoiners believe the use case of Bitcoin.
And some people might see that as as bearish just because individuals are exiting and and institutions are coming in, even though it's kind of built for peer to peer.
I'd just be curious, like how you all are kind of seeing that play out behind the scenes.
Yeah, yeah.
That chart is pretty drastic, right,
in terms of the drop of the amount of individuals
that are holding Bitcoin,
aka that were not sellers of Bitcoin.
And I guess if you take the summation of 2024 and 2025
together in that chart,
it's more than a million Bitcoin
across individuals who are sold,
or effectively a net loss or net kind of drop
of one million Bitcoin across individuals.
And those one million went towards institutions.
So no surprise there in that sense from,
I guess why the individual selling or selling across individuals to a certain extent.
What kind of one theory is that a large portion of that million across the two years is individuals moving away from holding spot Bitcoin, from holding actual Bitcoin themselves.
And either just liquidating early whales or taking profit sharing, who are buying businesses or whatever it may be with the funds that they or the profits that they have from those kind of early whale positions.
but then also at the same time moving it towards ETFs and towards stocks.
And I know that's obviously opposite of what we see a lot of times as Bitcoiners in the industry.
But some of these early whales who shift from holding Bitcoin to now they hold ETFs, hold stocks,
a lot of it has to do with tax considerations, security preferences, estate planning,
heritage planning, different positioning of their whole kind of entire portfolio.
So both selling and kind of profit-taking from early whales and also different tax considerations, security preferences, things of that nature from moving from actual Bitcoin and selling that and then obviously holding ETFs or stocks or buying businesses or whatever other assets they may be buying.
now to note obviously these institutions are have been net buyers of bitcoin over the last few years
institutions at their core are still individuals right a lot of these funds and etfs they're buying
because individuals are buying for their their iras and things of that nature so when you kind
of break it down at a certain at a base level there's obviously individuals that are driving
the growth on the institutional adoption side it's just shifting of how they are buying it
um so pretty interesting kind of uh i guess dynamic there but yeah i think most individuals
The take is that most individuals have been selling either early whales or for different reasons, for taxes, businesses, different assets, things of that nature.
Yeah, it really is interesting.
I think we have been kind of able to identify a lot of the individual sales are coming from whales.
You know, I think Galaxy, shoot, maybe it's three or four months ago now, you know, they posted.
I think it was like an absurd transaction was like 80,000 Bitcoin or something that they,
you know, help facilitate. And, you know, part of me is kind of like, okay, man, like you've
earned it, like go get that ranch in Montana, you know. But then I think it's slightly concerning.
So it's like, I don't know, concerning is probably too strong of a word. But, you know,
if these whales and your folks who have like the most conviction are exiting a position,
I just think that's interesting.
And I'm curious if you guys had looked at this because, you know, I was looking at the report.
I could be wrong, but older reports, like the estimate for lost coins was larger.
And so are we seeing it's like, OK, older wallets where we had no activity, maybe had some activity, you know, this cycle.
And so just given, you know, public blockchain, we're kind of constantly reassessing like what we know about it as things happen.
Could you add like some color to that?
Yeah, in terms of the lost Bitcoin number, I mean, it's just remains the same in that sense.
I guess from our perspective in that report, we also have a chart that kind of breaks down individual Bitcoin ownership and how that looks across lost coins, Satoshi, individuals, governments, all that good stuff.
and I think a lot of from what we've seen what I've seen as well the lost coin number hasn't
really changed much a lot of these early whales were they may have had dormant wallets but a lot
of times that actually wasn't included in some of those larger lost coin projections and if so
it wasn't it wasn't a large enough amount to really move that that projection to a certain
extent so not too much of a material take on there on that and if you were I guess to kind of zoom
back a little bit too from a projection standpoint if we were to take that 2025 number right of
individuals being net sellers institutions being net buyers um if you were to extrapolate that out
by 2036 i believe it is um institutions will actually be the majority holder of bitcoin
um across the entire uh kind of asset class um so just interesting again that's very fixed
assuming 2025 continues exactly and we extrapolate that out obviously we know that's not the case
but just kind of a thought experiment there that if it were to continue at its current pace,
not slow down, not speed up, 2036, the majority of Bitcoin being held would actually be by businesses,
governments, funds, ETFs, and things of that nature, which is pretty interesting to think about.
And obviously, what implications that may have, who knows, but just kind of an interesting timeline there in that sense.
Yeah. One question I have on the business versus individuals.
I mean, I assume, and you tell me if this is the correct assumption, that a business owner coming to you all that says, hey, I want to open up a business river account was previously just a river individual.
Is that a good assumption or no?
So it's a fair assumption for a solid percent, but it's not the case all the time.
But now, most of the time, the scenario here is the business owner is a Bitcoiner.
And now the business owner is basically wanting to buy Bitcoin on behalf of their business.
So they are a personal Bitcoiner.
They own Bitcoin for themselves.
And they're basically like, hey, I have this cash-flowing business.
Why don't I just buy Bitcoin and hold Bitcoin on my balance sheet of my business?
And why am I just buying it personally?
That's a very traditional scenario.
So they both are a personal Bitcoiner and also are now wanting to be a Bitcoiner on behalf of their business.
And that's the really core common thread across business accounts that we onboard at River.
97% of businesses on River have concentrated ownership.
And what does that exactly mean?
It means basically the decisions can be made by one to five stakeholders.
So approval is only needed from one to five stakeholders.
They don't have to really incorporate a massive board or a kind of intricate stakeholder kind of pyramid to get approval to add Bitcoin to the balance sheet.
It's typically businesses that are closely held that one, two, three people can make a kind of decision, come to the conclusion that they should buy Bitcoin on behalf of the business, and they go ahead and do so.
But you're exactly correct.
Most of the time, it is a personal Bitcoiner who owns a business, started a business, is operating a business, who now wants to add Bitcoin to that balance sheet of that business.
Okay. And so I guess, are you all seeing, it sounds like there's a mix of partnerships in there, corporations, as well as just sole proprietorships, not-for-profits, right? It's a general mix. I'm just trying to, I guess, see, are you seeing it as flows are coming out of a River individual account and actually just making a transfer over into a newly created River business account? Is it something like that or is it more?
Or maybe they're coming from a different platform.
Yeah, typically in addition to.
So typically the individual would still, the founder would still have obviously a personal position,
but they would then start to add to a business one as well.
So typically it's not mutually exclusive in that sense.
And yeah, they would buy for both.
We also, they definitely skew long term.
We polled some of our clients and business clients and 63% of businesses on River plan to hold their Bitcoin indefinitely.
So that's a pretty high number.
Obviously, the majority percent of businesses have no exit kind of in mind.
They don't want to sell their Bitcoin.
They just plan on buying and continuing to buy over the long run and don't plan to ever sell it.
So 63% of them kind of had that indefinite timeline, kind of low time preference in that sense.
And on the report, I mean, I love the page on EO Investment Advisors.
I think there's some interesting insights in there because, okay, 90% of the top 50 IRAs have a Bitcoin allocation.
Next page, you guys are kind of displaying the proposed position sizing of said firms.
Obviously, position sizing, very intimate to like the individual and goals trying to, you know, achieve.
but also on that page you have overall allocation or you know how advisors are putting together the
portfolio and you have bitcoins you know less than one percent if we're pulling on that thread
do you think this is just kind of more of like a marketing play for these larger firms who is like
look we recommend a bitcoin allocation like let me take your business and then in reality
you know they're kind of more dismissive of the asset class in general yeah i think uh to a
certain extent it could be the case for some firms but i think a lot of it is is just demand driven
right i think they're there some of them are waking up to the fact that their clients have
been pushing for them to allow them to buy bitcoin at least bitcoin etfs through their platform for
years and they're finally waking up to the fact that okay we have this demand for our client base
we see clients leaving these rias to go to others because they can't get access to bitcoin or to
bitcoin etfs um so i think that it's somewhat probably of their team trying to yeah as you
mentioned say face to a certain extent of signaling that they're open to the idea now how much do they
actually push that to their clients i'm not sure because i've never actually obviously been inside
the doors or seen how they how they do it um but i think to a certain extent it is yeah they're
they're listening to the demand they're they're somewhat they don't want to miss the sailing ship
in that sense of the prior years where they haven't allowed it um they've lost some they've
obviously lost funds and asked in their management because of that um so they want to signal that
they're at least somewhat open-minded to allowing spot Bitcoin ETF access.
And once kind of one of them does it, the kind of snowball continues to roll.
So, yeah, and I think it's somewhat of a signal.
Again, I think it's somewhat up to the specific advisors as well.
I think the firms have kind of locked the specific individual advisors from, obviously,
recommending Bitcoin ETFs previously.
I think some of the advisors have been pretty noisy internally to some of these firms,
that even ones that I had talked to before too
of like, hey, like give me access basically
to be able to at least give access
to my clients for this.
So I think it's a very advisor
by advisor case basis as well.
But yeah, it's pretty interesting to see
the recommended portfolio allocation Bitcoin.
Obviously it's very small percentages
across that entire graphic by all means
with Fidelity being the highest,
but it's still a pretty small percent
across the entire kind of base.
And as you guys are obviously doing research
on this, witnessing this trend in real time.
Have you guys had any thoughts or conversations internally
about building tools to support these folks?
Yeah, in terms of internal tools,
we don't have anything on the docket explicitly right now.
In that sense, we support a lot of advisors
and a lot of their clients in current form with buying Bitcoin.
So we do support a ton of family offices, RAs,
all that good stuff when it comes to assisting their clients
with getting Bitcoin and making sure that the experience is as smooth as possible
and actually owning that Bitcoin through River accounts.
But we don't have any kind of API plugins, at least in the current form.
Obviously, they could be coming soon.
We don't have anything explicitly to launch here shortly,
but there definitely is a case to be made in that sense to make it easier
for advisors and other service providers to be able to have access
to kind of different features that we could offer as well.
So definitely explicitly currently, but definitely wouldn't write it off for the future.
Ben, I think you promised Wyatt a huge announcement on the episode.
I think that's what he's searching for is the big announcement that he can go all caps back onto Twitter.
We need the all caps announcements to pump the price.
Pump the price.
I'm kidding.
okay let's let's pivot over to why um why you all see business owners say uh i love bitcoin
or i'm interested in bitcoin but it's a no for me on the business side for xyz reason because i
assume you get those conversations as well right yes we we certainly do um and again we also pulled
our clients on this similar to the uh the 63 about kind of holding perpetuity we also pulled on what
kind of stops businesses from buying Bitcoin or onboarding deliver. And by far, I think this is
also no surprise, by far it is the accounting implications, the CPA implications, it's basically
the CFO, the bookkeeper, whoever, the finance employee internally saying, hey, this is, I think
that this is going to make my life five times harder for basically no net benefit to the business.
It's not part of our operations. It's not key to our business as a whole, but it's going to make
my job so much worse. So it's typically the accountant or the CPA or whoever may be internally
the firm and the finance side of things that is typically the one pushing back against adopting
Bitcoin because of that exact kind of notion where they think it's going to make their life harder.
But again, it's not core to their business in their view. So they're pretty pushed back against
that pretty hard. But it typically almost always comes down to the accounting bookkeeping side of
things. Okay, interesting.
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book a demo at bitment.co today well and and uh if i could jump in here jordan i would kind of like
to maybe double click on why we think uh cpas in the account industry are holding back bitcoin
adoption just kidding i saw you over there salivating um and maybe we just throw the bit
that add in like right here? I mean, well, it's funny because it's a, it's a, it is a true thing.
It's a problem that we've identified in the firm probably back in 2020. So it is, uh, it's still,
I would say in at scale unsolved, I would be curious how you all normally try to counter that
argument, uh, or how do you generally try to work with, cause it is really a difficult problem.
Someone who, especially if they're bringing history with them, maybe they started on name whatever other exchange that you'd like to, or they jumped to several different exchanges before landing on river, uh, as like their one that they're going to stick with for the longterm.
there's a whole history back there there's all kinds of lots and you all don't have any insight
into that I assume unless the client gives it to you and if you ask the client to give it to you
they're going to be like I don't know how to get I don't know how to configure that.
Yeah yeah so the counter to that and honestly one of my favorite parts of River actually is our
performance reporting so you mentioned earlier in the the show the CSV downloads so we give
basically a detailed CSV download of all account activity in River accounts. We give a monthly
account statement PDF that looks very similar to what you see at a bank or traditional equities
brokerage. It breaks down kind of in a much more pretty format. Everything that's gone on the
account, buys, sells, deposits, transfers, all that good stuff. And also at the same time,
we provide all tax documents at the end of the year, which sounds so basic, but in this industry,
it's pretty hard to come by to get an actual clean 1099 that has gained and lost data calculated for
you short-term and long-term denoted all that listed out line by line for you um so we will
kind of do all that legwork do all that kind of hard work to make it as easy as possible
when it comes to the accounting side of things now as you mentioned it gets a little more complex
when you have bitcoin that you've acquired elsewhere outside of river we can only legally
attest to the bitcoin that you acquired on river because we know that cost basis and we can attest
that cost basis therefore we can calculate the 1099 for you generate that make it so much easier
for you. But if you bought Bitcoin elsewhere, that's where, as you mentioned, Jordan, it gets
a little bit messier. You can essentially, when you deposit Bitcoin to the river, it's an unknown
tax lot. You can go in and manually input unknown tax slots, their cost basis. So if you had data
from a different exchange and you knew what the cost basis is, you can break that deposit down
to as many rows as you want, as many chunks and tranches as you want, assign the cost basis
manually. And now our performance dashboard will calculate that for you and show you and display
that performance data based on that input and information.
But say you have 1,000 lots you acquired over seven years, right?
Going through and doing that is obviously a bit painful and manual.
And we're actually, that kind of problem there,
we're working on some unique ways to hopefully solve that in the future
of being able to in bulk or in mass kind of be able to backfill
some of that data for clients if they did have, say,
a CSV from a different exchange or whatever it may be
and have that data at least available
instead of having to manually go through
and hopefully be able to kind of, again, in mass update that.
Because then our system can calculate that,
can show you that, display that in account statements
and the CSV downloads and make it as easy as possible to share that,
not just obviously to the client, but also to the business,
to the stakeholders, to the CPAs internally, to the firms,
just to make it as easy as possible to actually account for that
when it comes time for that.
Yeah, no, it's huge.
I mean, especially right now,
I'm sure you all are getting some inquiries on tax loss harvesting.
I mean, better to have done it last week than this week.
But, you know, there's no time like the present.
I mean, but we're working with clients right now that are like, you know, I know that I've got some lots that are in gain positions long term.
I know I've got some lots that are short term losses.
And, you know, can we, you know, can we go in and tax loss harvest?
And even though it's only February, March, like go ahead and just lock that in, lock in a smaller gain, lock in a larger loss and take that to a financial advisor like Wyatt and say, hey, what other positions do we have in the portfolio that we could harvest some gains potentially and not have to pay taxes on those because we've got losses elsewhere.
So it's a very interesting time for definitely for all of that.
But to your point, it's like if you don't have that data locked in, then it's kind of like it's a mess for all the practitioners, be it Wyatt trying to do financial planning or for us trying to do tax planning.
So, yeah, I'm sure you've seen seen some messy, some messy reports and things of that nature.
I'm sure, Jordan, when it comes to when it comes to that.
Not a river one, but yes, there's there's been some other ones.
Thankfully.
Yeah, no, you're always reporting it should.
I know this is like turning into we're just fanboys, but we are, you know.
But yeah, especially some of the ones that didn't do proof of reserves and lost clients money and, you know, went out of business or they went offshore.
And now clients are like, I literally I don't have a way to go into my BlockFi account and grab old CSV.
We have to work with their bank statements to reconstruct cost-based schedule best way we can.
So it can get very messy for sure.
That's insane.
I mean, for newer Bitcoiners that are coming in, be it an individual or a business, there is a really good argument to be made to say, really do your due diligence on what exchange you would like to work with and just pick that long-term partner and stick with them because it will just make your life so much easier.
and it'll make our lives easier on on when it comes to tax filings and planning out your
doing your financial plan as well so and yeah no it's really interesting um then something i'm
curious you know kind of zooming up to like the macro view here i was a bitcoin answer dan and
jack ballast gave a talk there and he was talking about those four um profitable business models and
Bitcoin said or you said crypto but we don't like to use that word on the show um it was stable coins
exchanges lending and treasury companies you guys are obviously in exchange how do you first you
question on that it's like what do you think of that statement and second are there opportunities
for river to grow in to other verticals are you thinking you just want to be like the best exchange
known to man we're going to do this and we're going to do it really well yeah to kind of hit
on that point you somewhat hit the nail on the head on the on the ladder there in terms of being
the best exchange doing one thing and doing it very well that's kind of been our focus since day
one and alex has said this plenty of times as well uh plenty of places right it's it's big believer
in focus right it's kind of do one thing do it very well it's it's like the the raising canes
right they make chicken fingers they do it very well they stick to chicken fingers like don't get
distracted and don't get kind of get carried away with some of the products. And we've seen plenty
of businesses that Jordan mentioned a name of a few during bull runs, right, that they that they
get into these kind of hyper scaling, hiring a lot of employees, launching credit card products,
launching lending products, getting into areas that they're not focused on, because they're trying
to take advantage of the market movement. Whereas with River, we're Bitcoin only, we're very focused
on being Bitcoin only, we're very focused on being the best Bitcoin only exchange in the world.
We don't want to get distracted with other products.
We don't have any plans to have lending or anything of that nature in current form.
When you kind of remove and extract complexity, it really increases a lot of things, not just operationally, but also from a product perspective.
We try to make our product, our user interface, our user experience as intuitive as possible.
We touched on reporting.
reporting is a lot easier to build when you have one asset and one asset class as opposed to getting
distracted with even even if you build money on top of that asset it also introduces some
complexities things of that nature as well but i think also zooming out from just pure those kind
of four models that you mentioned just bitcoin as a whole right and different companies in the
industry um alex has a good a good way of describing this too it's like you have to build
in the bear markets right because it's somewhat like operating a hotel in a beach town but you
don't know when summer is so you're basically running a hotel where you have tourists coming
but you don't know when summer is you don't know when winter is you don't know when the seasons
are going to come so it's all about kind of being hyper focused on building the best products um we
really focus on our perspective on kind of a few different pillars um you mentioned proof of
reserves that's key and core to our culture we also have our financials that are public
that some people don't know about so we're a private company but we publish our financials
to be public to the world so that people can feel comfortable and safe with River as an organization,
as a company, as a financial services business, and kind of trust us in that sense.
Because we really want to build around core pillars of transparency, trust, security, and then also service.
Something we really do is obsess about the client as a whole, right?
We don't have users. We don't have customers. We have clients.
They're real people that have family, that have friends, that have real lives,
and we're helping them build their Bitcoin wealth.
It's not something we take lightly and responsibility lightly.
I think hopefully that shows through proof of reserves, public financials, force field, as you mentioned earlier, in terms of helping people protect their Bitcoin.
So I guess long-winded way of saying focused on building the best Bitcoin and Bitcoin-only exchange in the world and also being and building the most trusted financial institution in the world.
I think that evolves in that sense.
Whereas Bitcoin grows in asset class, right?
We want to be that most trusted financial institution in the world as opposed to just Bitcoin exchange in the world.
Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense.
And, you know, I don't fault you guys at all.
As, you know, working in professional services industry, I'm just bummed to hear that because I love working with you guys.
And I was like, oh, man, it'd be sweet if my clients would get Bitcoin collateralized loans at River because, you know, we know they do things like the right way.
Yeah.
Yeah. In the future, who knows what may come in terms of products.
So wouldn't write it off, fully write it off, I guess.
But yeah, definitely no explicit plans in the current form.
Thinking through unique ways and unique products,
and obviously Bitcoin Institute on Cash is one of those, right?
Every business earns interest on cash that clients hold in their accounts for them.
We were one of them, and we're like, hey, why can't we just pass this to our clients?
So now we pass Bitcoin Institute on Cash.
show any cash clients hold with us, earn 3.3% interest paid in Bitcoin on those US dollars,
FDIC insured, all that good stuff. So definitely we'll have more unique products like that in the
future. Don't explicitly have insight into what those may be right now, but yeah, definitely,
definitely more to come on that. But it's a call. It's honestly like a callback in my head to just
a simpler, more traditional time where you just, you weren't bailed out if you made a bad decision
or a string of bad decisions over time, right?
You had to set up a profitable business.
You had to manage what you had coming through the door.
If you need to make a big purchase,
you just, you had to save for that.
And so in some ways I see it as like,
yes, there's all these products out there,
but really they're just coming in
from the traditional world
and that's what everyone's used to.
But I think honestly, all those products
are what has gotten us into this extremely broad macro scenario where we're just in a mess, right?
At all levels, if you look at consumer debt or you look at business debt or you look at sovereign debt.
So I don't know. I'm kind of torn on the subject.
And I would say, yeah, I mean, the other reason is like I want to jump the line
and I want you guys to put out your API ASAP this year.
That's my big ask, which I know you all are, well, I don't know if I'm supposed to say anything publicly about it.
We'll see what happens this year.
We'll see what's coming on the API front.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, talk to us about, I know you said before we went on air, your February was a big month for you all.
Kind of talk through how that looked.
Because I think it's encouraging for folks who are either listening in and they're like, what is this Bitcoin thing?
Clients are asking about it or they're hardcore Bitcoin or they've been in the space for a while.
Give us a behind the scenes look at what happened at River in February in terms of volume.
Yeah, it's very interesting because, yeah, if you were to kind of look externally, people, the price obviously has stayed down this week.
It hasn't risen, but if you look to look in February, price was down, sentiment was low, fear was probably pretty high across the entire market.
But February was our highest volume month ever at River.
So we definitely, even though the price is down, adoption is not slowing by any means across both businesses and individuals.
So we've had our highest volume month ever in February.
We've crossed over 25,000 Bitcoin under custody.
That's currently in our cold storage full reserve that has proof of reserves we mentioned.
And 7.7 Bitcoin were earned in interest on cash balances.
So just for clients holding effectively their savings at River,
again, if they're insured, they earned 7.7 Bitcoin in total
across those balances at River as well.
So we're definitely seeing the accumulation continue,
the adoption continue.
Obviously, price has remained somewhat stagnant
with a little bit of increase here.
But yeah, by no means is the adoption slowing.
And we definitely see that increasing pretty steadily
and heavily internally to River as well.
Yeah, I think that's that's super like bullish sentiment.
Yeah, everybody's down in the dumps about the price of Bitcoin is like, sure, it's not fun necessarily.
But you know if you in greed index which I not totally sure how it calculated has been you know like extreme fear And it feels like everybody you know down and negative where the fundamentals themselves have never been better And to me that just another data point 100 Could not agree more
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Ben, one of my favorite tweets of all time,
I hope I never forget it,
was Mr. Alex Leishman absolutely dunking on
Brian Armstrong after the Coinbase leak.
What was that, like six months ago or something like that?
Who's Brian Armstrong?
wrong um I was gonna say the bald guy but I don't like if bald guy's a bad name
uh just search him I guess if you're in the audience just search search his name I guess
yeah yeah he shall not be named you know he's like Voldemort around here around BFFs but
um you know so that was obviously you know it wasn't even really a hack I guess it was more
of a data breach is like a better you know term for an offshore employee like getting bribed is
my understanding how the situation played out so they got access to like those customer data you
know client funds were never at risk but obviously like way more personal information out on the black
market than you know anybody should feel comfortable with and you know alex is talking about how
rivers made the conscious decision to invest in u.s talent uh invest in quality services something
jordan i've been kind of talking about off the camera is just you know ai as you know small
business owners like it's getting so powerful we're creating apps to you know automate a lot
of our back-end compliances.
And we almost feel fortunate
that we're in the services business
because it's like rise of the services,
you know, again,
and like actually having
that intimate client experience.
And I'd just like you to kind of walk through
maybe like some of your roles specifically,
your guys' kind of like white glove services
and how you interact with clients.
And then specifically,
if you're working in tandem with the CPA,
with a financial advisor,
you know, I always try to be very cognizant
when I'm working with outside,
you know, partners,
like I want to own and control
the communication with my clients.
And so how are you guys working with professionals?
What kind of changes or advancements
or efforts have you put into
like the services side of business?
Yeah, for sure.
On the former piece on the security side,
first and foremost, from River's perspective,
everyone at River is a security employee, right?
Not just our security engineers that we have
that are working full-time on security,
but even our client services team,
our relationship management team,
Everybody basically, before we do anything, the first thought is from a security perspective.
So definitely Alex has instilled that culture across everyone at River because like we saw in the Coinbase breach, right?
Humans are sometimes the biggest fault and biggest failure.
So thinking through security, being top of mind no matter what is always a kind of top of mind priority for us.
In terms of working with kind of advisors, service-based individuals, we've seen actually, we've seen an increase in the amount of advisors that we work with.
CPAs we work with, family offices, just because as it kind of continues, Bitcoin continues its kind of growth as an asset class.
And we obviously see the Wall Street adoption.
More and more advisors have hopped on the train and the wave of Bitcoin.
So we've been working directly with them more often.
Now, from a client perspective, right, we are just a, we're the Bitcoin portion of their entire wealth, right?
So a lot of the clients have obviously their advisors help them with other portions of their wealth and tax savings and things of that nature.
So we can work tandem and work hand in hand with those advisors to help them with everything and anything from the Bitcoin perspective, whether it's tax loss harvesting, whether it's optimizing different kind of tax loss strategies, HIFO, LIFO, FIFO, all that good stuff, whether it's just obviously buying, selling, Bitcoin interest on cash, whatever it may be.
estate planning. We have account beneficiaries so we can help clients with and also their advisors
or lawyers with TOD plans and transfer on death plans. Onboarding family trusts has been a big
growth area with advisors specifically in their clients is onboarding their estate plans, their
trusts, evocable, irrevocable, all that good stuff to get on board and to hold Bitcoin on behalf of.
So I would say honestly, the trust side of things has been a huge growth area where we're specifically
talking about just advisors and RIAs.
And there's been a lot of clients
who've been taking advantage of that
to kind of add Bitcoin to their estate plan
and to that existing estate plan.
We can easily onboard that existing trust,
add Bitcoin to that trust for them on River
and make it easy to report that
and provide that to any lawyer, advisor,
whoever may have or need info on that as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just want to call out too
how good the service is.
It's like the support, you know, you send an email to a support at whatever domain.
And I don't know, 90 plus percent of the time, you're just like, I don't know.
I got no idea where that's going or if I'm ever going to hear back on on that email.
I onboarded. There's a local guy here in Louisville.
He runs he runs. It's actually the largest American whiskey bar in the world, but it's a really popular restaurant and bar here.
and um and actually he came out to he came out and did our bourbon tasting i don't know ben i
don't know if you picked the wine or the bourbon but it was tommy um so i onboarded tommy to river
i orange pilled him like right after the election i didn't even know he owned the the whole restaurant
uh it was so funny and and we've become friends since but anyways he's you know he's a little bit
older guy like 50s late 50s probably and something happened you know and all older people they just
sometimes they make mistakes. And, and so I onboard him. Then I think he like did like some
kind of chargeback or something. Like he didn't have originally understand, he didn't recognize
in his bank or something. And he like disputed it. And then he sees it come out of river and he's
texting me. He's like, dude, what the heck did my account get hacked? Or like, what is this?
Cause then he, like he forgot or whatever. I don't know. All. And I'm like, I don't know. I was like,
dude, I mean, I'm just going to, I'll push you to, to email support river. And you guys emailed
back, like immediately got, someone got on the phone with him and sorted it all out. Um, and he
was an early customer. It wasn't like he was a, you know, a whale or anything like that. Um, so
again, just hats off. It was, uh, it was a good story, uh, and a good like example in my head of
like wow you could never expect that level of service with really any other exchange that's out
there uh every other exchange out there really is like a black box um yeah in terms of support
yeah no we we truly pride ourselves on the server side of things so i'm glad you got to
see that in action because yeah you can call our support team monday through friday 9 a.m to 8 p.m
eastern um someone's always gonna answer the phone you have a real human to talk to based here in the
U.S. who knows everything in and outs about River. They're not kind of offshore. They're not
employees of River. They're full-time email within a few minutes, typically,
in terms of getting email support back within those hours as well. So definitely,
truly pride ourselves on the White Glove service. Obviously, we're relationship managers like myself
as well, who worked a lot with advisors and other partners and businesses and private clients and
high-net-worth individuals to be a personal point of contact. They can text, call us seven days a
week. So yeah, being that kind of high-touch service is something we definitely pride ourselves
on. And as you mentioned, it's pretty hard to come by in this industry as a whole. A lot of companies
kind of set up an app and they say, hey, whoever comes and uses the app, that's fine. But we really
pride ourselves, as I mentioned before, right? We have clients we don't have users. Other apps have
users. We truly treat it as such. They're real humans that are, again, building Bitcoin wealth
on river. And we want to make sure we provide them with the highest level of service possible.
and hopefully that shows itself to the emails, the calls, all that good stuff as well.
Yeah. All right. I know we're getting close on time. I do want to make sure the last thing on
my list that we probably spend five or 10 minutes on maybe is like the banking direct deposit bill
pay piece. I know that I just know it sounds like, you know, onboarding a lot of businesses,
some businesses it's a buy and hold. Some businesses are integrating it into their payments
or how they're paying employees or contractors. I'm just curious if you could kind of go down
that rabbit hole a little bit about what that looks like at River over the course of the next
two to three years. Yeah, for sure. Over the next two to three years from that time frame,
definitely want to build more out in that regard when it comes to kind of what ushering in what we
call the dual currency era, which there was a prior report actually that we put out on that as well
in terms of spending in dollars, but saving in Bitcoin, right? By no means from a transactional
basis, do we think Bitcoin is going to replace the dollar tomorrow? There's obviously a lot of
systems and legacy thoughts and things of that nature that need to change in order for that to
happen in the future. So right now we want to help usher that dual currency era of saving in Bitcoin,
spending in dollars in. So that's why we launched things like direct deposit, as you mentioned.
You can now receive payroll directly to your River account. So you can go to your payroll provider
and push whatever amount of dollars to your River account. You can auto convert that into Bitcoin
at time of deposit for free. So you effectively can get paid in Bitcoin. You can set that
percentage you can define what percent of your payroll you get in bitcoin effectively when it
gets deposited to your river accounts obviously that's in addition to our bitcoin interest on cash
as we've we've mentioned before so you do have any idle cash your river cash balance it accrues
daily that interest so you only need to keep in the account for one day or longer it'll pay you
out that interest at the end of the month for that as well so it kind of works in tandem with our
direct deposit support and then coming here soon as well we're at bill pay so kind of rounding out
some of the more fiat kind of rails
and kind of increase
some of the usability there.
You'll be able to pay bills
directly from your River account.
So pay your rents,
pay your gym membership,
whatever it is,
you can pay directly
from your credit card bill
directly from a River account.
So you can hold that cash balance,
earn that interest in the meantime,
then be able to pay bills
directly from there as well.
So really just increasing
some of those features
on the US dollar side of things
to make it easier to kind of
the interoperability
between Bitcoin and dollars
as you need in order
to kind of live on a Bitcoin standard
and also usher some of that dual currency area as well.
And that's awesome.
I think that's, you know, really important features.
You know, clients ask me all the time,
it's like, hey, I want to live more on like a Bitcoin standard.
Like, how do I do this?
And, you know, it's things like you just described
that make that much easier.
My last question, Ben, and this has been, you know, fantastic.
I just kind of want to get your thoughts or opinion.
when you're talking about you're working with advisors and stuff do you just kind of like pitch
it to them as like I'm like your bitcoin arm I'm like your bitcoin guy like what's that some of
that like communication like yeah so in terms of I guess from an advisor perspective the landscape
is pretty pretty wide in terms I'm sure as you know right there's advisors who are very bitcoin
friendly and there's advisors who uh treat bitcoin like the black flag um and it's still kind of in
that that that very wide spectrum so it really depends on where the advisor and their clients
are and kind of mean what mean them where they're at right there are some advisors and their clients
who um use this only for bitcoin on cash they will deposit basically a rainy day fund or whatever it
may be get the fdse insurance and just begin accruing some bitcoin balance on that cash so
they don't have an actual they don't have to buy bitcoin directly but they deposit dollars earn
bitcoin they're off of zero now and getting off of zero as we all know is the biggest kind of
educational step you can take because it forces you to learn about the asset class about bitcoin
as a whole and take that kind of deep dive down the rabbit hole.
But there's some advisors as well where they're fully orange-pilled, they're kind of fully
Bitcoiners, and their clients are majority percent in Bitcoin.
So we work with all advisors, and we work with them in different capacities.
In most capacities, as you mentioned, right, we are their Bitcoin bank, for lack of better
terms.
So when it comes to anything Bitcoin-related, not only are we helping their clients buy
and sell, but we also serve as an educational resource.
So we've done lunch and learns.
We've done different things like that
for firms that are looking
to kind of upskill advisors,
their employees, their CPAs,
their accountants on Bitcoin as a whole,
aside from just explicitly
serving their clients.
So we try to push some of that
educational first type content
out there as well
when it comes to working with advisors
because there is a big educational gap
where we are in that spectrum
for the advisors who skew
towards non-Bitcoiners.
It's typically just because
they haven't taken the time,
the hours that we all have
to learn about the asset class
and learn about Bitcoin as a whole.
So we definitely kind of
Lean into that education piece as well, aside from just explicitly serving advisors and their clients from a buy-sell perspective as well.
I love it.
Man, it's been great.
As Wyatt said, Ben, thank you so much for coming on.
Been looking forward to having this conversation for a long time and glad we finally got it on the calendar and executed.
So any advisor or small business owner that's listening to this, how do they contact you or River?
How do they get involved so that they can start partnering with you all to serve their clients better?
Yeah, in terms of learning more, super easy domains, river.com.
If they ever want to reach out, I'm on Twitter as well, at Ben Epling, or my email is ben.epling, E-P-L-I-N-G, at river.com.
So happy to chat with anyone who's interested or has questions or anything of that nature.
always available.
Beautiful.
Well, thank you so much.
Wyatt, anything else from your side?
No, dude, it was great catching up.
Thanks for coming on.
This was great, Rob.
Yeah, thank you guys for having me.
Beautiful.
All right, thanks so much, guys.
We'll talk to you all soon.
All right, bye.
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