Unchained allows users to secure 90,000 BTC and keep it for self-storage.

Company’s name: freed from chains

Founder: Joe Kelly and Dhruv Bansal

Establishment date: October 2016

Headquarters location: Austin, Texas

Amount of Bitcoin in Treasury: Private

Number of employees: 107

Website: https://unchained.com/

Public or private? private

Joe Kelly and Dhruv Bansal started Unchained with one main goal: to provide financial services to people like themselves: long-term Bitcoin holders. Since 2017 when Unchained launched its first product, a lending desk where customers could borrow US dollars against Bitcoin, the company has evolved into a full-fledged financial services company for Bitcoin users who value holding their private keys. .

Unchained now offers a series of services and products, including multi-signature vaults, Bitcoin trading desks, Bitcoin IRAs, and Bitcoin inheritance plans for both individuals and businesses. But where Unchained really shines is not only in how it helps customers secure their Bitcoin, but also in how it guides them through the process of doing so. We have a concierge onboarding team that guides customers through the vulnerable process of setting up a multisig store.

“We really love being navigators,” Kelly told Bitcoin Magazine. “We’re not authoritarian, like, ‘You have to do that,’” she said. We are guides. We’re here to show you, ‘Here’s the map.’ There are several trails you can take up the mountain. Choose the path you want. If you need someone to be your sherpa on one of these trails, we can do it for you.’”

I sat down with Kelly to learn more about the philosophy behind Unchained’s approach, the company’s history, and how Unchained has established itself as one of the most trusted financial services providers in the Bitcoin space.

A transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, appears below.

Frank Korba: How did you and your co-founder Dhruv Bansal meet?

Joe Kelly: Craigslist. I was an undergraduate dropout looking for my next opportunity, and Dhruv was in graduate school. His department, the Physics Department, was looking for a new website. They posted gigs like, “Hey, come build a website.” I thought, “Maybe I want to start a web development company.” So I came to meet him at the center of nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory. I told Dhruv that I have always been very curious about this field. It was a constant part of our relationship and our shared curiosity about complexity science. After that we started building the company.

Corba: So you are an autodidact. Are you the type of person who seeks out a mentor, or do you read everything you can find on a topic until you fully understand it?

Kelly: It’s a mix. Like many humans, I can use my intuition instead of getting knowledge from books. I wish I had more mentors. Over the past 10 years, I have found myself in the final stages of my life as a CEO. I had to learn a lot at work.

Corba: What obstacles have Unchained overcome since founding it in 2016?

Kelly: One of the things that initially excited me the most about Unchained was that it felt like a very contrarian bet in some ways. In 2016, all the VC money was about “I’m not sure about Bitcoin, but blockchain is a real technology.”

But Dhruv and I looked at people like us who were holding Bitcoin long term and we felt that was the customer we wanted to serve. Long-term Bitcoin holders had no financial services advocates to advocate for them and no trusted institutions to work with. In a healthy way.

Then, there was feedback asking, “Then what about other coins?” Or how about lending Bitcoin and increasing your profits like BlockFi?” Rejecting such things was also the opposite. In principle, we say, “No, it’s Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Bitcoin is enough.” The idea of ​​lending Bitcoin was popular, but I’m really thankful that they didn’t do that. Otherwise, we would have been doomed like everyone else.

For much of our early history, we were willing to be unpopular, independent, and underfunded compared to our competitors. Thankfully, that’s changing with partnerships like NYDIG, which led its Series A in 2021. It gives us money and resources and makes it seem like we all know we’re going to be right.

Corba: So are long-term Bitcoin holders typical Unchained users?

Kelly: Yes, the core advantage of that is that individual long-term Bitcoin holders are drawn to self-management either because they already do it or because they want to work with someone who makes them comfortable with self-management.

Now some of our key sweet spots are the business or trust of those people. Unchained is one of the few places where you can establish trust while you hold the keys. This is different from relying on a third-party custodian to obtain these benefits.

Corba: Which products are currently most popular?

Kelly: Unchained Vault is the bread and butter product that most of our clients use. 95% of all customers have a vault that is either a personal or business account.

More than one-third of our customers currently have an IRA. This has been one of our fastest growing product lines over the past year or two.

Some customers get loans, but not everyone does.

Trading goes really well with safes. A growing number of our customer base are using our trading desk.

Corba: When you think of Unchained’s approach, the two words that come to mind are “security” and “service.” We have a concierge service that helps with onboarding customers, and we’ve heard customers talk about how important security is when storing lent bitcoins. Did you know that security and service will be at the heart of your business from the beginning?

Kelly: Security has been with the foundation from the beginning. And I was on the front line answering customer inquiries for the first year or two. When our main product was loans, we had a culture of utmost care for our customers.

When we launched our Vault products in 2019, one of the things we unlocked was our Concierge Onboarding product. The Concierge Onboarding product provides customers with a process to initialize a hardware wallet and set up a multi-sig vault. These interactions are led by someone on our team, which is a great trust-building opportunity.

While someone backs up their private keys in a live session (not on camera, of course), an Unchained representative on the other end coaches them through the highly vulnerable private initialization steps (multi-signature storage). This will help answer any questions and make you feel comfortable. Yes, I think it is correct to say that in Unchained, security and service come together.

Corba: Do you think it’s harder to convince people to use Unchained now that spot Bitcoin ETFs are real-time and a more convenient investment vehicle?

Kelly: ETFs play a big role in increasing overall awareness of Bitcoin, providing further legitimacy to an asset that may otherwise be on the fence. We have never seen the cloud become more cloudy or impact the client onboarding funnel. This is still running at full speed as before the ETF and has even accelerated since the ETF launched earlier this year.

One of the most effective elements of our sales approach is our army of Bitcoiners who do not work for Unchained but encourage everyone to practice self-care. People sometimes come to us because they feel peer pressure like, “Hey, I’ve been to a Bitcoin meetup and I know I need to get a foundation for self-care.”

Additionally, the average age of our customers has increased over the past two years. More members of the Boomer generation own Bitcoin. Maybe they buy in 2020-21 and then two or three years later they say, “Okay, now I’m ready to do it. I have been through lows and highs and will remain this way for over 10 years. Let me finally figure out self-custody.”

Corba: It seems like they understood exactly what the customer wanted. I’ve also read that you pay close attention to customer feedback and inform your approach at Unchained. Can you give an example of a product you created based on customer feedback?

Kelly: One example is the launch of Sound Advisory, a Registered Investment Advisor affiliate, in the fourth quarter of last year. The idea behind it came from a customer who came in for concierge onboarding and spoke to one of our frontline associates. One of the last questions they ask is “Do you know anyone who can give me financial advice about my Bitcoin? “I can’t speak to a traditional financial advisor, but as I’m approaching retirement age, I’m wondering when I might want to sell my Bitcoin or take out a loan using my Bitcoin as collateral.”

People want to really think about those decisions. The terrible reality for many people is that they can’t talk to a financial advisor and have to hide this part of their portfolio. They will not agree with you philosophically. It’s really difficult when you’re not aligned with who your trusted advisor should be.

Corba: I know that feeling. What else have you learned from your customers over the years?

Kelly: What we’ve seen at Unchained, now in its eighth year of existence, is how Bitcoin adoption occurs in the wake of macro geopolitical events or events that wake people up to, “Hey, it’s not really my money that’s in the bank.”

People have also learned from things like the Canadian trucker protests that believing certain things can result in losing access to dollars.

Then, last year, SVB and the First Republic failed.

What we have created at Unchained is a set of anti-fragile products and services that align with the core tenets and core philosophy of Bitcoin. This means that if a lot of bad things happen, there will be an influx of customers.

I’m incredibly proud of the work the team has done in terms of helping thousands of people get into a really comfortable position with assets outside of the traditional financial system and outside of systems that are at centralized risk of seizure or control. Their Bitcoin.

Unchained has over 7,000 clients protecting over 90,000 Bitcoins with 12,000 keys. In four years there will probably be 100,000 keys protecting tens of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin.

I think it will be a truly unique financial institution that has never existed before. And our goal is to do that profitably in a way that we’re going to be around for as long as possible. This will also be a net benefit to society, industry and the ecosystem as a whole.

Corba: I give them enormous credit for not underestimating their users. What we’re doing with Unchained is saying, “We’re going to give you the full Bitcoin experience.” At the same time, you are a financial services company and can play the TradFi game. It’s perfect for people who are more familiar with traditional finance but want to understand how Bitcoin differs from traditional assets or investments.

Kelly: This is a model and attitude that contrasts with the classic Wall Street attitude of looking for “How can I get my money here so I can make more money?” There is definitely a version of this that is not always for the benefit of the customer.

We are (opposite). We are literally trying to do business transparently as a company through blockchain.

Corba: It’s clear that you’re playing the long game, because your customers will have a different experience with Unchained than they had with their traditional financial institution, and they’ll be telling their friends about Unchained.

Kelly: Back to the ETF question. You can purchase some shares of an ETF as your first exposure to Bitcoin, but at that point you will only be partially converted. The full conversion occurs when you celebrate the Holy Communion, sending Bitcoin to your hardware wallet. It’s a key part of the trip.