YouSaid · the spoken record

Jon Melton

lines on the record: 41
first: 2025-08-13
most recent: 2025-08-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I appreciate that onchain.com. Feel free to reach out. We'd love to connect with folks on LinkedIn and on Twitter. I'm Jmel21M. Not super active. There's some high school football stuff and some stuff up there. But appreciate what you do for the space president and speak to you today.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I would love to get up the curve more in terms of how these are going to be used on it. And the interbank market seems like that's kind of the easiest one to control. There could be lending against stablecoins. For me, Bitcoin's always been the most interesting thing in the room, you know, when it was $100 billion when it's 2.3 trillion dollars like it is today. So even though it's small, I mean, that's really a bit grateful that I can continue to focus on that. And then on chain, you know, serving Bitcoiners with prudent products”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you're an emerging market, the dollar is pretty good, and Tether's proven that there's ginormous product market fit globally for the dollar. But how do you induce U.S. banking customers to flip into stablecoins? So Arthur Hayesford, a really interesting, quite colorful piece on stablecoins recently talking about the sort of compliance savings big banks could realize if stablecoins became adopted en masse. And it's a really interesting, you know, we talk about Days of zero interest rate policy, but what if there was a way for banks to induce consumers to get into stable points that paid zero through some sort of rebates or fees because it just made so much more sense? On the compliance side, from the bank's perspective, that sort of, you know, Hayes' take on it, which is interesting.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and for me, the use case for stablecoins has always been sort of Bitcoin is the best money ever. Anybody can get access to it.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a really interesting point. I mean I'm the chief bond salesman, and there was Doge, and that was quickly U-termed. Executive rate is just moving really fast and really aggressively, and they're focused if indeed there was a pivot and it was, hey, we can't cut. We've got to look to the short end. What's the stable? Like, this is stable coin playbook that we can run. Let's see if it can work and see if we can do that. They're very aggressive and very fast.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Clearly, anybody in America with any sort of debt, if they can lower their own interest rate, which is essentially what the Fed would do for the Treasury if they lowered rates to 3% that Trump wants, anybody would do that. And it's just amazing that the macro level sort of how open it is. But as somebody who cares deeply about the future of America, it's hard to see another alternative given kind of where things are at in terms of interest expense relative to other allies in the government.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think that the dichotomy between the fed and treasurer, even the said and the whole apparatus of the executive branch and the legislative branch is really striking right now. And I think that there is a very unified agenda by, like I said, the executive, the legislative branch, treasury senators talking, really talking in a negative fashion about PAL. And I can't remember a time in markets when senators have cared so much about the Fed chair, but there's a lot of attention on PAL and it's all very coordinated and very direct. And the jobs number today, you know, it seems pretty hard with the stock market at all-time highs to say that lower rates need to happen or else something cataclysmic is going to happen to the economy. So I think that Powell seems to be really kind of digging in on a traditional dual mandate justified and sort of holding rates where they are and the other side and the president has been outspoken about we're just going to wait. We're going to issue a lot at the front end.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Example, with bigger banks get involved with the stablecoin market, that could create an environment of really easy money if they're not paying interest on those that could make, despite the hesitancy of the Fed to cut rates that could produce another one of these moments where Bitcoin just melts off, so to speak. Bitcoin's already proven they can rally in the face of nonzero rate that was a question for a long time given to when Bitcoin was conceived, so to speak. But to the extent that there's another explosion of liquidity, the sort of nothing stops this train type mantra in the world of Bitcoin. Bitcoiners probably won't be surprised at what Bitcoin does.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“you know pocket that they can find for us treasuries and whether that comes in you know sort of arcane your regulatory ratios like the supplementary leverage ratio that allows banks to buy more treasuries with less capital or the genius act which asset says could be a 3.7 trillion dollar market these are ultimately the markets everybody's looking at the fed and you've got to look at the fed but you mentioned the make term funding program these are different ways the liquidity of the economy can expand and assets can get marked up and liquidity can get pumped into the system that are just new enough and i think that you know the banking system”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so even as a Bitcoiner, Stavros are incredibly interesting. And I think that sort of taking back into my macro background and interest, I think that it's clear to me that the federal government is looking for any sort of buyer.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Five years out. And there could be some specialty lenders like a credit fund or something that's really structured on an institutional basis. But I think that for banks, they have to get their feet wet in terms of are they comfortable custodying Bitcoin? Do they know how to custody Bitcoin? And having been in the market at a bank and speaking to banks now, I'm sure they're going to come up the curve, but I would be more optimistic of that something like that coming about through sort of private credit offering with somebody who's willing to take a little bit more perceived risk in terms of holding Bitcoin, trading Bitcoin.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a reason why it's a $2 trillion asset class in a world of $40 trillion in equities and $40 trillion in bonds and $20 trillion in gold. It's because that knowledge and that understanding of Bitcoin is not diffuse. You know, in the economy and certainly amongst lenders, and that's another reason why rates are still high, but I'm optimistic that banks have been a theme through this, but I think that bank market is loosening up. And I do think rates are going to come down and make sure you're going to get more involved in the coming years.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why not? I mean, like a couple of points in real estate and the wealth effect. I mean, Luke Groman talks about, you know, is like how critically important it is for asset prices in general, like the stock market to be high, to generate tax receipts, a lot of folks in the country ultimately like aspire to own a house or have most of their wealth tied up in their house. But the second piece is that, as you said, really accurately, if you have a piece of poor collateral that requires upkeep, that if you just left it there, how is this going to decay over the case of a, I mean, a 30 year old house needs a new roof? If you didn't touch it, you need to, I mean, working out of that requires, you know, the whole department of folks at a bank to work on those sorts of default situations. Whereas Bitcoin in a perfect world where all the money was flowing to all the right places should be priced much lower than that because it can be instantly seized, sold, you can get back to dollars very quickly. But like all things Bitcoin.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that there are two considerations for me when I think about sort of the dual collateralized structure. Number one is in five years, who knows where we're going to be in terms of capital. And you need capital to sort of underwrite that. And I think that right now real estate is obviously a government sponsored market. Rates are certainly artificially low because lots of that supply of loans can be offloaded to Fannie and Freddie. Either banks are going to have to come. What do you think?”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bitcoiners. So we just surpassed a billion in originations. We've been doing this since 2017. There's lots of clients who simply trust us because we've been in the market through cycle and we have unique infrastructure that allows us to deliver multi-sig loans at scale.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To That's absolutely valid and that if you have three types of threat authentication, shirt no Reauthification, your Bitcoin's on the blockchain. It doesn't go to a lender or a partner. The second one where somebody's pledging it to somebody say it's not going to move. They just need to pledge it to get the capital or to get a better rate, but it's still with somebody else. You have to underwrite that risk. And the third, you know, there are horror stories about is they're taking your Bitcoin collateral and they're lending it out to somebody to generate interest. And maybe that comes in the form of the borrow in the form of a lower rate, but it comes with the highest amount of risk. So I think what we're describing here is sort of a continuum of super conservative security conscious model of a more maybe traditional model in terms of we're going to pledge it with somebody else to raise lending capital and then a very risky model. Unchains clients tend to be really long term, probably very concentrated security focused.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, And this is important because Unless you're a bank, you're not lending out deposits. You're what's called a non bank lender And I can kind of like explain what that means, but it's highest level. All it means is that you need to go raise capital to facilitate your loan. We have capital partners and funding partners. The difference is they don't hold your Bitcoin. Some of them would like to hold your Bitcoin. They might give us a lower rate if we gave them your Bitcoin, but that's something, and again, it's not a pernicious, it's just something that you have to be careful. If your Bitcoin is pledged with somebody other than the person that you're getting a loan from, maybe it's a credit fund, maybe it's an asset manager, you should diligence and understand who that party is.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anybody else for another party. We use multi sig, which is a native part of the Bitcoin protocol and all collateral is held in a two-of-three multi-sID fault. Our borrowers have a private key. They participate in the creation of the collateral address. They can verify that their key is tied to that address. And once they send the Bitcoin there, they can monitor it and make sure that that address still holds their Bitcoin collateral. Strict no reap application. You may hear others in the lending market and the Bitcoin back lending market talk about funding partners or they'll take your Bitcoin and your Bitcoin will be with a partner and they might even say things like drawing liquidity against that. I would call that soft repothecation.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we've all got to live in the fiat world. So, as I said, there's only two ways to get liquidity. You can sell it for dollars, pay taxes on it, totally fine. You can also borrow against it. And that has the value of you maintain access to your collateral. It can grow over time and sort of do the work for you if you're conservative and careful with your risk management. Now, he mentioned sort of what should you watch out for. It's really important for us and on chain to deliver transparency and note rehypothecation or repledging. These are technical terms, but they're really, really important. And I think it might be helpful to kind of like break it down by degrees in terms of what is repopocation. At a high level, Reapophocation is you giving your lender Bitcoin collateral and they take your Bitcoin collateral and give it to somebody else. And Unchained, we have a policy in the strictest sense of never giving your Bitcoin to anyone.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“$400,000 house and getting a $200,000 mortgage against it. No bank is going to give you more money than the asset that you pledge. So that's the structure. Lending dollars backed by Bitcoin. I'll tell you why it's an appealing strategy for some. A lot of Bitcoiners ultimately come with you that Bitcoin is the right investment and it might not be a 10% allocation. It might be a 50 or 60 or more percent allocation of portfolio. And they believe that it still has years and years of really attractive cater compound annual growth rate. Maybe it's going to tenants. I listen to your show at Jeff Booth and Hodl. Those guys are really smart, but they also have a long-term constructive outlook that a lot of Bitcoiners do.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And it's an important seration because Bitcoin is this financial asset and we equate it with other sorts of services that we get in the world of fiat. So everybody's familiar with interest on your dollars in a bank account if you're lucky enough to find it or just returns on your portfolio or borrowing against your house. But in Bitcoin as a still maturing industry, you really just, you do have to be careful and you have to diligence who you're working with in the sorts of transactions that you're involved. The only business that we did it at Silvergate and then we actually do it on chain is the most conservative style of lending. We lend dollars over collateralized by Bitcoin. And all that means is that if you're looking for a $200,000 loan, then you have to post $400,000 in Bitcoin. So if you think about that in another more familiar asset like your house, it's the same thing as pledging your”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“High level. Yeah. Like I said, like there was all the cash was just given back to deposit. And this industry still needs banks.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because of bankruptcy proceedings and things that have come to light, there's a Wall Street Journal op-ed by our former chairman, Mike Lepra's at Silvergate, is another industry veteran, ultimately it's clear to those in the industry that the regulators are not comfortable with above a certain threshold of concentration to this industry. So I mentioned that silver getting on from let's try to bank some of these companies to this is a real industry. We can build a business and serve these clients better if we just focus on them. Yeah. So even though regulators as a Fed regulated bank are meeting with you on an ongoing basis, again, I'm not in all those, certainly not in all of those meetings. But I do think that there's a sense in the market that allowing a bank totally focused on digital assets one day and then quickly saying more not okay with the business model that has existed with consultation with them. That was the decision. We couldn't run the business model any further.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it seemed this asset grow up and see the industry grow up, knew that with the inflows and the volatility in the market, you had to be extremely liquid. So it was purpose built for volatility. Your question about politically motivated and what's come to light, I'm very grateful that Nick Carter has done some excellent reporting on this. Yes, he has.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think from a financial perspective, and I'll get to your question, but you mentioned in terms of high quality deloteration assets. It's important to note as well. I mentioned affiliated half dollar loan book by commitment. We had an extremely low loan to deposit ratio. So in addition to not being in the business of extending 30-year residential mortgages, we had a book of highly over collateralized short term, generally one year, sometimes a few years. But our Bitcoin back loan book was a very small portion of our balance sheet. It was very lot duration all over collateralized, super safe. The rest of it was high quality securities that we could pledge as banks do for liquidity that three years in duration was an extremely conservative balance sheet. And why was that? It's because the CEO Alan Lane, who's a Bitcoiner”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Knowing how slow government moved, I wouldn't be surprised that this is something that they've been thinking about for a long time. And it just took them 25 years to do something about it. At the same time, it's absolutely certain that Silvergate pushed the banking envelope. I know that on the credit side, we were far ahead of other bankers and I think put pressure on others to get into Bitcoin collateralized lending in the last cycle. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if sort of the business that we were doing and the technology that the team at Silvergate put together was a bit of a blueprint for. Others in the market for update the Fed.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a run on multiple banks because Silvergate was so liquid in terms of its high quality securities and pretty low duration securities on its balance sheet. It survived the biggest bank run in recent memory. I think continental Illinois had a 40-ish percent drawdown in 84 and Silvergate was far greater than that. Ultimately, in early 2023, Silvergate made the decision to voluntarily wind down, which is, as I understand it, very rare in banking and completely different from receivership where the executives are replaced and the bank assets are sold. So Silvergate ultimately gave all the money back to depositors and been in the process of an orderly wind down. Subsequent to that, but in very close proximity in terms of a timeline, the bank term funding program was put in place. So there was a To the banking community”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bitcoin back lending business takes off as well. We ultimately had a billion and a half dollars of commitments. We did multiple hundred million dollar deals with Marathon, a large facility, a large loan to micro strategy. It was a great business. FDX, Luna, 2022 was a very interesting timeline from Luna in May to FTX in November. And there were widespread fears throughout the industry and the price obviously performed very poorly.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ultimately, the whole deposit base was digital asset clients. It was a very liquid balance sheet. And we had, when I got there in 2020, it was just the start of scaling up a Bitcoin collateralized lending strategy. Only against Bitcoin all over collateralized, never realized any loss. But that was sort of the next chapter of the Silver Day strategy when I got there. So late 2020, think about Tesla, Saylor, like these material allocations from the space that continues to mature.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Participants could facilitate trading 24 7. And I think this was really as flawed as the fiat system is. It's really important to have access to fiat system for Bitcoin to progress and to mature and to go from being a 10 billion to 100 billion to a trillion dollar asset. So the SEN was very successful ultimately transferred over a trillion dollars of value. Silver gain went public in 2019. The ecosystem was growing up. Fidelity came in in 1718. Intercontinental exchange. It was just growing up and ultimately Silverty had 1,600 digital asset clients. It had the industry. And it had gone from can we raise deposits from this niche industry to we can be a better bank for these clients if we solely focus on this strategy.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that was the first chapter. After it went along for a few years and they had gotten regulators and educated the Fed on Bitcoin and kind of brought everybody up to speed, got a little bit more involved in terms of what problems can we solve. And Bitcoin trades 24-7, but the FedWire system does not trade 24-7. So because Silvergate ultimately had a critical mass of digital asset clients, they connected the pipes and created a system called the Silvergate Exchange Network.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like Zappo, Genesis, Coinbase, just some of like their early sort of first generation service providers. However, it's hard to contemplate now with names like JPMorgan and BlackRock and Fidelity. These companies had a hard time getting a bank account. Bank accounts are your access to the Fed and to the wire system. And the other side of Bitcoin, if you want any liquidity out of it, if you want any productive uses, you need to get access to dollars. And the credit part comes later. But early on, it was simply, can we provide an operating account to these first generation companies, which was interesting as a banker in terms of a source of deposit.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So Silver Date was for a time a small commercial bank in San Diego. It was founded in 1988. And the CEO, really, the visionary behind the Bitcoin had ultimately digital asset strategy at Silver as a gentleman named Alan Lane, who joined Silverdate in 2008 or 2009. And at that time, Silvergate had sidestepped a lot of the pitfalls of the great financial crisis that it had a clean balance sheet. And Alan was brought into help the bank with his next chapter. If you fast forward to around 2013, Alan is a very tech, curious, non-traditional banker who came across Bitcoin and said, Bitcoin is a way to be your own bank and I run a bank, I should look into that. So what he did, as curious people do and at that time, it was only Bitcoin and there were only a handful of new brand companies that had raised serious venture money.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tim I believe it sounded at 2013. And the way I think of it is the network of people that once this in Zappo was connecting with, he really lowered the barriers. So if you heard about Bitcoin, you thought it was interesting. Your next question is, well, if I want to buy it, where am I going to store it? I don't want to keep it on a thumb drive under my self-customs is an important aspect of Bitcoin. But for some of those early institutional type investors, like you mentioned of Bill Miller, the famous leg Mason money manager, trusting Once this and Zappo to hold their keys was a really big benefit for Bitcoin early on”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So somebody that was around and saw the birth and participated in the birth of the internet and because of his personal background in Argentina, it's a very different economy. Whereas if you've been Nicaragua before and you wanted Swiss francs, that was really hard. But everybody could get Bitcoin. But back to Wentis, ultimately he found Bitcoin went deep down the rabbit hole. And with his knowledge of financial markets and technology, brought a lot of credibility, but importantly, he built what at the time was and continues to be an incredibly secure custody solution far ahead of its time called Zappo with multi-state, multi-continent dispersed keys. a really next level custody solution that was very safe that folks, I think, would even have a hard time thinking about.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So what is, I think, I would agree with, as you said, some of the people who have been here really early on in class of 2017. So everybody feels like they're late. But there was a lot of history before 17. But a lot of people are coming into Bitcoin, obviously, all the time. And I do think that once this is one of the most important figures in the history of Bitcoin, because of what he built and also for the credibility that he brought to the space. So Wentz's background, this is a very talented entrepreneur, founding a company called Patagon in Argentina, which has been described as the e-trade of South America. Previous to that, he had the first internet service provider in Argentina.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went home and listened to a lot of Andreas, listened to everything I could find from Wences, read every blog post from Zappo, and ultimately quit my job about nine months later. In May of 2018 and joined the institutional team at Zappo, where I marketed custody and trading, but essentially Bitcoin to institutional investors. Some of the largest college endowments in the country, hedge funds, high net worth books. And it was a really interesting time, just given what was going on in terms of ports and a bad bear market. But to your question, it was absolutely the calculation that if Bitcoin's for real and it's a once in a 5,000 year opportunity and I have the opportunity to join a great company. Somebody like Ted, who I respected immensely, I would kick myself, but it all worked out. So”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So in September of 2017, I think Bitcoin was $4,000 or $5,000, but it was the year where it went from $1,000 at the start of the year. I had no idea if it existed. And then it got up to $19,000 or $20,000 that year. And it's in temperate that year. So I was working at Morgan Staley and in the midst of this big run-up in Bitcoin, they had an event focused on crypto. So they had, I remember Joey Krug was there, Ted Rogers from Zappo, which at the time was probably the biggest Bitcoin custodian in the world. Also, they have a talk. And that really resonated. And he essentially gave the very well-known Once this Casares framing of Bitcoin as Best money that humans have ever come across, or in this case, engineered. And as somebody who had been sort of grounded in macro investing, that was really, really interesting to me. So”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know you're going to be doing that for months on end, but the euro keeps on going up because Trump's hammering the dollar because we're trying to get exports going here. And that's something you might want to hedge and there's different ways you can do it. But it's also a super liquid, very deep market with a lot of leverage embedded in it. So you've got like Stanley Druckenmiller, who's a very opportunistic global macro oriented investor who could find it a really interesting and convenient way to express a more macro view with a multi-year time horizon just because there's so much leverage with the way things are structured. You can kind of get a specific sort of payout or exposure you're looking for.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there's a lot of both. And, you know, sort of which first item did you described, I would consider more a real money application or a risk management tool where you have a structural flow. You're an importer, but you're based in one country. So you've got to send euros every month somewhere.”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, thanks for the question. And it's really an interesting multidisciplinary area, which I think primed me a little bit for Bitcoin in terms of macro. So it's changed a lot over time as markets have become more electronified. But sometimes it can be a pretty almost kinetic environment in terms of trading activity. But at other times, it's a little bit more cerebral in terms of structuring when you think about derivatives and options and how do you create a hedge for a client. on a real-time basis you really have to be abreast of central bank policy what's going on in different countries you're not just looking at the currency market you're just in the commodities market and equities and risk sediment so it's a mix of having a conversation about markets all day long but really intense focus on execution and help clients”
2025-08-13 · We Study Billionaires · BTC247: Bitcoin's evolution with Traditional Finance w/ Jon Melton (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT