I Am the Bitcoin Guy in Our Corporation | BTC Prague 2025 Panel

Being the Bitcoin person inside a traditional organization is lonely, awkward, and sometimes thankless work. But it might also be the most important thing you ever do professionally. At the BTC Prague stage, I sat down with fellow Bitcoiners embedded in corporations — a pension fund, a crypto exchange, and a regulated digital asset bank — to share what that fight actually looks like from the inside.

The Honest Truth: Timing Matters

I’ll admit it — I left a big corporate company having completely failed to get it anywhere near a Bitcoin standard. Not because I didn’t try. I did. But I tried too early, and I didn’t frame it in a way that was digestible or acceptable to the people I needed to convince. The landscape back then was so negatively framed that it was essentially written in stone. You couldn’t win that argument no matter how right you were.

What’s changed is enormous. After a decade of pushing, the regulatory frameworks are clearer, trust has been built, and traditional financial institutions across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are now moving into Bitcoin. It’s not going to stop.

The ETF Was the Unlock

For those of us inside institutional settings, the launch of the spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US was the real turning point. At our pension fund managing around 60 billion in assets for Australians’ retirement, that was the milestone that made Bitcoin institutional grade. We became the first superannuation fund in Australia to invest in Bitcoin — a small allocation, around 30 million, but a historic one.

Even after that, many colleagues still lumped Bitcoin in with crypto. So I approached our Chief Investment Officer directly. I told her I’d studied this for well over a thousand hours and suggested we run an internal education session. She loved the idea. That session led to another for the leadership team, then the executive team, then the board of directors. Education is the foundation everything else gets built on.

Know Your Audience, Ditch the Toxic Maximalism

I learned the hard way that it’s not just what you say — it’s how you say it. Toxic Bitcoin maximalism has its place, but not inside your firm if you want to actually convince people. You have to be humble. Almost everyone was wrong about Bitcoin at some point. If you hold people’s hands along the journey and meet them where they are, it can work.

In the pension space, the narrative almost writes itself. We help Australians maintain and grow their purchasing power into retirement. That requires a low time preference — which is perfectly aligned with Bitcoin. Don’t start by trying to explain Bitcoin. Start by explaining money. What is it? What makes a good store of value? Once people genuinely wrestle with those questions, Bitcoin becomes obvious.

You Don’t Have to Reach the C-Suite to Matter

Maybe you won’t get your organization onto a Bitcoin standard. Maybe the executives won’t budge. But you will become the Bitcoin person in your orbit — the one co-workers come to when they have questions, the one who helps a colleague set up a DCA and a hardware wallet, the one who changes someone’s financial trajectory quietly and permanently.

I’ve orange-pilled people without even trying — just by being genuinely excited, living it openly, and being available as a resource. One acquaintance I had dinner with called me months later to say I’d completely changed his thinking and he was now launching the first Bitcoin treasury fund in his industry. I wasn’t even pitching him. I was just being a maniac about Bitcoin.

The Fulfillment Is Real

One of the most moving moments in my Bitcoin journey was receiving a message from someone in South Africa I had once tipped in Bitcoin. A year and a half later, out of nowhere, he sent a small amount back with a note that just said: “I understood it now.” That was everything.

Working at the intersection of regulated finance and Bitcoin — even when it’s hard, even when LPs tell you you’re distracted, even when the conversations feel impossible — is the most fulfilling professional work