Writing
First principles for serious capital.
Plain-English notes on Bitcoin allocation, custody, governance and the decisions that have to work across generations.
Published articles
The writing archive
Newest first
Many of these articles first appeared in the firm's newsletter archive. They are shown here with their original publication dates.
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking, Part 5 of 6: Why Inferior Systems Always Lose
History does not remember the systems that resisted change. It remembers the ones that survived it.
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking, Part 6 of 6: The Asymmetric Case for Bitcoin
The question is no longer whether Bitcoin is real. The question is what it means for a portfolio built to last.
Digital Dollar Perils
Digital Dollar Perils, Issue 6 of 6: The Digital Age Requires a Digital Monetary Strategy. The Strategy Should Be Deliberate.
The digital monetary transition is happening. The strategy should be deliberate.
Digital Dollar Perils
Digital Dollar Perils, Issue 5 of 6: CBDCs Are Sanctions Architecture. Stablecoins Are Dollar Architecture. Both Are Strategic Instruments.
CBDCs and stablecoins are competing strategic instruments: adversary-jurisdiction CBDCs to escape dollar reliance, dollar stablecoins to extend it. What jurisdictional alignment means for internationally exposed family offices.
Digital Dollar Perils
Digital Dollar Perils, Issue 4 of 6: A Stablecoin Is Only as Solvent as the Worst Asset in Its Reserve Stack
What the GENIUS Act 1:1 reserve requirement covers, what it leaves out, and why a stablecoin's secondary-market price, not its redemption promise, is the holder's real stress exposure.
Digital Dollar Perils
Digital Dollar Perils, Issue 3 of 6: Money That Can Expire, Be Restricted, or Be Frozen Is a Different Asset Class
Programmable money already exists in production: expiring CBDC balances and issuer freeze lists. Which portfolio sleeves can accept programmability, and why long-duration wealth should not.
Digital Dollar Perils
Digital Dollar Perils, Issue 2 of 6: USDC Dropped to 87 Cents in March 2023. The Mechanism That Caused It Is Still Live.
USDC's fall to 87 cents in March 2023 exposed the reserve-stack counterparty risk behind every stablecoin, and the portfolio responses, from bifurcated treasuries to downside-protected structures, each carry a cost.
Digital Dollar Perils
Digital Dollar Perils, Issue 1 of 6: Every Transaction You Make Is About to Become a Permanent Record
China's e-CNY ties 3.4 billion transactions to verified identity, and stablecoin settlement produces the same permanent record. Why identity-linked digital money demands an architectural evaluation first.
The Use Case Series
The Use Case Series, Issue 8 of 8: The Demand Stack Is Diversified. The Asset Is Fixed. The Math Follows.
Eight independent adoption channels, one fixed 21 million coin supply. Why demand-source diversification, not any single use case, is the thesis that justifies underwriting a Bitcoin position.
The Use Case Series
The Use Case Series, Issue 7 of 8: Twenty-Three Countries Now Hold Bitcoin. Their Households Hold More.
Twenty-three countries now hold Bitcoin, from the US strategic reserve to Bhutanese mining, while household adoption in Argentina and Nigeria grows faster than any sovereign program.
The Use Case Series
The Use Case Series, Issue 6 of 8: Bitcoin Mining Is Now AI Infrastructure With a Side of Hashrate
Public Bitcoin miners signed over $70 billion in AI and HPC contracts. How mining sites became AI infrastructure, and what a diversified three-stream revenue model means for allocators.
The Use Case Series
The Use Case Series, Issue 5 of 8: Public Companies Now Hold Roughly Five Percent of All Bitcoin
Roughly 194 public companies now hold close to one million Bitcoin. The corporate treasury bid, and the credit infrastructure that lets long-term holders finance against rather than sell.
The Use Case Series
The Use Case Series, Issue 4 of 8: Bitcoin Already Moves More Money Across Borders Than Most Bank Networks
Bitso moved $43 billion through one remittance corridor while Sub-Saharan Africa cleared $205 billion on-chain. Why structural, price-inelastic remittance demand is the most durable demand an asset can have.
The Use Case Series
The Use Case Series, Issue 3 of 8: Block Just Made Bitcoin a Retail Payment Network
Block activated Bitcoin payments for roughly one million Square merchants. Lightning settles in seconds, merchants receive dollars by default, and card-network processing economics face a structural challenge.
The Use Case Series
The Use Case Series, Issue 2 of 8: Cannabis Is the Template for Understanding Bitcoin Adoption
Cannabis operators adopted Bitcoin because no bank would settle for them. Deplatforming is a banking-system phenomenon, and demand from locked-out users is structural, price-inelastic, and geographically distributed.
The Use Case Series
The Use Case Series, Issue 1 of 8: The Use Cases Have Already Answered the Question
Bitcoin's use cases answer the underwriting question ideology cannot: who uses it, what problem it solves, and whether demand is structural. Evidence for credit committees, not converts.
Tax Strategy
The Tax Alpha You Are Not Capturing
Bitcoin is property, not a security, so the wash sale rule does not apply. How disciplined tax loss harvesting converts drawdowns into basis resets and captured tax alpha.
The Architecture of Asymmetry
The Architecture of Asymmetry, Part 2
Distinguishes what portfolios actually solve for from what they should solve for, giving family offices a framework for recognizing misaligned risk and return objectives.
The Architecture of Asymmetry
The Architecture of Asymmetry, Part 1
Explains why most portfolios are designed to feel safe rather than compound, and how that comfort can impose a measurable cost across decades.
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking, Part 4 of 6: Why Governments Cannot Stop It
Analyzes why bans, restrictions and enforcement campaigns have not stopped Bitcoin's decentralized network, and what persistent policy risk means for institutional allocation.
the writing archive
State of Bitcoin Allocation, 2026
Reviews four major institutional Bitcoin allocation reports published between September 2025 and 2026 to show how family offices and allocators are positioning.
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking, Part 3 of 6: A World Without Monetary Discretion
Explores how money, savings and portfolio governance change when no central institution can expand Bitcoin's fixed monetary supply at will or rewrite issuance rules.
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking, Part 2 of 6: The True Cost of Fiat
Fiat does not eliminate the cost of irresponsible behavior, it defers and redistributes it. A structural account of what fiat money costs savers, pensions, and family offices over time.
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking, Part 1 of 6: The Question Before Bitcoin
Before debating proof of work or the 21 million cap, serious allocators should ask the diagnostic question: does the world have a problem this asset actually solves?
Governance and Money
Unlimited Money, Unlimited Government
A New Jersey audit of a dress shop shows what unlimited money funds. How fiat's absent arithmetic ceiling builds regulatory apparatus, and what that apparatus costs family offices.
Post-Exit Founders
What Happens to the Founder After the Exit
Post-exit founders often hand liquidity to the centralized architecture they spent their careers avoiding. A coherence framework for evaluating Bitcoin before the wire hits the wealth manager.
Allocation Discipline
The Investor You Didn't Expect to Agree With
Bitcoin maximalists and family office principals share generational time horizons, low time preference, and a debasement problem. The categorical clarity maximalists offer, without the price targets.
Allocation Discipline
The Company You Didn't Mean to Keep
The principal on Coinbase and the committee reviewing on every 20 percent drop both govern a monetary asset like a trade. A different posture: written thesis, thesis-based review.
Family Systems
The Real Threat to Family Office Wealth Isn't Volatility
Bowen and Friedman's research on chronic anxiety explains why a committee can unanimously sell a sound position in weeks. Differentiation, not risk tolerance, is the variable to model.
Bitcoin Field Notes
You're the Bitcoin Guy, Right?
A conversation with the operator of a $1b family office: why Bitcoin is a lens rather than a trade, and what absolute scarcity changes about the fiat structure.
Bitcoin Field Notes
The Entry Point Most Bitcoin Investors Miss
A Bitcoin SMA applies old-world portfolio logic to a new-world asset: options overlays for managed downside, torque from treasury stocks, and roughly a third of the upside captured.
Bitcoin Field Notes
Bitcoin: Designed to Store Value: Custody Is the Conversation No One Has. Until It's Too Late
If someone else holds the keys, they hold the Bitcoin. Cold storage basics, 2-of-3 multisignature best practice, and the custody conversation families should have before allocating.
Bitcoin Field Notes
Bitcoin: Designed to Store Value: Scarcity Has Rules. Bitcoin Wrote Them Into the Ledger
Gold is relatively scarce; Bitcoin is absolutely scarce by design. Why a 21 million hard cap, enforced by protocol rather than trust, is a fundamental driver of value.
Bitcoin Field Notes
Bitcoin: Designed to Store Value: Decentralized from Day One. Still Unbroken. Still Unstoppable.
Control in Bitcoin is not missing, it is distributed across thousands of nodes with no kill switch. Why decentralized function beats centralized trust for long-duration capital.
Legacy
For Principals Who Inherited More Than Wealth
Inheriting a grandparents' property in Madras, Oregon becomes a meditation on legacy: inheritance is a direction, not a finished product, and capital should carry the same conviction.
Monetary History
From Caesar to Satoshi: The Death of Physical Money
Gold's weight created the centralized IOU system fiat exploited, from Roman coin-shaving to Nixon's 1971 announcement. Bitcoin upgrades the function gold could not make portable.
Bitcoin Myths
Bitcoin Myths Part 2: What Family Offices Still Get Wrong
Family offices regret the Bitcoin trade they never made while refusing the asset they still don't understand. Scarcity first, utility second: reframing Bitcoin from trade to treasury.
Bitcoin Myths
Bitcoin Myths Part 1: What Family Offices Still Get Wrong
Bitcoin is not crypto. The speculative altcoin sandbox recreates fiat's flaws; Bitcoin was built as the antidote to currency debasement and deserves a separate category entirely.
Series table of contents
The Money Question Nobody Is Asking
Digital Dollar Perils
The Use Case Series
Bitcoin: Designed to Store Value
White papers
Working documents for the room where a decision is made.
Bitcoin and the Architecture of Wealth Preservation
A complete, ungated whitepaper interpreting Bitcoin’s trust-minimization architecture for family offices managing wealth across generations.
Bitcoin Custody for Family Offices
A complete, ungated comparative analysis of Coinbase Custody, Fidelity Digital Assets and BitGo Trust Company for institutional family-office custody decisions.
7 Questions Capital Allocators Should Be Asking About Bitcoin
Seven practical questions for family offices, RIAs and investment committees evaluating Bitcoin without hype or avoidance.