Issue #5

Brought to you by Bitcoin Talent Co.

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🚨 News & Updates

Covering April 6th, 2023 - April 19th, 2023

🚀 Company Updates 

Onramp launched earlier this week providing best-in-class custody for HNWI, Family Offices, Investment Funds, Corporations, and Institutions seeking bitcoin exposure but not yet ready for self-custody. Their multi-party custody solution provides fault tolerance and allows withdrawal of bitcoin without triggering a taxable event. Onramp also educates clients on bitcoin and prepares them to take self-custody when they are ready.

Unchained, a provider of bitcoin custody and financial services, announced a $60 million Series B funding round by Valor Equity Partners. Unchained has also revealed a new brand logo and will use the investment to double-down on existing bitcoin products and launch new USD-denominated services, allowing clients to manage their traditional assets with the same high product and service standards.

Mutiny Wallet, a user-friendly bitcoin wallet with privacy, scalability, and accessibility built in, recently raised over $300k in a preseed funding round. They are developing a web-first wallet, routing node/lightning service provider, coinjoin, and synthetic dollars via DLCs. They are aiming to make bitcoin and lightning best practices accessible to everyone and have already developed a proof-of-concept wallet and lightning node in the browser.

Bitstack, a bitcoin savings app in France, has announced a $2.1 million (€2 million) funding round from a range of investors. The startup will use the funding to expand its product offerings, hire strategic staff and promote customer acquisition. Since launching, the company has onboarded over 25,000 users in France and seen its active users increase 20% monthly. The app will offer auto-investing, bitcoin rewards and a cashback debit card by the end of 2023.

CleanSpark Inc., a public Bitcoin mining company ($CLSK), has announced the purchase of 45,000 Antminer S19 XP bitcoin mining machines at a cost of $144.9 million. All machines are expected to be fully operational by the end of the year and the company is edging closer to its year-end goal of 16EH/s of machines. The company will use low-carbon energy sources for 90% of its energy mix and sell some of its mined bitcoin to reinvest in growth.

🟠 Product Updates

Ledger has released a 2.0.0 app that improves the security and user experience of multisig wallets. Multisig wallets are more secure than single-signature wallets because they require multiple keys to spend bitcoin. Ledger has implemented a HMAC policy registration mechanism to validate multisig wallets, ensuring the Ledger is one key in a known wallet and that the wallet is secure. The announcement also indicated that Ledger's multi-sig functionality is now available for use with Unchained’s multisig services.

Swan Bitcoin announced Swan Air, a jet to take bitcoin enthusiasts from the Pacific Bitcoin Festival in Los Angeles, CA to San Salvador, El Salvador later this year. Included in the announcement is The Swan House El Salvador, which is a satellite office opening October 14th that the team plans to use during Q4 and Q1 every year moving forward.

Voltage has launched support for Nostr, an ecosystem for verifying real users and displaying Lightning payments, with their Nostr Toolkit. The release allows Nostr users to easily send non-custodial bitcoin payments to and from their own node. Users can create their own NIP05 identifier and Lightning Address at vlt.ge, and these services are free.

Trammell Venture Partners has released a web platform to promote Bitcoin-native venture capital research, crypto job search activity, and founder and portfolio value creation. The platform provides a conduit of the best companies for generalist VC firms to look at and features opportunities for job seekers to find full-time positions at Bitcoin companies. Additionally, it takes a founder-first approach by profiling Bitcoin-native founders shaping the future.

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Bitcoin Talent Co. is the leading recruiting firm in the Bitcoin ecosystem, focused on partnering with companies whose products and services seek to expand a monetary network that will bring freedom and prosperity to all.

🎙 Interviews w/ Industry Leaders

KEY: 🎙 = listen, 📺 = watch, 📖 = read

BTCo7: Bobby Shell from Voltage: Host Eric Podwojski interviews the VP of Marketing of Voltage, Bobby Shell, to discuss his career path in marketing and how he transitioned his skillset to work in the Bitcoin industry. (🎙, 📺)

TFTC #411: How Onramp is Bringing Bitcoin Multisig to Financial Products with Michael Tanguma and Jesse Meyers: Host Marty Bent interviews Co-Founders Michael Tanguma and Jesse Meyers about the launch of Onramp; a new way to get exposure to bitcoin via a trust structure that leverages multi-party custody so that you can get direct exposure to bitcoin with the option to take delivery of it in the future when you are prepared to hold your own keys. (🎙, 📺)

The Bitcoin Standard Podcast #163: Free State Project with Jason Sorens: Host Saifedean Ammous interviews the founder of the New Hampshire Free State Project, Jason Sorens, to discuss the history of the movement, its goals, and its potential. (🎙, 📺)

The Bitcoin Layer: Is The US Government Attacking Bitcoin? | Legislation Pulse with Dennis Porter: Host Joe Consorti sits down with Dennis Porter, CEO and Co-Founder of Satoshi Action Fund to discuss the current state of legislation surrounding bitcoin and bitcoin mining. (🎙, 📺)

BTCo6: Alex Mastando from Bitcoin Talent Co.: Host Eric Podwojski interviews Senior Talent Advisor at Bitcoin Talent Co., Alex Mastando, to discuss his career path in the recruiting industry having worked at Robinhood and Kraken before joining a bitcoin-focused recruiting firm. (🎙, 📺)

The Pomp Podcast #1187: Wall Street Insider: Bitcoin To $10 Trillion Market Cap | Dan Tapiero: Host Anthony Pompliano interviews Dan Tapiero, co-founder of 1RoundTable Partners & 10T Holdings to discuss the Fed, problems with the legacy banking system, bitcoin, and what is going on in the macro billionaire circles behind closed doors. (🎙, 📺)

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🔦 Company Spotlight

Fedi

Total Funding

$23.4M (Source: Crunchbase)

About

From a Coindesk article published in July 2022:

“A common refrain among bitcoiners is “Not your keys, not your coins.” In short, if you are not holding the private keys to your bitcoin – that is, “self-custodying” them – and are allowing a third party like an exchange to take care of them, then you do not truly “own” your bitcoin (BTC). But self-custody carries with it a weight of responsibility and a level of technological expertise that some newcomers to the Bitcoin protocol can find intimidating.

Fedi’s overarching objective is to overcome three of the biggest obstacles to bitcoin adoption today – lack of secure custody, privacy and scalability – all of which are addressed by the open-source Fedimint bitcoin custody protocol. Fedi’s mobile app will be a bitcoin wallet built on top of that protocol, which means, in theory, the app may turn out to be a viable solution for securing your bitcoin.”

Leadership

• Obi Nwosu, Co-Founder

• Eric Sirion, Co-Founder

• Justin Moon, Co-Founder

💼 Working in Bitcoin

Bitcoin Talent Co. is the first recruiting firm to focus exclusively on the Bitcoin landscape. We see through the noise of crypto, blockchain, Web3, and all other buzzwords to help Bitcoin-focused companies operate at scale. Below are some of the positions we are actively recruiting candidates for.

Open Roles

1. Bug Bounty Program Manager - A Bitcoin company leveraging the Lightning network to create a bounty marketplace is looking for a sales expert with a technical vocabulary who is able to attract quality developers to the platform to complete bounties. A candidate with sales and marketing experience is ideal.

2. VP of Engineering - An interoperable Web 5 company using the Lightning network for decentralized bitcoin payments is hiring a VP of Engineering to work closely with the CEO. The role requires a candidate willing to work more than 60 hours per week writing code and managing an engineering team.

3. Head of Marketing - A Bitcoin financial services company specializing in custodial solutions is hiring an experienced marketer to own the function while creating a roadmap that aligns with future company goals regarding growth and content.

4. Recruiter - Bitcoin Talent Co. is seeking an experienced recruiter to join the team. Knowledge about Bitcoin and Bitcoin culture is a must.

🤔 Interested in an open role or know someone who may be interested?

Send us a message or reach out if you have strong folks in your network that could be a great fit, we have a very exciting referral program!👇

That's a wrap for this biweekly newsletter. See ya in +2016 blocks from now!

If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@BitcoinTalentCo) and connect with us on LinkedIn.

- Eric (@epodrulz)

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If you found value in this newsletter please subscribe and tell a friend. Our mission is to strengthen the bitcoin network with premiere human capital. The more professionals know about us, the more talent we can bring into the industry!