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The Market Intelligence Report. This is version one. In this episode, I’m going to run through
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a document that I’ve started creating as part of the creative process of listening to the
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marketplace. Yes, I, Jake, had some ideas about what I think people would like, but the question
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is, what do they value? Where are their pain points? What have they already tried? What will
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they pay for? And a number of other different questions we have to answer as I develop this
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product and this offer. So this is kind of a summary of where I’m at, an intention of sharing
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openly as I build. And basically, I’ve had dozens of conversations over the last few weeks. And the
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market is teaching me more and more every time about what it actually needs. Of course, the focus
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on Bitcoin custody and what it means to hold intergenerational wealth in your own self-custody
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setup and where the pitfalls are. And there’s just so many things that have come out of it.
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Anyway, by the end of this, I hope you’ll understand what I’ve learned and the trajectory
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going forwards. So let me rewind the clock and I’ll bring you up to speed as to where we’ve been
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at. For those of you that have not listened to the podcast, my name’s Jake. And well, I’m deeply
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passionate about Bitcoin and its adoption, but there are some very, very important points about
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it that a lot of people don’t understand. And in particular, taking self-custody of your Bitcoin
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is a superpower, but with all power comes responsibility. And that’s a trade-off some
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people aren’t willing to make. And this is essentially a study into that. Like at what
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point does a trade-off actually become a risk or convenience is not as important? There’s lots of
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different things to think through. Anyway, I launched an offer and I called it The Sovereign.
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And it was really something that I felt passionate that I would have purchased had I known it existed
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on a part of the journey that I was at a few years ago. And I sent it out to 44 people that I have
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become friends with in the Bitcoin space over the last couple of years through my podcast
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and through going to conferences and being an emcee and just meeting all these incredible people
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that come from every walk of life that have in some ways seen the light.
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You know, what is Bitcoin?
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Well, what is money?
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What does it mean that the central banks have been printing their own money for 100 years?
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Like these are deep, deeply important questions and get you into immediately like the most
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intellectually stimulating question I’ve ever asked.
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What is money?
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Because it affects everything.
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And all these people I sent it out to, I said basically one thing I wanted from them,
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which was, tell me why this won’t work.
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And I said one thing I wanted from them.
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I was keen to lean on some relationship capital that I’d fostered for a number of years.
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It’s like, what do I know?
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Well, I know there’s all these people, all these incredible people.
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Let’s see if they can help.
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So tell me, why does the sovereign not work?
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And I got over 20 replies.
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Some of them were literally like 15-minute long audio notes, some phone calls, some text messages, a whole array of different bits of information.
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Some loved it.
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Some challenged it.
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And one of my friends even said, Jake, just go and get a job, mate.
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so a whole spectrum of different bits of feedback all of which were valuable in their own right
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but the key to my mind is to distill through it all and find out okay of all of this like what’s
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truly important i also ran a really interesting um poll on twitter well it was a tweet that turned
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out to be like a poll i ran through that actually in the last episode if you didn’t catch that
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and so more conversations are followed from different areas so not just warm contacts but
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also social media. And I think it’s about pulling all of those different pieces of the puzzle
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together to go, okay, well, this is actually what’s going on underneath. And basically, I got a bunch
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of feedback, and it taught me some things I wasn’t expecting. You know, oh, okay, what does this,
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what does this mean? And so, weirdly, what I realized in hindsight, I’ve started building
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is something I’m calling a market intelligent database. Because these are all touch points.
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If you collect these together, you curate these in a systematized way, suddenly you have all these bits of information that together become more valuable than they are as a single part.
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And it’s changing how I’m thinking about the way I build this product, this offer, this business.
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So section one, I’m just going to run through an important distinction that as you go through this process, like it became really obvious it needed to happen.
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There’s a big difference between an opinion and a pattern.
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And so one person’s opinion is absolutely interesting, especially if they are someone that has got deep experience in an area where they know already, like, don’t waste your effort there.
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And that time they spent wasting time in a certain direction is capital, intellectual capital that you can leverage.
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And they just say, look, just don’t bother with that.
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Or have you thought about this?
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or I tried this in the past and you know for a number of reasons it didn’t really work.
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Now that’s not to say don’t press on with what your vision was but equally like okay interesting
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log that interesting log that and so these are all opinions but the important part is that when
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you get five independent people saying the same thing all opinions then you get a pattern and
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patterns are evidence and evidence change decisions. So okay now I have this evidence
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what decisions have I previously made that don’t make sense or what decision could I make going
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forwards that would make more sense and so as I build what I’m now calling the bitcoin custody
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architect that’s what I want to spend more time doing i.e really listen listen to what’s going on
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around you what are people saying how does it affect them how is that going to help you shift
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what you’re building in a direction that’s actually just as valuable now because I already recorded
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once. I just want to double check that this audio is coming through because I recorded a whole
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episode and then I got a classic at-home podcaster, got to then the production phase. There was no
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audio track. It’s like, oh, spend an hour preparing this stuff and presenting it to find that it’s
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just completely useless. Anyway, the smaller side, essentially the difference between opinions and
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patterns is helping you to, yes, use intuition to head in a direction, yes, leverage the concept
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of action leads to clarity, but the clarity is essentially an amalgamation of opinions that equal
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evidence So you moving from assumption to a data approach And it all about repeated market signals
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And that was like, it sounds basic in some ways, but it’s such a cool way to adopt thinking about this.
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It’s like, oh, okay, if I can really sit in that and listen to what’s going on around me and take inspiration from all these different places, what comes out of that?
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is going to be really cool. So what were the biggest insights? And some of them, some of them
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weren’t what I expected. And as I glanced at the microphone, I now realized why the audio didn’t
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record on the last one. It’s because I literally had the mic muted, and it’s now green, and it was
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red previously. Jeepers, what a waste of time that was. Anyway, again, small side number two,
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Let me focus. So insight number one, recovery beats sovereignty. So my original hypothesis is like, okay, people care about sovereignty. I care about sovereignty. The offer was called the sovereign. But as I had all these conversations, no one was really talking about that.
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they talked about losing access to their Bitcoin.
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They talked about their family understanding their Bitcoin.
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They talked about the importance of an inheritance plan,
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the importance of recovery of their Bitcoin in an unforeseen circumstance.
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And this word that I really like, continuity.
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And it’s like generation to generation Bitcoin continuity.
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And to throw gas on that fire,
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like the comments that’s like running at 50 or so comments now that I’ve posted on this tweet
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very much echo this idea that like losing access is a hundred percent loss versus 50 percent
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volatility to the downside who cares and to for anyone that didn’t see the tweet it’s basically
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like option a bitcoin’s down 50 option b you can’t access your bitcoin and it sounds like such a
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stupid question in some ways. I think even one of the comments was, why do people ask these stupid
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questions online? But to me, it’s really helpful because you get all these emotional replies like,
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oh my God, I hate the idea of losing my keys or losing access. And ultimately, not your keys,
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not your coins, true, but make sure you’re managing them effectively. And so the decision
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that comes out of this is like, okay, well, recovery is actually the center of this business.
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And that’s what the Bitcoin architect is designed to do as a title. It’s like, okay, the role
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of someone like myself would be a Bitcoin custody architect. And they supply Bitcoin custody
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architecture. And that includes all of these things that we’ve just touched on. So that was
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a really cool insight. It’s like, absolutely, sovereignty is important. I truly believe that
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myself. But listening to what people were saying, it’s actually not necessarily that word, but more
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the nuts and bolts are like, don’t fuck it up. So insight number two, confidence, not documentation.
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And so the hypothesis here is people buy architecture. The analogy being it’s like,
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oh, people buy the plans that an architect creates to build a house. But then I just got story after
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story of like, you know, my ledger died, or my wife wouldn’t have a clue what to do, or, oh my
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god i nearly lost everything um and including myself right i i mentioned this before i had a
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scenario once where i’d sent bitcoin from an exchange to a personal wallet and just never
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turned up in the wallet it’s like three days like where is it the ultimate test of losing your
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your physical wallet it’s like oh my god my bitcoin’s gone i can’t bear it turned out it was
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a bank holiday in the uk and it required a back-end process to be confirmed and then there
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it appeared like you know sweating bullets for a number of days but the point is is is people
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aren’t buying the plans they’re buying the solid safe house and so it’s the it’s kind of like it’s
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the outcome in a way and my my synthesis here is like so the hypothesis of people by architecture
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is like well actually no the real product isn’t the documentation the real product is confidence
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so uh sovereignty to recovery architecture to confidence like these are small things in a sense
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but also really important to to to get your head through because this is what resonates right what
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is the marketplace actually telling you and so insert number three architect not provider
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okay so what does this mean well the hypothesis initially is like i should become a custody
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provider. And of course, there are lots of different custody providers out there. And I
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think it’s a market that’s going to absolutely grow as Bitcoin adoption grows. And there’s a
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whole spectrum of different ways of doing self custody of which I think some are far better than
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others. And almost this is a discussion for another time. But multiple independent people
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said the same thing, which is like, you don’t want to become the custody provider, but more
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the architect. So it’s something that sits above the providers. Help people choose. Help people
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understand the trade-offs. So actually, this is very close to what I was just touching on. It’s
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like, okay, of the entire spectrum of self-custody, let’s say, well, or Bitcoin as a wider, you’ve got
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Bitcoin on an exchange, Bitcoin in an ETF, Bitcoin in a Bitcoin treasury company, Bitcoin in some
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kind of digital assets fund bitcoin in single sig self-custody bitcoin in multi-sig self-custody
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bitcoin in collaborative custody bitcoin in um some kind of custodian like there’s just so many
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different options it’s like okay where do you even start rather than being like oh i do this type of
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self-custody it’s like a more valuable thing be one layer above that but okay how old are you how
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many dependents have you got what’s the portfolio allocation today how meaningful is it if it all
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disappeared? Do you need to give it to someone when you die? Like all of these are much higher
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level questions that need to be answered before you actually think about how to set up the custody.
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And so the decision out of this is the architecture layer is the business. I hope you’re following
0:13:03
this because I’m using similar words and moving them around a bit. Insight number four, distribution
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comes through advisors. So I was thinking like, okay, this is a pure B2C play, right? You’re just
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going to go out there and create content that content helps grow trust that trust helps push
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traffic that traffic you can convert to commercial contracts in some way because people want to work
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with you all great in in in theory but a number of people said the same thing they like what about financial advisors family offices professional referral partners Now this is totally unprompted in reaction to
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the sovereign offer that I sent to people. Oh, yeah, good point. And it made me really think
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through this idea. So, okay, if you are someone who’s not pushing a specific type of self-custody
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provider, and you’re able to take a holistic view, actually, high net wealth individuals,
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family offices, private investors, they already have, you know, tax expert, they have solicitors,
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they have financial advisors, I wouldn’t want to be getting involved in that necessarily. But what
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I could do is sit alongside those guys. And they have, you know, big referral businesses, right,
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especially accountants, for example, I reached out to one recently, and they said, we don’t we don’t
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market ourselves at all, all of our business come through referral. Oh, that’s an interesting flywheel,
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Could you become some kind of referral mechanism?
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Insight number five, and sorry, just to close it up, number four,
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so distribution comes through advisors.
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So the decision, the advisor referral channel becomes a strategic priority.
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It’s like, okay, for me, one of the next steps as I build this
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is I’ve got to start speaking to the financial advisor
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and kind of family office style character.
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So insight number five, the relationship doesn’t end at delivery.
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so initial hypothesis uh basically a single consultancy fee you get set up in self-custody
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it’s yours you do it yourself um it’s kind of what they would call like a done with you
0:15:03
product where i’ll sit with you each step and make sure you get it set up effectively and then
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you’ll be super comfortable with hats all done cool off you go enjoy bitcoin and self-custody
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that was my hypothesis right but actually the evidence was different multiple people highlighting
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that like families change technology changes the the bitcoin self-custody tools change and so the
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plan should change as well otherwise your bitcoin custody plan goes stale and again this was
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mentioned in the last episode it’s like i actually found a vault that i didn’t have properly um
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written down if the provider was to disappear and i just happened recently so i’ve been doing this
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for years and years and I basically my plan had gone stale like this is very important thing not
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to do so what’s the the output of this the decision being an annual review is a critical part of the
0:15:54
core customer journey not an afterthought so anyone in the future that I’m bringing on board
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I’ll be very clear with it’s like this whole package includes annual maintenance and it’s not
0:16:04
going to break the bank by any means but it’s that peace of mind that confidence that people
0:16:09
are wanting to buy. And so the final insight to share, and this is kind of a cool one because
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as a podcaster, I love stories. So stories, not specifications. Okay. So the hypothesis,
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so technical explanations are enough. And what do I mean by that? It’s essentially like, okay,
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here are the plans, figure it out. But actually that’s not enough. And nobody really remembers
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the technical details, but everybody remembered stories. And so when I was talking to people
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about their custody setup, or they would give me feedback on things, they would give me experiences
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of like, oh, I remember this time when I was in this place, and this thing happened. Like in kind
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of the same way that like you smell that one thing that you remember as a child. And it might be like,
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I don’t know, an ice cream or candy floss or something random that you had once tiny, you know,
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25 years ago and you smell it and it reminds you of the place you were the person you were with
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you remember the story you don’t necessarily remember the ingredients of the of the food
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you’re eating and so the the output of this particular insight being stories become the
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primary teaching mechanism and that’s actually the inspiration for this particular podcast episode
0:17:23
because it’s like actually jake this is so cool what you thought you were building you’re actually
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not and because you’re not you’re listening and continue to do that and so open source it show
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people like okay this is what i was thinking this is why i’ve altered that thinking and this is where
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i think it’s going to go and so what surprised me most that and i guess this is like wasn’t really
0:17:46
about bitcoin it was much more about me and i’ve been so focused on creating something something
0:17:53
that I saw as valuable, that I wasn’t truly listening. And I’m not going to lie, the phrase
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you’re not listening is something that’s come up in my private life, my personal life a lot in the
0:18:04
last six months. And so it’s something I’m really trying to tune into because if you can’t listen,
0:18:11
then how do you make any good decisions, frankly, because you’re not properly assessing the data
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around you and as someone who’s been investing for 15 years like once the data changes your
0:18:25
hypothesis or your framework it needs to be reviewed and what is what is in my opinion like
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the opposite of intelligence is like when the information changes you don’t change
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and so the reflection here being it’s actually me you jake listen and i think that’s kind of fun
0:18:45
right yeah let me confess i wasn’t listening closely enough and so what does it mean if you
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can bed that into your creative process and and and the output over the next coming months we’ll see
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that um you know as founders of things it’s like you have this vision you want to build something
0:19:01
you personally would buy and again this spectrum some of you may have heard me talk about this
0:19:05
before but build it and they will come which in some ways like bitcoin is the best possible
0:19:13
example of this because you know they built the tech then released the white paper stewarded it
0:19:21
for a little bit and then Satoshi disappeared now I have yet to watch the the recent movie that’s
0:19:27
come out that suggests they know exactly who it is I’ll get to that later another story but then
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the flip side of this creative process is a hardcore scientific driven customer discovery
0:19:37
process where you’re out there listening for acute problems what’s the problem how do you try to
0:19:43
solve it? How much time have you spent solving this? What does it cost you? How have you tried
0:19:48
to do it differently in the past? And you can really iterate around that. And somewhere in
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the middle is probably about right. So for me here, it’s like, just check, start listening.
0:20:00
And so the upshot being is, what does the market actually want me to build?
0:20:06
And that’s a fundamentally different mindset. And in some ways, it’s a really hard thing,
0:20:10
because it’s it’s it’s your ego isn’t it your ego is like oh this should exist in
0:20:14
the world and and as I sit here now like every room you ever in you know that chair right there was at one point someone idea And an idea turns into action turns into a product turns into a piece of commerce
0:20:30
And this is the same thing here.
0:20:31
But the point is, is like, how have you stress tested your concept and product and offer as much as possible before it sees the light of day?
0:20:39
And don’t let perfection get in the way of perfectly fine.
0:20:43
anyway before I ramble on too much the point here is I learned more about myself in the last few
0:20:50
weeks than I really did about the initial offer that I put out there and so how am I going to do
0:20:55
things going forwards it’s like well every future decision should be grounded in evidence not opinion
0:21:00
the market intelligence database that I’m building is the operating system of this business and so
0:21:06
all these conversations that I’ve got I’m curating the information together I’m studying the language
0:21:11
that people used. I’m looking at the specific problems that they mentioned. And so every
0:21:15
conversation updates it, every podcast I create updates it, every advisor meeting that I have in
0:21:20
the future will update it, any customer potential conversation I have, discovery calls or research,
0:21:25
whatever it might be, that all informs this database of intelligence. And so the market
0:21:32
becomes the teacher. It’s like, ah, okay. What a cool way to think about building a product that,
0:21:38
although I’ve thought about this in a number of ways in the past, just right now it’s crystallizing
0:21:43
in an interesting way. So what is the summary of this episode? This is version one. I am trying to
0:21:51
take a listen first approach and the opinions that I receive I’m curating and then cross-referencing
0:22:02
so that it’s like, ah, now I have evidence.
0:22:05
Because one aggressive opinion from someone you really respect and like is valid.
0:22:12
But if it’s not echoed through all the other different opinions that you received,
0:22:16
then it’s an outlier.
0:22:17
And outliers in this instance aren’t actually that useful.
0:22:20
And what is more useful is perhaps the combined opinions of other people
0:22:24
that you weren’t necessarily expecting to get.
0:22:26
And for example, like Jake, have you reached out to financial advisors
0:22:29
and talked about how you could work alongside them from three or four different people?
0:22:32
especially as like you don’t want to be selling financial advice so ah okay maybe i can engineer
0:22:37
a way that i’m not actually a custodian and therefore not having to get regulated there
0:22:41
and i’m not doing financial advice very specifically and not like oh i’m going to help you
0:22:46
you know get rich quote unquote this is not financial advice which i think is the stupidest
0:22:51
thing when you read it um but actually it’s like no i’m going to help you design the the technology
0:22:57
layer that helps you own bitcoin how much you buy as a percentage of the rest of your net wealth
0:23:02
that’s up to you and your financial advisor and it’s a very clear position it’s like oh cool
0:23:06
this makes sense so warm outreach practitioner conversations practitioner what do i mean by that
0:23:13
sorry that’s in a note here practitioner sorry yeah the the the people providing the tools for
0:23:19
the marketplace are going to obviously be a very important part of this so founders and businesses
0:23:23
that I speak to, financial advisors, any social media comments and feedbacks. And also like
0:23:30
watching competitors, like how are they growing? What’s working for them? What’s not working for
0:23:34
them? And so like today, version one, okay, cool. I’ve managed to do a bit of warm outreach. I’ve
0:23:39
done some podcast episodes, done some other social media. I’ve got a bunch of opinions. Now I have an
0:23:44
updated piece of evidence. Version 10, it’s going to look different again, but it will start to get
0:23:49
more and more valuable over time, which I think is the cool thing. And so the goal isn’t to be
0:23:53
right. The goal is to keep learning faster than everyone else. And if I was to do that hypothesis
0:24:01
of today, people are going to want to work with you because you know more about what they need
0:24:07
than the rest of the market actually does. So to close things up, I used to think that Bitcoin
0:24:15
in custody architect was primarily a consulting business. But I think I’m shifting that towards
0:24:20
it being an intelligence business. And the competitive advantage, it’s not going to be
0:24:25
knowing everything, but it’s going to be knowing that I’ve listened better than anyone else.
0:24:32
Because if I consistently understand what Bitcoin holders actually worry about,
0:24:37
better products will emerge, better content will come out, and better decisions
0:24:41
will be done as a result.
0:24:43
And that, to me, drives better outcomes
0:24:46
for families who want to hold Bitcoin intergenerationally.
0:24:50
And that is the absolute key, right?
0:24:53
We’re real people with real lives
0:24:56
and we just want to make sure that we keep our shit
0:24:58
and pass it to the next guys.
0:25:01
It sounds so simple,
0:25:02
but it’s really not as easy as it should be.
0:25:06
So a shout out to anyone that’s got to this part of the episode.
0:25:09
I appreciate your time.
0:25:11
I appreciate your attention.
0:25:12
I would absolutely love to hear from you.
0:25:15
If you have a custody story, a recovery experience, an inheritance challenge, some balls up that
0:25:22
you made that you learned from, because I would, I’d like to learn from that in short.
0:25:29
So what experience do you have that you might be able to share?
0:25:32
You can reach out to me on any of the socials or email.
0:25:35
that’s always openly available to get hold of me
0:25:38
because all of these different problems that people face,
0:25:41
if we can pull them together in an effective manner,
0:25:44
will help us build better products
0:25:45
and help us drive forwards the adoption of Bitcoin.
0:25:48
And absolutely, like I’m a Bitcoin maximalist.
0:25:51
I think that Bitcoin treasury companies
0:25:53
are at best going to be a place for capital
0:25:57
that’s basically regulated out of Bitcoin self-custody.
0:26:00
At worst, I’m very skeptical of their ability
0:26:02
to actually not completely incinerate capital.
0:26:07
ETFs, that you don’t actually own Bitcoin.
0:26:10
And Bitcoin on a crypto exchange,
0:26:11
well, that’s probably the worst place you can possibly be.
0:26:14
So helping families actually own, steward,
0:26:19
take care of their wealth,
0:26:21
that is a genuine lifelong passion.
0:26:23
And I think this is the way to do it.
0:26:25
So every conversation that I have
0:26:26
will help to improve the market intelligence database.
0:26:29
And every new insight
0:26:31
makes the Bitcoin custody architect better.
0:26:33
So head over to jakewoodhouse.io forward slash BCA
0:26:37
to have a look at the offer and its latest stance.
0:26:40
You can reach out to me on any of the socials.
0:26:43
And yeah, look, this is version one.
0:26:45
I’m doing my best to listen.
0:26:46
I’ll do my very best in the future to listen.
0:26:50
And who knows where that’s going to go,
0:26:52
but version two will be even more interesting than version one.
0:26:56
So thanks so much for your time today.
0:26:58
It’s been awesome to present this to you.
0:26:59
and yeah, what an experience and what a ride this is.
0:27:02
So cheers and have a great day.