Bitcoin Security and Scarcity Are For Everyone

Welcome back to Mind Over Money. I'm Kevin Cook, your field guide and storyteller for the fascinating arena of Behavioral Economics.

Kevin Cook, author of the new book Family Office: Complete Guide to Setting Up a Family Office and Legacy Planning, interview Trey Sellers, Vice President of Sales at Unchained, on securing bitcoin for optimal inheritance planning, loans, and legacy solutions.

Listen to the interview in full on the Mind Over Money podcast.

Kevin Cook: Welcome back to Mind Over Money. I'm Kevin Cook, your field guide and storyteller for the fascinating arena of Behavioral Economics.

In this episode, I sat down with a Wall Street veteran who now spends his days helping high-net-worth individuals, families, and business owners to secure their Bitcoin for optimal inheritance planning, loans, and legacy solutions.

Trey Sellers has worked for Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, and MetLife where he specialized in technology consulting and back-office systems. At the investment bank Truist, he worked on the capital markets trading floor running risk analysis and P&L models for multi-asset institutional portfolios.

Trey is now a Vice President of Sales for Unchained. Unchained offers a suite of financial and custody services designed to, in their words, “protect your bitcoin with cold storage -- that you control.” Clients also get access to other services including trading, inheritance planning, loans, and Bitcoin IRAs. Unchained helps thousands of individuals and businesses by securing nearly $10 billion worth of Bitcoin.

If you don't consider yourself HNW, don't worry 'cause I'm not either. Recall that Forbes, in their original definition of “rich” for the “400” list, used to define it as “$10 million net worth and $1 million in annual income.” Now I think everyone on the list is a billionaire.

In the conversation with Trey, you are still going to learn a lot about the Bitcoin investment frontier that will apply to you as you build your own family legacy and inheritance plans. You should take away key questions that you can ask your financial advisors about Bitcoin and your own “family office.”

Trey helps us navigate terminology like “on-chain,” self-custody, and cold storage. And he lays out the importance of knowing how you own and secure your Bitcoin, whether you bought some in a Coinbase (COIN) or Robinhood (HOOD) account, or you’re using a hardware wallet and private keys.

There were three highlights in my conversation with Trey that I want to preview. First, was how he seized the moment at Truist to teach the staff at all levels about what he thought was coming with Bitcoin after the “halving” in 2020. He built a slide deck he titled “Bitcoin for Bankers” which made its way throughout the organization and made him an authority as interest grew during the rally to $69,000 in 2021.

Second, as he was explaining the services of Unchained and how they openly work with your financial advisors -- legal, tax, planning, estate -- to create sound structures and procedures, he said it’s like building your own “personal Fort Knox.”

The third highlight with Trey is how he has adapted the FIRE concept of "Financial Independence, Retire Early" to the ultimate freedom asset.

You can jump right into the podcast linked above and hear Trey's story in his own words, but be sure to come back to this article as I have some goodies for you.

Since I've been in financial markets for three decades, I tend to notice a big divide between the “youngsters” who grew up with Bitcoin just like smartphones, and the traditional finance or “tradfi” folks (like me) who studied the new asset class for years and one day finally realized the true power of Bitcoin (btw, I still capitalize the B just like the Internet as a unique technology protocol).

The first group tends to be tech-savvy and skeptical about old institutions, while my group can be full of late-adopters who understand the fiat monetary system that got us to the day where we said "Wow, this digital gold is really an entirely new and compelling asset class that can compete with barbarous gold and money printing!"

Trey Sellers is a bridge in the middle of these two broad groups. You can follow him on X @ts_hodl for excellent education and wry wit to understand why.

Even Michael Saylor, the current champion of "hodling" (buying, “holding on for dear life” and never selling) didn't “get Bitcoin” until 2020.

My story of "getting Bitcoin" is summarized in this 9-minute video...

To symbolize the “speed of light” power of Bitcoin as a digital asset, I tried to make the message only 8.33 minutes long, the time it takes the Sun's light to reach Earth.

I wish I could say I borrowed the “Bitcoin for [insert professional audience]…” idea from Trey because that means I might be further along on my Bitcoin accumulation journey by now!