Bitcoin for Nonprofits: Why ignoring Bitcoin is bad stewardship

What does Bitcoin have to do with your nonprofit? More than you might think.

In this episode, Graeme sits down with Adam O'Brien — CEO and founder of Bitcoin Well, the world's first publicly traded non-custodial Bitcoin company — for a conversation that challenges nonprofit leaders to rethink their relationship with money. From the broken global monetary system to the largest wealth transfer in human history, Adam makes the case for why ignoring Bitcoin may be one of the riskiest things your organization can do.

They explore why inflation is silently eroding your donor base's purchasing power, how the millennial wealth transfer is reshaping the future of charitable giving, what a Bitcoin treasury strategy could look like for a nonprofit, and how organizations can start exploring Bitcoin in a practical, low-risk way — one quarter at a time.

This episode is equal parts philosophical and practical. Whether you're Bitcoin-curious or a total skeptic, this conversation will challenge you to ask: in five years, when the world asks why you didn't take Bitcoin seriously — what will your answer be?

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Graeme's LinkedIn
Bitcoin Well
Anthem Creative

Creators and Guests

Host

Graeme Watt

Co-owner of Anthem Creative

What is Amplify Good Podcast?

Welcome to the Amplify Good Podcast, brought to you by Anthem Creative. We’ve spent the last decade helping hundreds of nonprofits build stronger brands, launch engaging campaigns that raise millions, and navigate how to tell their story in a rapidly changing digital world.

In this podcast we share what we’ve learned along the way and feature conversations with expert guests on the leading edge of nonprofit marketing tackling topics like leadership, storytelling, exponential technology, strategy, fundraising, and how to navigate change to amplify impact and become more human.

Welcome to the Amplify Good Podcast, a podcast for nonprofit leaders brought to you by Anthem

Creative. We've spent the last decade helping hundreds of nonprofits build stronger brands,

launch engaging campaigns that raise millions, and navigate how to tell their story in a rapidly

changing digital world. Now, on this podcast, we share what we've learned along the way, but we

also feature conversations with expert guests who are on the leading edge of nonprofit marketing. We

tackle topics like leadership, storytelling, exponential technology, strategy, fundraising and

everything in between and focus on how to navigate change in order to amplify impact and

ultimately to become more human.

So today's episode is a little bit of a longer one. We're talking about Bitcoin today. I think

it's a topic that is incredibly valuable and important for nonprofit leaders to be wrestling

with. If this is something that is new to you that's unfamiliar, or something that you've maybe

been considering and have some questions about and aren't sure what to do with it, this is

definitely the episode for you. We've brought Adam O'Brien on the show. Adam is the CEO and founder

of Bitcoin. Well, the world's first publicly traded bitcoin company. He is a wealth of knowledge when

it comes to all things Bitcoin. We explore the changes in the global monetary system, why

nonprofit leaders should care about bitcoin, and how they can practically go about embracing it

and adopting it as part of their strategy. There's so much that we explore in here, I hope you stick

with it to the end. There's a couple questions that Adam asked that I think are so vital for

every nonprofit leader to wrestle with and ultimately have an answer to. And I was challenged

by the episode. I think you will be as well, so hopefully you get some value from it. Welcome back

to the Amplify Good podcast. I'm here with Adam O'Brien. Adam, love having you on the show today.

Really excited about this conversation. Dude, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. So let

me set this up a little bit. I'll say this is probably going to differ from most of the

conversations that we have on the podcast. Most of our guests are nonprofit leaders, people that are,

you know, non nonprofit adjacent as consultants or people that are serving the nonprofit sector. You

are the CEO and founder of a publicly traded Bitcoin company. And so this conversation

is going to be a little bit outside the pocket of what we normally talk about. But I think I think

it's actually really relevant in something that is is vital for nonprofit leaders to be thinking

about and talking about. So really excited for this conversation. We've known each other for a

number of years. And so I thought, can we bring someone on to talk about the future of money and

where is the world going and what's happening in the global monetary system. And you were the top

of my list, so I'm excited to have you here. Thanks, man. Yeah I'm honored. Yeah, I think it's the money

is changing always. And, you know, I was actually thinking about this yesterday, uh, on a on a

different podcast. Talk talk talking about the concept of time and how when everything that is

in the world when you're born is just normal and that's just the way things are. And then up until

you turn about 30, 33, I just turned 33. And so that's kind of like my age, where I'm starting to

see things introduced into the world and I'm like, ooh, this is this is feeling not so good. But then,

you know, as you get older, things that are introduced become bad or or, you know, not normal.

And it's really hard to keep that your pulse on the change because the change doesn't stop. And

the only thing that stops is really our ability to adopt the change. And so thinking about what

money is going to look like for our grandkids is a really important and interesting exercise. Yeah,

100%. So let me give a bit of backstory here. 2013. Um, you know, like 4 or 5 years after Bitcoin

launches, you are how old at that point? Probably just out of high school and you're trying to buy

Bitcoin, finding it incredibly frustrating. And you know, you think to yourself there's got to be a

better way. I even read that you were like sitting in coffee shops, meeting people in coffee shops in

2013 and like selling them bitcoin. And so like this is when it was kind of like crazy internet

money and nobody really knew what it was. And then that was the catalyst for you starting the first

Bitcoin ATM company here in Alberta. And then you went on to be the first publicly traded

non-custodial bitcoin company. So like walk me through a bit of the backstory in the journey

there of how you got to where you are. Yeah I mean, just a just an interesting journey of me just

generally being curious and learning more about Bitcoin every, every day. And still to this day,

I've been in Bitcoin longer than 99% of the world, and I'm still learning so much about it. And it's

just so interesting, this this protocol, this idea that money isn't just sanctioned

from other men that sit in power at a moment in time. It is truly, you know, a universal concept

that we all agree which which kind of comes back to this, this concept of like stored time. And it's,

you know, we all go to work, we all produce value, and then we all want to have value to spend at

some point in the future. And we're constantly humanity for thousands of years has just

constantly been hunting for a tool to be able to do that. And Bitcoin looks like the best tool that

we've ever had. In order to do that. So I you know, I wasn't this like philosophical or understanding

this in my 20s or, you know, I was 19 when I found Bitcoin. I thought it was a joke. And so I just

start being like, I'm going to be the hero that disproves Bitcoin. And then I learned more about

it and I'm like, oh wow. Well I thought that was a scam. But actually that makes a lot of sense. So

what about this? And it's like, oh no. Well that ends up being true. And like, well the encryption

can't be that good. It's like, oh no, this is the most powerful encryption known to man. Like I

actually saw this chart and it was the how Bitcoin is is protected, is encrypted

is unimportant. But it's called it's 256 bit encryption. And you think you might think 256.

That's not very big. But it is the the chance of breaking Bitcoin is the same as

guessing the exact atom out of all of the atoms on the Earth. That's that's the

level of protection that Bitcoin has. And it's just so amazing. Um, how this

technology has, has evolved from shiny rocks, you know, for our ancestors into now, you know, gold and

then into into Bitcoin. Yeah, I think it was about four years ago I read the Bitcoin standard. And

that was kind of like I started hearing about bitcoin. You know I was looking at it trying to

figure out what it was and if it was something I should pay attention to or care about. And then I

kept hearing people talk about, you know, this book, the Bitcoin Standard. And it just like I digested

it so quickly, it fascinated me like the march through the history of money from the very

beginning. Like the first, you know, like traceable, um, you know, currencies that existed and then all

the way up to Bitcoin and to where we are today. It's absolutely fascinating. If you are at all

curious, listening to this about Bitcoin, I highly recommend that as a starting point, it will walk

you through the entire history of money, what money is and why it matters, and how it's evolved

over time, and then why Bitcoin matters in this equation. So I'll set the stage a little bit, Adam,

because I want to get really practical for our listeners here too. This is a nonprofit podcast,

and so most of our listeners are nonprofit leaders or, you know, marketing directors at

nonprofit organizations. And, you know, the majority of those organizations are fundraising

organizations, which means they have a mission that they are carrying out, and they are reliant

on the generosity of individuals and donors and foundations and philanthropists to fuel and fund

the mission. And so there's this this dynamic relationship that they have with with money and

with funding. And essentially funding is what makes the world go round when I, you know, when I

worked at World Vision, one of the phrases internally that went around is like revenue is

World Vision's love language, and it is the it is the heartbeat and the pulse of the organization.

Without it, the work that they're doing, you know, as remarkable and beautiful and needed as it is,

it goes away. And so, you know, the reliance upon on donors is a is a, you know, prominent reality for

most of our listeners. And so, you know, I think a conversation around the state of money and what

is the evolution of money and why does Bitcoin matter in the midst of that? What's happening to

the global economy? And what are the shifts that we're currently seeing in, in, you know, the global

economic structures that, you know, will have an impact on nonprofit organizations that leaders

need to be be thinking about. So I'd love to dive into that just at a very high level. Like, what are

you seeing? What are you studying when it comes to the global monetary system? What are the changes

and shifts that are happening and how does Bitcoin fit into that equation? Yeah. Money. Money

at its at its core, um, is very broken right now. And, and you can see that manifesting in

in many different ways. I mean peop families if you look like let's look 50 years back, you know,

50 years ago a single income household of like a pretty blue collar, you know, fair paying job was

fine for house ownership. You know, wife could stay home, raise some kids groceries on the table, you

know, a car that runs and you could have some, some activities. Um, and you look forward to today and,

and right now there are I mean, and I think your listeners will agree with this, like there are

households that have two working parents not able to do groceries in a house that's too small,

probably, maybe can't even afford a house. And, you know, there's all kinds of different accusations

being thrown around. But the root of that is the fact that the system that we save our dollars in,

that we save our value in, in dollars is, is broken. And there are new dollars constantly coming into

the equation, which makes the existing dollars worth a lot less. That's the concept of, of

inflation. And so you kind of have to have to work twice for your savings. You have to work once to

earn it. Then you have to be incredibly disciplined not to spend it all in one go, but

then you have to almost gamble it or invest it in order to maintain it. Because if you keep dollars

under your mattress, uh, it's a losing game. You are guaranteed to lose. You know, they tell us it's

about 5%, but it's closer to about 10% of the year. Yeah. And so you look at that and you think, okay,

if I work really hard, I stay really disciplined and then I save my money, I lose 15% of my

purchasing power. This is a broken type of economy. Yeah. Michael. So you have. Kind of the melting ice

cube phenomenon, right? It's like the melting ice cube phenomenon. It's I think Jeff Booth maybe

coined that before sailor, but, uh, and Jeff Boots, a fellow Canadian, by the way. Um, a good a b c boy. Um,

he wrote another great book for your listeners. Uh, The Price of Tomorrow explains this concept

really well. And and, yeah, this melting ice cube phenomenon. And so what do you do? And it creates

this misaligned incentive system where if you're holding a bucket of melting ice cubes, you're

incentivized to spend them before they go away, before they disappear completely, which creates

short term thinking, which erodes long term saving, long term projections. And I mean, for a not for

profit, if you've got an entire society who's only focused on the short term, why am I investing in

the work that your non-for-profit is doing? because I don't care about the future. I'm not

even thinking about the future. I'm so incentivized to only look at next month or next

quarter, maybe next year. But forget next decade, forget the next generation. I don't care about

them. And so but when you've got a proper monetary standard, when you've got money that's rooted in

physics and in in preserving value, and you do that through to a few different ways, this kind of

this concept of money. But one of the most important ones to preserve value is scarcity. And

so when you have this concept of scarcity behind the finance, behind the money, then you do start

thinking long term. Um, one of the things that Bitcoiners say and I, I have it on the back of my

not this one, I don't think. But like most of my T-shirts on the back, say, stack SATs, which is just

like a, like slang for buy Bitcoin for your last name, not for your first name. And this concept of

buying Bitcoin for your last name really right sizes your mindset. Because if I've bought a bunch

of bitcoin for my last name, which implies like my kids, but also my grandkids and my great grandkids.

Why am I buying a Lamborghini? Right? Why am I? Why am I doing anything that's kind of like self

selfish? I don't I don't need a third home. I don't need a, you know, a a garage full of cars and boats.

I've got this savings technology for my grandkids. Why would I strip that from them? So that I can

look at a garage full of useless things and. And that society who like, that's not that's an

unstoppable society. Because I care about investing in companies and in organizations that

are going to make a better world for my grandkids and for my great grandkids. And one of the things

that I that I just think about nonstop is my great, great granddaughter. What would the world

look like for her? Because for like, I'm going to be I'm going to be really old when I've got a

great, great granddaughter. Right. Um, but thinking about her forced me to make decisions that have a

century kind of outlook. And that's what the proper monetary system can do for the world. Yeah,

there's something really, I think, powerful in that for nonprofit leaders, too. Like, I was talking with

Bob Goff last year about this, and he he was telling me about these certain tribes that he's,

you know, studied that make decisions and they filter decisions at the tribal level through the

lens of what will this mean for four generations from now? And, you know, he kind of really

challenged me. Bob was like saying, hey, how can you be thinking that way? How can you be making

decisions today through the lens of what will this mean in three, four, or five generations? And I

think for nonprofit leaders, if you're talking about, you know, the sustainability of of your your

work and of your mission, you know, how can you make decisions and filter it through the lens of

what will this look like in three generations? And how can we set up the organization to be thriving

in three generations? And I think Bitcoin, you know, as far as the monetary system is shifting and

changing and everyone's feeling that as well, right? Like the melting ice cube is not just real

for individuals. It's also very real for nonprofit organizations. If they're sitting on a, you know, an

endowment fund, or you have a Treasury strategy within the nonprofit organization. Um, you know,

Raoul Powell calls it the hurdle rate. Like you, you have to beat the hurdle rate of 11%. You know,

on your endowment in order to just stay at par regardless, you know, like, let alone actually make

it make a gain. And so I think there's. Which is risk, right. Like 5% that amount of risk and

gambling on an endowment fund. It it it tends towards these organizations being forced into an

irresponsible move because you are if you don't like I mean, look at the look at the parable of

the talents. Right. If all you do is bury it, you lose. Yeah. And so you're forced to gamble it and

then trust other people in order to grow it rather than just, you know, relying on, uh,

technology and, and, and proper financial incentives. So let me. Okay. Let's talk about

gambling for a second. Like, I'll push back on that a little bit, because a common perspective with,

with bitcoin and cryptocurrency is like it's gambling, right? They would see that as the risky

play, right? So. And I'll get into it now I'll just tell the story. Let's get it out of the way. I was

on the board of a nonprofit organization. I won't I won't give names. Um, and we found ourselves in a

position where there was an asset that the organization was holding that had been sold. And

so we had this sort of this unexpected, you know, capital land on our balance sheet. And there was,

you know, I think $60,000 at the time. And there was a conversation with the board of like, what

should we do with this $60,000? And, you know, at the time, this was probably four years ago. Bitcoin

was sitting around $25,000. And I, you know, kind of made the suggestion. I said, hey, what if we were to

invest in Bitcoin as a long term play where this would be something that would, you know, hold its

value and not get eroded away and that would, you know, potentially increase in value over time. And

the looks that I got in the room like it was it was like deer in headlights was was an

understatement. It was just people kind of looking at me like, is he serious? And they thought I was

joking. And so it kind of like, you know, slowly turned into laughter around the table. And I was

like, no, no, no, I'm I'm not I'm serious. And it was kind of like dismissed out of hand because it was

like, that's the stupidest thing that we could possibly do. Like, so, you know, you talk about about,

you know, risk and taking a gamble. A lot of people and people listening to this podcast would

probably perceive and look at Bitcoin as, you know, extreme risk and volatility. So talk to me about

that a little bit. Yeah. Well so I don't think risk and volatility are the same thing. I also would

we throw around these these words like gamble like because I mean dude you've been in Bitcoin

for like 13 years as as I have. You've you've heard it all okay. There's nothing that I haven't

heard about about Bitcoin. And one thing I always ask and I and I frankly love those conversations

because I'm of the belief that, um, you know, I'm right about Bitcoin being the future of money. But

if I'm wrong, I want to know really soon because I am kind of dedicating my life. And you know, all of

my eggs are in this basket kind of thing. So if I'm wrong, I want someone to point it out. And and

so when I have these conversations and they say, oh, that is a huge gamble, that's irresponsible.

Bitcoin is not good. And I say, okay, um, why and and can you please define that for me. And they say,

well it's risky, you know, because of x, y and z. And some of the examples include it doesn't have a

long time history. And it's like, okay, sure. No it doesn't. But, you know, neither did anything before

it but before it began. So let's maybe look at fundamentals. What do we want our monetary system

to look like. And if we removed bias and you explained really any

financial system and included Bitcoin in that Bitcoin looks like the number one financial

system on paper. And as long as the market is governed by physics and

math, then Bitcoin is the best asset on the planet because it is

sufficiently decentralized, meaning no single entity can change their minds and change the

rules and it's sufficiently distributed, meaning everyone has equal and fair access

to it. Um, it really sucks that us as Canadians can't access the US dollar, as the Canadian dollar,

you know, disappears. And you know, and I'm being I'm being hyperbolic there, obviously. But as the

Canadian dollar gets worse and worse, like I remember a time when I was a kid when the U.S.

dollar was nearly par for the US dollar. Uh, today it's a buck 35. A buck 37. Um, that's

like, how is that for volatility, right. And volatility in the wrong direction. And I don't

think anyone is sitting here thinking, oh, well, the fundamentals of the Canadian dollar are so strong.

And so it's bound to return. It's bound to recover. Um, you know and comparing that, you know, looking

at even oil, you look at oil in its volatility. and I would think the opposite happens. People see the

value in oil. They understand how energy works. They understand why energy is important. And I

mean, we're using energy right now to stream this conversation. To film this conversation. I've got

lights on. You've got lights on. Cameras like we understand that energy exists. We're spending our

our mental and physical energy to have this conversation. So humans understand that energy is

an important thing, and we need to somehow force or save that energy. And and we need tools to do

that. And so thinking about the way that, um, companies and organizations save and store that

energy, you have to start looking at the fundamentals, not just the history, because the

history if you if all you did was invest based off of historical things, then, you know, you'd be

looking at, uh, I don't know, letter mail as the number one conversation piece and and you'd have

horse and buggy as like horse and buggies have a, have a longer history of travel than cars. Are

cars bad and worse than horse and buggy? No, of course not. They're faster and and certainly more

fuel efficient and all this stuff. And so it's like we have to look at the fundamentals of why

we think certain things are risky or bad or won't work. And when you do that, it's really, really hard

to ignore Bitcoin. Yeah. One of the things that I'm wrestling with now, and I think it taps into what

you're saying here, is like one of the big critiques of Bitcoin is like, well, it's not backed

by anything, right. Like you know, when you have gold, there's like it's backed by gold. So there's

a physical asset. There's something that you can, you know, touch and feel that it's backed by. You

know, when you, you know, earn money and take out a loan from the bank, it's kind of, you know, backed

by the banking system or by the government. And so Bitcoin is backed by nothing. The most compelling

response that I've heard to this is that it's actually backed by the most valuable commodity in

the world right now, which is energy. And so, you know, when we look at AI and what's happening and

the need and the demand for energy and, you know, the future that we're heading into is massively

energy intensive. Bitcoin has this distributed network of people that are securing the network

and contributing to the network that are backing that network with energy, which is the most

valuable resource that that the world has right now. And so, you know, I think it actually

strengthens the case for Bitcoin when you look at it through that lens. I want to get out of the

weeds a little bit on this, Adam, and start talking about what does this mean for a nonprofit

organization. Why should a nonprofit leader listening to this care at all? And, you know, as we

look at the shifts in the monetary system, one of the phrases that I hear often is like, governments

will never stop printing money. And I think, you know, when you look at, you know, debasement of

currency, you talk about, you know, the Canadian dollar being devalued. You see this hyperinflation

in other countries and all over the world. You can see this throughout history as well. You know, a

nation's currency going to zero. And in those environments, Bitcoin's use case is is far more

pronounced. But I think when you're talking to, you know, a nonprofit leader in North America. About

this. Um. Why should they care about this? Why would this be relevant to them at all when they're just

trying to, you know, they're trying to hit their their targets and their fundraising goals, and

they're just focused on engaging their donors and hitting their budget. So, like, why should they be

considering bitcoin, thinking about it or wasting any time or energy with it? And there's two

reasons. Um, the first reason that I would say is more philosophical. Um, the reason that all non

for profit leaders of these organizations should be fans of Bitcoin, even if they can't get their

organizations or don't get their organizations to actually adopt Bitcoin. Although I think that's

important and I want to touch on that in a second. Yeah I think they should be fans of Bitcoin and

they should want to usher in a Bitcoin standard. Um, because it encourages a society that cares

deeply about the future. And I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to understand that

societies that care about the future give to organizations that do good work for the future.

And so me in this is the concept of time preference. If you have a have a high time

preference, you value the present more than you value the future. This is a high time preference

and you're not giving like the only reason you gave is for a tax break, right? It's just a selfish

reason to get. And sure, um, that aligns some incentives pretty well. But I

like you. You want the donor that cares about the future and wants more than the tax break. He's

going to actually audit your organization, see that you're doing good work. You want the ability

to do good work and then receive more money. So you can do more of that, of that good work. And a

society rooted in a Bitcoin standard is that society. Because we have that long term

perspective, we have that long term thinking, and we generally want and genuinely want a

better world for our great, great granddaughters. And thinking about it in that way, if you did

nothing else, you only just adopted the thinking of a Bitcoin, or in that way

the world would be far better. So I think that's kind of the first and foremost. More philosophical

than anything else, but practically speaking, understanding that you have to gamble your money

in order to keep it is a fool's errand. And so figuring out where to store your value becomes

really one of the most important things that you can do to get off the machine, to get off this

kind of hamster wheel of, you know, oh, we have a project. Oh, we have to go ask more people who are

experiencing the same pains that we are for more money. And as things get more expensive, that will

get increasingly difficult. And so seeing an organization adopt Bitcoin really means

saving and budgeting in longer time horizons, because the big there are cycles in Bitcoin and

they generally go about five years. And so if you look at a five year budget, do you have the

ability to withstand that five year budget, really stretching that time horizon. And then on top of

that thinking, what can we live without in that time, in that time span, and how can we save it?

Because I have tasked people to have this kind of like 9010 rule where if you

saved 10% of your of your savings budget in Bitcoin, then in ten

years it will become 90% of your savings just because of the way that Bitcoin grows so

exponentially. And so for an organization saving, you know, value saving dollars, saving money,

saving in Bitcoin becomes incredibly important because you want to have an outlook on the

future that is so great that you believe that the fundamentals of sound money will prevail, and that

your organization saving in Bitcoin will allow for better purchasing power in the future. Mhm.

Yeah. And I think from a stewardship perspective. So that's one of the big conversations in the

nonprofit world right. Is is stewardship of donor resources. What is the best way for us to take

this money that's been entrusted to us by an individual or by a family officer foundation and

put it to use for the greatest impact possible. And I think some of that is like, if you can take

some of that money and put it into Bitcoin as a treasury strategy, and that strengthens the

backbone of the organization's financial reality for many years to come. I think, you know, it's very

strategic. It's also one of those things that, to me represents really good stewardship. Now, I think

there's a ton to unpack in that too. Like the whole donor education side of things, most people

don't understand that. And if they knew that a nonprofit was putting money into Bitcoin that

they had donated, there would probably be some explaining to do. So I think there's a lot of work

to do there. There's a long way to go, but there are some organizations that are innovating in

this space that are recognizing this and that are seeing, you know, the way that this is trending. And

I think, you know, when you look at the adoption of Bitcoin by by Wall Street and some of the largest,

you know, funds and wealth managers in the world, when you look at the US government, you know,

starting to move in that direction with this strategic Bitcoin reserve, you look at, you know, El

Salvador and what Nayib Bukele has been doing over there, and how they're transforming the

economic backbone of an entire nation by using this asset. I think it would be. It would be naive

and foolish for nonprofit organizations not to at least be thinking about this and considering it

and, you know, tasking someone within the organization to explore this and to take a look

at what are some of the use cases and ways that the organization could leverage that. Because I

think when we're seeing more competition for donor dollars, um, you know, what you do with those

donor dollars can become a big part of your strategic advantage. And one of the things that

creates additional, you know, kind of security and sustainability for the organization when it comes

to the long term viability of the work that you do. So, to me, this is this is a vital conversation.

And I'm so excited that, you know, we're able to have it. I think, you know, and this is my my plea

to people listening to this, not to dismiss this, um, you know, to to take the journey for yourself. I

think, you know, Bitcoin is best explored and discovered, you know, on your own. And so my, my

challenge maybe would be to dedicate even just four hours, you know, to to studying Bitcoin. Maybe

it is to read the bitcoin standard and understand the fundamentals of it. And maybe it's, you know, to

watch some YouTube videos or read some articles or maybe even read the Bitcoin white paper and

understand what it is and how it works. Because as the world is trending and becoming more digital

day by day, and as we're seeing, you know, the, the collapse of of currencies and the ongoing

inflation with global crises and the shifts in the monetary or the global monetary system, I

think this is going to become a more prominent conversation and something that is, you know, and I

guess what I don't want is nonprofit leaders to look back in 2030, 20, 35 with regret and say, I

heard Adam and Graham talking about Bitcoin on this podcast eight years ago, and I dismissed it.

And, you know, now Bitcoin is sitting at 1.5 million per coin. And we had the opportunity to

embrace that as part of our Treasury strategy and weave it into our endowment funds somehow. And and

we missed out on that, and our organization could have benefited from it because at the end of the

day, it's really just about and this is our, you know, anthem, as an agency, our core mandate is

amplifying the impact of organizations pursuing human flourishing. And, you know, I see this

conversation as being really, really relevant when it comes to that. Um, let me throw something else

that you, Adam, and then I want to start landing the plane a little bit more practically here. But

there's this other looming reality in the background that I think a lot of nonprofits know,

um, about. They're aware of it. They're thinking about it. Some are far more, you know, in tune to

this than others. But, you know, we talked to so many nonprofit leaders who, you know, behind closed

doors, um, will say, hey, you know, here's the real the real difficult challenge for us right now,

the majority of our donors are 70 plus, right. And we are incredibly reliant on

them. You know, most of their major donors, which means they make up about 40% of the organizations,

you know, budgets and revenue are, you know, 65, 70 plus. That's a reality that they

can't shake. We have so many organizations and nonprofits coming to us saying, we need your help

to engage younger donors. We have to take our, you know, loyal 70 plus year old donors who have been

giving for the last 20 years to our organization. We have to find a way to engage their kids. We

have to find a way to engage millennials and younger generations. Otherwise, we won't exist in

15 years. And that's one of the harsh realities that exist there. You know, what that essentially

means is that we are, you know, and this is currently underway. But the largest transfer of

wealth in the history of humankind is currently happening in the background. And so you have large

amounts of capital that are flowing to younger generations. Those generations are digital natives.

Those generations are people who are far more comfortable with, you know, um, online banking and

far more comfortable with, you know, digital forms of money. And a lot of those are also very

comfortable with Bitcoin. And so I think, you know, in ten years from now, 15 years from now, when that

capital has flowed to the younger generations, organizations that don't have a Bitcoin strategy

or that are not thinking about digital assets or haven't implemented something now, I think Will

will miss out. And I think the ones that do will benefit from that greatly. So I'd love to get your

take on this whole concept of wealth transfer and money moving to younger generations who are far

more comfortable with with what we're talking about here. Dude, you nailed it. I think to

something you said off the top is, I think what perfectly sums up this mindset, which is there is

a responsibility to to stewarding these funds, and it is at this point in time

irresponsible not to make a decision on Bitcoin. And when I say that, I mean having a

very good reason to not adopt Bitcoin. Uh, because there is I think Unless your

organization is the type that just lives and and runs year by year. If you have any

understanding of the future in your organization, and you have any desire to be a decade or a

generational organization, then ignoring Bitcoin is incredibly irresponsible because Bitcoin has

proven to be the best asset for generations. And now, as we tie into this donor base that is now

transitioning. First of all, it is the millennial generation that is really driving Bitcoin

adoption. It's the millennial generation that adopted it first. It's the millennial generation

that, you know, what we call orange pilled Wall Street. It was the millennial voter bloc that got

President Trump talking about Bitcoin and and bringing in a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And now

Kelly is an elder millennial individual who was the first country to adopt

Bitcoin. And no one can look at all. I mean look at the look at the the prosperity that has come to

El Salvador since adopting Bitcoin. And you compare that to, you know, countries in a similar

position looking at Venezuela as an example, which just completely evaporated. Um, and there's lots of

different factors that, that, that run into that. But it's the mindset behind Bitcoin that is that

is driving lots of these decisions. And so as, as organizations look from, oh my goodness, 85 year

old donors passing away, leaving enormous amounts of wealth to a 40 year old, um,

family who, first of all, 40 year old family. There's kind of two options there. One who has

is not financially stable or set at all and is just going to blow it. And so, you know, part of me

wants to maybe suggest like education on what is a struggling family living on, you know,

$150,000 household income, who that should be a great income. And they can't really, you know,

navigate this world or at least what they thought they could navigate in this world. How do they. How?

How does. How does an organization educate those people? And I think it would go a long way to

provide value in that way and show how show how they can, you know, steward money properly. Lots of

these people are going to be people of faith. Um, and, and lots of them are going to, I think, really

value receiving education for what do I do with a large sum of money? Um, from grandpa, from my dad,

from whomever amongst this crazy world. And so again, it comes back to your organization. Having a

good understanding is to what money is and where the puck is going, right, so to speak. But then

second, on the practical level, like Bitcoiners specifically, we just love donating and giving

money to people that, you know, understand Bitcoin because of the incentives that it aligns. If I

know an organization cares so much about the future, they're willing to forego all of the fear,

Uncertainty and doubt that comes along with being an early adopter to new technology. Um, if I know

that they're willing and they've done the research and they understand Bitcoin because,

again, it is impossible to disprove the physics and fundamentals of Bitcoin. And I

know this because I've been trying to disprove it for 13 years. I just I just can't figure out how

to disprove it. Right. And so when I see an organization that's done the research, I trust

them deeply and I understand deeply why they exist. And and I and I trust that they're going to

have, you know, stewardship at heart. And so even if it's just for the, you know, the crazy early

adopters like myself that, you know, can't figure out how to disprove Bitcoin. And so we jumped on

and decided to, you know, continue building in this ecosystem, even if it's just for us. Um, you know,

Bitcoiners are about to become the wealthiest niche of the population in the world, I think in

the next 20 years. Anyone who's been in Bitcoin for longer than a decade will be some of the

wealthiest, you know, general populations on Earth. And I and I say that as far as like, you know,

compared to entrepreneurs, compared to real estate investors, compared to athletes, compared to, you

know, whatever. And understanding that there's a giant group of people in this world that adopted

a technology that believe it's fundamentally sound and that have dedicated their lives to

building in the ecosystem, understanding how they think and how they talk is probably a pretty

prudent thing to do, because there are a ton of not for profit organizations that have made their

entire organizations around, you know, talking to athletes around, talking to entrepreneurs around,

talking to, you know, inheritance funds, um, figuring out how to talk to the people that understood

sound money very early and adopted it very early, I think is a very prudent thing to do. Come on.

Yeah, I think even just accepting Bitcoin right now, because most organizations don't they don't

have the rails to do that and they haven't thought through. I mean, the technology exists,

right? Like platforms like fundraise up. Even Canada helps like they've rolled out you know the

capability for an organization to at least accept a Bitcoin gift. Um, even doing that signals to the

Bitcoin community, to this group of very, for the most part, innovative outside of the box thinking

long term, you know, like future thinking individuals that you that you align with them

and, you know, so much of charitable giving is about values alignment. It's about wanting to find

organizations who believe what you believe and want to see the same future as you believe needs

to, to be realized. And so I think, you know, having a Bitcoin strategy as a nonprofit organization,

like you said, like if the largest pools of capital are going to be held by Bitcoiners in the

in the years to come, you know, being able to signal to them that you understand them, that you

align with them, that you share the same values, I think is is tremendously valuable as well, even.

Even just just quickly, just to tell that off having a little checkbox on the donation receipt

saying, hey, do you want 10% of this to go into our Bitcoin fund? And here's what the Bitcoin fund

needs. And it's just we're going to hold Bitcoin for no shorter than five years or shorter than

ten years. This is signaling hey this is for long term future growth signaling. Hey we are not going

to sell this at a loss which kind of lines up with the time horizon. Right. And understanding

when we do use this Bitcoin in order to fulfill our mission, we're only going to do so for

these activities. And again it's signaling future. It's signaling vision. It's signaling hey this is

a pool of money we're putting away for a decade. And we think this stuff is going to be important

in a decade. And so we're only going to use it to build that. That is so great for a donor to see. Oh,

great. You know, in in ten years my oldest son will be hitting 20, which is crazy to think about. And I

and thinking to myself, hey, when my son's of age, he'll be able to see the fruits of my donation

ten years ago or today. And that is so good to again thinking in generations. And when you signal

to people that you think in generations the trust just goes way up. And trust is the foundational

building block of charitable giving. It really is people, you know, their hard earned money, they're

entrusting it to organizations. And, you know, trust is the the I think the lifeblood of that

relationship between, you know, especially philanthropic capital and philanthropists and

charities, too. So I love it. This is fantastic, Adam, I want to I mean, we could talk for hours. There's

one more thing that I want to touch on with, with you, just to get really practical to like this

whole realm of, um, Bitcoin treasury strategies. And so this is something that's emerged in the last

number of years, you know, Michael Saylor and strategy kind of pioneered that. Now you've got

Meta Planet in this whole slew of companies in, you know, the corporate world all over the world

that are adopting a Bitcoin treasury strategy. What does it. So first of all, what is it Bitcoin

treasury strategy. And second of all, what does it look like for a nonprofit to take that same

playbook because it's now being proven very effective and implement it into a nonprofit

environment? Yeah. To understand a Bitcoin treasury strategy, you have to first understand how they're

viewing bitcoin. And very simply they're viewing it as a continuation of of of assets. And

so you look at our grandfathers I think you and I are like the same generation. You look at our

grandfathers, maybe great grandfathers. They kind of had gold, right. Uh, for our great grandfathers

especially, you know, gold was the supreme capital to be able to to build wealth and to be able to

preserve wealth. And then all that kind of weird stuff happened with gold and like, you know, in, in

the early 1900s and then, you know, over time, we went through the depression and the wars and

stuff, and then we had real estate and our grandfathers and our parents. They bought real

estate as this supreme ability to to build wealth and to maintain and to and and to grow wealth. And

now there's a bunch of weird stuff, you know, oh, eight happens. There's a bunch of weird stuff

happening with real estate. And, you know, depending on where you live in the world is like, not super

safe to even own real estate. And so what do we have now? And our generation is looking at at

Bitcoin and I think Wall Street and these these early bitcoin treasury companies have understood

that Bitcoin is a continuation of the gold to real estate, to bitcoin, uh, wealth preservation and

capital preservation. And so what they do very simply is they buy bitcoin, they hold bitcoin

and then they monetize that Bitcoin. Now I will will say and come on record,

I actually don't necessarily agree with this concept of a business simply holding Bitcoin as a

business. I believe that treasuries are intended and designed for productive companies, meaning

organizations that can show that they produce profit. Profit being a symbol that you are able to

produce more than you spend. Right. It's like a it's just a it's a metric of productivity. Is is

is profit. It's like, are you a leech or are you a producer? And so for the producers, they have, in my

opinion, earned the right to a treasury. And that Treasury, has to be saved, has to be

safeguarded. And of course, you know, Bitcoin treasuries use Bitcoin to to preserve and to

safeguard that treasury. Now the cool thing about why Bitcoin is such a good treasury asset is

because you or Bitcoin rather you are able with Bitcoin you are able to liquidate it

if you if you need to at a moment's notice. Right. Historically we've used commercial buildings. Big

organizations have used, uh, commercial real estate as a way they go get a mortgage, get a loan. But

like if you've got a levered up commercial building, it is almost impossible to liquidate

that. When times are hard. Right. You got a soft year. You got to, you know, crazy black swan event

even just like you took some time off and the business didn't do as well as you thought it

could. It's very difficult to to tap into your commercial real estate to do that. So then what do

you do? Well, you're forced again with the gambling option. Do you save it in dollars and guaranteed

an 11% loss or do you do you gamble on the markets. And so Bitcoin kind of preserves this

like instant liquidity opportunity where you can you can sell off a of a fraction of your of your

Bitcoin or you can or you can sell it all if you want. But the cool thing about Bitcoin too is

because it's such valuable capital you can actually borrow against it. And so you now have a

treasury asset that you can borrow with no credit checks, no income verifications like it is just

here. Post this bitcoin as collateral and receive and receive dollars for for short term

spending. And so now your treasury becomes monetized. And and I think this is a

relatively new concept because you couldn't just, you know, if you had a treasury sitting in dollars,

you couldn't necessarily borrow against dollars you could borrow against gigs and certain things

like this. But but the gigs were, again, you know, worse than inflation. So it's like it's a really

modern concept to have an asset that grows, Fundamentally speaking. And when I say

fundamentally, I mean the physics and fundamentals of Bitcoin are such that it will preserve capital

into the long in the long term. You have an asset like this that you can hold on your balance sheet,

and that you can borrow against for short term spending. This is a really interesting place in

our financial history to be, because it is better than gold in that like storing gold is very

cumbersome, right? If you're a massive organization, like storing tens of millions of dollars in gold,

I mean, you need a forklift. You need like, laser security and like special fireproof vaults and

security guards and like, all this craziness, but storing tens of millions of dollars in Bitcoin. I

mean, you have institutional grade security built into the bitcoin code, into the Bitcoin software.

And so it's just it's right there. And then being able to monetize and receive short term

value without liquidating your long term asset. It just again becomes better and better

and better because we are rightsizing the financial ship we are. We are financially

incentivizing the world to have aligned incentives through this decentralized and open

source kind of monetary system. And so the Bitcoin treasury platform, I believe, to round that all off,

are profitable companies that are able to save their excess profit

in Bitcoin, and then they're able to use that Bitcoin in the future to fund growth and

operations. This helps you maintain equity. This helps you for rainy days when and as they come.

But most importantly, it signals again to the world that you're a future looking organization.

And again, when an organization thinks in decades, they just last longer. Yeah, right. And it's just

it's just aligning aligning incentives in such an amazing way. So Adam, an executive director,

listening to this right now, and they're going, okay, I get it. What do they do next?

Like, so Like, you know. Like or yourself. Like put on the executive director hat. Like tomorrow you

go and, you know, become the executive director of a nonprofit organization. How do you implement

this? How do you start integrating Bitcoin into your ecosystem in a meaningful way? What does that

look like? Yeah, I feel uniquely equipped to do this because we just went through this with AI in

our organization that we obviously didn't have, and we don't have an AI director. Um, but what I

did was I spun up a committee of just individuals and just said, okay, we're going to meet

weekly Tuesday mornings, we're going to have a coffee every Tuesday, and we're going to just

discuss what we're learning in the AI space. And and I think that's the most important thing. Spend

a quarter, spend three months, you know, 13 meetings, uh, with a designated Bitcoin community or

committee in your organization, people from different, you know, obviously someone from the

finance team, but also someone from marketing, someone from operations, someone from, you know,

donor, uh, relations or I don't know what the positions are, but but I'm sure those kind of

exist. Right. Sales, marketing, finance, operations. Those are kind of just like, I'm sure they exist.

Get one from each department and be like, go read a book. Everyone reads a different book. And let's

meet next week on what have you learned? You know, and come at it from the mindset of let's prove

everyone else wrong. Let's show everyone why Bitcoin won't work for our organization.

Because when you approach with that lens, you're going to be nice and skeptical and and you're

going to create really healthy conversation around, oh no, Bitcoin won't work because it's

volatile. It's like, uh, boss, the dollar is pretty volatile. Like we we can't just assume the dollar

is going to be around here forever. And it's like, okay, you know, next. And you go through this, this

kind of thing and understanding the way your organization thinks and then having your

organization thinking about learning about Bitcoin in a decentralized way and then

converging back to discuss it is going to be going to do wonders. You do that for one quarter.

The next quarter. I think you just play with Bitcoin. Everyone in that committee gets a hundred

bucks and it's like, safeguard it, you know, send it to each other, understand how it works, set up a

wallet. Um go through actually using Bitcoin. And then before the end of the year, you have a team

that's well-read and understands Bitcoin and knows how to use it. And from there, if you've got

the right people in the right seats, you're going to know how it applies to organization. Because

once you understand something so well and you know how to use it. Yeah, I mean, like, that's it.

That's all it is. And I think that's that's where organizations are going to thrive. And it looks

like this big. It looks like this huge piece to bite off this massive,

you know, tuna fish sitting in front of you. It's this big ugly thing that you've heard is

delicious. But you're like, oh, look at this animal. Like, what do I even do with this? but you just, you

know, start to understand it. You start to realize how it works. And then eventually you've got this

beautiful sashimi sitting in front of you that you just get to enjoy. Yeah. And you want to just

take it off one bite at a time? Yeah. I think one of the big hurdles to this is board education. So

I mean, that's maybe a topic for another time. But I think, you know, this is obviously something that

any kind of changes to your Treasury strategy or how like allocating money to Bitcoin would be a

decision that requires, you know, board approval. So there's some governance challenges and issues

there as well. Um, it's certainly not for the faint of heart. I think the most innovative

organizations will hear this and go, oh, I think I think there's something in this that we should

explore. I love your, you know, kind of like progressive, slow recommendation of how this works.

And I think that that gives us something really practical to land on an end here. Um, I'll just

throw it out there. Adam, I feel like you and I need to coauthor a book of, like, bitcoin for

nonprofits. And, you know, I think that that kind of asset, to be able to put that in the hands of your

board and your board chair and say, okay, you know, we're going to spend the next three months as a

board reading this and digesting, you know, Bitcoin and how it might apply to our organization and

then developing a Bitcoin strategy. I think that would be an incredibly valuable asset to to do

the heavy lifting on the education side of things from, you know, someone like yourself who's

obviously deep in the weeds of, you know, the the Bitcoin ecosystem in the world from from a

corporate lens, and then our understanding of, of nonprofit and fundraising and how that that works

as well. So, um, that's for a future conversation. Adam, so, so thankful for you and just your time as

well. Um, I'm so let me ask you a quick question, because I don't know the answer to this. If if a

nonprofit leader is listening to this and they're going, okay, how do I set up, you know, some

institutional wallets for our organization, what does that look like? Is that something that

Bitcoin well, could help them with is like, you know, are you the right person for them to come to

you and say, hey, can you help me think through our Bitcoin strategy based on the services that you

provide at Bitcoin? Well, and and where can they find you and how can they reach out to you. Yeah I

mean it's super timely actually. So we're setting this up in the concept of small business and

small business and, and NPS I think are very similar. And so I am deeply passionate about about

working with not for profits on um, on their Bitcoin strategy. So absolutely reach out to me at

Adam O'Brien on Twitter. Uh, or, or on LinkedIn. Adam O'Brien. Um, either of those, you know, are going to

come to me and we'll be able to get on a call and just just discuss broadly how it looks. And now

I'll preface that with, like, your, your business, your organization probably isn't a special flower

that like, you know, needs this really intricate, unique Bitcoin. It's like, no, no, no, listen, you just

you spend less than you raise and you save that in Bitcoin and you save it for a long time. That's

like that's the gist of what a Bitcoin strategy is. So simple. But it's so simple man. And so yeah.

And then and then yeah as far as like governance and wallet management we're actively building

that out right now. And so it would be really great to hear from business leaders, from

executive directors, from board members. You know, I think it looks a lot like a joint bank account.

You want the same controls you have on a Bitcoin wallet as you do on a bank account. Um, and so

that's kind of what we're building out. But if you're like, no, no, no we need x, Y and Z, um, because

of governance, because of safekeeping, because of donor requirements, whatever. Then. Yeah, we we want

to hear about that. And I would just end off by suggesting and saying, like, understanding that the

risk of, um, your fiduciary duty is to is to safeguard capital and to, as you said, you know,

your mission to, to amplify the future. And, um, it's it's almost I don't think we're quite there yet,

but it is getting really, really close to being fiduciary, irresponsible not to investigate

Bitcoin at this point. I mean, you have the largest country, most powerful country in the entire world

owns Bitcoin. Um, you should at least have a very good reason to explain to your board and to your

and to your donors why you don't. Because if it's like, oh, I thought it was a scam. It's like, well,

we're kind of past that point now. It's a $1.6 trillion asset owned by the most powerful

organization in the world, being adopted by Wall Street, being adopted universally around the world

by people, you know, on the left and the right. Like this is not some political type of movement. This

is left leaning governments, right leaning governments, governments of all flavors, businesses

of all flavors. Wall Street is adopting Bitcoin. I urge you to have a very good reason not to.

Um, so you can explain to your donors why you didn't. Boom. There's your mic.

That's your mic drop moment there, Adam I think I mean that. Yeah, that will ruffle some feathers. I

think it'll challenge people in the best way. And I think that's that's it. You know, I think that's

what I wanted to have this conversation for. That's why I felt like you were the right person

to have this conversation with. You know, like having strong conviction, but also like, I think

even saying what you just said right there is like, you need to have a reason and an explanation.

In five years when people come to you and say, why didn't you adopt Bitcoin? Um, when, when Wall Street

was doing it, when the US government was doing it, when, you know, sovereign wealth funds were doing

it and the signals were clear and they were there, why didn't you? And to have a really good response

to that, I think is key. And if you have a good answer, that's fine. But, you know, I think the

deeper you dig with Bitcoin, it's hard to come up with good answers as to why not. So Adam,

appreciate you man. So grateful for this conversation and thanks for taking the time and

being with us today. Uh, thanks a bunch. Pleasure to be here. And yeah, anyone wants to talk to me about

Bitcoin or any other topic really? Uh, just at Adam O'Brien on Twitter, Adam O'Brien on LinkedIn. And

I'll look forward to it. Love it. We'll link that below. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the Amplify

Good podcast. And hey, if you found this episode valuable, would you share it with someone that you

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