Bitcoin: The Greatest Founder's Coach Out There

Bitcoin has many properties. It's influence on your psyche is probably its most powerful.

Marty's Bent

I had the pleasure of sitting down with my friend Luke Thomas last Friday to record an episode of the TFTC podcast:

Luke has been instrumental in helping me think about how we're building the business side of things at TFTC for a few years now. He's someone I greatly admire and has always been incredibly generous with his time and has been more than willing to knowledge share as it pertains to trends he's seeing in AI, marketing and business building. When you find the time, I highly recommend you check out our discussion. Especially if you're curious to learn about the state of AI, how businesses are applying it correctly and incorrectly, what businesses will thrive moving forward and the intersection of AI and bitcoin.

I won't spoil the whole conversation, but I wanted to expand on one of the topics we discussed; viewing bitcoin as a "founder's coach". This is a concept that we have never articulated in this way, but is core to everything we do at Ten31. If you've been reading this newsletter for long enough I'm going to take it that you've also been holding bitcoin and if you've been holding bitcoin for long enough I'm going to assume that it has rewired your brain in terms of how you approach your personal finances. Once you experience the positive benefits of holding bitcoin as it monetizes and increases in purchasing power, you are inevitably forced to audit everything else in your life that you allocate money to and seriously weigh the opportunity costs.

"Would my money be better spent at the bar, or does it make more sense save some money and buy some bitcoin instead?"

"Should I stretch for that second home we'll only live in for a couple of months a year, or should I buy bitcoin instead?"

"Am I working hard enough? Are there other things I could be doing on the side to make more money to save in bitcoin?"

Bitcoin forces you to see the opportunity cost in everything. The impetus for us creating the Opportunity Cost extension was to help make this process easier and crystal clear.

But, as Luke notes and we viscerally understand at Ten31, this same concept applies to businesses and the founders who run them. Once you put bitcoin on your company's balance sheet, it immediately goes to work as a founder's coach that forces you to considerably weigh opportunity costs, lights a fire of urgency under your ass to scale revenue and profitability as quickly as possible, and - most importantly - think with a very long-term perspective in mind. Every decision is met with the nagging question, "Is this going to help us accumulate more bitcoin?"

We've seen bitcoin's role as a founder's coach have profound effects on the companies we've invested in at Ten31. Many of the companies in our portfolio have raised money, allocated a material portion of their raise to establish a bitcoin treasury, and have had the luxury of not having to go back to the market to raise and dilute their equity. On top of this, with the opportunity cost of capital allocation brought to the fore of every decision made within the company, which has enabled companies to scale revenue and reach profitability with team headcounts that are far smaller than what the startup world has come to expect over the last three decades.

Jack Mallers talks about this a lot in regards to what he and his team have built at Strike. They are six years old, very profitable, scaling extremely fast, have more operational exposure globally than Coinbase and have done so with a head count lower than 100.

The founder's coach feature of bitcoin is profoundly powerful for individual companies. I've seen it up close and personal here at TFTC and across the portfolios of companies we're invested in at Ten31. I can only imagine the compounding second and third order effects on the economy, quality of life and the strength of the human experience when every company runs on a bitcoin standard.

It's fitting that I had this conversation with Luke on Friday and committed to writing about this part of our conversation today because I just landed in Utah for our annual Ten31 portfolio company retreat. I'll be spending the next few days with the Ten31 team and executives from our portfolio to expand on this idea, many others and how we can work harder and smarter to bring about a bitcoin standard.

We're going to win.

This Will Be the "Most Hated Rally" of the Next Decade

Jeff Walton predicts Bitcoin treasury strategies will spark the most despised market rally of the next decade. He argues this hatred stems from a fundamental clash of worldviews - traditional finance professionals can't grasp why companies should hold Bitcoin, while many Bitcoiners don't understand sophisticated leverage strategies. This creates a perfect storm of misunderstanding from both camps.

"Risk is mispriced globally... I think there will be a risk repricing over time that is just going to confuse so many people."- Jeff Walton

Walton believes these strategies are fundamentally reshaping finance by demonstrating that Bitcoin-backed securities offer superior risk-adjusted returns compared to traditional corporate debt. As more companies adopt these strategies and outperform traditional investments, the entire financial world will be forced to reconsider basic assumptions about value, risk, and corporate treasury management - a painful but necessary evolution.

Check out the full podcast here for more on M&A strategies, Bitcoin-backed credit instruments and S&P 500 inclusion dynamics.

Headlines of the Day

BLS Halts Data if US Government Shuts Down

Bitcoin Credit Enables Free Market Soft Landing

Momentum Builds on COVID Vaccine Exposures

Coinbase CEO Bullish on Legislation

Gold Hits All-Time High Above $3830

Bitcoin Has Crossed the Rubicon

This extended $75k–$110k range has caused some to wonder if the bull run is exhausted. But what if the on-chain evidence tells a totally different story? Join James Check (Checkmate of Checkonchain) and Connor Dolan for a data-driven discussion on what a maturing bitcoin market means for the road ahead.

James will break down:

Institutions reshaping the cycle: ETF flows and institutional allocator demand setting higher floors
Chopsolidation: why time-pain in the $75k–$110k range signals resilience, not
exhaustion
Conviction on display: heavy distributions absorbed while long-term holders remain in control

On-chain metrics show bitcoin has crossed the Rubicon—from a nascent store of value into a true institutional-grade asset class. This session will help you understand what that means for this bull market and beyond—and how you might position yourself appropriately.

Tuesday, September 30th at 3PM CT — online, free to attend.

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Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed $200M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.

Final thought...

I'm honored to know the REAL John Arnold.

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