Building digital assets into roboadvisor strategy, with Betterment VP of Crypto Investing Jesse Proudman

In this conversation, we chat with Jesse Proudman, the VP of
Crypto Investing at Betterment, who was also the co-founder and
CEO of Makara. Proudman shares his journey of building a
web-design business, which eventually morphed into a cloud
computing service and was later acquired by IBM. He then explains
his interest in blockchain and the business he built to manage
crypto portfolios, which led to the creation of the private cloud
product. He discusses the challenges of the public internet
versus private internet, public cloud versus private cloud, and
public blockchain versus private blockchain, and how the industry
has evolved since the ICO collapse of 2018.


 


MENTIONED IN THE CONVERSATION


 


Betterment website: https://bit.ly/3WlCM8B


CEO's Linkedin profile: https://bit.ly/3Ww8mQG


 


Topics: fintech, roboadvisors, crypto, investment, blockchain,
cloud, cloud-as-a-service, digital assets


 


Companies: Betterment, IBM, IBM Ventures, IBM Cloud, Strix
Leviathan, Makara, Plaid, Gemini


 


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Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexSokolin


 


TIMESTAMPS


 


1’28”: The entrepreneurial journey and the influences that led
Jesse to becoming a founder


 


3’04”: Connecting the dots between designing websites for the
local dentist to running cloud-as-a-service and getting acquired
by IBM


 


7’41”: Public technology vs private technology and whether they
solve for a similar answer


 


10’36”: Building an accelerator for IBM Ventures and how this
drove the inspiration behind Strix Leviathan (a quantitative
crypto hedge fund)


 


16’16”: Building a quantitative crypto hedge fund in the first
crypto bear market and the investment strategies needed for it to
work


 


20’32”: The trigger(s) that led to founding Makara (a
cryptocurrency robo-advisor startup)


 


24’58”: The acquisition of Makara by Betterment, the combined
offering as a result, and the psychographics of who this offering
is for


 


30’26”: Custodial vs non-custodial holding of crypto assets, and
the regulatory mine field of providing investment advice in the
United States


 


33’53”: Betterment’s approach to modelling the full user
journey/financial picture combining the traditional asset
allocation with a crypto asset allocation


 


39’38”: The strategic vectors within the digital asset advisory
business and what the future looks like for this industry


 


43’07”: Channels to use to connect with Jesse & learn more
about Betterment


Disclaimer here — this newsletter does not provide investment
advice and represents solely the views and opinions of FINTECH
BLUEPRINT LTD.


Contributors: Lex, Laurence, Matt, Farhad, Mike, Daniella


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