Pod Feature Recap:
Michael Tanguma on the Stephan Livera Podcast
Bitcoin Custody, Institutional Adoption, and the Future of Capital Allocation
In one of the most comprehensive overviews of Onramp to date, CEO and co-founder @MTanguma joined The @stephanlivera podcast to explain the thinking behind Onramp’s architecture, the future of bitcoin custody, and how institutions and individuals can hold meaningful positions in a digital bearer asset without compromising security or sovereignty.
The conversation starts with a reality check: while it’s easy to buy a little bitcoin, it’s extremely difficult—both psychologically and operationally—to securely hold significant wealth in it. Tanguma draws on his experience at Unchained, where he helped pioneer collaborative custody, to explain the gap between bitcoin ideals and practical constraints.
Most boards reject self-custody models. Most fiduciaries can’t hold private keys. Even highly capable individuals struggle with inheritance, redundancy, and operational resilience.
“It’s one thing to write down 12 or 24 words—it’s another to entrust them with your life savings. That’s the psychological barrier most people can’t cross.”
These gaps created opportunities for ETFs and centralized solutions, but at a cost: increasing asset concentration, opacity, and systemic risk. Onramp was built to solve this differently—by designing from first principles a custody model that distributes trust without removing individual control.
At the core of the discussion is Multi-Institution Custody (MIC), where multiple regulated, independent entities each hold a single key in a 2-of-3 multisig arrangement. Clients retain title ownership and control, while no single custodian can act unilaterally. The system is designed to be:
➤ Technically robust — built on open-source, interoperable multisig
➤ Legally sound — with clearly defined client ownership and authority
➤ Operationally resilient — with built-in inheritance, duress protocols, and human verification
➤ Aligned by incentives — keyholders act independently but are accountable to the client
Tanguma emphasizes why bitcoin-native multisig remains the most reliable framework for secure custody. It’s part of bitcoin’s base layer—open, interoperable, and commercially implemented since 2013.
The logic is simple and familiar: multiple keys, distributed among trusted parties, with no single point of failure. Like a vault that requires more than one key to open, it’s a structure both institutions and individuals can understand and verify.
“The beauty of multisig is that it’s interoperable—and here’s the key word—battle-tested. It’s been around since 2013 and has been used at the base layer ever since.”
By contrast, MPC (Multi-Party Computation)—used by many crypto custodians—splits and recombines a single key using proprietary cryptography (mainly to support the long tail of crypto assets outside of bitcoin).
While often marketed as decentralized, MPC reintroduces a single point of failure at key reconstruction and lacks transparency. Tanguma compares it to black-box security: institutions can’t verify what’s actually happening behind the scenes.
He also distinguishes between Miniscript and multisig, cautioning against over-reliance on complexity for security. While Miniscript enables certain spending conditions like time locks and fallback keys, it’s not native to the base protocol (unlike multisig), is largely unproven at scale, and often difficult for users to understand.
The conversation shifts to risk—especially the growing threat of physical attacks, coercion, and inheritance failure. Tanguma argues that most industry problems stem from a flawed custody model.
“Nobody breaks into Jeff Bezos’ house for his equity portfolio—but people will kick down your door for a seed phrase. That tells you everything you need to know about custody risk.”
Onramp’s custody stack is designed to scale both wealth and peace of mind. Inheritance support, duress protocols, and insurance through Lloyd’s of London are paired with regionally distributed keys and client-controlled safeguards—such as time delays, withdrawal limits, and human verification.
The onboarding process—once a multi-week affair for collaborative custody or a multi-month or multi-year affair for DIY self-custody—can now be completed in minutes.
For clients not yet ready for MIC, Onramp’s new trading platform, Onramp Trade, offers an easy entry point with a built-in path to transition into MIC.
The second half of the discussion explores capital formation and venture investing through a bitcoin lens.
Tanguma explains the philosophy behind @Early_Riders, the venture fund pioneering bitcoin as the hurdle rate—raising, deploying, and returning capital in bitcoin terms.
“The moment you denominate in bitcoin, everything changes. You become more discerning. You protect your purchasing power. Every allocation decision is filtered through a sound-money lens.”
Rather than chasing inflated fiat valuations, Early Riders focuses on building sustainable, efficient businesses with bitcoin as the benchmark and constraint. Tanguma describes it as a “craftsman approach to capital,” designed for long-term durability and soundness.
Michael and Stephan also examine the rise of bitcoin treasury companies and public equities trading at a premium to their BTC holdings (mNAV).
While these vehicles help drive attention and capital toward bitcoin, Tanguma offers a sober warning: they reintroduce centralization risks and incentive misalignments that could compromise their long-term sustainability.
The episode highlights what most bitcoin discussions still overlook: custody isn’t just a technical decision—it’s a structural one. It shapes how capital enters, how it’s secured, and how it endures over time.
Tanguma clearly lays out the problem. Self-custody isn’t practical for most people managing real wealth. Centralized solutions concentrate risk and erode the very properties that make bitcoin valuable.
Multi-Institution Custody is built to avoid both pitfalls. It introduces distributed trust and provides real fault tolerance, without giving up unilateral control.
As more capital flows in, the industry needs custody models that can hold up—not just ideologically, but operationally.
“There’s no perfect solution—just better trade-offs. And as bitcoin grows, the stakes are too high to get custody wrong.”
Full episode 👇
