The Pomp Podcast
Brian Estes, Founder of Off the Chain Capital: The Unknown Bitcoin OG
- Brian Estes, a Bitcoin OG and founder of Off the Chain Capital, overcame a severe spinal cord injury at age 16 that left him paralyzed; he went on to earn a scholarship to play wheelchair basketball at University of Illinois and studied at Cambridge.
- Estes worked as a stockbroker at AG Edwards in the early 1990s, where he learned critical lessons about long-term investing through client stories like Mrs. Smith's Walmart holdings and the importance of distinguishing price from value.
- He discovered Bitcoin in 2013 at $100, read the Satoshi Nakamoto white paper, and realized blockchain would rebuild the financial system; he became a VC and invested early in Coinbase, eventually buying secondary shares from employees.
- Estes co-founded Off the Chain Capital in 2016 with friends and family; he sold 80% of holdings in December 2017 when an elderly woman wanted to swap GE stock for Bitcoin, sensing peak retail emotion.
- The fund now sources value opportunities including bankruptcy claims (acquiring Bitcoin at steep discounts) and providing liquidity pools for blockchain company employees needing to diversify concentrated equity stakes.
- Estes believes Bitcoin's future value is incalculable using models like Metcalfe's Law and stock-to-flow ratios; he sees Bitcoin as a finite-supply protocol analogous to DNS domain names, capable of absorbing unprecedented value as adoption scales.