Richard Byworth

The Bitcoin Bottom, Family Offices and the UK Exodus | Richard Byworth #227

Richard Byworth - Bitcoin Is Taking Over the System

- Richard Byworth's 18-year career in investment banking at Nomura, where he built and scaled the convertible bond franchise in Asia, and his pivot to Bitcoin and digital assets. - Convertible bonds as institutional financial instruments: how they embed volatility options, why companies like MicroStrategy can issue zero-coupon convertibles, and how hedge funds use them for volatility arbitrage. - Bitcoin treasury strategies employed by MicroStrategy and MetaPlanet: accretive dilution, aggressive equity issuance, put option sales, and financial engineering to grow Bitcoin holdings per share. - MetaPlanet's innovative use of warrants and ATM structures in Japan to work around regulatory constraints, and the potential for short squeezes given high short interest (27–28% of market cap). - Institutional finance's slow awakening to Bitcoin through convertible bond investors and fixed-income allocators, with Bitcoin treasury companies serving as a Trojan horse for TradFi adoption. - Future phases: cash-flow generative companies adopting Bitcoin treasuries, potential Bitcoin or Satoshi dividends, and nation-state Bitcoin reserve strategies as sources of FOMO and upside volatility.

#386: Richard Byworth on Becoming Public Market Crypto Exchange

- Diginex is becoming the first crypto exchange company to list on NASDAQ via SPAC, providing institutional credibility and a pure-play public market exposure to digital assets. - The company built DigiVault, a highly secure cold custody solution operated through global vaults, as the foundation for institutional adoption. - EQUOS exchange is designed specifically for institutions with features like segregation of duty, managed accounts, and compliance infrastructure unavailable on retail platforms. - Derivatives markets in crypto are nascent (3–4x spot volume) compared to traditional finance (100x+), representing massive growth opportunity. - Digital securities and securitization businesses aim to tokenize real-world assets (real estate, private credit, private equity) starting with debt rather than equity. - Byworth emphasizes that institutional adoption requires iterative, regulatory-compliant approaches rather than forcing immediate digitization on traditional investors.