The Bank Account for Bitcoiners

TLDR - I've been in process of switching from USD to BTC as my base money for 10 years. I joined Fold to build the number one account for Bitcoiners to send their direct deposit AKA a checking account. With Fold you have the banking features you need with the currency you prefer making it so you no longer have to use a fiat maximalist bank.

In 2014 when my dad emailed me about Bitcoin I was one year out of college working at a credit union and ironically helping this guy named Neel Kashkari run for governor of California. Six years later in the depths of 2020 I had left politics and found myself in the back of a bar paying for beers with a bitcoin rewards debit card talking about the bitcoin circular economy. Four years later in 2024 I'm writing to you from the Fold blog letting you know that everything is in place for you to stop using dollars or at the very least significantly cut back on them.

Let's fill in the gaps a little bit. In 2015 when I opened up a Coinbase account I wasn't married and didn't have kids or a mortgage. Later that year when I sent Sherin my girlfriend (now wife) my Coinbase ref link I didn't know yet that Bitcoin would change my life. I didn't know that I was starting a multi year journey of switching the base money that I use.

In 2017 during the run up when Sherin and I got married and combined finances we had more money in bitcoin than we did in dollars and those two numbers have never flipped back.

2019 was the first year I ever met other Bitcoiners in person and OC Bitcoin Network was born.

2020 was full of running the Bitcoin meet up and on episode 160 of Tales from the Crypt you can listen to Marty Bent and I talk about my early thoughts of budgeting and doing personal finance in Bitcoin. It was also the year Sherin and I bought our first house.

2021 was full of banking on Fold and doing product marketing for Choice App, the leading Bitcoin retirement account in the Apple App Store. I had always been a personal finance nerd before Bitcoin and marketing at Choice is when things really started to accelerate. Marketing for Choice highlighted for me that it's not account types that are the problem, it's the underlying currency that bank accounts and investment accounts run that is the main problem.

2021 was the year our first son was born and it was the year that we leaned harder into a manual spreadsheet to track our finances in both currencies because mint.com was not cutting it anymore. The rewards earned in Fold were the beginnings of a checking account column denominated in Bitcoin that I still have to this day.

After banking hard on Fold for multiple years and taking a tour around all the bitcoin apps out there we had tried everything. Add on top of that another house and another baby and the years of simple personal finance were long gone.

Budgeting is hard. Budgeting while married is harder. Budgeting while married in two currencies is tough. It takes a lot of manual movements and constant shuffling.

OR at least it used to...

Now we're caught up to present time. We're caught up to 2024.

Earlier last year I did about 300 user interviews with people who have this same type of trajectory of effectively growing up with Bitcoin and I heard over and over again this desire for a Bitcoin product experience to match the life stage they are at now.

The current solution is to pair a traditional checking account with a bitcoin exchange. This is the main way everyone does their personal finances whether they are pushing their checking account to $0.00 or sitting on a simple DCA schedule.

What I'm proud and excited to tell you is that Fold is reimagining that whole flow. Fold is making it so that you can cut out that traditional checking account completely.

Fold led for years on being the number one bitcoin rewards debit card. Fold is refreshing that leadership one level up to be THE bank account for bitcoiners.

I'm excited and thankful to join Fold as their ecosystem lead and pursue an aggressive road map over the rest of this year and into 2025.

Hit me up to talk more, tag me on twitter, send me a DM, invite me to your meetup or podcast.

Look forward to seeing you around and talking more,

Brian
@brainharrington