More Human.
Friday July 10th, 2026 - Issue # 138
(Any views expressed below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)
Morning morning,
I was planning to write about why the setup for the next bull market still looks strong, but that can wait. The bigger story this week is that Satstreet received Restricted Dealer approval from the OSC.
Alongside that, we also shared several other milestones worth noting: over C$4 billion in lifetime trading volume, three straight years of independent third-party financial audits, increased insurance coverage, and continued expansion across multiple jurisdictions. None of that is random. It’s the result of building the business a certain way in an industry that has spent years chasing speed, convenience, and less human involvement.
That has always been the question for a firm like ours. How do you compete when the market keeps moving toward lower cost, faster onboarding, and fewer questions? On the surface, stripping away every extra layer looks like the obvious winning strategy, especially when markets are strong. But that view misses something important.
A lot of what gets criticized as an unnecessary process in this industry is really just the byproduct of taking trust, verification, and the movement of client money seriously. That distinction is becoming more relevant now because AI is making good businesses more productive while also making bad actors more dangerous. Tools for phishing, spoofing, and social engineering are improving rapidly. Trust is getting easier to fake. This is why Anthropic’s Mythos model caught our attention. We’re entering a world where advanced cyber capabilities are becoming more powerful and more accessible. Even the companies building these systems are treating them with caution. In that environment, real oversight and human judgment start to look less like inconvenience and more like common sense.
Crypto adds another layer. In traditional finance, mistakes can sometimes be reversed. In Bitcoin and crypto in general, settlement is final. There is no undo button. When real ownership and final settlement are at stake, moving money requires more care, not less.
Bitcoin’s settlement finality is a feature, not a bug. It is what makes Bitcoin powerful. The money is actually yours, with no intermediaries standing between you and your assets. But that same finality also means the movement of money deserves real attention. From the start, we built our process to protect clients before anything irreversible happens. Verification and human judgment matter more when settlement is final, especially as the tools bad actors use to target digital assets keep getting better. We handle every transaction with the kind of care you would expect around something rare and valuable.
We’re also going in the opposite direction of much of the industry when it comes to client relationships. While many platforms move toward chatbots and self-serve, we’re doubling down on real conversations: more calls, more time spent with clients, and more focus on actually knowing the people and companies we work with.
This is where we see the business heading. Satstreet is a high-touch digital asset brokerage today, but the longer-term ambition is to build the private bank for the next generation in the digital era. That means brokerage, payments, cross-border capital movement, and eventually access to tokenized products, all built on a foundation of regulation, security, infrastructure, and long-term relationships rather than one-off transactions.
The market spent years rewarding anything that looked seamless. But when serious capital is moving in a system where settlement is final, speed and convenience are not always the right standard. Sometimes the extra layer of care is the thing standing between control and chaos. In a world where AI is making trust easier to fake, that distinction is only going to matter more.
If you’re looking for a more thoughtful, private-banking approach to digital assets, we’d be happy to talk.
And on a much lighter note, one thing we’ll keep doubling down on is the real-world side of this business. A few weeks ago we hosted The Bitcoin Open, a golf tournament for clients and partners. There were many bad swings, but mostly great conversations. Here’s a quick video from the day:
We’ll keep doing more of these. This business still works better when there are actual people involved.
Have a great weekend.