Swan CEO Cory Klippsten discusses the rise of Bitcoin treasury companies, the strategy behind Swan's partnership with Sequans, and the future of corporate Bitcoin.
Timestamp Overview
[00:00:00 - 00:04:40] Introduction & The Start of Swan
- Anders welcomes Cory Klippsten, CEO and founder of Swan, to the show.
- Cory and Anders reminisce about how they met six years ago in Los Angeles when Cory was launching GiveBitcoin, the company that came before Swan.
- Cory was looking for marketing help and was introduced to Anders, who was initially suspicious but eventually met with him.
- Anders recalls how he started his successful eToro investment portfolio, focused 100% on Bitcoin, after attending a conference with Cory.
[00:04:40 - 00:09:47] Swan’s Strategy & The Rise of Bitcoin Treasuries
- Cory explains that GiveBitcoin evolved into Swan based on the idea of building a trusted brand through content and media, similar to how Fidelity built its business for stocks.
- He describes Swan’s strategy as “content-led acquisition,” creating educational material to attract and build trust with customers before offering them products.
- Cory notes that the concept of companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets (Bitcoin Treasuries) became very popular in late 2024, moving beyond just MicroStrategy.
- He credits Michael Saylor’s “refining capital” analogy for helping Wall Street finally understand how these companies could structure their finances to acquire more Bitcoin.
[00:09:47 - 00:15:20] Swan’s Partnership with Sequans
- Cory discusses how Swan is helping other businesses adopt Bitcoin and has now partnered with Sequans, a publicly-traded company on the NYSE.
- Swan manages the Bitcoin strategy, marketing, and custody for Sequans, which has converted over 90% of its value into Bitcoin.
- He explains a challenge they faced: many initial investors in the deal were looking for a quick profit rather than holding for the long term.
- These short-term investors have been selling their shares, which has temporarily kept the stock price down. Cory mentions that long-term believers like Adam Back and Swan are not selling.
[00:15:20 - 00:20:25] Naming the Game: What to Call These Companies
- Cory discusses the different names for companies that aggressively buy Bitcoin, like “Bitcoin Accumulating Companies” (BACs).
- He personally prefers the term “Leveraged Bitcoin Equities” (LBEs) because he believes the most successful ones will use leverage (debt) to buy Bitcoin faster.
- He points out that an LBE is a specific type of Bitcoin treasury company, one that actively uses financial markets to grow its Bitcoin stack.
- Cory also explains that having a real operating business is crucial for these companies to be included in major stock market indexes, which helps attract more investment.
[00:20:25 - 00:25:20] The Importance of Leverage & Preferred Stock
- Cory states that for these companies to have an advantage over an individual simply buying Bitcoin, they must use leverage (borrowing money).
- He confirms that all U.S.-based companies in this space, including Sequans, plan to issue preferred stock, which is a way to raise money that functions like long-term debt.
- Cory shares that Sequans plans to start issuing preferred stock once its Bitcoin holdings reach over a billion dollars, likely in the first half of the next year.
[00:25:20 - 00:30:04] Market Dynamics & Short-Term Challenges
- Anders asks why Sequans doesn’t sell some of its Bitcoin to buy back its own stock, since the stock is trading at a discount to its Bitcoin value.
- Cory explains that doing so could damage market trust and is not a wise long-term move, even if it seems logical in the short term.
- He attributes the current low stock price to a few large initial investors selling off their shares to move on to the next trade.
- Cory believes the stock price will recover once these sellers are finished, and discusses the complex “game theory” involved as other similar companies prepare to launch.
[00:30:04 - 00:36:18] Sequans’ Path Forward & Swan’s Broader Role
- Cory explains that once the initial selling pressure on Sequans’ stock is gone, its value will rise, allowing the company to issue new shares to buy more Bitcoin.
- He mentions that Swan is actively helping six or seven other Bitcoin treasury companies with services like custody, liquidity, and even staffing.
- While Swan has an exclusive agreement to provide strategy and marketing for Sequans, it can still offer its other services to the rest of the industry.
[00:36:18 - 00:42:50] The Bitcoin “Hive Mind” & Swan’s Public Future
- Cory emphasizes the collaborative nature of the Bitcoin industry, where experts share ideas and analysis openly on social media and in private groups.
- He confirms that Swan plans to go public, hopefully by the end of the calendar year, and become a Bitcoin accumulating company itself.
- He details the unique advantages Swan will have, such as using its own Bitcoin holdings to offer lower-cost loans to its customers and improve its brokerage services.
- Having a large Bitcoin treasury will provide working capital and make the core business more profitable, creating a powerful positive feedback loop.
[00:42:50 - 00:51:48] The End Game: Playing for Scale
- Anders notes that smaller Bitcoin accumulating companies seem to be growing their Bitcoin holdings faster on a percentage basis.
- Cory responds that while small companies can show high growth, the real goal is to achieve massive scale and attract billions of dollars from the traditional financial system into Bitcoin.
- He argues that unless a company can reach institutional scale, it doesn’t truly matter in the grand scheme of things.
- Cory concludes that he is focused on the long-term “arbitrage” opportunity between Bitcoin’s expected growth rate (25-30% per year) and the lower cost of raising capital (12-15%), a game he believes will last for 15-20 years.
Notable Quotes
Swan's Founding Thesis
My thesis was content led acquisition. And so basically going really hard at research, going hard at media, et cetera, and building your own audience so that you could launch product after product after product into the waiting arms of people that know you and trust you.
Cory Klippsten @coryklippsten
The Fidelity for Bitcoin
That's a very good analogy that what Fidelity has done over the last 50 years building for for equities as an asset class, we're doing for Bitcoin.
Cory Klippsten @coryklippsten
Leveraged Bitcoin Equities
I called it leverage Bitcoin equities... because at a steady state, it won't be these sort of SPACs and RTOs into dead shells and stuff like that. I think the best candidates... share the same characteristics as private equity takeover targets.
Cory Klippsten @coryklippsten
The Real Goal
The end game is to prove that it's not just a one horse race, that there are other companies that can matter, that can get to 50,000 coins, 100,000 coins, that can not just be a place to park coins from tether. Like, can you actually suck in capital from the fixed income universe and put it to work in Bitcoin?
Cory Klippsten @coryklippsten
The Speculative Attack
It's the speculative attack. It's what Pierre wrote about back in 2014. This is the best embodiment of the speculative attack that we've seen.
Cory Klippsten @coryklippsten
Playing for Scale
Unless you get to the scale where you are actually sucking in tens of billions of dollars from the fiat system into Bitcoin, you actually don't really matter.
Cory Klippsten @coryklippsten
The Long-Term Arbitrage
I'm playing this arb that will last for at least 15 to 20 years in my view, which is bitcoin's CAGR being higher than the weighted average cost of capital... I just want to Arb the shit out of that for the next 10 years.
Cory Klippsten @coryklippsten
Questions & Answers
Question 1: Why did GiveBitcoin evolve into Swan?
Answer: Cory Klippsten explains that the core idea was to build a range of Bitcoin products and services under a single, trusted brand. He believed the best way to achieve this without the high marketing costs associated with crypto exchanges was through “content-led acquisition.” By creating high-quality research, media, and educational content, Swan could build its own audience of people who knew and trusted the company, making it easier to launch new products like savings plans, IRAs, and asset-backed loans to a receptive audience.
Question 2: Why is Sequans’ stock trading below its Bitcoin value (MNAV < 1)?
Answer: Cory Klippsten states that this is happening because some of the initial investors who funded the company’s Bitcoin purchase were short-term traders, not long-term holders. These investors are now selling their shares to take profits and move their capital to the next trade. This selling pressure has kept the stock price temporarily suppressed. He believes the price will recover once these investors have finished selling.
Question 3: Will Swan itself become a Bitcoin accumulating company?
Answer: Yes. Cory Klippsten confirms that Swan has been planning since late 2024 to become a Bitcoin accumulating company. The plan is to take Swan public, raise capital, and use it to significantly increase the amount of Bitcoin on its own balance sheet. He believes Swan is uniquely positioned for this because its core business has natural synergies with a large Bitcoin treasury, which can be used to offer better products and lower costs to its customers.
Question 4: What is the long-term “end game” for these Bitcoin treasury companies?
Answer: According to Cory Klippsten, the ultimate goal is to achieve institutional scale and become a major channel for capital to flow from the traditional financial system into Bitcoin. He emphasizes that the goal isn’t just to trade stocks or see a company grow from 100 to 1,000 bitcoins. The true end game is to create companies that can attract tens of billions of dollars from large asset managers, fixed-income markets, and passive index funds, effectively executing a “speculative attack” on the fiat system.
People and Organizations Mentioned
- Anders: The host of the show, Bitcoin Treasuries World. He was an early collaborator with Cory on GiveBitcoin.
- Cory Klippsten: The guest, founder and CEO of Swan Bitcoin, a Bitcoin financial services company.
- GiveBitcoin: The predecessor company to Swan, focused on gifting Bitcoin.
- Pepperdine University: A university in Los Angeles where Cory Klippsten was when he first had a video call with Anders.
- eToro: A social trading and multi-asset investment company. Anders became a “Popular Investor” on the platform with a 100% Bitcoin portfolio.
- Pierre Rochard: A prominent Bitcoiner who Cory credits with having a similar idea for a Bitcoin savings platform around the same time as Swan’s founding. He is known for his 2014 article on the “Speculative Attack.”
- Fidelity: A multinational financial services corporation mentioned by Cory as a model for the kind of long-term, trusted financial services company he wants to build for Bitcoin.
- John Haar, Alex Stanczyk, Stephen Lubka, Matt Gillett: Members of the Swan sales and private client services team.
- Morgan Stanley & McKinsey: Major financial institutions where members of the Swan senior team, including Cory and Joao, have previously worked.
- MicroStrategy: A business intelligence company, famous for being the first public company to adopt a Bitcoin treasury strategy, led by Michael Saylor. Mentioned as a pioneer in the space.
- Michael Saylor: CEO of MicroStrategy, credited by Cory for his “refining capital” analogy that helped Wall Street understand the Bitcoin treasury model.
- MetaPlanet: A Japanese public company that has aggressively adopted a Bitcoin treasury strategy, mentioned as a key example of the strategy’s global rise.
- Cantor Fitzgerald: A financial services firm. Cory mentions attending their conference where Saylor gave his influential analogy. They have also launched SPACs (CEP and CPL) focused on Bitcoin.
- True North: A company in the Bitcoin treasury space. Cory mentions its founders, Cotsman, Jeff, and Ben.
- Ben Werkman: A well-known analyst in the Bitcoin treasury space, who was hired by Swan as CIO.
- Joao: Swan’s Chief Strategy Officer, described by Cory as a top-tier analyst with a background at McKinsey.
- Sequans (SQNS): A Paris-based, NYSE-listed company that has partnered with Swan to execute its Bitcoin treasury strategy.
- KDY Nakamoto & Cantor SPACs (CEP, CPL): Other entities in the Bitcoin treasury space that Sequans competed with to be first to market with new Bitcoin purchases.
- Adam Back: A prominent cryptographer and CEO of Blockstream, mentioned as a long-term investor in the Sequans deal who is not selling his shares.
- Nakamoto (NAKA): A Bitcoin accumulating company expected to make a large Bitcoin purchase.
- Pomp (Anthony Pompliano): A well-known investor and media personality in the crypto space, mentioned as being involved in another Bitcoin treasury deal.
- Empory: An e-bike manufacturer that pivoted to a Bitcoin treasury strategy, mentioned as having acquired a large amount of Bitcoin right from the start.
- Ryan Matthew Lane: A money manager Cory mentions is associated with Empory’s Bitcoin strategy.
- Gemini / Winklevi: A crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins. Cory speculates they might be involved with Empory’s Bitcoin acquisition.
- BlackRock & Vanguard: The world’s largest asset managers, mentioned by Cory as the type of institutional giants he aims for Bitcoin treasury companies to attract capital from.
Links Mentioned
- BitcoinTreasuries.net (Referred to in the conversation)