Before the World Understands, Builders Are Often Locked Out

A Venture Banker’s First Encounter with Bitcoin’s Builders

Long before bitcoin became a ticker symbol, before ETFs, before policy panels and prime-time debates, it lived in rooms that banks did not want to enter.

In late 2013, I was a venture banker at Comerica Bank in Palo Alto, right in the heart of Silicon Valley. At the time, we were explicitly prohibited from banking crypto-related companies. The posture was simple: too risky, too unclear, too fringe. And yet, even then, something about bitcoin would not let go of me.

I read the Bitcoin White Paper in December 2013. It was not written like a pitch deck. It was written like a thesis. Sparse. Technical. Conviction-filled. It was clear this was not a company asking for permission. It was a protocol making a claim about how the world could work.

In February 2014, a friend invited me to what became a defining moment in my journey. Matt Roszak, who has since founded and backed multiple foundational companies across the crypto landscape, invited me to The Bitcoin Supper Club at Spruce in San Francisco. This was his creation and the second event ever. There were roughly fifty people in the room. Many of them have gone on to build what is now considered the backbone of bitcoin and crypto.

It was, in hindsight, a baptism by fire.

Matt introduced me as his banker. I stood up and said something that was both honest and formative. “I really wish I could bank all of you. And while I can’t, I want to find ways to help all of you.”

That moment mattered more than I realized at the time.

Because builders almost always start on the outside.

They are misunderstood before they are regulated.
They are excluded before they are embraced.
They are called dangerous before they are called inevitable.

Bitcoin builders were no different.

What struck me that night was not hype or price. It was seriousness. People wrestling with first principles. Engineers, economists, philosophers, entrepreneurs asking uncomfortable questions about money, trust, power, and time. It was not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It was construction.

That season forged something in me.

I became deeply convicted that bitcoin, the currency, and Bitcoin, the technology, mattered far beyond speculation. That they represented a rethinking of coordination, sovereignty, and truth in systems that had quietly drifted away from all three.

Ironically, while I could not bank those builders at Comerica, many of them would later become my customers at AWS. The cloud became the neutral infrastructure layer where innovation could finally scale. The very builders once locked out of banking were suddenly shaping global systems from the inside.

That pattern is not accidental.

Builders with global impact rarely receive early institutional approval. They endure resistance, delays, closed doors, and public skepticism. And often, that resistance is the crucible that clarifies calling.

Debanking is not new. Gatekeeping is not new. What is new is the visibility.

And what remains constant is this: systems change not because incumbents allow it, but because builders persist.

Bitcoin was forged in exclusion.
It grew through conviction.
And it continues because truth compounds even when permission is denied.

That early season taught me something I still carry.

If you wait for every door to open before you build, you will never build anything that matters.

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Prayer

Father, thank You for the builders who labor in obscurity before the world understands. Strengthen those who face closed doors, opposition, and misunderstanding for the sake of truth. Give us discernment to recognize what You are doing early, courage to stand with conviction, and humility to steward influence when it comes. Let us build what serves people, honors truth, and advances Your Kingdom, even when the cost is real. Amen.