Onramp, a Bitcoin-only financial services company, has introduced an institutional-grade asset management offering. This innovative service is built upon their robust multisignature, multi-institutional, and multi-jurisdictional custody platform. Onramp positions itself as a modern, full-reserve Bitcoin bank, leveraging the transformative technology of Bitcoin in collaboration with established institutional custodians such as BitGo, CoinCover, and Tetra Trust.

Founded in Texas in 2022 by Michael Tanguma, a former executive at Google and Unchained Capital, Onramp aims to democratize institutional-grade custody. They provide a comprehensive suite of financial services to Bitcoin users of all sizes, including IRAs, trusts, Bitcoin-backed loans, inheritance planning, and tax-advantaged accounts. Operating globally, with the exception of U.S.-sanctioned nations, Onramp extends its services to both institutions and individual Bitcoin enthusiasts who hold over 10% of their portfolios in the emerging asset. According to Tanguma, Onramp is currently a profitable business managing billions of dollars in assets under custody with a lean team of over 25 individuals.

Onramp takes full advantage of the paradigm shift in financial security offered by Bitcoin, particularly its smart contract tools, most notably multisignature script (multisig). Multisig refers to a set of high-security, low-complexity programming tools native to the Bitcoin protocol, which boast a wide range of applications, from payment networks like the Lightning Network to wealth protection superior to that offered by any single bank.

Historically, wealth custody has been limited to two fundamental forms: individuals either maintained direct control over their assets, akin to burying gold or keeping cash under a mattress, or they entrusted their wealth to a reputable bank in exchange for an IOU or title of ownership. While self-custody carried risks like petty crime, bank custody was vulnerable to financial fraud and geopolitical instability, forcing users to choose between risks or diversify. The advent of Bitcoin fundamentally altered this landscape.

As a distributed and decentralized network, Bitcoin exists ubiquitously, with tens of thousands of copies globally, constantly communicating about the latest transactions. This design inherently routes around bottlenecks and single points of failure. To secure the value of its transactions, the network relies on the most powerful computing network in history, powered by proof-of-work, or Bitcoin mining. Critically, Bitcoin transactions are programmable; users can create conditional transactions that are only valid if specific criteria are met. The most common implementation of this scripting language is through multisig transactions, where multiple independent signatures are required for a transaction to be accepted and processed by the Bitcoin network.

Multisig accounts bear a resemblance to shared accounts in traditional banking, but with a crucial distinction: their security is rooted in mathematics and cryptography, underpinned by a global, decentralized network, rather than being reliant on lawyers and accountants. This results in an unprecedented form of money account capable of resisting the arbitrary whims of specific political jurisdictions, wars, or natural disasters, by distributing keys among custodians worldwide. Furthermore, the balances of these accounts can be publicly audited by running a full copy of Bitcoin or using a Bitcoin explorer, a level of transparency unimaginable in the traditional financial world. This capability has been likened to having