Stormrake – Old School Brokerage for the Digital Asset Era

0:00This is the Brave New Coin Crypto Conversation hosted by Andy Piggering. My guest today is Bishop is the COO at Storm Rake, a Melbourne-based digital asset desk offering, test execution, trading, full service, brokerage support, and their custodian as well. We'll learn all about this today. Welcome to the show, Bishop. Thank you for having me on, Andy. It's great to be here and I appreciate the platform. Yeah. Absolute pleasure. I reckon we do what we do at the beginning of the show, Bishop, it'd be great if you could just give us a little bit of background, a little bit of your personal and professional story. What have you been doing? And yeah, the lead up to joining the team at Storm Rake. Awesome, awesome. Well, I've been in financial services for about 10 years now, started off in foreign exchange

1:00brokering back in 2015, discovered Bitcoin early on in my career but didn't do anything with it professionally until 2019. So I always bought my first parcel back in 2016 and McDonald's car park was how I got introduced to peer-to-peer electronic cash all those years ago, so just over a decade. And then moved into the industry professionally in 2019 working for another brokerage and then in 2022 joined the Storm Rake desk, bought into the business and now one of the owners and directors of the Storm Rake brokering business, which has been great because four years ago we had less than a hundred clients, most of them friends and family of ours, like direct friends and family. Now 10,000 clients spread across the country and opening up our office in Dallas. So what a privilege it is to have gone from just a small retail broker back in 2015 servicing a couple of handful of clients to now running as one of Australia's finest brokering houses and we're expanding into other asset classes.

2:01So our main wheelhouse, if you will, is we're big on Bitcoin, we're big advocates for Bitcoin as money and of course other cryptocurrencies as a technology asset. But we're also starting to offer things like tokenized gold, tokenized equities, very big on tokenization just due to the speed, settlement and liquidity that it will offer. And that's something that we've seen as well, thanks to the rise of hyperliquid, it's been in a dex that's now been trading things like oil and gold and silver throughout the geopolitical conflict we've been seeing and it's offering it 24, seven. So genuine price discovery is occurring on the weekend, thanks to crypto technologies. So for me, that's kind of been my journey over the last 10 years and my next 10 years is actually just focusing on entrenching Bitcoin into the legacy financial system and ensuring that as many individuals can get their hands on Bitcoin as well because if we just end up with BTC living on the hands of a very few institutions and Michael Salas balance sheet, we haven't done enough to distribute amongst individuals, I don't think we've won successfully.

3:05Yeah, very nicely said, Abisha, you know, you guys storm rate your position yourself as a brokerage rather than an exchange. So for just for people who might not know the distinction or how do you guys think about that distinction yourself? Yeah, I mean, we use exchanges, for example, as a broker, we're facing about 20 different exchanges ourselves. So nothing against with the exchange model, it's just that you get far less pricing. The reason why we face 20 exchanges is so we can get proper liquidity and sharper pricing. There's a bit of a spread, two to three percent in prices across the different exchanges that we're facing and we can pick up those discounts for you in the market and pass that on to you as a broker. The best way I could describe it is if you're going to a mortgage broker, for example, they face many different institutions and get you the best rate available in the market, whereas if you stroll on down into your local Big Four branch, you're going to be facing

4:06their rate and their rate alone. And they won't be scanning the market and going across other vendors or going across other institutions because it wouldn't be in their interest to do so. That's the same thing as an exchange. You go there, you're facing one price, you're facing one order book and that's it. You can either take it or leave it, whereas with us, you get proper pricing, a wide range of services and support that's not just around buy or sell, you can actually get proper education and support along the way. Yeah, and so the advantage of that would be your aggregating price across multiple different platforms looking to get the best price, especially that's especially useful if it's like a larger OTC trade, right? Yeah, correct. I mean, we also use OTC desks ourselves and usually OTC desks are limiting for average investors in the sense that their transaction size is $100,000, whereas ours is $2,000 and we service a wide range of people above that $2,000 minimum.

5:09So what we could do is we can aggregate ourselves before we go to an OTC desk. So a client may send me $10,000 to buy Bitcoin, another one may send me $30,000 to buy Bitcoin, another one sends me $80,000 to buy Bitcoin individually, they wouldn't be able to access an OTC desk, but on an aggregate basis that order is accepted on our side, we aggregate it across the board and then we can then pass on those savings to the client because we get to access that much deeper and much sharper pricing and also give that to the client. Because for us, we don't charge a spread or a markup on our execution. So if I can buy Bitcoin at $98,000 BTC AED, that's exactly the price that I'm going to give you, whereas and we just charge a flat commission. So clients know what the cost of the transaction will be even prior to sending me the dollars because the rate is fixed, so they know how much they're going to pay me in advance and then they walk away with a maximum amount of Bitcoin per transaction they do with us.

6:10That's always the goal, that's always the goal. Be sure to like, who's the, I guess your typical client if there is such a thing and talk about where different clients are based, do you service different countries around the world? What does that look like? Yeah, I mean, our typical client is a busy professional, a busy mother, somebody who doesn't have the time, but certainly has the financial resources to deploy capital into Bitcoin or into financial markets in general. So they've got plenty of capital resources, but just poor on time, which is quite a common story for a lot of hardworking men and women across this fine nation of ours. And as well as retirees, people who are managing their self-managed superfund or looking to manage their self-managed superfund, our target clients because they would benefit from our service the most, a 22-year-old with 500 bucks to their name, they're probably better off going to an exchange and learning how to do it themselves anyway, whereas somebody

7:12who's 55, running a business, looking at retirement pretty soon, they don't need to learn how to navigate multiple exchanges and wallets and all that kind of stuff. They just come to Stormbreak, open an account, buy their Bitcoin and get the upside, and then they can choose a self-custody down the road, no problems. And then in terms of the regions we support, we service Australia, New Zealand and the United States. So the US is a launch that we're doing and we're opening an office there in end of April, April, 2026. So we're super excited because this has been an expansion that's been two years in the making and is finally coming to reality in the next four weeks. So it's, yeah, long time coming and I'm super excited to get it going. So Americans, Aussies and Kiwis, welcome aboard. Yes, so tell us more about the, I guess the American of the operation that is exciting. Yeah, so we've developed a brokering desk here in Melbourne. We're right on 11 Queens Road. Many clients across this great nation have come to us to service their Bitcoin and cryptocurrency

8:14investments. So we've replicated the model in the US. So the exact same old school, old world service that our clients have come to know and love here in Australia are going to be receiving the same in America. So it's a genuine privilege to be able to take care of them and it's just, it's easy to lift and shift the technology stack that we've built here and then leverage it in a new jurisdiction. We've just had to navigate the registrations, the licensing, the onboarding requirements. All of that is, it's quite diligent over there. You can't go into America half-baked. So we've done all the right steps to get licensed and regulated in the United States. So make sure that our clients can access our services reliably as well as have the right banking relationships to give them reliable deposit options then convert their fear into Bitcoin. So that's been taking a bit of time, but now it's kicking off in four weeks and we've already got over 150 early registrations to our business there. Stormway.com, Falsash USA has just been super hot.

9:16So people keep registering to get early access to our launch in the US. Fantastic. And look, I'm curious, you're obviously based in Australia and the wonderful city of Melbourne. Just have the F1 last weekend, didn't you, and Melbourne, that was good. Well, I took my son. I know, I know, I know he didn't even make it to the starting grid, mate. That was shocking. My son and I would have been loved, would have loved to see him. You were in the grandstands. Nice. Yeah. A bit of F1. Australia, what is the current, I guess, regulatory mood in Australia? I mean, you always think Australia and New Zealand are a little bit behind the curve in terms of digital asset adoption and regulation compared to some other places in the world. But yeah, what do you think's happening? Yeah, I mean, Australia is 10 years behind America and the Kiwis are 10 years behind the Aussies. I can say that. My wife is New Zealander, so I can get away with that one. Her family is from Auckland in a place called Manakau.

10:18Anyways, so we haven't been keeping up, unfortunately, in Australia. We've only just issued our digital asset platform guidelines in late last year. And Stormrake, for example, we're applying for our own Australian Financial Services license. We're already as track registered, but there hasn't been a digital asset regime here. Like licensing regime, as opposed to the US, which has had it for years. And also our banking scene here, Australian banking is super hostile to Bitcoin brokers and exchanges, to the extent where they block client transfers, not universally, but it happens enough for it to become a bit of a problem. And so that's what I've identified as that. Australian regulations are a bit slow, but it's improving. And the regulatory landscape is catching up to where it is in America right now. But the biggest problem is the banks. I'm not a big fan of the banks. They've actually debanked me personally three times now, just for being in Bitcoin, just

11:21for being in crypto, and it's just, it's discrimination. And it's also slanderous, because they go out and say to their customers who are trying to transfer funds to us, they say outrageous things about my business and myself. And we're right here on Queen's Road, open for business, I'll strike registered, waiting to get our AFSL submitted to ASIC so that we can get approved as a market dealer here in Australia, for digital assets. But that license has only just come into effect by June 30th, 2026. So it's really hostile territory from the Australian banks, and that's part of the reason why I'm actually opening up a shop in Dallas, in the United States, because you can go there and be a digital asset broker and not be discriminated against, not be mocked, not be debanked. And you just be treated like another normal participant in the digital economy. Whereas here in Australia, we don't have that privilege. We get treated like a pariah industry. But the challenges we're warding, and I help my clients navigate about $50 million worth

12:23of transactions from the Aussie banks into Bitcoin. And it feels good because it's like every single dollar that I can get out of the Fiat Ponzi system and into Bitcoin, it feels like I'm doing a good job. I love it. Look, as well as obviously Bitcoin, you have a fund. I think the fund is called the StormRake Cumulus Fund, for wholesale and sophisticated investors. So just give us a little bit of an overview of what that fund is, I guess who you're targeting at at. What does the performance look like? Yeah. So for us, we're asset manager as well as a broker. We have a wholesale asset management fund, too, actually. One is the Cumulus Fund, which allows us to invest in digital assets outside of Bitcoin. So by mandate and by design, it doesn't hold any BTC and it's focused pretty much exclusively on what we call the picks and shovels of the crypto ecosystem.

13:26So layer ones, we're big on Ethereum and Solana and HyperLiquid and the plumbing, things like chain link and the like. We also get access to and have exposure to equity plays in that digital asset fund because oftentimes, the capital appreciation or growth is not in the token. It's actually in the companies that issue the token. For example, chain link labs, which whilst it is a private company, there was an opportunity on a VC stage to get invested in the actual company itself and buy on the Elnesh cap table as opposed to getting access to just token. So there's a number of ways you can get access to what we call picks and shovels, which is what the digital asset fund is for, which is the known as Cumulus class. And then we have the stratus class as well, which is a Bitcoin and Gold fund. Our Bitcoin and Gold fund has done incredibly well this year. It's not up about two and a half percent at the moment, which is good whilst considering Bitcoin's had a pretty rough Gold and Gold has also been very, pretty volatile as well.

14:30By design, it allows us to get exposure to both Bitcoin and Gold and capture some of the upside that is in the precious metals market at the moment and reduce the volatility that is inherent to Bitcoin, but also improve the growth profile to that of Gold itself. If we were just a Gold fund, our returns wouldn't look as good without the Bitcoin. And if we were just a Bitcoin fund, then the volatility would be a lot higher and our clients would have to face much bigger drawdowns. So we have put that together and our goal isn't to do triple digit returns in the Bitcoin Gold fund. It's to give a stable rate of return beating that of inflation as well. And then if somebody wants to just get into good old spot Bitcoin, that's what the brokering desk is for. Yeah, very nice. Part of that process, of course, is custody for, as you said earlier, maybe people that don't have a lot of spare time and they're not too interested in looking after their Bitcoin themselves.

15:31So you offer a custody solution? That is correct. So clients can choose to hold assets with us if they want and it's a fully institutional grade custody solution with insurance and all the bells and whistles that you'd want from a institutional custodian, separation of funds, the appropriate delineation of responsibilities internally, proper audit controls and processes in order to prevent any loss of funds or re-hypothication. So that's important, but we also fully support self-custody. So if a client wishes to hold assets themselves in their own cold wallet or hot wallet of choosing they can, we have no problem supporting self-custody in tensions. It's just that for those who maybe not have the time or the nuance to set up a cold wallet can set up and stay with us just by opening the account and buying. That's it. Jobs done because all of our assets are immediately held in cold storage because we pull wherever we buy from, whether it's an OTC desk or an exchange, we pull the assets

16:35from that platform into our cold storage and issue a purchase confirmation for the client and then they can view and monitor their portfolio performance and balances through our portal, but at any stage they can sell or withdraw and that's a 24.7 service that we extended them. Yeah. Very nice. So you'll see, oh, you're the chief operating officer. What is it like, you know, I guess spearheading a business like Stormbreak as you're on one hand, I'm sure you're always, you're growing a team, you're expanding into America. There's, you know, I guess the stress of the markets being, you know, a little bit down or sideways at the moment, just what's it like, sort of, you know, steering the ship as you were? Look, it's full of challenges. I mean, I talked briefly on the Australian banking challenges that we face, regulatory pressures, the growing of a team of 30 employees here, which is fantastic and all the ongoing training that that requires.

17:35But to be fair, it's such a rewarding challenge, right? It's like, I get to come into an industry that is literally 17 years old and it's still in its adolescence and I get to play a role in the transformation of our economy, one from a, you know, into a digital economy and one that's powered by digital money. And I'm right at this tip of it, right? Not just in our operations, but across our entire asset class and our entire industry and our entire economy. And it's just like, you know, no two days are the same. I'm a father of three. I've got a wife at home that I got to take care of and I couldn't think of anything better and more rewarding than doing what I am now. So that one day when my sons and my daughter grows up, I can show them exactly how to build a business in a nascent industry with no regulations and no guidelines, literally from zero bootstrap the entire thing and we built an industry around us. So it's fun. It's exhilarating and I couldn't see myself doing anything else to be honest. It's one of the most rewarding things of that in my life.

18:36I'm sure that there's other things I could have done. I could have become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. I'm sure that would have made my Lebanese mother a lot more happier than being a digital asset broker. But I genuinely feel like I'm doing God's work here and making sure that people can emancipate themselves from the Fiat system, get into Bitcoin. I can go home with a smile on my face knowing that I've done a good job. Nice, nice. Very nicely said. Looking ahead, institutional adoption is accelerating even while price might not reflect it. There's a lot happening behind the scenes. ETFs have reshaped the landscape, particularly in the U.S. regulation is slowly, slowly moving forward. Where do you see storm rate and maybe three years' time? I see us as a competitor to the likes of Charles Schwab or E-Trade, which are large traditional broken houses, which have got a range of services in the trad fire space.

19:38I'd love to be a existing complement in digital assets. As a digital asset broker, I believe in Bitcoin primarily as a base form of money that I think will genuinely revolutionize the way we trade with each other. Further to that, just making sure that I've got complementary services, collaborative custody, institutional custody, lending services, spending services, so that way we can become a more and more entrenched institution over the next three to four years and provide an access to the markets without having to be a intermediary that restricts its intermediary that opens is what I'd like to see us as because if I just end up becoming a bank and clients can't freely transact and do what their funds as they see fit, which is very much the Bitcoin ethos, then all we've done is replicate the banking system with a new set of digital rails. I'd much rather just provide and give access to this market without it being a restricture or impediment to people's freedoms.

20:41Very nicely said. All right, well as we start to finish up just before we do that, be cool to get your thoughts on, yeah, well the market really, what do you see happening in 2026, I know no one can really say, but yeah, what are you looking at, what are you expecting, what are some of the different things that could happen? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I mean, I think that we're pretty much at the bottom at the moment or within 10 to 20% of the bottom at the, as we speak, we're trading at around 70,000. Should we get to a low of 50, 55, if it's possible, absolutely, we've seen a low of 60 so far, which we've bounced off, but I think that it cast your mind back to 2022. The bottom that occurred back then was a process, wasn't a singular event. We hit 15,000 in June, 2022, then we rallied up to 24,000 FTX, then happened, we came back down to 15,000 and then we had then chopped around for three, four months before we started

21:43to track up sideways. So I think that we're right at the bottom at the moment or within 10 to 20% of where the absolute SMICO bottom will be and it's a great time to be investing. So I anticipate sideways chopped for the next little while as the market recovers from this correction and from this bear market, but I feel like even if we rallied up to 80K and then spilled down to 50, we've been buying our clients in at 60, 63, 65, so even now more recently, 70,000 were seeing some really large scale buying, occurring by some pretty sophisticated and large institutional investors, which shows me where the smart money is going. Eventually retail will come back in and buy at 120 again when the market gets hot, but hopefully through our education, through our collaboration, Andy, we can help people get into Bitcoin at discounted levels as well. So right now, we're probably going to chop for the next three to four months and be in a pretty wide 20% range, heading higher and everybody says we're back and then head lower and everybody

22:44says we're over. And then in that time, it's just a great accumulation zone for BTC before you rip to 200, 250 as part of our new bull market all time high. Bring it on, bring it on. All right, let's close this episode out, be sure and I'll do that. We'll do that just by telling people, particularly listeners, I suppose, in the US, Australia, New Zealand, how can they come and look at your offering and what's your unique offering, I guess. Why should people come and look at StormRake and how can people do that? Yeah, I mean, the main reason why you should come to us is to primary points is that one, you're going to get fixed price execution and maximize your Bitcoin's under each purchase that you make with us, or what I call the Satoshi maximizer, so you can walk away with more Bitcoin with us than you could on an exchange DIY on your own. And then further to that, you get a far better level of service you're going to have and be paired with one of my dedicated brokers.

23:46In your case, Andy, your clients and your audience will be exclusively dealing with Brody, so that way they know exactly who they're going to be calling and speaking to. And they are also supported by a wide range of associates and client services, so that way we can have seven day a week coverage for our clients. But that way, you're not having to figure out who am I dealing with, who am I going to call when the market's volatile, when the market's moving to the upside or the downside, you know exactly who to ring and you don't have to figure things out on your own. So people come to us for better price execution, walk in a more Bitcoin and a better level of service so they're not having to figure out everything that's happening on their own, because it's quite a volatile market, but the volatility presents opportunity. If you want to be, if you want to find out more about us, come to StormRake.com or use Andy's link in the show notes in the description. And you can jump on board. If you want to book a consultation as well with myself, you just go to StormRake.com and click on contact and you can have a chat with me directly. Just mention that you've come to us from Andy to pick up the Brave New Coin discount.

24:47Fantastic. This is a lot of fun. Thank you so much for coming on the show, be sure all the best and bye for now. Thanks Andy.