Robert Gutmann wanted to put bitcoin in a custody account. The request sounded straightforward enough for a firm accustomed to handling complicated investments. Then came the response from the other end of the telephone: “Bit what?” A proposed financial future had encountered a small difficulty in the present. The person answering the phone needed the noun explained.
Gutmann later told the story with the amusement of someone whose business had benefited from the misunderstanding. At Stone Ridge, he and his colleagues were studying an open-source monetary system and buying bitcoin for themselves. Their existing arrangements could accommodate plenty of unusual assets. Bitcoin required another conversation, followed by considerably more work.
The work became NYDIG. By December 2021, the company would announce a $1 billion funding round at a valuation above $7 billion. Gutmann was its co-founder and chief executive. The distance between those two scenes, the puzzled custodian and the funding announcement, is where his story becomes interesting. Much of it was covered at the speed of an audit.
A telephone call with an awkward answer
Stone Ridge’s investigation began in late 2015 and early 2016. As the firm accumulated bitcoin, its founders needed a way to hold it that fitted the obligations of an institutional investment manager. Personal conviction did not answer questions about control of assets, transaction records or balance-sheet treatment.
Gutmann described three pieces of the solution: execution, custody and accounting. The team needed to convert dollars into bitcoin, secure the resulting holdings and establish records an auditor could examine. Accounting rarely enjoys the spotlight at a technology conference. Here it helped determine whether the business could exist at all.
First they built for their own holdings. Then they adapted the system for pooled investment vehicles. The eventual commercial opportunity was to make those capabilities available to other organizations with similar requirements. A problem inside the firm had become a product outside it. NYDIG was founded in 2017.
Three practical requirements between an investment thesis and an institutional holding.
Mathematics, music, then the trading desk
Gutmann arrived at that problem with a background that resists the usual shorthand. He earned a BA in mathematics and music at Columbia University. The combination is an appealing biographical detail; it requires no invented theory about how counterpoint prepares someone for counterparty risk.
His professional training came on trading desks. He began at Morgan Stanley, becoming a senior trader in its Delta-One Structured Products group. From 2010 to 2012, he headed the Delta-One Synthetic Solutions Group at RBC Capital Markets. These were jobs inside established institutions, dealing with financial products and the machinery needed to deliver them.
In 2012, he co-founded Stone Ridge with Ross Stevens and Yan Zhao. His responsibilities there included heading Product Development and Execution, formulating investment strategies and serving as a portfolio manager. He also sat on the firm’s investment and management committees. Building NYDIG followed years spent working out how an investment idea could be made usable.
There was an earlier personal encounter with bitcoin, too. In November 2020, he discussed buying his first bitcoin through Craigslist in 2010. It is a detail with pleasing historical proportions: an early purchase through a classifieds site, followed a decade later by work helping an established insurer buy the same asset through institutional infrastructure.
The long interval before the queue
A product can be ready before its customers are. NYDIG’s early years supplied Gutmann with a prolonged demonstration. In his March 2021 conversation with Nic Carter, he recalled the thin institutional appetite after the business began. “But for 10 quarters, nobody cared.”
The remark gives some weight to a phrase that founders use rather freely: being early. Ten quarters means repeated opportunities to reconsider the idea. It means that a working service and an interested market can occupy entirely different calendars. Public attention eventually makes the beginning look more inevitable than it felt.
When NYDIG announced a $50 million growth equity round in October 2020, Bessemer Venture Partners described a company emerging from stealth after years of development. Its investment account emphasized the mixture of financial experience, technology and regulatory work involved. The institution-facing business had been taking shape well before its public arrival.
Stone Ridge’s commitment was visible in another figure reported at the time: it held more than 10,000 bitcoin, supported by NYDIG. The founders had developed infrastructure around an investment they were themselves making. That is a useful detail in assessing the origin story. They were living with the problem before offering to solve it for others.
“But for 10 quarters, nobody cared.”
Robert Gutmann, March 2021
A very old institution buys a very new asset
In December 2020, MassMutual bought $100 million of bitcoin for its general investment account in a transaction facilitated by NYDIG. It also made a $5 million equity investment in the company. The bitcoin was held on NYDIG’s custody platform. An insurer founded in 1851 had found a route into an asset with a much shorter history.
The two investments served different purposes. One was exposure to bitcoin; the other was ownership in the business providing access. Together, they made the institutional thesis rather easier to explain. A firm could be interested in the asset and in the infrastructure around it, without treating those as the same investment.
Gutmann’s public comments focused on meeting the complex needs of institutional investors and making NYDIG’s capabilities available through other financial firms. His earlier trading and product-development work made sense in this setting. An institution needed a service it could examine, approve and use repeatedly. A persuasive speech was only the beginning of that process.
In March 2021, NYDIG announced a $200 million growth capital round. Participants included Morgan Stanley, New York Life, MassMutual, Soros Fund Management, FS Investments and Stone Ridge Holdings Group, alongside Bessemer and FinTech Collective. The list shows the company’s expanding connections across established finance. Gutmann emphasized that the participating firms were also partners on strategic initiatives.
Another concrete step came in October. U.S. Bank launched cryptocurrency custody services for institutional investment managers, naming NYDIG as its first announced crypto sub-custodian. The arrangement put NYDIG’s capabilities inside a banking relationship that clients already knew. It was a practical expression of the business Gutmann had been describing.
December brought the $1 billion round led by WestCap. The announced valuation exceeded $7 billion; the stated plans included further development of bitcoin and Lightning payment capabilities, tokenization and smart contracts. Those figures belong to that funding announcement. They mark the scale investors assigned the business at a particular moment in its development.
Through the doors people already used
Gutmann’s account of wider adoption began with a familiar obstacle: people already had financial relationships. A bank account, a brokerage account or an adviser could be easier to use than a new provider. NYDIG’s approach was to supply technology that existing firms could put into their own offerings.
In May 2021, he explained a partnership with FIS, the banking technology provider, in those terms. The opportunity was to offer bitcoin services through banks using FIS infrastructure. Potential distribution had to pass through software integration and the choices of individual institutions before reaching their customers.
That distinction makes his version of adoption more tangible. An announcement created a route. Banks still had to decide to travel it, and customers still had to decide what they wanted. The distance between infrastructure and use is filled with ordinary decisions, each less photogenic than a funding round.
Employee benefits offered another route. In February 2022, NYDIG launched a Bitcoin Savings Plan allowing employees of participating companies to convert a chosen portion of their paycheck into bitcoin. Early participants included businesses associated with Drew Brees and Tilman Fertitta. The plan brought the company’s infrastructure into a recurring financial routine.
The New York Yankees partnership followed in July 2022, offering employees of the organization access to the savings plan. The practical detail matters more than the sporting association: this was an optional workplace benefit involving part of a paycheck. The route from trading desks to payroll had acquired an unexpectedly baseball-shaped stop.
Leaving the chief executive’s chair
On October 3, 2022, NYDIG announced that Tejas Shah would succeed Gutmann as CEO, with Nate Conrad becoming president in place of Yan Zhao. Gutmann and Zhao would remain at Stone Ridge Holdings Group, working with Stevens across its businesses. Gutmann would also continue on NYDIG’s board.
The handoff closes a distinct chapter. Gutmann had helped build an internal solution, turn it into a company, wait for a market and develop relationships with institutions whose requirements shaped the product. His founding role and former chief executive title describe that work more accurately than leaving him permanently seated in an old interview’s job description.
For all the large sums in the story, the opening telephone call remains its most revealing scene. A request met incomprehension. Gutmann and his colleagues answered with execution systems, custody arrangements and accounting work. The resulting business reached investors through the details they needed settled. Even an ambitious financial idea has to survive a conversation with the person keeping the books.