Back in February, I shared a note on my background and the history of Onramp as I stepped into the CEO role. I mentioned back then how energized my team and I were for Onramp’s prospects to fulfill its vision of breaking down barriers of multi-asset investing. Four months later, as we enter the summer season, I’m even more excited about the progress that’s happened and what’s on the horizon, but I am also cognizant of the challenges the industry faces.
What’s happening with Onramp.
Yesterday we shared news about our latest funding round with JAM FINTOP and EJF Capital as lead investors in our Series A financing. This capital gives Onramp a substantial runway to pursue the mission and vision of the company. Added to our roster of already amazing investors, we not only achieve capitalization toward ambitious product development and growth plan, but we also gain deep and invaluable fintech and digital asset industry knowledge along with the operational expertise to get the job done. We always envisioned Onramp as a collaborative brand that both enables and leans on our partners to reach new heights. The folks at JAM FINTOP and EJF Capital have already begun to bolster our platform and strategy and I look forward to a long and fruitful relationship.
Our engineering team continues to amaze as they tackle a deep product roadmap of features that will make Onramp an unmatched, single solution for everything a financial professional needs to support digital asset investments. We are integrating directly with industry-leading Portfolio Accounting, CRM, and Financial Planning tools including Orion, Advyzon, Black Diamond, Redtail, Wealthbox, Right Capital, and more. Additionally, we can leverage our recent integration with Morningstar ByAllAccounts to cast an expansive net of connectivity to wealth-tech products throughout the space. These integrations are essential for seamless onboarding and advisor/client experience, as more practices look to synchronize their software stacks.
Finally, I’m incredibly excited about our plans to make the comprehensive Onramp Academy fully free and accessible to all financial professionals. Onramp’s mantra has been to ‘educate before you allocate’ and by making Onramp Academy free, we give financial professionals a rich and valuable library of content so they can quickly build their knowledge base, access research, and utilize client questionnaires and checklists as they begin to support digital assets.
Industry Headwinds
The last few weeks have been difficult in the digital asset space. The insolvency of Three Arrows Capital has had a dramatic, ripple effect across its creditors causing the bankruptcy filing of Voyager Digital as well as serious concerns at BlockFi, Genesis, and others. These events on the heels of Celsius Network’s issues and the crash of Terra/Luna have added fear to what has already been an extended crypto bear market that has seen major currencies and tokens drop over 60% from their peaks.
But even with these challenges, the overall digital asset space remains vibrant and strong. In 2021, a global study by Visa showed two–thirds of existing crypto buyers expected to increase their investments in the next year. Our friend, Ric Edelman, stated back in May that despite a 50% drop in major crypto prices, the rout will “not change [any investor’s] views.”
Ultimately, I believe these difficulties will make the digital asset investment space stronger and more attractive. Just like the early days of the Web that saw the failures of the likes of Pets.com, an emerging industry will see cycles and its share of headwinds. The Three Arrows Capital blowup illustrates the pitfalls of over-ambitious leverage and lending much like the housing bubble prior to 2008.
Most importantly, these events shed a light on the urgent need for financial professionals to help clients navigate digital asset investments. Towards that end, I’m even more confident in Onramp’s mission of connecting the world’s traditional and crypto infrastructures. We have to make it simple for advisors to work with clients on their entire financial picture. Raging bull markets will hide a lot of poor investment judgment. However, market turmoil is an opportunity to either compound those mistakes or “right the ship.” Bear markets are when investors need advice the most. The best advice they can receive is from an experienced and knowledgeable financial professional. Onramp is the smartest and most efficient way that financial professionals can learn about, allocate to, and manage digital asset investments within a client’s properly diversified portfolio. As we add features like dollar-cost averaging (DCA) and automated rebalancing, the platform will become even more powerful in helping to manage bear and bull markets. Our goal is to be the beacon of market intelligence and stability throughout the inevitably volatile maturing process of digital assets.
The (Healthy) Road Ahead
Just a few months ago, the Onramp team was emerging from some major personnel shifts and my commitment was to stabilize the organization and complete our funding round. With our funding complete, I’m so proud of the energy and focus we’re bringing to the platform development and our ambitious objectives. But at the same time, we are putting in policies to ensure a great culture and work-life balance. During these challenging times, it’s vital that we prioritize our team’s health and create space and time for family and friends.
We are building the tools for a phenomenal digital asset future but I know the basis for that success is the investment we make in our human assets. In that spirit, I wish you all a happy and healthy summer and look forward to sharing more exciting Onramp news and developments in the coming months.
Thank you,
Eric Ervin, CEO
Onramp Invest, Inc.