Ready to own Bitcoin but not sure where to start? In Part 2 of our cryptocurrency series, host Kirsten Howe continues her conversation with Jirayr Kembikian, CFP® and Managing Director of Citrine Capital, to break down the three distinct ways to acquire and hold Bitcoin—each with its own unique trade-offs.
Jirayr walks through everything from Bitcoin ETFs (the easiest and most familiar option) to exchange custody and self-custody, explaining why he believes “the only wrong answer for Bitcoin allocation is zero.” He reveals the critical phrase Bitcoin purists use—”not your keys, not your coins”—and why understanding custody matters for your financial security. You’ll discover why Bitcoin-only exchanges are safer than multi-crypto platforms, learn about the estate planning risks of keeping Bitcoin on exchanges, and understand why a 2-3% allocation keeps you market neutral.
Perhaps most surprising: you don’t need $112,000 to get started. Bitcoin is divisible into 100 million Satoshis, meaning you can start with as little as $10 through dollar-cost averaging. Whether you’re considering your first Bitcoin purchase or evaluating your current approach, this episode provides the practical guidance you need to make informed decisions about cryptocurrency ownership.
Time-stamped Show Notes:
0:00 Introduction
1:58 Bitcoin ETFs approved last year—the easiest approach using familiar brokerage accounts.
2:57 ETF advantages: Clean titling for trusts, beneficiary designations, and zero complexity beyond buying and holding.
3:58 ETF trade-offs: Not actual Bitcoin in your possession, custodial risks, and varying expenses depending on the fund.
4:41 Buying Bitcoin on exchanges—the historically most common method before ETFs existed.
5:23 Critical recommendation: Bitcoin-only exchanges minimize attack vectors compared to multi-crypto platforms.
6:23 Exchange custody risks: Customer lockouts, poor service, theft, and loss of funds plaguing the space.
7:22 The worst form of ownership: Keeping Bitcoin on exchanges presents maximum vulnerability.
7:54 “Not your keys, not your coins”—the phrase that defines Bitcoin security philosophy.
8:35 Estate planning dangers: Exchanges often restrict account titling and lack beneficiary options.
10:00 Self-custody—the superior method that requires responsibility and practice, like learning to drive.
10:45 The wallet analogy: Cash in your possession versus cash floating in cyberspace at the bank.
11:15 Self-custody advantages: Complete control means only you have access to your Bitcoin.
11:45 Self-custody risks: Lost passwords mean lost Bitcoin forever with no password reset option.
12:35 How Citrine Capital has allocated Bitcoin since 2020 for clients who didn’t opt out.
13:56 Surprising reality: Most clients use ETFs despite self-custody being theoretically superior.
15:00 Why ETFs won: Familiarity, comfort, and implementation ease outweigh theoretical superiority for most investors.
16:05 “Get off zero”—the Bitcoiner mantra explaining why zero allocation is the only wrong answer.
16:13 Market-neutral allocation: 2-3% Bitcoin allocation matches global market cap and avoids effectively shorting Bitcoin.
17:22 Bitcoin divisibility demystified: You don’t need six figures to invest.
17:46 One Bitcoin equals 100 million Satoshis, just like dollars and cents.
18:23 Dollar-cost averaging with as little as $10 or $100 monthly makes Bitcoin digestible and accessible for everyone.
Get in touch with Jirayr!
Managing Director & Co-Founder
Citrine Capital
CitrineCapitalAdvisors.com
jirayr@citrinecapitaladvisors.com
415.494.8262
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to Absolute Trust Talk. I’m Kirsten Howe, the host here at Absolute Trust Council, and today we’re going to follow up with my guest, Jirayr Kembikian, who is a Bitcoin expert, a CFP, a wealth advisor with Citrine Capital. We talked last week about the origins and the basics behind cryptocurrency in general and Bitcoin in particular.
This week, we’re going to focus a little bit more on the different ways that people can own Bitcoin, and the pluses and minuses of each of those. That’s where we’re going to start. So Jirayr, welcome. Thank you for coming back and talking to me some more about this fascinating topic.
You started toward the end of our last episode, introducing this topic, which is the three different buckets, you call them, that people can own Bitcoin. So I’m going to let you take over the conversation.
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be back. So as I was touching on, there are many different ways you can acquire and hold Bitcoin. They each come with their own unique trade-offs. And first, the first approach, in my opinion, is the easiest approach, which is, as of last year, Bitcoin ETFs were approved. So this is an ETF wrapper, similar to a mutual fund, which everyone is familiar with, usually. So inside this exchange-traded fund, there is Bitcoin in that fund. So that’s the easiest way. Fidelity and BlackRock are the two biggest names in the ETF space that have a Bitcoin-specific ETF, and this would fit inside your traditional brokerage account, a joint account or IRA account, so very similar to how most folks hold the majority of their assets. And this is the easiest, maybe, I would argue, the cleanest way to own Bitcoin. There are trade-offs, just like everything else. But this is by far the easiest way.
And the ETF—it rises and falls as Bitcoin rises and falls?
Exactly. So you’re getting basically the price exposure and the price action of Bitcoin. It’s also important to note that while I mentioned Fidelity and BlackRock have what’s called Spot Bitcoin, meaning they’re holding actual Bitcoin in their funds, there’s also futures markets, or derivative markets placed on Bitcoin, which are not owning actual Bitcoin. They’re essentially betting—they’re betting on Bitcoin or betting against Bitcoin. And that is different, often more expensive, more complex, and, in our opinion, not favorable.
Okay, okay. So go ahead and talk to us about the pluses and minuses of owning your Bitcoin via an ETF.
Yep. So this is going to be the most traditional means. So this is going to be the easiest form for folks to move forward with, and similar to how the traditional financial or brokerage system works, you can title these accounts very similarly to how you would have your other accounts. If you have a trust, you can title them in the name of your trust. If you have beneficiaries that you want to update for these accounts, for your retirement accounts—very clean and straightforward, and there’s really no complexity apart from simply buying the Bitcoin ETF and then holding it in these accounts.
Yeah, it’s very familiar. We know how to go online and trade in and out of our Fidelity accounts. It’s just all the same, except the underlying investment is a little different, okay?
The downside? Well, the downside is Bitcoin purists would argue that it’s not actual Bitcoin that you hold in your possession. So there still potentially could be some risks. And depending on the ETF that you’re selecting, they all have their different flavors of where they are custodying the Bitcoin. They have their expenses within the ETFs that you need to pay for. So there are different trade-offs, and depending on how comfortable or uncomfortable you might be with custodying Bitcoin yourself versus handing it off to a trusted custodian, that is a known risk or a known trade-off.
Okay, yeah, fair enough. Okay, so second bucket.
The second bucket is maybe the most common, at least historically, until the ETFs came out.
Yeah, exactly. Until the ETFs came out, which was only last year, although those have exploded in popularity. But the second bucket is buying Bitcoin on an exchange, and this was really the main way and the only way to acquire it, and that’s why it’s become the most popular over time. So this might be a Coinbase or Robinhood that most folks have heard of, and you’re buying it on an exchange, and this presents multiple trade-offs in our opinion.
However, let me start with a recommendation. If you are pursuing it from an exchange perspective, we really recommend working with an exchange that is Bitcoin-only, meaning it’s not serving other cryptocurrencies. And from that perspective, you have minimized the risk or attack vectors potentially. So think of any product where you’re focusing on one thing versus literally hundreds or thousands of things to be able to secure that and custody that and whatnot. So we feel the risk is substantially smaller and maybe even eliminated if you’re working with a Bitcoin-only exchange.
Bitcoin itself is inherently less vulnerable than the other cryptos.
Yeah, okay.
To continue on that path, the recommendation is really do your research on where you are buying them in the sense of we want to make sure that this custodian has had no history of locking out customers, that they have good customer service, that there is no history of theft or loss of funds. And unfortunately, this has plagued the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space over time.
When you use the word custodian, is that what Robinhood and Coinbase are? That’s what you’re talking about?
Exactly. They’re an exchange and also a custodian. So you can not only buy your Bitcoin or crypto on there, but you can potentially also store it there.
And that’s what you mean by custodian. Okay.
Exactly. So the trade-offs, as I already mentioned, is you want to make sure that you’re working with a Bitcoin-only exchange. There is risk historically, where folks have lost their funds or not been able to access their funds for a variety of reasons.
This also—if you’re keeping your Bitcoin on an exchange, we believe that’s the worst form of ownership, in comparison to the total of three options. So we feel it’s the worst option because, as I mentioned, people have lost control of their Bitcoin. There’s often a phrase used in the Bitcoin world that says “not your keys, not your coins,” meaning we want to own our keys to access the Bitcoin ourselves, and we want to make sure that no matter what happens, even if it’s not fraud, that we have access, and it’s our responsibility to properly store our Bitcoin.
So tremendous trade-offs with this approach, and I’ll continue. There’s also potential financial planning or estate planning risks in keeping your Bitcoin on an exchange where, depending on the custodian, some do not allow you to title your accounts in the name that you want, which, as we know in this community, presents potential risks on how you’re passing that down over time. Beneficiaries are not always available on these accounts, and there’s additional layers of problems that simply don’t exist with the traditional brokerage world.
Okay, okay. Which leads us to bucket number three.
So bucket number three, which we believe is superior, however, similar to when you’re first starting to learn to drive a car, it is a responsibility that takes practice and hours and hours of proper care to make sure you’re doing it safely. And the same thing goes with when you’re holding Bitcoin in self-custody. And a good example of this is when you have a physical wallet, right? You keep your cash in your wallet, theoretically. And this is very similar to that example, where, if you’re taking self-custody of your Bitcoin, that means, from the analogy perspective, you have the cash in your wallet, versus the cash is floating in cyberspace in the bank. So that’s the analogy there. The reason we feel it’s superior is because, again, going back to the phrase, “not your keys, not your coins,” so you have access to your Bitcoin, and only you have access to your Bitcoin. And for some folks, and a growing amount of folks, that seems to be the preferred method and the superior method. But as we’ve also seen, people can lose their keys or passwords—is another way to think about it—and because it’s solely your responsibility with that self-custody setup, once you lose the keys, you can’t reset your password. Depending on your framework, now there are more and more solutions and safeguards being built into the Bitcoin ecosystem to where you can have multiple backup keys or different approaches to where you’re not just relying on a single key or password, but you still have that sole responsibility and access.
So I mentioned a variety of custodial options, and you also, Jirayr, you have a variety of investments in your portfolios that you design for your clients. You do include Bitcoin—that is an option for your clients.
Yes, that is correct. So we have been allocating since 2020 to Bitcoin in our client portfolios, unless they opted out. And we took that very, very seriously. So just to backtrack a little bit, I mentioned that in 2014 we were completely dismissive of Bitcoin, and by the way, in 2014 the price was around hundreds of dollars per Bitcoin. And then we fast forward to maybe 2018 and really took a deep dive between 2018 and 2019, and myself and my co-founder, we said, “Hey, we really think there’s something here.” We took a very deep dive, and ultimately we made the decision in 2020 to recommend this to our clients, and the large majority of them did move forward with Bitcoin.
Okay, so my question for you in that vein is, how do your clients, on a day-to-day basis, how do they own it? Are they self-custodying, I’m assuming, because that’s what you advocate for their Bitcoin?
So the large majority are actually not in self-custody. And while we do discuss that it is the superior method, and some have worked up to that, and some have even come to us already having self-custodied their Bitcoin, and we’re adding additional optimization on their setup and overall plan, but the large majority are holding it in bucket one, as we refer to—as a Bitcoin ETF.
An ETF, okay, okay, interesting.
Yeah, the reason for that was we really wanted a system that they were comfortable with, so the ETF was the most familiar method in order to own that, and it allowed us to also not necessarily rely on the client to implement this, which, as we know already is difficult from just a pure implementation perspective. But we also know that the self-custody route is even more overwhelming to many. So we really felt that the price exposure and the unique characteristics Bitcoin brings into the portfolio were reason enough to move forward with the Bitcoin ETF. And as I mentioned, some folks have geared up or started to gear up for self-custody. Maybe in addition to their brokerage allocation, we’ll talk through trade-offs of what might be an appropriate allocation for folks. We really believe, from our perspective, the only wrong answer for Bitcoin allocation is zero.
Right, okay, okay.
And we really go from there.
Okay, so if they’re investing in Bitcoin via your firm, it’s going to be an ETF that you’ve vetted and you’re satisfied with, but you can maybe coach them a little bit if they’re interested in looking at self-custody.
Yep, that definitely might come down the line, but we really feel, again, as often Bitcoiners might say, “Get off zero,” meaning get off zero allocation.
Yeah.
Many of the folks that we work with and aligning with our philosophy is we try to keep an index-based approach, right, similar to how index funds operate. So similar to that space, we know from a mathematical perspective how big the overall global stock market is. We know how big the Bitcoin market is, market cap specifically. And just going by that perspective, you should have approximately a two or 3% Bitcoin allocation in your portfolio simply to be market neutral. Now, if you have less than that, you are effectively betting against Bitcoin or even shorting it, which I would not want to be in that position. And if you’re more optimistic, you might want to consider a larger allocation than the two or 3%, but that’s really how we start dipping in, dipping our toes in, and we believe that there’s currently more risk not to own Bitcoin than there is to own Bitcoin.
Yeah, I see what you’re saying. It’s becoming a bigger piece of the overall market, and why do you want to not have some of that?
For just for the fun of it, thinking about self-custodying, that’s not something that I would be willing to take on. That sounds really scary and really challenging. A lot of knowledge needs to be acquired, but Bitcoin, the last time I looked was sometime over the weekend, it was $115,000 or so. Is that how much you have to have to get into the Bitcoin market?
That’s a great question, and sometimes folks don’t realize this, but Bitcoin is divisible. So one Bitcoin equals 100 million Satoshis, so similar to dollars versus cents, right? $1 equals 100 cents. And the same thing applies here. You can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin, and realistically, most folks cannot afford to shell out $115,000. It’s currently at $112,000 as of the time of this recording, and most folks are, similar to other investments, doing dollar-cost averaging strategies where, depending on your exchange or also through the Bitcoin ETF, you can buy daily. You can buy monthly in amounts as small as $10 or $100 a month. So depending on how you’re buying it, it’s a very digestible amount for folks.
Okay, okay, so you can buy a few Satoshis. You don’t have to buy the whole $112,000 Bitcoin. I did not know that. Okay, so it hasn’t gotten to where the average person can’t get in there. It’s affordable—not yet, presumably.
Okay. Well, thank you so much, Jirayr, for explaining all those different ways that you can own Bitcoin, and I want to pick this up with you next time, because we’re not done talking about the things that I find fascinating about Bitcoin, so I hope you all will join us next time. Jirayr, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Okay, and we look forward to connecting with you next time.
Resources Related to This Episode:
- Absolute Trust Talk Ep. 194: https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/194-bitcoin-demystified-part-1-why-1-in-7-americans-own-bitcoin/
- Absolute Trust Talk Ep. 139: Optimizing Your Portfolio with Alternative Investments https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/139-optimizing-your-portfolio-with-alternative-investments/
- Absolute Trust Talk Ep. 132: Trust Funding in a Digital World: Safeguard Virtual Wealth https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/132-trust-funding-in-a-digital-world-safeguarding-virtual-wealth/
- A Will is Not Enough – Securing Your Legacy with Estate Planning Life can change in an instant. A will is not enough to be prepared. Get free access to our actionable E-book Guidebook #1 and start protecting your legacy today. https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/guidebooks/
- Learn how to comfortably define gray areas and assess your unique needs to build a secure future now effortlessly. Check out Guidebook #2, Estate Planning Beyond the Basics, here > https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/guidebooks/
- Get our free introductory guide to the most used estate planning tool, family trusts, and understand how we plan to help protect your family. Guidebook #3: https://absolutetrustcounsel.com/guidebooks/
- Absolute Trust Counsel would love to offer access to our Incapacity Planning resource page: https://AbsoluteTrustCounsel.com/Incapacity-Planning/. We’ve collected our top planning information all in one place so listeners can find videos, guidebooks, blog posts, and a host of information with tips and strategies on implementing, planning, and protecting themselves and their loved ones.
- We’re pleased to provide a library of e-books to address common estate planning questions and concerns in practical, easy-to-understand language. https://AbsoluteTrustCounsel.com/Resources/.
- ASK KIRSTEN: If you’d like Kirsten to answer your question on the air, please email her at Info@AbsoluteTrustCounsel.com.
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