The Last Trade E077: The Institutional Case for Bitcoin with Daniel Batten & Samuel Roberts

Daniel Batten, a former climate tech investor turned Bitcoin ESG researcher, and Sam Roberts, an institutional investment advisor to pension funds, join OnRamp to present the institutional case for Bitcoin from two very different angles. Batten explains how his deep dive into Bitcoin mining's energy use revealed surprising ESG benefits—from grid stabilization to methane capture—that completely flipped his initial skepticism. Roberts shares how the freezing of Russian sovereign assets in 2022 was the key catalyst that made institutional investors realize Bitcoin's value as a neutral, non-confiscatable asset in their portfolio. The episode details the rigorous due diligence process a pension fund undertakes when evaluating Bitcoin, including the outsized focus on custody arrangements, and why OnRamp's multi-institution model addressed every institutional concern that single-custodian alternatives could not.