Bitcoin is for everyone, not just people who follow crypto.

Astra exists to make that real for American workers, one paycheck at a time.

I arrived as a saver who got it wrong first.

I spent five years stacking sats, and then I sold, well before Bitcoin really took off. I watched from the sidelines as the thing I'd been holding ran without me. That stung. But it also made me pay attention in a way I never had before.

What really got my attention was the about-face at the top of traditional finance. Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, had once dismissed Bitcoin as an “index of money laundering.” A few years later his firm launched one of the largest spot Bitcoin ETFs in history and he was calling it a legitimate asset and a form of digital gold. When the loudest skeptics reverse course that hard, something real is happening.

So I went back to first principles, which, for a history major, felt like coming home. I read the history of money, barter, seashells, coins, gold, paper, and how each form eventually gave way to the next. One phrase kept coming back: sound money.

Then I looked at my own life. A new car payment that kept climbing. Groceries that cost more every week. The dollars I was saving were quietly losing ground. After all the research, the fact that there is no CEO of Bitcoin, no one who can print more of it, I realized this wasn't a trade. It was the future of money. And we are still incredibly early.

I built Astra so the next person doesn't have to learn it the hard way I did, so saving in Bitcoin is automatic, consistent, and built into the paycheck you already get. No timing the market. No selling too soon.

I found a way to build the bridge without building the whole exchange.

Building this the obvious way would have meant building a crypto exchange from scratch. I looked hard at that. After consulting with attorneys and business developers, the answer came back fast: roughly $3 million in capital, a team of lawyers, and a two-year runway before processing a single transaction. That wasn't the path.

Astra is built on Coinbase's Developer Platform infrastructure. Rather than chase our own money-transmission licenses or build custody from scratch, we use Coinbase's established rails for custody, compliance, identity verification, and transaction execution.

Astra is the bridge. Coinbase is the engine underneath it.

That decision let us reach market in a fraction of the time and cost, and it puts the regulatory and compliance weight on Coinbase, one of the most scrutinized names in the industry, not on a startup.

Reaching for the stars, and one very personal eclipse.

Astra is about reaching for the stars: in life, in wealth, in what becomes possible when you start early and stay consistent.

I've always been a bit of a space nerd, so the name and our eclipse logo felt right from the start. But it became personal in a way I never planned. In April 2024, my wife went into labor with our first daughter during the total solar eclipse over Rochester. The eclipse in our logo isn't just a design choice anymore. It's a reminder of why I'm building something meant to last, for her generation, and for anyone willing to take the first small step toward their own future.