The Digital Credit Podcast Episode 3 | Gui Gomes

Timothy Kotzman (0:00)

Welcome to The Digital Credit Podcast. I'm Tim Kotzman. Today, I'm joined by Gui Gomes, founder and CEO at Oranje BTC, and a long-time participant in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Gui has worked at the intersection of Bitcoin, capital markets, and institutional finance, and Oranje BTC has been particularly active recently, expanding access for international investors and helping launch Digy11, hopefully I have that right, in Brazil, an ETF designed around income-generating securities tied to the Bitcoin economy. Gui, welcome to the show.

Gui Gomes (0:45)

Hey, Tim. It's a pleasure to be here. And this was fast, right? You're looking for a guest.

Timothy Kotzman (0:49)

Yeah.

Gui Gomes (0:50)

And I'm glad we were able to schedule this afternoon.

Timothy Kotzman (0:53)

We're in the digital economy. Things are just popping off, especially as we're hopefully entering the next bull market.

Gui Gomes (1:01)

Yeah. Things move fast.

Timothy Kotzman (1:03)

Absolutely. Let's maybe start with Oranje BTC. What are you building there? And what do you think the market still maybe even misunderstands about the opportunity for Bitcoin-focused public companies?

Gui Gomes (1:18)

Sure. So I've been, as you mentioned, in the Bitcoin ecosystem for about 10 years now, first as studying and investing and following, and then I joined the industry back in 2022 and began working on what became Oranje BTC in the summer of 2024

Right at the time, sales were pivoting strategy from micro strategy to strategy, the treasury become the key focus of the company. I saw that opportunity at the same time, there was a small hotel company out of Japan, starting to grow their treasury. And I just saw that that was a business model that would expand around the globe, and there will be other players bringing different flavors in different jurisdictions and trying to replicate the same model, and that will be another avenue for Bitcoin adoption.

So I put a business plan in place back in September, October of 24 My initial idea was actually to lease in the US. I'm originally from Brazil, but I've been living in the US for almost 10 years, and there was no other Treasury model beyond Sailor at that point. But while working on the plan and talking to a few friends back home, I soon realized that, hey, if I'm thinking about this, for sure there are other 25 to 50 people in the US, the most active capital markets around the globe, thinking about a similar business model or trying to bring a different flavor for a Bitcoin Treasury company. At the same time, Brazil is a large market that has one of the highest digital assets adoption around the globe in terms of grassroots, was one of the first countries to launch a Bitcoin ETF.

There was no single player that was from Bitcoin or digital assets that was listed in the Brazilian stock exchange. So that was when I said, you know what, instead of trying to go after the US market, let's bring this to Latin America that, if you look at it, is probably one of the regions that need Bitcoin the most. Rich region with about a billion people, but Latin America has seen many flavors of currency debasement, capital controls, and all the problems with the current fiat system. So essentially, we decided by December of 24 to go into the Brazilian market. And as you know, the first half of 25 was quite active, and there was a lot of excitement and a lot of capital going into this business model. We were just in the right time and had a pretty solid plan, had a great group of people joining me from my co-founder, who has been a CFO and CEO at public companies in Brazil for about 15 years. We had, of course, Eric Weiss as a board member. Eric, for those who don't know, very close to Michael Saylor, has been on the Bitcoin space for almost 12 years.

And then we brought some big local names as well. Fernando Urich, who is the largest voice around Bitcoin in Brazil, has written a book about Bitcoin back in 2013

George Levine, Julio Capua. So we got a pretty strong group of people together. We were able to raise a meaningful amount of capital. We raised about $400 million back in June of 25 And then we listed the company on October 7th of 2025 And for those who know, that was essentially the all-time high for Bitcoin. So the timing was perfect. Exactly. Bitcoin hit $126,000 on October 6th, and we listed on October 7th. And of course, October 10th, the largest liquidation event in Bitcoin history. But we have always been thinking about long term. We design a company for long terms. We're not thinking about a trade, a quarter or even a month. So even with all the headwinds that the industry got over the past almost 12 months, we were well capitalized. We had little that, and we had a strong business plan, and we just executed for the past 12 months.