You may have been buying your bitcoin from other exchanges over the past years and only recently came across River. Naturally, you may be interested to see if we solve any of your problems better.
There can be a variety of reasons why you may want to switch exchanges, depending on what is important to you. Below we cover the three biggest reasons why River is trusted by so many individuals and businesses, along with a few services we currently do not provide.
#1 Hyperfocus on Security
The vast majority of bitcoin holders prefer to trust a custodial solution with their bitcoin, rather than being the sole owner themselves. We offer cold-storage custody to our clients free of charge, because we know trusting an exchange is a first stage many Bitcoiners go through. It takes time to build up the confidence and knowledge to self-custody.
Throughout Bitcoin’s history, many exchanges have unfortunately had security breaches. These often cost their clients dearly by resulting in a loss of funds that could not be repaid.
At River security is our top priority. It is a top-down operating principle, starting from our Founder, CEO, and CTO, Alex Leishman, who is a security engineer by background. To ensure our customers’ funds are safe, we built our own security infrastructure and do not use a third-party custodian. Some exchanges outsource this, making clients trust multiple companies.
Security is critical to building and maintaining long-term relationships with our clients and making you feel confident about storing funds with us. We deliberately grow our business slower to ensure we can keep our focus on keeping all funds secure.
#2 U.S.-based Client Services
At big companies, clients quickly become a number, and going through support is a dreadful experience of emailing back and forth for weeks.
We have a friendly and energetic U.S.-based client services team to support you in your Bitcoin needs. Our private clients even get a dedicated relationship manager to assist them.
Our service is especially appealing to older generations who want to be able to talk to someone on the phone who can answer any question they may have. Few businesses offer this.
Our support is also a critical component of our beneficiary solution to help clients pass down their bitcoin to loved ones.
#3 The Smartest Way to Accumulate Bitcoin
We make it easy for you to accumulate bitcoin in a River account or a self-custody wallet.
- You can automatically buy bitcoin through recurring buys with zero fees.
- You can automatically withdraw this bitcoin to self-custody.
- Once per month we offer a free on-chain withdrawal to encourage self-custody.
Once this flow is set up, you can just focus on what’s important to you, and occasionally check in to see your generational wealth build up.
You’ll notice we use the word free a few times, so how do we make money? We charge a fee on one-time buys and sells. Everything else is operated at break-even to help us develop long-term relationships with Bitcoiners.
If our products and services appeal to you, give River a go and sign up today.
We have much more to offer that wasn’t covered, such as business accounts with fast onboarding, an excellent referral program, and a wide variety of educational content.
What River Doesn’t Offer
People appreciate platforms that fulfill all of their needs in one place and some businesses try to pursue all of these demands. Trying to compete in all areas as a business can compromise the quality of its products. It is important to us that when we build something, we ensure our clients receive the highest standards. Some products and services we don’t offer yet, and others we may not get around to.
No other cryptocurrencies, we’re Bitcoin-only
If you are someone who has been introduced to “crypto” and is led to believe that a diversified crypto portfolio is a wise strategy, then the absence of other assets may come as a surprise to you.
At River, we focus on helping people build up their long-term wealth, and we do not believe that other cryptocurrencies were created with that same interest at heart. They have founding teams that hold large portions of the supply, marketing narratives that switch every few years, and they prioritize growth and profits over long-term sustainable practices that will make their networks resilient for generations.
Unlike other exchanges, we have no interest in profiting from making inexperienced people believe that these tokens hold long-term value, nor encouraging them to gamble at attempts to become rich. We are confident that Bitcoin presents a unique opportunity for anyone to build up their wealth in a sustainable way.
We don’t (currently) offer collaborative custody
Some experienced Bitcoiners have asked us if we offer a collaborative custody model where they hold 2 of 3 keys that secure their bitcoin holdings, and we hold the third. A handful of other companies in the industry have such solutions, which come with yearly fees to pay for all the operational complexities.
We have investigated this area, but haven’t prioritized offering it as a product. It is entirely possible to use River to accumulate your bitcoin, and then use our auto-withdrawal feature to send it to your collaborative custody elsewhere if this is a strong need.
Most clients today are satisfied with the options to either self-custody, or trust our multi-sig cold storage solution that protects client funds with multiple keys, locations, and backups.
We don’t have a service to open Bitcoin IRAs
With that said, we can support existing self-directed IRA accounts if clients wish to hold real bitcoin within their IRA. If you do not have an existing self-directed IRA please reach out to us as River has partners who can assist you with this process!
We have not pursued a service to help clients open Bitcoin IRAs as the launch of Bitcoin ETFs makes it more appealing for individuals to buy these for their non-Bitcoin IRAs.
We don’t offer bitcoin(-backed) loans
The lending business is complicated and involves multiple layers of risk and trust in third parties. It is not an area we are focused on.
We are always interested in hearing your product feedback and suggestions. Just because we don’t offer something today, we would still love to hear your thoughts on it.