Scott Dedels, co-founder of BlockRewards, joins Sunny Ray for the inaugural episode of the newly renamed Sunny Ray Show. Dedels traces his winding path from studying history and entering financial services in 2008 to spending over 15 years working in pensions and employee benefits. He shares how the COVID lockdown pushed him into Austrian economics, Jeff Booth's Price of Tomorrow, and eventually deep into Bitcoin research. That obsession led him to leave the pension world and build BlockRewards, a company creating Bitcoin-based savings and payroll products for employers. Dedels discusses how BlockRewards helps ordinary employees dollar cost average into Bitcoin through their paychecks, the regulatory and funding challenges of building a Bitcoin native fintech, and why he believes institutional adoption via companies like Strategy and BlackRock is accelerating mainstream acceptance. The conversation touches on Bitcoin treasury strategy, the shifting attitudes of corporate decision makers, and the long term implications of a maturing Bitcoin market for both companies and their workforces.
BlockRewards co-founder Scott Dedels on turning pension industry pain into Bitcoin payroll products for the masses.
Can you share your backstory and how you got into Bitcoin?
I started in financial services in 2008 right before the crash, coming from a history background. I spent over 15 years in pensions and benefits consulting. My first Bitcoin touch was in 2011 seeing a buy Bitcoin sign in Kelowna, but I dismissed it. It wasn't until the 2020 lockdown, when I started reading Austrian economics and Jeff Booth's Price of Tomorrow, that I fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and eventually left my career to build BlockRewards.
What is BlockRewards and what problem is it solving?
BlockRewards is a financial services company building employer based products that run entirely on Bitcoin. Our vision is to give companies of any size tools they can confidently deploy to employees, using the employer as a trusted partner to expose people to Bitcoin's compound growth. It's a gateway to help people understand why holding some Bitcoin as savings makes sense, depending on their comfort level.
How do you accelerate the learning curve for average employees who don't have time to study Bitcoin deeply?
Because our products are tied to the payroll cycle, employees are dollar cost averaging every two weeks and watching their stack grow in real time, which builds understanding organically. We're two and a half years old with customers from day one who've seen Bitcoin three or four x in that time, so someone saving five or ten thousand dollars might now have forty or fifty thousand in cash value.
What are the biggest challenges you've faced building BlockRewards?
Regulatory requirements, documentation, and user agreements have been major hurdles, along with building software from scratch as founders who aren't developers, which made timelines hard to predict. Funding is also tough since we need investors who understand Bitcoin and are willing to part with it to invest in us instead of just holding. The Bitcoin founder community has been incredibly generous with help though.
Looking back, is there any advice you'd give yourself before 2020?
Honestly, I think the timing worked out the way it needed to. If I'd started two years earlier it would have been really hard to get traction, especially right after the FTX crash when the public perception of Bitcoin was toxic. It took this long to build the product and reach a point where the market was actually ready for it.
What's the pulse like when you're pitching employers and executives on Bitcoin payroll products?
BlackRock is doing us favors since the conservative portfolio now has a default three percent allocation to IBIT, so people are buying Bitcoin whether they realize it or not. Ray Dalio recently said the ideal Bitcoin allocation is fifteen percent. Things are moving faster than executives in the rearview mirror realize, and pushback is starting to soften.
What did you think seeing the US president become a major Bitcoin spokesperson?
Wild, I never saw that coming back in 2020 when I started going down the rabbit hole. It's a crazy time to be alive watching how fast the political and institutional landscape around Bitcoin has shifted.
Building something daring? Sunny talks to founders like this every day. Fifteen minutes to see if your story belongs on the stage.
Claim your pre-interview