In this episode, Sunny Ray sits down with Anant Tapadia, co-founder of Bithyve and creator of the Hexa wallet, a Bitcoin-only, open source, non-custodial wallet. Anant shares his path from computer engineering and an MBA at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, through a career in London's financial sector, to discovering Bitcoin in 2015. He describes moving from blockchain to crypto before settling fully into Bitcoin, and explains why his team chose to build a wallet, seeing it as the essential touch point between everyday users and Bitcoin. Anant details Hexa's account structure, checking, savings, and vault accounts, its unique five key recovery system designed to remove single points of failure, and how the wallet differentiates itself from multisig services like Casa and Unchained Capital by separating recovery security from transactional convenience. He also touches on assembling his four person founding team and presenting Hexa's security model at DefCon. The conversation offers a grounded look at building consumer focused, non-custodial Bitcoin tools.
A Bitcoin wallet built like a bank, without giving up your keys.
Where does your story begin, before Bitcoin and before your company?
I'm a computer engineer by training and did my management degree at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, which gave me perspective on financial systems and economics. I was settled in London since 2005, ran my own business, and worked with banks on large IT projects. That background gave me a head start once I discovered Bitcoin, though I learned far more about economics and computer science after getting into it than during my whole degree.
How did you first get into Bitcoin, and what was your path from there?
I came across Bitcoin around 2015 and, being an engineer, went down the blockchain rabbit hole first. I realized a blockchain without its own native currency isn't truly decentralized, since whoever funds incentives controls it. That led me into crypto around 2016, exploring altcoins without investing much. Eventually I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and have focused only on Bitcoin since.
What happened after 2017 as the market got hot?
I consulted with companies on Lightning and the economics behind Bitcoin, drawing on my banking background. I tried opening an exchange late in 2017 but realized it was too late. Looking at our strengths, myself and a few like-minded people realized product development, not financial infrastructure, was where we could add value, and wallets are the real touch point users have with Bitcoin.
Were you thinking about monetization early on, or focused purely on building?
From my product background, I knew good products eventually make money but not right away. The first step was building something people liked and getting users on board. Many successful apps build first and monetize later, so that was our thinking when we started, and eventually testing with users helped us figure out how to monetize the wallet.
How did your founding team come together?
It happened one person at a time, just talking to people about why I'd left a well paying job to focus on this. Some people got interested. We ended up as four founders, three from London whose wavelengths matched mine, and one who was my college friend, who called me up curious about what I was doing and got hooked after asking questions for two weeks.
How does Hexa's five key recovery system compare to writing down a 24 word seed phrase?
The key benefit is there's no single point of failure. You scan a QR code and store a recovery key in seconds, across five places like your email, drive, a friend, or family member. You only need three of five to recover, so losing one doesn't matter. It's mathematically more resilient than a single paper with 24 words kept in one vault.
How is Hexa different from multisig solutions like Casa or Unchained Capital?
Those are great for cold storage, but at the transaction level they're inconvenient since you'd need three keys signed from different locations just to spend. Hexa separates recovery security from transactional security, so your backup can be maximally resilient while everyday accounts, like checking, remain easy to spend from using just your phone.
Is Hexa available now?
Yes, it's been available for about three months and hundreds of people are already using it and keeping money in it, though we're still calling it beta for now. We also presented a white paper on our security and cryptography approach at DefCon, the world's biggest hacker conference, and got strong support there.
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