The signs started appearing everywhere for Will Reeves long before he founded Fold. In Argentina, a friend showed him how families preserved wealth through Bitcoin during runaway inflation.
In Sonoma County, where his family worked in the wine industry, he watched migrant workers get gouged by traditional remittance providers who charged usurious fees for sending money home.
During Occupy Wall Street in Oakland, he witnessed PayPal donations getting shut down while bitcoin donations flowed through unimpeded.
“I had all these touch points with Bitcoin all representing an incredibly powerful aspect of it,” noted Will. Each interaction revealed another superpower: wealth preservation, efficient remittances, censorship resistance, technological innovation.
But even with all these glaring signs, it took years before he made the leap.
The Silicon Valley Disconnect
Will had spent over a decade in Silicon Valley’s corporate machine, bouncing between major tech companies and launching consumer payment products. He was good at building things, it was his calling, but something felt off.
“Even despite doing this in Silicon Valley with a bunch of incredible opportunities and projects I got to work on, I never truly felt like I was completely aligned with what I was bringing to market,” he explained.
“I thought it was cool to build, I thought there was a great opportunity and I thought I could make something the world would love, but the alignment wasn’t there.”
The breakthrough came around 2015 when he met his co-founder, who was working on a Bitcoin side project. For the first time, Will saw how he could merge his two worlds: building exceptional products and supporting something he genuinely believed in.
“That was truly inspiring where I could actually finally say I could bring my worlds together building things and things that I care about,” he said. “That was a complete unlock.”
Solving the Wrong Problem First
Fold’s early iteration focused on spending bitcoin, converting it to gift cards or cash so people could shop at places that didn’t accept it directly. The logic seemed sound: Bitcoin holders needed ways to spend their digital money in the real world.
But Will quickly realized they were solving the wrong problem.
“The problem was not enough people had bitcoin,” he said. “We were solving a problem that didn’t quite exist or wasn’t even really ready for it.”
The insight that changed everything came from connecting two observations: not enough people own bitcoin because it’s a superior savings asset, and not enough people have savings period, regardless of where they are from.
“Those two insights brought together this idea of wait, how can we build a product that allows people to passively build savings that will be denominated in Bitcoin?” Will explained.
That’s when Fold pivoted to rewards. Instead of asking people to spend bitcoin, they would help people earn it through everyday purchases.
Building the Bitcoin Financial Stack
Today’s Fold bears little resemblance to that early gift card conversion service. The platform has evolved into a comprehensive financial services suite designed around one core principle: helping users end up with more bitcoin than they started with each day.
The Fold debit card rewards users with bitcoin on every purchase. Premium Fold+ members get higher cashback rates, boosted spins, and exclusive giveaways.
Users can direct deposit paychecks, set up automatic bitcoin purchases through dollar-cost averaging, enable round-ups on purchases, and even get paid directly in bitcoin.
“Fold is a platform where you can fully port your personal financial activity to, but to a platform that is there specifically designed to make sure that you end up with more bitcoin than you started with each day,” Will said.
The platform serves everyone from Bitcoin newcomers earning rewards on Uber rides and Amazon purchases to maximalists “living 100% of my life in Bitcoin and living in a parallel financial reality to the rest of the world.”
Most importantly, Fold provides the tools to move along that spectrum at your own pace.
“Maybe it’s not 100% conversion of your paycheck right now. Maybe it’s 10%. Okay, let’s dial up the paycheck conversion there. Let’s increase your roundups,” Will explained. “It gives you this toolkit that follows your education into Bitcoin as you develop confidence.”
Surviving Bitcoin’s Volatility Cycles
Building a Bitcoin company means accepting an additional layer of difficulty that most entrepreneurs never face.
Will describes it as “building on a moving foundation” not just responding to customer needs, but adapting to an entire industry figuring out its own product-market fit.
“When you have 50% drawdowns in incredibly short periods of time… that adds a whole new difficulty factor,” he said, noting the “absolute trail of Bitcoin company bodies that got pushed through that meat grinder and didn’t make it out.”
The key to survival? Conservative growth and what Will calls “cockroach mode.”
“Growth at all costs will destroy you in Bitcoin,” he warned. “You need to be extraordinarily resilient, very conservative in how you’re building your company… and be prepared to go into cockroach mode for years on end.”
But those who survive the volatility cycles emerge stronger. Fold now holds over 1,000 BTC in its treasury and went public on NASDAQ in February 2025.
The Gift Card Revolution
Fold’s newest innovation might be its most significant: Bitcoin gift cards appearing in physical retail locations across America. While most people discover Bitcoin through brokerage accounts or mobile apps, Will sees a much larger distribution opportunity.
“When you think of where financial services are distributed today, it is not just an app store. It’s not just a brokerage account. It’s literally in every store you shop in,” he explained.
Gift cards represent the perfect Trojan horse. They’re familiar to consumers “gift cards are the number one gift in America” and retailers already have dedicated sections for them. More importantly, retailers want Bitcoin customers.
“These retailers know that Bitcoin is able to draw very valuable customers who are high earners… Many of them have families. They want these customers,” Will said, pointing to Costco’s $200 million monthly gold sales as proof that Americans want alternative assets.
“You’re going to see this in 2025 get rolled out. Big orange Bitcoin B’s are going to be gracing the checkout lines of the largest retailers in America where millions of people shop and trust already.”
Building Partnerships Beyond Traditional Finance
One of Fold’s most interesting developments is its integration with different companies, such as Crowd Health, a peer-to-peer healthcare funding company that helps people avoid traditional insurance. Will sees these partnerships as representative of a broader shift.
“We’re talking with life insurance companies, lending companies, mortgage companies,” he said. “I think this is a vision that is going to replicate across Crowd Health into a bunch of other adjacent services I think Bitcoiners are going to love.”
These integrations matter because they make Bitcoin part of everyday financial life rather than a separate investment category.
When someone can contribute to their health coverage with bitcoin or earn bitcoin rewards on insurance payments, it becomes truly integrated into their financial routine.
The Human Impact
Beyond the business metrics and technical innovations, one of the things Will loves to see is his customers doing better financially than their peers.
“Our customers are more confident, more stable and more optimistic about their financial future,” he said. “Part of it is they’re genuinely doing better than their peers. They are outpacing their peers.”
Will sees this success against a troubling backdrop. “Everyone else is living in a world where the tools that they rely on are actually counterproductive to their end financial goals, that’s a really f****** big story,” he said.
It’s a meaningful achievement when hundreds of thousands of people have earned bitcoin through Fold, with thousands now living primarily on bitcoin, especially in a financial system where traditional tools often work against people’s long-term interests.
Looking Forward
When I asked Will what he’d want to ask Satoshi Nakamoto if given the chance, his answer revealed his perspective on Bitcoin’s evolution.
“I would ask him what surprises him most about where Bitcoin is today versus what he envisioned,” he said. “Bitcoin has been unleashed into the world. It is a virus that is taking over people to achieve its ends at this point.”
Will sees Bitcoin as having “taken a life of its own” far beyond what any single person, even Satoshi, could have predicted. The technical developments, social adoption, and financial integration have all exceeded early expectations.
Fold’s role in that evolution is clear: making Bitcoin accessible to anyone willing to start small. Whether you’re earning your first satoshis on coffee purchases or converting your entire paycheck, Fold provides the infrastructure.
“Are we achieving a better world for those that are adopting Bitcoin and can we be a good tool to support that transition?” Will asked. For thousands of Fold users stacking sats with every swipe, the answer appears to be yes.
As Bitcoin continues its march toward mass adoption, companies like Fold are building the bridges that make that transition possible.
Not through complex technology or financial jargon, but through simple tools that meet people where they are. Sometimes the most revolutionary ideas are the ones that feel completely normal.
