Aussie duo’s wild ride fronting the crypto money roller coaster
Swyftx trading exchange founders and best mates Alex Harper and Angus Goldman are the Aussie face of the crypto generation but the highs and lows have tested their will and resilience.
In early 2022, Alex Harper and best mate Angus Goldman were the Australian poster twins of the global cryptocurrency revolution.
Their Brisbane-based crypto trading exchange called Swyftx, the second largest in the country, was pulling trading volumes of $3bn a month. Four years after launching, their investors were to reap a collective dividend payment of nearly $50m.
“It was through the next period where we ended up with almost four black swan events in the space of six months,” Harper now says, reflecting on the period that followed – the darkest of his life.
“We had to respond really rapidly to things that we were not fully in control of.”
Harper and his business partners’ mental resilience was tested to the limits by a failed merger, redundancies and the fallout across global markets from the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.
Swyftx and rival Superhero had unveiled merger plans in June that year to create a wealth management platform administering $1.5bn in cryptocurrency, direct equities and superannuation assets on behalf of almost one million Australians.
By the end of the year the deal was dead, a collateral victim of rising interest rates and the FTX collapse.
There were reports Swyftx was heavily exposed to the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, whose top executives have since pleaded guilty in the US to money laundering and sanction busting.
During 2022 Swyftx had to make half of its workforce redundant as part of two cost-cutting rounds, despite making an annual net profit of nearly $37m, struck on revenue of more than $150m.
“I’d say that was the first time in my professional career where I was waking up at three o’clock in the morning worried about work. I’d be going to dinner and not being able to think about anything but what was going on at work. It was the first time ever that I was unable to switch off,” Harper says.
He hired a business mentor, starting jogging every day and sought therapy for the first time in his life.
“It was quite a funny conversation, because I was like, ‘Okay, so here’s my 10 problems, and this is why I’m really stressed’. He says ‘Yeah, well, that’s pretty reasonable’,” Harper recalls of the first session with his psychologist.
“But it was a validation for me. Meditation was also one thing that he talked to me about, and I’ve taken quite an interest in it. Just being able to manage your internal thoughts and compartmentalise them.”
Fast forward almost two years, and Harper and Goldman – who both turned 30 this year – have not only survived but thrived.
Swyftx’s broker-based model today facilitates purchases of bitcoin, ethereum and more than 370 other crypto assets, supporting billions of dollars of monthly trade volumes.
In June this year Swyftx chief operating officer Jason Titman, who helped Harper and Goldman through the storm of 2022, was appointed chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange. Harper stepped aside to explore new opportunities but is still on the Swyftx board.
“Jason just absolutely thrived in the challenging environment and then particularly the year after, when we started heading back on this growth trajectory again,” he says.
“He was really helping with the strategy, driving the company and helping me rebuild the culture. So it is really refreshing to have that strong entrepreneurial spirit coming from someone who also has a depth of experience across boards, M&A and various other sort of business.
“So his appointment was just a natural progression.”
Looking ahead, Harper says he will work “on the Swyftx business, rather than in it”. Separately he is also considering investments in medical technology and renewable energy.
“Certainly I’ve taken an interest in where the AI technology is heading and where that intersects with Swyftx. There’s plenty of opportunities within the business and external to it,” he says.
“So I’m now looking at a bit of both.”
Early entrepreneurial spirit
Swyftx was founded in 2018, seven years after Harper and Goldman met at the National Computer Science School at the University of Sydney.
In his early years Harper had sold fruit juice at the local market to earn pocket money the as a teenager started a computer repair business. Goldman was a computer coding whiz-kid before he could ride a bike.
After meeting at university, they started a credit payment platform to trade bitcoin.
Their families have always been close and they bonded over their shared heritage.
Despite the arguments with his parents, Leanne and Michael, Harper says he now appreciates them pushing him hard when he was younger.
In primary school, they ordered him to pick up the phone and call the parents of his friends to organise sleepovers. When he got his first job at Woolworths, they charged fuel money to drive him to work. So he rode his bicycle instead.
“In my first business, I used to have my clients come and pick me up from my parents’ house when I was in high school before I had a driver’s licence. They were happy to pick me up for free, whereas Mum and Dad would charge me,” he recalls with a wide smile.
Goldman says his parents, Angela and Mark, taught him resilience.
“That was drilled into me as a kid. If something doesn’t work out the first time, try and try again. Do the hard work, think about it more and go for it. Resilience is the way that you overcome challenges,” he says.
The success of Harper and Goldman in the crypto industry has allowed them to buy a 17m-long motor yacht, which is skippered by Harper’s father who used to own a small fishing boat.
Last month Harper took a working holiday aboard with his parents off the central Queensland coast.
“We were fortunate enough, a couple of years ago, to buy a boat. So Dad is basically the full-time caretaker of that. It has really created so many opportunities for us to just connect with everyone,” Harper says.
“It’s really nice, after he’s worked for so many years to support us with a great education and opportunity and stuff, to finally see him in his happy place.”
He acknowledges that dividends from Swyftx have helped him and his business partner buy houses and “some personal luxuries”, but insists they have learned to “respect” wealth.
“On a personal level, I think that the most important thing when it comes to money is that if you haven’t had it and it sort of just lands in your lap, people potentially don’t have the respect for it or the appreciation for what that means,” he says.
“The whole experience we’ve been through has been incredibly humbling and challenging, but also full of growth.”
Harper celebrated his 30th birthday in July this year with a 10-day trip exploring the Western Australian coastline with just a mate, a swag and their four-wheel-drive.
The success of the Harper-Goldman partnership can be attributed to their yin and yang personalities. The former is the visionary, the latter executes the vision.
They have always been conscious of what kills start-ups in the early stages: the lack of funding, product, market fit and – most importantly – co-founder conflict.
“Those four things we were able to manage through good timing into the market, good friendship and communication and surrounding ourselves with great advisers,” Harper says, noting they are clear to draw a line between business and the personal.
“Angus knows he can relax when I start a phone call with, ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t a work call’,” he says.
Brand awareness and experience
Swyftx is best known in the public eye for being the exclusive crypto exchange partner of the National Rugby League.
Swyftx also has deals with the Brisbane Lions AFL club, the Adelaide Strikers Big Bash League cricket franchise and a Bathurst 1000 motor racing collaboration.
“Those sponsorships are the most external facing representation of the growth journey that we’ve been on – particularly the last two years – around maturity, looking into the future and seeing what opportunities exist ahead of us,” Harper says.
“Then making sure that the company is well equipped operationally and structurally, from a governance and risk perspective, and that includes from the board perspective.”
Three independent non-executive directors have recently been appointed to the Swyftx board with a combined 80 years’ experience across mergers and acquisitions, banking and legal regulation.
They are Cathryn Lyall, a Fintech Australia board member and Seed Space partner; Claire Wivell Plater, who is a Youi and Athena Home Loans board member; and John Polinelli, a former Morgans director.
Jason Titman has just been elevated to the role of executive chairman. The other board members are Harper, Goldman and Swyftx general counsel and former State Street managing director Aaron Dauber.
In the past five years, Swyftx has transacted more than $30bn of crypto trades and Goldman says the firm expects to more than treble that volume in the next two years. Earlier this year it recorded its fourth highest monthly volume ever.
“We believe there could be up to another six million Australians coming into the market post regulation, so more institutional investors, financial advisers, and potentially even superannuation funds,” he says.
Australian crypto investors and businesses continue to operate in a confusing and uncertain regulatory environment.
The exchanges are regulated by Austrac but under a relatively light touch regime which does not hold operators to the same duties as ASIC-regulated markets that deal in financial products.
The federal government is currently consulting on draft legislation to deliver a local regulatory framework for crypto, but the passing of the new laws is likely to be delayed until well into the new calendar year.
Swyftx has long advocated for tough regulation to govern crypto and in that context, wants to be one of the key consolidators in the industry going forward.
“There’s a lot of smaller exchanges in Australia. So we think that as regulation comes in, it will be important for consumers and for these exchanges to look to consolidate,” Harper says, noting any acquisitions would be funded by the substantial cash reserves within the Swyftx business.
He says Swyftx wants to introduce more sophisticated products such as derivatives to support a wider customer base.
While Swyftx has long been lauded for its user-friendly experience for new and intermediate crypto investors. It charges a trading fee of 0.6 per cent which decreases with higher trading volumes. However it has been criticised for falling short on advanced trading features such as margin trading, futures trading, or CFDs for experienced traders.
Reflecting upon turning 30, Goldman describes the past six years of his Swyftx journey as “life-changing”.
“Fundamentally, Swyftx has had an absolutely monumental impact, far bigger than what I think I could ever have thought about when we were considering the idea in 2017,” he says.
“But I guess, at the same time, things also haven’t changed. Like the objective or the reason that we started Swyftx around fixing problems, bringing the platform to people and democratising that access. Those are still the reasons that we are even here.”
Harper says he has long lived by an old Scouts principle to leave a place better than you found it.
“So my approach from a younger age, and one of the things that’s really driven my ambition, is to build a machine that is self sustaining and one that can keep growing and contributing beyond just the business itself,” he says.
Swyftx has now also introduced an employee share plan, allowing the firm’s staff to – like their multimillionaire bosses – earn and crystallise wealth.
“I think it’s really, really important to live your life to the fullest. So we love to see our team also reaping some of the rewards of our growth,” he says.
“Some of our employees who have had successful investments in crypto across the years, they’ve been able to pay off their mortgages and sort of set themselves up for life. So it’s really rewarding to see other people benefiting along the journey.”
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