Equyt
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What we're shipping

A running record of what we're building at Equyt, written by me (Justin) as it happens. The product, the site, the company, the slow weeks included. Newest first.

I keep every entry here, so nothing gets quietly deleted. It's a permanent archive.

A full week with the calendar doing the talking

This was the busiest stretch since we started. The conference call Kurt and I mentioned last week actually happened, and it went well enough that we're carrying the conversation forward rather than filing it away. I kept the founding-engineer interviews moving, and I spent real time with a CPA pressure-testing whether the cost-basis and fair-value methodology holds up under the kind of scrutiny an auditor would bring, which is exactly the heat I want on it this early. In between the calls I went back through the site and the security page and tightened the parts that were still reading like promises instead of plans. None of this is the sort of thing that makes a headline, but a week of steady, unglamorous progress is how this actually gets built.

A day of calls, a third customer, and interviews

Today was genuinely full. I spent most of it on conference calls, and a third business committed to coming on as a customer while we test, so the beta now has real companies waiting on it. Kurt and I also ran two interviews with founding-engineer candidates, and tomorrow I am talking with a CPA who could help make the accounting defensible. The customers matter, but I keep coming back to the people: the right founding partner, an engineer or a CPA, is the thing that changes everything from here.

Shared the site with a limited network

I started quietly sending the site to a small circle I trust, and the replies came back within hours: plenty of constructive criticism and sharp questions (the good kind), some genuinely useful insight, a possible partnership, a conference call Kurt and I are taking next week, and a promise of our first customer for beta testing. Not bad for a soft open.

A preview for founding engineers

Opened a gated dev preview of the architecture for founding-engineer candidates: how ingestion, cost basis, fair value, and posting actually fit together. It's behind a password on purpose. If you want to see the architecture, email me at justin@equyt.com and I'll send login info.

We're sharing our progress

Started this page. It's a running log of everything that got us here, going back to the conference in 2025 that set me off. I'll keep posting as we go, the wins and the slow weeks both, because I'd rather show the work than polish a highlight reel.

Published how we handle security

Wrote the security and compliance page, which matters more to this audience than almost anything else. The short version: we're watch-only, we never touch your keys, and there's no path for money to move. I'd rather a skeptical CFO leave reassured than impressed.

Claimed @equytbtc, gold check and all

Locked in the X handle and got Equyt verified as a business. Small thing, but it's the difference between looking like a real company and looking like a weekend project. Plain 'equyt' was long gone, so @equytbtc it is.

equyt.com is live

Pushed the first real version of the site live. It says what we're building, who it's for, and how the monthly close works once Bitcoin's on the balance sheet. Refreshing the page and watching it load on the actual domain never got old.

Work begins on design

I came back from the road and went straight into design. I started laying out the real pages in earnest: the hero, how the close should read on screen, and the product mockup that had to carry the whole story. Most of what you see on the live site took shape during these days at the desk.

A slow stretch (founder travel)

Honest note: not much shipped these few weeks. I was traveling and the build mostly sat. I'm leaving the gap in the log on purpose, because pretending every week is productive is exactly what I don't want this page to do.

Built the dashboard mockup

Built the working product mockup that anchors the homepage: holdings, cost basis, unrealized gain, the transaction table, the 'close ready' badge. I wanted people to see the thing, not read a paragraph describing it. Designing real screens forces real decisions.

Stood up the infrastructure

This is the part I'm at home in. Put everything behind Cloudflare, self-hosted the fonts, set the security headers, and tightened the whole stack down. I run my own servers, so I'd rather own this layer than rent it and hope.

Started building the site

Started hand-building the marketing site. No page builder, no template, just me and the markup, so every choice on the page is one I made and can defend. Slower up front, but nothing fights me later.

Drew the logo and a design system

Spent way too long on the logo, and I'd do it again. It's a geometric ledger-bar "E" tilted twelve degrees that reads as a balance sheet if you squint. One orange, dark by default, built to sit next to serious finance software instead of a crypto exchange.

Settled the read-only architecture

Made the call that shapes everything: Equyt is watch-only, full stop. We work from xpubs, descriptors, and read-only exchange keys, we never hold a key, and there's no withdrawal path anywhere in the design. The easiest way to earn a CFO's trust is to make the scary thing impossible.

Designed the close, end to end

Laid out the whole flow on paper before writing a line of product: connect the accounts, pull the transactions, apply cost basis, mark to fair value, post the journal entries, hand back audit-ready reports. If the close can't survive being drawn by hand, it won't survive an audit.

Named it Equyt

After an embarrassing number of bad names, Kurt and I landed on Equyt. It's a balance-sheet word, not a crypto one, which is the entire point for a CFO. We argued about the spelling for a while, then went and grabbed every handle we could before someone else did.

Kurt's in

Talked Kurt into building this with me, which didn't take much once he saw the same gap I did. Having a partner to argue with (and to tell me when an idea is bad) changed the pace overnight. That's the week it stopped being a side project.

Wrote out the monthly close, by hand

Sat down and mapped the entire close for a Bitcoin-holding business, step by step, just to find every spot it falls apart today. That ugly hand-drawn map turned into the outline for the whole product. The bugs in this space hide in the boring steps.

Mapped where the data lives

Went source by source: what you can actually pull from custodians and exchanges (Coinbase, BitGo, Anchorage, Kraken, River) and what a journal entry has to look like to land cleanly in QuickBooks or Xero. Turns out 'just sync it' hides a lot of sins.

Worked through cost basis and lot tracking

This is where spreadsheets quietly go wrong. I dug into specific-identification lots, partial disposals, and making realized gain and loss land in the right period. Get this part sloppy and every number downstream is fiction.

Talked to CFOs and CPAs

Spent a few weeks just listening to finance people about how they handle Bitcoin on the books today. The answer was almost always a nervous spreadsheet and a quiet prayer before audit season. Nobody had a real tool, which is either terrifying or a very good sign.

Read the FASB guidance, twice

Spent a weekend deep in FASB ASC 350-60, the rule that finally moved corporate crypto to fair value. Not a beach read, but it's the reason this product has to exist, so I stayed with it until it stuck.

Called my own CPA

Called my accountant and asked how I'd actually book Bitcoin on a company's balance sheet. The long pause told me everything. When the pros are improvising, there's usually a real product hiding in there.

Where it started

Sat in a corporate treasury conference and kept hearing the same thing between sessions: companies are putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet with no real way to account for it. I couldn't stop turning it over on the flight home. That's the day the idea wouldn't leave me alone.