An Exclusive Interview with Brian Rudick, Chief Strategy Officer at Upexi , a Nasdaq listed Solana Treasury Company. By Selva Ozelli Esq, CPA, Author of Sustainably Investing in Digital Assets Globally
President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act into law on July 18th making it the first federal law to regulate stablecoins. Approved by Congress on Thursday, July 17th the bill’s passage saw the digital asset industry assets –particularly digital asset treasury company stocks– surge past a $4 trillion market capitalization for the first time. The Genius Act imposes federal and state oversight on stablecoins — digital assets backed by the U.S. dollar — transforming realms of finance forever and making President Trump the de facto crypto president of our Nation. Ahead of signing the Genius Act into law, Trump Media filed to create a digital asset exchange-traded fund that would include Solana, Cronos, XRP, Bitcoin and Ether most of which are considered for a new U.S. “strategic reserve” for our Nation.
Brian Rudick, Chief Strategy Officer at Upexi
Companies like Upexi (SOL) are increasingly viewing digital assets as strategic reserve assets, establishing dedicated corporate entities to hold digital assets on their balance sheets and raising capital specifically to acquire them for reserve.
These companies’ stock serves as vehicles through which investors can gain exposure to digital assets while offering investors a regulated entry point into the asset class through the registration and listing of the entity on an exchange holding the asset on its balance sheet. Already over a 100 Nasdaq listed of digital asset treasury companies exist and more are announcing their entry into this area. Trump Media acquired about $2 billion in Bitcoin as part of its plan to become a crypto treasury company.
The Exclusive Interview with Brian Rudick, Chief Strategy Officer at Upexi , a Nasdaq listed Solana Treasury Company provides information about digital asset treasury companies for the benefit of digital asset investors.
Tell us about your educational and professional journey that led you to become the Chief Strategy Officer at Upexi, a Nasdaq listed Solana based Treasury company?
I spent a decade on Wall Street, mostly managing a long-short book of bank stocks as part of a larger financials team for hedge funds like Citadel, Millennium, and Balyasny. A few of the banks that I covered like Signature and Silvergate were the fiat on-off ramps for crypto, which is when I went down the crypto rabbit hole and decided that it would take a long time but that digital assets will absolutely be ubiquitous one day, and that I wanted to be a part of the industry. From there, I moved to GSR, one of the oldest and largest digital assets trading firms globally, where I ran the research effort for four years. While at GSR, I had an increasing appreciation for all the value that MicroStrategy creates, I believe because digital asset treasury companies are really just banks, so I was able to internalize where the capital markets value creation emanates from and led the effort at GSR to lead Upexi’s $100 million equity private placement. And finally, it just made a lot of sense for me to move from GSR to Upexi to continue to push on Upexi’s mission to be the canonical Solana treasury company and generate as much shareholder value as possible.
Upexi is a leading Solana-focused treasury company, purpose-built to help institutions capture upside in the most performant blockchain network in crypto. Tell us why Upexi chose Solana and not another blockchains to invest in?
We chose to be underpinned by Solana rather than other smart contract blockchains for three main reasons. First, Solana is one of the first second-generation smart contract blockchains, so it benefits from having best-in-class performance due to having the latest technology like parallel transaction processing, while also enjoying large network effects that continue to compound. Second, this combo of top performance and large network effects have attracted a large and vibrant ecosystem of users, developers, and decentralized applications, including many from a variety of sectors like DeFi, DePIN, AI Agents, gaming, telecommunications, social, and many more. Lastly, Solana is putting up the best metrics of any chain by many measures, including daily average users, decentralized exchange volumes, application revenues, and many more. In short, we believe Solana has the best chance to be the endgame winning high performance blockchain.
Solana is designed as an energy-efficient blockchain network, and it has actively worked to reduce its environmental impact. Solana employs a combination of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and Proof-of-History (PoH). Was the energy efficiency of the blockchain a contributing factor in selecting SOL for UPEXI’s treasury investments?
Solana is an energy-efficient blockchain, but this was not a main factor in choosing it. This is because even proof-of-work based blockchains are arguably good for the environment, as miners are incentivized to use the lowest cost energy sources possible, which is incredibly renewables. Thus, proof-of-work based blockchains like Bitcoin can encourage renewables development and contribute to grid stability.
Tell us about President Donald Trump’s digital asset legislative initiatives including the Genius Act and its impact on the digital asset industry and specifically Upexi.
The importance of digital asset legislation and resulting regulatory and legal clarity cannot be underestimated for the digital assets industry. This is because the largest item always holding crypto back has been unclear rules in the US. In fact, large companies generally have strong incumbent businesses and will not risk disintermediating them if they don’t have to, especially if doing so increases regulatory and legal risk. However, with stablecoin legislation having passed and market structure legislation continuing to make progress, large companies will be forced to jump in in a big way, else risk being disintermediated by those who do. And it’s the large corporations that have billions of customers, built-in trust, billions of dollars of capital, and top developers, which can throttle blockchain and crypto adoption and lead to a step-change in usage and functionality once they come in fully. In other words, we may be on the precipice of onboarding the masses, and digital assets, Solana, and Upexi are all well-positioned to benefit.
What are the advantages to investors in investing in Upexi’s stock as opposed to a direct investment in SOL?
Investors may prefer to buy Upexi stock rather than buy native SOL or an alternative instrument like a Solana ETF as Upexi is able to create value for shareholders in ways these other assets/instruments cannot. First, we generate value via intelligent capital issuance, where issuing equity above book is by definition accretive. Second, we buy locked Solana at a discount, which provides built-in gains for shareholders as the discount moves to par over time. Lastly, we’re able to take on prudent leverage, which is beneficial if one expects the underlying asset to generally move up over the medium-term. These value accrual mechanisms are not available with spot Solana or via a Solana ETF.
For these reasons, Upexi is backed by the leading cryptocurrency venture capital funds and top key opinion leaders. Those who invested in Upexi include the following (among others): Big Brain Holdings, Anagram, Delphi Ventures, White Star Capital, Maelstrom, the family office of Arthur Hayes, Hivemind, Borderless, Morgan Creek, Elune Capital, and Delta Blockchain Fund, as well as prominent angels including Austin Federa, Frank Chaparro, Joey Krug, Bartosz Lipinski, Larry Wu, and Jordan Prince.
Solana is a popular blockchain for issuing meme coins and NFTs. President Donald Trump issued his meme coin $TRUMP on Solana. Does UPEXI invest in meme coins and NFTS?
Upexi does not invest in meme coins and NFTs. That said, we support Solana in a number of ways, such as staking to support network security, intending to tokenize our equity to support Solana’s mission to be Nasdaq onchain, and evangelizing Solana to raise its visibility, particularly amongst traditional investors.
Any developments concerning UPEXI our readers should be aware of?
Upexi will continue to acquire and HODL as much SOL as possible in an accretive and risk-prudent fashion. We have a simple, but proven model and are confident we can continue to create significant value for shareholders.
How can people reach you?
I am reachable at brian.rudick@upexi.com or on Twitter at @thetinyant.
Brian Rudick is the Chief Strategy Officer at Upexi , a diversified brand owner and Amazon aggregator leveraging data and operational efficiency to scale consumer product companies. Brian brings a unique blend of expertise in both traditional finance and emerging financial technologies, including digital assets and decentralized finance. With a background in investment banking and equity research, he has spent over a decade analyzing capital markets, leading M&A strategy, and advising on high-growth opportunities. At Upexi, he drives strategic planning, acquisition initiatives, and performance optimization across the portfolio. Prior to Upexi, Brian served in senior analyst roles at Roth Capital Partners and Bloomberg Intelligence, where he covered the technology, media, and digital asset sectors.
See more breaking stories and interviews here.