Less than four months after his abrupt resignation from his role as chief executive of Onramp Invest, high-profile fintech personality Tyrone Ross Jr. is breaking ground on a new venture aimed at helping financial advisers navigate the cryptocurrency space.
In an interview Friday morning, Ross confirmed that he's co-founder and CEO of Turnqey Labs, a new interface platform “with the goal of providing all the data from the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”
“We will integrate and aggregate data to help RIAs,” he said. “It’s not an allocation thing and it’s not a fund, it’s just the data, because the reporting on these assets is still incomplete and not good.”
Ross, who left Onramp on March 1 after 19 months, said he's also launching a registered investment adviser known as 401 Financial later this year that will serve as an “incubator for the startup.”
Ross preferred to keep many of the details surrounding his new ventures vague but teased the pending RIA as cutting-edge.
“We’re building the RIA from scratch in a very specific way,” he said. “Everybody talks about the next-gen RIA, but nobody has built it. We will have a unique tech stack, marketing in a way that will break the mold, it will be very much a digital experience, flat fee, customizable and driven by technology.”
Even with cryptocurrencies in the middle of an apparent free fall from last year’s high point, Ross remains a true believer in the potential of digital assets, and he thinks financial advisers need to get up to speed.
“The timing is ideal,” he said. “The best companies in the world were created in environments like this.”
Ross expects the Turnqey platform to go a long way toward getting advisers to view crypto as an asset to be advised on, as opposed to an asset to be managed inside client portfolios.
“Advisers should be advising on it, not managing it, and you don’t need to be a crypto wizard,” he said. “You need the ability to give advice and be conversant and knowledgeable.”
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