In a recent conversation with Zak Mir, Nick Thurlow, Executive Chairman of Hamak Gold, shared exciting developments at the company following a transformative acquisition of Bitcoin as part of their broader capital allocation and treasury management strategy.
This move marks Hamak Gold’s first significant step into digital asset investment, reflecting a forward-thinking approach to value creation and balance sheet optimisation. Here, we explore the insights Nick provided about the company’s evolution, strategy, and vision for the future of digital asset management.
Zak Mir: Hello and welcome to Zach’s Traders Cafe. Today I’m joined by Nick Thurlo, who’s executive chairman at Hammock Gold. Your shares are up 10x now since the start of the year and 43% this week. So you’ve had a good week. There’s a bit of a transformation at Hamak Gold. Maybe you can explain what’s been going on there.
Nick Thurlow: Yeah, sure. We took over the company at the beginning of July. We raised £2.4 million to expand the existing company and add a digital asset treasury part to the company. I mean, we’ve seen the recent successes in the UK and over the last few years in the US and I think we thought there was a nearly unique opportunity to work in the big board space in the UK because fundamentally there’s a lot of people and institutions that are underweight Ill broadly call crypto assets and we just thought there was a way you know especially through the big board to be able to get us in a in a position to help that market out and I mean obviously a lot of companies have joined the bandwagon or the gold rush in the digital space over the last couple of months.
Zak Mir: What makes Hamak different? Is it the management? Is it the strategy? You know, what are we looking at?
Nick Thurlow: I think it’s a little bit of everything. I mean, we’ve got a very experienced team which we will continue to add to shortly on the board and the advisory board. We definitely have a long-term shareholder value view that if we build the right foundation, we will be able to overachieve the market. We’ve all got a lot of experience. I worked for tier one banks before. I’ve worked in asset management, I’ve worked with a family office, now and to go to that larger level of investor, not ignoring the retail investor at all, but to get the sort of bigger numbers that we are hoping to do. You have to have a real foundation of partners that’s are from lawyers, auditors, bankers, you know, regulated partners to be able to go and deal with, you know, the institutional market that we are aiming to service.
Zak Mir: In terms of the retail investors who’ve really got the bit between their teeth on your stock, what is your message to them at the moment?
Nick Thurlow: Well, thank you for joining us on the journey first of all, and secondly, you know, be patient with the sometimes crazy swings on an intraday basis. You know, I think was I’m not sure it was the end of last week or beginning of this week, but I think there was one day our stock was down over 30% on one day and I got all these messages saying there’s a rumours that you’re doing a placement at 1.9p. Well, it was completely false. So I think when you sometimes have a big run up, you’re a victim of your own success. And that’s something, you know, 50 – 100 million balance sheet, you’re going to have these bumps along the road as the market digests news or rumours. And I think that’s, you know, be it with for the long haul with us. I think that’s the key message. And in terms of the Bitcoin treasury aspect, lots of other companies, as I said, have got into it.
Zak Mir: Dr. Arthur B. Laffer joined your company. He was appointed earlier this month, which is, as you know, he’s a sort of world-renowned figure. Is that one of the differentiators, you know, the people like him, the advice, the strategy that you’re going to have?
Nick Thurlow: Yeah, him and others that that are coming. So this this really builds upon what I was talking about the foundation. I mean we want I think its very difficult to duplicate what Micro Strategy has done. So the way we look at it is you know I think we originally spoke about this as Bitcoin Treasury 2.0 but you know the sort of that’s now morphed into digital asset treasury policy and I think the next company after Micro Strategy is going to have to do things slightly differently.
Zak Mir: You know they timed it perfectly and what we want to do is work with great partners, great advisers, and figure out what the next five years looks like for this space. And I’m not sure anyone knows what the right answer is, but its going to be slightly different to what people did for the last 5 years is that is the way we look at it. So the more people of Dr. Laffers calibre that we have around us, I think the better it will be. And I mean you’ve gone into this strategy but lets say in a couple of months it turns out that buying Ethereum is fantastic or Ripple or going into a completely different area that’s the way to be.
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Zak Mir: Are you flexible enough in your sort of outlook and skills to be able to move with the market 100%.
Nick Thurlow: I mean look I’ve been in treasury since the early 90s. So my whole career is based around risk in general. Its not the best risk strategy to have one asset. Now, we’ve already got gold and Bitcoin. I think, you know, there’s a great quote from the guy who founded Vanguard. He said, uh, and Ill paraphrase because I’m not good at quotes, but he basically said, don’t buy the needle, by the haystack. And at some point, I think a basket of the larger coins is a sensible idea. Ethereum, Ripple of two obvious ones.
Zak Mir: You actually have a history going back decades and you know this is kind of always been your day job. Its not just something that you just decided to do on on an opportunist opportunistic basis.
Nick Thurlow: No, not at all. I think what you’re fundamentally talking about is how you manage newer asset how you manage assets right and using again the generic term of crypto assets that and you know I prefer digital assets but the world will evolve. you know I think there was a really interesting story a couple of weeks ago that didn’t get a huge amount of thing I think Im pretty sure it was RobinHood is now using blockchain to allow retail investors to trade 24/7 365 in the US now they’ve got their own internal ways of having to manage the risk but through that system blockchain which is you know obviously a part of digital assets and crypto is going to revolutionize how retail investors can trade stocks all the time.
If we look at that the technology is changing how we invest and how we manage things so were looking at this as a I think what you now see you know the micro strategies BlackRock and other governments putting you know this is basically its bitcoin is a fundamentally reserve currency I mean look at how much you know people are holding.
So you can’t ignore it. I think the really big thing for us was that across the globe the UK is massively underweight and that really looked at us and thought right if we just bring in some of the you know some of the lessons we’ve learned over the last 30 years of managing assets and risk management that there’s a really big opportunity here. I mean, you know, if we can partner up with some of the pension funds or even some of the individuals through ISIS and the like, there’s a big opportunity. Theres a massively untapped market and I think that’s how you build a big company. Well, we look forward to that.
Zak Mir: In the meantime, Nick Thurlo, executive chairman at Hammock Gold, thank you very much indeed. Pleasure, Zach. Look forward to talking to you again. Thank you for listening. Remember to visit our website for more news and other podcasts at www.shar-talk.com.
