The challenge
OpenAlpha's edge is research: a systematic overlay that aims to outperform simply holding Bitcoin, while staying fully non-custodial. The hard part was never the strategy - it was everything around it.
Shipping it the traditional way meant writing and auditing custom smart contracts, standing up custody and accounting, and reconciling an off-chain track record investors would have to take on trust. Months of infrastructure work before a single position could be opened.
Why Rethink
Instead of building that stack, OpenAlpha launched on Rethink. Custody, on-chain accounting and scoped execution came out of the box, so the team could put all of its time into the part that actually differentiates the product.
- No smart-contract code. The strategy runs through Rethink's existing, audited infrastructure - no bespoke contracts to write or audit.
- Non-custodial by default. Depositor assets stay in Safe smart accounts; OpenAlpha executes strategy within scoped, on-chain permissions and never holds the keys.
- A verifiable record. Every position and NAV update is on-chain, so SmartBTC's performance against its Bitcoin benchmark is auditable, not asserted.
"We wanted to compete on research and risk management - not spend two quarters writing Solidity. Rethink let us focus on the strategy and ship our own product."
- OpenAlphaWhat they built
On top of the Rethink stack, OpenAlpha designed its own front end - SmartBTC - with the look, language and onboarding of an independent product. Investors interact with OpenAlpha's brand; Rethink runs quietly underneath, handling custody, administration and settlement.
Because execution is framework-agnostic, the team plugged in its existing systematic models and ran them against a Bitcoin base, all within limits enforced on-chain.
The outcome
A live, non-custodial systematic product - benchmarked to Bitcoin, fully verifiable, and entirely OpenAlpha's brand - without a custody desk, an administrator, or a single deployed contract of their own.