Tom Kivisto

Thomas L. Kivisto is Co-Founder, Chief Investment Officer at Tantra Labs. Tom has over 40 years experience in commodities trading and has managed over $3 billion in AUM focusing on the energy sector over the course of his career. Bitcoin may be a nascent technology and a revolution in terms of money, but Tom’s experience in understanding the old world of commodities has played an integral part in shaping Tantra’s outlook on Bitcoin as well as our proprietary algorithmic development platform. Tom is not only a fount of knowledge and experience, but he is our bridge to the world of oil and gas, which is quickly becoming a hotbed for the ever growing Bitcoin mining industry. What’s more, if you ever have the opportunity to meet him, Tom’s cheery demeanor, perpetual smile, and stockpile of interesting stories are guaranteed to lower your blood pressure and leave you smiling yourself. Tom grew up just outside of Chicago, where he was a star point guard at East Aurora High School. With two older brothers obsessed with basketball and a father who won more than 1,000 games as a high school basketball coach, Tom was destined to be a baller. It didn’t hurt that Tom’s father was also his high school basketball coach! Tom’s brother Bob taught him how to push through the pain faced by athletes, and his father taught him the value of hard work. Both of these lessons continue to serve him to this day. But Tom wasn’t your everyday jock. Despite all the testosterone in the house growing up, Tom’s mother, a high school language teacher, managed to instill in him a rigorous academic standard and a life-long love of the arts. After high school, Tom went on to study pre-med at the University of Kansas, balancing his academic life with his college basketball career in the NCAA. Eons ago, gigantic dinosaurs roamed the earth under the shade of innumerable species of megaflora. And then they died. Millions of years of pressure changed all that organic matter into a sea of black ooze and great big pockets of flammable gas. This is a gross oversimplification, but ever since humans discovered that these materials could be harnessed for energy, oil and natural gas have formed the lifeblood of our modern day industrial society. There was a great deal of coal involved too, but Tom Kivisto only concerned himself with oil and gas. Not long after graduating from the University of Kansas, Tom got his big break working for Koch Industries, where he routinely had lunch with Charles Koch, a man whose words are “Impossible not to carry around in one’s long term memory.” In 1983, crude oil went electronic, and Tom had the opportunity to begin Koch’s first physical oil to Mercantile trade book. But Tom had bigger, more independent goals, so after much success in the energy sector, he left a great salary for the world of venture capital. In 2013, Tom was flying across the country and ended up sitting next to a “crazy crypto guy” named Ped Hasid. After a polite “Hello”, Tom noticed that Ped was staring intently at his computer screen and asked, “What kinda charts are you lookin at?” Ped spent the next five hours of the flight explaining Bitcoin to him, and they made plans for the very next day to discuss a joint business venture. This came to be Block26, the parent company of Tantra Labs, and the rest is history.