Onramp announced today the appointment of Blake Killian as Chief Marketing Officer. Killian will lead Onramp’s marketing strategy across brand, content, education, and client engagement as the company accelerates growth among individual, trade, and enterprise clients.

[Press Release]

Belief, Ah-has, Tap Water, & Why I Joined Onramp

Blake Killian, Chief Marketing Officer

Bitcoin has a way of sneaking into your life. My first encounter came in 2017 when a close friend returned from grad school in London talking about blockchains, digital currency, and this odd new thing called bitcoin. At the time, I filed it under “curiosities”—complex, confusing, intriguing but distant.

By 2019, curiosity started to harden into conviction. By 2021, the orange pill had slipped all the way down.

What pulled me in wasn’t hype. It was a series of ah-has: about what money really is (and was, and now is again); about why Satoshi wrote the whitepaper, not just what it said; about how a trustless, finite, immutable base layer could change the engine of the world forever. Pretty heady stuff. And since my default mode is head-in-the-clouds, I’ve learned to lean into it.

Here’s what I believe: bitcoin isn’t a novelty. It’s inevitable. Just as the internet and the iPhone became woven into everyday life, bitcoin will too. In fact, I believe it will eventually feel so ordinary that we won’t even think about it—like tap water. It’ll follow the same arc Uber, Venmo, and Netflix did: first nouns, then verbs, then invisible utilities. Technologically, bitcoin is already on that path. Philosophically, it’s unlocking freedom, fairness, and autonomy in ways we can’t fully imagine yet.

The real question isn’t if we get there, but how. Do we stumble into it through crises, shocks, and rug pulls? Or do we choose it—because we understand it, trust it, and believe in it? Call me Pollyanna, but I’ll take the second path. Not out of naïveté, but logic. Choice, understanding, trust, belief—and yes, patience and white knuckles—got us this far. That momentum will carry us forward.

And that path—adoption by choice, rooted in education—is the one I want to help lead. That’s why I joined Onramp.

For the past 20 years I’ve worked at the intersection of marketing, media, and technology. I’ve helped Walmart engage 2.1 million employees through personalized storytelling. For ViacomCBS (Paramount), I built content strategies grounded in audience truths—like the fact people watch shows on networks, not network shows. With Anheuser-Busch, I developed interactive campaigns that shifted perceptions “beyond beer.” Earlier in my career, I led strategic initiatives that helped Ericsson, the multinational telecommunications giant, gain traction by predicting the future. And I was even part of the team that took Fireball Whisky from cult label to mainstream juggernaut.

I’ve built digital strategies, campaigns, and platforms that reached millions across industries from finance to consumer goods. But bitcoin is different.

Bitcoin is the foundation for the future of money and freedom. And Onramp is different too. What drew me here wasn’t just the strength of its multi-institution custody model or rapid product innovation, but its ethos: curiosity, research, education, and innovation at the core. Onramp believes, as I do, that bitcoin adoption requires trust—and trust requires teaching.

As CMO, my mission is simple: make bitcoin inevitable by choice. That means building narratives, campaigns, and content that help individuals, businesses, and institutions understand why bitcoin matters—and how Onramp makes it safe, secure, resilient, and accessible.

This is the most important work of my career. I couldn’t be more excited to roll up my sleeves, join this incredible team, and help lead the next chapter of bitcoin adoption where there’s strength in many and simplicity in one.