Find steady footing in volatile markets.
Cairn is an experimental digital asset platform for people who want a clear route through crypto — research, custody, and portfolio tools built around patience instead of noise.
A calmer way to hold a position
Every part of Cairn is built to slow you down at the right moments and get out of your way at the rest.
Layered research
On-chain data, funding rates, and volatility context shown alongside price — not buried in a separate tab.
Cold-storage custody
Assets are held in segregated cold storage with multi-party approval on every withdrawal.
Scheduled buying
Automate recurring purchases across your chosen assets, and rebalance on a schedule you set.
Portfolio waypoints
Set target allocations and get a plain-language nudge when your portfolio drifts off route.
Tax-lot tracking
Every buy and sell is tracked by lot, so year-end reporting is a download, not a project.
Route-based support
Reach a real person, not a routing menu, any day the markets are open.
Trail markers, not signals
Most platforms compete to give you more — more charts, more alerts, more reasons to check your phone. We built Cairn around the opposite idea: give people just enough information to make a decision, then leave them alone.
A cairn is a simple stack of stones left by the last person through, so the next one doesn't get lost. That's the whole design brief.
Read our approach →
Three steps, no detours
Fund your account, choose a route — hands-on trading or an automated schedule — and check in as often or as rarely as you like.
Verify & fund
Link a bank account or transfer existing holdings. Funds settle within one business day.
Set your route
Trade manually, or set target allocations and a recurring buy schedule.
Check waypoints
Get a plain-language digest when your portfolio drifts from target — nothing more, nothing less.
Custody built like it's not a feature
The bulk of assets on Cairn sit in geographically distributed cold storage, offline and out of reach of any single point of failure. Every withdrawal needs sign-off from more than one party before it moves.
We publish a plain-language security overview and run independent audits twice a year — because "trust us" isn't a security model.
Cold storage by default
95% of holdings sit offline. Only a small operating balance stays in hot wallets to fund same-day trades.
Multi-party withdrawal
No single person, including us, can move client funds alone. Every withdrawal needs independent sign-off.
Twice-yearly audits
An independent firm verifies reserves against client balances. Reports are published, not just promised.
What early users say
Feedback from people testing Cairn during the demo period.
The recurring buy schedule is the first crypto tool that's actually made me check my phone less, not more.
I moved off three different exchange apps onto this one. The research panel next to price is genuinely useful.
Having a person to call instead of a support ticket queue changed how I feel about holding a larger position.
Ready to find your route?
Compare plansMarkets
Simulated pricing for demonstration purposes — not live market data.
Context on every position
Open any asset and see funding rates, realized volatility, and exchange flow data next to the price chart — the same signals desks use, translated into plain language.
Set alerts on any of these metrics, not just price, so you hear about the thing that actually matters to your position.
Recurring buys that respect your plan
Schedule weekly, biweekly, or monthly purchases across up to ten assets, weighted however you choose. Pause or adjust anytime — nothing is locked in.
See which plans include this →
Market insights
Short reads from the research desk, updated as conditions change.
Coverage at a glance
Numbers behind the market data shown above.
Pricing
Three routes, from a first small position to a fully managed portfolio. No trading fee is hidden past the second decimal.
Trailhead
- Trade up to 8 assets
- 0.25% trading fee
- Basic price alerts
- Standard cold storage
- Email support
Basecamp
- Trade all 42 assets
- 0.10% trading fee
- Recurring buys & rebalancing
- Advanced research layer
- Tax-lot reporting
- Priority chat support
Summit
- Everything in Basecamp
- 0.05% trading fee
- Dedicated account guide
- Custom allocation strategy
- Early access to new assets
- 24/7 phone support
Prices are illustrative for this demo. Fees shown are per-trade; no plan charges a spread on top.
| Compare plans | Trailhead | Basecamp | Summit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assets available | 8 | 42 | 42 |
| Trading fee | 0.25% | 0.10% | 0.05% |
| Recurring buys | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-rebalancing | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tax-lot reports | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dedicated guide | — | — | ✓ |
| Support | Priority chat | 24/7 phone |
Custom, for family offices and advisors
If you're managing digital assets for other people, or a portfolio well above Summit's typical range, we'll build a custom fee schedule, reporting format, and onboarding flow around what you actually need.
Talk to us →
What plan members say
The fee schedule is the first one I've read top to bottom without finding a footnote I didn't expect.
Upgrading from Trailhead took two minutes and nothing about my history or settings was lost.
Free tier and it still doesn't feel stripped down. That's rare.
Pricing questions
Built by people who got lost first
Cairn started as a shared spreadsheet between three friends trying to track crypto holdings across five exchanges. The platform is the tool we wished existed.
We're a small, deliberately unglamorous team. No trading floor, no ticker wall — just people who think most financial products are designed to keep you anxious and checking your phone, and wanted to try something else.
Every feature on Cairn has to answer one question before it ships: does this help someone make a better decision, or does it just give them something new to watch?
What we optimize for
Say it plainly
If a feature needs a tutorial to explain, we've usually built the wrong feature.
Design for the long hold
We build for people making decisions over years, not for the next five minutes of price action.
Treat funds like they're not ours
Segregated cold storage and multi-party withdrawal approval, without exception.
A small studio in Portland
Cairn is built by a team of eleven working out of a converted warehouse space, with a few people distributed across other time zones. We ship in small increments and read every piece of support feedback ourselves.
We're not chasing headcount. Every person who joins has to be able to explain the whole product, not just their corner of it.
How we got here
2022 — The spreadsheet
Three friends built a shared tracker to stop losing track of holdings across five exchanges.
2023 — First custody partner
Partnered with a qualified custodian and opened a private beta to about 200 people.
2024 — Recurring buys shipped
Scheduled purchases and rebalancing became the most-used feature on the platform.
2026 — This demo
A rebuilt interface, published as an open design experiment.
The team
Mara Ellison
Co-founder, Custody
Devon Osei
Co-founder, Research
Priya Nair
Product & Design
Sam Whitfield
Engineering
Lena Kowalski
Compliance
Ines Calder
Customer Support
Malik Fenwick
Security
Owen Vance
Data & Research
Open an account
This is a demo form — nothing is submitted anywhere. Fill it out to see how the flow feels.
Prefer to talk first?
Reach a person directly — no ticket queue.
Stop by if you're in town
We're not a call-center operation — most of the support team sits a few desks from engineering. If you're nearby, message ahead and we'll set aside time to walk through the product together.
