Whiskey 5 is a recurring Soldier Systems Daily feature that asks “Who, What, When, Where, and Why” of industry leaders, manufacturers and instructors — to let you hear how they describe themselves. It’s intended to give you a close
and thorough look at some of the people that make our industry unique. We’ve found these basic 5 questions to be the basic keys to understanding. Past Whiskey-5s have included businesses from Adventure Operations Group to Zulu Nylon Gear and many, many fine organizations between.
Today, we’ll be sharing an overview of Bullet Vault.
Who
Clay Tippins and a small group of solid, like-minded people run Bullet Vault. One of those folks is a longtime gun industry peer
Nate Treadway (now a Bullet Vault strategic advisor). Others are part of the same group of investors that owns Lone Wolf and
Primary Weapons System (PWS). Tippins is a Naval Special Warfare veteran, self-professed economics geek, and technology
developer. Some of you will remember him from his run for the office of Governor in Georgia a few years back.
Bullet Vault is an ammo subscription business that offers far more expansive services than you might think. Bullet Vault has built the foundation to evolve into a collateralized transaction engine backed by a physical 9mm 115-grain FMJ bullet.
1 “BulletReserve” = 1 physical 9mm bullet in the warehouse.
(L to R) Clay Tippins, Trigger, and Nate Treadway. The giant on the far right is Tip, Clay’s son.
Let’s back up and explain – particularly the collateralized part of this.
Once upon a time, the $USD was backed by gold specie. The British pound (£/GBP) has that name because it was backed by a
pound of silver. The precious metals Bullet Vault deals in include a number of other, more Second Amendment-based metals, including brass, lead, steel, and more in the form of physical 9mm bullets
Bullet Vault uses proprietary blockchain technology to issue and track bullet reserves. Every token minted on the blockchain has a real thing – a 9mm bullet – behind it. Want to start putting away a few hundred rounds of ammunition each month? That’s the subscription service.
Want to gift the monetary value of your BulletReserves to someone else at Bullet Vault? Transfer some of your reserves to their account.
Are you buying bullets instead of investing in gold and silver? Sell a few cases back to Bullet Vault seamlessly within the platform. Or…have us ship you some of your reserves from the warehouse. Then, meet up with some of your buddies and go have a range day.
Just don’t plan on using whatever you sell back or trade away as further investment or collateral. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. The logic and function of the software track unallocated bullets (which are the tokenized assets), allowing them to be used as a one-for-one, 100% collateralized allocation.
In real time.
When
Although the idea that became Bullet Vault was born back in 2019 (over a fire at a hunt camp), the site and app have only
been active for a few months. There were years of research, banking studies, and software development in the beginning,
then more of the same when Tippins realized that just establishing his own bank (his original idea) would not be enough
to complete his mission.
The challenge is processing. There has to be a way to conduct the transaction.
That has become increasingly problematic over the last several years as credit card companies, Paypal, and others have slowly begun to slow or even forbid Second Amendment-related commerce.
That already alarming trend has been worsening for years, and for Tippins and Treadway, it became more personal shortly after
the purchase of Lone Wolf Arms.
“The first Wednesday I owned Lone Wolf,” Bullet Vault Chairman Clay Tippins says, “my CFO called and said, hey, got bad news for you. We’re going to lose card processing within the next week.”
That event was a catalyst—not the only catalyst, but an extremely significant one—as you’ll learn below in Why.
Where
Bullet Vault’s “Head Shed” is in several remote locations, but the Tippins live in Georgia, and their current warehouse is in Idaho. As we add locations, we will achieve redundancy and potentially reduce costs.
Next up will be Montana, a location that could offer some initial benefit to those buyers who wish to store ammunition long-term. Montana is one of just five (5) states that don’t (currently) charge sales tax on ammunition.
Bullet Vault customers who want to “ship and shoot” must still pay appropriate state and local taxes. Warehouses in other states, possibly Oregon, Georgia, Delaware, or New Hampshire, are likely in the near future.
Why
BULLET VAULT WAS ESTABLISHED TO SUPPORT THE FREEDOM TO DO COMMERCE.
Financial institutions refuse to do business with 2A industry businesses. Credit card companies won’t process charges for gun-related purchases. Social media platforms, including YouTube, penalize or cancel those who violate (or even might have
violated) a fairly ambiguous set of ‘community standards.’
Tippins explains:
“The problem is the transactions. That’s the…Achilles Heel of the Second Amendment. It’s the jugular. If they can’t legislate guns out of existence, they’re gonna try to do it other ways. They’ll make insurance expensive, they’re gonna cut us off from credit card processing and banking services, and from social media. The ability to do commerce is the lifeblood of the world. We need commerce not just as an industry but as a people.”
In many of those latter cases, consistent enforcement limited to their own rules is dubious at best. It’s the same with many
crowd-backing mechanisms like Patreon, GoFundMe, and the like.
Bank Vault was with difficulty, able to switch from Bank of America-backed anti-gun credit card processors before we suffered
irreparable financial damage, but it was a near thing.
In Tippins’s own words, it scared the shit out of him. It also made him mad. So, he decided to do something about it. That something was, after dialing things in more than a little, Bullet Vault.
Specifically, taking a bullet subscription service and making it an engine for collateralized trade.
In addition to being a handy way to use dollar-cost averaging to stash away ammunition at a good price, of course!
We evolved from a bank-focused mission to one of collateralized trade because of the need for transactions. It doesn’t help much to have lots of money in your account if there’s no way to use it electronically. Cash is nice, but in today’s age, it is impractical except for incidental daily use.
If Tippins and the Bank Vault crew have our way, eventually, people will use Bullet Vault to swipe or check out instead of Amex, MasterCard, or Paypal.
Bullet Vault FAQ
• A BulletReserve is the digital representation of a single 115gr FMJ 9mm made-in-the-USA bullet in a new brass
case; each Reserve is backed, one for one, by a physical bullet.
• Bullet Vault currently charges a 6% sales tax on Reserves at the time of purchase. That’s Idaho’s state sales tax. No
subsequent tax is currently charged when the user decides to have their ammo shipped.
• Applicable taxes on future ammunition purchased in other states, i.e., Montana and others, will be determined when a
user “withdraws” it by having it shipped; that amount will be based on the user’s ship-to location.
• There is no storage fee for the first year following a user’s purchase of Bullet Reserves. After the first year, an as-yet-undetermined (but guaranteed to be minor) fee will be charged.
• Bullet Vault cannot currently perform services in Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Rhode Island. We are working to expand services into
currently restricted parts of the lower 48. Some states require ammo to be shipped to an FFL location.
• Clay Tippins has never been in a SEAL movie. He hasn’t written a novel or a memoir. But he did run for Georgia
governor once, and he still has great hair.
Hit us with questions, concerns, or comments below, and we’ll try to answer quickly (or at least update our FAQ).
Bullet Vault is online at https://bulletvault.com/.
Connect with us on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/bullet.vault/
Subscribe to the BulletVAult channel on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/@bulletvault
