About · Bitcoin self-custody & succession, Australia Built on a loss that didn't have to happen.

Quorum Practice is a bitcoin self-custody and succession consultancy working with individuals and families across Australia. It was founded by James Banner, formerly the owner of an engineering surveying consultancy, who has been in bitcoin since 2013 — and who found out what a single point of failure costs by living through one.

The founder

James Banner.

James spent his career in engineering surveying, latterly as the owner of his own consultancy. That work is built on precision and proof: setting structures out to the millimetre, checking every measurement against an independent second reading, and recording the result so that someone who has never met him can open the file in twenty years and retrace exactly what was done. Running the consultancy added a discipline on top of the technical one — being the person the client holds responsible when it matters.

He has been in bitcoin since 2013, and spent those years reading into how blockchains actually work — not as an investment story, but as engineering. How a transaction is signed. What a wallet gives away when it connects to the network. Where the weak joints are.

Then he lost his. Everything he held in a software wallet on his computer was drained in a single transaction. There was no dramatic break-in. He approved something that looked legitimate, and that approval handed an attacker permission to empty the wallet. By the time he understood what had happened, the coins had moved, and there was nobody to ring.

What followed was several years of methodical study — hardware devices, multi-signature setups, how recovery words are generated and where they should live, how a wallet talks to the network and what it leaks doing it. The question he kept returning to was not how do I stop being unlucky? It was how do you build something where no single mistake, his or anyone else's, can end it?

That answer is Quorum Practice. Every setup it designs needs more than one key to move anything, so a compromised device, a lost backup or one bad afternoon is an inconvenience rather than the end of it. Every backup is verified before a single unit is moved. And every plan is written so the people who come after you can follow it without you in the room.

One more thing, plainly. Quorum never holds, sees or copies a client key, recovery words or a passphrase. You create every key yourself, on your own devices, with us guiding you through it. The design is deliberately built so that Quorum cannot move or recover your bitcoin — not for you, and not for anyone claiming to be you.

“I approved one transaction and it was gone. No branch to visit, nobody to ring, no way back. I built this so the people I work with never have that afternoon.”

James Banner · Founder
Where the method comes from

The same discipline, applied to keys.

Surveying and custody come down to the same three principles. The habits that make a survey defensible thirty years later are the habits that make a custody plan survive you.

01 Independent verification

A survey is not finished when the number looks right. It is finished when a second, independent measurement agrees with the first. Every backup in a Quorum setup is tested and proven before a single unit is moved onto it.

02 A record a stranger can follow

Survey files outlive the surveyor. They are written so somebody who was never there can pick them up decades on and retrace every step. That is precisely the job an heirloom estate plan has to do.

03 Redundancy by design

No structure is ever set out from a single control point, because control points get disturbed. No custody design should rest on a single key, a single device, a single location or a single person.

What came out of it

Three rules we don't bend.

You create every key. We never touch one.

We guide; your hands are on the devices. We never see or copy a key, recovery words or a passphrase, and we never ask for a balance or an address. If we could recover your funds, so could someone else.

Never just one.

Not one key, not one device, not one location, not one person who understands it. If there is only one way to reach your bitcoin, that way will eventually fail.

It has to work without you.

A plan your family cannot actually follow is not a plan. That is why the last stage is a rehearsal with the people named in it, rather than a document handed over and hoped for the best.

Next step

Start with a free call back.

Pick a time that suits you and James rings you. Fifteen to twenty minutes, free, with no obligation and no sales pitch. Bring nothing sensitive — we never ask for balances, addresses, recovery words or device PINs. You will leave the call knowing your weakest point. What you do about it is entirely your decision.

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