Charlie Shrem: The Untold Story of a Bitcoin Pioneer and Renegade (#321)

Transcript

This is Epicenter, episode 221 with guest Charlie Shrem. Hi, welcome to Epicenter. My name is Sebastian Mungiu and welcome to 2020. From all of us here at Epicenter, I'd like to wish all of our listeners a very happy and prosperous new year. I hope you've enjoyed the holidays and are fully recharged. I'm uh feeling a bit under the weather, you might hear it in my voice.

Uh but uh I'm I'm excited nonetheless and I'm very very happy and very excited to bring you our first interview of the year, our conversation with Charlie Shrem. Of course, Charlie needs little introduction. For those of you who've been in space for a long time, Charlie's a well-known figure in the space. Uh but if you're new, you know, maybe you came into the ecosystem recently and you don't know all the old-timers, that's okay. You know, if you weren't around in the land before time era of Bitcoin, you know, Charlie was the CEO of a company called BitInstant. And in 2011, he founded BitInstant and allowed people to buy Bitcoin with cash.

Now, you have to understand, this is an era where, you know, you could probably fit all the people who ever heard about Bitcoin in a single conference room. You know, there was no Kraken, there was no Coinbase, there were no hardware wallets. People were going out and buying laptops and like air-gapping them so that they could securely store their their crypto. You know, the only exchange at the time was Mount Gox. And if you had if you want to buy Bitcoin, you had to wire money to Japan. Well, Charlie wanted to make it easy and he wanted to allow people to buy Bitcoin with cash at any supermarket or pharmacy, just like you would any gift card.

That was an important and a very revolutionary idea at the time. BitInstant is also an important focal point in the story of Bitcoin because it's where some of the most well-known and prominent figures in the ecosystem had their first encounters. So, among the investors of BitInstant were Roger Ver and the Winklevoss twins. And who was running marketing at BitInstant? Erik Voorhees, who then went on to found ShapeShift. So, in 2014, while he was returning to the US from Amsterdam, Charlie was picked up by the FBI at JFK International Airport in New York and was later sentenced to 2 years in

prison for aiding and abetting an operation of, you know, an unlicensed money transmitter business. Now, I'm not going to get into the specifics of the charges, but in short, BitInstant sold Bitcoins to a guy in Florida named Robert Faiella, who was laundering money to help people buy drugs on the Silk Road. And as the compliance officer of BitInstant, this is something Charlie should have alerted authorities about. Now, I'm not going to get into more detail. I'm not going to comment on that, but that's what happened. Now, Charlie's been out of jail for a little while. He did just over a year in in prison, which is still a lot.

Don't get me wrong. Uh but, you know, he's now, you know, out of that system. He's now a free man and he's done a few things since then and now has a podcast called Untold Stories. And it's really good. I would really encourage you to check it out. It's I think he's celebrating his 1-year anniversary like this week. Well, I felt like Charlie came on Epicenter to tell his untold story. This is the most candid interview we've ever done. Charlie shares some things here that he's never shared before. He tells uh the story of BitInstant, how he got involved in Bitcoin, you know, his time in jail, his um how how met his wife, and he tells this He also talks about his very complicated relationship with

his family, which you'll hear him talk about in the interview. Anyway, after you're done listening to this, I would really encourage you to pick up the book Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. He also wrote The Accidental Billionaires, which is the story of Mark Zuckerberg and founding Facebook. It got turned into the movie The Social Network. Uh so, Bitcoin Billionaires picks up where that story left off. It tells the story of how the Winklevoss twins learned about Bitcoin and started buying massive amounts of Bitcoin, and then how they invested in BitInstant as their first investment in the Bitcoin space.

It tells the story of the the complicated relationship between Roger Ver and the Winklevoss twins. Anyway, it's a fascinating read, and it really got me interested in in having Charlie on the podcast. So, I hope you'll enjoy this interview because I certainly did. Now, before we go to the interview, I'd like to tell you about our sponsors for today's episode, and I'm very pleased and super excited to tell you about our brand new sponsor, Status. We had the founders, Jared Hope and Carl Bennetts, on the podcast a couple years ago, but we're going to do another episode about Status soon because the Status secure messaging app is coming out this month. It's currently in beta, but it's going to be in the app stores in production very soon.

I use secure messaging pretty much exclusively with all my friends and family and colleagues, and there are two apps that I use. Signal for people that I'm close to, and Telegram to quickly connect with people in the blockchain ecosystem. But, there are things that I don't like about both of them that Status fixes for me. For one, Status doesn't rely on a phone number. I don't want to share a phone number to use a messaging app that doesn't even use the functionality of the phone. And also, sharing your phone number it exposes you to vulnerabilities like SIM swapping and also just people spamming you. Like I mean, I get text messages from things that I don't even know

where they come from, probably because I've been sharing my phone number with so many people. And so, Status doesn't rely on a phone number. When you create your Status account, you you create a seed and then you share a public key with your contacts, the way it should be, right? And also, it's fully decentralized. I got to tell you, I am absolutely astonished that the entire ecosystem has adopted Telegram as a messaging app when it is a fully centralized ecosystem.

When you reset your phone and you put your phone number in Telegram and all your messages pop up, that's because they're coming from the Telegram server. They're fully backed up on the Telegram server at all times, encrypted, but they're still there and you're still relying on that centralized service. It's a point of failure and it's something that we should all move away from and I I'm going to start using Status. When people are asking me like, "What's your Telegram?" I'm going to say, "No, no. Find me on Status." We need to start eating your own dog food as a community, as an ecosystem, and using apps that really leverage blockchain. And Status is the way to do it. And so, I would encourage everybody to go to status.im, download the beta.

Uh the new production version will be out on iOS and Android this month. And when you're there, create your account and join us on the Epicenter channel. It's hashtag Epicenter on the public channel. And I'm there and other folks from Status are there as well. And we'll give you some free SNT tokens so that you can create your own ENS name on Status and share it with your friends and just start building communities and migrate the ecosystem from Telegram to a real decentralized app. And so, uh over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be telling you all about the Status ecosystem because it's so much more than just a messaging app. Status is a collection of products and protocols which create a new blockchain

infrastructure, a tech stack that allows secure communications. And so there's Keycard, the secure contactless open-source hardware wallet. There's Embark, which is their all-in-one platform for building and deploying dApps. There's uh Subspace, which is the front-end development library. There Nimbus research on implementing lightweight Eth 2 clients. And Vac, the modular peer-to-peer messaging stack which Status relies on. All these things are part of the Status ecosystem. And uh I'm very excited to be able to tell you about those over the next couple of weeks. But uh until then, find us on Status #epicenter public chat. We'd like to thank Status for their support of the podcast.

We are also brought to you by Cosmos, the internet of blockchains. Now, in preparation for the upcoming IBC module, they've announced the second ever adversarial testnet challenge, Game of Zones. You know, we've never had a fully interoperable blockchain before. This is a new thing. And so we we need, as a community, to learn about how this thing's going to work. And so, much like with Game of Stakes uh before Cosmos was launched, Game of Zones will allow teams to compete in this invaluable educational opportunity to learn about the nuances of the IBC protocol and how the system will work once there are, you know, tens and hundreds of blockchains

interoperating together on the Cosmos Hub. So, Game of Zones is due to start in 2020. A more exact date will be coming very soon. But the Interchain Foundation is providing 100,000 Atoms in a prize pool for winning teams. So, there'll be multiple challenges, and those Atoms will be up for grabs for teams that are competing in Game of Zones. So, if you want to learn more about this adversarial testnet challenge, go to cosmos.network/goz and there you can join the Riot chat and talk to all the people who are already thinking of participating and discussing about Game of Zones. And you can also

sign up for the newsletter there where you'll get updates on Cosmos every single month. We'd like to thank Cosmos for their support of Epicenter. We're also brought to you by Peppo, a community of content creators sharing short video content on crypto and entrepreneurship. On Peppo, when you want to show your love for content, when you want to like something, well, you tip the content creator with Peppo coins. And when you want to participate in a conversation, you show your interest by putting up Peppo coins as well. The app is really cool. It's well designed. It's easy to use. And the team that's building it is constantly listening and gathering feedback and trying to understand how people are using this so that they can better the

app in the direction that makes sense for the community. So, if you'd like to try it out, you can go to peppo.com/epicenter. That just lets them know that we sent you and there you can find links to iOS or Android and you can find me there. I'm at seb2.0, that's seb2poant0, posting content there quite frequently and I'd love to also talk to you there. So, come meet me on Peppo and take part in the conversation. And with that, here is our conversation with Charlie Shrem.

So, we're here with Charlie Shrem. Charlie has been involved in Bitcoin since, well, since over a decade and is a well-known figure in the space for many reasons which we'll get to during this interview, but yeah, I'm super excited to have you on. It's been I mean, I think you know, internally at Epicenter, you know, we wanted to have you on years ago, many years ago, and for reasons which uh I think a lot of the listeners will be aware of, well, we couldn't. But, you're back, and we're yeah, really excited to have you on the podcast today.

Yeah, it's so funny cuz um just the other day someone was like, "So, like, let's go through, you know, year by year of of this Bitcoin space." And I said, "All right, let's do it." And they said, "All right, so what was 2015 like in the Bitcoin space?" And I said, "Well, I don't really know. I wasn't there." Yeah, there was a blank spot there for 4 years. We call it the sabbatical. Yeah, you had a a Bitcoin sabbatical. So, tell us what were you doing before you got into Bitcoin? Absolutely. It's a crazy kind of like when I look back, uh and I try to spend a lot of time reflecting because our life has gone through, when I say our, my wife and I our life has gone through such a whirlwind, her and I met

in 2012, around that time, right when I first, like a year into Bitcoin, or 2 years into Bitcoin. So, uh she was a part of that whole kind of ride so far, um of course, and and the ride forever. But, I got involved in it was sometime in 2011, a year before that, it was around 2010, I had read that slashdot article about Bitcoin, and there was that, you know, the famous slashdotting, as Jeff Garzik likes to call it, because it was that 2010 article that a lot of the uh early crypto people had read, but we like kind of ignored it, and I almost say that a lot of people that I talked to on Untold Stories say the same thing. It's like,

"Yeah, I ignored the first time I had ever heard about Bitcoin." And and that happened to me, and it wasn't until a year later that I had uh been in a in a chat room somewhere, uh IRC, actually, now that I'm thinking about it. I was in an IRC chat room on in in early to mid 2011 when uh just some you know, some random people started talking about um I I belonged in a lot of these like gray hat I was like not a very good hacker, but more of like a script kiddie. I I I joke that I'm I'm a trained very bad developer cuz I'm not very good at it, but I can still read code and I can uh have conversations with CTOs and things like that. But um I was in there trying to to learn how to better my Python game

when someone started talking about Bitcoin and that was sometime in 2011. And what was your first like what were your first thoughts about it? Like how did you then how did it go from there to like creating and starting BitInstant? Yeah, so the story goes that in uh I was in a chat room and you know, even till today I'm still to remember who it was cuz I wanted to thank that person. But um I had at that time I was you know, I was in um I was my first year of college and I was running a a different electronic startup. Um I was you know, 20 years old. I don't even think I could legally drink yet and I was um hanging out with some friends and I was we were in some chat rooms and someone started talking

about Bitcoin and saying how yeah, this is so cool. Check this out. But he didn't really know like why it was cool or what I should check out. It was just like you know, how many times were we seeing digital versions of money? You we saw over those early years we saw so many iterations of different versions of the of of and a lot of them were scams. So you saw a lot of these like digital currency scam type things and um I mean, around the same time as Liberty Reserve and some of the other ones e-gold and they didn't really work. So when I had when when this guy was talking about this Bitcoin thing, I was like well, okay. So it's a download it's a downloadable cuz back then all it was it was a it was a few dozen people hanging

out on forum.bitcoin.org and then you go to bitcoin.org and download the Satoshi code, the Satoshi client. And it wasn't called Bitcoin Core. It wasn't even called Bitcoin QT yet. It was simply just Bitcoin. I mean, that's what It was the It was the Satoshi client, right? You download it and as soon as you downloaded it, as soon as you turned it on, it would start mining because the Satoshi client back then, the the downloadable wallet, it was the only wallet back then. It was only one wallet. It was a downloadable Uh I don't even think it worked on Mac yet. It was like Windows and Linux. Downloaded it and I may not be a thousand percent accurate. It may have worked on Mac at that time. But you downloaded it and as soon as you turned it on, it would start

mining for you and downloading the blockchain for you. And then you can start, you know, transacting. And I was like, well, what's Okay, it's like a downloadable wallet that you send this You send nothing. What do you send? Dollars? Like, what was it? And then he attempted over IRC to explain, "Yeah, it's you know, the thing is called Bitcoin, but also you can send these Bitcoin things and they're not They're just units. They're placeholders. They're not really worth anything and they weren't worth anything. They weren't really trading anywhere except for on forums. You know, you could buy 10,000 Bitcoin for a few hundred bucks. And that's kind of how it started. And then I didn't really understand why it was so important.

But then as we started investigating it, some of our friends, we realized that oh wow, this is really cool because and we didn't really understand like Sebastian, we didn't understand like mining yet. I didn't understand like any of that. What was cool to me was simply this. The database that I had on my computer, like the the cuz back then it was a database file. So you downloaded the database file up until that point and then it would download the rest. So I was like, wow, this is really cool because if you check out this database, not only is my transaction that I just did going through, the one that he just sent me some coins, but if someone else is doing a transaction, then it still shows up on

my database as well. So, kind of the light bulb went off in my head and I said "Oh this is actually really cool because if I like unplug my ethernet cable, I still have a copy of someone else's transaction who's sending money from New Jersey to California, and I'm in Brooklyn. So, it that that to me was like, "Well, this is really cool because I have that ledger, like me, Charlie, on my computer, not sitting in a data center somewhere." And I didn't really understand the implications yet, but it was just that. That was it.

I could see how like downloading the first Bitcoin client, opening this software on your computer, running it, it might seem like very underwhelming. It looked like [ __ ] too. Yeah, because like you you get this thing, it looks like [ __ ] it's got like three tabs, like send, receive, and you know, maybe addresses, and the UI's probably like really bad, and Well, it also didn't work, and a lot of the things that you had to to Satoshi I guess didn't realize that when you have something called a graphic user interface, it's got to be a graphic user interface, right? And so, but a lot of the the early processes that you were trying to do within Bitcoin, you download the software. This is such a funny tidbit. I've never actually said this, and no one talks about this. So,

imagine this. Imagine you download a piece of software, and you're not a developer or programmer, and you want to interface with the software. Send, receive, you know, all these small little functions. Send, receive, create new address, send invoice, you know, like very basic e-wallet stuff. And so, those four things were would work on, you know, like there would be a send, receive button, but if you wanted to do a simple thing like export your private key, import a private key, redownload the the blockchain, and then Sebastian like and Sunny the the software would break half the time. So like you'd have to find yourself re- having to like delete all the files except for your wallet file and then

re-download the whole thing and this would happen very frequently. Basically every time an update would come out which was all the time. But it didn't really matter because the blockchain wasn't that big so who cares? But what I was trying to say earlier was so you couldn't actually interface with the software a lot. You'd have to within the software you'd go to advanced and there was like an RPC interface where you'd have to start typing out command line commands in the graphic user interface. It is didn't make any sense to me.

Uh the the kids these days they don't realize how easy they've got it with their ledger wallets and their you know No, they don't realize. staking web platforms. Oh, they have no idea cuz you know all software is either like command line or graphic user interface like a GUI. But Satoshi was like literally command line in the GUI. It's just so funny how like nascent and how much testing and how early you know the early Satoshi code was but Bitcoin is still going strong. It's still there. It's still a lot of the early same code. It never broke. Like isn't that astounding to think about? I mean that's what's that's what excites me every day.

Yeah, I mean I think I had a friend who I can't remember exactly who it was but they were telling me about this same process where like you know every every couple of days you just had to like delete your entire blockchain history file and like because something would just go wrong and they told me like yeah I on one of those purges I accidentally purged my wallet.dat file as well and that had you know quite a few Bitcoin on it. So I've heard a lot of the stories around this stuff. It's crazy. So yeah that was sort of like the state of the technology. What was the state of the community like though? Like so, you were in you went to college in New York, right?

Yes. I I actually just moved to New York like last month. So, you know, I'm trying to I'm getting the hang of the New York scene these days, but what was it like 10 years ago? Like what was were there meetups and were you hanging out with other Bitcoiners or was it sort of completely online and what what was this world like? Great great great question and one that's really not asked enough. Let's go back as early as as I as I can remember and full disclosure there are probably some people or places or things that I'm going to forget. This is not an accurate picture because I'm going to leave you know, I I don't remember I don't have the memory to remember everything from 10 years ago.

But some of the best memories are this. Go back to uh 2011, the community was largely on the internet. I was largely it was all on the internet up until that point when I had first got involved there were never not that I know of there was no Bitcoin conferences that had ever taken place. Now, about a month after I got involved, this guy Bruce Wagner he had a show called the My Bitcoin Show or something or no, it was a Bitcoin show I don't remember what it was called, but it was he actually a lot of people were claiming that he was involved in the exit scam later on called My Bitcoin, but that's neither here nor there. He was one of those people in the early days who's not involved in anymore who was

the media. He was the only crypto media. He had like an internet TV show and he wrote a blog and that was it. Like there was no Telegram yet. And so up until this point there was just everyone hung out in one place and one place alone that was forum.bitcoin.org and then eventually around that time in 2011 our Bitcoin Reddit our Bitcoin launched, but it was all there was no Bitcoin talk. It was all forum.bitcoin.org and so he did the first Bitcoin conference in 2011 and Charlie Lee was there, Roger Ver was there.

Oh my god, I think Garzik was there. Um there were so many of us that were there. So many of the early people that were there. I'm I'm forgetting everyone, but if you actually look at a picture, uh Charlie Lee has one of the only pictures that I know of. If you look at a picture of it, you'll be able to pick out So I think the BitPay people were there. Where was this conference? This was in New York. The Mount Gox people were there. This was I mean anyone who was at any Bitcoin related anything was at this. This was like early mid-2011. That was like the first one that I and that was a community. It was a great community cuz we were all so new and like puppy-eyed, you know? We were so fresh. We didn't We weren't jaded. We There were no scams.

There were no Imagine living in a Bitcoin world with no exchanges ever got hacked, no ICOs, no exit scams. Imagine just Bitcoin, the love, the crypto anarchy, the ideological You know, every single person back then was there for ideology. Now I'm not like going I'm not trying to like romanticize this, guys. Like I'm not I I'm trying to just to talk about the history. There There were good and bad of those days and there are good and bad of nowadays. So that's just kind of how it was, but the community back then I would say there was an unspoken rule of I had to like really dial this in. There was an unspoken rule of the early Bitcoin community and when I mean unspoken, it was very religiously followed, but it

was not said. And the unspoken rule was, "Let's work together to grow this pie before we start competing." So you'd have you'd have companies that competed with each other that behind the scenes were working together. So all the Bitcoin exchanges back then worked together very closely. Um I worked very closely with them. Competitors, even my competitors back then, which there were almost none, I would support them. I actually tried to even buy one of my one of my competitors in 2011. But buying a Bitcoin company in 2011 was literally the company was run by a guy in his dorm room. So there wasn't really much to buy.

What were some of the bads that you alluded to? The bads of the infrastructure were just was just terrible. And also that you know the infrastructure so as the years went on so let's let's continue to go forward so you know we get into the end of 2011 we get into 2012. We went through like kind of like that first bubble and that first I mean there were there were some earlier ones but the first real bubble that got mainstream attention was that Gawker Gizmodo wrote an article about it. That was probably the first article except for the Slashdot article. And this Gawker article was an article that was written around I'll never forget it was in May or June of 2011.

And it talked about how you can buy drugs on Silk Road. And till today if you ask a lot of people who got involved in the space a lot of people will tell you that they found out about Bitcoin. A lot of them probably won't admit it but they found out about Bitcoin from that article. And it's not a bad thing you know if however you find out about it is how you found out about it. But when that article was written the price of Bitcoin was hovering maybe around 12 or 13 dollars. And then almost immediately when that article was written the price started pumping. So I FOMO'd in at 32 dollars. And then the price pumped to 36. So I'm like in the money right? I'm making four dollars a coin. But think about it for a second.

Think about how many coins you would get for thousand bucks right? So when you're up four dollars a coin you're in the money. I mean you're making ton of money. And then the price dumped. Dumped down to like two dollars from 36 and I lost a ton of money. That was like I've never been more wrecked in any subsequent bubble than that first 36 dollar bubble. So when did you decide to start BitInstant and what was the goal of that company? So, this is what happened with BitInstant. Super simple. I was at a bar mitzvah. It was 2011, and I was trying to buy some Bitcoin. And it was actually during that bubble, the one I just said, the $32 bubble. I was trying to buy Bitcoin. It's cuz I was like FOMOing.

Like that was super FOMO. And so, um I was at a bar mitzvah, and I had wired money to There were only two exchanges. There was Mt. Gox, and no one really wanted to use them because the only way to buy from Mt. Gox was to wire an international wire transfer to Mark Karpeles' personal bank account that's denominated in yen, right, in Japan. Okay. Who's going to [ __ ] do that? Who Who's going to do that? No one. Well, a lot of a lot of people did that. A lot of people did it because that's all that's only way you can do it. But realistically now, if like that was the only way to buy Bitcoin now, no one would do that. Like some people would, but it's a It You don't understand. He would have to manually approve wires. It would take like a week.

It There was no automated infrastructure. The wire transfer instructions were sent via email. Like there was no When I mean there was no infrastructure, there was no system for this stuff. There was no customer support phone number. It was literally just like every Okay, you ready for this? BitInstant, Mt. Gox, Coinbase, BitPay, and bitcoin.org were all launched on Bootstrap. Did you know that? Bootstrap. It's like a like a WordPress style template that you can Like it wasn't even They All those Those are our top infrastructure of today.

And like that's what it was like back then. They were all Like no one could even afford to have websites designed. Coinbase, BitInstant, Mt. Gox, TradeHill BitPay. Crazy, right? So, anyways, so that was our infrastructure. And it was so wonderful though, because it was fun. So, I wired money so so this So, all of a sudden this guy launched this like exchange He was living in Chile. His name was Jared Kenna, and he launched an exchange called TradeHill. And it was very similar to Mt. Gox. It looked better, and it was based out of San Francisco.

But still you had to wire money to Jared's personal ING account. And everything had to be manually verified. So, I really wasn't thinking about how I was going to have to, you know, buy Bitcoin. So, I wired money, and as soon as I wired the money to his account, his account got shut down. And so, I'm thinking I got scammed. So, I called him when I was at this bar mitzvah, and he answered. And we had like a 3-hour call about Bitcoin about how amazing Bitcoin was. And I said, "Jared, let me ask you a question. If I start a company where it's like a retail way to buy Bitcoin, would you support us?

Cuz you're an exchange, and we're not really a competitor of you." And he said, "Yeah, I would support that. But I can't take credit for BitInstant, because really the idea came a few days before this when I was on the Bitcoin forums, and my my partner my business partner for those years, Gareth Nelson, he came up with the concept in a forum post, and you could go back and find it now. And he said, "Um I have this idea to start like a little side business called Fast Mt. Gox." That's literally what the name of That's what he wanted to call it. Fast Mt. Gox. So, it's like you have Mt. Gox, and we just want to make it fast. Let's call our company Fast Mt. Gox.

So, I said to Gareth, "I want to do this with you. You know, like you can code it, and I'll send you the $1,000 to like get started. But we need to call it something else. So, that's where we came up with the idea of BitInstant." And the first idea of BitInstant was very simple. We would wire 10 grand to Mt. Gox, and and then leave the money the dollars sitting in our account. We'd have relationship with banks here in the US, and with at our peak we had have been working with MoneyGram, Western Union, CVS, Walgreens, Duane Reade, all the pharmacies, all the grocery stores, you can walk in and buy Bitcoin up to a like a few hundred bucks. And so, you'd walk in and buy Bitcoin and then deposit money at like a Walmart and our software was

hooked into it. So, but all our software really did was let's just say you wanted $300, we transfer $300 minus 3 or 4% from our account to your account. So, all we were really doing is we weren't really Bitcoin, but we created an easier way, a faster and easier way to fund your exchange account. So, we were like the payment processor for the exchanges. Which so, you had partnerships with all of these like giant groceries Yes. chains? If you look at a bunch of TechCrunch articles and all these other things, you wonder and those early articles will say that BitInstant did 30% of all the Bitcoin global Bitcoin volume up until like 2014. That's a huge number. And

there were a lot of exchanges back then. There was Bitstamp, Mt. Gox, TradeHill, CanBX, Crypto Exchange, ExchangeB. A lot of these exchanges don't exist anymore. I'm missing a few, but there were a bunch of them. Bitstamp, I probably already said that. And they had very significant volume. So, how did BitInstant have such a significant amount of market share? Simple. We didn't actually sell you your Bitcoin. We were the processor for all the exchanges. Not for all, but for like the top four of them. So, when you wanted to fund your Mt. Gox account, your Bitstamp account, your TradeHill account, all those companies would tell you use BitInstant.

We were the processor for them. That's how we were able to have so much of the volume. How did you build these partnerships with the grocery stores? So, how did like you convince Walmart and CVS to like get on board and like, you know, allow people to deposit at their stores into BitInstant? Yeah, it was really easy. There are only There are two companies in the US that manage the payment processing for almost all of the companies that I mentioned. Those I think back then it was SoftPay and MoneyGram.

And so, when we made partnerships with those two companies, it allowed us to work with all the other ones. So, there's MoneyGram in every Walmart and every Duane Reade, CVS, Walgreens, etc. etc. So, because we had the deal with them, you'd be able to create a MoneyGram barcoded slip on your computer, print it out, go to a Walmart, and then go to the go to the checkout, hand the you know, the the cashier that piece of paper that had the MoneyGram logo and the BitInstant logo. They'd scan that piece of paper. The piece of paper would then,

you know, tell the computer that this, you know, it's 300 bucks. You'd hand the cashier 300 bucks like you're buying groceries. And then, within seconds, the MoneyGram software would ping my software, and then my software already knew about your transaction because remember you came to our website and you had created a slip. As soon as we get that ping that the transaction is done, we then transfer the money into your account. And then, like a week later, MoneyGram would settle with me that 300 bucks. So, I'm almost like I was floating the 300 bucks for a week.

Yeah, so MoneyGram is kind of sort of this payment intermediary that allows people to send money with cash at, you know, retailers. And so, you just have to make a partnership with them, and then that gave you exposure, or at least allowed people to buy Bitcoin with cash through the service at just about any, you know, retailer in the US. So, and so, exactly. And so, back then, from 2011 from 2011 to the end of 2013, almost everyone in Bitcoin had used at least once been instant. And I can very fairly and accurately say that. In fact, if you ask any guests you have going forward that was around in those years and say, "Did you ever use BitInstant?" The answer will probably be yes.

Yeah, that that would be interesting. And so the trick was you were kind of using MoneyGram's like faster clearing. It may not be settling faster, you know, it it still takes a couple days to settle, but it was clearing faster. I did it for the software. And so you're arbitraging that delay between MoneyGram's clearing versus like wire transfers. And that's why I needed to raise money. So I needed the float. So when we first started the company, you know, I used the little bit of money that I had, some bar mitzvah money and stuff to to be the float. And we weren't doing so much volume. So $1,000, let's just say it took us a week to get the money back. Let's just say it you deposited the money on Monday, it would take me until the following Monday for that money back that's spendable to

re-buy to get money back into the exchange account so I can cycle it one more time. Let's just say it took a week. I think it was about that, maybe a little bit faster. So you would need to have enough float to handle your weekly volume. So at this point you needed to raise money because you didn't have enough float to honor these these transactions. And so I think this is a good segue into how you end up meeting Roger Ver and the Winklevoss twins. And this is a story that I didn't know very much about. Like I knew that you were involved with those people early on, but I read the Bitcoin Billionaires book, which came out a couple months ago, and basically like that that tells the whole story of like

Roger and the and the Winklevoss twins. And it was interesting to to see how like those two they they were two opposing forces. Like one on one side you had this kind of like libertarian, very anarchistic type of personality that was pushing you to you know, do more volume, just like let people do the transactions. There were there were two competing forces and it wasn't just Ben Mezrich who wrote Bitcoin Billionaires very very accurately was able to kind of uh make you understand how these forces were not just in my head but the forces were starting to to enter and to split the overall Bitcoin community.

Let's talk then about how you how you met them and and how that sort of schism started to enter into the Bitcoin community. Absolutely. So it's early 2012 and the company was growing very quickly and it was just me and Gareth and I think that's it running BitInstant. And so we needed money. I went on this internet TV show, Bruce Wagner's TV show and I, you know, said to everyone, I said to whoever's watching um if you're an investor, BitInstant is growing, everyone is, you know, using us, we're doing $1,000 of volume a day. $1,000 of volume a day. Like think about that for a second. Coinbase probably does $1,000 in a nanosecond. But that was our daily volume and that was so great that we simply couldn't keep up with demand. I didn't have

of float to keep the company growing. So Roger had heard that and he sent me a Skype that night and he said, "Hey, I heard about I watched your show and you know, I'm I own this company called Memory Dealers. I live in Japan and I love Bitcoin and I and I'm, you know, I have a little bit of money and so I'm just trying to, you know, support this economy and if if you're interested in just like a an investment I'd love to to be involved." And I said, "That was the Skype message." Like one message and I was like, "You're a lifesaver. I don't know who you are, but like I'm willing to, you know, this is what our numbers are, this is what our company does and I'm willing to give you 10% for $100,000."

And he goes, "How about this? How about I forget what it end up coming out to, but I gave him a little bit more, not a little bit, I gave him some more, and the idea was that he was going to be my confidant, be like just 10 hours a week involved in helping me run the company." And it was very worth it. And so Roger really was very involved. And so one of the first things that Roger did was a month later was he said, "Hey, there's this guy that I know that lives in New Hampshire and his name is Erik Voorhees and he's kind of like libertarian like me, voluntarist, kind of like a nut, but he's super cool and he's very smart. I want you to hire him." And I was like, "Roger, like I know you invested 100

grand, but I don't have the money to like pay his salary." And Roger was like, "I'll pay Erik's salary until you can afford it because Erik will be very good for your company." And Erik I remember I I met Erik at the train station cuz he was living in New Hampshire. Um he took a train down to New York and we met at the train station and we became best friends instantly. And we're still today we're super close. Erik and I actually spoke to him yesterday and even when I was under house arrest and I couldn't leave my parents' basement and I missed his wedding, Erik set it up where I was able to give a toast at his wedding, you know, over video chat and that was really wonderful. So I didn't miss out on that.

And where do the Winklevoss twins come into the picture? So we kept moving forward and the company kept growing and at this point I'm skipping a lot, but the industry was exploding and this was 2000 and I think the end of 2012, early 2013. And no, it was actually 2012 for sure. And I knew this guy, he was like my neighbor growing up, you know, he babysat me, his dad was my dentist just to give you an idea. His dad was like, you know, my dentist from a kid. You You you knew I was involved in this Bitcoin thing and you went on vacation to Ibiza one day and while he was there, I don't know what the book said, but what really happened was

there were no chairs at the beach club and when David had had seen Cameron and Tyler, the movie had just come out. So, yeah, I guess he was a little starstruck. So, he gave up his and his wife's chairs out in Ibiza beach club to Cameron and Tyler. So, you can imagine like David's wife getting really pissed at him for giving up these chairs, but that's kind of what happened. So, as he was giving up the chairs, he kind of put in their ear. He says, "You know, you guys should check out this Bitcoin thing." And then when they went back home, they investigated it and they get and then they called him. That's kind of how it all played out.

That I think that's pretty much what the book how the book explains that episode. And what were your first impressions of them? I was starstruck. You know, I the movie had just come out and everyone was like super, you know, who did it? Was it Cameron and Tyler? Was it Mark Zuckerberg, you know? So, you know, it was like hanging out with like um I don't know, like let's just say like Brad Pitt kind of walks in the door. You [ __ ] yeah, Brad Pitt, let's go hang out, you know, like George Clooney, like, you know, like a real celebrity.

These guys just had a movie made out, you know, Armie Hammer, Jesse Eisenberg, it's kind of crazy. So, that's kind of how it went. It's so starstruck and you know, the book very, very accurately and I implore everyone to read it. Uh the book goes into how we met, our relationship and how event over time Roger and Eric in the the crypto anarchist, you know, movement tried to continue forcing me into the voluntaryist movement to like live and let live and people should be allowed to put whatever drugs into their bodies that they want to. That was that kind of mentality and the other Cameron and Tyler mentality was, "Listen, this industry is so new.

We need to engage the regulators. We need to engage governments, we need to be the shining city on the hill. I think that was like their quote that they would say over and over again. And back then the start being starstruck kind of wore off and I realized that maybe our personalities didn't vibe uh as much and I was a 21-year-old kid or 22 and I didn't like that these guys who had went to Harvard, a school that I could never even not only just not afford but not was never smart enough to get into were telling me what to do. And one of the very important things that they were telling me what to do was, "Charlie, you need to you know, like this company's growing.

You had 30 people." But I was 21 or 22. I didn't know how to run a company. And Cameron and Tyler were basically trying to convince me to bring on a seasoned CEO. Now, this was my first startup. So, I'm thinking, "Fuck these guys. I want to run my own company." But little did I know that that concept of bringing on a seasoned CEO is a very normal thing. It's actually very Nowadays, if I was running a company and my investors came and said that, I would, you know, breathe a sigh of relief. You know, I would want that. So, one of my biggest and only regrets in life is kind of not listening to the very smart people in the room when I was younger. And you

know, that's okay. It's a life lesson. I would encourage everybody to read this book. It's I read this book over like 3 days. I didn't put it down. Ben Mezrich is a great writer. Is it Is it Has it started filming or? No, it hasn't started filming but Ben like I mean, I don't I don't know what I can say on the show but it's it's going to happen. It's sold. you want to play you? So, so you want to hear something funny? So, actually that's how I know this is happening. So, talks are already happening with like Jonah Hill to play me. Ooh. But I want Jerry Ferrara who played Turtle in Entourage and who also plays in in Power. I forgot his name, but I love power and he plays the lawyer in power. He's a great actor. And so I I

messaged him, you know, I sent him a message. I was like, "Hey, do you want to play me in this movie?" And he's like, "Fuck yeah." And so we're going to supposed to meet up in New York in a few months when I when I go back. That's amazing. I also heard the interview you did on your podcast with Ben and at some point I think he describes the book as pulling in the opposite directions of the mainstream movement and the crypto libertarian movement and I thought that was such a good way to describe the story. And most people don't realize I I I mean this book is not like documentary. It's a fiction, right? It's so it's it's a fictionalized version of what's happening.

It's a novel, right? It's a novel, yeah. So I'll tell people this that like a lot of the events are accurate but more of like the dialogue sometimes is exaggerated. I'll give you an example. He wrote how like I had 26 bongs in my office, you know? I don't have 26 bongs. I probably had one and it probably wasn't even mine. But I mean, so that wasn't not, you know, it's not it's not inaccurate but it's a little exaggerated. So I would still tell people to read that book. I love the book. It's a great book. And look, Ben could have used his license of writing fiction to write a very outlandish and inaccurate book and he didn't. He wrote a very good book

that's going to be seen as historical. And if you look at his other books, I've read all his other books, a lot of his other books he has to use a lot more of that license to make it interesting. He didn't have to do that here. That what was so cool. All the stories that you read are like all based in truth, which is so cool. Well, not all but most. The character that that sort of you have in this book, it seems kind of like a totally neurotic character. Did Do you think that Ben portrayed you accurately? Maybe at maybe not at this time but like back then were you Was that accurately you?

1,000%. Wow. I was this neurotic kid who didn't have his ADHD in check. I was coming into a little bit of money. I grew up in a very religious Jewish Orthodox community in a bubble and I had not known of the outside world. I mean, I never even had a cheeseburger at that point. Never had tried lobster, you know, cuz you could only eat kosher. So, I was like being discovering the world through Bitcoin. Right? So, I was like just excited and so ecstatic of the world that we were in back then. This will segue the conversation too much, but I just want to say one thing.

I'm romanticizing it here a little bit, but understand that where these two camps ended up going. So, there were two camps and now it's not so much that there's like one or the other. It's a spectrum and people fall as, you know, fall where they want. But the larger like the Roger Ver and that mentality was a lot about power and control. That was disguised in crypto anarchism. And you see that with the Bitcoin Cash movement, you know, the power and control. And then the pro business movement, the Winklevoss movement went to like one extreme of being very close with the government and that is very good for our infrastructure.

Well, not very good for like the crypto anarchist movement. So then, the rest of us kind of like sprinkle and fall at various points on that spectrum. Wouldn't Wouldn't you agree? Yeah, I mean, we had Eric Voorhees on actually maybe like a month or two ago and yeah, so, you know, he seems to have sort of been an example of one of the people who kind of tried to learn from that and kind of stray a little bit of the middle path where like, you know, he still has tries to keep those the crypto anarchist ideals, but like, you know, understands where trade-offs need to be made and whatnot.

I agree with him. Eric was a lot more mature than I back then and has matured a lot faster than I in those years, too. So, I like speaking with him frequently because I still kind of look to him as a as a moral guidepost, as I do with a lot of people. And my understanding my my thought process is if I have a bunch of You know how like GPS works? GPS needs, I think, three different satellites in order to triangulate someone's location. So, I try to follow my moral compass by keeping three or four people that I believe that have very solid like grounding.

Who are those three or four people? Well, Eric is definitely one of them. I have one or two non-crypto people that I that I don't know if I want to name just because they're private people. And then I have one of my Not one of, but I have a one or two of my best friends here that live in in Florida with me. And then one of my friend, he's German. And I look at him as as one of my moral guideposts. And between, you know, it's like half crypto and then half non-crypto. Between the four or five of those people, as long as I can maintain good relationships. And then of course, my wife is the ultimate decision maker on everything. But, what's really good is that she's really close with all these people, too. So, she's close with Eric, she's close with Eric's wife. And

so, we're able to like really It's it's a really nice crypto families. It's nice. That's cool. I absolutely love talking to Eric. Every conversation I've had I've had with him either, you know, in real life or over the podcast, has just been filled with so much insight and you just you just get the feeling that this guy has very strong, grounded morals. But, what's nice about Eric is that you can still talk to the person. You can still have a debate with him. You can still have sort of a a disagreement and talk through it, and it'll always stay respectful. And And that I think is like a a very strong quality in in in people that, you know, it's hard to find.

But, so one of the things about about the the that's that really touched me and like when I read the book I I met you for the first time at SF Blockchain Week just like a few weeks later. And actually when I met you it was like I met you and your wife at the same time. Yeah, we were in the we were in the ready room, you know, to get ready for the for the show. No, I remember that. Okay, cool. I thought you meant like 10 years ago. No, no, no, just like couple months ago. So, I met you and your wife basically at the same time and it was like, "Oh god, like you know, the story continues." And so that was that was really kind of heartwarming. So, can you maybe talk a little bit about that story? I know there's a there's a crazy moment in the

book where like you have to go back to your parents and sort of like break up with her and you're forced to, you know, make this huge concession. I don't know if you're you're comfortable sort of describing that episode. Absolutely, I'm very comfortable. In fact, it's somewhat therapeutic for me and I know it is for her, too. And we got together in 2000 and end of 2012, around April, and we got together because she was actually one of the first people to do the first ever Bitcoin transaction that took place at a physical location. And then it was reported in the New York Post. And so we kind of met through that. It was like in the bar scene. She had

she was working at a at a nightclub that I was became like a part investor in with Erik Voorhees. So, we kind of all got together and I liked her and I was kind of afraid to ask her out and then our friend set us up on a blind date and kind of the rest is history. And then when we had first met, this was before Bitcoin really exploded. So, I was still like living with my parents. I didn't have any money and but I was just excited. I was excited and passionate about the space. When we first started dating, that's when like 6 months into it everything started exploding and going crazy. And then we were traveling around the world and then January 26th, 2014, we must be dating about a year, year and a half at this point, and we were coming back from

a trip in Amsterdam, and I got arrested at the airport for I was caught up in the Silk Road investigation that took down, you know, Ross and dozens of other people, but essentially I was the CEO of BitInstant, and I was also the compliance officer. I also cleaned, you know, cleaned all the toilets and everything. It was just me and Gareth, but one of our customers, you know, talking about that like libertarian movement and everything, I had allowed one of our customers to essentially buy Bitcoin from us as like a reseller, and then I knew that he was then reselling that Bitcoin on Silk Road. And people ask me, it's like, why didn't you do anything? Well, cuz like I knew about it, but I just didn't really care to stop it.

I was of the belief that when you buy Bitcoin from me, well, what do I have to do with it? I don't care. But obviously that's wrong, that's and that's illegal. So, then I went to jail for a year and a half. The whole process of being in the criminal justice system was 6 years start to finish, and I literally My 3-year probation just ended like 2 months ago. And so, that was really nice that that ended. The day that my probation ended was the day that Courtney and I celebrated our 2-year wedding anniversary. I proposed, we got married, and I got released from prison on the same day. Not like physically the same day, but the same date. It was all done on purpose.

When I had gotten arrested, the government had asked the judge to put a million-dollar uh bond on me, and I didn't have a million dollars, so my parents had came in and said, "We will put up our house." And at that point, I had already It's a very complicated thing, but I grew up very, very, very religious, and I had chosen myself to leave the the religion and leave the community. It was my choice. My parents and the the community weren't happy about that. And so, my parents had basically said that I would have to apologize to them in front of the judge for leaving the religion. I would have to break up with Courtney in front of the judge, and I would have to promise with the threat of going to jail that I

wouldn't be with her. Could you imagine that, right? So, and my parents enforced it. And then the the fourth condition was I would have to live back at home with them in their basement and then go to like synagogue and be religious again. So, I faked it. I faked it for a while. I faked it for like, I don't know, like 6 months or 7 months or 6 months or 7 months. And we were still together. We FaceTimed, we talked every day, we watched movies together over Skype. Uh we drank together over Skype. We didn't see each other for those 6 months, but we talked and video chatted constantly. And our relationship got very strong during those 6 months. And eventually my parents figured it out.

Once my parents figured it out, they tried to send me back to prison because they had figured it out. They tried to pull the bail. The judge found out. You know, the rest of the story is actually kind of sealed, so I can't really talk about it, but a month later I was able to move in with Courtney. And we were able to be back together and I wasn't under the control or under the thumb of my parents anymore. And then I was able to live with Courtney for the next 6 months under house arrest leading into my year and a half stay in in federal prison.

Do you still Have you reconciled with your parents or are you still not in touch? There's no resentment anymore because Courtney and I both learned to move on from resentment. It's not good to harbor that. Over the years we've tried to thaw. They came out to Florida for a day. But it's hard. It's not their fault. It's just that they're part of this larger community and if they accept me and they accept my wife because she's not Jewish, then my parents will be kicked out of that community. And my three younger sisters would be kicked out of the community with their husbands, too. And it's not just being kicked out of the symbolic community, all their jobs are in the community.

Their work, their lives, their business, their house, their social lives, their wives, girlfriends, husbands, their best friends are all the restaurants they eat at, the places that they pray at, the lives they live are all in this community. So, the threat of leaving the community and being excommunicated is as real as it is for them as it was for me. So, they're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place and they can't, you know, we try to pretend, but it's just it's there's still a lot of anger and resentment and fear and it's difficult.

And I think time will heal it, but as of now, no, I've not spoken to my parents in many years and I've not seen them and one can only hope that they're proud of of their son. Well, I would hope so, too. And it's really hard, I think, for people who've never experienced something like that to understand what that's like, but uh you know, when your whole life is wrapped up in community and you like literally your entire life, there's a lot at stake there. True. It was a very toxic community and I'm really happy that I left. It's a very toxic community. I wouldn't call it a cult, but it's, you know, a lot of people would.

If it wasn't for the Bitcoin community and if it wasn't for Courtney, I would have never had the guts to leave cuz I literally left by like packing all the [ __ ] in that I owned in a car in my car one day and literally leaving when my parents weren't home. What I mean by leaving, I had to sneak out. That's how serious this was. I wouldn't have had the guts to do it. And there are a lot of people that have helped me. I don't know if you know of Tur Demeester. Tur he has a very similar story. He grew up in a very toxic family in Belgium and he left. He moved to the US. And when we had met, I told him, cuz I'd read about what he you know, he'd written about this and I said like Tur, like I'm trying to leave my family and

he helped me do it. He walked me through it. He was there. And I give give a lot of credit for helping me with that. I didn't know about that connection. Oh, yeah. And my parents didn't give up and not only my parents, but the whole community tried to come after us. We were dating like a year and a half at this point. When I left, they offered her like $100,000 to leave me. Crazy, right? And I told her, I said, "You should have taken it and then we would have had the money together." But if it wasn't for the family of the Bitcoin community that was If it wasn't for the family that we were, I wouldn't have had the guts. And now, I have no resentment. I have no regrets in that sense. And I want Courtney and I to be close with my family again. Like I

want that. I'm at fault as much, if not more than them. So, if they're listening to this show and they're thinking that I blame them, I don't. Courtney doesn't either. We blame ourselves. And one of the reasons that I haven't been able to have the courage to really move forward and rebuild that relationship is I harbor a lot of guilt. I have a lot of guilt right now. And for the anger and sadness and and pain that I caused my parents over those years. And I don't think I've fully let go of that guilt yet for me to rekindle that relationship with them.

That's really touching. I mean, I don't think we've ever had such a a candid interview on this podcast. Thanks for sharing that. No, but thank you for having me. We wanted to ask you about your time in in prison. And I think for me, the thing that's most interesting is as someone who wasn't ever you know, involved in crime before like wasn't on a track to go to prison, I suppose. Did you learn anything being in there? And did you get a sense that this institution was preparing people for like life after prison?

From your vantage point, what were you able to take away from that experience? You get out of prison what you put in. And so, everyone does their time differently. One of the mantras is do your time, don't let your time do you. And, you know, on that note, what you have to almost do is you have to stay productive and enhance and grow your life, but at the same time do it in a place where you're literally it's like morally and intelligently and like just completely void of any type of culture and love and life and any of that.

So, imagine trying to like further yourself in a place that's backwards and continuing to regress in humanity. And I don't say that with [ __ ] sarcasm. Those prisons are literally regressions of humanity. They are disgusting and despicable. And, honestly, you know, we should be ashamed of ourselves for not caring enough. Our government and people care so much about putting people into prison that we don't care about them once they are in there. And we can easily say to ourselves, "Oh, yeah, who cares? They're going to be there forever." No. Most inmates are only in for a year or two or three. And when they come out, you know what they're going to do? They're going

to go back right to crime. You know I know that? Because I asked them and they told me. You know why? Cuz they just do nothing in prison. There's no vocational training. There's no life skills. There's no, "Hey, let's try to make you a better person." It doesn't exist. So, you have to do it on your own. It's an uphill battle. And the only way to do it is when you say to yourselves, "I want to do it." 95% of inmates don't say that. They don't say, "I want to do it." You know what they do? They substitute. So, they substitute drug dealing with working out in the gym. They substitute gambling with playing cards in prison. Like they they substitute. It's the same [ __ ] And

they go out and they commit crimes. And I know guys who I was in with who got re-arrested. And I'll see the news articles. Oh, this one guy I was in with, he was in for identity theft. And his wife is a freaking like state senator. And I was in with him. And he was in for like 5 years. And within 6 months of him getting out, he's already check kiting again. And he has all opportunities in the world. His wife is a state senator. Like, what are you doing? The point is that you're in a place that brings out such negativity. So, you can literally go in. So, you'd have people that are brothers. You'd have business partners.

Sebastian and Sonny, I was in with people who were literally father and son. Who the prison made them so like morally devoid that they were at each other's throats. They were literally ratting on each other. Father and son in prison. Like, what kind of place does that to people? So, you talk about vocational training? No. I'm lucky that I came out better than I went in. What did you do that like How did you make sure to I was very lucky that my lawyer was able to introduce me to people who had gotten out of the same place that I was about to go into. And I still remain friends with those people today. And those

people sat me down and said, "Charlie, you're about to go into a place that's literally hell in Pennsylvania. Like, if they put hell in Pennsylvania, that's where you're going." The only way to like beat the system and the only way to do your time and not let the time do you is to work very hard on making yourself a better person. It took a month or two, but started in you know, you have a lot of time. And prison is a place where you learn how to be with yourself. And I almost kind of like joke with people and I tell them, "Hey, try this experiment. Go in a room by yourself with no phone or any computer or paper or pen or anything and just sit by yourself for 2 hours. Can

you do it? Can your listeners do it? Probably not. Very difficult. Very difficult to sit in a room for 2 hours. You go crazy. In prison, you do that about almost every day. You have hours and hours and hours. You know what I would do? I would have a paperback book in my back pocket 24 hours a day. Always. Cuz you never know when they call your name on a loudspeaker and you got to sit outside someone's office for 3 hours while they eat Wendy's. There's this um documentary that just came out. I haven't watched it yet, but I heard an interview with Lynn Novick who has worked with Ken Burns in the past on like the Vietnam War documentaries and she did a a documentary on college inmates that go through college while in uh prison.

And it has just for them like been a life-changing experience. Some of these people have went on to work at like NGOs and like get jobs at when they get out of prison. It's interesting how she describes the the sort of politics that go into that because a lot of these people come from families where no one's gone to college. And so there's almost like a resentment on the part of the families for getting educated. And then the other thing is like even the the guards in the prison, a lot of these people are not college educated. So they start getting feeling resentment against the the inmates that get the college education, right? But like I've yet to watch it, but um it just shows how [ __ ] up the system is.

I mean, what's the point of putting people in prison if when they come out they just go back to crime. I mean, that doesn't advance society, right? Yeah, I think we kind of forgot why we were putting people into prison in the first place. But you know what? Like if you ask me like what's my opinion on prison reform, I don't have really one. I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't I would say that prison may not be the best punishment for all crimes. I think there are actually a lot Like honestly, like it's so funny cuz if you would have asked a lot of people like, "What would be a worse punishment? 1 year of prison in like a camp or a low or like 5 years of house arrest?"

If you've already been in prison, you would say they'd rather the prison because house arrest of 5 years is a worse punishment. It's worse. Think about it. You have to be under the thumb of the government with an ankle bracelet for 5 years. But, during those 5 years, you're working, you're paying taxes, and you're being a hopefully a prosocial member of society. The biggest problem with prison is that you're getting out of society, so you're considered an It's literally a label. It's like a legal label. It's not I didn't make this up. The You are considered antisocial when the day you walk into prison.

And it to their belief is that by the time you get out, you are now a rehabilitated prosocial member of society. So, my whole concept is you have these people that did something bad and illegal, but the same time, why not keep them as a social member of society with a very cuz it costs $50,000 a year per inmate. And there's some inmates are in there for 20-something years for a pound of weed, right? Like, how is that beneficial for our government? But, I don't know. I mean, I don't know prison reform. All I know is that one of the beliefs that I have is that I shouldn't have to lose my rights for life. Most people don't know, but when you're a felon, you lose a lot of rights. And I fought very hard to get

even my right to vote back, and I just got it back last year. So, for the first time in the history of America, if you're a felon or a formerly convicted and you live in Florida, you will now for the first time in your life be allowed to vote as of 2020. And that's really wonderful. So, thank you to all Floridians who voted to give us our rights back to do that. Yeah, Wayne, thank you, Wayne, for that. It's very important. And I'll tell you why it's important. We're a huge voting block. You ready for this? We are 8% of the Floridian population. There is a million of us felons living in Florida out of 15 million people. We are a huge voting block. That's why the lobbyists fought so hard to not let us get our rights

back. Felons, we are very open-minded people. We're very open-minded people and we're not willing to take politicians words at like whatever they say. We investigate. Now that we have our rights to vote back, I feel like in the future we care about our civic duty. We will vote at the local level. We will vote. You know, you have these like city elections where you have like a mayor or a city councilman and you live in the city. I live in the city the size of 100,000 people. But when it comes to like electing the mayor, only 2,000 people vote. So it's very easy. I once jokingly asked a Republican fixer here that lives in Florida. I said, "Hey, how much is it to buy a city council election?" And he

was drunk and he laughed and he said, "50 grand." And I said, "That's it? That's all it cost?" So my hope is that now that felons have we have our rights to vote back, it'll be much more difficult to game the system or to buy elections. Do you think this process of your experience there has made you more libertarian or a little bit less and more understanding of the role of the government in these kind of situations? The life roles that I've been through and Courtney as well, it's made us hate labels first and foremost. We hate labels. Uh just any type of label. Even Republican Democrat Independent.

Because when you subscribe to a label and you call yourself, now you constantly have to defend that label for the rest of your life. And that sucks. And it's hard to get away from that. Once you defended a label, I know what you mean. Yeah. And it's stupid. So first of all, labels are dumb and we should never subscribe to them. But it's okay to still talk about them, you know, like talk about different labels and everything. So, I don't know if it's made us more libertarian. I think it's actually I know you're going to laugh, but I think it's made us very like middle-of-the-road type of people. We're not anarchist, but we're also not statist. We believe that there is a basic role of government that needs to exist, but it needs to be like a quarter of the size of it is today.

I believe and I don't care if people yell at me on the internet, many libertarians believe this, too, because they're libertarian, right? Anarchists believe that there isn't no role in government, but libertarian believe that there is a small role. Now, I don't like to say I'm a libertarian, but I believe there is a small role, but what I'd like to see and what what we believe now is that we've gotten a lot more and I know a lot of felons and Bitcoiners do the same thing. We get a lot more involved in like your local like politics and where you live. And so, we believe that local politics matter, but federal politics don't.

I mean, I don't care about like honestly, like federal politics is stupid. I don't care. If you ask me like what my take is on impeachment and the Republic I it's like I'm busy. Like it doesn't matter. If you were to ask me about my thoughts about them wanting to double the size of the parking garage at the local botanical gardens, I'm going to [ __ ] go nuts cuz I care about, you know, local politics. That's just the way we work now. So, what continues to drive your belief in uh Bitcoin and like where do you hope to see it going then in that case?

I'm just happy with where we are today. I'm happy with our community and I'm happy with, you know, how things have played out so far. For me at least, as long as we continue to grow at the pace that we're growing, I think we're going to do a very good job. I'm pretty happy with our community and our industry as a whole. And so, I really wouldn't change much about that, you know? I think that we're we're doing a really good job. You've been doing a great job of helping contribute to the community uh with your podcast. I started actually listening to it after SF Blockchain Week was, you know, when I first uh heard about it and then I started listening to a bunch of it and it's been really amazing.

What led you to decide to you go from being sort of a entrepreneur, not that, you know, running a podcast isn't an entrepreneur. It's It's still an entrepreneur, but like running like a business like BitInstant and then you had some other products you were working on as well to becoming a more media personality. Why did you go down that path? I have the show and then over the years I've built a number of small businesses that continue to operate independently on their own here in Florida in various sectors of business and it allowed Courtney and I to live off of that during the bear market and not have to like live any crypto.

I made a decision to not become a CEO of a large Bitcoin company ever again. I don't want to be the in that spotlight. I don't want to be in a position of power. I don't want to be in a position of influence like that ever again. I don't. I'm done with that. I love the show. I love starting small businesses. I love employing people. I don't want to ever have a full-time job again. You know my life schedule is now I wake up at 6:00, I go to my office at 7:00, I work, I'm in the studio at 10:00, I go back to the office at 11:00, I'm in the office till about 2:00, and then at 2:00 I'm done. I want that schedule forever.

That's a really good schedule. I hope that at some point I can get to that kind of discipline and having that leisure time. How you like doing a podcast? What's it like starting a podcast in 2019? How do you like it? What are you learning? It was actually my therapist's idea to start the podcast because he told me he's like you're too idle in like your life. I was sitting with him and you know, I have PTSD so does Courtney. So we see therapy you know, weekly and we were sitting as always he's like Charlie like you're very successful but your business is kind of run their own you have too much time. So do something and I said I don't really know what to do and then I always wanted to do a podcast for many many years but I

never I always wanted like a radio show. When I was in prison radio was my lifeblood, right? I had a little radio a little FM AM radio and I would listen to radio all day and all night not even music. I would listen to radio programs. I would have my own schedule. I knew which stations played which shows and they were largely like non-political shows. I would listen to like a ton of NPR shows because a lot of their shows are non-political. I would listen to sports shows. I would listen to a lot I love radio and I fell in love with how radio programs are produced and I felt like the glory years of radio are lost and so except for like NPR and how they professionally produce their show.

When my therapist gave me the idea I says I said to myself why don't I do like a highly produced show like a super highly produced show almost pretending as if my show was like on NPR. And that's how I treat Untold Stories. Every aspect of the show is it's not a news journalism show and it's a very curated and pre-planned out and formatted and written show just like yours and I was going to kind of do it on my own. I was interviewing different production companies when through a mutual friend I had met Jason Yanowitz who's the CEO of the Blockworks Group and Blockworks said we love you. They only had like two or three shows at the time. They had Pomp Show and Meltem and I think now they have like 20 shows. We want to do this

show with you and so I actually had to pay them for the first like four months just to produce my show. So I was like deep in the hole. And then I was like deep in the I was like 20 grand in the hole for this damn show. And I was okay. I just wanted to break even. I I didn't want to make money, but I knew that in order to do this show the right way you had to spend money. Now I do every show in the studio here with Wayne, audio engineers, you know, I have content writers like just like you. You have your whole system. And I love doing it. BlockWorks has been able to find really good sponsors that the first thing that they that gets written in the contract that they get no control over like what content I put out. And that's like a

deal breaker. They're able to find me really really good That's super important. Yeah, cuz again this is not a news journalism show. This is entertainment my show. I don't want the sponsors have any say in like what I can and cannot say. I've been very fortunate. So I I need to spend like hours with you picking your brain on like how to make cuz you have quarter million downloads like you have a crazy amount of downloads and I'm not even. Like I'm a tenth of that. So I want to get to where you are. I know We're a little bit higher than that over but we've been around. 1% podcast in the world. I mean you're it's insane. This has been an unbelievable show.

It's somewhere between a quarter million and a top 1% So congratulations and thank you for continuing to do that. We've had about I don't know like 5 million downloads over the course of the 6 years or something. So it's nowhere near the top 1% of the podcast but you know, we've done a bit of things in the crypto space I suppose. I mean Unchained is great. I really like it. I've heard a couple of episodes. Like I said I I heard the one with Ben Mezrich and it's fantastic. So happy to spend time with you anytime you want to shoot some ideas around. We have a mutual sponsor Peppo. We'll give him a shout out really quick and they're a great company in social media.

I'm excited to continue working with them. They're such a cool sponsor because they make us work. Like some sponsors just say like throw a 30 second you know add in there but Peppo is like constantly making us do stuff and work together and that's so cool. And I like when they do that, you know, when they make us do stuff because then we know that they're going to continue getting value out of it and then sign up for another year. I like them too. I like the the community that's growing there. It's like this very niche little community and Yes, they're able to build this nice community, yeah. Thank you for so much for having me on the show.

I'm glad we could have a do a sort of an untold stories on Epicenter. It feels very much like the style of interviews that you do on your podcast. I'm happy that you were able to tell your story on Epicenter. Most of the stuff I said today I've never actually said before or done on any show. Very fresh and very new. So I'm happy to have have done it. Thanks a lot and yeah, we'll keep in touch. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. You can find and subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you have a Google Home or Alexa device, you can tell it to listen to the latest episode of the Epicenter podcast.

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