The Bitcoin Game #41 - Charlie Shrem

The Bitcoin Game

Hello, welcome to episode 41 of The Bitcoin Game.I'm Rob Mitchell, and my guest today is Charlie Shrem.

When I got into Bitcoin, the two ways I was most familiar with to buy Bitcoin were to wire money to Mt. Gox in Japan, or go to the local 7-Eleven to send cash to BitInstant. It's not hard to see why BitInstant became one of the biggest Bitcoin companies in the U.S., until it stopped doing business in 2013.

Charlie Shrem was BitInstant's CEO and Co-Founder, he was very active in the community, and I would guess most Bitcoiners see him as someone who took one for the team. Charlie served a two-year sentence for activities related to money laundering, lack of proper licensing, and not filing suspicious activity reports. Of course, many feel he was doing nothing morally wrong, and some argue the legal case wasn't that strong. Surely his prison sentence was an early warning shot to those running Bitcoin businesses.

Now that Charlie Shrem has served his time, he's become active in the community again. In today's episode, Charlie and I discuss his early days in Bitcoin, BitInstant, his new Mainstreet.ky venture, Steemit.com, the People's Bank of China's effect on Bitcoin, and more.

SHOW LINKS

Charlie Shrem's Site

Charlie Shrem's BitcoinTalk Profile

BitInstant Wiki

A Geek in Prison by Charlie Shrem - Part 1

A Geek in Prison by Charlie Shrem - Part 2

A Geek in Prison by Charlie Shrem - Part 3

A Geek in Prison by Charlie Shrem - Part 4

A Geek in Prison by Charlie Shrem - Part 5

A Geek in Prison by Charlie Shrem - Part 6

A Geek in Prison by Charlie Shrem - Part 7

A Geek in Prison by Charlie Shrem - Part 8

Mainstreet.ky

Rootstock

Needham & Co.

People's Bank of China

MAGIC WORD

Stay tuned for the magic word in this episode, and submit it to your LTB Network account to claim a share of this week's distribution of LTBCoin. Listeners have one week from each episode's release date to claim the magic word credit.

SPONSOR

While much of Bitcoiners' time is spent in the world of digital assets, sometimes it's nice to own a physical representation of the virtual things you care about. For just the price of a cup of coffee or two (at Starbucks), you can own your own Bitcoin Keychainor the newer Bitcoin Fork Pen.

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CREDITS

All music in this episode of The Bitcoin Gamewas created by Rob Mitchell.

The Bitcoin Gamebox art was created from an illustration by Rock Barcellos.