Charlie Shrem

A lot of people have, like, 95 percent of their wealth in bitcoin. Great for them, but I got to be smart.

A lot of people say that I took the first shot for Bitcoin. The first person to walk through the door always gets shot, and then everyone else can come through.

I was, like, 22 years old. I had half a million dollars sitting in the bank. I had no expenses. Life was great.

In prison, you have to forget about the world on the outside. You have no Internet, no communications, and you're cut off from the whole world. Everything is given to you. You have shelter; you have food, a shower, water. You don't need to spend a dime. You don't have to worry about bills.

I'm investing. I'm taking a lot of bitcoin, selling it as the price goes up, and putting it into real estate. Because then if bitcoin goes to zero - which, it's an experiment, it could - I won't be on the street.

I spend thousands of dollars on lawyers every day just to make sure that I'm not gonna go to jail.

My word is gold, And I make sure everyone gets paid.

Good-quality protein is very hard to come by in prison. Tuna is good, but tuna doesn't have texture. Mackerel is meaty.

Bitcoin is my baby; it's my whole world and my whole life. It's what I was put on this earth to do.

The hardest obstacles for Bitcoin companies are banking and regulation.

Before I went to prison, there were not really many blockchain products. It was only bitcoin.

My brain is here for the picking, and a lot of people are calling me to see what I think about their business, and I'm brutally honest with them.