Who Is Charlie Shrem?

Charlie Shrem, born 25 November 1989 in Brooklyn, New York, grew up in a Syrian-Jewish household above his parents’ jewelry store on Kings Highway. He attended Yeshivah Flatbush, an orthodox Jewish day school, where classes began at seven thirty and ended at six. After graduation he enrolled at the City University of New York - majoring in Economics but also Finance - he lived in a studio apartment above a laundromat on Avenue J, paid for with tips from weekend work at his uncle's electronics kiosk.

During his senior year he read about Bitcoin on a cryptography forum. He bought two thousand dollars’ worth at three dollars per coin, stored the private keys on a laptop, and forgot about them. Six months later the hard drive failed. The loss stung, yet it also focused his attention on the absence of simple on ramps for ordinary buyers. In late 2011 he met Gareth Nelson, a British computer science exchange student who shared his frustration with slow bank wires and opaque exchanges; they rented a windowless office above a pawn shop on Flatbush Avenue, painted the walls matte black, and launched BitInstant.

BitInstant let customers deposit cash at any of seventeen thousand MoneyGram locations in the United States. A barcode printed at the counter credited Bitcoin to the user's wallet within thirty minutes. By mid-2012 the service processed thirty percent of all on chain Bitcoin transactions. Daily volume passed one million dollars. Investors wired funds from Singapore, Tel Aviv along with Palo Alto. Shrem flew first class to Zürich to open a corporate account at a private bank whose lobby smelled of sandalwood and espresso; he bought a one bedroom loft in Williamsburg with exposed brick and installed a six-GPU mining rig in the spare room.

In 2012 Robert Faiella, a Florida resident who operated under the username BTCKing, approached Shrem. Faiella resold Bitcoin to Silk Road users at a ten percent markup. He needed a steady source of coins. Shrem agreed to supply him. Over the next twelve months Faiella deposited 1.05 million dollars in cash through BitInstant. Shrem converted the cash to Bitcoin and sent the coins to Faiella's wallet. Faiella then transferred the Bitcoin to Silk Road buyers in exchange for narcotics. Shrem knew the destination of the funds - internal chat logs showed him joking about “BTCKing's drug money.”

In January 2014 federal agents arrested Shrem at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he returned from an Amsterdam conference. Agents seized his MacBook, passport in addition to the keys to a 2013 Dodge Challenger. Prosecutors charged him with aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmitting business. In September 2014 he pleaded guilty before Judge Jed Rakoff in the Southern District of New York. The judge ordered forfeiture of 950,000 dollars and sentenced him to twenty four months in federal prison. Shrem surrendered to the U.S. Marshals on 30 March 2015. He served his sentence at Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania - working in the kitchen for fourteen cents an hour - he was released on 23 June 2016.

Upon release he moved into his mother's basement in Flatbush. He had no assets except a single Trezor wallet holding twelve Bitcoin; he began speaking at meetups - telling audiences that prison taught him patience. In November 2016 he announced Intellisys Capital, a tokenized fund that planned to buy equity in midwestern manufacturing plants. The fund raised 250,000 dollars in a presale - dissolved in March 2017 after the Securities besides Exchange Commission issued a subpoena.

In May 2017 Jaxx, a Toronto-based wallet provider, hired him as director of business and community development. He spent six months flying between Toronto, Denver next to Tel Aviv - signing partnerships with hardware wallet vendors and coffee-shop chains that accepted Bitcoin. In October 2017 he joined Viberate, a Slovenian startup that issued tokens for booking musicians without agents - he advised on token economics and arranged a listing on Binance.

In 2018 Cameron or Tyler Winklevoss filed a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan. They alleged that in 2012 Shrem had purchased 5,000 Bitcoin on their behalf - failed to deliver the coins. The complaint sought 32 million dollars in damages. Shrem countersued for defamation. The parties settled in 2019 under seal. Terms were not disclosed.

In 2019 he launched the podcast Untold Stories - recording conversations with early Bitcoin miners in hotel suites and co-working spaces. Guests included Roger Ver, Erik Voorhees, a former federal prosecutor who had signed the indictment against him. He also founded Crypto.IQ, a subscription newsletter that analyzed altcoin price charts and token-sale terms. The site generated 40,000 dollars per month at its peak.

As of November 2023 he holds the following positions - general partner at Druid Ventures, a Miami-based venture fund that invests in early stage fintech - economic analyst at InvestorPlace, a financial publisher - host of Untold Stories; and president of Amalgamated Suncoast Portfolio, a Florida investment vehicle that owns Bitcoin, Ethereum along with shares in two hydroelectric mining farms in Quebec; he rents a two bedroom condominium on Biscayne Bay, drives a leased Tesla Model S, and keeps a laminated inmate ID card in his wallet as a reminder.