# Cash with wings. Charlie Shrem and Anthony Di Iorio on Bitcoin, freedom and building the browser for value > - A PROUD Magazine Berlin interview by Emin Mahrt and Moritz Stellmacher with Charlie Shrem and Anthony Di Iorio. > - Charlie calls Bitcoin gold with wings, Anthony calls it cash for the internet. > - Both got in for the ideology: control over your own money, data and privacy. > - Charlie says Bitcoin itself can't be regulated, only the on and off ramps to fiat. By Emin Mahrt. Published 2026-03-09. Updated 2026-03-09. Canonical: https://emin.de/posts/cash-with-wings-charlie-shrem-anthony-di-iorio-on-bitcoin-freedom-and-building-t First published: https://medium.com/@em/cash-with-wings-charlie-shrem-anthony-di-iorio-on-bitcoin-freedom-and-building-the-browser-e92dff34395b (2026-03-09) Category: bitcoin. Format: essay. Language: en. Provenance: mixed. AI-assisted: true. Reviewed by a human: false. An interview by Emin Mahrt and Moritz Stellmacher for PROUD Magazine Berlin. ## Who they are Anthony Di Iorio is a Canadian entrepreneur who sold his Toronto rental properties in 2012 to go all-in on Bitcoin. He co-founded Ethereum in late 2013, founded Decentral Inc. and the Jaxx multi-asset wallet, and was the first Chief Digital Officer of the Toronto Stock Exchange. Forbes estimated his net worth at $750M to $1B in February 2018. He bought his first Bitcoin at about $9 in the summer of 2012 and right away started building Toronto's Bitcoin community. He organized meetups, installed the city's first two-way Bitcoin ATM and hosted over 100 blockchain events. Charlie Shrem is a Bitcoin pioneer born in Brooklyn. He co-founded BitInstant in 2011, and by 2013 it processed roughly 30% of all Bitcoin transactions worldwide, backed by $1.5M from Winklevoss Capital. He was a founding board member and later Vice Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation. In January 2014 he was arrested at JFK Airport and sentenced to two years for aiding unlicensed money transmission related to Silk Road activity. He was released mid-2016. In 2017 he joined Jaxx as director of business and community development, working with Di Iorio, and that is exactly when this interview happened. **Basically,** Di Iorio co-founded Ethereum and Jaxx. Shrem co-founded BitInstant and served two years in prison. ## Gold with wings PROUD: How would you explain Bitcoin to a 10-year-old? Charlie: Imagine a brick of gold. It's scarce, it has utility, it has value. Now give it wings. Bitcoin and these other tokens are gold with wings. You can take that piece of value and send it to anyone, anywhere in the world. Decentralized. No one can freeze it, no one can double-spend it, no one can counterfeit it, and no one can take it from you. Anthony: It's literally cash for the internet. What email did for information, Bitcoin does for value. You can send payments globally, instantly, without needing banks or intermediaries taking commissions from a peer-to-peer exchange. Think about what email did to open up the internet. This enables value movement through the same pipelines, connecting individuals without expensive third parties. PROUD: What excites you more, the technical side or the ideology behind it? Charlie: Anthony and I got involved around the same time, and I think we both got in for ideological reasons. This technology lets people take data and value back into their own hands. Privacy. Control of your digital life. And it's not just Bitcoin. Ethereum does smart contracts, other projects handle social media, data, insurance, supply chain. The blockchain does a lot of different things beyond money. Anthony: Every part of our life is managed by third parties. Your money is controlled by a bank and the government. Your ID is controlled by the government. Your communications can be listened to. You're just not in control. What excites me is the freedom and liberty that comes from these technologies. I believe in the Austrian School of Economics, sound money, less government, personal freedom. That matched perfectly with Bitcoin and blockchain. Putting those two things together, cryptography that puts people in control of their lives, from money to identity to payments to education certificates. In our case with Jaxx, it all comes down to a 12-word key owned by the user. That's the unlock for the entire emerging digital world. **Basically,** Bitcoin explained to a 10-year-old: scarce value you can send to anyone, anywhere, with no bank. ## The moment it clicked PROUD: What was the first moment that activated this for you personally? Charlie: I was working with a non-profit. PayPal froze the account, $10,000 meant for hospitals and children, because the paperwork wasn't right for a foreign non-profit. That pissed me off. Then someone in a chat room said "download this software" and sent me some bitcoins, basically worthless at the time. I said "what's the big deal, it's just a version of PayPal you download." He said no. With PayPal, PayPal operates the ledger, they control it. When he sent me Bitcoin, it updated on my books, his books, and *everyone's* books simultaneously. No central server. No one could tell him he can't send money. No one could freeze it. That was a big deal for me. Anthony: Summer of 2012. I read about it and got it instantly. This is going to be more important than the internet. The internet disrupted media, postal services, anything to do with information movement. Bitcoin has the opportunity to do the same for value movement, globally, instantly, for free, peer-to-peer. The internet developed the roads. Now the trucks and cars are passing along with goods and services. I bought my first Bitcoin at about nine dollars and something cents. That same day, my next thought was, there's nothing happening in Toronto, why don't I start it? Becoming that center of gravity for the community was probably one of the biggest decisions I made. It led to meeting Charlie, to all these connections, and eventually to building Jaxx. PROUD: How did this whole space get so big, so fast? Anthony: We knew it would become like the internet, just not this quickly. Time is always hard to judge. But I'm happy with the progress. Projects like Ethereum opened doors beyond payments in 2013. Smart contracts, automatic executable code, removing middlemen like lawyers and insurance companies. People realized they can globally trade value without legacy systems. It's cheaper, faster. And once the interfaces come into play, the average person will be able to say "oh, I get exactly what's going on here." **Basically,** A frozen PayPal account for Shrem, a summer of reading in 2012 for Di Iorio. ## Privacy or Big Brother PROUD: What's the biggest change decentralization will bring to society? Charlie: Right now, people trade privacy for convenience. It's easier to use Facebook, easier to use the banking system. People don't use Tor. People don't use Signal, even though Snowden recommended it, because all their friends are on WhatsApp. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, and Facebook gives access to governments. But it's easier. There's a trade-off. Society will go one of two ways. Big Brother, cameras everywhere, phones monitored. Or a shift toward privacy-oriented systems where we're in control. Bitcoin gives us control of our money because no one can take it. And when monetary policy is taken from the government, they can't use it to create wars. We pay taxes that go toward things we don't consent to. If we can't change that, at least we should have the choice. The good thing about Jaxx is that we're trying to make the best user experience possible. We want to make it easier to use the Jaxx wallet than your bank's iPhone app. That's the whole point. PROUD: What percentage chance does a decentralized society actually have? Charlie: The cypherpunk movement was a joke in the 90s. Everyone made fun of them. Now it's bigger than ever. I don't think it'll ever be a 100% shift, but a good percentage of the world population will be using decentralized, privacy-oriented software. You'll have two systems. People will use one or the other. As long as that's possible, we're in good shape. **Basically,** Shrem sees two roads for society: cameras everywhere, or privacy tools where people are in control. ## What Jaxx solves PROUD: What problem does Jaxx solve, for someone with zero technical background? Charlie: In the past eight years of Bitcoin, you've had exchanges where you buy Bitcoin and leave it there, like Mt. Gox. If the exchange disappears, you lose everything. With Jaxx, we don't control your Bitcoin. You create a username and password that only you control. It encrypts all your data. If you lose it, there's no recovery, but no one else has access either. And it's not just Bitcoin. It's Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash, Monero, all in one wallet. We're taking it further. Information, decentralized internet access, everything through one interface. All in one. **Basically,** Unlike Mt. Gox style exchanges, Jaxx does not hold your Bitcoin. You keep the keys. ## Hacks, price and new projects PROUD: What's the worst thing that could happen to Bitcoin? Charlie: Some crazy technical issue, a hack on the protocol layer itself. But here's the thing. There's no economic incentive to do it. If someone found a flaw and stole everyone's Bitcoin, it wouldn't have value anymore. It's not like robbing a bank where the money still works. If you break Bitcoin, it goes to zero. No one believes it has value anymore. So what's the incentive? PROUD: The biggest driver for newcomers is the price discussion. Is that okay, or should people focus on the ideology and technology? Charlie: Whatever they want, to be honest. Bitcoin has something for everyone. There's no one answer. PROUD: Is there a recent project or idea that got you really excited? Charlie: All these different projects doing different things on the blockchain. Steem doing social media, Ethereum doing smart contracts, Matchpool doing dating. It's not just money anymore. And honestly? That's what I saw in Jaxx. That's why I joined the company. **Basically,** Stealing all Bitcoin would kill its value, so no one has a reason to try. Price is fine as a way in. ## Governments and prison PROUD: Can Bitcoin stay independent from governments long-term, or could they take it over? Charlie: Bitcoin itself can't be regulated, it's a technology. As long as data moves freely on the internet, you can't regulate it. But they can regulate the companies that operate as on and off ramps between fiat and Bitcoin. And they are. That's fine. As for regular users, don't worry about it unless you're doing something illegal. PROUD: You ended up in prison yourself. Can that happen to the masses? Charlie: That was my fault. I had a company and I was being stupid. That shouldn't concern regular users at all. *Interview conducted by Emin Mahrt and Moritz Stellmacher for PROUD Magazine, Berlin. Anthony Di Iorio called in on his way to Shanghai for hardware production meetings. Charlie Shrem joined from New York.* **Basically,** The protocol can't be regulated, the exchanges can. Shrem calls his own prison time his own fault.