Mining Bitcoin at Work
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A story about Shaan's first exposure to Bitcoin through his office IT guy in 2013.
"I remember in 2013, I first heard about crypto from a guy in my office - Pete, our IT guy. He was like 'Bitcoin is the shit, it's at $7 now, it's at $11.' I didn't know what that meant, and he said 'fuck fiat currency.' I didn't even know what fiat meant at the time - I thought that was a car.
He was mining Bitcoin using our servers at the office and would say things like 'we mined 2 Bitcoin today.' I was kind of mocking it but was curious, so I started going and listening to some talks.
One of the things I was looking at was whether smart VCs and people smarter than me were investing in this space. I listened to a talk by Marc Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz - who now blocks me on Twitter. He was talking about how crypto was going to be great, how Bitcoin was such interesting technology, and how blockchains might change everything.
When the interviewer asked how much they had invested, they said they hadn't invested in any crypto companies yet. They were just buying Bitcoin directly. I found it super strange that a VC fund wasn't investing in companies but instead buying the underlying currency."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.