Michael Birch killed Shaan Puri's early crypto exchange over SEC fears
Shaan Puri · When to Go All In on an Idea & the Crypto Exchange That Could Have Been | My First Million #200 · Jul 14, 2021 · at 26:41
Shaan Puri recounts running an idea incubator backed by Bebo founders Michael and Xochitl Birch in the early 2010s when Bitcoin was trading under $100.
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“Our idea lab was backed by this couple, Michael and Xochitl Birch. It's basically an individual couple who's, you know, independently very wealthy. And so he come, Michael comes by for lunch the next day. He's like, Hey, the lawyer, like our lawyer, Susan told us that you're doing like a Bitcoin project. And I was like, yeah, kind of exciting. Like, and I don't really know it myself. I wasn't the one with conviction. It was like my team and I was just backing them. And so he's asking me, he's like, isn't that like, kind of, like, for the Silk Road, and like, isn't that, like, kind of scammy? And I was like, no, I think there's merit to it, but I couldn't, like, make a strong case. He's like, dude, I don't know, man, like, if we do something wrong here in the financial space, like, look, if we make a social app that fails, whatever, I burned a million dollars of funding. If we do something that's illegal, the SEC comes after us, I could lose everything. So, like, let's put the kibosh on on our crypto exchange that you guys are trying to, like, create, Like launch tomorrow.”
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