This is an opinion editorial by Daniel Feldman, the CEO of Green Block Mining.
In 2016, after I sold a gaming company that I founded with a high school friend to a group of former executives from Amaya/PokerStars, I was looking for the next thing to do. In 2017, I discovered bitcoin. I would argue with my brother-in-law and father-in-law about the efficacy of cryptocurrency, but could not effectively support my position. So, to learn more and be able to better defend my pro-crypto stance, I started a blockchain and cryptocurrency meetup in New York City. I moderated discussions with curated speakers and hosted a post-meeting dinner, giving time for further discussion and networking. The meetup became popular. Investment banks, family offices, funds, startups, friends and a variety of interesting people regularly attended for three years until COVID-19 hit.
I began each of my meetups with a play on the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” theme song, “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” by saying, “North Americans just don’t understand.” It was a way to introduce three stories that demonstrated both the global need for decentralized money and why North Americans do not innately understand this. I only gained this perspective by living outside the U.S., through my time living in Moscow as a student and then later as an expat worker.
Story One
In 1984, a teacher said that he could teach anyone the Russian past tense in fifteen seconds, which convinced me to begin studying Russian in high school at Buckingham Browne and Nichols in Cambridge, MA. In 1990, I spent the first semester of my junior year in college on a study abroad program in Moscow, USSR at the Pushkin Institute for the Study of Foreign Languages. Students from all over the world studied and lived together in the two dormitories, separated by socialist and non-socialist countries. It was a fascinating time during the final months of the USSR. The first McDonald’s and a Pizza Hut had opened.
The official…
