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Charlie Shrem Calls Bitcoin the Currency of the Future, Wants to Grow the Bitcoin Ecosystem

In his morning keynote at the Inside Bitcoins conference in New York City, 23 year-old Charlie Shrem described Bitcoin as spurring a paradigm shift in the financial sector. Shrem is Vice Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation and CEO of BitInstant.

The growth of Bitcoin—the digital currency that allows for feeless and instantly settled transactions–is directly related to wider acceptance by traditional retailers, assuring the security of transactions and combatting some of the less than favorable press that Bitcoin has garnered.

However, the growth of Bitcoin is also dependent on entrepreneurs like Charlie. Once laughed out of every venture capitalist’s office in New York City, Charlie Shrem convinced his mother to take out her life savings in order to start BitInstant, which solved the problem of “how do you buy bitcoins?” Today, as a result of Shrem’s efforts, you can walk into any 7/11 and buy Bitcoin in addition to your daily coffee or Slurpee. Later the famous, or infamous, Winklevoss twins invested in the startup.

Shrem’s latest endeavor is named Bitcoin Wireless, whose aim is to allow for the exchange of mobile airtime minutes as a currency (reminiscent of the virtues of mobile transaction pioneer M-Pesa).

Another innovation cited by Shrem in his talk was that of the Harvey brothers out of New Hampshire, who are launching the first Bitcoin ATM network; the ATM’s will allow for virtually instant cash-for-bitcoin exchanges.

With so much optimism and innovation surrounding Bitcoin, Charlie Shrem was quick to also point out some less rosy realities. Bitcoin has reputational issues to address; while these are due to Bitcoin’s “early days” when the currency’s environment was akin to the “Wild Wild West” and have been amplified by some members of the media, these issues are very real.

Next, is the issue of how Bitcoin might play with respect to traditional banks and financial institutions. In his talk, Shrem was hopeful that Bitcoin would one day be harmoniously incorporated into the traditional banking system, co-existing alongside credit cards, cheques and other more traditional instruments of financial transactions.

On the net, does Bitcoin’s future look bright? According to Shrem, “Bitcoin is doing to the world what Email did to snail mail.”

Authored by Michael Smouha and Ronan Murphy, Contributors to On Bitcoin

Conference photo tweeted by @saumvaish