This is the 2nd part of a two-part episode on Charlie Shrem, America’s first Bitcoin superstar.  When we left Charlie at the end of Episode 1, he was just being confronted by joint FBI, DEA, IRS task force at JFK Airport in New York.  Upon his arrival, he is arrested and detained by the federal authorities.  Tune into the second part of this two-part episode to find out what happened to Charlie. Why was he detained?  On what charges? We follow Charlie through the shock of these events and discover how his experiences changed him and his relationship to the world of Bitcoin and blockchain. We conclude the episode with a conversation with Ned Scott, the Co-founder and CEO of Steemit, an exciting new blockchain project that Charlie is involved in.

There was a time; not so long ago, that Bitcoin was just an obscure little diversion for the hardest of the hard-core crypto geeks existing on the fringes of the internet.  Out of those recesses rose a quiet young yeshiva student from Brooklyn who would seize upon a unique opportunity, using his own personal experiences and his love of computers to create one of the first successful retail Bitcoin enterprises.  His name was Charlie Shrem, and by the time he was 21 years old he was a Bitcoin titan.  His startup, BitInstant, allowed ordinary people to easily purchase bitcoins from retailers like 7-11 or Walmart. Within months of starting BitInstant, Charlie was traveling and speaking all over the world about Bitcoin and gaining a reputation as a Bitcoin superstar.  But what goes up can also come down.  Listen to episode 5 of Wall & Broadcast to learn more about how Charlie rose to prominence and ultimately found himself confronted and detained by federal authorities at JFK Airport.       

If you’re anything like us here at Wall & Broadcast, you love movies about Wall Street.  Whether it’s the sheer outright hilarity of Trading Places, the brutal ruthlessness of Margin Call, the gritty day to day grind of Boiler Room, or the mixture of greed, wealth and power of The Wolf of Wall Street, we can’t seem to get enough of what Hollywood is saying about our industry.  But is Hollywood getting it right?  Strap in for another episode of Wall & Broadcast where we try to find out if the entertainment industry’s portrayal of our industry is accurate.  We speak to an actual frozen concentrated orange juice futures trader from the 80’s, a former Wall Street secretary from Staten Island, Downtown Josh Brown of CNBC fame who worked in a couple of ‘boiler rooms’ himself, and actors Rudy Eisenzopf from the Big Short and Alessandro Nivola from the upcoming Wizard of Lies to get some answers.