Nicolas Cary is one of the biggest leaders in the bitcoin sector by being the CEO of blockchain.
He is super busy and travels a lot so we were really lucky to catch him for a quick interview at the 2014 Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam.
Bitcoinist.net
Hi Nick, thank you for your time, I am sure Bitcoinist.net readers will be stoked to read this interview!
Nic Cary
Hello! Thanks for having me!
Bitcoinist.net
How did you get involved in the cryptocurrency business? And please tell your story with Blockchain.
Nic Cary
Okay. So I learnt about Bitcoin in 2011 from a friend of mine, in Erik Vorheese. So Eric and I went to college together at the University of Puget Sound, and we must have met the first week of school. So we were close friends, and we’ve remained very close ever since then. He told me about Bitcoin while we were fishing off the Long Island south, we were going for flanders which is a big flat fish.
We were on this tiny little aluminum dingy, and puttering along, and I remember that Eric had had like a religious moment and started to talk about how amazed he was by this crypto world and started to tell me all about it. I was really interested in what he told me about it.
With not only learn more about and spend some time committed to the research, but also I would buy some bitcoin just so that I could like basically start to learn more about it. So that was my introduction to Bitcoin, and was while fishing for flanders in the summer of 2011.
So I watched it from the sidelines for a long time. I was working in Startup, and helping manage the product development process there, and Bitcoin was growing in the kind of sidelines. And for me, I was a lurker, so I was ready every single day, refreshing it and reading every single paper I could find and reading every single news article.
And then eventually, it became obvious, that it was sort of impossible to participate in everything and stay up to date with everything. And that’s when I realised there was a lot more going on in the industry and in the space than I was initially aware of. So long story short, fast forward a little bit, I was approached to help at Blockchain by creating some plans around how we could build a vault service that would be useful for people to send and receive their bitcoins and securely store them anywhere in the world. And they asked me if I wanted to help grow the company and I said: Absolutely! So I dropped everything else I was doing, and I joined up with the Blockchain team. Ever since then it’s been absolutely non-stop, we work basically 365 days 24/7, we’ve got a team that’s growing, we started with just a couple of us and now there are over 20, we are entirely boot-strapped, we do have an initial investor but all of this work we’ve done has been without growth capital. So we are a revenue positive business, we make our money through ad sales basically, and we’ve just eclipsed 1.6 million users which is really exciting. It demonstrates that you know there really is a market for bitcoin in the world. And we are excited to see what’ll happen in 2014.
Bitcoinist.net
That’s great story I like it a lot. Let’s move on… I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of questions about Bitcoin and Blockchain so let’s move over to a little bit more personal stuff. Who’s your role model, and why?
Nic Cary
Ha, it’s a good question! So the most influential person in my life was definitely my grandfather. My grandfather held a steady job for 50 years, he fought World War 2, before that you know he got married and had his kids, and for me he was someone who was unbelievably committed to their ethics and someone who just was always a steady hand. So they had more in my life to me it was where my morality was shaped and then a lot of ways my north star, which is just be an honest and thoughtful person and be reflective, and I hope to better and improve my life every day and I think about him a lot and my grandfather was probably the most important person in my life.
Bitcoinist.net
This is really honest and thank you, I’m sorry for the sensitive question. I have been traveling to most of the conferences and I have seen you at most of the conferences so I was wondering: you’re traveling so much, who’s working?
Nic Cary
Yeah, so find time between working things. The travel schedule is pretty crazy. I don’t know exactly how many miles I’ve put on in the last 4 month but probably several hundred thousand. Just in the last seven days I was in New York, flew to Toronto then Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, Manchester, and now I’m here in Amsterdam. I’m planning to go home briefly.
Bitcoinist.net
This sounds really incredible and tiring.
Nic Cary
Well hopefully, there will be some peace and quiet and I concentrate little bit. But there’s no time to wait in this space. And for us, being able participate in bitcoin is an opportunity of a lifetime. Most important learning opportunity of a lifetime. And so, because of that I consuming reserves of energy and I’m so also inspired especially by my team mates that every single day get out of bed and work constantly on helping improve Bitcoin and helping Blockchain get better.
Bitcoinist.net
You have mentioned that you were fishing when first heard about bitcoin so I’m assuming you like fishing so whenever you have just a few minutes of spare time, what do you like to do other then fishing?
Nic Cary
So I guess my passions outside of cryptocurrency are actually quite rustic. So I am a fly fisherman, that’s something I do enjoy quite a bit. I like mountain biking, I for personal stress reasons I like to run, so I’m an active runner, I run half marathons and train for marathon at the moment. I’ve got half marathon in Edinburgh next weekend, so that’s in Scotland. So that helps me keep an even keel. And also gives me a little time to organize my thoughts on what I’ll be working on that day.
Bitcoinist.net
While running?
Nic Cary
Yeah, while running. Yeah, other than that I used to spend a lot more time reading and writing. And that sort of been placed on the sidelines. Instead replaced by writing lots of emails.
Bitcoinist.net
Thank you Nick.
Nic Cary
Yeah! Thank you.
Interview by: Mate Tokay
