How a Coffee King Became Canada’s Top Bitcoin Guide

What we talked about.

In this episode of the Sunny Ray Show, Sunny sits down with Miguel, who calls himself the Bitcoin Sherpa, to trace his journey from coffee executive to Bitcoin educator. Miguel recounts leading one of Mexico's most storied coffee companies as a young CEO, then walking away from a multi million dollar opportunity to immigrate to Canada in 2010. He describes years of survival jobs, including serving coffee at Tim Hortons, and the identity crisis that followed before mentorship helped him climb into a banking career managing billions at TD and Scotiabank. Miguel shares the vivid dream about his infant son that pushed him to seriously study Bitcoin, and how that study reshaped his entire worldview. He also discusses founding UnstoppableMe to support newcomers, climbing Kilimanjaro to raise awareness about underemployment, and now running Bitcoin Sherpa, where he mentors people through their Bitcoin learning journey and builds tools like Bitcoin Parents. The conversation blends personal reinvention, immigrant resilience, and Bitcoin conviction into one story.

A former Mexican coffee CEO turned Canadian banker explains how a dream about his son led him to become Canada's Bitcoin Sherpa.

The questions, and the answers.

Why do you call yourself the Bitcoin Sherpa, and where did that come from?

It comes from a dream I had two months after my son was born, during the pandemic. In the dream he was a teenager asking why I didn't do anything about Bitcoin when it started. I told him it was for criminals and bad for the environment, and he saw right through me. That hit me like a punch in the gut. I was a 12 year banker managing billions, but I woke up needing to actually study it, and everything changed from there.

You were CEO of one of Mexico's most famous coffee companies in your early 20s. What was that world like?

I never expected to become CEO, a professor connected me to the owner and I got the job managing the whole group of companies. When I joined we were selling 200 kilos of coffee a month, and by the time I left four years later we were at 20,000 kilos. I traveled the world representing Mexican coffee in competitions in Japan, Spain, Canada and the States. I felt like I was on top of the mountain.

You landed in Toronto in 2010 and your first job was serving coffee at Tim Hortons. How did you process going from coffee CEO to coffee server?

It was crazy, I had never experienced anything like an identity crisis before. No one in Canada knew me, trusted me, or hired me for anything similar to what I did in Mexico. It took five years of survival jobs, Tim Hortons, restaurants, construction, cleaning, even framing houses despite never having touched a hammer. My whole identity shattered and I questioned whether coming to Canada was a mistake, but I kept pushing through.

In 2013 you discovered mentorship and everything changed. Who was that mentor and what did they show you?

I was desperate, paying rent with a credit card, and at a networking event I invited everyone to my house for tacos on my birthday. A branch manager showed up, we connected, and he told me I was like a radio tuned to the wrong frequency for Canada. He helped me land a job as a bank teller, and I got promoted within two months. It taught me that connections and trust matter as much as skills.

Looking back at your whole journey, what's the one lesson you'd hand to every newcomer on day one?

Find mentors as fast as possible and as many as possible, one is not enough, you need ten. Through UnstoppableMe I learned that in Canada everyone has the credentials and high IQ, so it's not about intelligence anymore, it's about who knows you and trusts you. Give before you take. I spent five years planting seeds and connecting with as many people as I could without asking for anything back.

Was there a specific book or resource that changed how you thought about money?

The Bullish Case for Bitcoin by Vijay Boyapati was my favorite, I actually prefer it to The Bitcoin Standard, though that book is great too. I also devoured the first twelve chapters of the What is Money podcast with Breedlove and Saylor, which took me deep into the history. Then I signed up for Pomp's Crypto Academy, sixty hours of content that turned out to be entirely about Bitcoin, which felt meant to be.

Tell us more about Bitcoin Sherpa, what's the mission and vision?

My objective is to decode the path to Bitcoin conviction by researching the common trends in how people come to understand it, then reverse engineer that into a guided path for pre coiners, almost like building a map for Bitcoin learning. I run Bitcoin meetups in my area, I'm building Bitcoin Parents.co, and I've even coded games for children about the power of deflation, like a piggy bank race.