In this episode, Sunny Ray talks with Adam Goldman, co-founder of Bitbuy, one of Canada's leading cryptocurrency exchanges. Goldman traces his path from a military boarding school and a dropped-out political science degree at Dalhousie University, through IT work in construction and web hosting, to discovering Bitcoin around 2013 to 2015. He describes building an early Interac-based crypto payment service that evolved into Bitbuy in 2016, and later merging with Chris Marsh's Blockchain Markets to create Bitbuy Pro. Goldman recounts attending the 2014 Bitcoin Expo in Toronto, receiving an Ethereum shirt directly from Vitalik Buterin. He discusses the regulatory limbo created by Canada's 2015 FINTRAC guidance, the damage done by bad actors like Quadriga, and why patience and persistence were essential to building trust in a skeptical banking environment. The conversation closes with a wide ranging discussion on Bitcoin maximalism versus the broader crypto ecosystem, comparing Bitcoin and Ethereum's differing purposes, and why he sees DeFi as a genuine technological evolution rather than a repeat of the 2017 ICO bubble.
Bitbuy co-founder Adam Goldman traces his path from Ethereum's earliest days to building a trusted Canadian bitcoin exchange.
How is bitcoin doing today?
Bitcoin is up almost two percent on the 24 hour and it's facing that 12k resistance level. If you're in BTC today is a good day, especially if you've been waiting since early summer. Alts and stuff like Fifa are getting crushed though, it's really a function of the dominance play tied to world events and economic responses to COVID.
Can you share your story, how you got into crypto and eventually founded Bitbuy?
I went to military boarding school, then dropped out of Dalhousie studying political science because I wasn't learning fast enough. I worked in construction IT, then technical college for networking, then a Toronto web hosting company where the CTO's scientific math background made bitcoin click for us. Around 2013 to 2015 we built an Interac based service inspired by QuickBT, which became Bitbuy in 2016, and later we acquired Chris Marsh's Blockchain Markets to build Bitbuy Pro.
What's been your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur trying to build a legitimate, trusted bitcoin business in Canada?
Regulatory uncertainty has been the biggest challenge. FINTRAC released guidance in early 2015 but never built a supporting framework, creating a catch-22 where banks couldn't work with crypto companies unless registered as a money service business, but there was no way to register. That scared banks off and left room for bad operators, including situations like Quadriga, which hurt trust across the whole Canadian industry.
You mentioned wearing your OG 2014 Ethereum shirt from Vitalik. What was the 2014 Bitcoin Expo like?
That was one of the first crypto conferences ever in Canada, held at the Toronto convention center and sponsored by CryptoKit and Decentral. The Ethereum team was there with mountains of t-shirts, really excited, promoting the foundation and dev community while beta testnets were being worked on. Even mainstream companies like Shopify and exchanges like CAVirtex had a presence. It showed me crypto had a real physical community, not just an online one.
How do you navigate the spectrum between Bitcoin as a beacon of legitimacy and outright scams like OneCoin, with everything from ICOs to DeFi in between?
DeFi is different from the 2017 ICO bubble because the underlying technology has matured. Ethereum wasn't stable enough back then to support what's being built now. I don't think Bitcoin and altcoins should be compared like apples to apples, they're built by different communities with different ideologies and different scopes, even if their roots share some technological similarity. I love Bitcoin, but I love it all, and DeFi represents real evolution.
What has kept you up at night while running Bitbuy through Canada's regulatory environment?
Watching the US move faster on federal guidance from the SEC, IRS and CFTC despite starting behind Canada has been disheartening. But you can't rush anything in crypto, most of the successful projects and companies grinded their way there. We just kept our heads down, stayed patient, and kept executing on our roadmap even through the 2018 crash and the ICO fallout.
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