How Anthony Di Iorio Built Ethereum’s Future Against All Odds

What we talked about.

In this episode, Sunny Ray talks with Anthony Di Iorio about the unlikely path that led him to become a pioneer in the Bitcoin and Ethereum space. Di Iorio traces his story from childhood computer tinkering and early bulletin board systems, through a marketing degree at Ryerson, a stint in the family patio door business, and a green energy drilling venture that stalled due to government regulation. A push from his brother to study monetary history led him deep into Austrian economics and eventually to Bitcoin in mid 2012 through a Free Talk Live podcast episode. He made his first Bitcoin purchase within days, then founded the first Toronto Bitcoin meetup that October, an event whose earliest attendees included Vitalik Buterin. Di Iorio also recounts co-building a provably fair Bitcoin gambling platform called Satoshi Circle and launching a national Canadian Bitcoin advocacy organization designed to avoid the governance mistakes he saw in the U.S. Bitcoin Foundation. The conversation captures the grassroots, community driven energy of Bitcoin's earliest days in Canada.

Anthony Di Iorio recounts his winding path from computers and economics to founding Toronto's first Bitcoin meetup.

The questions, and the answers.

Do you remember when we first met?

I'm guessing it was 2012 or early 2013, probably at one of my meetups. Those meetups went beyond Toronto because they were on meetup.com, so people all over the world were watching what was happening there. It's wild to think it's been eight years since then.

Can you walk me through your backstory before crypto?

I was born in 1975 and was always a computer person, building computers before age ten and doing networking jobs by eleven or twelve. I ran bulletin board systems before the internet existed. I later started a web design company with my brother, then studied business at Ryerson, worked in marketing, joined my family's patio door business, and ran a geothermal drilling company before Bitcoin.

How did you first get into studying money and economics?

My brother, a former politician, started studying how governments and monetary systems work and encouraged me to learn what money actually is. I went to YouTube and researched the history of money, especially after the housing and financial crisis, and fell into the Austrian school through people like Peter Schiff. I spent about a year and a half deep in that study.

How did you discover Bitcoin?

In summer 2012 I searched Google for freedom podcasts and found Free Talk Live, a show connected to the Free State Project. In the first episode I listened to, they mentioned Bitcoin, which I'd never heard of. I looked it up immediately and was hooked from day one, buying my first Bitcoin on LocalBitcoins for around nine or ten dollars.

What led you to start the Toronto Bitcoin meetup?

After buying Bitcoin I searched for a Toronto group and found nothing, so I set one up on meetup.com myself. I held the first event at Popper's Pub in October 2012 with about eight people, including Vitalik Buterin, Peter Todd, and Ernest, the guy I'd bought my first Bitcoin from. It grew from there into the hundreds.

Tell me about Satoshi Circle.

I connected with a developer named Steve Dakota through Reddit and we built Satoshi Circle, a provably fair Bitcoin gambling site inspired by Eric Voorhees's Satoshi Dice but more graphical, like a spinning roulette wheel. We set a lower house edge than Satoshi Dice and it did well right away in late 2012, early 2013. The plan was always to use it to fund something bigger later.

Why did you decide to set up a national Bitcoin organization in Canada?

I wanted to expand beyond Toronto and connect with people across Canada, but I'd seen how the U.S. Bitcoin Foundation faced backlash for being dominated by American board members and not being inclusive enough. So I put out press releases nationally, gathered interest from people in every province, and set up a more democratic process where an independent group would vote on board applicants, including my own.