Edan Yago traces his path from a family history shaped by fleeing pogroms, the Holocaust, and South African apartheid, including smuggling gold coins out of the country as a child, to his discovery of Bitcoin while completing a PhD in neuroscience and running biotech startups in the US. After reading the Satoshi white paper, he pivoted fully into crypto, joining Zynga to bring bitcoin payments to a mainstream gaming audience, helping form the Digital Asset Transfer Authority, and later building Epiphyte, a company that used bitcoin as an international settlement rail for major banks like Barclays and CBA. When banking partnerships proved too slow and bureaucratic, he pivoted to remittances, profiting from bitcoin price arbitrage in countries with capital controls, until JP Morgan's 2017 announcements caused the company to lose its bank accounts overnight. The conversation also touches on the OCC's 2020 ruling allowing US banks to use bitcoin and stablecoins for settlement, which Edan sees as validation of ideas he pursued years earlier. Throughout, he frames Bitcoin as a tool for preserving human dignity and financial sovereignty against oppressive systems.
A family history of fleeing oppression shaped Edan Yago's mission to bring Bitcoin sovereignty to the world.
Where does your story begin?
My family survived the Holocaust and fought apartheid in South Africa. As a kid between ages 9 and 11, I smuggled Krugerrand gold coins out of the country sewn into my coat because it was the only way my family could move money past the regime. I grew up understanding that if a government can control your money, you're lost, which is why financial sovereignty became central to everything I do.
How did you first discover Bitcoin?
I was doing a PhD in neuroscience, then started biotech companies using machine learning for disease diagnosis. While reading network science papers in a freezing Carnegie Mellon basement, I came across the Satoshi white paper and spilled coffee on my laptop from shock. I realized this was the key to making sure families never had to smuggle gold again, and I went all in immediately.
What was your entrance into the crypto industry professionally?
I moved to San Francisco and took a job at Zynga, the fastest growing games company, specifically to learn how they brought digital assets to mainstream audiences like housewives in the Midwest. I helped bring bitcoin as a payment mechanism to Zynga, got to know the founders of Kraken and Ripple, and helped form DATA, the first regulatory lobbying body for crypto.
What was your first real opportunity in the space?
In 2013, Israeli banks blocked wires to Japan to stop people funding Mt. Gox, so all five Israeli bitcoin exchanges lost their bank accounts overnight. We set up a payments processing company for them and other exchanges globally, maintaining bank accounts and acting as a payment processor for about a year before eventually getting shut down too.
What did Epiphyte actually build for the banks?
We built technology that let banks convert funds using bitcoin as a settlement rail, similar to what Ripple was doing but without creating a token. For example, CBA in Australia could convert dollars to bitcoin, send it through our system to a bank in Spain, which would convert it to euros. We got Barclays, CBA, and BBVA on board and won a Swift global banking innovation award in 2014.
Why did you pivot away from working with banks?
I met a mentor whose company had just been acquired for billions after 25 years of grinding through bank bureaucracy and regulation. He told me flatly he would never do it again if given the choice. That conversation pushed us to pivot from banks to remittances, connecting FX and remittance companies directly using bitcoin without banks ever touching it.
What happened after JP Morgan's 2017 crypto announcement?
JP Morgan was the USD clearing bank for almost all the banks we worked with, so when they made their 2017 announcement, we lost basically all our bank accounts overnight after I returned from my first vacation in years. Since we had to provide enterprise level uptime, it became too difficult to manage, so we ended up selling the business.
Can you explain the OCC's recent decision for people who aren't following closely?
The OCC is a US bank regulator, and their decision means banks and financial institutions they regulate can now use bitcoin or stablecoins to settle transactions between themselves. It doesn't change Bitcoin's code at all, but it validates the settlement rail model we were building with banks back in 2014, years ahead of when the industry caught up.
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