In this second conversation between Sunny Ray and Mumbai based lawyer Surreal, the pair revisit the founding story of India's early bitcoin industry, sparked by news of Coinbase's landmark IPO. Surreal recalls discovering bitcoin in 2012 while researching space law, drawn first to its philosophical promise of censorship free money before later grasping its technical depth. He describes attending the 2013 Global Bitcoin Conference, where he met Sunny, Harish and Benson, and how a shared cab ride to the airport led to a partnership between Unocoin and his family's techno-legal law firm. The two discuss the nature of law itself, framing it as philosophy, psychology and economics combined, and Surreal explains his guiding principle of bending rather than breaking the law when building in unregulated spaces like bitcoin. The episode sets up the tense chapter that follows, when the Reserve Bank of India issued a public warning against bitcoin just weeks after Unocoin launched, triggering tax raids and enforcement scrutiny that tested the young Indian crypto industry's resolve.
Sunny Ray and a Mumbai lawyer relive how a chance cab ride sparked Unocoin, and how India's crypto pioneers faced down the RBI.
How's your day been, especially with the Coinbase IPO happening?
I was glued to my screen watching Coinbase's opening price, it hit around 180 dollars and I was blown away. Something that started as a whitepaper and code thirteen years ago is now worth more than Goldman Sachs. It's the fastest trillion dollars ever created. There will always be naysayers, but they've either missed the boat or don't understand it, same as people once called the internet a fad.
Where are you from and how did you first hear about bitcoin?
I'm from Mumbai, spent six years in Silicon Valley during undergrad, then came back to study law. I was researching privatization of space exploration in 2006 when a colleague told me to look up bitcoin in 2012. I couldn't understand the technical paper, but I was drawn to the philosophical side, especially the idea of censorship free money, which got me thinking about how our money is already censored.
How did discovering bitcoin's philosophy differ from its technical side for you?
The whitepaper was too technical for me, full of hash rates and cryptography I couldn't grasp. What caught me was the philosophical side, why would something like this exist, what's the purpose. I'd been following Occupy Wall Street and WikiLeaks at the time, so when I read about censorship free money, it clicked, our money is already censored and concentrated in certain pockets.
What made you attend the Global Bitcoin Conference in 2013?
I convinced my office and my father, who founded our law firm, that this could be the future of legal practice. At the conference the technical presentations went over my head, but I understood this was something powerful. That's where I met Sunny, Harish and Benson, the early bitcoin pioneers in India, and we shared a cab ride to the airport afterward that led to more conversations.
What is law, in your view?
Law is a framework of rules designed to keep society functional, it is both a tool and a weapon. It is built from words, psychology, sociology and economics combined. Growing up we are taught money is scarce, but if you flip that and imagine abundance instead, it changes how you see society. Law, like money, is something we created, and understanding its philosophy determines whether you accept or reject it.
You told me something important in that cab ride, about not breaking the law, can you expand on that?
What I actually said was don't break the law, bend it instead. Lawyers are one of the communities best geared to survive anarchy because we are trained to navigate situations where there is no clear law, using legal fiction and hypotheticals. At the end of the day law is philosophy, and if your philosophical foundation is right, understanding and working within the law becomes second nature.
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