In this conversation with Sunny Ray, the guest traces his path from electrical engineer and licensed financial advisor in Toronto to Bitcoin entrepreneur, driven by a lifelong question of what money actually is. After discovering the Bitcoin whitepaper around 2011 while living in Bangalore, he became obsessed, started local meetups, and eventually co-founded Unocoin, one of India's earliest Bitcoin exchanges, naming it after the Spanish word for one. He recounts early bitcoin mining losses, a detour working for the Google and Y Combinator backed startup Buttercoin, and his return to Unocoin after investor Barry Silbert backed the company. He reflects candidly on times he cashed out of bitcoin and regretted it, why he now treats bitcoin as an intergenerational, one way holding, and his self described maximalist stance despite knowing Ethereum's founders early on. He also shares his personal dollar cost averaging strategy and why he warns everyday investors against overexposure, even as he himself leans heavily into bitcoin out of distrust in fiat money and inflation.
An early Unocoin cofounder recounts losing bitcoin to mining bets and rent, then going all in as a lifelong maximalist.
How would you introduce yourself right now?
I'm essentially a bitcoin entrepreneur, a business development guy. I consider myself an engineer at heart who likes solving problems. The first half of my career was focused on robotics, which I'm really passionate about, and the last eight or nine years I've been full time dedicated to bitcoin. That's my main gig, though we can talk about other things too.
Over these nine years, were there moments you felt like cashing out?
Every time I've cashed out I've gone on to regret it. Now I try to make bitcoin a one way street, using a dollar cost averaging strategy so I don't have to think about price. I did liquidate some bitcoin in 2014 to cover eleven months of rent when I moved to Bombay for a job. I regretted that too. Now it's an intergenerational plan, meant to be held beyond death.
Did you ever cash out to diversify into other assets or cryptocurrencies?
I probably should be more diversified into things like real estate, but I don't recommend others put more than one percent of their wealth or monthly cash flow into bitcoin since it's speculative. Personally I put in as much as I can because I'm scared of fiat and money printing. I'm a bitcoin maximalist and never got into Ethereum, even though I knew its founders early, to my financial detriment.
How did you originally get into bitcoin?
I used to be a financial advisor obsessed with the question of what money actually is, and no one could give me a real answer. I followed Occupy Wall Street and the Ron Paul movement, but they only pointed to problems, not solutions. Around 2011, living in Bangalore, I came across the bitcoin whitepaper and became obsessed, telling my grandmother about it every single day.
How did you first hear about bitcoin and start the meetups?
I think I heard about it on Twitter, and I saw Anthony Di Iorio doing bitcoin meetups in Toronto and felt like I was missing out. There was also a guy named Davinci from Toronto making YouTube videos about bitcoin that I followed. So I started my own meetups in Bangalore with a few people, including a guy named Benson, and eventually we held them at the Leela Palace.
Tell me how Unocoin actually came together.
We took a scientific approach, treating ideas as hypotheses to test. We first tried bitcoin mining, importing equipment from around the world, and lost a lot of money, putting in a hundred bitcoin on one project and getting back only thirty. We also organized the Global Bitcoin Conference at the Sheraton in December 2013, which led directly to founding Unocoin, named for the Spanish word for one, inspired by my wife.
What happened right after Unocoin was founded?
Even though I helped craft the idea and bought the domain, I ended up joining Buttercoin, a Google and Y Combinator backed startup in Silicon Valley, as head of business development, working there during the actual Unocoin launch event. About a year later, Barry Silbert invested in Unocoin, and I felt compelled to come back and rejoin full time.
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