What Happens When an Amazon Tribe Owns $30M in Bitcoin?

What we talked about.

Joseph Weinberg discovered Bitcoin in December 2010 as a computer science student in Vancouver, when a classmate found it on SourceForge while searching for a peer to peer library for a class project. After graduating in 2012, he left the western world to backpack through Peru and ended up living with a remote Amazon tribe, an experience that reshaped his view of money and community. Seeing a makeshift Western Union hut deep in the jungle convinced him Bitcoin could give the unbanked access to value transfer without banks or identification. He later gave the tribe several hundred bitcoin and has funded their schools and shamanic traditions for a decade. Before fully committing to crypto, Weinberg worked at Extreme Labs, the world's largest mobile app development company, building products for Facebook, Uber, Instagram, and Tinder, through its acquisition by Pivotal. As Bitcoin's price surged in 2013, he left the corporate world to build in the space full time. The episode traces his path from computer lab experiments to jungle immersion to becoming an early leader in Bitcoin's ecosystem.

A Bitcoin pioneer explains how a remote Amazon tribe ended up holding millions in crypto and what it taught him about money.

The questions, and the answers.

What was your life like before Bitcoin, and how did you first discover it?

I grew up in Vancouver, traveling a lot thanks to my parents. In my third year computer science class in December 2010, a friend found Bitcoin on SourceForge while we were looking for a peer to peer library for a class project. We tried mining it for fun on some laptops, though I always saw it more as a communication tool than a financial instrument.

What led you to move to the Peruvian Amazon, and what happened when you got there?

I felt I needed to get out of the western bubble, so after graduating in 2012 I backpacked through Peru and ended up living with a remote tribe in the Amazon for what was meant to be a six day trip. I stayed a month, then eight months, and I've been going back for ten years since, immersing myself in their consensus driven, self governing culture.

What was the moment that made Bitcoin click for you as more than a technical experiment?

I saw a mud hut with a Western Union sign in the middle of the jungle. The tribe had no banks and no ID to access one, so a bank trip meant a three hour trek plus discrimination. I realized Bitcoin could let them transact without ever needing that broken system, and remittances became the use case that truly convinced me.

What did you end up doing for the tribe with Bitcoin?

Around 2011 I gave the tribe roughly five to six hundred bitcoin, and they still hold it, not really knowing how to use it. Every year since we have funded their community, building schools for healing and shamanism to keep their culture alive, using the bitcoin for good rather than just watching its price.

What was Extreme Labs, and what was your role there?

Extreme Labs was the largest mobile application development company in the world at the time. We built Facebook Mobile Messenger, Uber, Instagram, Twitter, and nearly every major Canadian bank app, and Tinder actually came out of our internal Hatch Labs project. I worked there through the acquisition by Pivotal in late 2013.

Why did you leave a stable job at Pivotal to go all in on crypto?

Bitcoin was flying by late 2013 and tech leaders around me, including Extreme Labs' own investors, were suddenly asking me how to buy it. It was scary to leave, but I could tell it was the right move since I wanted to build something of my own in a space I understood better than almost anyone at the time.

What parallels did you see between the tribe's culture and Bitcoin's philosophy?

The tribe is consensus driven with no top down hierarchy, no police, and no president, similar to how Bitcoin operates without central authority. Their only real law is not to steal, everything else is self organized around trusted figures like healers, and it is also a female led society, which gave me a completely different lens on how a group can govern itself.