Founder of Stellar, Ripple and Mt Gox Jed McCaleb: On Cryptocurrency and the Hardships of Entrepreneurship

Jed McCaleb is a cryptocurrency legend. He's been involved in some of the most high profile organizations in crypto including Mt. Gox, Ripple, and now his current rocket ship, Stellar.org. But the journey from Little Rock, Arkansas to number 40 in the Forbes rich list has not been a smooth ride. He struggled his whole life with trying to find a balance between wanting to do something huge and wanting to just go chill at the beach and surf. Luckily for the rest of us, he opted to work hard to affect a lot of change in the world. Having dropped out of UC Berkeley after just one and half semesters, realising that he could already do what he wanted to do, programming, it still took him nearly four years in the wilderness, building stuff and floundering in the dark, before he started up e-donkey. And the rest, is history. Join us today as we follow Jed’s journey from e-donkey to Stellar.org and listen as we talk about: Why he’s better suited as CTO, not CEO His childhood growing up in the woods with no running water or electricity The basics of cryptocurrency (it’s mum-friendly don’t worry) Why he picked the name e-donkey for his company The time he built a butanol lab in his girlfriend’s apartment How Mt. Gox was originally started as an online trading exchange for Magic: The Gathering The future of bitcoin Why even as an incredibly successful entrepreneur he still struggled to get Stellar.org off the ground His best piece of advice for entrepreneurs Links: stellar.org -- Sponsors Vorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleaders Vanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleaders Vertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders -- Newsletter Sign up here: https://secretleaders.email/ You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices