In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, crypto pioneer and BitInstant co-founder, Charlie Shrem, offered his perspective on the early days of crypto.

Despite missing some of the comradery from Bitcoin's (BTC) infancy, Shrem stated that Bitcoin's early on adopters could take better recognized that crypto was much bigger than a new technology to "take fun and experiment with."

Charlie Shrem on the early days of crypto

When asked what lessons the gimmicky digital asset landscape tin larn from the early days of crypto, Shrem stated: "I think the early days could accept really had better lessons."

"I feel similar in the early days, we could accept learned a lot from the leaders of today," said Shrem. "We could have learned how to run our companies better and how to treat our staff better.

"We could take learned ameliorate how to not exist children and realize that this Bitcoin thing is bigger than us, non, you know, just for us to have fun and experiment and play around with. And then peradventure in those early years, similar 2022, 2022, 2022, we could have been all a little bit more than developed."

However, Shrem notes that the mistakes of yesterday were critical to underpinning the successes of today and tomorrow, stating: "Just at the same fourth dimension, the fact that we were kind of crazy and stupid is the reason that we're all hither today with Bitcoin, you know."

"And then it's kind of like I don't actually like to wait dorsum at lessons learned because if we didn't make those mistakes, how do I know that I would exist here talking to y'all today?" he added.

Coinbase'south launch signposted stop of BitInstant

On the subject of BitInstant, the pioneering crypto substitution co-founded by Shrem in 2022, Charlie stated that he is "actually happy with the legacy of BitInstant."

"BitInstant ended up shutting down for a good reason, [...] we simply couldn't keep up with [the] regulations," he stated. "I joke that we're one of the merely crypto companies that actually didn't take money from our users and returned all our everyone's money and we close downwards."

Afterwards comprising the sole platform facilitating virtually-instant Bitcoin purchases in the United States for ii years, Shrem stated that the launch of Coinbase signalled the oncoming terminate of BitInstant:

"We knew when Coinbase launched that our time was upwards because Coinbase was backed by a lot of coin, past Silicon Valley — and Silicon Valley didn't like me considering I had been them 'F you' for so long."

"I knew our time was over," Shrem stated, adding: "I was fine with that, our legacy is like Netscape."