Brooklyn’s Bitcoin baron Charlie Shrem gives Skype speech to Texas group

Bitcoin baron Charlie Shrem spoke via Skype from his parents’ place here in Brooklyn this week to the Texas Bitcoin Conference in Austin. It was his first public statement since he was arrested. He modeled the speech off of an earlier speech by Rick Falkvinge, at a demonstration by Falkvinge’s Pirate Party in Sweden, in 2006.

Read Shrem’s remarks in their entirety on Falkvinge’s website.

The key points in Shrem’s speech are:

• When a new technology threatens an entrenched power, it will use financial and legal power to attempt to crush that technology.
• The Catholic church attempted to do this with the advent of the printing press.
• The banks, like the church, want to maintain a pyramid communication scheme among consumers.
• Bitcoin lacks a central failure point.
• “The financial and banking industry has tried to shame us, telling us what we’re doing is illegal, that we’re pirates. They’re trying to push us down under some rock. Look around you today – see how they’ve failed. Yes, we’re pirates. But one who thinks being a pirate is a shame is mistaken. It’s something we’re proud of,” Shrem said, near his conclusion.