Our guest this week is Richard Bensberg, a long time Beijinger and the newly appointed Director of Sales and Integrations at Blockstream where he is focused on their Liquid product. Richard got his start in Bitcoin in the early days of OkCoin where he was managing compliance before leaving in 2015 to found Remitsy, a money transfer business using Bitcoin that was later acquired by Wyre. Richard then ran Wyre’s Asia business before recently joining Blockstream, still out of Beijing. We cover topics including the early days of Bitcoin in Beijing, OkCoin company culture, founding a Bitcoin company out of Beijing, the benefits of building a team that is aligned ideologically on the importance of Bitcoin, and the current state of Bitcoin in China.

Richard on twitter @richardbensberg

Blockstream on twitter @blockstream

Timestamps:

00:00 – Running a Regtech company out of Asia and finding Bitcoin
9:00 – Deciding to pursue Bitcoin commercially, connecting with OkCoin and moving back to China full time, Bitcoin scene in Beijing (2014)
13:00 – Working at an early Bitcoin company in China and the Beijing Bitcoin meetup
17:00 – Managing compliance at OkCoin, competitive landscape of Bitcoin exchanges in China at the time
21:00 – Star Xu as a CEO, OkCoin Mafia, and the company culture
28:00 – Context for CCP involvement in tech companies and OkCoin at the time
34:00 – Leaving OkCoin to start Remitsy, development of Richard’s thinking about Bitcoin
41:00 – The business of Remitsy and running a company with an aligned view of Bitcoin, current thoughts on use cases for Bitcoin
45:00 – Decision and process of Remitsy’s Acquisition by Wyre
49:00 – Running Wyre’s Asia business
52:00 – Joining Blockstream, the current focus
57:00 – Thoughts on the current state of Bitcoin in China
1:01:00 – Beijing Recommendation, getting in touch