In an interview with Cointelegraph, Adam Traidman, the co-founder and chief executive of BRD, formerly Breadwallet, shared the story of his journey into crypto.
BRD was founded in 2015, quickly rising to prominence as a popular wallet in the United States and emerging economies like Venezuela.
After initially being skeptical regarding Bitcoin’s prospects for mainstream adoption, Tradiman was won over after overhearing a conversation between executives at Andreessen Horowitz concerning BTC.
I told him he was out of his mind
“I’m originally a computer chip designer, and it was in about 2013 when I was CEO of a company that was doing wearable devices for weight loss before the Apple Watch and the Samsung Gear came out,” recounted Traidman.
“At that time, one of my former employees sat down with me at a bar and he looked me in the eye and said, Adam, you have to do a Bitcoin company with me.’”
He stared into my eyes and he said, it’s the most important thing going on in your lifetime.
“I looked at him and I said, Aaron, wow, I am impressed with your passion, but as far as I know, Bitcoin is used for nefarious activities, As interesting as Bitcoin might be, technologies like that never go mainstream, and I told him he was out of his mind and I didn’t talk to him for a year.”
“And boy, do I wish I had because he’s now a much wealthier man than I,” Traidman added.
A conversation overheard by chance
Traidman continued to work on the wearable device company in Silicon Valley, where he had been based for roughly 20 years as an entrepreneur.
While going to pitch his wearable device company to Andreessen Horowitz, Traidman recalls happening to overhear a discussion on the subject of Bitcoin (BTC):
“Literally on the way to the conference room, I heard them talking about Bitcoin — that was when Andreessen had funded Coinbase. And I thought, son of a gun, these are some of the smartest guys in the Valley, if they think there is something to this, then maybe my friend isn’t so crazy after all.”
After getting back in touch with his former employee to learn more about Bitcoin Traidman said he had an “epiphany moment:”
He said: No, you don’t get it, this is much bigger than the Internet. That’s why guys like Andreessen are getting in. This is not just communication — [its] the social fabric of society. And by changing these things, not only is it an opportunity to disrupt the largest industry in the world — which is banking and finance — but also to do good to close the wealth gap, to bank the unbanked, to do things that aren’t possible in the confines of the old financial system.
Traidman stated that his friend then again asked him to build a company around an open-source project Breadwallet.
“Today, the company is called BRD,” he said. “We have four million customers in hundreds of countries and six-seven billion dollars that our customers protect in our app.”
“It’s been a great journey. I just wish I had been smart enough to get involved a little bit earlier,” Tradesman concluded.
