Why Alex Tapscott quit his high-paying job to write a book about Bitcoin | Crypto Stories Ep. 14

I actually remember quite clearly the first time that my dad and I both realized that we were focused on the same thing. We were on our annual ski trip together when he was asking me, you know, what are you looking at these days? What are things that are interesting you? And I said, well, actually I've been spending a little bit of time recently looking at Bitcoin. And he said, oh, that's really interesting because I'm actually running a big research project. My dad's an academic author, consultant and so forth at the University of Toronto, looking at how new technologies are enabling new forms of global problems. And one of the technologies that we're trying to understand a lot better is bitcoin. And so he asked me, would you be interested in participating, being an author, or at least running one of these research projects? At the time, I was working in a financial services role at the investment bank Hannaccourt, dealing in markets. And so the idea of an emerging market, one that didn't exist only a few years prior, really fascinated me. So I agreed. So throughout 2014, I worked on this project, which eventually led to this report called the Bitcoin Governance Network, which argued that in order for bitcoin to reach its potential, we needed non state, non corporation based governance models for helping to scale Bitcoin in order for it to actually fulfill its promise and fulfill its potential. That research actually led to other research which we did together, which eventually became basis for a book proposal. So we decided there might be an opportunity here to take our findings and explore this topic much, much deep. In 2015, I quit my job at the tender age of 29 to do something I'd never done, which is to write a book with no idea of what was going to come afterwards. Certainly many of my colleagues were confused. They thought I was nuts. They thought the idea of quitting this high paying job to do something like write a book was the height of insanity. There have been tons of difficulties along the way. You know, when we were met with hostility by many people in the business world, a lot of folks thought that crypto was just bad, that it could only cause trouble. But there was a part of me that felt unfulfilled and felt the need to sort of chase this dream. And as they say, when you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask which seat, you just get on the rocket ship. And that's what I did. Working with my dad was an absolutely fascinating experience. I was someone who had spent their whole career working in finance. I had done some writing emails, but nothing close to the kind of in depth analysis and real thinking you have to do when you write a book. I think also he found it very valuable to have someone who could explain some of these more arcane financial subjects to him. So for us, being able to debate, critique each other's works I think led to really fruitful collaboration. Fast forward to 2016 and the book came out and as they say, better lucky than smart. It was right around the time that a much larger audience was trying to understand what this was. As a result, the book was a big hit. It was translated into, I think, 19 languages and sold over 500,000 copies and led me on a journey that I'm still on to this day. For about a year I traveled the world giving speeches, traveled to every continent except Antarctica, met some amazing people, opened my eyes to new perspectives, new global points of view. Great things that I've taken away from this whole experience has been that my relationship with my dad has gotten even closer. We were always very close, to be clear. But to add this dimension to that relationship where you're actually working together has been an absolute joy for me. And I think he would say the same thing. And I look forward to the next chapter, and the next chapter after that in this evolving crypto story, which is my life. Sam.