Vik Sharma: Why He Built a Private Messaging App That Sends Bitcoin

**Natalie Brunell** (0:00)
We recently crossed 40 trillion dollars in debt, and it's like people have to protect themselves.

**Vik Sharma** (0:05)
That's what Bitcoin is invented, right? To protect the common person from that, from a centralized manipulator. A couple years ago, I tweeted about Bitcoin should be used as money, and people jumped all over me. Even like big VC firms, I'm like, why are you pro-Bitcoin? You're already texting and communicating with people all the time, so why not Bitcoin? Why not payment?

**Natalie Brunell** (0:23)
The idea of combining a privacy application with messaging with Bitcoin payments is very, very interesting.

**Vik Sharma** (0:29)
None of your friends and family are going to know you're using another app.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:31)
They won't have to download Radar.

**Vik Sharma** (0:33)
No. Radar and Signal can communicate with each other.

**Natalie Brunell** (0:35)
Got it.

**Vik Sharma** (0:35)
I can self-custody and I can transfer value electronically around the world without any third party, without any permission, without begging your bank to, hey, can you please send this money?

**Natalie Brunell** (0:51)
Hey, everyone. I'm here with Vik Sharma. He is the founder of Cake Wallet as well as Radar Chat. And I'm super excited to talk to you. Jeff Booth actually introduced us. So, Vik, welcome to the show.

**Vik Sharma** (1:01)
Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Thanks to Jeff for introducing us. That's great.

**Natalie Brunell** (1:05)
Well, let's start with a little bit of your background. Maybe some of the viewers are not familiar with your work. You have a fascinating background because you actually come from working in the steel industry, right? So, take it as far back as you want.

**Vik Sharma** (1:17)
How far back? I mean, let's go. 1981 My dad started a steel engineering company in 81 in Pittsburgh. So, I grew up in Pittsburgh.
So, that was going on, but in my teen years, early teen years, I was coding, programming, and then I went to university for electrical engineering. I started as computer science, but switched to electrical engineering, and then joined my dad right afterwards in the steel industry, in the steel engineering and machinery business. So, we didn't make steel initially, we made machinery to make steel.

**Natalie Brunell** (1:54)
Okay.

**Vik Sharma** (1:56)
And then we did operate a steel mill outside of Pittsburgh for a long time as well.
And then in about 2017, 16, 17, I got invited to be on the board of another steel company, which wanted to expand into the US, and then eventually I became the chairman and CEO and president of that company until about a year ago. But being in the steel industry, I've always dabbled in the tech world, I was kept up with what's happening during the Y2K scare. If you remember, I had an IT company at that time with about 100 people. Wow. I was 29 at that time, so in about 1999, 1998, and started that company, and then 9-11 happened. Unfortunately, everyone's business went down, and then the Y2K work was done and all that, so ended up selling that to a local competitor in Pittsburgh at that time. This is while still running the family business. So I've always dabbled, I've always looked into the tech world, and that led me to Bitcoin in 2013

**Natalie Brunell** (3:10)
Well, how did you find it? And what made you feel like this might be a transformative technology?

**Vik Sharma** (3:16)
It didn't start that way. I mean, I heard about it. It was in the back of my mind, like in 2012
And it's kind of like, okay, I need to look into this. This seems to be the latest tech thing that's going on. Then 2013, I moved to New York City, living in Florida before that. And the steel industry was just very slow. So I thought, okay, I have nothing to do. So I sat in my office and I would watch YouTube videos on Bitcoin. And it just clicked for me right then. I mean, I know there's different aspects for everybody, why they like Bitcoin or what they found important about it. But for me, it was the permissionless nature that I can self-custody and I can transfer value electronically around the world without any third party, without any permission, without, you know, begging your bank to, hey, can you please send this money? So that really clicked for me at that time.
And then I got into mining late 2013 I bought a couple of ASIC miners off of eBay.

**Natalie Brunell** (4:21)
Wow.

**Vik Sharma** (4:24)
And started mining. I think it's producing like 0.2 Bitcoin a day.

**Natalie Brunell** (4:29)