Former Physicist Becomes Bitcoin Ambassador

One of the most successful Bitcoin ambassadors today is former physicist and Money Button founder Ryan X. Charles. He was already a candidate for a Physics Ph.D. researching high-energy astrophysics and Bayesian probability theory when he decided to leave it all behind and follow his passion for Bitcoin in 2013.

“I’m a lifelong engineer [and] I’m also a former physicist, so I have been very involved in technology and engineering and things like that for my whole life. And I was drawn to Bitcoin originally in 2011. It just seemed like a really interesting new technology that looked like it had the ability to change the world. Bitcoin is a remarkable technical innovation that makes a lot of new things possible. So it struck me as being analogous to the Internet,” Charles told Bitcoin Association during his profile interview as one of the global organization’s Bitcoin ambassadors.

Charles went on to become BitPay’s software engineer and Reddit’s first-ever cryptocurrency engineer. In 2015, he decided it was time to start his own project of creating a decentralized social network called “Yours,” which later on became Money Button.

“Money Button is a simple payment system. The idea is to make it so that sending money over the Internet is the easiest possible thing you can do, both for the end-user, as well as for the business that uses Money Button. But actually, it’s a little bit bigger than that because what it really is, is actually a way to interface with Bitcoin so we don’t just provide payments. We provide every feature that Bitcoin provides,” Charles said.

But it was only in November 2018 that Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV), the rebirth of the original Bitcoin, was founded. And so for three years, Charles would keep changing blockchains—from Bitcoin Core (BTC), Litecoin (LTC) to Bitcoin Cash (BCH)—as he realized each time that they could not give him the features and functionalities he was looking for. Until now, it is very difficult to find a blockchain that has a stable protocol and an immutable, transparent, and infinitely scalable blockchain.

“We’re actually the first company to switch our application from Bitcoin Cash to Bitcoin SV. There is a difference in visions of the two sides. And Bitcoin Cash was focused on innovative new features at a protocol level, whereas Bitcoin SV was focused on fixed protocol and scaling on chain so that all the innovations happen at the application layer…. From a business perspective, you can build your application on BSV and you can know that it’s going to continue to function forever. That’s much better for our business,” Charles explained.

And moving to Bitcoin SV was the best decision of Charles’ career in digital currencies.

“Since moving to Bitcoin SV, we have had about 1.3 million button swipes—that is to say, 1.3 million times people have used Money Button to make a payment. We have had more than $10 million in payments go through Money Button, with volumes growing exponentially. So the numbers are certainly looking good,’ Charles said.

Not only does Money Button continue to grow steadily since it became a part of the Bitcoin SV ecosystem, but he now has the privilege of working with nChain Chief Scientist Dr. Craig S. Wright—the very man who invented the Bitcoin that made Charles leave the world of Physics. It is not a wonder that Charles is perfect to act as one of the meticulously chosen Bitcoin ambassadors.