Crypto’s True Value: Social Good. Featuring Bitcoin OG Francesco Rulli

This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Quantstamp.

“I think that the philosophy of cryptocurrency, the decentralization concept, wasn't meant to be a speculation opportunity.”

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Joining “Money Reimagined” hosts Michael Casey and Sheila Warren is crypto OG Francesco Rulli. Rulli’s career history ranges from founding a fashion company with actor John Malkovich, to building a film distribution network, to creating a bitcoin-based payments program for young female students in Afghanistan, to helping guide the cathedral in Florence, Italy, through a digital transformation.

A core thread running through Rulli’s varied career is the belief in one’s purpose and responsibility to contribute to their community and to the world as a whole. Rulli believes the core value of proposition for blockchain technology is less in its current status as a generator of speculative assets and more as a tool to do social good.

The project Rulli founded with acclaimed Afghan entrepreneur Roya Mahboob, the Women’s Annex Foundation, which aimed to foster digital literacy and financial opportunities for Afghan women through bitcoin, successfully proved that the decentralization and anonymity features bitcoin could be used to better serve underrepresented populations. More recently, he has started working with museums and educational institutions to integrate donors’ patronage with NFTs so these institutions can continue to be funded as the technology advances.

This episode was produced and edited by Michele Musso with announcements by Adam B. Levine and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Our theme song is “Shepard.”