It was a strange sensation, being surrounded by people and yet knowing you were completely alone.
Charlie guessed it was what it felt like to die of some gruesome disease, in a bed in a hospital with your family and friends next to you, helpless to do anything but watch as you took your final breaths.
He knew he was being macabre, but it was hard not to be dramatic in such a place: it was obviously built for drama. A dusty, aging, wood-adorned courtroom in the bowels of a New York judicial building. Charlie could only imagine how many degenerates—murderers, arsonists, rapists, bankers—had been sitting exactly where he was sitting, on an uncomfortable chair next to his lawyer in the defendant’s galley. Over to his right, about five yards away, he could see the prosecuting team. Serrin Turner, the assistant U.S. Attorney who had been the front man on the case since before Charlie had agreed to settle, and Turner’s various assistants. Fitting, since Turner had also led the prosecution against Silk Road that had sent Ross Ulbricht to prison for life. Next to them, Preet Bharara himself, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, the famous prosecutor who had taken down too many white-collar criminals and Wall Street bankers to count. And somewhere behind them, the IRS agent who had first arrested Charlie at JFK, Gary Alford, there to witness the results of all his hard work.
And directly ahead, on the bench, was Judge Rakoff, a kindly-looking man in glasses.
Charlie tried not to stare directly at the judge; Charlie was barely holding it together, and if he matched eyes with the man, he knew he was liable to burst out in tears. He also avoided turning around. Behind him, the overcrowded pews of the courtroom were crowded. Walking in with his lawyer, the ankle bracelet humming against his ankle, he had seen that every seat was filled.
On one side was his family—not just his immediate family, but seemingly the entire Orthodox Syrian-Jewish community of Brooklyn had also come out to see the show. Just two rows back, his mother, father, and sisters, and behind them, he’d seen his rabbi, his next-door neighbor, his childhood eye doctor, and his orthodontist. There to—support him? Condemn him? Bear witness?
On the other side of the room were Courtney and her parents. Even in the packed room, he could still hear her sobbing. And the rest of that side of the gallery was filled out with other secular supporters, mostly from the world of Bitcoin. People who had worked at BitInstant, colleagues from the various conferences he’d attended, fans. Maybe “secular” wasn’t the right word—many of his Bitcoin supporters were as religious in their own way, as fundamentalist in their beliefs as the Orthodox black hats on the opposite side of the aisle.
Charlie knew the audience didn’t matter. They may have been gathered by his bedside, but they couldn’t affect what was about to happen. You were born alone, you died alone.
And you were sentenced alone.
Charlie’s lawyer touched his arm, signaling that things were about to begin. The look in his lawyer’s eyes was supposed to be encouraging; they had gone over the possibilities again and again in the days leading up to this moment, and they had both agreed that actual jail time was unlikely. After all, the court’s case had come down to a handful of stupid emails. Even though Charlie had admitted he had been an idiot and allowed a reseller to buy bitcoin to use on Silk Road for illegal drugs, he wasn’t a money launderer or a drug dealer himself. You could almost say he’d done the opposite of money laundering; he had foolishly dirtied money, rather than made it clean.
He’d committed a crime, but he didn’t believe he deserved to rot in some jail cell. He had pled guilty because he knew that he was in the wrong, and because it was too risky and expensive to fight the charges in court, but he didn’t deserve to be sent away to some hole.
After a brief introduction, his lawyer got the chance to speak first. As he and Charlie had discussed, he was asking for a probationary term—something they felt fit the crime.
“He’s only a twenty-five-year-old person,” went his lawyer’s argument. “So I don’t know that he gets to be a Greek tragic hero, but he hurt himself tremendously, tremendously. Because he had it made. He found a way. He has mixed feelings about his small, Brooklyn neighborhood, but he was out, and he was attached to this wonderful idea, and all he had to do was guard it with his life, and he didn’t.… I don’t think we need a jail sentence to send a message to Charlie Shrem that what he did is bad and wrong and illegal.”
It sounded right to Charlie, and a quick glance toward the judge told him that he was at least listening, but then the prosecutor rose for his response.
“The defendant was essentially facilitating drug trafficking,” Turner started, and Charlie’s stomach churned. It sounded so vile and wrong—and yet, he knew, at least technically, it was absolutely correct.
“He was moving drug buy money. I know it doesn’t look like the usual drug-trafficking case.… It’s online, rather than on the street. These are digital drug deals, but he’s moving drug money nonetheless.”
Correct—but still, Charlie believed, unfair. Because what he was doing—helping people get bitcoin—was, at its heart, something good, something that he believed was making the world a better place. Offering a form of freedom.
Or was that just Roger Ver and some of Erik Voorhees in his mind again? He didn’t know anymore what to think.
Finally, the judge gave Charlie a chance to speak for himself.
Trembling, he tried to put what he was thinking into words. He knew he was rambling; he was scared, but his family, his whole upbringing really, was behind him, watching.
“I screwed up really bad, Your Honor. My attorney and Mr. Turner were correct in saying that I was given a responsibility and I failed myself and my community, my family, and the Bitcoin community as a whole.”
He could hear a rustle of noise behind him, but he plowed forward, his thoughts coming faster, maybe even a little too fast.
“You know, you see the movie Spiderman when you are younger and one of the only quotes that you kind of remember from that is with great power comes great responsibility, and I always would watch that and said what does that mean—when you have great power, where does that come from.”
He was riffing now but he didn’t stop himself. Here was his chance to speak, after a year of pure hell. Trapped in that basement by the ankle bracelet and the bail money—bail which his parents continually threatened to pull, especially when they caught him speaking to Courtney.
“When you’re in a powerful position, when you’re in a position of power, it’s a lot harder to stay responsible to yourself and stay morally responsible. It’s a lot easier when there’s nothing riding on you. And I failed that. I was very young. I was twenty-two and I was the CEO and I was the compliance officer.… It was just me and my partner running this out of our basement.”
His lawyer shifted in the seat next to him, and Charlie knew he had to get control, reel himself in, but he wasn’t done. He had an audience and somewhere there had to be a microphone and god damn it, he was going to speak.
“I broke the law and I broke it badly, and I’m really sorry for doing that, and I’m sorry for failing you and failing this country, but I cherish so much and I want to change the world and I’m trying to … I was a kid and I want to be that person that is remembered for even doing one little thing to change the world.…”
He looked right at the judge. He was saying everything he needed to say.
“Bitcoin is what I love and all I have. It’s my whole life. It’s what I’m on this Earth to do, is to help the world see a financial system that does not discriminate and provide for corruption, and I think that Bitcoin will do to money what email did to the postal service. It allowed everyone to be equal. People in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, will have the same opportunities now with Bitcoin, and because of this now, because you can move money instantly and information on a peer-to-peer system. And I think that’s really important. And if Your Honor grants me that, I’d love to be back out there healing the world and making sure people don’t do stupid things like I did.”
Charlie paused—it sunk in that the whole room was staring at him. The judge, his lawyer, the prosecution, his family, the Bitcoiners present. He swallowed, then slowly lowered himself to his seat.
“And again, I’m sorry.” He coughed.
There was another pause, as the judge peered down at him.
And then, finally, it was time. After a brief statement, telling Charlie that indeed he was brilliant, maybe too smart for his own good, thinking too far ahead, not paying attention to what was in front of him; that he was young enough that he would go on and assuredly do great things—then, the judge made his decree.
“The court thinks that the appropriate sentence is two years. Accordingly, the defendant will be sentenced to two years in prison.”
And suddenly, the courtroom seemed to recede down a long tunnel, and Charlie was shrinking into somewhere very small. He could hear his mother crying on one side and Courtney crying on the other, and then shouts of defiance from some Bitcoin supporters, and then his lawyer was whispering something to him, how he’d only serve 85 percent of the sentence, how for part of it they would send him to a halfway house, where he could get a job, something simple like washing dishes in a restaurant. How he would be okay, he would make it, when he got out he would still be a young man, in his twenties. How he didn’t need to be scared.
And Charlie looked at him, and then he was back out of the tunnel, he was himself again, because he realized that for the first time since his arrest, he didn’t feel scared. He felt—relieved.
For nearly a year he’d been locked in his basement, drinking and smoking and being dragged to temple every Saturday, strapping on tefillin every Thursday. Sneaking phone calls to Courtney when he could to keep his sanity. Hell, he’d even Skyped into a Bitcoin conference or two, railing and raving at his computer screen with a Bluetooth microphone hanging from his ear that the court-ordered bracelet was heavy on his ankle. When he’d watched the videos afterward, he’d been shocked at how insane he’d looked. But that period in his life was over now.
He was going to prison. After that, he’d wash some dishes or mow lawns or whatever it took.
He’d get back on his feet and then he’d get back into Bitcoin. Because what he’d just told the judge, they weren’t just words, they weren’t just him pleading for his life. They were from his soul. Maybe that’s why he felt so good right now. Bitcoin was his life. He was going to prison—for selling Bitcoin. Well, at the end of the day, he could handle that. And then he would begin again.
Behind him, his parents had reached the wooden rail that separated the audience from where he was sitting. They were trying to reach him: crying, calling his name. But he didn’t look their way. Instead, he turned to his lawyer.
“Can we please make everyone leave the room? Except Courtney.”
His lawyer signaled to the marshalls and they agreed to the request. The uniformed officers had to actually physically lead Charlie’s mother and father away. Soon, it was just Charlie in the defendant’s pit, Courtney holding him.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said while she cried. “We’re going to be okay.”
And the best part was he knew it was true. And then he hugged her—and the tears filled his eyes.