Founder's Story - The CEO Who Predicted Bitcoin, AI, and What's Coming Next | Ep. 396 with Sam Tabar CEO of Bit Digital (BTBT) and White Fiber (WYFI)

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Daniel Robbins interviews Sam Tabar on building conviction early, reinventing repeatedly, and taking theses into the public markets. Sam explains how witnessing the shift from analog to digital in the 1990s trained his pattern recognition, why Bitcoin threatened existing power structures by being “money from the people,” and why Ethereum’s smart contracts can disintermediate banks and even lawyers. The episode also explores AI’s impact on society, the risk of homogenized culture, and why Sam believes the biggest danger is not job loss but surveillance and control. Key Discussion Points Sam shares his origin story, raised by a car-mechanic father and a tarot-card-reader mother, feeling the sting of scarcity early and using it as motivation to create security for loved ones. He explains his “pattern recognition” muscle, seeing the internet transform society and feeling the same cognitive break when he first used ChatGPT. Sam frames Bitcoin as the first true global currency: weightless, borderless, decentralized, and resistant to inflation and state control. He addresses Bitcoin’s early illicit uses by comparing it to the early internet, arguing the tech is not defined by its earliest adopters. Sam describes Ethereum as “Bitcoin 2.0,” where smart contracts are programmable “if-then” agreements that can replace middlemen in payments and contracting. He uses the NFT boom as proof of blockchain scalability, noting that at one point NFT transaction volume exceeded Visa without the system breaking, even if valuations collapsed later. Sam reflects on reinvention, saying you sometimes have to “kill the person you thought you were,” leaving law despite social pressure for stability and following interest into finance and tech. He shares the key AI worry: not job replacement, but governments and surveillance platforms using AI to reduce individual freedom. On the upside, Sam believes AI will remove menial work and free humans to use imagination and creativity, if society protects liberty. Takeaways Growing up around scarcity can create a powerful drive, but the long game is using money as a tool to protect people you love, not as an identity. Bitcoin is a thesis on sovereignty: money that cannot be printed, paused, or controlled like fiat, and that changes everything. Ethereum’s programmable money is about disintermediation: fewer fees, fewer gatekeepers, and faster settlement than legacy rails. The next winners will be infrastructure builders, because AI’s growth is bottlenecked by compute, power, data centers, and the plumbing behind the scenes. The biggest risk of AI is centralization and control, so founders should care about governance and freedom as much as capability. Closing Thoughts Sam Tabar’s story is about conviction under ridicule and the courage to reinvent before the market forces you to. This episode connects three waves—internet, crypto, and AI—through one lens: technology reshapes society when it breaks old power structures and creates new ones. The opportunity is enormous, but Sam’s warning is clear: if we chase efficiency without protecting freedom, we may build the most productive world in history and lose the thing that makes it worth living. Want to start your own creator journey? Click here: www.fanvue.com Thank you to our amazing sponsor, Shopify, who has changed my life. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at SHOPIFY.com/foundersstory Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gold is basically kind of a useless piece of yellow metal. Bitcoin is the world's first global currency that has no weight like gold. That's easily transferable, easily fungible. It's very threatening to governments. It's very threatening to banks. And there is no inflation on Bitcoin. You have such an incredible history. Two publicly traded companies on Nasdaq, CEO, I mean, that's incredible.

Let's go back though. I think you do need to kill the person you thought you were in a way. And I remember going to school with kids. You had much more than we did. To be honest, it really bugged me. And so I wanted to make sure that when I grew up, that I would never have those feelings. I'm excited today, Sam. You have such an incredible history, story. Not only have you seen things at the forefront. You've been at the forefront when everyone else, I'm sure was like that will never be a thing. And you saw it and you did it.

Two publicly traded companies on NASDAQ CEO. I mean, that's incredible. So let's go back though. French Canadian mother, Nazarene father, born in Canada. I'm sure most people in that situation would not say one day I'm going to be running two NASDAQ companies. Was there something that was instilled in you from either your parents or something you learned when you were child that's brought you here today. Yeah, that's a good question. My father was a car mechanic and my mother was a tarot card reader. So I grew up in an unusual household from a lower

economic class. And I remember going to school with kids who had much more than we did. And there was always a difference, a material difference between my family and the neighbors or my family and myself and the kids at school. And to be honest, it really bugged me. And so I wanted to make sure that when I grew up, that I would never have those feelings again. So that's one of my motivations, but also another motivation is that I do like to take care of my loved ones. I take care of my mother. I take care of my upcoming new family. And so those are very very primal motivations for me. And I embrace that. I embrace that. I enjoy it. And in this world, unfortunately, money solves a lot of problems and you can't ignore it. So, you know,

there is an artist in me, but at the end of the day, I do have to look at reality and how financial pressures can be a really terrible thing when you're trying to raise yourself up or raise a family. And so I just want to solve those problems. But there's also other things as well. I really love technology. I think technology is basically a proxy for magic. I love new technologies. I'm always the first one with a new gadget. And when I looked at the trajectory of my career, I've always been able to recognize patterns when it comes to technology. So when it comes to crypto or artificial intelligence and data centers and so on, we've been able, I've been able to determine that these were going to be massive trends that were going to

transform society and capitalism and economics. And so far, I have not been wrong in the pattern recognitions that I've been able to surmise. And I've been able to take my thesis to the public markets. And we've gone public on a number of companies that's now currently listed in NASDAQ, that being a digital, but more straightforwardly, white fiber. I remember when Wall Street was like Crypto's a joke. You know, there's certain really prominent people were like, I will never do anything with Bitcoin who are now investing billions of dollars into Bitcoin specifically and obviously working with stable coins.

So you made this bet. You saw it. You talked about data centers, AI, before people were really chatting about it. Obviously, it's been around, but it wasn't what it is right now today. What muscle? How do you see these things, these visions that you say to yourself, this is going to be a thing? Well, I remember growing up in the 90s when the internet was invented. And we were using something called the World Wide Web, which is what WWW stands for.

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You can also find the link right at the top of the description and in the pin comment to check out Fanview Creator Academy. When the internet was invented, and so these technologies sort of force your, they kind of break your brain. They force you to imagine or reimagine what society can be like if this technology is taken to its logical limit. So I was blessed to grow up seeing what the analog world,

was and then what the digital world was, that being analog pre-1995 and then digital after 1995, 1996. Those are two very different worlds that I happen to live in. And it helped me sort of understand, okay, so what's the next thing? And when crypto was invented in 2008, Bitcoin was invented in 2008, that was during a very terrible financial crisis that occurred in traditional capitalism and a very mysterious guy by the name of Satoshi invented Bitcoin, which basically is a decentralized monetary store of value. And it's, you know, if you think about the history of money, like think the way money worked in the past is that it came from the earth. So money came basically was dug up by gold and silver and copper. That was where how the, how ancient

society basically had money. All these old coins that you see, they're all made out of gold, silver, or copper. And so money came out from the ground in the past. And then as time went on, money came from the top. In other words, government. Government came up with this thing called fiat, dollar, pound, dinar, what have you. These are currencies. These are invented fictions by government. And so it went from the ground to the ground to the people and then from the government to the people. But with respect to Bitcoin, Bitcoin is from the people. It's a decentralized currency that the government can't control, nor does it come from the ground. So this is a currency, there's a technology, a store value that is people-oriented, which is why it's very threatening

to the existing capital structure. It's very threatening to governments. It's very threatening to banks. And that's why there was a lot of resistance to Bitcoin because governments and banks just can't control that currency, nor can they make money off it. And they can't also manipulate it, just as the way they manipulate currencies today.

So I kind of enjoy that trajectory, that historical trajectory of the history of money when it comes from the ground, then it came from the top governments and now comes from the people. This currency just became so big. It was just impossible to ignore. And now, as you rightly mentioned, a Bitcoin is now a very, a very received, well-received, almost mainstream store value. And to a large extent, it's replacing the gold markets. Gold is basically kind of a useless piece of yellow metal.

I understand that you could use it, you know, for like fillings for your tea. teeth and maybe some jewelry during weddings. But it doesn't deserve the $13 trillion value valuation and market cap that it currently has today. I think it's 13 or 14 million, maybe even more than that. I haven't looked at the most recent data point on the market cap for gold. But there's no point, there's no, there's no reason for it. Bitcoin rather completely take over gold as a store value. And it's much easier to have Bitcoin over gold. You can't, I don't know if you've ever held a $20,000 pound of gold. It's very heavy.

Gold bars are very heavy. You can't really put them in your pocket, nor can you go through airports if you want to go to United States to, for example, Germany. That's going to be a very big piece of metal. And so when you have Bitcoin, you have that, you know, there's no weight to it, right? It's an international currency.

It's also the world's first global currency. All other currencies are denominated. in certain nations, like the euro, which is a economic union, then the US dollar, the Canadian dollar. But Bitcoin is the world's human's first global currency that has no weight like gold. That's easily transferable, easily fungible. And so that is really a technology that I thought was really, really cool. I understand that Bitcoin does not have the cleanest beginnings. But in other words, in the, in, in, when it was invented in 2008, Bitcoin was used for like, you know, purchasing drugs or all these weird illicit trades. I just want to remind your audience that when

the internet was invented, it was a pretty dark place as well. The internet had a long, it still is. And so, so, you know, that's how nascent technology start. They start with, you know, appealing to like the, you know, the darker aspects of humanity, whether, you know, for example, the internet was like full of porn and a bunch of stuff that, you know, but that it doesn't mean the technology of the internet is bad. And it's the same thing with Bitcoin. Bitcoin started with, like, it became this like in the early days a currency for illicit trades, but that it doesn't mean that the technology itself is bad. And now it's grown up to be. proper and legitimate and it becomes a real store of value. And it even helps certain developing

countries. Like, for example, there are some countries like, for example, Venezuela, where inflation is running rampant. And so when you have farmers for trying to build their life savings and they're using the Venezuelan currency, if they save money in the Venezuelan currency, inflation is just going to eat all its value up. So if they just convert it to Bitcoin, they know that the inflation on Bitcoin will not happen. There is no inflation on Bitcoin because nobody's printing an excess amount of Bitcoin that you can't do that. You could do that with a national currency, but you can't do that with Bitcoin. And so it kind of helps, you know, the farmers in the Philippines or in Venezuela where currencies are volatile. If they put their life savings

from all that hard work, I say as a farmer or what have you in Bitcoin as opposed to the national currency. So I think there's a really, there are many wonderful use cases for Bitcoin. And when I was a lawyer and at the time a banker, I also realized that cryptocurrency can really disintermediate the middleman because there's no middleman anymore when you exchange value when you have Bitcoin. So just going back to the old world of fiat, whenever I send you money, I have to send it through PayPal or through a bank or some sort of payment processor. There's always a middleman between us that's slicing a little bit of off the top in terms of service fees and what have you for no reason what does that middleman really do they're just taking that actually but at the point you could

just do that without any you know any commission it's pure to pure so I think that's that was an interesting technology for me so I'm curious too because I've been dabbling since about 2017 I wish at that point I went all in like I had these friends We do. We all do. They were just like, you should buy this. No, they told me they explained the technology and I'm like, I don't understand blockchain. Like, I don't get it. I'm like, if they had just said, go all in, I would have went all in.

Instead, I just dabbled for the first. We talk a lot in the show about the terrifying moment right before you launch. What if I fail? What if no one buys anything? And I remember those doubts clearly when I started my first business, I was selling skincare. And I was like, I don't know if anyone is even going to buy this. And then I found the most amazing software that I've used still to this day. That is Shopify.

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other types of use cases, maybe in the U.S. market or things that you're excited about. It doesn't have to be Bitcoin, just crypto. Obviously, we have stable coins and other things. What excites you about crypto for use cases in the U.S.? Well, when it comes to, for example, Ethereum, and by the way, most stable coins are built on Ethereum. I think there is an amazing use case there. So Bitcoin competes with the gold markets for store value, but Ethereum competes with the banks when it comes to exchanging value and because it has this technology called smart contracts. And basically what smart contracts are is really simple. It's their if-then statements. So if somebody does this, then my Ethereum will go to the wallet over there. So you're programming

conditions. What happens when you're programming conditions? What is that? That is actually a contract. So if you can program conditions on the movement of money, which is what Ethereum does, you're basically replacing lawyers and you're replacing banks. And so that's huge. And so Ethereum basically took the technology of Bitcoin and just made it much better. The way I see it is sort of like Bitcoin is like 1.0 and Ethereum is 2.0 in terms of where cryptocurrency should be going. Wow. Okay. I remember the NFT days. You remember those days? Yeah. I mean, NFTs were a big thing. At one point, there were more transaction. on NFTs than there was a visa.

So that that's a, you know, there are a lot of transactions on there on on on on all the visa credit cards in the world. And at one point, there were more transactions on NFTs that there were than of all the visa transactions. Now, what does that say? I understand the value of NFTs went down. But the technology was amazing. It never broke like this technology during those high high water mark days.

It did not break. You go, all those transactions went through. Nobody's arguing over title of any of these transactions because it's on the blockchain. And you were able to make more transactions than Visa does globally. And the system didn't break. I understand the valuation went down, but that's not the point. The point is that technology worked. Yeah, I remember, I remember learning all about the contract.

When you talk about this, I remember, we actually put on some blockchain events, you know, many years ago in Southeast Asia. and such. So it brings back all these memories. So let's talk about reinvention because you've reinvented yourself. You were talking earlier about how you used to be attorney, hedge fund, banker, founder, AI, CEO. Every time you did a reinvention, was there something you had to change within yourself or something you had to maybe leave behind? It's a good question. No one has ever asked me that question in the way you framed it. I think you do need to kill person you thought you were in a way. I try to make sure there are no holy, there's no sacrilege. Like I try to make sure that I always keep an open mind to new concepts. And

even if I'm really married to one concept, I am willing to let it go if I feel the idea can be theoretically outdated. So when I was a lawyer, I realized that, you know, this is actually an outdated profession and I received a lot of social pressure to remain a lawyer because I went to law school I went to this like well-known law school and then I went to this very well-known law firm and on paper I would be the last person to ever leave the legal profession because I had a so-called perfect resume in the profession of law so I had a lot of pressure not to mention student debts And so I had a lot of pressure to not leave that legal career. But sometimes you have to follow your intuition, and you have to move towards things that excite you and things that you find interesting.

So I took a financial risk because there's a lot of financial stability being a lawyer. But I felt there was more upside if I followed my interests. And so that's what I did. And I continue to do that. being a lawyer, then I went into being, I was involved in a Japanese hedge fund for seven years, and that grew to be a big monster. And then Bank of America actually poached me and asked me to be their head of capital strategy for Asia Pacific, which I did. So I was like a banker for a number of years at Merrill, just basically responsible for that entire region from China to Australia.

and Korea and Japan and Hong Kong. It was quite, quite heady days. And then I took some time off. I went to this festival called Burning Man and I took some time off, which was a huge mistake. I highly recommend not taking too much time off. I took a bit too much time off about four or five years trying to figure out what my next move would be. And then I realized it would be a technology company in blockchain. And we were called Fluidity, which we co-founded, and we had this product called AirSwap, which was one of the first decentralized exchanges in the world built on Ethereum.

And we successfully sold that company to Joe Lubin, the co-founder of Ethereum and to Consensus. And we had a, you know, our shareholders made money, which is saying something because most people in blockchain didn't make money in those days. And then I was asked to be an executive to Bit Digital, and I had some vision on how Bit Digital should transform itself in terms of being a public company. And then, you know, when I, when I, when I use chat GPT, I had the same

feelings when I did when I, when I used email, when I was using the internet in 1995, it was I'm sure you had that same feeling when you use chat GPT. It's that chat GPT moment. Like this is This is a brand new technology. So that was a couple of those a few years ago. And I remember being in Singapore using it, showing my colleagues, and we realized we need to be in this business. And so we leveraged our skill set in basically powering AI. And now we sit on the intersection of cloud and infrastructure. And we IPOed white fiber last August, successful IPO.

and I'm currently running both companies. So that's a long-winded answer and saying you just have to keep an open mind and always try to recognize new patterns and follow your interests. And like I said, I believe that technology is magic. And so I love always understanding the latest technology and being involved. When you say the World Wide Web, I can't help but think my first Internet days, I used to get those AOL-Free CDs for a month. I couldn't afford to get the internet.

So I always get the free CD that you just create a new email address. And now you have like a limited internet off AOL and just even the sound. You got mail. Like it's what happened? Yeah. Isn't that funny? Like maybe we need more sounds back. Remember like all websites had like music when you like you.

Yeah. Open a website and they all had music. And it was like MySpace had music or every website had music. It took forever to load. It's hilarious thinking back to how much how much has changed. And it's only been like 30 years, 20 some odd years. Like it's crazy to think of so much has happened in the last 25 years. Yeah.

But one thing that I don't like what's happening is the homogeneity of the world. Like everything is starting to look the same. You just talked about how every, you know, website had like different jingles and different textures. And I find like when it comes to where the world is going, it feels like it's all like collapsing into this one bland thing. Like I feel like all cars in 2026 are beta gigging to look like the same shape. And all music is starting to sound the same. All these singers, they're using auto tune. All the music sounds the same.

All the all the cars look the same. All the websites have the same format. All the corporate see. CEOs have to sound a certain way, you know, and I kind of, I'm kind of a closet rebel, and I just rebel against things that makes me feel like I have to be this, that things need to be uniformed. And I don't like the uniformity of where the future is going. I really don't like it. And that's, that's something. Is it because of the ease of use of different LLMs and are reliance now on these or other AI tools that we're not really thinking anymore.

We're just using them and we're just living with the end product. I think you're right. I mean, I have a girlfriend who's a musician and she was telling me that a lot of music sounds the same because all these like basically musicians are using all the same technology. So because of that, you get this like sort of same similar output. Whereas in the past, people were approaching music differently. And I think just going back to the LLMs that you're talking about, people are just biving with chat GPT or cloud.

And they're getting similar sort of outputs. They're getting really great stuff. Don't get me wrong. I use chat. I'm a power user of chat. And so are you, I'm sure. And there are even better technologies out there now like cloud. But, you know, it does create atrophy.

in some ways in our thinking. I just don't understand how children today, when they go to school, if they're using chat nonstop, which they have to, right? But like, I just wonder if that creates at your mental, like the brain is a muscle. And if you're not,

if you're, if you're just vibing with chat, GPT to get this amazingly polished answer to a difficult question, are you really using your muscle? And so I just don't know what society is going to look like. And I just want to, wonder if our children will grow up to be soft brain humanoids. I just wonder.

Yeah, talking about society, two things that scare me. One is the algorithm with social media and how we are bending everything we do towards an algorithm similar to what you're saying, right? Like you have to make music for an algorithm or for a social platform, hoping somebody will do a 10 second dance of it, right? You have to create something. you have to create a video like this interview has to be structured in a way that it gets exposure through an algorithm otherwise what's the point i wonder the impact on our society social media and this and on top of that i really really am and i'm pretty much convinced that there's a good chance that ai will replace a lot of the jobs however i'm excited that i don't really want to work in the future anyway so i'm hoping like i i'm I can just go to Burning Man and hang out with friends. So what scares you and what excites you about all these converging technologies? Well, what scares me very simply is that the loss of freedom, I worry about governments using AI and using companies like Palantir to take away individual freedoms.

That worries me. But what excites me is that AI is going to replace a lot of menial jobs, and that's going to unleash a large portion of humanity to use their imagination and energy and mental calories to do other things besides push paper or do whatever menial jobs that AI can easily do. So that's exciting. But what worries me is the use of artificial intelligence to control the masses. That's not something I am supportive of. I haven't really thought about that. I'm glad you bring that up. I'm going to have to go and I want to stew on this.

I like to sleep on something and I wake up in the middle of the night and I will document with AI the crazy dream that I had about a thought. So I'm glad you bring that up. My wife and I wrote this book here called Unlimited Possibilities. And it really reminds me of what you were saying earlier around it's a breakthrough moment in your life. And you've obviously had a lot of unlimited possibilities, a lot of breakthrough moments. I mean, the fact that you take care of your mom who was a tarot card reader, I'm sure she tells you all the time how proud she is and thankful, which, I mean, talk about how gratifying that could be. But what is an unlimited possibility in your life, that moment that sticks out to you?

Well, you just mentioned one. I've supported my mother's, the huge source of happiness for me. You know, and as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, I'm planning a family. I'm late at this game, but I'm planning a family. So I'm really looking forward to seeing the types of souls that will surface and how I could, you know, help them be, you know, optimized human beings. So I'm looking forward to that. But also, I realize that, you know, these souls come with their own personalities, and there's only so much shaping I can do. So I think that's the blessing that comes from, you know, getting older.

You realize that you can't control a lot of things. I still try to control things, but I have, you know, as years go by, I let things go. Do you think a big part of your success is the fact that you, I can tell, are very grounded. And it seems, at least it seems like you are very grounded to me. You're very humble. It seems you're very connected within yourself, which I don't think, you know, you look really not stressed. Even if you might be stressed, which I'm sure you stress out, you know, you have a lot

of stressful things, pressures, but you appear to me as if you are very relaxed and grounded. And I think that's not so common. and with entrepreneurs C-suite until much later in life, like you mentioned. It's something you have to learn. But has that something that's always been? Or is that piece of you a big part of your success now? Well, I'm not going to, you know, I definitely think about work a lot during my off hours and I spiral sometimes. And sometimes I'm a bit absent-minded to what's happening around me because I'm thinking about work constantly. So maybe that's a form of stress. But I think definitely, again, I can't, sometimes I'm told that's not very CEO like and I just, I don't give an F

sometimes. I'm just, I'm at a point where like I'll just basically, I would like to just rather, I'd rather just be unscripted and say what's on my mind than then just be the mold. I don't want to be part of the mold. that be who you are. Sam, I learned a lot today. And what an incredible journey you've had. This is why we have Founder's Story. And I hope there's somebody who's listening, watching was just like you before.

And they see you and like, wow, I'm going to be like Sam one day. And on top of that, in 20 years from now, I'm going to say, look, the king, the king of Bit Digital, the king of crypto, the king of AI, Sam, I remember when I talk. I remember what I had. You know. Not the thing of anything. Just letting you know. No, this is a big great. Sam. I appreciate your time today. And thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.