He bought Bitcoin at $20 when everyone called it "Magic Internet Money"

Today, he’s built an empire worth billions, powering Bitcoin’s infrastructure — from mining chips to AI data centers.

In this weekend episode of Season 4: Destiny Avenged, George Kikvadze, Vice Chairman of BitFury, joins Karthik to unpack how a Soviet-born financier, laid off the day Satoshi released the Bitcoin whitepaper, reinvented himself — and helped turn belief into billion-dollar reality.

This isn’t a crypto hype story — it’s a founder playbook: of betting on people, building infra when speculation was easier, and surviving brutal cycles with integrity intact.

In this episode:

🔹 From Soviet collapse → Hedge fund layoff → Bitcoin’s “whitepaper day”

🔹 The $20 Bitcoin bet that built Bitfury

🔹 Backing Ukraine’s chip-design geniuses & mining 600,000 BTC

🔹 Surviving a 99% chip-yield crash and rebuilding from scratch

🔹 The trade-off: Hold 300,000 BTC or build real companies

🔹 Spinning out billion-dollar ventures: Hut 8, Cipher Mining, cooling & AI chips

🔹 Why “Gandhi would’ve loved Bitcoin” — truth, self-reliance, decentralization

🔹 Why infra outlasts price charts and hype cycles

00:00:00 - Gandhi, Truth & Self-Reliance → Bitcoin

00:01:07 - Setup & Stakes: $20 BTC, job loss, Bitfury, the book

00:04:41 - Reinvention arc: crisis, travel, Cyprus shock → all-in

00:10:23 - Gandhi lens & India hook: 1 BTC = 1 crore sats

00:16:54 - Finding Val & the Ukrainian “textbook” chip team

00:26:39 -CNBC ‘this thing mines Bitcoin’ → 16nm yield crisis & fix

00:35:32 - The 300k BTC trade-off; spin-outs: Hut 8, Cipher, AI

00:40:09 - Macro playbook, $1M BTC thesis, 21 lessons, rapid-fire, wrap

Season Partners: IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume portco)

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