About

Introduction

Ryan X. Charles is an American entrepreneur who lives in Texas Hill Country.

If you are looking to hire me, please see my CV.

Today, my primary focus is on EarthBucks, a new blockchain for small, casual transactions for everyone on Planet Earth. I also build and operate Identellica, a pseudonymous identity verification service, and Hallucipedia, a collaborative AI-generated encyclopedia.

My History

University Years and Early Career

After learning to program at age 10, I graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a double major in physics and mathematics. I then spent six years in physics graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis before leaving in 2013 to work full-time on Bitcoin. I joined BitPay in September 2013 as a software engineer. BitPay offered the option to accept part of my salary in Bitcoin, which I embraced by becoming the first person at BitPay—and likely the first in the world—to accept my full salary in Bitcoin.

I worked on BitPay’s full-stack software in Node.js/Mongo (navigating callback pyramids and “undefined is not a function” errors) and transitioned into developing bitcore, a set of open-source tools for working with Bitcoin.

After helping to start Copay, the BitPay wallet (later renamed to just “BitPay”), I left BitPay to join Reddit in September 2014 as the world’s first officially titled “cryptocurrency engineer.” At Reddit, I worked on fullnode, which would have been the Reddit cryptocurrency wallet, and “Reddit Notes,” a project aimed at putting Reddit cryptocurrency into the hands of every Reddit user. Unfortunately, Reddit was experiencing significant turmoil at the time, including the resignation of two CEOs, and I was laid off before the project was completed.

I then joined BitGo as a software engineer, working on their full-stack wallet software in Node.js/Mongo. While at BitGo, I wrote a popular article about decentralizing Reddit, which inspired me to start my own company. I left BitGo to found what was initially called Datt, later renamed Yours.org (now owned by unrelated entities), a decentralized social network that used micropayments to reward content creators.

Entrepreneurship

Yours.org gained traction with a small but dedicated user base. We raised two rounds of funding, including a $1.5 million round led by Bitmain. I was involved in the Bitcoin block size wars of 2017 and publicly switched the company’s technology from Bitcoin to Litecoin that year due to high fees. After the launch of Bitcoin Cash, I switched the underlying technology again, this time to Bitcoin Cash. Yours.org was the first application to use Bitcoin Cash in 2017.

After running the project on Bitcoin Cash for a few months, it became clear there was a need for a developer tool to facilitate micropayments on Bitcoin Cash. I pivoted Yours.org to create Money Button, a “simple payment system”—essentially an entire wallet embedded in a button, making it easy for developers to integrate payments into their apps.

In late 2018, I was involved in another blockchain conflict as Bitcoin Cash split to create Bitcoin SV. I decided to support Bitcoin SV, and my company was the first to adopt this new blockchain.

Money Button achieved greater success than Yours.org and was acquired by The Bayesian Group in 2020.

I left The Bayesian Group, by then renamed Fabriik, in early 2021. After that, I worked on various small projects but mostly took time off to recover from the stress of running a startup and to reflect on my next steps.

The Origin of EarthBucks

I spent some time researching AI and building AI applications. In early 2024, after creating Artintellica, a social network for AI agents, I realized there was still a need for small, casual transactions in the range of 1 US cent to 5 US dollars to provide an alternative to monthly subscriptions in the AI revolution. I decided to shift my focus from AI back to blockchain and created EarthBucks to address this need.

My goal with EarthBucks is not only to create a new blockchain for small, casual transactions but also to develop AI applications that leverage this payment system to enable experiences not possible with traditional credit card payments.

My Projects Today

Today, I operate EarthBucks, Identellica, and Hallucipedia. My interests lie at the intersection of AI and cryptocurrency, particularly in building the EarthBucks blockchain for internet payments and applying it to generative AI applications.

Contact

To contact me, please email me at website@ryanxcharles.com.