“Bitcoin doesn’t care about your track record. It doesn’t care about where you’re from; who you’re voting for… There’s no systemic prejudice built into the system.”
— Justin Rhedrick, Co-Founder and Executive Director. “From Bars To Bitcoin,” Decential Media
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.
If you or someone you love has been touched by the criminal justice system, you already know what it feels like when jobs, housing, and banking are out of reach. The systems meant to support a fresh start often make one harder to build.
Our co-founder Justin Rhedrick lived that reality. After serving his sentence and returning home in 2014, he worked manual labor jobs and struggled to make rent. Then a friend introduced him to Bitcoin, and something clicked. It reminded him of stamps in prison: a form of money that exists outside any single institution’s control, immune to seizure or manipulation.
“I didn’t have to be some accredited investor, I didn’t have to already have a certain amount of income or wealth… That’s when I saw the freedom in it.”
— Justin Rhedrick, “How Bitcoin Helps Survivors of the Prison Industrial Complex,” Bitcoin Magazine
That freedom is what the Bitcoin Transformation Community is built on. Bitcoin doesn’t ask about your record. It doesn’t require a credit score, a co-signer, or personal information like your birthday or your mother’s maiden name. It requires adherence to the laws of math and physics; to cryptography and proof-of-work. Bitcoin’s historic breakthrough is what that combination makes possible: consensus at a scale as vast and distributed as the Internet itself.
Bitcoin was built in direct response to the failures of traditional financial systems: a fixed supply that no government can inflate away, a network no institution can shut down, and a currency no authority can freeze or censor. For communities that have historically borne the heaviest cost of inflation, economic exclusion, and financial surveillance, that’s not a technical detail — it’s the whole point.
“If the world isn’t going to hire you, hire yourself.”
— Justin Rhedrick
Technologies like Bitcoin are not fads — they are open infrastructure. And AI, whether we choose it or not, is already reshaping the way we work. Just as both can be used to consolidate power, they can be used to build resilience, ownership, and opportunity from the ground up.
At BTCTC, we exist to create access through education, skills training, and job re-training. We’re building that future together, one person at a time.
This blog is part of that journey. Join us in bridging the knowledge gaps between community and the technologies accelerating us into tomorrow.