X

This lot comprises two original Icelandair boarding passes dated 26 January 2014, issued to Charlie Shrem and Courtney Warner (now Courtney Shrem), for travel from Amsterdam to New York via Reykjavik.

Hours after this flight landed at JFK Airport in New York, Charlie Shrem — then 24 years old, co-founder of BitInstant and founding director of the Bitcoin Foundation — was arrested by federal authorities, making him the first high-profile Bitcoin entrepreneur to be prosecuted in the United States.

Excerpt from Shrem’s forthcoming memoir (journal entry preserved in his own words):

My arrest was not only one of the defining moments of my life but was also a watershed moment for Bitcoin. At that moment, every Bitcoin company in the world looked at themselves in the mirror and wondered if they were next. Every company got serious about Know Your Customer policies, and the wild west early days of Bitcoin geek and misfits were officially over.

As I stood there at passport control wondering why it was taking longer than usual, I gripped these boarding passes in my hand. At that moment, I looked around and almost in slow motion, dozens and dozens of federal agents with their guns drawn surrounded and aggressively approached Courtney and I. We crunched down because I didn't know what else to do, and I was grabbed and taken to a holding cell in the airport. At that point, I became the face of the fight for the future of Bitcoin.

The boarding passes are printed in standard Icelandair format, marked for Saga Class seating. Shrem’s pass is hand-signed and inscribed “1/1”, and both are annotated with the handwritten note “Lounge 26.” Together, they represent the final physical documents of Shrem’s free movement before his arrest — an inflection point not only in his personal life, but in the history of cryptocurrency.

Provenance: Retained by Charlie Shrem and Courtney Warner from the day of travel, January 26, 2014. Signed and inscribed by Charlie Shrem in 2025.

Details:

Airline: Icelandair
Date: 26 January 2014
Route: Amsterdam → Reykjavik → New York (JFK)
Class: Saga Class (business class)
Passengers: Charlie Shrem / Courtney Warner
Materials: Printed boarding passes on thermal card stock
Provenance: Direct from the personal collection of Charlie Shrem

Significance: Airline boarding passes are normally disposable ephemera, but these documents mark one of the pivotal moments in Bitcoin history. Shrem’s arrest underscored the collision between cryptocurrency and U.S. regulators, sending shockwaves through the early community.

As relics, they bridge personal narrative and financial history: artifacts of the precise day the U.S. government began testing its strength against Bitcoin’s pioneers. For collectors of cryptocurrency history, they represent not merely memorabilia but historical documents of the moment Bitcoin moved from the shadows of idealism into the reality of legal confrontation.