The story behindthe room.

Miami toAtlanta.

Marlon Williams has been shipping software since he was a teenager. He sold his first startup - Firstaid, a medical-records suite he built moonlighting - by 26. Tasked with tracking emerging tech, he found Bitcoin in 2009 and never looked back: Fenero, a cloud contact-center platform, in 2012; co-founding the Telos blockchain and serving as chair of inspector general at WAX as smart contracts arrived.

When "DeFi summer" hit in 2020, he built Starter Labs - one of the first crypto launchpads engineered to kill "rug pulls," holding developer funds in smart contracts until they actually shipped. By early 2022 it had raised more than $45 million for 60+ projects and ranked the #1 IDO launchpad by ROI. He'd left Miami for Atlanta during the pandemic. The best chapter, and the worst, were both still ahead.

The employeewho wasn't.

Crypto was built by pseudonyms. Satoshi Nakamoto was a name and nothing more, and through DeFi summer many of the best developers shipping real products worked the same way - judged by their code, not their credentials. Marlon built in that spirit too: heads-down, anonymous, shipping.

So in August 2020, when a developer calling himself "Pemba Sherpa" messaged him on Telegram - polished LinkedIn, clean GitHub, great references - bringing him on remotely was simply how the industry worked. He was good: rewrote interfaces, mastered Solidity, and by 2021 he was Chief Technology Officer of Marlon's twelve-person company, with access to its financial rails.

"In my mind, we had become friends."

Then the red flags. $30,000 went missing in October 2021. In March 2022 it collapsed - hundreds of thousands withdrawn and laundered, blame shifted to a phantom "cousin," chats deleted, the man gone. Over twenty months Marlon had paid him roughly $400,000 in wages; the crew stole more than $1 million in crypto.

He reported it to the FBI and spent $20,000 on a private investigator in Dubai. Three years later, in June 2025, the truth landed: "Pemba Sherpa" was Kim Kwang Jin, a North Korean operative working under a stolen identity - part of a network that infiltrated TV networks, automakers, and entertainment companies to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to the sanctioned regime.

"This was not a simple scam. It was a long con."Daniel Polk, FBI Special Agent

Marlon had worked in stealth alongside federal agents to help expose it. The indictment named four operatives, and the FBI raided 29 "laptop farms" across 16 states.

So he builtthe room.

"I would never work with a developer I don't know. I have to see your family. We have to have lunch."

The betrayal rewired how he builds. So in 2022 he built the opposite of the faceless, remote anonymity that let North Korea in: the Atlanta Blockchain Center - the country's first physical, crypto-only coworking and incubator space. A real room. Real people. Every Thursday since.

250+ events. 33 founders incubated through Immutable Founders. The mission, #10in5: make Atlanta a top-10 global blockchain hub in five years - built this time on verified identities and face-to-face trust.

A Morehouseman.

He didn't keep it for himself. Through Immutable Scholars he has mentored HBCU students from Morehouse, Spelman, and Clark Atlanta - six scholars, with $4,000 in USDC awarded to those who finished, and a co-founded AUC Web3 Club.

And he enrolled at Morehouse himself - the alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - graduating with a degree in Business Administration while running blockchain companies, incubating Atlanta founders, leading ABC, and raising a family. A legacy of greatness, and a commitment to help build the next one.

This isABC 2.0.

The room that began as a response to a betrayal is now a launchpad for what's next - including the security lessons hard-won from the heist, built into everything that comes out of it. Chapter two is bigger: the Block Parties across Georgia, the policy fight, and a community that shows up every single week.

Not a launch. Not a pitch. ABC has a four-year track record - and the founder behind it has twenty-five. Come help build the next ten years.

Not a company.A community.

Bitcoin Pizza Day, 2026 · every face here showed up.

Who's fundingthe mission.

Founder & FinancierMarlon WilliamsMorehouse College · Business Administration · Cum Laude. Funds the mission himself, from the $70K in ecosystem grants to the $75K in PitchFest checks to the room itself.

PartnerStand With CryptoCo-presenting the Block Parties and sponsoring Off The Chain Thursdays.

Every name here puts real weight behind the mission. The next ones belong to the people and companies who help write chapter two.