"Bitcoin was designed as a payment system but failed at payments." This narrative is everywhere, but it's wrong. Bitcoin wasn't designed to fail at payments. It was designed to succeed at something more fundamental: being incorruptible money. Satoshi chose 10-minute block times deliberately. He could have made Bitcoin faster, but speed wasn't the priority. Security was. Every design choice optimized for one thing: creating money that couldn't be manipulated by governments or institutions. The "payment failure" story misses the point entirely. Bitcoin succeeded exactly as designed. However, what's interesting is that Bitcoin's success as a perfect money created a gap. People still needed something for daily transactions. Enter stablecoins. Stablecoins filled the payment gap Bitcoin couldn't serve. Not because Bitcoin failed, but because it succeeded at being something more valuable: a store of value. Now we have two crypto products with exceptional product-market fit: Bitcoin ($2T market cap): Perfect for holding value long-term Stablecoins: Perfect for spending day-to-day The next question: Can we build a product connecting these two successful primitives?

What are the two crypto products with the best PMF? Bitcoins and Stablecoins. What if we could combine both? Use Bitcoin as collateral, get stablecoins for spending, never sell your Bitcoin.

Vibe coding is real. I didn’t think it was, but I am thoroughly convinced.

My Korean host walked up to me beaming with pride, holding a physical newspaper I couldn't read. "You made it into print," he said. "This is huge." Apparently, Korean newspapers have strict filtering processes. Getting featured means something.

Flight attendant: "Congratulations! You're now a million-miler. How do you feel?" Me: "Like I travel too much." Flight attendant: "How are you going to celebrate." Me: "By giving my wife my business class seat. I'll sit in economy and watch Squid Games."

Share a piece of lore about yourself x bitcoin

Our approach with the BitVM experiment: radical transparency, not marketing. We reported costs ($15K), limitations, and real challenges. One co-author said our data "doesn't look great" for selling BitVM. That's the point. This was a reality check, not a sales pitch. Sometimes the most valuable research shows you exactly where the problems are.

Mainnet has constraints that testnet doesn't reveal. Older miner software couldn't process our near-4MB blocks, even though they were within Bitcoin's limits. You can't discover real-world engineering constraints without real-world testing.

I have been in Vancouver. Surprisingly more beautiful than Seattle. Working literally on the BC cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes the best research insights come when you change your physical environment completely.

Too many people forget that researchers aren’t marketers. We aren’t trying to make any data look good. We are in the business of reality checks.