Mike Brock, general manager of TBD at Block, discusses how TBD’s yet-to-be-released DEX is structured, explains why he thinks decentralized solutions do not necessarily need blockchains, and tells the humorous story about how Jack Dorsey convinced him to start working on a Bitcoin project. Show highlights:
- what TBD is and what its relation to Block (formerly Square) is
- how TBD differs from Spiral, another Block-based Bitcoin firm
- how tbDEX works and why building on-ramps and off-ramps to crypto is so important
- who will be supplying the liquidity for tbDEX
- why Mike is passionate about creating digital identity infrastructure
- how tbDEX will incorporate digital identity tooling into its protocol
- what Mike thinks about Vitalik Buterin’s misgivings concerning tbDEX’s design
- why Mike fell down the rabbit hole (thanks Jack Dorsey)
- what lessons Mike learned at CashApp that he is using at TBD
- which stablecoin TBD will be working with
- why Mike is not a believer in DeFi
- why tbDEX (or, seemingly, other TBD products) will not utilize tokens
Thank you to our sponsors!
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Episode Links
Mike Brock
- Twitter; https://twitter.com/brockm
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-brock-9030813/
- Introduction to TBD: https://twitter.com/brockm/status/1415795490914856961
TBD
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/tbd54566975?lang=en
- GitHub: https://github.com/TBD54566975/tbdex-whitepaper
- Whitepaper
- Careers: https://block.xyz/careers?search=tbd
- Other
Other Topics
- Spiral (lightning development). Brock helped set up Spiral.
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/spiralbtc
- Website: https://spiral.xyz/
- CashApp
- Impressive BTC revenue: https://decrypt.co/93793/block-bitcoin-earnings-cash-app-hit-nearly-2-billion-q4
- Lightning network: https://blockworks.co/cash-app-integrates-lightning-network-for-bitcoin-payments/
- Aaron Levie
