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

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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
- https://tbd54566975.ghost.io/introducing-tbdex/
- https://tbdex.io/whitepaper.pdf
Careers: https://block.xyz/careers?search=tbd
Other
- Origin of name: https://twitter.com/TBD54566975/status/1424818221652324355
- Vitalik’s reticence: https://cryptopotato.com/vitalik-buterin-tells-how-jack-dorseys-tbd-might-build-the-bitcoin-dex/

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
- https://twitter.com/levie

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