My guest today is my friend Jeff Garzik. Jeff has long been at the center of developing and commercializing open source software related to Bitcoin and blockchain technology. Before co-founding Bloq to develop blockchain solutions for a multi-chain world, he spent five years as a Bitcoin core developer and ten years at Red Hat. His work with the Linux kernel is now found in every Android phone and data center running Linux today. Jeff serves on the advisory boards of BitPay, BitFury, Netki and WayPaver Labs. Jeff is currently the Chief Designer & the Co-founder of Vesper Finance. Vesper works as a "metalayer" for DeFi, routing deposits to highest yield opportunities within risk tolerance for the particular pool. Products are non-custodial and auto-compounding. Under-the-hood, Vesper enables a truly set-and-forget experience at scale through a unique approach that enables yield aggregating "strategies" to be upgraded, replaced, connected, and concurrent – all with no added burden on the end user. Jeff is also the CEO of Bloq, an enterprise blockchain solutions company he co-founded with industry investor Matt Roszak in 2015. The company’s solutions include end-to-end blockchain infrastructure service BloqEnterprise and tokenization venture studio BloqLabs. In our discussion, we cover Bitcoin's role within the broader crypto ecosystem, where innovation is headed in the space, regulation, and much more. Jeff discusses Bitcoin vs Ethereum debate, the sound money meme war over, and why Bitcoin's halving cycle is ingenious. We go on to discuss why cross-chain is the future, has innovation left Bitcoin, and the Path to Decentralization. Jeff goes on to analogize cryptocurrencies to social networks and discusses the importance of building tools that empower people. Jeff gives an excellent suggestion to regulators for dealing with the innovation within crypto. We finish our conversation discussing how Vesper empowers users and makes DeFi approachable and safe. Please enjoy my conversation with Jeff Garzik.

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