How are venture investors approaching the crypto and FinTech landscape in 2025? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with three experienced VCs – David Mort, Tyler Griffin, and Kabir Kumar – to explore investment strategies in today's regulatory environment, where to find opportunity among established players, and how AI is reshaping financial innovation. The investors share candid perspectives on what they're looking for in founders and which trends show lasting potential beyond the hype.

What does the future of Bitcoin development look like? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Tadge Dryja (Bitcoin Core developer, researcher, and co-inventor of the Lightning Network) to explore the practical challenges of scaling Bitcoin, how innovations like Utreexo could dramatically reduce node operating costs, and whether decentralized alternatives to stablecoins are viable through technologies like Discrete Log Contracts. Tadge offers a clear-eyed view of what's working in Bitcoin development, what isn't, and where the real opportunities for innovation lie.

What exactly makes a payment a payment—and why does it matter when crypto gets involved? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Jess Cheng (Partner at Wilson Sonsini, previously at the Federal Reserve, IMF, and Ripple) to explore the legal foundations of payments, how crypto is challenging traditional financial frameworks, and what it will take to modernize money movement in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.

What if the current anti-money laundering system doesn’t work—not just for crypto, but for anyone? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Rebecca Rettig (Chief Legal Officer at Jito Labs) and Mike Mosier (Co-Founder at Arktouros, ex-FinCEN, ex-OFAC) to discuss the real limitations of today’s compliance frameworks and what’s needed to build a system that actually detects and prevents financial crime—without stifling innovation.

In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Ethan Heilman, Research Engineer at Cloudflare and Bitcoin Research Collaborator at MIT DCI, to discuss the complexities of Bitcoin’s scripting limitations, how Collider Script, a novel way to bridge Big Script and Small Script, is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with Bitcoin covenants, and what the future holds for programmable money.

Read the ColliderScript paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1802

Explore more of Ethan Heilman’s work: https://www.ethanheilman.com/

In this episode, Marco Mahrus, veteran in fintech and payments and Head of Revenue at Bridge, joins Patrick Murck (Founder & CEO of Surus) to explain how stablecoins are transforming payments, remittances, and global money movement, and what the future holds beyond speculation.

Who should decide the future of financial services—regulators or the market? And why do banking rules often fail to adapt to new technology? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Matt Homer (Founder & GP, The Venture Dept), Sarah Elliott (Board Member, Advisor), and Alex Acree (Chief Legal Officer, Unit) to explore how prudential regulation is shaping - and sometimes stalling - financial innovation.

In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Chris Walker, Co-Founder & CEO of Credit Co-op, to explore how DeFi is reshaping lending and credit markets.

The conversation unpacks how businesses are using stablecoins to bridge liquidity gaps, why traditional credit models are struggling to keep up, and what the future of decentralized finance (DeFi) looks like beyond speculation.

How much privacy should financial transactions have? And how much surveillance is too much? In this episode, Patrick Murck dives into the trade-offs between financial privacy and oversight with Gregory Lisa, Senior Counsel at Hogan Lovells.

Patrick Murck brings together three leading voices in crypto regulation and securities law to examine how traditional disclosure frameworks can adapt to the unique challenges of digital assets. Chris Brummer (CEO, Bluprynt), Lee Schneider (General Counsel, Ava Labs), and Lilya Tessler (Partner, Sidley Austin) explore what meaningful disclosures look like in an industry where assets range from meme coins to treasury-backed tokens.