Nicholas Gregory, CEO of CommerceBlock, joins the show to talk about their new statechain implementation, Mercury. In this episode: 

• Origins of CommerceBlock
• Nicholas' prior career in martial arts
• Nicholas' underground MMA club in NY
• Did Roger Ver take the most expensive BJJ lesson ever?
• The purpose of CommerceBlock's Mainstay system
• The difference between OpenTimestamps and Mainstay
• How sidechains evolved from the original vision and where they are today
• What can Bitcoin learn from Ethereum?
• Nic's rundown of privacy-enhancing technologies
• Centralized mixers versus coinjoin versus statechains for privacy
• How statechains allows you to send a UTXO without an on-chain transaction
• Trust drawbacks and caveats in using statechains
• CommerceBlock's Mercury statechain implementation
• Statechains as virtual opendimes
• Synergies between statechains and Lightning
• Nicholas' thoughts on Bitcoin scalability
• Statechain timelines

Sponsor notes:

Copper is transforming how institutional investors engage with digital assets by developing award-winning custody and next-gen trading infrastructure. Headquartered in London, the firm is scaling rapidly across Asia and North America to bring its suite of products to a wider pool of institutional investors. To learn more visit copper.co or reach out on Twitter, @CopperHQ

Aave is a decentralized, open source, and non-custodial protocol where users can deposits and borrow digital assets, and earn interest on those assets. Head over to aave.com to experience and learn more about DeFi.