Welcome to Slate Sunday, CryptoSlate’s weekly feature showcasing in-depth interviews, expert analysis, and thought-provoking op-eds that go beyond the headlines to explore the ideas and voices shaping the future of crypto.
I’m balanced on a box with a spotty WIFI connection and a glitching computer. Moving house disrupts literally every aspect of your life, yet I’m determined to maintain an unbroken workflow.
It kind of lends itself to crypto anyway. The number of meetings I’ve taken from an airport, theme park, or some other random place is racking up.
In the spirit of building the airplane as we fly, I expect Alexei Zamyatin, the mastermind behind the BTCFi project Build on Bitcoin (BOB), has done the same. He doesn’t seem to mind as I’m thrown out of our call halfway through our chat and have to reconnect.
One quick tether from my phone and we’re back in business. I want to pick his brains on one of the most misunderstood concepts in crypto: Bitcoin DeFi. What is it, what’s wrong with it, and does it even matter for Bitcoin holders still clutching their keys in silent conviction?
‘Blockchain, not Bitcoin’, and back again
Alexei got into Bitcoin through a back door, “like many people did.” With a background in computer science, he started working at an IT research center in Austria, where his colleagues were “really excited about privacy and censorship resistance.” That naturally led him to Bitcoin.
Fascinated by blockchain technology, he soon turned his attentions from Bitcoin to other altcoins and their functionality. Besides stacking and holding, Alexei saw a world of possibilities:
“I got really excited about what else we can do with the technology. So I guess early on, I was in the blockchain, not Bitcoin camp.”
He admits that his position changed fairly quickly once he understood the real value of BTC as an asset, and he set about finding ways to combine the technology of smart contract platforms like Ethereum with Bitcoin as the asset.
Alexei then fell down the rabbit hole of merge mining and cross-chain bridges, co-authorin
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Author: Christina Comben
