TL;DR: After Satoshi Nakamoto and Gavin Andresen, Jeff Garzik was the most prolific coder to Bitcoin Core in its early years. In fact, from Android phones to mining software, Garzik’s work is still very much in use today. We snagged him to talk about his time with Bitcoin Core, where crypto is now, and his vision for the future with his company, Bloq. This episode is available embedded in the article below, and on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public, Breaker, PocketCasts, PodBean, YouTube for Newer Episodes, YouTube Older Episodes, and Overcast.

Jeff Garzik was Bitcoin Core’s 3rd Most Prolific Coder

Jeff Garzik doesn’t shy from his business mistakes. He laughs about them, in fact, and it makes him instantly relatable. As a futurist, he has an eye always looking forward, but he’s also keen to talk about how much the world Satoshi created has evolved.

We begin by putting him in context. He was the third most prolific coder to Bitcoin Core, and that was after cutting his tech teeth in the open-source software world on projects like RedHat and Linux. He seems to have been at least a part of engineering scenes you’re like likely very familiar with.

He’s game to also talk about a favorite subject among CoinSpicers, namely peer-to-peer electronic cash. He has some sympathy for the idea, and recalls fondly his personal experience shilling merchants and trying to get them to embrace bitcoin as a currency. He recounts how it wasn’t ready in those days, but that maybe it’s closer with the advent of stablecoins and better applications.

Garzik now is CEO of Bloq, a multifaceted blockchain company focused on interoperability, keeping its corporate hands in everything from enterprise use cases to tokens and even bleeding-edge scenarios. Overall, he’s a really inspiring listen. Garzik hasn’t lost his idealism, but tempers it these days with heavier doses of pragmatism and much, much longer-term thinking.

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