🇳🇵🔁 🇺🇸 | zk + btc | ceo @alpenlabs | prev founded Synapse (acq. Palantir) | AI @ MIT
NYC
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Circle 🤝 @AlpenLabs
USDC and CCTP are coming soon to the first bitcoin anchored chain supported by Circle.
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ICYMI: huge research unlock here.
this work opens the door for practical, one-round *permissionless* challenges to claims about arbitrary computation on bitcoin. more details coming soon.
Our latest research reduces the offchain data required for garbled Groth16 verification on Bitcoin by more than 99.99%.
48 GB → under 2 MB.
eprint.iacr.org/2026/2100
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native USDC
composable with BTC
settled on bitcoin
USDC is coming to Bitcoin — through Alpen, in partnership with @circle.
Circle-issued dollar stablecoins for Bitcoin’s financial system, enabling BTC holders to borrow, lend, and trade without leaving Bitcoin behind.
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couldn’t ask for a sharper contrast between Millennium Probs 1 & 2
align your people & your culture with the generosity, curiosity, humility of Grigori Perelman
before your lofty talk of AI alignment
The world has extremely capable models now; I did not expect a result of this magnitude to happen so soon.
We have been talking a lot about the need to pace progress to ensure safety; for me this is the strongest evidence yet of the urgency.
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your priors about safe bitcoin custody will be challenged in ways you probably cannot fathom
that includes HSMs, regulated custodians, and even some self-custody workflows.
we had to revisit every part of alpen’s protocol & code to ensure it’s designed for the AI-Cyber era
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seeing so many misinformed takes about the Elements bug that was exploited today
seem to be stemming from several Kimi slops...
don't let this stuff replace your own thinking guys
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Simanta Gautam 🏔️ retweeted
Something we never formally announced, but have worked on for years: Strata.
It's the best solution to scaling Bitcoin (imo).
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Everyone has an opinion on scaling: soft forks, payments, big blocks, EVM, Simplicity, DeFi, privacy, do nothing, etc.
The movement has outgrown a single answer. Fortunately, Strata can satisfy almost everyone at once.
At its core, Strata is a shared bridge. A public good anyone can tap into.
No change to Bitcoin required (though one wouldn't hurt). No EVM requirement. No new token.
How it works, simply:
Any scaling solution (we call them domains) can open a "ZK account" on Strata holding a BTC balance. Periodically it submits a ZK proof: "My scaling solution changed a bunch of user balances, here's unforgeable math showing I'm not lying."
Strata verifies, updates the balance. Users on any domain can bridge in and out as they please.
That's the whole requirement. Produce a valid ZK proof. Fortunately, ZK proofs are absurdly flexible, you can prove any computation. A privacy protocol, big blocks, micropayments, Simplicity, Ark. Literally whatever you want.
We use it ourselves at @AlpenLabs: users do EVM stuff on our rollup Alpen → we generate a ZKP → updates our balance on Strata → settles to Bitcoin via Glock ("BitVM3 / Garbled Circuits").
Anyone else can do the same without ever touching Alpen. Full agency per domain: design your own VM, your own throughput trade-offs, your own sequencing.
The best part is design choices from one team don't leak into anyone else's. So, if you hate the EVM, that's fine, don't use it. Build or use whatever you prefer, use the bridge as a public good.
If different domains want to inter-op or share resources they can. But they don't have to!
It's a really elegant design.
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For the technical crowd: Strata is a rollup on Bitcoin, so there is a Sequencer and DA element. The DA is very minimal because the big DA costs are decided by the individual domains. One domain can settle DA to Bitcoin, another could use a federation. The only DA Strata requires is posting the balances for each ZK Account (quite small), not the full state for each domain.
Honest gotchas, for now: Strata's sequencer is a single entity today (decentralizing it is on the roadmap, nothing in the design prevents it).
The bridge carries Glock's 1-of-N trust assumption: one honest participant prevents theft
Not perfect. But strictly less trust than every wrapped BTC in existence.
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We have a high level visual here: alpen.org/#architecture
Or you can check out the video explainer in the quote tweet.
👨🏻🏫 New Bitcoin Whiteboard - How to bring any scaling solution to Bitcoin
Chapters
00:00 Bitcoin Scaling
02:00 ZKP's & Glock
08:00 SNARK Accounts
11:00 Strata as Orchestration Layer
15:10 Custom Execution Domains
17:37 Future Roadmap
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but coinbase's value from base is not just sequencer REV anymore
it's become a financial-product monetization story
base's REV over last 3 months (~$10M) is ballpark same as the origination fees made by coinbase on their btc-backed borrow product powered thru base
Crazy stat of the day:
@RobinhoodApp Chain is the #1 @ethereum L2 by blockchain revenue, in just its first full month of being live 🤯
Robinhood Chain generated $3.6M in July revenue, ahead of notable names like @0xPolygon ($2.7M) and @base ($2.1M).
Even crazier: Robinhood Chain alone accounted for 38% of ALL L2 revenue in July!
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add in potential revenue from base-powered earn/lending products, etc., and you start seeing that REV is missing the forest for the trees
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I love the charts on @Blockworks
I think y'all should add a new metric to capture the real value of these fintech chains that includes new revenue enabled at the application layer like the examples above
wdyt @MikeIppolito_
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On a related note, there's almost 2x more wrapped BTC (cbBTC) on Base than ETH
up from 1x 6 months ago, 0.5x 12 months ago, etc.
if you're an ethereum L2...pivot to bitcoin?
l2beat.com/scaling/projects/…
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Context Is All You Need
Muse Code runs specialized background agents that stay active your whole session, so they build up context over time instead of starting from scratch on every task.
When a job is big enough, it fans out to separate sub-agents working in parallel in isolated worktrees. Your working copy is never touched. In testing we had it build six features for a game simultaneously with no collisions.
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My first call with @mickymalka was the day after SVB collapsed. It was a very busy Saturday for him, but I remember how excited Micky was to talk about bitcoin that day.
The @RibbitCapital team is truly world class. Fortunate to have their support @AlpenLabs from early days.
.@mickymalka is the founder of @RibbitCapital — the firm behind Revolut, Robinhood, Nubank, Coinbase, and more.
He bought his first share of Berkshire Hathaway when he was 13, in Venezuela, with money he borrowed from his grandfather.
His grandfather charged him interest.
He started his first company at 17. In his mid-20s, he put every dollar he had into launching a bank in Brazil for the 50 million Brazilians nobody else would serve.
Micky is a quiet killer. Respected by the elite of the elite.
When I asked @patrick_oshag how he’d describe Micky to someone who didn’t know him, he said: “He’s a mfing moneymaker.”
Micky hates labels. The only label he wants is on his tombstone: “He was a rebel.”
0:00 Why Micky Malka Refuses to Be Labeled
3:00 Writing Your Way to Conviction
5:41 Buying Berkshire at 13 and Learning Buffett's Operating System
11:48 Token Factories, AI Bankers, and the Future of Money
18:38 The Infinite Game: Why It's Better to Be Behind
22:09 Gen Z Founders and the Chaordic Company
29:00 Why Young Founders Want to Build Atoms, Not Just Bits
34:29 Bringing Beauty and Taste Back to Technology
36:56 Revolut, Founder DNA, and Earning Deep Trust
45:54 Building OnePay With Walmart
50:53 From Lemon Bank to OnePay: A 20-Year Idea
56:00 Compounding Trust and Protecting Your Reputation
1:00:30 Node and the Rebel Case for Digital Art
1:07:34 What It Means to Live as a Rebel
1:10:50 Why Ribbit Is Built Like a Startup
1:14:41 Charlie Munger and the Power of Time
Includes paid partnerships.
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Simanta Gautam 🏔️ retweeted
Maybe I'm naive, but I had never heard of Micky nor Ribbit before joining @AlpenLabs.
Now, I can say they've been a god-tier investor for us.
.@mickymalka is the founder of @RibbitCapital — the firm behind Revolut, Robinhood, Nubank, Coinbase, and more.
He bought his first share of Berkshire Hathaway when he was 13, in Venezuela, with money he borrowed from his grandfather.
His grandfather charged him interest.
He started his first company at 17. In his mid-20s, he put every dollar he had into launching a bank in Brazil for the 50 million Brazilians nobody else would serve.
Micky is a quiet killer. Respected by the elite of the elite.
When I asked @patrick_oshag how he’d describe Micky to someone who didn’t know him, he said: “He’s a mfing moneymaker.”
Micky hates labels. The only label he wants is on his tombstone: “He was a rebel.”
0:00 Why Micky Malka Refuses to Be Labeled
3:00 Writing Your Way to Conviction
5:41 Buying Berkshire at 13 and Learning Buffett's Operating System
11:48 Token Factories, AI Bankers, and the Future of Money
18:38 The Infinite Game: Why It's Better to Be Behind
22:09 Gen Z Founders and the Chaordic Company
29:00 Why Young Founders Want to Build Atoms, Not Just Bits
34:29 Bringing Beauty and Taste Back to Technology
36:56 Revolut, Founder DNA, and Earning Deep Trust
45:54 Building OnePay With Walmart
50:53 From Lemon Bank to OnePay: A 20-Year Idea
56:00 Compounding Trust and Protecting Your Reputation
1:00:30 Node and the Rebel Case for Digital Art
1:07:34 What It Means to Live as a Rebel
1:10:50 Why Ribbit Is Built Like a Startup
1:14:41 Charlie Munger and the Power of Time
Includes paid partnerships.
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Congrats to this amazing team! Excited to be part of this round.
We’ve loved using @v12sec at @AlpenLabs. It’s proven valuable even alongside @OpenAI’s Trusted Access Cyber scans.
AI will usher a golden era of on-chain safety, contrary to the common doomer belief.
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