TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
#292: Diving into tbDEX with Mike Brock
- Mike Brock's eight-year journey at Block (formerly Square), from early Cash App work through integrating Bitcoin in 2017 to leading TBD, the company's newest business unit focused on decentralized financial infrastructure.
- The philosophy behind TBDex: a messaging protocol designed to create decentralized on-ramps and off-ramps between fiat currency and Bitcoin, addressing the "fatal conceit" that most users still must transact in traditional financial systems.
- TBDex's use of decentralized identity (DIDs) and verifiable credentials to establish trust networks between users and participating financial institutions (PFIs) without requiring centralized custody or data aggregation.
- The rejection of pure trustlessness in fiat-to-crypto exchange due to the irreversibility and regulation inherent in traditional payment systems; instead, TBDex enables **distributed social trust** similar to how certificate authorities work on the web.
- KYC/AML compliance reimagined through zero-knowledge proofs and self-sovereign identity, reducing data exposure while still meeting regulatory obligations.
- Mike's thesis that anonymity and pseudonymity are distinct from privacy; financial transactions require **some degree of social trust** to function, and TBDex optimizes for privacy while allowing parties to set their own trust standards.