Guests:

• Jeroen Develter, COO of Persistence One
• Chandra Duggirala, Founder of Portal to Bitcoin
• Jake Gordon, Co-Founder of Nexio

Top 3 Key Takeaways from Our Guests

1. Bitcoin dominance is reshaping market dynamics.

The speakers started the conversation by diving deeper into how DePin impacts other traditional industries outside of Web3. All speakers highlighted how DePIN technologies are set to challenge established companies such as NVIDIA, Google, and Amazon. Mehdi from Animoca Brands also mentioned that projects like Wing Bits and Geodnet successfully offer decentralized models that monetize user contributions (e.g., flight tracking) and improve GPS accuracy. He also emphasized that these innovations can significantly impact sectors ranging from autonomous vehicles to consumer robotics.

2. Technical maturity is powering new use cases

Beyond market sentiment, each speaker highlighted the significant leaps in technical capability across the Bitcoin ecosystem. Jeroen explained how Persistence enables secure, seamless asset swaps across the dozens of emerging BTC variants—without relying on risky bridges. Their intent-based solution creates a new paradigm for interoperability across Bitcoin L2s, improving composability and user experience.

Chandra described how Portal is solving the long-standing problem of trustless cross-chain trading. Portal enables exchange-like speed without custody or bridge-based vulnerabilities by building on atomic swaps and implementing channel factory-based scaling. Jake, meanwhile, discussed Nexio’s mission to bring familiar tooling and development environments to Bitcoin, empowering builders to deploy DeFi protocols using the Move VM and scaling frameworks typically found on more developer-friendly chains.

3. The Ecosystem is growing—quietly but powerfully

What surprised the guests most over the past year was the speed at which Bitcoin’s narrative and infrastructure have matured. Chandra acknowledged that he initially underestimated the cultural and technical impact of Ordinals and BRC-20s, which have evolved from a novelty into a major driver of attention and experimentation within the Bitcoin ecosystem. 

Jake pointed to the rise of treasury strategies among publicly traded companies, highlighting that more firms are beginning to follow MicroStrategy’s playbook and treat BTC as a strategic reserve asset. Meanwhile, Jeroen reflected on the unexpected surge in Bitcoin staking and yield-generating mechanisms, particularly around the Babylon ecosystem. What once seemed incompatible with Bitcoin’s architecture—staking, DeFi, and cross-chain liquidity—is now becoming foundational for its next growth phase.