Details
Mike Schmidt joined the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2018 as a product manager at Blockstream and a contributor to Bitcoin Optech. With Optech, he contributes to the newsletters in addition to organizing and presenting technical content at member workshops. Mike has also contributed to Bitcoin Core by organizing events, assisting in running the taproot review sessions, and performing testing and outreach in the space. 15 years experience discovering, understanding, and developing software solutions to achieve customer needs. Success in leading multiple payment system deployments for large institutions. Rabid learner and productivity geek.
Work Experience
Education Experience
Relevance Person
Kunal Karani
Kunal Karani is the chief Business officer of E Money Network after being the co-founder of Finance Blocks. He also served as CEO and chief strategy officer of Turing Labs. Kunal Karani is a 4-time entrepreneur with over 10 years of technology experience and a deep understanding of multiple sectors. He graduated from Purdue University in the United States.
Jeff Boortz
Jeff Boortz is Blockstream's Chief Product Officer, responsible for managing the Blockstream product portfolio, and has more than 20 years of product management and IT experience. He holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley and a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.
Sam Fang
Sam Fang is the Chief Financial Officer at Blockstream and holds a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Jacob McDorman
Jacob McDorman is the co-founder and CTO of Saga and previously was the co-founder of Cellaflora, a software consulting firm. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Purdue University.
Pieter Wuille
Peter Wuille is a Bitcoin Core developer and the co-founder of Blockstream. He is ranked second in terms of commits to Bitcoin Core and is responsible for important improvements to Bitcoin such as BIP 66, libsecp256k1, and Segregated Witness. His programming languages include C++, C, Perl, Java, Bash, (PG)SQL, Haskell, OCaml, and PHP. He is also skilled in system administration, including Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, and LDAP. His specialties include programming languages, compilers, and cryptography.
Xiahong Lin
Xiahong Lin is the co-founder of Continue Capital, he founded the blockchain prediction market Bodhi, and worked as a Twitter Android developer.
Erik Svenson
Erik Svenson is the co-founder, President, and CFO of Blockstream. He has more than 20 years of experience in leading strategies, operations, and fundraising in his previous roles. He spent 10 years in the traditional finance industry in leading roles, followed by another decade as a co-founder and consultant for rapidly growing technology startups. Erik has a BA from Stanford and is a former CFA charterholder.
Matt Leisinger
Matt is the CEO and Co-Founder of Alluvial Finance. Alluvial is building the enterprise liquid staking standard. Recently, he was the Head of Liquid Staking Products at Figment, a blockchain infrastructure company focused on building web3. Prior to joining Figment, Matt spent 12 years in the proprietary trading space, leading teams in building high-frequency, algorithmic trading systems. He was a Partner and Managing Director at Transmarket Group. Matt graduated from Purdue University with a degree in Computer Engineering and from the University of Chicago with a Master's in Computer Science.
Steven Willinger
Steven Willinger is the Partner of Blockchain Builders Fund. Presively he was Ventures Lead at Coinbase. Product Management at Blockstream. GTM at Google. Steven Willinger graduated from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Yuan Xia
Yuan Xia is the Founder & CEO of Secure3. Previously, he worked for GGV Capital, Airbnb, and Facebook. He is also the Founding Director & CSO of CertiK. He graduated from Purdue University and Yale University.