Apple, Google, Money App alums ditch Large Tech to construct on bitcoin

AUSTIN — On a Friday morning final spring, Mark Suman referred to as out sick from his job as a senior engineering undertaking supervisor at Apple and made his manner downtown to a spot referred to as the Bitcoin Commons, a form of clubhouse for fans of the world’s largest cryptocurrency, located just a few blocks south of the Texas State Capitol.

On the time, Suman was, in his phrases, “an energetic hobbyist,” tinkering with the know-how in his spare time. “I really performed round with it a bit inside Apple as properly,” he says. “There’s not so much I can say, apart from we had been at all times exploring new applied sciences, and so I used to be enjoying round with among the open-source bitcoin instruments inside Apple and doing a little exploratory work.”

Suman was there for the annual ‘Bitcoin Takeover’ occasion. He had adopted lots of the audio system on-line and when he noticed the gathering pop up on his feed, he took the time off to see it for himself.

“I used to be sitting within the crowd eager to get into the area and actually construct one thing new and construct one thing novel,” Suman recalled.

What occurred as a substitute was the start of knowledgeable pivot: he struck up a dialog with a developer after a chat on the Commons, and was launched to different coders who had been winding down a undertaking referred to as Mutiny. Inside just a few months, Suman handed in his discover at Apple and with the builders he’d met, pivoted into one thing larger — co-founding Open Secret, a startup reimagining how person knowledge is saved within the cloud. As a substitute of counting on centralized databases, the corporate encrypts knowledge to every particular person person — even after it’s uploaded. So if there is a breach, there’s nothing to steal, Suman defined. No honeypot.

The leap was not with out stakes.

“There are many sleepless nights,” he mentioned. “I’ve received a household, I’ve received children, I’ve received a child off at college.”

He had spent years engaged on privateness infrastructure — tackling powerful technical issues round person safety at scale — however noticed a approach to do it higher with blockchain. “Apple likes to speak a giant recreation about privateness,” he says. “And having been there, I’ve seen very deep inside plenty of their techniques that they do care about privateness at each degree.”

That imaginative and prescient — and the Commons — helped give him conviction. The builders there have been all laser targeted on creating one thing that mattered.

Bitcoin Commons sits on the second flooring of the Littlefield Constructing on the nook of Congress Avenue and Sixth Road — the place the broad boulevard to the Capitol collides with the noisy sprawl of Austin’s nightlife district. It’s an apt metaphor for the area itself.

By day, it serves as a clear, open-plan coworking hub for bitcoin operators and builders. At evening, it transforms right into a gathering place for rogue builders and off-the-record meetups. Occasions right here draw a mix of enterprise capitalists, open-source contributors, off-grid vitality technicians, and Lightning engineers — builders who construct software program to make bitcoin quicker and cheaper to make use of. On some afternoons, as soon as joyful hour hits, the kitchen within the again converts right into a bar.

“Bitcoin is crucial technological innovation in any of our lifetimes, and it wants its due,” mentioned Parker Lewis, one of many stewards of the Commons and the writer of a brand new guide on bitcoin referred to as “Step by step, Then Immediately.”

“And so whereas bitcoin has no CEO and no advertising workforce, we right here on the Bitcoin Commons and Bitcoiners all around the world assist educate individuals about bitcoin, why it is essential, what’s being constructed, and current a imaginative and prescient for the longer term,” continued Lewis.

“The vibe, it is at all times excessive sign,” mentioned Dan Lawrence, CEO of OBM, which manages vitality use for industrial-scale mining farms. Lawrence mentioned he was “grateful” that the U.S. authorities had develop into a bit of extra pro-bitcoin below the brand new administration, however added, “It doesn’t matter what occurs wherever, all people right here is at all times going to bleed bitcoin.”

This yr, the Commons feels completely different — not as a result of bitcoiners have modified, however as a result of the world round them has. The temper is bullish. Strategic. Triumphant, even.

Bitcoin‘s worth mirrored this optimism, surging to an all-time excessive of practically $110,000 in January, coinciding with Trump’s inauguration. By early April, it had retraced to the low $70,000s earlier than rebounding to almost $85,000 as of Saturday morning — volatility that underscores the market’s sensitivity to political developments and investor sentiment.

Only a yr in the past, the vibe within the Commons was cautious. Even bitcoin — the asset largely spared by securities regulation — felt the coolness of an aggressive regulatory regime. Builders had been being arrested all over the world. Pockets suppliers had been being pressured. Open-source initiatives landed on sanctions lists. The query then was, who can be subsequent?

Then got here the election. Trump’s return to the White Home introduced with it a full-court press of pro-bitcoin coverage strikes. Inside his first 100 days, he’d pardoned Silk Highway founder Ross Ulbricht and three co-founders of the BitMEX crypto trade, established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and appointed a “crypto czar” to supervise the federal authorities’s digital asset efforts. Even skeptics discovered themselves nodding.

“I used to be in Nashville when Trump spoke,” Suman recalled of the Bitcoin 2025 convention in Tennessee, the place Trump made his first main deal with to the crypto trade. “I wasn’t planning on going. However you already know, when somebody like that’s on the town, you go see it.”

Suman says he feels Trump has delivered on his guarantees to the crypto neighborhood for essentially the most half. Nonetheless, he stays cautious. “I’m not one who embraces politicians,” Suman mentioned. “I am type of apolitical so far as which facet. So I solely belief them till I see the way it’s really enjoying out in our life. To this point, I feel it is going properly, nevertheless it may actually change.”

Kevin Hurley, CTO at Lightspark, says Washington’s stance towards crypto seems to be shifting, with regulators just like the SEC taking a much less combative strategy — shifting away from lawsuits and towards clearer capital markets guidelines. “Hopefully now we’re really going to have some readability on what’s and what is not a safety, what can really be achieved,” he mentioned.

However even in a friendlier political local weather, warning over authorities involvement stays a function, not a bug, of the crypto neighborhood.

Joe Kelly, CEO of Unchained — a startup that helps shoppers retailer bitcoin securely by holding their very own non-public keys — mentioned it is good to watch out what you would like for in relation to the U.S. authorities proudly owning plenty of bitcoin. “That may go different methods,” he mentioned.

Up to now, the federal government’s so-called Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has underwhelmed some digital asset advocates, because it’s restricted to bitcoin beforehand seized in enforcement actions — not newly bought property or sovereign funding. Nonetheless, the administration has directed the Treasury and Commerce Departments to discover budget-neutral methods to amass extra bitcoin.

Kelly acknowledges a shift within the regulatory environment, however he is additionally cautious of untimely celebration, even with massive market wins just like the launch of exchange-traded funds that enable traders widespread entry to bitcoin.

“If one thing just like the ETF had launched too quickly, I feel it may have distracted from the individuals constructing on the precise know-how itself,” Kelly mentioned. “We have had the fortune that for many of Unchained’s life there wasn’t an ETF,” he added of the agency’s efforts to teach traders on find out how to retailer their crypto.

The shift has had ripple results throughout the trade, together with insurance coverage.

Becca Rubenfeld, COO of Anchor Watch, says regulatory motion is opening the door for bitcoin to be handled like another monetary asset. Conventional insurers do not cowl bitcoin immediately — they insure the infrastructure round it. But when bitcoin turns into an admitted asset on insurance coverage firm stability sheets, that modifications every part.

“At the moment, the trade is extraordinarily underserved,” Rubenfeld informed CNBC. “However what Anchor Watch is doing is particularly insuring the asset itself. So we constructed a proprietary custody resolution. And when prospects use us for custody companies, Lloyd’s of London backed insurance coverage is included in these companies.”

The demand is rising. So is the stress to construct — and safe — the technical infrastructure that makes bitcoin work.

Mike Schmidt, government director of Brink, which funds open-source bitcoin builders by means of a nonprofit construction, emphasised the significance of supporting the engineers sustaining bitcoin’s underlying infrastructure. “Bitcoin wants engineers,” he mentioned.

“We now have a $2 trillion asset. We now have strategic reserves of bitcoin being held by international locations, and there is simply this small group of engineers which are conserving this factor collectively on the code base,” Schmidt mentioned. “There’s solely possibly 40 full-time engineers engaged on this. So we need to make it possible for the engineering development can hold tempo with its broader adoption.”

Lisa Neigut began as a back-end engineer at Money App, the place she labored on their inner bitcoin product, earlier than shifting to Blockstream and spending six years as an open-source developer on the Lightning Community. Lately, she runs Bitcoin++, one of many largest technical convention sequence within the area, with six occasions deliberate throughout six international locations this yr.

“Bitcoin++ is concentrated on bringing collectively bitcoin builders and builders to speak about what they’re engaged on — the frontier of bitcoin,” Neigut mentioned. “You may get an concept of what bitcoin goes to appear to be tomorrow.”

That sense of momentum resonates with filmmaker Alana Mediavilla, who spent 5 years at Google engaged on movies about massive knowledge and cloud infrastructure. She screened her new documentary, Soiled Coin, a feature-length undertaking bitcoin’s vitality footprint and the individuals behind the infrastructure, on the Commons.

“I had put in my time within the cloud area,” she says. “I understood what knowledge facilities had been, I understood the place it was going, and I additionally understood how a lot vitality it takes to run these enormous services that proper now are operating the spine of our society.”

Her objective wasn’t to essentially defend bitcoin mining however to broaden the dialog. “I simply need to get all people’s knowledge middle literacy as much as a sure level the place we are able to proceed to have conversations about it, as a result of it isn’t going away.”

She describes the group in Austin as a coming collectively of individuals “very dedicated to their craft” — and in her view, pushed extra by shared beliefs than by profit-seeking.

“Folks suppose that it is like a get-rich-quick,” she mentioned. “Perhaps these had been the outdated days for bitcoin. Now, if you’d like 100x it’s best to have a look at altcoins and meme cash and different stuff, however you are most likely not going to get that with bitcoin.”

“What brings them collectively is that they need to have higher cash, and so they need to have a extra truthful world,” she added. “So the ideas are strong. How we implement these ideas — that is the place the variability and spice of life is available in.”

A surge of recent funding can be reshaping bitcoin’s builder financial system.

Enterprise funding in bitcoin-related startups soared in 2024 alongside the crypto market’s rally. The variety of pre-seed offers within the area climbed 50% final yr, in keeping with analysis from Trammell Enterprise Companions, an Austin-based VC agency targeted on bitcoin-native startups. Throughout all early-stage funding rounds, practically $1.2 billion has been invested in bitcoin corporations since 2021.

The renewed curiosity comes after years of technical upgrades to the bitcoin protocol and rising confidence in its long-term resilience.

“Severe individuals now not query whether or not bitcoin will stay 15 or 20 years into the longer term,” mentioned Christopher Calicott, managing director at Trammell. “So the subsequent query turns into: Is it attainable to construct what the founder is making an attempt to attain on bitcoin? More and more, the reply is sure.”

PitchBook initiatives that crypto enterprise funding will surpass $18 billion in 2025 — practically doubling the annual common from the earlier two-year cycle. A lot of that capital is flowing into bitcoin infrastructure and purposes — funds, privateness instruments, custody options — somewhat than the speculative buying and selling platforms of earlier cycles.

Turning beliefs — and enterprise {dollars} — into actuality nonetheless requires real-world infrastructure. And that is the place entrepreneurs like Steve Barbour, the founding father of Canadian agency Upstream Knowledge, are available. He is spent years constructing off-grid mining containers for distant oilfields, however this spring, he is increasing operations into Wyoming, a guess he attributes on to the Trump administration’s rollback of vitality laws and renewed push for home manufacturing.

Wyoming — dwelling to each sprawling coal operations and among the nation’s most permissive crypto legal guidelines — has emerged as a hub for bitcoin miners and the lawmakers who assist them.

The administration’s newest government orders loosen environmental restrictions and encourage extra fossil gasoline growth — a boon for oilfield miners like Barbour, whilst critics warn it may come at a steep local weather price.

“I am extraordinarily optimistic and bullish on Trump’s administration,” Barbour mentioned. “The EPA lastly got here out with a brand new stance on all this stuff they have been doing to simply destroy the vitality sector in America, which has affected us very negatively. I am seeing plenty of issues going the best manner now with the choices the Trump administration is making, and clearly they’re making an attempt to draw funding in America and manufacturing.”

Zaprite’s Lewis, one of many Commons’ most vocal coverage thinkers, agrees that issues are shifting in the best path — notably across the authorities’s determination to determine a proper nationwide bitcoin reserve.

Whereas a crypto government order is a vital first step, “codifying it with regulation will assist drive additional regulatory readability that the U.S. is open for bitcoin,” Lewis mentioned. “It’s going to even be good for the nation … the largest precedence can be for the regulatory readability piece, pushing Sen. Lummis’ Bitcoin Act to codify and make everlasting.“

Senator Lummis, a longtime advocate for the trade, is pushing laws to codify bitcoin protections into federal regulation. Her proposed laws outlines a plan for the U.S. to purchase bitcoin with “current funds” of the Treasury Division, which incorporates tax income. The thought, partly, is to place bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset — one that would respect over time and scale back reliance on debt. The senator has mentioned that the last word objective is to cut back the federal deficit, in addition to place bitcoin alongside gold and different laborious property as a approach to strengthen the greenback over time.

With out the Bitcoin Act changing into regulation, Lewis warns that right now’s tailwinds may reverse with a single administration change.

However whereas Washington debates bitcoin’s function in the way forward for the U.S. financial system, Suman was already betting his personal on it.

“Why did I depart this actually comfortable job at Apple, the place I used to be getting paid so much and had inventory and that type of stuff, to come back right here, the place my future is unsure?” he mentioned. “It is the potential for constructing one thing new that I feel is de facto wanted on the earth. And I hope that it pans out. … If it does not, and we go down in a glory of fireside, a minimum of I’ll have tried one thing that I actually imagine in.”

Even after he accepted the supply to hitch Mutiny — later pivoting into Open Secret — issues did not settle down. “That was proper when a outstanding group of builders had been arrested,” he recalled. “They had been creating an app referred to as Samurai, and so they received arrested. I had accepted my supply with Mutiny, however I had not but left Apple.”

The gamble wasn’t simply career-based. It was emotional. Existential.

“Figuring out that folks had been being arrested and there was plenty of uncertainty, I nonetheless dove in,” he mentioned. “The fellows mentioned, ‘Pay attention, in the event you’re nervous, we are able to simply name this off and you may keep at Apple,'” Suman recalled. “However I mentioned, ‘No, I actually imagine in what we’re constructing. Let’s make this factor scale.'”