Form & Structure

Peter Glyman (Coinbax) joins Patrick Murck to break down the compliance layer missing from enterprise stablecoin payments...and why community banks are running out of time. 

Greg Xethalis, Karen Ubell, and Sheila Warren join Patrick Murck to debate the Clarity Act blowup, crypto market structure legislation strategy, and whether there's still a window to pass comprehensive crypto legislation this year or if the industry needs to modularize and pass what it can.

Financial regulation is failing to keep pace with innovation and the results are catastrophic. The UN estimates that less than 1% of financial crime gets caught globally, despite banks spending tens of billions annually on AML compliance. In this episode, Surus CEO Patrick Murck sits down with Jo Ann Barefoot, former Deputy Comptroller of the Currency and CEO of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, to explore why outdated regulatory technology is the bottleneck preventing both effective crime detection and financial innovation. Featuring Jo Ann Barefoot's decades of experience helping regulators adapt to technological change, from FinTech waves to crypto to AI transformation. Relevant for: Crypto builders, DeFi teams, compliance professionals, RegTech innovators, stablecoin issuers, tokenized asset platforms, financial services leaders, policy experts.

U.S. policymakers continue to wrestle with how to regulate decentralized finance, stablecoins, and the broader crypto ecosystem. But as our guests Rebecca Rettig and Mike Mosier argue, the central challenge has never been "decentralization." Instead, the real regulatory question is who has independent control over other people's value.

In this monthly policy roundtable, Patrick Murck is joined by Greg Xethalis (General Counsel, Multicoin Capital) and Karen Ubell (Partner, Goodwin) to break down the urgent push for crypto market structure legislation before midterms. They discuss Mike Selig's nomination to chair the CFTC and what his crypto expertise means for the agency's expansion into spot markets. They examine whether Congress should rush legislation or take time to get it right, what the Binance listing terms leak reveals about US regulatory arbitrage, and why moving from 54 state licenses to federal oversight matters for competitiveness.

Protocol Labs' Juan Benet (Founder & CEO) and Diana Stern (Deputy General Counsel) join Patrick Murck on this week's episode. They discuss launching the PL 'alignment asset' token as a novel way to share incentives across Protocol Labs' network of over 700 companies.   

Patrick Murck hosts David Tse (Co-Founder of Babylon Labs co-founder and Stanford professor) dive into how Babylon attracted nearly $7 billion in Bitcoin staking and explore their new trustless Bitcoin vaults that activate dormant Bitcoin assets for productive use in DeFi.

Patrick Murck and Professor Carla Reyes (SMU Law) discuss how the 2022 UCC amendments created "controllable electronic records" to finally align commercial law with crypto lending practices. They explore whether Bitcoin's UTXO system makes security interests practically impossible to enforce, why Florida's attempt to ban CBDCs through state law doesn't actually work, and how the GENIUS Act might prevent stablecoin issuers from paying bankruptcy costs.

In this episode of Form & Structure, Patrick Murck sits down with Pete Rizzo, The Bitcoin Historian and host of the Supply Shock podcast, for a wide-ranging conversation about Bitcoin's evolution and what Pete calls its "new epoch.".

In our Monthly Bitcoin Series episode of Form & Structure, Patrick Murck sits down with Neha Narula (Director, MIT Digital Currency Initiative) and Ethan Heilman (Research Engineer, Cloudflare) to discuss Roman Storm verdict's impact on privacy tech, Bitcoins fee market breakdown, and the "one sat per vbyte" policy debate. 

White House Crypto Council Executive Director Bo Hines joins Patrick Murck to break down the administration's comprehensive strategy to make America the crypto capital of the world. Bo discusses the President's Working Group Digital Assets Report, Bitcoin Strategic Reserve implementation, and the timeline to pass the Clarity Act by October 2025. Then, Dan Spuller (EVP Industry Affairs, Blockchain Association) dives into North Carolina's emergence as a crypto hub, state-level competition for digital asset infrastructure, and how regulatory clarity is driving companies back to the United States.

Patrick Murck hosts Greg Xethalis (General Counsel at MultiCoin Capital) and Karen Ubell (Partner at Goodwin) for our monthly Policy & Regulatory Roundtable to discuss the historic signing of the GENIUS Act, what it means for consumer protection, and the path forward for comprehensive market structure reform.

Johnny Reinsch, Executive Director of the Tokenized Asset Coalition, joins Patrick Murck to discuss why TAC is shifting from policy advocacy to solving technical infrastructure challenges, how stablecoins are becoming the gateway to broader tokenization, and why his mantra remains "not everything should be tokenized." The conversation explores Johnny's evolution from Bitcoin maximalist to tokenization realist, offering candid insights on what actually needs fixing in the industry.

As crypto treasury strategies expand beyond Bitcoin, a new wave of companies is emerging to capitalize on this trend. But which ones will survive market cycles? In this episode, host Patrick Murck explores this question with Joseph Onorati and Parker White, co-founders of DeFi Development Corporation, the first publicly traded Solana Treasury Company, who bring multi-cycle crypto experience dating back to 2013.

Host Patrick Murck is joined by Greg Xethalis (General Counsel at Multicoin Capital), Drew Hinkes (Partner at Winston & Strawn, and Adjunct Professor at NYU School of Law & Stern School of Business), and Karen Ubell (Partner at Goodwin Procter) to break down the Senate's 68-30 passage of the GENIUS Act—the first productive crypto legislation heading to a U.S. president's desk—and what it means for stablecoins, institutional adoption, and the future of digital dollars.

In this episode of Form & Structure, Patrick Murck invites David Taylor (Co-founder & CEO of Etherfuse) on to discuss how Etherfuse is bringing sovereign debt onchain, solving cross-border payment inefficiencies, and why they chose Surus as their custody partner.

In this episode of Form & Structure, Patrick Murck sits down with three Bitcoin network experts – Neha Narula (Director, MIT Digital Currency Initiative), Ethan Heilman (Research Engineer, Cloudflare), and Tadge Dryja (Bitcoin Core developer and Lightning Network co-inventor) – to discuss recent debates around the Bitcoin network  including user activated soft forks, op return transactions, the security budget debate, and the necessity of protocol specialization. 

In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Adam Silver, co-founder and CEO of Plural Energy, to discuss how tokenization is transforming renewable energy investment and bridging traditional finance with DeFi innovation. After taking the unconventional path of studying for his Series 7 exam while building his company, Silver shares his vision for creating what he calls the "financial operating system for the base layer of the economy" and why he believes bringing real assets on-chain is key to unlocking capital flows into the energy transition.

In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Kristin Smith, President of the Solana Policy Institute and former CEO of Blockchain Association, to discuss crypto's regulatory evolution and the path forward. After seven years leading industry advocacy efforts, Smith shares insights on how crypto can achieve lasting policy results despite political challenges and shifts. 

In this episode, Patrick Murck chats with Nick Ducoff, Head of Institutional Growth at the Solana Foundation. Nick unpacks how the Solana ecosystem scaled from $300 million to over $10 billion in TVL and discusses the influence of the rise of institutional adoption and how tokenized assets, streaming payments, and stablecoins are creating the foundation for the next wave of onchain finance.

In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Punia, Co-Founder of Nashpoint, to explore why today's DeFi ecosystem is dominated by hedge funds and crypto whales —and what it will take to return to crypto's original principals of building open, accessible financial infrastructure. The conversation dives into how DeFi has drifted toward mimicking TradFi, the limitations of current liquidity models, and how sovereign debt tokens and diversified capital bases could help reshape the onchain economy for broader participation.

In this episode, Patrick Murck chats with Andrey Chabanov, who explains how his company, Trusttek, is providing seamless crypto integration for financial institutions while Ramp Me Daddy, his Telegram-based wallet born from a hackathon project, makes buying meme coins simple for everyday users. The conversation explores how meme coins compare to previous trends like ICOs and NFTs, and the potential future innovations in this space.

How are venture investors approaching the crypto and FinTech landscape in 2025? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with three experienced VCs – David Mort, Tyler Griffin, and Kabir Kumar – to explore investment strategies in today's regulatory environment, where to find opportunity among established players, and how AI is reshaping financial innovation. The investors share candid perspectives on what they're looking for in founders and which trends show lasting potential beyond the hype.

What does the future of Bitcoin development look like? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Tadge Dryja (Bitcoin Core developer, researcher, and co-inventor of the Lightning Network) to explore the practical challenges of scaling Bitcoin, how innovations like Utreexo could dramatically reduce node operating costs, and whether decentralized alternatives to stablecoins are viable through technologies like Discrete Log Contracts. Tadge offers a clear-eyed view of what's working in Bitcoin development, what isn't, and where the real opportunities for innovation lie.

What exactly makes a payment a payment—and why does it matter when crypto gets involved? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Jess Cheng (Partner at Wilson Sonsini, previously at the Federal Reserve, IMF, and Ripple) to explore the legal foundations of payments, how crypto is challenging traditional financial frameworks, and what it will take to modernize money movement in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.

What if the current anti-money laundering system doesn't work—not just for crypto, but for anyone? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Rebecca Rettig (Chief Legal Officer at Jito Labs) and Mike Mosier (Co-Founder at Arktouros, ex-FinCEN, ex-OFAC) to discuss the real limitations of today's compliance frameworks and what's needed to build a system that actually detects and prevents financial crime—without stifling innovation.

In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Ethan Heilman, Research Engineer at Cloudflare and Bitcoin Research Collaborator at MIT DCI, to discuss the complexities of Bitcoin's scripting limitations, how Collider Script, a novel way to bridge Big Script and Small Script, is pushing the boundaries of what's possible with Bitcoin covenants, and what the future holds for programmable money. Read the ColliderScript paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1802 Explore more of Ethan Heilman's work: https://www.ethanheilman.com/

In this episode, Marco Mahrus, veteran in fintech and payments and Head of Revenue at Bridge, joins Patrick Murck (Founder & CEO of Surus) to explain how stablecoins are transforming payments, remittances, and global money movement, and what the future holds beyond speculation.

Who should decide the future of financial services—regulators or the market? And why do banking rules often fail to adapt to new technology? In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Matt Homer (Founder & GP, The Venture Dept), Sarah Elliott (Board Member, Advisor), and Alex Acree (Chief Legal Officer, Unit) to explore how prudential regulation is shaping - and sometimes stalling - financial innovation.

In this episode, Patrick Murck sits down with Chris Walker, Co-Founder & CEO of Credit Co-op, to explore how DeFi is reshaping lending and credit markets. The conversation unpacks how businesses are using stablecoins to bridge liquidity gaps, why traditional credit models are struggling to keep up, and what the future of decentralized finance (DeFi) looks like beyond speculation.

How much privacy should financial transactions have? And how much surveillance is too much? In this episode, Patrick Murck dives into the trade-offs between financial privacy and oversight with Gregory Lisa, Senior Counsel at Hogan Lovells.

Patrick Murck brings together three leading voices in crypto regulation and securities law to examine how traditional disclosure frameworks can adapt to the unique challenges of digital assets. Chris Brummer (CEO, Bluprynt), Lee Schneider (General Counsel, Ava Labs), and Lilya Tessler (Partner, Sidley Austin) explore what meaningful disclosures look like in an industry where assets range from meme coins to treasury-backed tokens.

Patrick Murck brings together three veteran crypto legal and policy experts to examine the industry's most significant crises and their lasting impact on regulation. From Mt. Gox to Libra to FTX, the conversation explores the key ways that these events have shaped the regulatory landscape and influenced policymaker perspectives on digital assets.

In this episode, our Sheila Warren, Greg Xethalis, and Marco Santori join Patrick Murck to discuss the intersection of personnel decisions, legislative priorities, and existing regulatory frameworks will converge to shape the future of digital asset regulation during the first 100 days under the new administration. 

Patrick Murck brings back Chris Brummer, Georgetown Law Professor and CEO of Bluprynt and Lee Schneider, General Counsel at Ava Labs to unpack Paul Atkins' nomination as SEC Chair. The conversation explores Atkins' background and demeanor and examines what his "return to normalcy" leadership could mean for digital asset regulation. The trio dives deep into the intricate web of relationships between Congress, the courts, and regulatory agencies that will shape future policy. 

Join your host Patrick Murck, Founder and CEO of Surus, as he brings together three influential voices in crypto law and policy: Chris Brummer (Georgetown Law Professor and Founder & CEO of Bluprynt), Marco Santori (Chief Legal Officer at Kraken), and Lee Schneider (General Counsel at Ava Labs). In this candid conversation, these industry veterans debate what comes next for digital asset regulation, explore the tensions between innovation and investor protection, and tackle the question of whether Congress can finally deliver comprehensive crypto legislation. From potential SEC enforcement actions to the future of DeFi regulation, this episode offers an insider's view of the challenges and opportunities ahead as crypto enters a new regulatory era.