George Harrap - Co-founder of Step Finance Ep #45
George Harrap is the co-founder of Step Finance, a platform for Solana DeFi users to track their portfolio performance. Before Step, George was the CEO of Bitspark.
00:29 About George Harrap and mining 05:03 From Bitcoin to DeFi, how can crypto solve currency issues in the world 18:27 STEP Finance’s vision for the next five years 21:20 Censorship resistance and layer 1s 27:11 Hackathon: what would you like to see created? 30:30 Thoughts on Rust and why it was the better choice for Solana 38:08 Why you can’t innovate in the traditional financial system
DISCLAIMER The information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.
The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.
The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
George Harrap - Co-founder of Step Finance Ep #45
Subscribe & Listen
More from Validated
OUT OF SCOPE Ep. 2: Anything But Crypto with David Hoffman
In this episode, Austin and Tori join David Hoffman (Bankless) to talk about "anything but crypto." Their conversation spans longevity and mind-uploading, the challenges of changing opinions in public, and how modern media incentives distort nuanced ideas. They also discuss social media, the future of long-form content, AI risk and alignment, what it means to “win” the AI race, regulatory uncertainty, and ... yes, David's ideas around fitness. 00:00 - Welcome and intro 01:46 - How Do You Want to Live? 06:17 - Changing Your Mind as a Public Figure 09:35 - Media Distortion Effects 14:34 - Quality of Content vs Virality 16:33 - Yudkowsky and AI Doom 24:58 - Base Models' Values 27:55 - China and AI's Moral Core 30:01 - What Winning the AI Race Means 36:46 - Why CLARITY Stalled 41:47 - Hypertrophy and Longevity 44:23 - Conclusion Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
OUT OF SCOPE, Ep. 1: Hot Takes Roundtable with Tori Pastore (Soup) and Austin Campbell (Zero Knowledge)
And now for something (almost) completely different. Welcome to Out of Scope, a new sub-series where Austin and Tori Pastore (aka Birb Bernake) riff with guests on hot takes from the frontiers of tech, finance, policy, and whatever else is the flavor of the week In this debut episode, they sit down with Austin Campbell to discuss... quite a few things: running stablecoin reserves, repealing the 17th Amendment, why banks resemble cartels, insider trading, market structure, why regulators should be paid more and held to higher standards, modernizing the BSA, and—most importantly—a definitive ranking of video conferencing tools. 00:00 - Introducing Tori 01:24 - Chinese Peptides Explained 02:45 - GLP 1 Hype Cycle 05:40 - Peptides and Food Science 10:49 - Enter Austin Campbell 16:11- Stablecoin Reserve Rules 20:35 - Gold Doom Scenarios 22:59 - Banks' Payment Monopoly 34:38 - AI Lobbying and EA critiques 38:20 - Prediction Markets Incentives 43:59 - Fixing Regulator Accountability 47:39 - Prediction Markets 48:47 - Market Manipulation Debate 59:54 - Perps Versus Futures 01:02:51 - Assassination Markets Debate 01:06:21 - Austin's Magic Wand Reforms 01:10:40 - Blooper Reel Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Why Crypto Fails without Privacy with Mert Mumtaz (Helius)
In this episode, Austin chats with Mert about why privacy is becoming essential for crypto and on-chain finance. They discuss how ZK-based privacy works via shielded pools, commitments, proofs, and nullifiers, contrasting it with Monero’s probabilistic obfuscation. Mert explains Zcash’s renewed adoption through improved usability, macro and regulatory shifts, and fairer historical distribution. He argues privacy layers fail when they lack tangible benefits, and outlines a new fully on-chain, composable, atomic privacy protocol for Solana built with Light Protocol’s compression approach, including permissionless and enterprise “zones” with configurable compliance features and reduced MEV via encrypted swaps. 00:00 - Why Privacy Matters 03:05 - Zcash And ZK Origins 06:26 - How Shielded Pools Work 09:56 - Why Zcash Broke Out 15:52 - Why Privacy Layers Fail 19:47 - Solana Privacy Protocol 22:57 - Composability Breakthrough 25:51 - Go-To-Market Plan 30:50 - Compliance And Zones 32:40 - Onchain Versus Off Chain 34:58 - Zcash And Solana’s Future 40:29 - Bitcoin Privacy And Quantum 43:48 - Closing And Where To Find Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.