The guest for this episode of Bitcoin In Asia is Alejandro De La Torre, vice president at Poolin. De La Torre and Poolin have launched taprootactivation.com to improve on the communication and transparency of the Taproot activation process. Bitcoin Magazine’s Aaron van Wirdum covered the initiative here, and in this Interview, De La Torre and host John Riggins explored additional context around it. De La Torre has been in the Bitcoin data and mining space since 2014 when he founded SendChat, later acquired by wallet and data service Blocktrail, where he led business development until the company was acquired by Bitmain. Inside of Bitmain, De La Torre co-founded BTC.com and led its European office during the SegWit upgrade process. Now, back with former BTC.com colleagues at Poolin, De La Torre leads its global business development initiatives. Poolin operates out of Beijing and is currently the second-largest pool in terms of Bitcoin hash power. Their services have expanded over the past year to include facilitating additional financial services products for their miner customers, and they have partnered with BlockFi and Three Arrows Capital, among others, for those expanded services.In addition to discussing taprootactivation.com, De La Torre talked about lessons learned during the SegWit and blocksize debates, Bitcoin upgrade activations and the changing competitive landscape in the Bitcoin mining pool business.
