bitcoin-scaling
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Alpen Labs
Alpen Labs is a Bitcoin infrastructure company building Strata, a zero-knowledge (ZK) validity rollup and bridge that lets people borrow, earn, and transact in dollars directly on Bitcoin - without wrapped tokens or custodians. Founded in 2022 by a team of MIT alumni, the company uses ZK cryptography to bring programmable smart contracts and DeFi-style financial products to Bitcoin while preserving its security and decentralization.
Simanta Gautam
Simanta Gautam is the co-founder and CEO of Alpen Labs, a startup building zero-knowledge infrastructure to make Bitcoin scalable, private, and programmable. An MIT-trained engineer who earlier founded the airport-security computer-vision company Synapse Technology (acquired by Palantir, where he became AI Lead), he now leads a team turning Bitcoin's intentionally limited base layer into rails for global money. The mission traces to a personal detail: founders with roots in Nepal, where roughly a quarter of GDP arrives as remittances, saw firsthand how much money is lost to middlemen.