In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, Atomiq Labs co founder and CEO Sylvie sat down with The Blockopedia’s co founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to talk about leaving banking for crypto, building trustless infrastructure between Bitcoin and other chains, and what it actually takes to earn user trust in a space still fighting its reputation.
Sylvie’s entry into crypto did not follow the usual founder script. Before Atomiq Labs, she worked in banking, management consulting and fintech, often as the right hand to CEOs. That experience, she says, gave her a firsthand view of how complicated traditional finance really is, which made the pitch for decentralized systems land differently when it finally reached her.
She bought her first Bitcoin in 2018 while working at a startup in Southern California, largely nudged by engineer friends who were convinced early. The real turning point came almost five years ago, when she met her future co-founder Adam through a program built to connect potential founders. Adam introduced her to the Bitcoin Lightning Network, and having seen the friction of legacy banking up close, she had what she describes as a small revelation about what the future of finance could look like.
What Atomiq Labs Actually Does
Atomiq Labs builds fully trustless swaps between Bitcoin and other chains, currently live on Solana, Starknet, Botanix and Citrea. Unlike typical bridges that rely on third party validators or multisig setups, Atomiq’s security comes directly from Bitcoin itself. Sylvie explained the logic simply: attacking the Bitcoin network would require billions of dollars in mining infrastructure, making it economically irrational to try. That built in security, rather than borrowed trust from a validator set, is the core of the product.
From Hackathon to Mainnet in Six Months
One milestone Sylvie is genuinely proud of is how quickly Atomiq Labs moved from idea to mainnet. The project started at a Solana hackathon in Berlin, where she and Adam decided almost spontaneously to build together. They won first place for Germany, earned an honorable mention globally, secured a grant from the Solana Foundation, and were live on mainnet within roughly six months, going live around August or September 2023.
Building Trust as an Early Stage Project
For a project handling cross chain value transfer, trust is everything. Sylvie pointed to two pillars that matter most for Atomiq Labs: fully open source code and independent audits. Early visibility from the hackathon win also helped, along with in person demos at Solana events, which she says build a kind of trust that online interaction simply cannot replicate.
User feedback has directly shaped the product too. An early Telegram channel gave the team direct input that led to real interface changes, something she credits for the compliment Atomiq recently received during a Starknet collaboration, where users called the redesigned front end simple enough for non technical crypto users to navigate.
Where the Market Still Falls Short
Sylvie is candid about crypto’s reputation problem. Mention working in crypto to someone outside the industry, she says, and the reaction is still often skepticism, largely because scams, rug pulls and meme coins dominate public perception over legitimate use cases like remittances and stablecoin adoption. She believes the industry needs to break out of its own echo chamber to reach a wider audience.
On real world assets, she is measured rather than hyped. While she sees genuine long term potential, she thinks institutional adoption of tokenized assets like treasury bills is still further away than the current enthusiasm suggests, even as she argues the underlying rails need to be built now regardless.
Advice for Founders
Asked what has helped her most as a founder, Sylvie pointed to her complementary partnership with her technical co-founder Adam. Her advice to future founders was direct: choose a co-founder you will genuinely enjoy working with, since you will likely spend more time with them than almost anyone else in your life. She also recommends a structured co founder questionnaire to surface shared values and working styles before committing.
In a quick round of rapid fire questions, Sylvie named Apple Notes as her essential tool, Telegram as where she finds the best conversations, and bear markets as better for builders than bull markets.
Watch the full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQXobyM-4zg
