Bitcoin SV making moves
I have been swimming many laps in my pool lately. It is so good for mind and body and if I get thrown over the side of a boat I will have a chance to make it to shore. My swimming skills are getting better, just like my knowledge of Bitcoin SV is. What prompted this was my fascination as to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. This saw me attend the Bitcoin SV conference in Toronto in June where I had a tip-off there would be a big announcement. Obviously, that was going to be Craig Wright giving clear evidence that he is Satoshi. He made a strong case and the people I attended with left convinced of his claim.
I met most of the key people involved in the Bitcoin SV project and interviewed Craig Wright. That video will be up in the next couple of days so subscribe here to see it. I will discuss my thoughts on Craig Wright in the coming weeks but I will say this upfront, Bitcoin SV is not all about Craig Wright, people need to wake up to that fact. After the BSV conference, I set off to the Mediterranean to attend a five-day cruise courtesy of Coinsbank. Buzzing from the experience at the Bitcoin SV conference and glowing at being on a boat in the Med full of fellow Crypto fanatics like myself, well, Bitcoin fanatic, I am not a Crypto fanatic, I told many of my Bitcoin friends about being at the conference. When I mentioned Craig Wright the look of hatred sprang to their faces. I really did think I could get thrown overboard. Why is this? Why the hatred. You need to have been in Bitcoin for a while to understand the passions, tribalism and competition present. The stakes are high here and winnings will be counted in the trillions of dollars/ Satoshis. BTW Satoshi or not I liked Craig and had a good laugh with the guy. He is, in my opinion, one of the smarter people in the Bitcoin space. Bitcoiners are all a bit odd and some are the most amazing people I’ve ever met, regardless of which community.
Can you support multiple versions of Bitcoin
If you’re a Bitcoiner it turns out that is not the done thing. Pick one, seems to be the only way, or you just end up with everyone hating you. If you are new to Bitcoin you will be shocked to see the hatred within the various communities. It is forking crazy. Firstly I am a journalist….sort of. I have been writing about Bitcoin for three years, making videos, and podcasts begin next month. Bitcoin has many forks but it is the three main Bitcoins I will cover. So yes I will be covering all the Bitcoins that matter right now. There you go I said it now everyone hates me.
Right now for me, the action is at Bitcoin SV. After a soul-destroying year, making content in a dumping then sideways price market, with little happening in adoption or visible tech, life really sucked. With little support from the community with content or funding, it is great to have real action to get back into. BTC price action and BSV tech action, whoops BSV probably has had more price action. The fact it was delisted by some big exchanges means you probably missed a great opportunity to make big gains. More on that later but yes hatred played its part there.
Apologies to Bitcoin Cash BCH supporters
I feel I have done a disservice to Bitcoin cash. How could I have a site called hardforking and not cover their project!! I was brainwashed to think their coin split was in some way a betrayal to what Bitcoin is. I reached out to Roger Ver recently and was amazed to get an immediate reply. I look forward to making some content with him in the near future. I like Roger and the more I have learned about him the more I see what a huge influence he is in this space both in Bitcoin and Crypto in general. I also like Craig Wright and I assumed he and Roger having worked together at Bitcoin cash may have had some form of friendship. Ah no! Craig called Roger a terrorist this week in a youtube interview. This happened the same day that I was asked if I could help coordinate a debate between the two of them by a large media outlet. That would just be the most amazing debate and I hope it happens.
The attached video is with a super cool guy from coinspice.io It was filmed a couple of months ago but I wanted to post it as he does a good job of summarising the thoughts of the Bitcoin cash community. We have some new people joining the Hardforking team so the hours of footage we have will finally get posted and made into a great documentary series the real Cryptos. Check out the trailer here. It is also a bit embarrassing as I keep referring to coin splits as Hardforks. That’s technically not the case but hey, 99% of you only care about the price so let’s not get too technical.
I was a hardcore bitcoin maximalist. A bitcoin maximalist is a term coined by Daniel Kravitz, a well-known guy in the Bitcoin space and a BSV convert. We spoke at length at the BSV conference and you can also see that video if you subscribe to our channel. You become what your around and I was only around maximalists it seems. I view my medias role as being educational and entertaining. You can get your fix of price action in my series with Venzen Khosan but as the as wider public enter this space my content will also give them a good grounding in the Bitcoin origin story and help people navigate what Bitcoin is. I feel invigorated to make more content now as the emergence of Bitcoin SV, BSV, means there is so much to learn and cover. I like the people I met in this project, they have been incredibly approachable. I spoke with a couple of the engineers at Nchain this week, the day after their quasar upgrade and they were ecstatic over the success.
What is the key difference between Bitcoin BTC and Bitcoin SV
I guess I need to follow the lead of well-known Bitcoin podcaster Peter Mc Cormack. Peter is very upfront on his lack of technical knowledge. This is me doing the same. Like him, I am creating content for the newbies and trying my best to explain highly technical concepts simply. So here we go! Bitcoin SV is the same open-source code as Bitcoin BTC. When Satoshi published his white paper it was clear that Bitcoin would be used as peer to peer electronic cash. No limit would exist on blocksize enabling this to happen over time. The BSV people are saying that Bitcoin, BTC is not true to the white paper and they do have a point. They have just increased the blocksize in what was called Quazar. You could, therefore, say that the main difference is that Bitcoin SV are creating a blockchain with ever-expanding blocksize and they are doing it all on the chain. Bitcoin BTC are developing layer two solutions. The lightning network is a big project at this time. Who will win, time will tell. There are many other differences but I see this as the core difference. It just dawned on me that we have an upcoming defamation case brought by Craig Wright against Peter McCormack for calling him a fraud. Is Peter Mc Cormack really Satoshi and the whole ‘I don’t get the tech thing’ is a massive bluff. This is truly a crazy space to create content in. The defamation case brought by Craig Wright against Roger Ver has been thrown out by a UK judge citing the fact that Ver doesn’t have a large UK following and therefor the case didn’t have grounds to proceed on the defamation front. Craig Wright is also involved in a case with his deceased best friends family, something I discuss with him in the next video.
Where I see the real Bitcoin battle being won and lost
There are many powerful voices in the Bitcoin BTC community who say the blocksize does not need to change. A few want to decrease it for security reasons. Bitcoin could take its place as the replacement for gold and many people would be happy. The vast majority of BTC holders do not give a rats ass about anything other than the price of their holdings. It is surging ahead right now and it may well be the case that what we have now in BTC is as good as it will get with regards to people actually using it as a day to day currency, at least for the foreseeable future. Having met some incredible people at companies like Blockstream I know there will be innovation, amazing innovation in BTC. I have reservations however in BTC winning the one blockchain takes all race. Marketing will play a massive part in deciding which blockchain wins. In my experience Bitcoin is a shambles in this area. I ran headfirst into launching a Bitcoin media company, bad move so far financially for me. I would have done far better financially just buying Bitcoin than creating content about it!! My experience has been an attitude from many that Bitcoin needs no marketing. Well, then how the fuck will it win enough followers to take the first big step of being considered digital gold let alone be used for anything. Lightning adoption isn’t exactly taking off. Who evens knows about it outside of hardcore Bitcoiners. Throw in Bitcoin SV which will claim the store of value attribute but also could have many more offerings and I suspect a much better-coordinated marketing effort and Bitcoin BTC faces real competition in the next couple of years. I think this battle will be decided within 3 years, maybe less. BSV seems to be taking a marketing position that it is the chain for big business and Bitcoin BTC is for more nefarious activities. The digital gold win relies on large institutional if not governmental acceptance and I think BSV will make that play along with both a retail play for people to build consumer solutions and I see their big play being as the institutional-grade blockchain. Most people in the institutional world finally realise a private blockchain offers little. Better solutions exist. There are exceptions of course but I see this as a winner takes all battle of public blockchains in the longer term. Don’t worry you will have multiple blockchains to gamble on for the foreseeable future. I hope to help you understand why more than one Bitcoin could be a good move right now investment-wise.
Bitcoin BTC adoption is happening but people are just sitting on it, they are not using it. My personal feeling is that the real battle here is Bitcoin BTC and its huge head start in the recognition by people who currently hold it potentially being overtaken in the coming few years by a very motivated, funded and talent group working on BSV. I know only too well that Bitcoin BTC has no marketing department. Barry Silbert has produced some ads about Bitcoin being the new gold but the mainstream is still largely in the dark. The winning Bitcoin will be the one with the most adoption and with only 1% adoption at present, this race has only just begun.
Summary
Bitcoin BTC has taken off from its price lows earlier in the year. Little innovation has taken place and I see very minimal retail fomo. I think the price action may well be driven by some very large OTC trades out of China/Hong Kong and the UAE. Retail fomo is likely to happen if new all-time highs are hit. This could well happen this year. Bitcoin BSV has also seen significant price action upwards. The BSV stakeholders from what I have experienced are highly motivated, funded and after all, this is also Bitcoin. This then begs the question that if you are a big believer in Bitcoin why would you not hold BSV also. At a minimum, it makes sense to me that this would be a natural investment and I have said this to my friends who hold Bitcoin BTC and a raft of altcoins. Dump your alts and buy BSV. I am not giving you financial advice, you need to make your own decisions but for me, BSV should be very closely looked at. I will be posting regularly on BSV and any investment I make is likely to be in both BTC and BSV. Ultimately it will be just one of these two and with that in mind, I will be delving deeply into where the best investment of time and money is. Oh, and I will also take a closer look at what the Bitcoin Cash community are doing. Could they make a big move soon?
