CoinGeek Conversations

Legacy financial services are making a mistake not offering crypto, according to Daniel Skowronski, General Manager of Fabriik Exchange.  

 Daniel’s extensive experience working in finance, including stints in senior management at HSBC Hong Kong and Bank of America, has left him concerned about the lack of agility in the banking world. 

 He warns that banks and stock markets will be left behind if they continue to ignore digital currencies. He believes that their reluctance is down to a concern with wealth preservation, saying “I think they are sort of a victim of their own self… they sort of became cocky, they sort of became arrogant.” 

 Daniel explains to Charles Miller on this week’s episode of CoinGeek Conversations that this is one of the reasons why he has turned his back on the industry and is now working on Fabriik Exchange. 

 Fabriik Exchange is a digital marketplace, launching in June, which will allow customers to exchange directly between digital currencies. It will also include a portfolio manager where “newbies” can easily pick and choose which assets they want.  

 Daniel is hopeful that the service will “bridge the gap between the old world and the new world, but more importantly, create wider access to everybody.” 

 Access is one of the core values that underpins Fabriik and all of its products. Daniel believes that access is also the USP for digital currencies, praising their ability to give “access across a number of different categories whether it’s the rich, it’s the poor.” 

 Fabriik Exchange will facilitate that access by allowing users to directly exchange coins, saving transaction fees, and through the company’s ‘everything digital’ mindset. 

 Fabriik aims to disrupt the status quo by creating a safe and open financial ecosystem that will allow people across the globe to thrive. The firm believes that our financial system is broken, as one quarter of the world’s population (1.7 billion people) cannot access it. 

 Regulation will be essential for this plan. Daniel says that Fabriik has been “built first and foremost around regulation because we’re starting to see bigger players, institutions, real money starting to flow in this industry.” 

 The company are also keen to focus on a younger market. Daniel tells Charles a story about a twenty-five-year-old investor who, when creating a portfolio, shunned traditional stocks and bonds and invested in five cryptocurrencies instead. Daniel explained that this experience showed him that there “is a new way of thinking, a new way of investing.” It is this millennial mindset that Fabriik intends to capitalise on. 

 The Exchange will be launching from the US first and then rolling out to the European Union. After that, they plan to slowly move out into Asia, but Daniel stresses that no customer will be left out, saying “we don’t have to actually be there to be able to accept them.” 

 Daniel also talked about his interest in AI technology. Daniel explains that his work for both companies is driven by “the idea of this open access to billions of people around the planet that was unavailable before.” 

What do Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin have in common? Aside from great success, these tech innovators pursued higher education while setting-up a business. Much like Robin Kohze, CEO of Vaionex - a company that specializes in solutions at the nexus of data science and blockchain technology -who is currently completing a PhD in genetics at Cambridge University.

On this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, Robin tells Charles Miller that while working on his academic and entrepreneurial activities simultaneously is a challenge, it keeps his ambitions aligned: “I can always transfer the experience from one field to the next.” For instance, Robin studies pattern recognition in genomics, a skill which he hopes to bring to the Bitcoin economy. “When you're in genetics, you realize that it's a very complex structure that constantly interacts and changes,” he says. “In the Bitcoin world we have a real opportunity to fine tune, optimize our worldwide economic system.”

Robin also founded the Cambridge University Metanet Society which seeks to educate about and promote the powerful capabilities of Bitcoin SV. “What the Metanet society is about and what Vaionexis about,” Robin explains “is creating a funnel to bring developers, non-developers and future developers into the space, creating their own applications and reimagining.”

Currently, Vaionex operates five platforms— Satolearn, Raspora, Metashard, ApiAndMe, and Blockcodes. Charles jumped at the opportunity to complete Satolearn’s wallet workshop. “What was innovative about it,” Charles says “is that you actually interact with blockchain during the workshop itself and real things happen on the blockchain.” It’s a feature that’s quite unique from other learning platforms.  

In the interview, Robin was happy to announce that Vaionex is working with the University of Exeter to integrate the Satolearn platform within its FinTech MSc program.  The workshop, as he explains will teach “students how to write applications with the BSV Blockchain ...some will be asked to create an actual product to be submitted as a Master’s thesis.”

In addition to offering training with Satolearn, Robin has relaunched the Bitcoin SV Developers website which will provide anyone with the opportunity to connect with builders in the ecosystem. It’s “a kind of dictionary of all the developers in the [BSV] ecosystem all linked to their respective tools and their companies ...I think that would be a uniting presence in the work that everyone can be led to.”

Vaionex aims to someday be a globally recognized, best in class blockchain service provider. Robin believes it will take group effort, doing less talk and more work to achieve this. “I think we are fighting for our spot in the next generation of technology and that's what is often referred to as proof of work in the ecosystem, that everyone just shows what they can do without talking too much about what they will do soon in the future. It's more about actually doing it and offerings of value that enriches everyone’s experience.”

Tuvalu may be the fourth smallest country in the world, but it hasn’t let that get in the way of its giant ambitions. The island nation announced in December 2020 that it plans to create the world’s first national digital ledger, using Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain technology.

The plan is to migrate to a completely digital infrastructure, with Tuvalu choosing BSV for its scalability and efficiency. The news has already made waves in the BSV ecosystem but could it go further and show the world what can be done on BSV?

One of those behind the project, Brendan Lee, CEO of Elas Digital, certainly thinks so. He told Charles Miller, on this week’s episode of CoinGeek Conversations that he is confident the project will be an “eye-opener to other people who are looking in, at just what’s possible when you use Bitcoin in this way.”

He believes that the scheme is “a fabulous opportunity… to demonstrate what’s possible” and hopes that the success of the project will encourage other nations, even the US, to follow suit.

The digital transformation is being led by a partnership between Elas Digital, developers nChain, BSV consultancy firm Faiā and the Tuvaluan government.

Brendan first heard about the project after seeing an article on Medium by his former colleague, the MD of Faiā, George Siosi Samuels. He was intrigued and reached out to George who was keen to involve him.

The three companies all bring unique strengths to the project. Elas has been integral in designing the initial concept, nChain brings developmental expertise and Craig Wright’s Metanet while Faiā’s community-driven approach will ensure the project’s utility for the people of Tuvalu. 

They aim to build “the highest velocity financial and administrative service in the world.” This will include the digitisation of government documents and the introduction of a tokenised cash system which will sit on top of the Tuvaluan currency (the Australian dollar). 

The digitisation of government records will make it easier for the government to access and verify the source of data. And Brendan believes that a digital cash system will also prove extremely valuable for Tuvalu, a country which has “a very difficult time actually keeping enough cash in circulation for the economy to function properly.”

Brendan explains that his understanding of the islands’ needs is derived from public consultations and ongoing dialogue with government ministers.

He has also been able to lean on George’s Tuvaluan heritage. George’s mother was born on one of the islands. This has allowed the team to approach the project with a better understanding of what’s appropriate and how the ledger will fit into islanders’ lives.

This has been vital as one of Brendan’s core goals is eventually “handing it over to them and allowing them to use it to build a record of their own culture and heritage.”

At the moment, Brendan is focusing on a few starter projects, including a portal for citizenship applications which he hopes to have up and running by the end of the year. After that, he is confident that the process will speed up and prove to the world just what’s possible on BSV. 

It’s almost exactly ten years since Satoshi Nakamoto made his last regular appearance online – on April 23 2011. After that, there was only one more message, of just five words, a few years later. To commemorate the occasion, on this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, Charles Miller is joined by the man behind the pseudonym, Dr. Craig S. Wright.

Between managing a full-time job at the Sydney accountancy firm BDO, finishing multiple degrees and traveling from the city to his farm, Craig found the time to write emails and post as Satoshi Nakamoto on the Cryptography Mailing List where he linked to the Bitcoin White Paper – allowing the mailing list members to be first to see it.

Craig had doubts about Bitcoin even after its release, he admits: “I was rather uncertain whether it would work or not, to tell you the truth, I was not confident at all.”     

The first and noteworthy reaction to the White Paper came from mailing list contributor James A. Donald who said that the problem with the idea was that Bitcoin would never be able to scale – a point that Craig has been busy refuting ever since.

In trying to work out who was behind the Satoshi identity - all the more mysterious after he ‘disappeared’ in 2011 - several discussions focused on the way Satoshi writes. Charles points out that ‘Craig as Satoshi’ tends to write calmly. In contrast, he quotes Craig in a 2010 post writing as himself, in which he sounds decidedly agitated. Craig explains that he has many different writing styles appropriate for different contexts. 

The “Satoshi anoraks,” as Charles calls the amateur online investigators, have made all sorts of analyses - from the use of double spacing to the times of day or night that Satoshi posted.

One observation was about Mike Hearn’s holiday greeting to Satoshi in which he said: “Happy Christmas Satoshi, assuming you celebrate it.” Satoshi didn’t respond to Hearn’s greeting. Charles asked whether that was deliberate or just an omission: “I don't hide that I'm Christian anymore, but I used to,” Craig said. “I found that it was rather problematic because of the attitudes of people in Silicon Valley in particular.”

A conversation with Craig wouldn’t be complete without a mention of books, in this case, audio books. The two exchanged some laughs as Craig describes how his wife would have to put up with the sound of his audio books being played at high speed as they were in bed at night. “I live on audiobooks - the wife says it sounds like a bunch of chipmunks.”

Join Charles Miller on this episode of CoinGeek Conversations to learn more about ‘the rise and fall of Satoshi Nakamoto’.

The Chinese government is “open” to blockchain technology says Lise Li, China Manager of the Bitcoin Association.

Lise says that the government’s attitude is down to a recognition that it needs new technology to digitise and “build a more efficient and more trustworthy …society.” She also credited the power of the internet industry and the “large group of experienced developers and engineers” that China boasts. 

Forty of those talented developers gathered last week on the beautiful island of Dong’ao, in Guangdong province, to attend the Bitcoin Association’s BSV Bootcamp. They were there to learn more about BSV and blockchain technology, attending workshops and presentations on a range of subjects including BSV wallets and how to use script.

 Speaking on this week’s episode of CoinGeek Conversations, Lise told CoinGeek’s Charles Miller that it was not only BSVers at the bootcamp as she had invited 20 developers who were not involved in BSV companies.  She said she was “happy to see that the BSV ecosystem is getting more diversified.” 

 Charles also caught up with bootcamp attendee Gu Lu, founder of SatoPlay – a game platform built on the BSV blockchain. Gu has recently developed a new game called Overshoot which he was proud to tell Charles is the first 3D shooter game on BSV.

 The game utilises a smart contract solution and allows users to earn NFTs and trade with each other. Players can “collect ten cards for each game. If they collect four of them, they can convert them into a set of play cards, which there are only 50 cards around the world and no more.” 

 Gu explains that the conference is a great opportunity to meet developers outside the BSV world so he can “introduce the game to other people, maybe outside the industry, maybe outside the blockchain.”

 He’s also keen to learn from developers working on other chains, saying “it’s great to talk to them and find the difference between different blockchains, find maybe something is better on that chain, maybe something is better on BSV.”

 Gu’s collaborative attitude is a reflection of the ethos of the bootcamp. The attendees eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together and are encouraged to learn from each other. Lise explains that the reason she chose Dong’ao Island was because she wanted her guests to relax “and also be more dedicated to the event and to learn something.”

 One attendee who is keen to learn is Amanda Li, a postgraduate student at Renmin University in China and a new entrant to the BSV ecosystem. Amanda is majoring in the theory of blockchain and believes that the technology can “achieve a more secure and more people centralized society.” 

 Amanda first heard about BSV through Lise Li who was giving a lecture at her university. She was immediately enthralled and believes that wider use of the BSV blockchain has the potential to “change the world.” 

 Even outside the world of BSV, there are signs that the Chinese government is warming to cryptocurrencies with the deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China recently labelling bitcoin an “investment alternative.” Watch this space. 

Experienced cryptocurrency journalist and self-confessed Bitcoin sceptic, Amy Castor puts matters into perspective when it comes to the valuation of BTC. The spike in price in recent months has everyone, both crypto and non-crypto people, buzzing. “There’s a big rush of people trying to make money in the space,” Amy says. “People are kind of running in, in the hopes that it'll go up higher.”

The price of BTC of late is around sixty thousand dollars, a whopping increase from its previous ten thousand dollars back in September. But Amy says BTC has no intrinsic value. She views it mainly as a speculative investment and predicts a repeat of what happened during the 2017 crypto price crash: “this is a bubble, the bubble is going to pop” she says. “It's like a game of musical chairs. And there aren’t going to be a lot of places to sit when the music stops.”

In this week’s CoinGeek Conversation, Amy tells Charles Miller that she was a marketing writer who eventually took the initiative to learn about crypto before pivoting into her current profession. Being within cycling distance of lectures at MIT helped: “sometimes Gary Gensler would teach courses at MIT Sloan and I would just go in and sit in the classes, and the other things that they had going on there as a way to get up to speed.”

Today, Amy’s numerous articles on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies can be seen on The Block, Bitcoin Magazine, Coindesk, Forbes and Decrypt—all of which gave her exposure, but to her, writing on her blog has proven to be a better fit.

“There was a time when I was writing for different crypto publications and at some point I just sort of gave up on that and just said, I'm just going to write what I want to write for my blog. It seems like when I was just mostly true to myself is when my stories would get the most attention.”  

Amy is as doubtful about non-fungible tokens - NFTs - as she is about the price of BTC. She admits NFTs have brought excitement to cryptocurrency in recent months, noting that more and more people are reading about them and buying crypto to be able to join the NFT bandwagon. However she sees no real value in NFTs themselves. As she points out, “you could have an entity that points to nothing.”

It’s unclear whether NFTs will remain relevant for long. She believes they will eventually hit a stumbling block. “I think the problem with it is they're going to run up against certain regulations.”

Amy looks to some NFT purchases as contentious - for instance, the electronic mosaic by artist Beeple that sold for sixty nine millions dollars. Amy was quick to suggest that it’s crypto insiders who buy these types of NFTs and don’t seem to care about the artwork itself.  

Also known for her extensive research and articles on Tether, Amy didn’t shy away from disclosing her doubts on the blockchain based cryptocurrency: "what is backing Tether in terms of actual dollars?” 

As to the future of cryptocurrency and where it’s heading, Amy says “regulations will eventually catch up to everything that's going on at the moment.” She believes Bitcoin will still be around, but it won’t have much value, as we see it today.

Top online gaming lawyer Jeff Ifrah says that US regulators are unlikely to have a problem with tokens that are “offered on the game to extend play, to skip levels, to gain certain powers.” 

The news will be welcomed by game developers keen to monetize through the integration of cryptocurrency wallets and blockchain technology. 

Jeff is also optimistic about the recent flurry of activity around NFTs. He said “it’s a very exciting space right now and I really hope the regulators don’t ruin it.” 

He singled out NBA Top Shots, saying that the endorsement of the NBA and stars like LeBron James could have a positive influence on regulators. 

However, Jeff, speaking on this week’s episode of CoinGeek Conversations, did stress that in the US, regulation varies depending on what state you’re in. He explained to Becky Liggero that it ultimately comes down to state regulators who have “to decide whether or not he or she is going to permit an operator to accept crypto.” 

He pointed out that when it comes to using cryptocurrency for gambling in America, “there’s no prohibition that’s written into the law about it. It’s just that the regulators haven’t approved it as a form of alternative payment.” 

This is because regulators are more concerned with onboarding payment systems like banks and credit companies first. But Jeff believes that regulators will address cryptocurrency, they just want to get traditional payments sorted first. 

 Lots of states in the US require crypto companies to obtain a money transmitter license to operate. Jeff warns, “if you were to accept some sort of payment processing that was not licensed, you would not just be, as a processor, in trouble with the regulator, but you’d be putting the entire license of the operator at risk as well for doing business with an unlicensed supplier.” 

 On the use of blockchain, Jeff tells Becky that regulators are likely to need only the lowest level of licensing. They will want to know who owns the technology, but nothing more complicated than that. 

This will be music to the ears of companies using blockchain to develop new gaming systems that are ‘provably fair’, in a way that is transparent to all users. Once a casino can prove it’s trustworthy, users are much more likely to game there. 

It’s not all plain sailing for the use of digital currency in iGaming though as Jeff warns that any tokens “offered to an entire market through an ICO… that’s going to be a problem.” 

He also cautions that even if a site is being operated from a country where Bitcoin and online gambling are totally legal and properly licensed, if you allow “someone who’s physically located in the United States to access your technology, you have opened yourself up to risk.” 

Overall, regulators in the US have been slow to take account of cryptocurrency in the online gaming space. But Jeff is hopeful that an injection of cash could be the answer. He believes that “state regulators need to set aside money from their licensing regime” to clarify the rules and enforce regulation where necessary. 

Calling on traders and non-traders who want to start trading! TDXP - short for ‘truly distributed exchange protocol’ -  is a trading platform that is simple and easy to use. All you need is a Bitcoin SV wallet and you can start buying and selling cryptocurrencies, commodities, stocks, indices and foreign exchange. 

So what makes TDXP different from other trading platforms? That’s what Charles Miller finds out as he speaks to TDXP CEO, Armen Azatyan in Russia and TDXP’s marketing manager, Nick Numas in the UK, in this week’s CoinGeek Conversations. 

Armen and Nick have teamed up in pursuit of a shared goal— to expand TDXP to a larger market. They come from diverse backgrounds, each offering a distinct set of skills set. Armen has primarily worked in information technology entrepreneurship while Nick, a dance instructor with a degree in banking is focused on engaging the community.

“Going into this environment ‘the big business’ has a very serious directive,” Nick says. “I like this team and the pressure is on.” Having joined TDXP recently, Nick hasn’t been to Russia yet nor can he speak the language, but he looks forward to visiting Armen and the team one day. As marketing manager Nick is focused on engaging with communities in countries like Japan and China.  

One of TDXP’s strengths is that it runs on BSV technology, Armen points out: “to trade in tiny amounts is BSV’s ability and we are grateful for the tech we can utilize.” 

TDXP has already been on a journey before arriving at the BSV solution. The company started out on Ethereum. But with Ethereum, Armen says, the fees are still high. 

On top of that, Armen points out, TDXP has distinct arrangements for its liquidity mechanism. “Key difference with TDXP is that Ethereum is slow, they are doing spot trading. In our case, the liquidity pool is mutual for all assets and all categories, thanks to the nature of CFO or contract-for-difference model.”

What’s next for TDXP? Armen notes they’ve got big plans in the pipeline. “We will be launching a sophisticated referral program in the near future and we plan to share a significant portion of the revenue with the community and its partners.” 

Flashing a nice big smile, Nick beefs up support for the company saying, “I love this business because of their approach… trying to clean up the space, that’s what I stand for. And Bitcoin can do that.”   

There’s no stopping TDXP as it plows ahead with its plans to expand to communities outside its network. Aside from having a product Armen describes as “the nicest user experience you’ll ever get with trading,” they have a new team member in Nick - whose energy and enthusiasm Armen says are rare skills advantageous to a growing company.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are like Bitcoin marmite - you either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Some, like digital artist Beeple, who recently sold an NFT at auction for $69.3 million, are understandably enamoured. Others, such as crypto sceptic David Gerard, have serious doubts. 

Josh Petty, co-founder of Twetch, has seen the trend first-hand. He recently launched NFTs for 101 Twetch hats which sold out in under a minute. The hats are embroidered with an individual number and come with a digital trading card to represent them. 

 “The Twetch hat is a very special type of digital item because it actually comes with the physical peg,” Josh says. The hats, which first sold for $100 to $420 and are currently trading at $2000, are just the first step for Josh. He says, “the hat is a very simple, primitive example of the direction we’re going where the property that you have in real life or the digital life, those things are interacting.” 

 On this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, David Gerard admitted he was impressed by Josh’s initiative but said he still had concerns about NFTs: “a lot of my objections to NFTs are not so much the future possibilities of what you might be able to do with this construct as with a lot of the grim realities we’re seeing here in March 2021.” 

 David is unimpressed by customer service issues on NFT markets run by Ethereum. He says there are “enormous amounts of problems that they really haven’t done a lot of homework to work out how to sort out. Just customer service issues like you sold me an NFT that wasn’t minted by the artist and I feel ripped off.” 

 Because an NFT doesn’t require people to own the copyright of something to mint tokens for it, it’s a market ripe for fraud. And there are other possible problems too: Josh admits that “there’s even been cases where people are going to an Ethereum based NFT website, they buy this piece of art, the artist later just goes to the website and uploads a different image of a rug.” 

 But Josh explains that it’s easier to build verification into the blockchain on Bitcoin SV and show where digital property is minted. On Twetch “somebody can actually prove they own it, and they can prove it’s the thing that they have, that digital item and it’s built into their ownership and we’re solving that problem where no one else really is.” 

 Josh also criticises Ethereum’s high minting fees, saying, “the price of purchasing an NFT - the minimum is so high on Ethereum that small artists that want to sell something for twenty dollars or less aren’t going to be able to have any income from this at all. On BSV we can do this.”  BSV’s low transaction fees and capacity for scaling mean that budding digital creators can offer tokens at a higher margin. On Ethereum, new entrants are hit with high transaction fees and unexpected marketplace costs, restricting their earning potential.

 Josh believes BSV offers accessibility to young artists. He plans to “build a better platform that actually empowers people to be able to sell and trade things and make actual money from it.” 

 The conversation was more of a meeting of the minds than Josh and David expected. David agreed that “there’s a world in which NFTs are this sort of fun, interesting thing you can play with and that’s good.”

RelayX’s new product, the RelayX Exchange, billed as Bitcoin’s first decentralized exchange, last week started offering trades in a first token, the Shua (created by and named after Bitcoin SV developer Joshua Henslee). 

But it’s non-fungible tokens, NFTs, that have been in the news and RelayX founder Jack Liu is bullish about their prospects – though not just for speculators:  

“It’s not about the token going higher and higher in price,” Jack asserts. “It’s about an immutable way to do provenance - and track and move and trade an item, that I think can be super-powerful for all the items in the planet.”

The possibilities for NFTs are almost unimaginable: “there are a billion physical things but only a few so far have become NFTs,” he points out. “At scale every single piece of matter in this entire world, as Craig Wright mentions, even a grain of sand, could be represented on the blockchain”

Jack was speaking on this week’s episode of Coingeek Conversations. He admitted that he hasn’t been a customer for the video clip NFTs offered by NBA Top Shot, even though he’s a big basketball fan. But he didn’t want anyone to think that was through any lack of confidence in their potential:

“I’m not a skeptic. Personally I’m fascinated about NFTs.” He just doesn’t happen to be a collector: “I have great appreciation for art and artists but owning a piece of the work is not my focus.” He says RelayX will be creating a market place for NFTs soon.

A whole new perspective on NFTs arose when host Charles Miller suggested that an NFT might be a long-term alternative to receiving socks as a Christmas present. Hypothetically, Jack explained that somewhere down the line, Charles might be able to sell the NFT which was a representative token for the socks. Or that the NFT might entitle the holder to replace the socks with new ones over time – more of like a subscription than a one-off gift.

But returning to fungible tokens, at the moment, there is just one, the Shua, available on the RelayX decentralized exchange (DEX). “We thought it was a good token to surface, it has a lot of users and it runs on both the Run network and the Money Button network,” Jack explained. “It’s a good way to test out the DEX before we unleash more tokens.”

Jack said his team will be putting out more tokens on RelayX and Run, exceeding the number already available on MoneyButton. He predicts that there will be an explosion of tokens that are exchangeable, useable and redeemable.

Jack’s investment arm, Output Capital, is supporting Haste, the BSV gaming app. The decision to invest, Jack says, was due to the healthy number of transactions the startup already had. “It’s kind of obvious that this kind of app and platform has so many users, it’s so easy to use and that you can associate transactional blockchain with rewards.”

As for the issuance of their own tokens by Haste and others, Jack explains, it’s a new way to incentivize. “Gamers get to earn the token and developers who make new games on the platform get to earn from Haste.”

Jack wants the community to promote the platform with the use of tokens. “Tokens help bootstrap a network effect in the same way that doing Facebook and Twitter ads might have done ...but they cost a lot of money and require VC fundraising.”

Jack mentions Handcash and his hopes that it would eventually support Haste and other tokens. Ideally, he wants the two wallets to have interoperability. “My goal is to grow Bitcoin and not just grow Relay and weaken the whole ecosystem. We grow together.”