CoinGeek Conversations

Entrepreneurs Alyna, Jonathan and Dimitar found new and clever ways to improve the way people work, eat and conduct business. While all come from different backgrounds, together they share a common vision: using blockchain technology to leverage their business platform. 

Pakistani entrepreneur Alyna Butt wants to revamp the overall work experience through Squadbond, an all-in-one workplace platform similar to a productivity management software, but with an added feature: a token reward system.

While productivity management tools help with efficiency, they lack the ability to reward workers for their achievements. As Alyna points out, employees want to be recognized for the work that they do. With Squadbond, she says “people can own their performance.” 

As she tells Charles Miller on this episode of CoinGeek Conversations, the platform will includes a feature that would allow employers to track a worker’s milestone achievements and offer them rewards for a job well done. “The tokens are highly-customizable,” she says. “They [employers] can attach a monetary value to it or they could give a gift card or …give out equity.”   

Having been on both sides of the spectrum, as an employer and an employee, Alyna believes that there is a disconnect between the two. According to her, companies spend about £2,600 a year on every employee to have access to productivity management software - only to realize that employees are challenged by having to use them. In turn, she says issues like improving retention and employee engagement remain unresolved. Alyna believes that an incentive system is a simple solution that would help connect employer and employee. 

From bridging the gap in the workplace to connecting food producers to consumers. Gud Italia, an international ‘farm to fork’ marketplace is the brainchild of Jonathan Silvestri, an Englishman with an Italian father who worked as a chef in the UK. Having been exposed to the restaurant business at a young age, Jonathan knew that the high demands of the industry were not for him. He then took on several careers: as a food journalist, an actor and a civil servant in the UK. 

It wasn’t until after moving to Italy fifteen years ago that he found his way back to the food industry. He met with some of the country’s artisan food producers and immersed himself in their stories, learning about the history of Italian food production. He later realized that there is a missed opportunity in the distribution of Italian goods to the UK. As he explained, artisan producers in Italy have a difficult time getting their products out to the UK. “The quantities required of them, it's too much, it's too heavy, they have other barriers, language barriers, logistical barriers, marketing costs, all those kinds of things so they often avoid selling to the UK altogether,” he says. 

With Gud Italia, he aims to bring Italy’s artisan food products to the UK while utilizing blockchain to timestamp a product’s journey from production to destination, as well as the delivery timeline and temperature in which it was stored. As Jonathan points out, the system will not only benefit consumers by providing knowledge on their food’s history but it will also offer farmers and producers a chance to be known, be exposed and to build their brands. 

From food to real estate. Dimitar Hadzhiradev wants to build trust between landlords and realtors through blockchain. Dimitri, a landlord himself, gave an account of his unpleasant experience with property managers while trying to rent out his property from overseas. As he explains, “it's always a pain to find a trusted partner who will manage my property. Of course you can go the traditional way to an agency, but agencies are inefficient.”

With Sprooce, he says all transactions

Ever wondered how books get published? It’s not an easy process says Arsim Shillova, co-founder and CEO of Libraro, a platform that will allow the general public to have access to unpublished books – and help publishers decide which to support. Arsim, an author himself, was disheartened after seeing first-hand what it takes to get a book published. 

“I actually wrote a book and decided to try and get it published through the traditional way of sending it to a literary agent and to my disappointment, I never got a response,” he recounts.Out of curiosity, he decided to visit the publishing company to get a better understanding of the process. 

As he tells Charles Miller on the latest episode of CoinGeek Conversations, “when I entered this office, I realized why I never got a response, because the office was full of manuscripts. Physically it was impossible to read that many. But technology should be able to solve this problem.”

Arsim says that authors like him stop writing after experiencing rejection through the traditional process. With Libraro, he wants to give writers an opportunity to get their work out to the public. As he explains, Libraro allows authors to write from scratch or upload their content onto the platform. Artificial intelligence will then provide a synopsis of the manuscript as well as offer suggestions for possible improvements. Once the content goes live, readers can access the author’s work with an option for both parties to engage with one another. “It's almost like another social community platform,” he says.    

The platform utilizes blockchain in such a way that content on Libraro is recorded on the ledger: it is immutable and offers a layer of protection: “intellectual property rights are something of a concern to everyone out there who writes something,” he says. “We will use blockchain to timestamp the manuscript, so we know that there is a digital record and it sits in blockchain with your credentials.”

Libaro is currently in talks with the London Writers’ Salon, a writers’ group with twenty-thousand members. “The idea is we want to channel these writers to our platform,” Arsim says. 

From books to sports. Next up, Charles speaks to James Hart, Founder and CEO of Rumblebox, a platform that makes use of NFTs to fund new sports leagues and events. As James explains, sports fans will be allowed to crowdfund through Rumblebox in exchange for benefits such as tickets, VIP access to the athletes, merchandise and monetary rewards.

James says their plan is to target the Gen Z. To start with, they intend to focus on emerging sports such as esports and YouTube boxing: “the younger fans that are more NFT-friendly, are more likely to have completely different tastes and in the way that they consume sports, for example, they like esports way more than football, and in some countries they like YouTube boxing over traditional boxing”.

Part of Rumblebox’s strategy is to partner with an athlete or influencer and to leverage their audience by having these personalities act as endorsers of the new sports league or event. As James explains, Rumblebox will work similarly to NBA Top Shots, a popular NFT marketplace that allows users to trade on the platform regardless of their knowledge of the technology behind it. Just like NBA Top Shots, which has a million users, Rumblebox will price its products in US dollars. 

According to James, their objective is to create new sports franchises or sports leagues that will bring long term value: “the more profitable and more organic growth that they [athletes and influencers] get for the fan base for those leagues and events, the more valuable a season ticket or a VIP access pass is going to be.”

Watch Arsim and James talk

Solving lack of financial inclusion in Africa with Wleepay 

Two-thirds of the African population don’t have access to traditional financial services, says Wleepay founder and CEO Lionel Bernard. Because of this, he started Wleepay, a company that offers mobile financial services to the unbanked in Africa. “The word Wlee is used by certain tribes on the west coast of Africa, it literally means money,” Lionel says. 

Wleepay is currently available in his home country of Liberia and will soon expand to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast. According to Lionel, banks in Africa are scarce and target only high-end customers, leaving the average person with low income to the unbanked population. 

Wleepay will address the lack of financial inclusion in Africa by offering its potential customers some attractive features. “Our fees are way lower than competitors. In some cases, our competitors are charging twenty percent in transaction fees.  We're charging between two and five percent,” he explains. “The other thing we're providing is better customer service, which is something you can't get with others. We also provide a crypto wallet.” The mobile financial service company also plans to onboard small businesses such as street vendors and taxi drivers onto the platform to accept payment through Wleepay’s QR code.  

Lionel left his software engineering career in the United States to pursue entrepreneurship in Libera. As he tells Charles Miller on this episode of CoinGeek Conversations, Wleepay allowed him to pursue entrepreneurship whilst also making a social impact. “The entrepreneur in me is eager to leverage this opportunity because I see the problems that exist and I believe that we can provide a better service to the unbanked in that part of the world. The social impact component of all of this is that a lot of unbanked folks that live in rural areas especially simply don't have an alternative. They're being taken advantage of in terms of pricing, in terms of quality of service, in terms of lack of better financial services that allow them to transact across borders,” he asserts.

Repolify: creating effective communication between government and society 

Also speaking to Charles on the show is ‌Artur Lucyk, co-founder and CEO of Repolify, a platform that also aims to solve a social problem, this time, in the democratic system of government. “Repolify is a blockchain-based platform that will engage citizens in the political process,” Artur says. “It is designed to revitalize democracy and provide people with updates on the political process or political decisions on a national and local level.” 

The platform allows users to see updates on existing laws, new and pending bills, as well as other developments in government pertaining to their topic of choice. A user can choose between topics like the environment, social welfare and taxation to receive updates on, after which, users are allowed to comment or give feedback on a specific issue. Additionally, users can access names of politicians in charge of government projects, which in turn can help voters make informative choices come election day.

Artur was keen to point out that Repolify aims to offer quality content. “We will have journalists and policy professionals supervise and oversee the quality of content and kind of the level of engagement, make sure this really works and provides value,” he asserts.  

The platform will also use artificial intelligence to simplify and compress lengthy government documents for its users. “What we are trying to achieve is more simplicity, more understanding, and more awareness into what's going on.”

Artur, a lawyer by profession, had his share of experience protesting against the government in his home country Poland. He says there isn’t enough understanding of government policies within the country. With Repoli

As the world enters into the Web3 era, entrepreneurs are getting more creative, finding new ways to cater to the young generation with advanced technologies such as blockchain. A prime example is the startup founders at Block Dojo, the 12-week London incubator course where businesses are developed and pitched to potential investors. 

Block Dojo participant Lena Rantsevich describes her platform as the new CV and the new standard for the future of work. “Reputy.io is a soul-bound talent wallet that helps people better express themselves and find better jobs and faster,” she says. 

Soul-bound, a term coined by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin means a token containing personal information that is validated. “It could be your medical history or driving history, anything that goes into your digital ID or digital passport,” Lena explains. 

Reputy.io uses the Bitcoin SV blockchain to store information such as photos or videos that showcase an individual’s skill set. A feature on the app allows for verification of a skill or talent performed in front of an audience. As Lena explains, every “entry goes into a wallet, there is no scoring, no assessment, it's not traumatic unlike other reviews platforms.” 

For jobseekers, the app is free, with an option to pay for premium access. Similar to LinkedIn, users will receive notifications when a new vacancy with a matching skill set appears. As for employers, a monthly fee offers the opportunity to search for talents that would best suit their needs. Lena also mentions an embedded marketplace on the platform that will provide users access to coaches, services and training courses. 

Lena believes the platform will draw in the Gen Zs. As she tells Charles Miller on this episode of CoinGeek Conversations “there's playability of the social media - Gen Z will love it because there's a lot of creativity and customized interfaces inside.” 

Also discussed on the episode is the future of travel. Alex Hurd’s TravelVRse offers a new take on how we plan travel. TravelVRse uses Web3 technology and lets users visit a destination without having to leave home. The new platform provides a travel experience in the metaverse. “You will come into a virtual world, you'll be able to pick a city that you want to go to, then you’ll be able to see a range of tours in that city that you can go with, and there’ll be themed tours,” Alex says. 

As Alex points out, millennials are moving into virtual reality and web3. In turn, he says hotels, restaurants and art galleries are keen on investing in their platform to help keep up with the young market. “Hotels and landmarks are paying for this service, that is fully immersive, so you really get to feel what it's like in that local area, and then for the hotel, they want you to go and stay in the area and stay with them,” he says.

TravelVRse will use blockchain technology in its token reward system. Virtual travelers who complete challenges inside the metaverse will be awarded tokens that can be used in the real world - for instance, a free stay at a sponsoring hotel.     

According to Alex, the TravelVRse app is available on the Meta store and will eventually be available in the Apple store. The first city tour launching in June will be in San Diego.

Lastly this week is CarStash, an app that will bring reliable blockchain solutions to the car industry. It’s co-founder and CEO Charles Feibel says “Carstash is basically creating a digital passport for car owners on blockchains so they can store all the history and maintenance records of their car.”

As Charles explains, they plan to onboard establishments that cater to the car industry first before releasing the app to users. After which, he says they plan to target car collectors, luxury car owners and the likes who wish to keep the value of their vehicle. 

“You will basically receive a logbook wi

Julio Alejandro disagrees with much that’s said in the Bitcoin SV world. But he’s a rarity among its critics in that he welcomes the chance to debate the issues and he praises Dr Craig Wright - “an incredibly smart, capable human being” - for his willingness to engage in dialogue around contentious questions of government, money and self-determination.

As CEO of the London-based JADA consultancy, Julio provides public workshops and offers his services in private client work on blockchain and other leading technologies. Born in Mexico, he has also worked as a journalist which, through first hand experience, heightened his awareness of the problems of immigrants in both North America and Europe.

He believes in the power of blockchain to solve some of the problems of material inequality and unequal human opportunities through creating alternatives to the monopolistic power of the nation state - in its provision of passports and money in particular.

At the first of Dr Wright’s recent Masterclasses, in London, Julio challenged Dr Wright in the Q and A session, putting forward libertarian arguments for blockchain that he claimed could be achieved through the creation of DAOs (decentralised autonomous organisations). Dr Wright argued that the autonomous communities that Julio promotes necessarily exist under national laws and that opting out of those laws and the societies they exist in is not possible in the real world. 

Speaking on the latest edition of CoinGeek Conversations, Julio follows up that discussion, questioning the Western-centric view of the world and arguing for the development of more autonomous, self-directed communities:

“Why do we believe within this Western vision of imposing on a group of people that this is the best system of thought? So when we say, ‘is this right wing or left wing or whatever wing’, my answer is: let other people, that are not harming someone else, create their own things - which can be a cryptocurrency or a country, a legal system. We should be coding and actually building those countries that demonopolise. That's a DAO. It eliminates the monopoly. If we're not eliminating a monopoly, we fail. If we're not eliminating the nation states, we also fail.”

He sees blockchain as a liberating technology that could spread the spirit of entrepreneurship and self-determination around the world - including to his own country of origin:

“The level of entrepreneurship in the largest Hispanic country in the world that has 130 million people - in Mexico and 40 million living legally or illegally in the United States - is a disaster. It's horrible. It's almost nonexistent. Bitcoin and blockchain, sadly, does not exist in Mexico.”

In the spirit of his desire to engage with Bitcoin SV rather than just attack it, Julio has already proposed starting an “Intentioned Community” for those who support the ideas of Craig Wright. In a new post on his LinkedIn profile, he outlines what he has in mind: 

“Rent one building, let's move twenty entrepreneurs in. Craig's rules, choices, residents, and standards. We'll be 50, 300, and eventually 2,000 tech entrepreneurs in one district in London. Who's down for a #SatoshiVillage? Healthy, long-term, sustainable, tech-fitness oriented community.”

Sounds good - a bit like nChain, but healthier! 

Blockchain technology is starting to impact other fast-developing tech fields such as AI and IoT. That was the message from two senior representatives of nChain, who are both organising conference events that will bring experts from the different areas together to learn from each other. 

Owen Vaughan, Chief Science Officer of nChain Licencing and Alessio Pagani, Research Director of nChain were talking on the latest episode of CoinGeek Conversations. Owen is convening a workshop on Blockchain and AI at IEEE Coins 2023 in Berlin in July. And Alessio is doing the same in relation to IoT at the Global IoT Summit, to be held in October. 

Neither conference is focussed on blockchain but these sessions will bring the expertise of nChain, the London blockchain development company, to a wider audience, as Alessio explained: “that's our role. That's why we are organising a workshop to help those experts in IoT to understand more about blockchain and also for us to have feedback about our research in that field and discuss with the experts - and hopefully share more about BSV and blockchain in general”.

In relation to AI, Owen says “it's a time when I think a lot of people are asking the question how can these two great advances in computer science in the twenty-first century talk to one another?” Owen’s conference, COINS, sounds as though it would be crypto-related but that’s just a coincidence. It’s been running since 2019 and COINS stands for Conference on Omni-layer Intelligent Systems.

Owen is confident that nChain’s work will be useful to AI developers - even if they are not aware of that yet. “They might not realise the technology we've developed could support what they're doing. I'm particularly interested in blockchain for data usage and auditability and things like that or identity management and decision making. And these things are very relevant in AI at the moment.”

With IoT, Alessio says it’s not just about remote sensors feeding back data from the field - traffic information, for instance, or from actual agricultural fields - but also the personal data that we collect on our phones. Use of the blockchain would remove the third party from that system. So instead of sending the information to one of the tech giants “it gives you back the ownership of the data and it allows for everyone to have access to that data - if you want”. 

A blockchain system would allow for that kind of control of personal data - so, for instance, Alessio says, you could provide health data for research if you chose to, or restrict the level of detail you allow. 

There is concern about the power of AI, but Owen says that incorporating blockchain into systems could help provide much-needed accountability - or ‘decision auditability’: 

“so if an AI ever makes a decision, maybe it advises you to make a particular financial trade and you question that in the future it's very convenient to have an audit trail. Why did it make that decision? And this is a whole field of research now called AI Explainability. So I think the blockchain will be very useful in checks and balances …so that we can be sure why [AI) is making decisions and make sure it's compliant with legal, ethical and moral standards.”

MintBlue, a blockchain-as-a-service platform which utilizes the BSV blockchain, recently announced that it broke a new world record by making 50 million transactions on a public blockchain in 24 hours. The company’s co-founder and CIO Pieter Den Dooven tells Charles Miller on this episode of CoinGeek Conversations how they set up the challenge and describes the micropayment transactions: “all of them did a very small amount of money from one place to the other place and they also all had a little payload in it”. 

Den Dooven says his team was confident they could break a previous record of 35 million transactions a day. “We aimed for 40 million, but overshot that with an extra 10 million and came at 50 million”. They later found out that a higher number of transactions had been claimed on EOS but Den Dooven is confident that mintBlue holds the record for a proof-of-work blockchain.   

As far as sustainability goes, Den Dooven believes there is no such a thing as “too big” when it comes to adding data to the blockchain. He referred to a section of the Bitcoin White Paper which allows a developer to make adjustments. “You can remove certain parts of the data that you personally don't need and so there's this way of keeping track of the blockchain without keeping everything,” he says.

In the second half of the show, Den Dooven discussed mintBlue’s services and how it can benefit businesses. The company’s focus is on delivering blockchain solutions that can solve real world problems. Accounting and invoicing are some examples he mentioned that would greatly benefit from mintBlue’s API product. 

Den Dooven was keen to point out that mintBlue’s software is for developers and entrepreneurs who want to build out a business. For €49 a month and €0.01 per kilobyte, mintBlue customers can easily write code on the blockchain, he says. “It's a no code and low-code platform which allows you to automate a lot of things without having to write code.”  

mintBlue plans to add new features this year such as smart contracting and state machines— a feature that allows different companies to work seamlessly with each other. 

After winning the BSV hackathon held in New York City in 2021, Den Dooven and his team went on to build mintBlue. Prior to the hackathon, Den Dooven worked at a consultancy firm that he founded doing mostly blockchain research and development projects for various companies and industries. 

Den Dooven’s passion for bitcoin spans over ten years. “It’s been a long journey,” he says. As for his thoughts about the future of bitcoin? He says, “I'm particularly happy with how things are moving in the BSV space. We have a lot of solutions for today's problems. There's a lot of work to do, but for us that's a good thing, because we think we can solve a lot of the problems that are apparent in these times.”

As the Philippines embarks on a path to digital transformation, government agencies and various organizations are looking in to blockchain technology as a tool to help the country achieve its goal.   

Shortly after Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos Jr. was inaugurated as the 17th president of the Philippines last year, his administration announced its desire to streamline government services with the use of new technologies. 

In response to the government’s call, the province of Bataan hosted its first blockchain conference on October of last year. The event was attended by local and international blockchain leaders, as well government officials from the Department of Information and Communications Technology— the agency tasked by the President to implement digitalization in the country. 

With the aim of putting forward blockchain services to government and businesses, nChain, a global tech company that offers blockchain solutions and products, participated at the event. As Stefan Mathews, nChain co-founder and executive chairman tells Claire Celdran in this episode of CoinGeek Conversations, what followed after the event was a series of talks between nChain and the local government of Bataan that resulted to a memorandum of understanding between the two parties to establish a digital platform for the province to streamline current systems and procedures of government services. 

“During the event and several meetings afterwards, I had some fairly deep conversations with Governor Garcia and Congressman Garcia and their vision for this technology and the application of it in government is second to none. I mean, they are very, very progressive thinkers.”

Bataan is poised to become the country’s blockchain hub due to its special economic zone status. Nonetheless, Stefan notes that Bataan’s freeport status is irrelevant to nChain’s objective. 

“The reason we're there is the technology and the opportunity to do things with the technology that benefits the province but also benefits the country.” 

Coincidentally, Stefan has been residing in Bataan for nine years. He believes Bataan is a natural fit for blockchain activity.

With the aim of forming partnerships and strengthening relations, nChain recently embarked on a series of meetings with government officials, financial institutions and a top university in the country. As a result of these initiatives, nChain has formed a partnership with Ateneo University in delivering blockchain education to its students. 

“We will be working with faculty staff to train them on the delivery of blockchain courses, blockchain material.. we will be sponsoring or providing grants or funding projects for three PhD students at the university to extend their research in blockchain here in the Philippines, which also includes making available the entire intellectual property portfolio of nChain for students.. and finally, there is the internship issue, we want to provide internships both in our companies and in terms of what we're doing in Bataan for university students to be able to complete their education.”

On top of the work nChain is doing with Ateneo University, Stefan also announced the company’s plan to launch a Blockchain Dojo incubator in Bataan. Stefan says the initiative goes hand in hand with their aim to “foster Filipino innovation in the building of solutions on the blockchain that will be deployed domestically, but also potentially, internationally, it also allows us to contribute to possibly uncovering a Filipino unicorn.”

Perhaps one of the most memorable part of nChain’s recent activities was Stefan’s meeting with Philippine President “Bong Bong” Marcos. As Stefan says, the casual conversation which took place over lunch at the presidential palace covered a number of topics pertaining to the delivery of blockchain services in Bataa

Nathan Cropper knows all about the dark side of crypto. He spent eight years at Barclays, tracking down dubious account holders as part of the company’s Financial Intelligence Unit. He was in “a small team that conducted the first analysis of Barclays-wide crypto exposure”. So don’t try telling him that Bitcoin is untraceable.  

 
His job was a little unsatisfactory because he never found out what happened to the individuals whose accounts he flagged up: the cases were just handed over to the authorities and were then out of his hands.  

 
But this education in the murky side of crypto opened his eyes to its potential for legitimate business. On this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, Nathan talks about the intellectual and career path that has taken him from Barclays to his new position as Head of Business Development at the Vaionex Corporation. 

 
His education got a boost when he caught a talk by Dr Craig Wright on YouTube. He remembers that what he learnt in that two-minute clip “answered so many questions in my head that …weren't able to be answered by the rest of this community in the world of crypto. I was like, wow, this guy just said something fundamental. I'm going to actually spend a lot more time looking at what he's talking about and also this thing that people are calling BSV”. 

 
He was on his way to his next role, at TAAL, the mining and transaction processing company. That was two years ago. And now he’s moving again, to a Business Development role where he can make use of his knowledge and enthusiasm to make Bitcoin SV an integral part of the financial world that he used to be part of: “I have got so many ideas about how we can integrate and how we can connect in with the banking system,” he says. 

 
Nathan stresses the importance of facing up to the regulatory hurdles that BSV must negotiate if it’s to realise its potential. That means passing a whole lot of tests to be accepted as financial market infrastructure: “MasterCard have done it. Visa has done it. The faster payment system have done it. There's a whole load of financial technology out there which have demonstrated that they can be considered financial market infrastructure.” 

 
He explains the thinking behind the financial authorities’ careful scrutiny before they award the coveted infrastructure status: “if there's something wrong taking place on the Visa network, it would be absolutely terrible if everybody's card stopped working. That would be dreadful. They can't allow that to happen. So we need to be able to demonstrate that we have the same level of controls in the BSV network so that we can actually encourage big players to want to onboard the network and have people transact on top of it.”  

 
But achieving that status won’t be easy, he warns: “there's a lot of hard work. And it's not simply going to be an easy road. It'll be a challenging one. It's one which I think collectively as an ecosystem would be extremely valuable for us to do.” 

 
So business development at Vaionex is going to be busy - not only in attracting new customers to its multi-product offering, but also in working with other players such as the Bitcoin Association, in taking BSV’s financial utility to the next level. 

Until now, the kind of people attracted to Bitcoin have mainly been developers, says Kurt Wuckert Jr. But that needs to change in order to create real Bitcoin businesses and convert existing businesses to Bitcoin.

“If we were better at sales and marketing,” Kurt believes, “we might not even be in the blockchain economy at all. We could all be selling solar panels or something and make pretty good money. So it really, I think, is largely a culture thing.”

Changing Bitcoin culture would mean bringing in experienced salespeople - and it wouldn’t matter if they came into the job knowing nothing about Bitcoin: “it's not that difficult to just hire good experienced people from sales, “ says Kurt. “I mean, there's there's companies that have SAAS [software as a service] salesmen or enterprise cloud computing salesmen. These guys could pretty quickly get up to snuff on selling Bitcoin SV solutions. Get them out there, get them knocking on doors, build leads, build clients, build business. It's formulaic. It's not that hard to do if you put the right people on the job.”

Kurt was speaking on this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, the second part of his interview for the show. This week he took a step back from discussing his day-to-day responsibilities as CEO of the mining business GorillaPool, and spoke in his capacity as Chief Historian of CoinGeek. With that longer-term perspective he stressed the importance of increasing the throughput of transactions on the blockchain to make up for the halving every few years of the ‘subsidy’ (the block reward payment in Bitcoin) that miners receive for adding a block to the chain:

“If you were just mining casually in 2009, you were earning 50 coins a block. And the average miner is earning less than seven coins a block right now. So there has been a - I don't know what that is - ninetyish percent drop off in profitability, really, if you're measuring in Satoshis. It's bad. And so we need to do better. We need to have massive blocks because that is Bitcoin's security model at scale.”

So the mining network - and therefore the continuing existence of Bitcoin - depends for its future on more businesses creating transactions to be processed. Kurt is confident that will happen, but says “we've got to hurry”. 

The problem is that in the past few years, too much emphasis has been put on the extremely volatile price of coins rather than on their utility: “people kind of can't get it through their heads that there are other ways to make money with blockchain.”

If that doesn’t happen soon, there’s a doomsday scenario in which the whole Bitcoin economy grinds to a halt. People will look back on this time, Kurt speculates, thinking that “maybe blockchain was just a bad idea. And it's going to be real humbling in ten years [when] all of us are just doing something different because nobody actually got a real customer”.

But, ever the optimist, Kurt hopes the current depressed market conditions will actually prove to be just what Bitcoin needs: “this is actually what I love about bear markets,” he says. “They make people reassess that ‘Hey, maybe I've been wrong. Maybe I need to rethink the profit model of being in this economy’. And yeah, I mean, we just need somebody to get out there and seal the deal …or else.”