CoinGeek Conversations

For Joe Holles de Peyer, co-founder and COO of Gate2Chain, his ‘eureka’ moment came, as so many of the best ideas do, from his experience of a real-world issue. 

 When he was living and working in Mallorca, the Port of Palma set up an IoT sensor infrastructure to measure the air quality of the island’s capital. Despite a regular influx of pollution-causing cruise ships the data that was presented claimed the air quality was perfect. 

 Joe says that as he knew this wasn’t the case and he lost trust in the data. With IoT, he says, “there are so many steps in the process, so many things that can go wrong, from not cleaning a filter to actually manipulating the data when you put it on your computer.” 

 As he tells Charles Miller on this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, this was when he and his team started experimenting with implementing blockchain with IoT devices and discovering the power of the technology to prove data integrity. 

 He found that using blockchain, he could program devices to behave in certain ways dependent on real-time information, while also certifying the accuracy of data through a signing mechanism. 

 The ‘eureka’ moment, he explains, is the realisation that “the blockchain allows us to send, to share, to store information and value on the same protocol. On the old internet we were just sharing information and now thanks to the blockchain we can also share value and attach value to information and share it on the same protocol.” 

 Joe originally chose the Ethereum blockchain to build on but switched over to the BSV blockchain when he realised the former wasn’t fit for purpose. Gate2Chain is now utilising the power of the BSV blockchain through two sets of products. The first is an easy-to-use developer suite which allows users to connect new or existing apps, websites, games, or any other system to the blockchain. 

 The second service, which is currently in development, is called Minta. “It’s a one-stop shop, it’s a wallet, a bank account, it’s integrated also with a conventional bank so you can actually have your euros, your dollars, your dirhams, it’s an NFT minter, it’s a marketplace, it has a messaging app in it, it’s a bit of everything.” 

 Joe explains how a service like this can provide real-world value, giving the example of a freelance photographer. Instead of using a third-party system to send photos and a separate payment platform to receive the money, this could all be handled in the Minta platform. 

 Photos would be uploaded in the form of NFTs and shared with a client with a value already programmed in. The money could then flow directly from one account to another, removing any need for trust for both parties.  

 Minta is being built to be user-friendly as Joe wants to ensure that Gate2Chain’s services are accessible for everyone, not just for those with technical knowhow. “It’s about making blockchain easy,” he says. 

 The easier the products are for people to use, the more appealing they will be to the everyday user and the wider adoption is likely to be. This will bring Joe one step closer to his goal of revolutionising the internet and creating a digital world better suited for the people using it. 

IBM and SmartLedger’s Certihash are working together to develop a BSV blockchain-based product that will reduce the costs and time associated with cyberattacks. 

Speaking on CoinGeek Conversations, Patryk Walaszczyk , a blockchain solution expert at IBM Consulting, says that most of IBM’s blockchain projects have until now been built on Hyperledger. 

Working on this project that uses a public blockchain like Bitcoin SV expands IBM’s knowledge. “We are trying to experiment with a public infrastructure like Bitcoin SV, we see the potential of this information and the possibility to enter the web3 ecosystem.”    

Patryk says IBM typically develops software using the so-called waterfall method, which means approaching a project stage by stage. Certihash, in contrast, practices agile development. He acknowledges IBM’s intent to learn from Certihash. “To learn to be agile, you have to cooperate with the companies who truly understand how agile works.” 

IBM and Certihash are in the process of creating and developing the Sentinel node, a suite of tools on the BSV blockchain that aims to improve cybersecurity. Patryk describes the sentinel node as “a product which could potentially be identified as a second layer security tool …dedicated to data breach detection.” 

He alludes to ‘permissionless’ blockchain technology such as BSV, saying “we've been experimenting already with the public infrastructure, and we know how it works.” However, he says that verifications will be required to validate the efficacy of BSV at an enterprise level. “We'd like to test it and get knowledge whether it works similarly to what we have done on the permissioned ledgers”.

Patryk recognizes BSV’s potential in creating enterprise grade solutions. After experimenting with Ethereum and BTC, he believes in BSV’s ability to deliver a high quality performance with low transaction fees. And from a technical perspective, he says “we believe that the foundation is solid, the white paper is solid.” 

Despite BSV’s capabilities, the question remains as to whether enterprises will consider using a public blockchain. According to Patryk, permissioned blockchain is viewed by many companies as a safe option. “You are in control of your data, you decide who will see it …a public blockchain is completely different because whatever you are going to put into a blockchain will be publicly available.” He says public blockchain solutions may always be a hard sell to companies in the financial and capital markets. “I don't believe the public blockchain infrastructure will be utilized by all companies in the future.”    

After attending the recent BSV Global Blockchain Convention, Patryk is convinced that BSV companies are focused on finding solutions to real business problems rather than using BSV for financial speculation. “I think that's a good thing from a business perspective …to justify using this technology instead of focusing on which is going to be the best choice for future earnings.”

Patryk also expressed interest in working with other BSV companies saying, “if there would be any company interested in our services, we are keen to start cooperation.”

Tech philosopher and entrepreneur Somi Arian envisions a society that is free from the shackles of tech companies like Meta and Google. Her advocacy is to uphold human integrity by allowing individuals to own their data. 

While studying political philosophy at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, Somi expressed her political grievances through music, as the singer in a death metal band. “The interest in heavy metal music is an indication I'm an anarchist at heart …I've always been against governments, I've always been against authority of any sort,” she says. 

When Somi first learnt about blockchain in 2017, she says she knew in an instant that the technology would disrupt Amazon, Facebook, Google and the likes. For her part, the decentralization aspect of blockchain is the solution to data-ownership issues. As she explains, “blockchain technology is really interesting because of the possibility of self-organization …minimizing the impact of governments.”

Apart from speaking in international events, in 2018 Somi released an award-winning documentary called The Millennial Disruption which discusses how digital natives are changing ecommerce. She’s dedicated most of her work in educating people to issues concerning technology and its impact. As she explains, “the type of life that I'm inviting people to live is going against the grain of how you are being programmed by Meta and by the governments.” 

On this episode of CoinGeek Conversations, Somi is keen to point out to Charles Miller how countries like China disadvantage their people through the government and the corporations working together:“we have now got a problem of nation state and then we have the problem of the corporate state, they're both as bad as each other, so I don't necessarily think that nation state is our guard against the corporate state and vice versa.”

In her view, decentralization is a hedge against the system and she is adamant about educating people about it. She wants people to realize that that CBDCs are not the type of cryptocurrency that are decentralized, nor are the tech giants. If people understand this, they can extract themselves from these systems. 

Somi’s company, InPeak, aims to educate individuals about the ownership economy in the next generation of the internet. “In” stands for ‘inspire’, ‘in this together’ and ‘inclusive’. The company offers its customers a subscription service that primarily educates individuals about bitcoin and blockchain. Soon, the company will offer an NFT option for membership.  As for the benefits of doing business in Web3, Somi explains that unlike Web 2.0, Web3 allows anyone to own their content and get paid directly without going through third parties such as banks.  

Somi spoke at a panel discussion at the BSV Global Blockchain Convention in Dubai where she made a keen observation about Apple and Ethereum. She says, “if Ethereum is like Apple, there's room for a Microsoft and it is yet to be determined who is going to be that Microsoft… so maybe BSV could fill that gap.” 

Fake degrees are a growing problem worldwide and can cause serious issues for employers and recruiters. While the practice may not be new, the advent of the internet has made it easier than ever to get hold of fraudulent qualifications. 

 It’s difficult to work out how many fake degrees are in circulation, but George Gollin, a member of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation estimates that over 100,000 fake degrees are sold each year in the US alone. Globally, the numbers are likely to be in the millions. 

 Dr. Mohamed Al Hemairy, head of the Technology Transfer Office at the University of Sharjah, is confident that he has found the solution. His team have partnered with the BSV Blockchain Association to build an academic certification and accreditation platform using the Bitcoin SV blockchain. 

 He explains to Charles Miller on this week’s episode of CoinGeek Conversations that the plan is to build a network which academic institutions can join and use to authenticate students’ qualifications. Before joining, the universities will be verified to ensure their legitimacy. Once that is done, they will then be able to validate students’ certificates. 

 “Once it’s there, it’s immutable, it cannot be changed, it cannot be manipulated, and it has the trust by the community that are joining the network that this is a valid certificate issued by this institute.” 

 Dr Al Hemairy explains that the team intend to roll out a beta version of the service in the UAE as a case study, looking for feedback and improvements before they expand worldwide. The platform will be open source and available for institutions to join for free.  

 A project like this would have a real impact, he says. Customers could quickly find out if their lawyer or doctor is legitimate and for employers, it would save time and money as they wouldn’t need to hire people to do background checks: they could just check the Bitcoin SV blockchain. 

 “It’s built on BSV blockchain which has more features and advantages than any other blockchains available in the market. It is scalable, it has very low transaction fees and the BSV Association is supporting this project to be open for the whole world.” 

 Dr Al Hemairy is confident that the platform will catch on and “in three to four years will be widely used and adopted by nearly every institute in the world.” 

 He explains that there’s a lot of innovation like this taking place in Dubai due to a governmental push for blockchain development. For example, the UAE government recently launched the Dubai Blockchain Strategy, an initiative that aims to help Dubai to become the first city in the world to operate fully on blockchain technology. 

The upcoming BSV Global Blockchain Convention in Dubai from May 24 to 26 will be an important event for anyone with a “sense of history”, says Calvin Ayre, founder of Ayre Ventures and CoinGeek. 

 “It’s like Woodstock coming to these conferences, that’s how influential this technology is going to be and it’s going to change so many things and it’s going to touch everything,” says Calvin. 

  While attendees of the Convention might be dressed in suits rather than flares and sunglasses, the comparison to the iconic, late 60s counterculture festival, will resonate for those in the Bitcoin SV space who understand how revolutionary the technology could be.  

  Calvin is particularly excited about links between Bitcoin SV companies and big consultancy firms like IBM Consulting, which has recently been developing Sentinel Node in association with Certihash. 

 “I hope we educate these big consulting companies so that they understand what this technology can do so they in fact become evangelists for us when they are brought in to solve technical problems in big data.” 

 Another organisation that Calvin is pleased to see teaming up with the Bitcoin SV community is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) – the world’s largest association of technical professionals.  

 This connection came about when Latif Ladid, founder, and president of the IPv6 Forum and an IEEE influencer, came across Bitcoin inventor Dr. Craig Wright’s blog after reading about his victory in the Kleiman v. Wright trial in Miami last autumn. 

 When Latif learnt that Bitcoin SV had been built to integrate IPv6, the most recent version of the internet protocol, he reached out directly to Dr. Wright, who has now become a keynote speaker in the IEEE conference series and is publishing information about the technology in the IEEE newsletter. 

 Calvin believes that the Kleiman case has opened people up to Dr. Wright’s work in a big way. “The fictional cloud of fraud has been removed off of Craig’s shoulders, and as a result, the serious engineers who have been studying Craig’s technology feel that the reputational risk has also been removed and people have been reaching out to Craig and our community and we’ve got a lot more serious people directly involved, publicly.” 

 On the subject of Dr. Wright’s lawsuits, of which one more was announced last week, Calvin admits he wishes Dr. Wright didn’t have to spend his time on them and could instead focus on other things.  

 "Craig’s going to go down in history as one of the largest filers of patents in the world, if not the largest, and all the while doing it while he’s being attacked and forced to deal with this massive litigation overheard and continuing to do multiple university degrees at the same time.” 

 Despite this distraction, Calvin is clear that the main goal for the Convention is education. “All my focus is on educating people that can actually use this technology to solve big data challenges,” he says. 

FloatSV and RelayX founder Jack Liu has proved to be a forceful presence in the Bitcoin space. Armed with a fintech background and almost a decade of experience in digital assets, his thoughts and ideas about the bitcoin ecosystem offer both substance and, at times, challenges to entrepreneurs building on Bitcoin SV.

Contrary to belief of the majority in the BSV community, Jack thinks the price of BSV matters significantly. As he tells Charles Miller on this episode of CoinGeek Conversations, his attraction to Bitcoin is partly due to its incentive design: regardless of wealth and stature, any individual has a chance to raise money using the network. “A small business is able to raise five dollars of money the same way as a larger team can raise …billions of dollars. That levels the playing field and that's ultimately the value,” he explains.

RelayX seeks to build businesses on chain in a way that is free of patents and NDAs, as well as products that are interoperable. Jack’s goal is to preserve one powerful aspect of Bitcoin: that it is global. “Anyone can join. What you don't want is to leverage that ledger and build a closed system on top, no matter how nice it is because then as developers and users interact with the closed economy, then you lose a lot of the power of the base layer bitcoin,” he asserts. 

In today’s society, dependence on finance is significant. As Jack explains, this has to do with individuals earning in a fiat currency then investing and speculating with that money. He envisions a world where people will be able to be more financially independent. “If people were earning, spending, consuming and producing on a single ledger that itself had a deflationary money supply, then basically people would no longer use finance as a necessity, it becomes an option.” 

Unlike fiat currencies, Bitcoin as a system does not have a central authority. Jack is keen to point out that Bitcoin removes power from money and that in itself is liberating. But how do we know how the system is doing? Well, price is one way of gauging Bitcoin’s performance.  Jack believes that innovations and building good utility for the ledger will help increase Bitcoin’s price. As he points out, building applications that allow users to monetize instantaneously is the way to go. Users tend to overlook transaction fees if they are able to earn in heaps. 

In terms of transactions volume in the BSV network to date, Jack thinks there should be magnitudes more. As he says, “if you have 5 million transactions on Cryptofights per day but it's being done by like a few hundred users, that is not growing the price, that's not growing the economy.” 

Jack advises entrepreneurs to come up with a product that Bitcoin holders want instead of building a business based on their own likes and interests. He says its best to monetize their business even as early as inception days. He advises entrepreneurs to raise as much BSV as possible for their business without having to worry too much about failing to return the investment. Bitcoin cannot be outperformed due to its limited number, he says. As he explains, investors will benefit not by getting a return of their investment but by allocating a percentage of their Bitcoin holdings towards a project that contributes to increase Bitcoin’s velocity and utility and in turn increasing the price of Bitcoin. “That is a healthy ecosystem,” he says. 

IPv6 at the BSV Global Blockchain Convention 

There’s been much focus on the IPv6 or the Internet Protocol version 6, an upgrade on the current IPv4. Compared to the latter, IPv6 is known to increase security and privacy functionality on the internet. It’s no surprise that IPv6 will be an expected buzz word in the upcoming BSV Global Blockchain Convention in Dubai. 

On this episode of CoinGeek Conversations, we’ll hear nChain chief scientist Dr. Craig Wright discuss the combining power of blockchain technology and IPv6, as well as the founder and president of the IPv6 Forum, Latif Ladid as he explains why BSV is the only blockchain capable of handling IPv6’s transactions volume.

CoinGeek Conversations: A Look Back at CoinGeek Conferences

As we patiently await the upcoming BSV Global Blockchain Convention to be held in Dubai this May, Claire Celdran takes a look back at some of the highlights of CoinGeek Conferences past.

 Listen in on Jeff Baek’s presentation of Peersend and how it allows users to send and receive money seamlessly on the internet.  Watch personalities from the gaming industry including Haste Arcade, HandCash, NFTY Jigs and Built by Gamers discuss how users can monetize from playing and participating in games. And witness all over again BSV Technical Director Steve Shadders’ live demonstration of terranode! 

On this episode, we brought back Patrick Thompson’s interview with TAAL CEO Stefan Mathews and Financial Cryptographer Ian Grigg on the premiere broadcast of CoinGeek TV where the two revealed stories of their initial encounter with the Bitcoin White Paper and Dr. Craig Wright.  

 Lastly, get inspired with the keynote speeches from the distinguished economist George Gilder and nChain Chief Scientist Dr. Craig Wright at the 2020 CoinGeek Conference in London.   

Rad CEO Tony Mugavero knows a thing or two about big entertainment brands - just look at the list of the company’s content deal partners, which includes Disney, NBCUniversal, Fox, Showtime, Warner Brothers, Sony.

And he knows about cutting-edge tech. Rad’s current focus on blockchain follows pioneering work in VR, in which he also partnered with big entertainment brands.

But Tony is happy to admit that for Rad and for many others a couple of years ago, the VR revolution didn’t quite happen. Back then, Rad was a VR streaming company - offering 360 video, 3D spatial audio and other innovative products. While VR “continued to take its time”, as Tony puts it, Rad moved into more “traditional” video streaming.

Talking on this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, Tony explains how he knew then that Rad “still needed a differentiator”, rather than competing head to head with the likes of Amazon and Netflix. 

Blockchain looked like it could provide one. And so “we started working on incorporating smart contracts for content and handling royalty splits and payments”. That was around the start of 2018, but once again Tony found he was ahead of the curve: “the world wasn't ready for it yet.” Potential business partners were interested but not willing to dive in.

That was then. Today the world is catching up with Rad. And Rad is putting NFTs together with entertainment to create - inevitably perhaps - “NFTV”. CoinGeek owner Calvin Ayre, through his Ayre Ventures, has recently announced an investment in Rad. And Tony is planning to incorporate the Bitcoin SV blockchain as an important element in Rad’s model for the future.

Last year, Rad started experimenting with its first NFT sales. For instance you could buy an NFT for a high quality video of a classic movie which came with a physical poster that would be shipped to you. The other side of the smart contract was that royalties and other payments would immediately be sent to anyone owed them, automatically and immediately the sale was completed. 

So how does BSV fit into the picture? Tony says that “Ethereum has gotten incredibly expensive” and “it’s reasonably fast …but not that fast.” BSV has the attributes people are looking for: 

“I think if you look at what's happening generally across the whole ecosystem, there's been a lot of development around ‘how can we make blockchains faster and cheaper?’ And so, ultimately, BSV clearly fits into that category. And you know, there's a community that's really excited about it and its potential and building on top of it.”

One idea for using BSV would be as a kind of master data record for other chains: “if we have a bunch of different transactions that are happening on a bunch of different chains and you need a single record that's auditable that somebody can just say, ‘show me all the different things that are happening in this ecosystem’, then you don't want to go query every different blockchain and and try to cobble that data together yourself. So simultaneously you can have a bunch of different buying and selling and minting and trading that's happening, but then have kind of a master ledger that tracks all of that information.” 

As to whether NFTV will be working with the big entertainment brands or be more of a disruptive force in competition with them, Tony says that a move towards more control by both producers and consumers goes with a bigger trend: 

“I think it's a generational shift. It's not like one company comes out and completely destroys the whole entertainment business. It's how do we listen to creators and consumers and say, what are they doing, what are they trying to do? What do they want? And build something for that? And if that ends up going counter to the studios and what they're trying to achieve, they'll just need to listen to their consumers and their fans. "

Genuine Retweets is changing lives, according to its founder and CEO, Nick Numas. He says he feels “humbled” by the impact his company is having, especially on those living in less developed countries, where in some cases it has “doubled some people’s wages.” 

“We receive letters from people that we apparently change their lives with the earnings they get from Genuine Retweets.” 

The platform, which is exclusively on Twitter, allows promoters who it signs up to earn money by retweeting, commenting and liking posts. In return, they receive instant payment into their Bitcoin SV wallets. For businesses, it offers a paid service that distributes their tweets and increases engagement with them. 

It’s not just about the money for Nick though. He wants to “re-educate people… to show them your presence is valuable online, and we foresee in the future there’ll be a lot more type of business operations which compensate people for their presence online.”  

Genuine Retweets’ promoters are moderated to ensure that only accounts with a significant following or that could be valuable to the businesses using the service are permitted to participate in the paid work. 

The moderation process is something that Nick is fastidious about. He uses 15 moderators who make decisions on jobs coming in and are paid 25 cents for each moderation. In total, the team has checked through 2400 accounts and only let 640 join as paid promoters. 

 “You have to be valuable to the businesses that use our service, if you’re not a valuable person i.e if you do loads of giveaways, then your account looks really tacky or if your account looks fake and stuff like that, we won’t let you in to do the promoting.”  

Nick explains to Charles Miller on this week’s episode of CoinGeek Conversations that the reason he is so particular about the accounts he signs up is down to his experience working as a marketing manager for TDXP, a trading platform. 

He says that he tried giveaways to increase numbers on TDXP, but this just led to follows from robots. He workshopped the issue with a developer colleague and discovered his problems could be solved using a private Twitter account and an API. 

That’s when the Genuine Retweets business was born, and he’s thrilled with its progress. “We broke even in two weeks, and we’ve made a profit every single week and we pay a full-time developer now.” 

While the business is currently centred around the BSV community, Nick is keen to expand the business model. He explains that the Bitcoin community is one of many that he’s keen to tap into and is currently in talks about a music version of the service and a football one for Aston Villa. 

He believes, like Dr. Craig Wright, that Bitcoin’s role should be as the ‘plumbing’ for the internet, something that sits beneath the surface and ensures the smooth running of things. 

“I am very besotted with Bitcoin. If anybody can find me a better tool to do entrepreneurship on the internet than Bitcoin, I need to see it because as far as I’m concerned there is no better tool do to business with on the internet than Bitcoin.”