DeFiance Media catches up with Bitcoin and blockchain thought leaders at GBC22 in Dubai
At the first BSV Global Blockchain Convention, DeFiance Media got a chance to capture some of Bitcoin SV’s leading personalities. Each of them is working on something completely unique, made possible thanks to the power of the BSV blockchain.
Kurt Wuckert Jr. – CoinGeek and GorillaPool
Wuckert is well known to most people in the Bitcoin SV ecosystem. He is CoinGeek’s head of Bitcoin historian and co-founded GorillaPool, a mining pool focused exclusively on BSV.
Wuckert tells DeFiance how he has been around the industry for over 10 years and has seen the true story of Bitcoin. Unlike many others, he is not afraid to tell the true story of what happened. He maintains that Bitcoin was hijacked by a conglomerate of large companies that recognized the threat and decided to take over.
Who are these companies? Wuckert names NY Life Insurance, CME Ventures, Mastercard, AXA and several others. He tells us how they formed an incubator to steer the direction of Bitcoin in connection with higher up from Bain Capital and the World Bank. He reminds us that this goes against the myth of ‘decentralization’ that is propagated by small blockers. Today, this powerful conglomerate dominates the industry with portfolio companies such as Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Kraken, Lightning Labs, BitGo, Fire Blocks and many other prominent names.
Speaking briefly about the LUNA / UST implosion, Wuckert reminds us that there is no perfect algorithm, and that there are far too many technocrats in the industry today. This time with a message he has repeated many times; that Satoshi’s original Bitcoin design should be carved in stone and left alone.
To move on to GorillaPool and his motivations for starting it, Wuckert tells us that he is a Bitcoin theorist and has always been interested in testing different things. GorillaPool allows him to experiment with specialized scripts, and so far the pool has extracted the block with the largest number of transactions and recovered blocks of 4 GB +. This is an excellent way for Wuckert to prove those who say “Bitcoin can not do X” wrong.
John ‘Jack’ Pitts – Structured Linguistics
Pitts introduces himself and his company, and tells the audience they probably know one of the products best: SLictionary. He describes it as a revolutionary common dictionary that pays experts to define words.
Pitts highlights the flaws in Merriam Webster and other centralized dictionaries; definitions are views, and academics in their ivory towers should not be the only ones to define them. SLictionary creates a “swipe left / right” economy around words, and provides multiple definitions and views on a concept.
Pitts reminds us that language is constantly evolving and has done so through the ages. “The people decide the language,” he tells us. Even better, SLictionary lets real experts define words. For example, Satoshi Nakamoto can define Bitcoin himself, and his definition can be tokenized and sold as a security on the open market, passed on to his children, and so on.
Finally, Pitts tells us that SLictionary has introduced a second language: Modern Standard Arabic. He describes it as a challenge, but tells us that it is now live on SLictionary.
Michal Scislowski – Soundoshi
For his part, Scislowski dreams of democratizing the music industry and introducing the next generation of music carriers with NFTs. He founded Soundoshi to achieve these goals.
He tells us more about Soundoshi, and describes how it aims to challenge the models used by major streaming services such as Spotify. To him, the deals these monopoly platforms offer are unfair, and the “topup and play” model is better than the monthly subscription model. On Soundoshi, each stream will cost $ 0.01 or $ 0.02. He hopes that this model will offer listeners and artists a better deal and give new life to albums, which he says were initially killed by streaming services.
Why music NFTs? Scislowski describes them as portable, portable and digital, the perfect vehicle for the modern world. He also tells us that Soundoshi needs micropayments to become a reality, which is why they eventually built on Bitcoin SV. Blockchain’s chain storage was another element of their decision. As he describes it, the music files are stored on the distributed Bitcoin network and the NFTs act as access keys.
When we talk about the challenges of using such a model, Scislowski mentions changing people’s perceptions to make them want to own music again. He rightly points out that users right now could lose all their music if a streaming service like Spotify goes bankrupt
In the near future, Scislowski wants Soundoshi to travel to Africa, the Middle East and South America to encourage artists there to share their music and culture with the world.
Phil Runyan – NiftyCo
Runyan is the leader of a Web 3.0 incubator called NiftyCo, which brings industry expertise and knowledge to startups. He describes how users can create NFTs on their platform and refer them to their wallet. From there, they can choose which platforms to sell them on.
Yet NiftyCo is much more than just another NFT extraction platform. Runyan describes how they change the game; While most NFTs today are single-serving, which means you get an image, audio file or video, NiftyCo allows users to stack multiple file types in one NFT. This is to the great advantage of artists, and allows them to stack album art, music files and maybe a music video in one file. Naturally, this can make each NFT more valuable.
Runyan tells us that his company is not exclusive to BSV, but chose to build on it due to low fees, scalability and ease of doing so. He hopes that NiftyCo can provide access to NFTs for everyone and not just offer “crypto toys for crypto boys”, as he describes it.
Somi Arian – InPeak
Arian describes himself as a “technology philosopher” and the founder of InPeak. She started it to focus on bringing women into the Web 3.0 site. She says that ‘In’ stands for inclusive, inspired, in the knowing, and in this together.
Prior to that, Arian ran a think tank for women in business and technology. It looked at why women are left behind in every new technology trend and rarely reach the top echelons of their technical careers. The think tank found that six reasons play a role:
- Self-confidence
- Technical skills
- Financial competence
- Entrepreneurship skills
- Women’s health problems
- Family and relationship support
How can this be fixed? Arian’s think tank found that an interdisciplinary approach is needed. Changing culture, social attitudes towards family and society in general will all play a role in ensuring women equal access and opportunities in technology.
Right now, Arian is most inspired by NFTs. She finds them “incredibly empowering.” For example, she describes how they fractionalize communities and make it so that large companies do not control all the communities on their platforms.
Arian ends the interview and describes how she not only wants to see women strengthened in technology, but she feels it is important that they play a role in how new technology is formed. Right now she’s seeing technology as dominated by male thinkers, and she thinks this is dangerous.
Latif Ladid – Founder and President of the IPv6 Forum
Latif Ladid is probably well known to BSV enthusiasts already. He is a researcher at the University of Luxembourg, is the founder and president of the IPv6 forum, and is the leader and co-chair of several other subcommittees around 5G, IPv6 and the internet.
Ladid tells DeFiance Media that today’s internet runs on IPv4, which has only around 4.3 billion addresses, and that we consumed all of them in 2011. He elaborates on how IPv6 is about to replace IPv4, and makes 340 trillion addresses available.
Ladid describes today’s Internet as a “research Internet” and says that we must move to a “production Internet.” When we do, each person will have multiple IP addresses. Devices will also have unique IP addresses.
This will create a world of end-to-end communication and direct connection between everything and everyone.
While researching blockchain and IPv6 for the European Commission, Ladid describes how he met some articles published by Dr. Craig Wright, he describes how he sent him emails, and the two have raised and promoted the idea that Bitcoin and IPv6 were created for each other ever since.
Watch BSV Global Blockchain Convention Dubai 2022 day 1 here:
Watch BSV Global Blockchain Convention Dubai 2022 day 2 here:
Watch BSV Global Blockchain Convention Dubai 2022 Day 3 here:
New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeks Bitcoin for beginners section, the ultimate resource guide for learning more about Bitcoin – originally proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto – and blockchain.
