Calvin Ayre: Blockchain can make governments look good to their citizens

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The London Blockchain Conference next week will be held at a prestigious venue in Parliament Square – no coincidence because its slogan is “Bringing Government and Enterprise on the blockchain.” As conference creator Calvin Ayre explained in this week’s CoinGeek Conversations, the use of blockchain can benefit both governments and citizens:

“Governments can use this technology to manage data in a way that makes it look really good to their citizens. They save costs. They are able to offer unique services that were not possible before.”

But the “honesty and truth” of a government will also become more transparent to citizens, which may not always be welcome, Ayre believes: “It will be interesting to see how this plays out because we know that many governments do not like things that force them to be honest.”

The conference is “about solving big data challenges in a unique way with blockchains.” And while Ayre is a big supporter of the BSV blockchain – partly through Ayre Ventures, which invests exclusively in BSV businesses – he insists the conference is not a BSV event: “BSV is just a tool. If anyone else has another tool that wants to compete in that area, the conference is open to them.”

Indeed, the conference advertised the participation of proponents of any other blockchain that had what Ayre considers essential to serve this market—unlimited scaling, the ability to make nanopayments, and a readiness to comply with all existing laws—but no one applied: “Nothing came back . Not one person. And I actually found that shocking.”

Ayre draws a complete separation between the work he supports and the rest of the ‘crypto’ market. He sees no future for crypto and supports the proposal of a select committee of British MPs who recently recommended that crypto should be regulated under gambling laws rather than financially – as it currently is under the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK.

“Innovation on blockchains will happen after the crypto nonsense is cleared out of the way,” he says. And as a former entrepreneur in the world of online gaming, he believes that crypto is “like gambling – only it’s like illegal, unregulated gambling.”

As for the current media focus on AI, Ayre believes that more important technological developments will center around the implementation of the BSV blockchain and IPv6 – an internet protocol that allows greater scaling of IP addresses than the currently more common IPv4.

“You’re not going to solve the Internet’s challenges with artificial intelligence. You need what BSV does to make the Internet work better, for artificial intelligence to work better. They are things that will actually work together.” The BSV blockchain can provide a record of the origin of data used in AI – an important additional component to making the results more reliable.

On the issue of Dr. Craig Wright’s many ongoing lawsuits, closely followed in BSV circles, Ayre is a big supporter of Dr. Wright on social media, but admits, “I’m not a fan of all his lawsuits. I actually wish there was a lot less of that and a lot more focus on the business.” Still, Ayre has no doubts about Dr Wright’s claims: “Of course I support him because he’s right. I just don’t think all that needs to be proven right now.” He jokes that “everything looks like a nail to Craig and he’s got a couple of hammers in his hands.”

The London conference will be the first of a regular annual event, says Ayre. From next year, he wants to expand it from this year’s two stages – with a focus on business and technology – to three, and expand the conference from three days to five.

Listen to Calvin Ayre’s full interview on this week’s CoinGeek Conversations podcast or catch up on other recent episodes:

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