CoinGeek Weekly Livestream: Tech goodness with Bitcoin Association’s Brett Banfe

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CoinGeek’s Kurt Wuckert Jr. spoke with the Bitcoin Association’s Brett Banfe on the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream, where they discussed how they came to understand Bitcoin, micropayments, HandCash and much more.

Summary of the events that shook the industry

Wuckert begins with a brief summary of the events that rocked the digital currency industry this week.

Sam Bankman-Fried repeatedly assured FTX users and those who follow him on social media that all was well on FTX, but it was all a lie. The exchange collapsed after a failed bailout deal with Binance, causing token prices to plummet and users to lose fortunes.

Introducing Brett Banfe

Brett Banfe thanks Wukcert for the invitation and says he has learned a lot from him. He currently works for the Bitcoin Association as a community manager and sales representative for Handcash, so he is deeply involved in Bitcoin SV (BSV).

Banfe recommends everyone check out a recent conversation with Patrick Prinz. He discusses deconstructing top-down approaches to hierarchy and making organizations more like an organism. He also says that there may have been too much focus on enterprises, given how slowly things are going. While pursuing enterprise use cases is still important, the strategy is shifting to builders, entrepreneurs and developers to provide proof of concept and get the ball rolling.

Speaking about his work so far, Banfe says he’s learned not to sugarcoat things and that “if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.” He says he is learning that it is possible to engineer goodness, something he never thought possible.

Talking about how he got into BSV, Banfe says that at first he thought it was a scam and decided to look into it, but he eventually found that the scam sounded a lot like logic. Wuckert laughs with him, pointing out how hard everyone works, the money invested in infrastructure, the opportunity and reputation costs and more, but people keep going.

Micropayments at BSV

Banfe says that, much like the founding fathers of the United States did, the key to fighting the old way is not to resist the old way, but to invent a new way that makes the old obsolete. He says micropayments are exactly this – something no one has ever done before.

Wuckert looks for this, noting that all most other projects do is absorb capital. Virtually no one else does micropayments. Banfe notes that there are no limits to how low they can go, and micropayments are the key to true decentralization.

Works with Handcash

Wuckert asks how things are going at Handcash. He says that Alex Agut was one of the influencers who made him support BSV. He notes how impressive Handcash has been all along. He asks Banfe how it works with Agut and under his leadership.

Banfe says one of the keys to success is having a CEO and a bulletproof CTO, and that’s HandCash to a tee. He says Rafa Jiménez deserves more credit for his actions and is a force to be reckoned with. He says they really care about their customers and understand the technology.

BSV versus BTC in the long term

Wuckert remembers how Bitcoin has changed over the years — it was a business tool, and then it became a speculative craze. He says he has done reasonably well out of Bitcoin and can’t deny it, but he doesn’t see it as something to make money from anymore. He does have a “moon bag” of BSV for when the market wakes up, but he would rather create value, such as mining and growing the Bitcoin economy.

TAAL and mining

A viewer asks what’s happening to TAAL (CSE: TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF ) and why it’s going back to private ownership. Wuckert says he has no inside information on this, but will give his thoughts on what happens regardless.

Wuckert says he doesn’t think TAAL should ever have been public. It’s too small, and one of the main problems is that being public doesn’t allow a company to be nimble enough to adapt and compete. He goes so far as to say that it may be impossible to succeed as a public Bitcoin mining company.

As for the recent acquisition, Wuckert says he believes it’s a premium that won’t be seen again anytime soon. He doesn’t know exactly why it has been taken private, but the industry is tough, and playing by the rules of being a publicly traded company makes it much more difficult.

Speaking of mining, Wuckert answers a viewer’s question by saying that if BTC falls below $12,000, things could get messy. As miners move away from BTC, block propagation can be affected and if that happens, it can lead to chain death.

What’s next for JungleBus?

A viewer asks what’s next for JungleBus. Wuckert says he’s in the process of writing a series of articles to explain things like how your DEX should use JungleBus, where it should exist in your stack, etc. Big things are on the horizon, including solving a lot of interesting Bitcoin problems Wuckert wants to see resolved.

See: BSV Global Blockchain Convention panel, Small Payments, Big Fun: Micropayments for Casual Games

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