Bitcoin has gone through numerous ups and downs in the last few years, and it’s time for it to make a comeback stronger than ever, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
As BTC reaches all time high going into 2021 based on a speculative frenzy of cheap money going into a rhymes-with-Johnsey scheme, we must keep our heads in the game and keep building; we are on a tight schedule to deliver the best future for the world.
Bitcoin was designed for slow and steady growth, evidenced by Satoshi Nakmoto’s implementation of the halving block subsidy every 4 years. Let’s do our part and make up for the last 10 years of absolute failure of adoption, now that we’ve liberated the protocol from the crabs dragging us down to the bottom of the bucket (and making the world think that Bitcoin can’t be used for anything besides speculation in the process).
Here are the ways to rekindle the Bitcoin fire.
1. Change public perception to important people
There are “influencers” in the world, and there are people who influence the world. I would guarantee you that most people reading this article do not know who the people pulling the strings behind most of the cryptocurrencies on the market today are. (That is probably a good thing, you are better off keeping your sanity, trust me.)
The recent SEC lawsuit towards Ripple and XRP is a great example of how every “conspiracy theorist” spreading “FUD” in the industry was actually right. Ripple was (allegedly, according to SEC’s conclusion) manipulating their price by instructing the market makers they contracted to “turn on the buys” immediately after announcements for a period of 24h.
Their SEC-alleged business model was to forge partnerships with institutions, sell them tokens at a discount guaranteeing profit for the institutions, then benefit from the publicity of a partnership with said institutions. They also allegedly offered millions of dollars in cash payments to exchanges to list them.
This is, in my opinion, an unsustainable model for any business, but this is what the “crypto community” knows — if something is increasing in price after news, it must mean that a lot of people are following it, right?
Crypto reality is the opposite; prices go up from manufactured market making practices and attract people that buy the top, which makes them community members in the future. Do not expect to gain popularity in the crypto community without a massive increase in price.
So, why is this relevant?
Fortunately, there is a shining light at the end of every tunnel. Every person with a brain outside of the digital asset community sees right through this. Any experienced market analyst knows that the space is riddled with Ponzi schemes and pump and dump manipulation. This is why they don’t invest, primarily. All the fake market caps do not represent real money in the industry.
We must attract people and enlighten them on Bitcoin’s history as well as Core (BTC) nefarious schemes to steal Satoshi’s Vision of frictionless peer-to-peer electronic cash, passing it off as digital gold to attract billions of dollars of speculator money. The only goal being to enrich people who bought at single digit dollar values by siphoning money from new investors, while the fundamentals of the coin have only gotten worse.
a) Set up user friendly directories for every app on Bitcoin, and why it’s a killer use case that cannot be accomplished anywhere else, explained to new users (for example, online banking makes you not have to go to your bank every time):
HandCash, Money Button, RelayX, Twetch, PowPing, TonicPow, PayPistol, RelaySwap, Peergame, RelayX Card, Paymail, Baemail, BitcoinFiles, Relica, FloatSV, Oyo, etc.
(There are a ton more — these are just ones that stand out immediately) This list must be curated heavily to allow only businesses and protocols that are professional, and provide a solution to a real world problem.
b) Set up explainers for why Bitcoin
Smart money must understand the appeal, because there are no fundamental ways to value Bitcoin at this time. Influential people must understand why there is a community around this and why the visionaries choose to build on Bitcoin (SV) and not on the other chains out there that are raising millions of dollars for seemingly no reason.
Easy to understand websites must be formed that explain that Bitcoin, as Satoshi created it, is the perfect vehicle for countless use cases — micropayments, immutability of data, data storage, expediting and making multitude of industries much more efficient. They must understand the direction BTC went in and why the name and ticker is as such, and they must understand why it is wrong — and why Satoshi’s Bitcoin is the way forward.
Smart money is smart, and often times visionaries. Treat them as such. We are professionals, and need to act like it, in a niche world of computer coders and nerds.
2. Change public perception to masses
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” — Plato
We live in a technologically-transitioning time period — one where information warfare runs rampant, and is common among all parts of life. If you are paying attention to politics, you will always see one side calling the other communists, and the other side claiming capitalism is unethical. If you are in the fitness industry, people argue about whether vegan or carnivore diet, two opposite diets, are healthier for you. Each side has massive incentives to sway the large group towards their direction, whether financial gain motivated or ideologically motivated.
The Bitcoin information war is more intense probably than any war. This one is totally rigged towards BTC:
- Jack Dorsey is the CEO of both Twitter — the primary promotion service for BTC, and Square/Cash App — the primary onboarding service for purchasing BTC. Square is the third-largest contributors to Bitcoin Core (BTC) development
- The Bitcoin.org domain is controlled by Core, the Reddit r/Bitcoin is controlled by Core, etc.
- BSV is not listed on Binance, one of the leading retail exchanges, nor Kraken, a US institutional-favoured exchange, or Coinbase, which is set to go public and has a large retail presence. BSV is also not listed on Bitcoin.com
Obviously, this means most new entrants to the market do not know what Bitcoin Satoshi Vision is, besides the common misconceptions spewed out by publications such as CoinDesk, which have VC backing by the same companies as BTC developers Blockstream. BTC proponents have made every possible effort to erode the credibility of anyone supporting BSV, so this raises the question: do we sit on the moral high-horse, or do we fight back?
This is a question of good — creating a free market economy on-chain for hundreds if not thousands of years to come, vs. evil — creating a speculation machine that seeks to extract money from later speculators to benefit the earlier market entrants who engage in promotion.
This is a question of realizing Satoshi’s dream as outlined on the whitepaper, vs. perpetuating the intellectual property theft of stealing Satoshi’s brand name and selling a completely different product for short term profit.
So, we must fight.
a) Disarm all fraudulent arguments
• Claims of centralized leadership, claims of lack of credentials and other unimportant claims only seek to draw the undecided conversation participant away from what truly matters; the theft of the brand name by the other unrelated protocol.
• Call out conversations that seek to only talk about price. This puts you in the speculator’s frame, and is what got Bitcoin to this point — choosing short term gain for free instead of working hard to achieve the peak of what is possible. When confronted with price arguments, ask the questioner if they are looking at the price of Copper futures daily, or other any other use-based commodity prices.
Call out conversations that choose to tarnish Bitcoin’s reputation. Bitcoin can scale, Bitcoin has scaled successfully and Bitcoin is successful already.
b) Deconstruct and destroy BTC narratives and arguments
Most BTC arguments depend on preying on uninformed people. Most of these narratives can be easily debunked by simple research, albeit most people don’t do this research. Most people buy into BTC without knowing what they’re buying; they let the Sin of Greed take over.
Best performing asset class: False.
Bitcoin is not an asset class, it’s a cherry-picked asset from an industry that has no clear definition as to which assets are securities, commodities or currencies.
Here are 10 US stocks in 2020 that performed at least 300% better than BTC at some point in the year: TSLA, NIO, FVRR, TUP, KIRK, MRNA, LL, PACB, AWH, WKHS. There are hundreds of stocks, with at least decent liquidity, that have massively outperformed BTC this year with less drawdown, and actual fundamentals leading to their price rise.
Uncorrelated to broader markets: False.
BTC dropped over 60% in less than a 48 hour period in March 2020 panic, underperforming global markets by a large percentage. Anyone that was on leverage would have been wiped out.
Digital gold: False.
BTC has none of the properties of gold, will likely add inflation once the block subsidy becomes insignificant and works as a pyramid scheme whereas Gold is central-bank owned and a natural-occurring element with real uses rather than a human-engineered scheme to enrich early adopters.
Bitcoin Satoshi Vision on the other hand, will (likely) have supply and demand come and go from the amount of adoption, or lack of adoption, by enterprises seeking to use the chain for immutable data storage and the amount of transactions generated by on-chain stakeholders. A true commodity based on supply and demand, not a security with no use other than speculation.
Have fun staying poor: Just @Twetchdat.
It will be on the blockchain forever, and will make them think twice about saying dumb statements again. The internet troll is only as strong as you make him. (It is kind of pathetic this has to be included.)
In war, there are only allies and enemies.
c) Popular people: block trolls
Have you ever wondered why Peter McCormack only has positive comments on his posts? It’s because he’s blocked everyone that ever disagreed with him.
That is the very definition of information warfare; those people cannot express their opinions on his posts in the future because he has blocked them. New people never get to see the negative side of what Peter is promoting. That is as evil as it gets.
Since we are promoting honest usage and not Ponzi speculation, it is imperative that all trolls and Ponzi promoters be blocked by the bigger users representing BSV on social media.
Every time a new user comes to the discussion, they see the poisonous discourse represented by the 3-follower trolls. They don’t get to download one of the leading BSV apps, they don’t get to ever participate in the ecosystem, just because of no-skin-in-the-game trolls.
d) Be consistent in the branding. We come up with ONE logo that is universally used.
If it were up to me, I would drop the dragon.
3. User-friendly experiences
There exists a culture of capitalism, and rationality within the BSV community. The real world’s truth is far from what exists within the community. The truth of the matter is that a lot of people are not capitalistic in their ideology and that they are definitely not rational. However, does the world wide web discriminate based on one’s political leaning or technological orientation? Absolutely not.
a) Wallet integration
It must be up to the wallets to market themselves through both advertising and the creation of good features, but it must not be restricted by the apps that integrate the wallets. In 2020 it’s rare to encounter a situation in which you visit a website and are told that your browser is not supported by the webpage.
The same way, all wallets that have integration features must be able to be integrated to all apps. Exclusivity agreements may be put in place for short periods of time, but anything more only suppresses adoption and prevents the “rising tide lifts all ships” effect. See: Joe Rogan dumpster fire Spotify contract
b) Subsidization
There are lots of existing popular killer applications in Bitcoin that could make it to critical mass. For example, can you imagine the meme economy Twetch could have? There’s just one key problem: onboarding. Someone that hears about Twetch from outside the BSV community will have to create a wallet. They will then have a $0.00 balance. This means they effectively cannot do anything.
Subsidization is required from most BSV apps if the user is a first-time user. This means sending a penny to cover transaction fees, and then allowing a certain amount of posts for “free”, for the user to get a taste of getting those juicy interactions.
Twitter suggests the user to type in their interests upon registration and follow a list of dozens of people within their niche, meaning every new user’s feed will be populated with at least semi-relevant content. It’s a small price to pay for how much better the user experience would be.
This applies to every single consumer facing app and is essential to adoption. No one can understand how good BSV is if they cannot use it in the first place. Once again it contributes to the “rising tide” effect.
c) Fiat and token-to-token onboarding
For the purposes of using Bitcoin, we need on-chain purchases. A PayPal listing would do nothing for BSV. The average user experience for purchasing BSV is unclear, and unpleasant.
Using BuyBSV.com has only yielded card rejections for me and thus the only way I have been able to purchase BSV has been through centralized exchanges and then withdraw, which is way too much friction, especially given the lack of exchange support.
I have always been of the opinion that there needs to be a bridge between Ethereum and BSV; Wrapped BSV on the Ethereum blockchain, which can then be redeemed for native Bitcoin tokens. Even if there is a redemption fee of up to 1% this could be viable.
This acts as an easy way to move liquidity from Ethereum network participants to BSV, as well. (Of course, legality aspects would have to be explored.)
d) User interfaces and branding
A lot of BSV apps have practical uses that go beyond speculation, but have 1990s web design. WeatherSV is a great use case for the Bitcoin blockchain: storing immutable weather data on the blockchain. Hundreds of years from now researchers will be able to use machine learning algorithms to analyze intraday weather patterns from this moment today, to predict weather far into the future up to the minute. This is an amazing feat.
It is time for all BSV businesses, whether hobbyist or professional, to professionalize anyway. We are expanding past the “SV” community, and thus it’s time to drop the SV out of your company’s name. You are fulfilling Satoshi’s Vision, and that is enough merit in itself; there is no need to broadcast it. For the outsiders, that doesn’t mean much. Drop the ideology, and hire a web designer to re-do all your websites, people.
4. Build infrastructure and build agencies
a) Infrastructure
Infrastructure is probably the single most important thing to leveraging a new technology.
Can you imagine if every time you wanted to go to Google.com, you had to type in h-t-t-p-s-:-/-/w-w-w-. -g-o-o-g-l-e-.-c-o-m?
That would be a pain in the ass and a friction point for most users. Luckily, in BSV we recognized this early. We’ve created Paymail, we’ve created non-Bitcoin addresses with handles, and we’ve created keyless wallets. Unwriter has created a multitude of protocols that have contributed immensely to the BSV ecosystem. It’s time to create more and it’s time to create them to be developer-friendly. We are not creating them for the current developers of BSV; we are creating them for people who have never-ever coded anything on Bitcoin, and they should be explained as such.
b) Technical & Sales Agencies
Agencies are essential to exponential success. This is the case because you create people who have skin in the game; people who need the protocol to succeed.
In BTC, the key stakeholders are exchanges and miners. Both of these entities (sometimes the same people) have only price in mind when it comes to skin-in-the-game, because they rely exclusively on block subsidy and trading volume on their exchanges. There is no other skin-in-the-game, because they are not loyal to the protocol and have also invested in other competing chains.
In BSV, we must create non-speculative skin-in-the-game. The “honest miner” analogy doesn’t work because the miner is trying to protect the price, it works because a large part of the economy will be data-based transactions on Bitcoin and for every second that the network is not working as intended, millions of dollars will be lost — the same way as the internet.
The people that run these agencies religiously follow every new update to Google algorithms, because they have skin in the game. If they don’t keep up to date, they’ll be out of business in a year.
There will be Bitcoin agencies that are tasked with data management. Once the infrastructure is set up, blockchain-as-a-service agencies are free to pop up and monopolize on this market. There are so many inefficiencies to solve by implementing blockchain data solutions; it is going to be up to the people who make and run these agencies to decide how they will do them. Accounting fraud prevention is just one use case that will save billions of dollars yearly by having verifiable blockchain data. Supply chain integration is another.
It may be the case that an agency will charge a business $10,000 per month and their transaction fees (example: 2 million transactions) will cost $5,000 in BSV, netting them a profit of $5,000. The agency understands the Bitcoin blockchain and therefore works with it, and the business never has to interact with the blockchain; they receive their reports the same way they usually would.
This is what adoption looks like on a big scale: hundreds of agencies working to make millions of businesses more efficient by migrating their data and micropayment solutions on-chain.
5. Remember where you came from
From the mass-forum-bans, to the DDoS attacks, to the slander, to the hash wars, to the delistings, to the smear campaigns, we don’t forget. We may forgive eventually, but we don’t forget.
There are lots of people who have put their money and reputations on the line to make Satoshi’s invention come true, after a multitude of VC backed ideologues managed to steal the Bitcoin name away from what it was intended to be.
Remember, that the Core BTC developers fully knew that minimizing merchant adoption meant a higher short term price. They’re not stupid, they’re malicious. Merchants sell their coin for fiat right away, leading to sell pressure. Any honest person knows that; Bitcoin wasn’t meant for speculation, it was meant for online payments. They did it to increase their fiat holdings because they bought in at the single-digits and needed someone to sell it to.
Only someone dishonest would seek to change the protocol to not allow the very thing it was designed for.
Only someone dishonest would celebrate when fees hit $100 per transaction, on a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
So when we succeed at creating the next paradigm in online payments, finance and data storage, remember who the people we fought against are, and remember what they stood for, because they are not going to take Satoshi’s invention again.
We are going to make it succeed.
