Craig Wright: Demonstrating that Bitcoin works is the best way to educate people about blockchain

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How do you educate people about the power of blockchain technology? According to Dr. Craig Wright, the best way to demonstrate its capabilities is by building solutions for the challenges they face in their day-to-day lives.

Dr. Wright was a keynote speaker at the London Blockchain Conference, where he talked about building a business with Bitcoin, redactable signature systems, and addressed the audience’s questions. CoinGeek Backstage reporter Jon Southurst caught up with him on the sidelines of the event to talk about taking Bitcoin mainstream.

On the best way to bring in the masses, Dr. Wright says we must show the world what Bitcoin is capable of.

“We’re going to have to demonstrate. [We must] build solutions and show them,” he told CoinGeek Backstage.

Dr. Wright said private blockchains like the Hyperledger Fabric make big scalability claims that the public can’t prove.

“We want to make it public so that the whole world can view, audit and know,” he says.

The nChain chief scientist lauded the growth of the blockchain industry in recent years. However, he believes that fragmentation is costing the sector.

“The whole’ everyone having their blockchain’ thing is a bit silly. It’s like everyone having their own internet,” he notes.

In the internet’s early days, most major enterprises were keen on having a private internet network that they could control. These networks would connect through protocol gateways. This approach wasn’t scalable, and today, we all use one internet protocol, which has been the foundation of its success.

Similarly, blockchain technology will only become ubiquitous, like the internet, when the world uses one network that can scale to accommodate billions of users.

While the Bitcoin blockchain can underpin virtually any industry, Dr. Wright believes it needs a few killer applications to put it on the global map. CBDCs are a great starting point, he told CoinGeek Backstage.

“Imagine a digital pound where you can send a hundredth of a penny. That may not seem like a lot, but when you do lots of them, it will change the nature of many industries,” he said.