Bitcoin SV (BSV) is Bitcoin meant for business, and is the blockchain all enterprises should build upon. BSV is the rebirth of the original Bitcoin, designed to fulfil the Satoshi Vision. Emerging from the contentious November 15, 2018 hard fork of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network, BSV now stands as its own chain and token. Unlike Bitcoin Core (BTC) and BCH under Bitcoin ABC’s development plan, BSV’s mission is clear and focused: restore the original Satoshi protocol, keep it stable, and enable it to massively scale on-chain. That is the only way to make Bitcoin the world’s new money (a peer-to-peer electronic cash system) and the global public ledger for the world’s biggest enterprises.
Since the November hard fork, native Bitcoin businesses have quickly announced #WeChooseSV, and added support for BSV. In fact, many of the best BCH applications – such as Centbee, HandCash, Money Button, and Keyport TV – have moved exclusively over to BSV. Their reasons are strikingly consistent: BSV means business. Here’s why all global enterprises should use BSV.
1. BSV promises a stable protocol.
BSV seeks to restore Bitcoin to Satoshi’s version 0.1 protocol. This means re-enabling the Satoshi opcodes, and removing artificially-imposed limits (such as the limit of 201 op codes per script). The approach rests on the belief that the original Bitcoin protocol has all it needs to sustain a vibrant, scalable network. As Satoshi wrote on June 17, 2010, Bitcoin’s original design was meant to remain for a lifetime:
The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime.
But Bitcoin never had the opportunity to flourish the way it was born to be, before Bitcoin Core developers restricted it. The Bitcoin Core group froze an artificial 1 MB block size limit, disabled numerous original Satoshi opcodes, and supports the Lightning Network as a Layer-2 alternative to on-chain scaling. It then forever altered Bitcoin by adding Segregated Witness in August 2017. These changes moved BTC far away from Bitcoin’s fundamental design.
In August 2017, Bitcoin Cash emerged as a supposed effort to reclaim the original Satoshi Vision. But it later became clear that BCH developer groups treat Bitcoin Cash as an experimental playground –implementing new transaction ordering rules, new op codes, and risking controversial changes every 6 months or even faster. In fact, during the November 2018 network upgrade, Bitcoin ABC’s developer team implemented three (yes, three) hard forks within just one week; it added checkpoints and 10 block reorganization protection — changes which undermine the fundamental role of Bitcoin miners to determine the valid blockchain through their Proof of Work. As early as January 2019, BCH now seeks to introduce Avalanche, a pre-consensus concept and move towards a Proof of Stake system. There’s even renewed discussion now for BCH to reduce the block interval from 10 minutes to a significantly shorter period. When will it stop? With each protocol change, BCH moves further away from Bitcoin, and has become another alt-coin.
That’s not good for business. The world’s largest enterprises, such as Amazon.com and Uber, will not invest significant time and resources to build applications on Bitcoin’s blockchain, if the base protocol frequently changes at a developer group’s whim. That is why BSV simply wants to restore the original Satoshi protocol, and then keep it stable. Any significant protocol changes after that should be rare, and implemented only with strong consensus and adequate testing. Developers can experiment all they want; but they should do so on top of the base layer rather than change the foundation.
BSV offers a Bitcoin protocol that is solid rock, not moving sand. With a solid-rock foundation, global businesses can reliably build robust applications, projects, and ventures upon BSV – just as they reliably build upon the long-stable Internet protocol.
2. BSV will be a massively scalable network.
Since the beginning, the Satoshi Vision was always for Bitcoin to massively scale. In April 2009, in Bitcoin’s infancy, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote to Mike Hearn that Bitcoin “never really hits a scale ceiling:”
The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It never really hits a scale ceiling.
Therefore, attempts to artificially limit the block size – such as Bitcoin Core’s 1 MB cap – violate the Satoshi Vision. On the BCH network, developer groups are not open to scaling as quickly as the Satoshi Vision needs; for the November 2018 upgrade, they kept their default block cap at 32 MB. In contrast, BSV raised its default to 128 MB, as a big step towards even higher block caps. The BSV roadmap will one day remove the block cap entirely, and let miners configure for themselves what block sizes they will accept.
Unlike the Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash camps, Bitcoin SV has already shown that bigger blocks are possible now. During a November 10, 2018 preview of the Professional Stress Test, Bitcoin SV’s software successfully mined but five 32 MB blocks. At the time, those were the largest ever on a public blockchain. Nine days later, during the main Professional Stress Test, we saw bigger world record blocks on the BSV chain of 38 MB and then 64 MB.
Big blocks are critical to attract big business. Just like companies want a stable platform to build upon, they will only develop enterprise-level applications on a Bitcoin blockchain they know is scalable – with throughput capacity established in advance to support their high volume needs. Bigger blocks are also needed to support the increased diversity of transactions which businesses want to perform, such as token and smart-contract transactions, in addition to simple payments. If you’re a company looking to build global Bitcoin solutions for supply-chain management, electronic data interchange, or smart contracts, you need a massively scaled network.
That is why BSV announces – loudly and proudly – that it is “open for business” with a much higher block capacity than Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin Cash offer. We hope to see 1-2 GB size block caps on BSV within 2 years. With nChain’s Teranode project, we plan an even bigger future of terabyte (1 million MB) size blocks, so that BSV becomes the global public ledger for the world’s biggest enterprises to use for all kinds of financial and data transactions.
3. BSV uses a professionalised approach to security
As I have been saying, it’s time for Bitcoin to grow up and professionalise. The BSV full node team takes that seriously. For its engineering approach to security, it is taking steps never been done before in the history of cryptocurrency:
• Offering a world-class bug bounty program to encourage the world’s best security researchers, to find and responsibly disclose bugs. Bounties go up to USD $100,000 (payable in BSV) for the most critical bugs, and rival programs offered by tech giants Google and Microsoft.
• Following a well-defined Quality Assurance process, before making any code changes, and adopting practices from the most security-sensitive industries.
• Being the first-ever fully security-audited Bitcoin-node implementation in history. With financial support from CoinGeek, the BSV node team has engaged Trail of Bits, a top-class security audit firm to review the BSV code and strengthen quality assurance practices. In the blockchain space, Trail of Bits has previously worked on projects for Sai, RSKj, and Livepeer. The cost for security audit work is significant, which is likely why it has never been done before in Bitcoin’s history. But thanks to CoinGeek, BSV will benefit from professional security audit testing.
BSV has a plan to create industry best practices, and deliver unprecedented commitment to quality assurance and professionalised engineering. That’s exactly what big businesses want for an enterprise-friendly blockchain.
4. BSV has a regulation-friendly mindset.
BSV’s supporters do not invite unnecessary regulation, but we know it is important to create a platform that lives in the real world, with real laws. For Bitcoin to achieve global adoption, businesses and consumers need confidence that using its currency and blockchain is legally safe. Whether we agree with them or not, we cannot ignore regulations that govern how a company operates on the Bitcoin blockchain. That is why the BSV ecosystem attracts businesses and applications who want to build in a regulation-friendly environment.
A good example is the Tokenized team, which won CoinGeek’s £5 million tokenisation contest in large part because its solution enables a token issuer to comply with laws in its operating jurisdictions. That’s smart, business-friendly, and indicative of the BSV ethos.
In contrast, some of BCH’s strongest advocates call for legally questionable practices. When extolling the virtues of new BCH opcode OP_CHECKDATASIG (or OP_DATASIGVERIFY), Bitcoin.com’s CTO Emil Oldenburg proposed using it for gambling applications, such as “on-chain bets” or “wagers” and “escrow services.” What he describes is a marketplace of bets on the rise or fall of an asset’s price, without the actual financial asset being traded; that is actually an illegal “bucket shop” under U.S. and other laws.
Even worse, in a video statement, Bitcoin.com’s CEO Roger Ver suggests the BCH blockchain can be used for transactions to buy illegal drugs, and any type of transactions for that matter, saying that:
[Bitcoin allows for] permission-less use. You don’t need permission to do whatever the hell you want with it. If you want to gamble on the Internet, that’s just fine too. If you want to buy drugs on the Internet, that’s just fine too.
I support everyone’s right to their own opinion, and take no position on how governments should regulate gambling, narcotics, or anything else. But Bitcoin will not grow to global adoption and use by billions of people, if it is promoted with illegal use cases. That scares away big businesses, and will just bring heightened government scrutiny. That is why BSV’s ethos is to act responsibly, respect the law, and attract enterprise usage.
Businesses Choose SV
BSV’s enterprise-friendly approach makes it easy to attract sensible Bitcoin businesses. Some of the best application founders echo our thinking when they explain why they say #WeChooseSV:
HandCash’s co-founder Alex Agut wrote:
The Bitcoin SV side is more aligned with us in terms of global adoption, keeping Bitcoin legal and innovating on top of the protocol – not messing with it and causing splits again and again.
Keyport TV’s co-founder Sumanth Neppali explained:
We seek stability, and we do not want an ‘upgrade’ every 6 months.
Bitcoin is not a dev playground. Money is not a Javascript framework that every 6 months, something new will be released.
Bitcoin’s design is complete.
Money Button/Yours.org co-founder Ryan X. Charles observed:
Bitcoin SV is the closest blockchain to the original Bitcoin protocol.
Bitcoin SV is committed to keeping the base protocol in place – ‘set in stone.’ This is extremely desirable from our point of view, as the protocol as it stands today is sufficient for our business indefinitely into the future.
Bitcoin SV understands the urgent need to scale.
10 years after the birth of Bitcoin, it is time to fully realize the Satoshi Vision. To do so, we must build a blockchain designed for business: to meet real enterprise needs, to be used by real people, and to comply with real laws. It means we need a stable protocol, allow for massive scaling, and add a professionalized approach to security. That’s the BSV way, and that’s why Bitcoin SV means business.
Jimmy Nguyen is Founding President of the bComm Association and CEO of nChain Group.
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