BSV is Bitcoin and it’s not a cryptocurrency: Elas Digital submits report to Australian Senate

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Elas Digital has submitted a report to the Australian Senate explaining BSV’s capabilities and position in the technology and Bitcoin world. The 14-page paper is a contribution to the Third Issue Paper of the Senate Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre, and has been published on the Australian Senate website.

The Senate Committee had called for industry submissions in response to its Third Issues Paper, and received 60 submissions by its June 2021 deadline. The responses come from a wide variety of financial and technology industry representatives, including Australia’s central bank, major banking and insurance corporations, regulators and advocacy groups. Joining Elas from the blockchain industry is a submission from Kraken.

Elas recently submitted a response to the 3rd issues paper for the Australian Senate's Select Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre.

You can read our submission here: https://t.co/vARS9wwQ68

And get more info/other submissions here: https://t.co/vjb3ZzwSGL

— Elas (@elas_co) July 14, 2021

Elas’ paper begins with an explanation that Bitcoin follows rules set in the original 2008 white paper “Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system”, authored by Dr. Craig S. Wright under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

In its opening paragraph, Elas’ paper also clarifies that:

The operators of the BTC network (Bitcoin Core developers) duplicated the Bitcoin database and created a network separate from Bitcoin in 2017 but kept the name and trading ticker on cryptocurrency exchanges leading to the public perception that BTC is Bitcoin.

It mentions the recent default judgment in favor of Dr. Wright from the High Court of England and Wales, that established he holds copyright over the Bitcoin white paper. The Bitcoin SV (BSV) network, it reads, is the only network that retains the Bitcoin protocol as its primary mechanism of operation, and is thus the rightful claimant to the Bitcoin transaction ledger.

As well as distinguishing itself from BTC historically, the paper points out that BSV has capacity for thousands and even millions of transactions per second, as opposed to BTC’s five. Bitcoin also does not seek to be recognized as a “cryptocurrency” and is not useful as a tool for anonymity or crime.

Elas then goes on to describe its role as a company that “allows the simple and low-cost creation of administrative ledgers for the recording of immutable attributed data and the issuance of the most versatile tokens in Bitcoin.”

Mentioning that it has five U.K. patents outlining methods for token use and creation, Elas also refers to its involvement in the Tuvalu National Digital Ledger project with nChain and Faiā, and its work tokenizing gold asset with Amleh Gold.

It describes Bitcoin as a “once in a millennia opportunity to completely re-imagine how data, identity and records of ownership” can be managed in any jurisdiction and at any scale. Bitcoin’s unbounded scaling can record data to the blockchain in real-time based on triple-entry accounting principles, “receiving, validating and timestamping all economic activity taking place in the world.”

Elas highlights that Bitcoin isn’t just a money system, but a data-carrying one. Additionally, its native BSV asset should not be seen as a speculative opportunity, but rather used as a tool for low-cost data processing that adheres to Satoshi’s set-in-stone rules and can be guaranteed to function as a secure and unchanging ledger in compliance with regulations for many years into the future.

“Bitcoin’s security model is almost entirely economic,” it says, noting the differences between BSV’s incentives and other blockchain systems. Those, along with other “versions of Bitcoin” like BTC and BCH can often create confusion as to what blockchain is, how it works, and what it does.

Why the Australian Senate is looking at financial technology

The Australian Senate committee first formed in September 2019 as the Select Committee on Financial Technology and Regulatory Technology, changing its name and focus in early 2021. It is tasked with exploring opportunities to market Australia’s strengths, and to position the country globally, as a technology and finance centre. The end goal is to assess the tax and regulatory environment against other countries around the world, and attract/retain technology and financial business activity that can benefit both Australia and any overseas markets it serves.

It produced its second interim report in April 2021 and called for those in the financial technology industry to submit responses to its third issues paper by the end of June. It is also seeking out potential employment and economic benefits and new opportunities arising from the COVID-19 pandemic situation.

The committee has a particular interest in blockchain for finance, mentioning “debanking” of fintech companies, “neobanking,” as well as the opportunities and risks associated with wide-scale adoption of the technology.

Watch: CoinGeek Zurich panel, Tuvalu: A Country’s National Digital Ledger on BSV