Calvin Ayre invests in True Reviews: a new take on consumer review sites built on the Bitcoin SV blockchain

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A big problem with consumer review sites is that it’s hard to know for certain the authenticity of a review. A negative review could come from a competitor, somebody with an axe to grind or even a bot; a positive review may be posted by the proprietor itself, a friend or even paid shills. Honest consumers also have little incentive to post quality reviews, because it’s only the review site provider who makes money from user content.

True Reviews is an application built on the Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain that fixes problems with traditional consumer review sites, and encourages higher quality content. It uses BSV micropayments to allow users to profit from their review content, while also reducing trolling and preventing fake reviews from bots. Reviewers must actually pay a few cents (in BSV) to post reviews, but can earn BSV back because other users must pay a few cents to like, comment or interact with the user reviews. The platform also allows reviews to be tied to a tokenized proof of purchase (using tokens also built on BSV), allowing consumers and businesses to verify that reviews are coming from real paying customers.

Why would I pay when I can post on normal review sites for free?

i) True Reviews’ “pay-to-post” model discourages online bots, trolls and fake reviews (unless they want to pay), and encourages more honest and higher quality reviews

ii) The payments are tiny, a couple of cents each (in BSV) and ‘what goes around comes round’ – a review post will cost $0.02, but just one ‘like’ or comment from another user earns that back. After that, users are earning profit from their review content.

iii) No advertising on the site; True Reviews takes a small cut of the user revenue.

iv) True Reviews does not need to sell user data to advertisers or other third parties, and can monetize their feedback.

The concept of using Bitcoin micro-payments to encourage higher quality social media is already a reality with Twetch (like Twitter), Streamanity (like YouTube) and Memento (like Instagram) – all of which also use the BSV blockchain because it can scale to handle thousands of transactions per second with very low fees. This enables a better Internet vision where tiny payments of mere cents or even fractions of a cent can be quickly exchanged for better user activity – a big improvement from today’s Internet which delivers “free” services to users but at the cost of cluttered advertising and data-sharing.

True Reviews CEO and Founder Connor Murray, commented: “This product is another part of a new type of Internet where online advertisements, bots and fake content can be banished to the dustbin of history. Customers need to be able to trust the review they are reading and True Reviews will provide just that. This is only possible on the Bitcoin SV blockchain, which is finally realizing Bitcoin’s ability to combine data and monetary value. To have Calvin Ayre’s backing to get us up and running is, obviously, hugely exciting for this venture.”

Calvin himself added: “There are so many amazing things being built on the BSV chain, its mind-blowing and I’m constantly looking for investment opportunities in this space. True Reviews leapt off the page immediately as a terrific demonstration of BSV’s superpowers of micropayments and data. I’ve also been impressed with Connor so this was an easy decision.”

The investment is a successful outcome from True Review’s participation in one of the BSV Venture Pitch Days conducted by Bitcoin Association, the global industry organization that supports Bitcoin SV. Jimmy Nguyen, Founding President of Bitcoin Association, remarked: “Last October, we organized a first BSV Venture Pitch Day in conjunction with the CoinGeek conference in Seoul, South Korea – providing BSV start-up ventures the opportunity to pitch to seasoned investors. True Reviews gave a strong pitch, and it is great to see the venture now receive funding. This result confirms the value of the Bitcoin Association’s work to support the rapidly growing business ecosystem on Bitcoin SV.” 

Learn about the future of blockchain on Bitcoin SV at the next CoinGeek conference – anticipated to be in New York City in October 2020.