CoinGeek Weekly Livestream: Engineering goodness with Bitcoin Association’s Brett Banfe

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CoinGeek’s Kurt Wuckert Jr. talked to the Bitcoin Association’s Brett Banfe on the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream, where they discussed how they came to understand Bitcoin, micropayments, HandCash, and much more.

Recapping the events that rocked the industry

Wuckert begins by briefly recapping the events that shook the digital currency industry this week.

Sam Bankman-Fried repeatedly reassured FTX users and those who follow him on social media that everything was fine over at FTX, but it was all a lie. The exchange melted down after a failed rescue deal with Binance, causing token prices to plummet and users to lose fortunes.

Introducing Brett Banfe

Brett Banfe thanks Wukcert for the invitation and says he has learned a lot from him. He currently works for the Bitcoin Association as a community manager and sales representative for Handcash, so he’s deeply involved in Bitcoin SV (BSV).

Banfe recommends everyone check out a recent talk with Patrick Prinz. He discusses deconstructing top-down approaches to hierarchy and making organizations more like an organism. He also says there may have been too much of a focus on enterprise, given how slow-moving it is. While pursuing enterprise use cases is still important, the strategy is shifting to builders, entrepreneurs, and developers to provide proof of concept and get the ball rolling.

Speaking about his work so far, Banfe says he has learned not to sugarcoat things and that “if it were easy, everyone would do it.” He says he’s learning that it’s possible to engineer goodness, something he never thought was possible.

Speaking of how he got into BSV, Banfe says he first thought it was a scam and decided to look into it, but he eventually found out the fraud sounded a lot like logic. Wuckert laughs with him, pointing to how hard everyone is working, the money being invested into infrastructure, the opportunity, and reputational costs, and more, yet people keep going.

Micropayments on BSV

Banfe says that, much like the Founding Fathers in the United States did, the key to fighting the old way isn’t to resist the old way but to invent a new way that makes the old one obsolete. He says micropayments are exactly this—something nobody has ever done before.

Wuckert seconds this, noting that all most other projects are doing is absorbing capital. Virtually nobody else is doing micropayments. Banfe notes that there’s no limit to how low they can go, and micropayments are the key to true decentralization.

Working with Handcash

Wuckert asks how things are going at Handcash. He says Alex Agut was one of the influencers that caused him to back BSV. He notes how impressive Handcash has been all the way. He asks Banfe how it is working with Agut and under his leadership.

Banfe says one of the keys to success is to have an out-there CEO and a bulletproof CTO, and that’s HandCash to a tee. He says that Rafa Jiménez deserves more credit for his actions and is a force to be reckoned with. He says that they truly care about their customers and understand the technology.

BSV versus BTC in the long term

Wuckert recalls how Bitcoin has changed over the years—it was a business tool, and then it became a speculative craze. He says he has done reasonably well out of Bitcoin and can’t deny that, but he doesn’t see it as something to make money on anymore. He does have a ‘moon bag’ of BSV for when the market wakes up, but he’d rather create value, such as mining businesses and growing the Bitcoin economy.

TAAL and mining

A viewer asks what’s happening with TAAL (CSE: TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF) and why it is returning to private ownership. Wuckert says he doesn’t have any insider information on this, but he’ll give his thoughts on what’s going on anyhow.

Wuckert says he doesn’t think TAAL should ever have been public. It’s too small, and one of the main problems is that being public doesn’t allow a company to be nimble enough to adapt and compete. He goes as far as saying it might be impossible to succeed as a public Bitcoin mining company.

As for the recent buyout, Wuckert says he thinks it’s a premium that won’t be seen again anytime soon. He doesn’t know exactly why it has been taken private, but the industry is hard, and playing by the rules of being a publicly traded company makes it much harder.

Speaking of mining, Wuckert answers a viewer’s question by saying that if BTC drops below $12,000, things could get messy. As miners move away from BTC, block propagation could be impacted, and if that happens, it could lead to chain death.

What’s next for JungleBus?

A viewer asks what is next for JungleBus. Wuckert says he’s in the process of writing a number of articles to explain things like how your DEX should use JungleBus, where it should exist in your stack, etc. Big things are on the horizon, including solving lots of interesting Bitcoin problems Wuckert wants to see solved.

Watch: The BSV Global Blockchain Convention panel, Small Payments, Big Fun: Micropayments for Casual Games