Craig Wright on CoinGeek Backstage: Bitcoin has become Orwellian, but I’m restoring the original vision

Very few fiction books have had more tremendous success and significance than George Orwell’s 1984, which follows the life of Winston Smith in the dystopian world overseen by ‘Big Brother.’ Dr. Craig Wright believes that most of what he created with Bitcoin has been subverted, and concepts like peer-to-peer and decentralization have now become ‘Orwellian.’ He’s now fighting to restore his original vision of Bitcoin (BSV).

Dr. Wright was in Dublin for the Global IoT Summit, where he delivered a keynote presentation on the integration of Bitcoin SV, IPv6, and the Internet of Things to bring forth a new era of the Internet. CoinGeek Backstage host Becky Liggero caught up with Dr. Wright at the event to discuss his vision for Bitcoin.

“The concept of peer-to-peer has been Orwellian in nature,” Dr. Wright started, pointing out that it had changed drastically from when Bitcoin launched in 2009. 

“Peer-to-peer means a machine talks to another machine directly. [It doesn’t mean] that a machine goes directly to this Amazon-like network of billions of dollars’ worth of computers bouncing around in a mesh and get it to the other end. That’s the distinction here,” the nChain Chief Scientist told CoinGeek Backstage.

He further verified the purpose of the nodes, noting that “the nodes are there to stop double spending.”

Dr. Wright talked about Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) as well. SPV, he noted, is how “you enable the scaling of Bitcoin, rather than have everyone running a node.”

SPV was in the Bitcoin white paper, but “unfortunately and luckily,” people didn’t really get it. It’s unfortunate because Bitcoin would be country miles ahead if SPV had been implemented from the go and also lucky because now “that’s enabled us to patent the technology and stop everyone else from stealing it.”

In his presentation at the Summit, Dr. Wright delved into how BSV’s decentralization would allow for the infinite scaling of IPv6 and IoT securely.

But as he told CoinGeek Backstage, decentralization as a concept has become Orwellian in nature as well. For him, decentralization means “pushing things out to the edges.” In politics, it’s the equivalent of lowering power as close to the people as possible through state governments, local councils, and so on—not getting rid of the government altogether.

“In blockchain, decentralization means pushing everything out to the individual,” Dr. Wright noted.

Dr. Wright has been unwavering in his conviction that Bitcoin isn’t a criminal haven. Instead, its transparency makes it the antithesis of crime. He believes that by integrating Bitcoin into more aspects of our lives, taxes, for instance, we can rid ourselves of crime, and “the good guys will win for once.”

Watch: Dr. Craig Wright’s keynote speech: A Better Internet with IPv6 and BSV Blockchain at the BSV Global Blockchain Convention

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