Last week, leaders in the Bitcoin SV (BSV) space, including Bitcoin’s Founder Dr. Craig Wright, traveled to Bogota, Colombia, for the Expo Bitcoin International to educate the government and local community on how Bitcoin SV can change their lives.
Over the course of five days, Bitcoin enthusiasts, developers, government officials, payment processors, local business owners, even mothers and children, were treated to a series of presentations ranging from an intro to Bitcoin SV to application development, coding and mining.
“Columbia is the fifth largest community using Bitcoin in Latin America, so we have a large potential,” shared Boris Javier Barrera, event organizer and CEO & Founder of Bitek.
“In 2017 it is estimated that almost 2% of the GDP of Colombia was represented by Bitcoin transactions, this is a huge amount of money. They are realizing right now that Bitcoin is expensive in fees, Bitcoin is slow and they think Bitcoin is like that, but Bitcoin SV is showing them that Bitcoin, the original vision, is fast, reliable and very, very cheap in fees,” Barrera added.
Without a doubt, Dr. Wright’s presence at the Expo was the ultimate highlight and drew an adoring crowd, many who waited for hours just to take a selfie with Bitcoin’s creator and introduce him to their small children. During the Expo, Dr. Wright delivered what we at CoinGeek regard as his most inspirational speech to date, covering his vision for Bitcoin, a speech absolutely anyone on this planet can understand and relate to.
In an exclusive interview with CoinGeek, Dr. Wright explained why he took the time out of his busy schedule to travel to Colombia and interact with its people.
“Bitcoin’s really about global cash. Its an electronic cash system. Its money. And what we want to see is a system that enables people to build wealth. Now that’s an important aspect,” he said.
“Wealth is something that doesn’t come from zero sum games, trading on exchanges or whatever else and as we move into the future, intellectual property and the use of developing things over the internet is going to be huge. That’s where real growth is going to happen,” Dr. Wright explained.
“And in countries like here in Colombia, this is where the opportunity lies- they can start selling services and when they do this, the country is really going to boom,” he added.
In order to grow the Bitcoin SV ecosystem, merchant adoption is key. Local bar owner Victoria Mulgannon shared with CoinGeek her experience with adding Bitcoin SV as a payment option at Revellion, her “cultu bar” and cabaret in Old Town Bogota.
“It was very easy. Boris came, we have a POS system and its pretty common, its not the latest and greatest and still he was able to immediately install the system. We’ve had no problems, my partners are really happy and its been really exciting, I really believe that this is a very interesting turn of events in civilization. It’s a really interesting space to learn about and be close to you guys,” Mulgannon shared with CoinGeek.com.
Long time blockchain enthusiast Conner Murray of Bitcoin & Beyond delivered three presentations during the Expo and shared with CoinGeek why he has decided to dedicate his work to the BSV chain.
“Bitcoin SV is what Satoshi always envisioned. I’ve learned a lot from people like Craig who obviously created Bitcoin and I’m very hopeful that we finally have a Bitcoin that fulfills Satoshi’s original vision. It doesn’t change and that’s what I think is so important that I reiterate that so much,” he said.
“If I put money under my bed in the United States, I’m not guaranteed its not going to lose value in the next five years and we saw even just in Bitcoin Cash and [SegWitCoin] BTC, things are changing so much that I can’t guarantee that my money isn’t going to be debased by some centralized group of people which was the entire problem Bitcoin was meant to solve,” Murray added.
As always, Jimmy Nguyen, the Bitcoin Association’s Founding President, did a wonderful job communicating to the masses how BSV can better their lives, and emphasized his vision for people to earn and spend BSV as opposed to buying it and holding it. He also highlighted BSV’s desire to work within regulations as opposed to around them in order to achieve mass adoption.
“Moving Bitcoin from this concept that has taken over cryptocurrency where you buy cryptocurrency on an exchange and then use it as money. That’s ridiculous. That’s not how money works. We want to create an ecosystem and Bitcoin SV where people earn Bitcoin through applications and services which use their computing power on their devices, through their freelance services or just through payroll. That’s how money gets to the ecosystem. We want to build that,” Nguyen said.
“And our other big talking point here is regulation friendly. BSV, unlike the other cryptocurrencies out there, favors working with government to create a business regulation friendly ecosystem and that’s the only way it will grow to his dream, that Satoshi Nakamoto had, of 4 billion-plus people in the world using Bitcoin, as Bitcoin SV of course,” he added.
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