February 4 is a significant day in Bitcoin’s history. On this day in 2020, the Genesis protocol upgrade successfully took place, stabilizing the Bitcoin protocol in addition to removing the block size limit.
To commemorate this historic event, CoinGeek’s chief historian Kurt Wuckert Jr. is hosting a Genesis anniversary livestream beginning at 2 p.m. EST on February 4.
A few hours before Kurt is set to go live, Bitcoin Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen and nChain CTO and Bitcoin SV Infrastructure team Technical Director Steve Shadders are also hosting the BSV Virtual Meetup – EMEA at 12 p.m. EST (6 p.m. CET).
As far as what you can expect to see in each livestream, Kurt said:
“I will be doing live Q&A, illustrating some mostly unknown facts about bitcoin, entertaining a couple of special guests. Plus, I will be making a special, live announcement that nobody should miss.”
And from Jimmy and Steve, you can expect,
“This week, Bitcoin Association kicks off our BSV Virtual Meetups once again, with the first event of the year a special edition for the Bitcoin SV community in Europe, the Middle East and Africa,” said Nguyen.
“I’ll be giving a general update on news across the Bitcoin SV ecosystem to start the event, after which I’ll joined by Steve Shadders to discuss the Genesis upgrade—both past and present. Then, we’ll have a host of special guests tuning in to share some news of their own which you won’t want to miss—but no hints from me as to who or what, you’ll have to tune in to find out!”
Unbounded scalability
The Genesis protocol upgrade was a revolutionary event in Bitcoin; I would even say that the Genesis upgrade was the dagger in regard to setting Bitcoin apart from the airdrops such as BTC and BCH. Although BSV was technically more capable than both BCH and BTC before the upgrade, the Genesis upgrade opened the floodgates for innovation on BSV and removed the block-size limit—something that none of the other airdrops have done.
“For eleven years, debates about the protocol reigned among the bitcoin intelligentsia,” Kurt said. “These debates crushed the possibility of building businesses on a solid, scalable foundation. That ended on February 4, 2020, with the penultimate update to Bitcoin SV—the restoration of the boundless protocol without arbitrary limits, and the first blockchain project on earth to truly leave the realm of beta testing.”
Most blockchains are nothing more than hobby platforms, they serve as playgrounds for developers to test out some very innovative ideas. But because the blockchains are technically restricted for arbitrary reasons, it is impossible for those developers to turn their innovative ideas into enterprise solutions.
One of my favorite quotes comes from Joshua Henslee, who said, “On ETH, if you succeed you fail, you are going to hit a wall every single time.” Due to the block size restriction and the limited number of transactions per second the Ethereum network can handle, there becomes a point where your success bottlenecks the network and your transactions can no longer be processed in real-time. In addition, the transaction fees on the network make it more costly to do business than it would otherwise be if you just used cash. These network problems are unattractive to any serious business that generates large amounts of data or processes hundreds of thousands of transactions per day.
However, Bitcoin’s unbounded protocol changed this, which is unprecedented in the digital currency ecosystem. Bitcoin has no block size limit, so enterprises can push as many transactions as they need to through the network without being stifled by arbitrary limits, and it only costs a fraction of a penny (the current transaction fee is $0.00045) to execute a transaction. These factors make Bitcoin SV the perfect chain for any business looking to incorporate blockchain solutions.
“Only the Bitcoin SV network can offer the combination of capabilities—unbounded scaling, greater data functionality and capacity, as well as predictable, super-low transaction fees—required to support true enterprise adoption of blockchain technologies,” explained Nguyen.
“We’re seeing a host of companies from a variety of sectors already leveraging these unique capabilities to power a new generation of applications and services, as varied as healthcare to eSports—with much more to come!”
Interested in learning more about Bitcoin’s capabilities as well as the Genesis protocol upgrade and what it means for the future of Bitcoin and blockchain technology? Then you are going to want to tune into both the Bitcoin Association’s BSV Virtual Meetup – EMEA on February 4 at 12 p.m. EST (6 p.m. CET) as well as Kurt’s livestream at 2 p.m. EST!
Register to join the BSV Virtual Meetup – EMEA.
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