BSV developer Joshua Henslee recently attended the BTC 2022 Miami conference. In this video, he shares his experiences and observations from the event. A full written summary is provided below.
Greed drives the BTC project
Henslee mentions that while he was outside the conference center in Miami, he saw a man with a double-sided sign that read: “Craig Wright is Satoshi, BSV is Bitcoin, and money is the root of all evil.”
Henslee informs us that this will be the theme of this particular video; that what drives BTC is greed, and that was the most obvious thing at the conference.
“The first thing you see is the big bull and the price chart in your face,” Henslee says, referring to CoinGeek’s Patrick Thompsons’ observations from inside the conference.
Henslee notes how there were ads for lightning wallets, digital currency apps, NFTs linked to QR codes and more throughout the city. He also noticed that the BTC conference were sponsored by Cash App. Henslee is not alone in finding this ironic since Bitcoin was supposed to disrupt wallets like this. He jokes that perhaps next year, the main sponsor will be PayPal.
Henslee tells us that the man with the double-sided sign got into some heated debates with BTC conference attendees. Some of them asked him why he believes that Dr. Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto, and he responded that he’s the only one who understands the Bitcoin white paper. Many BSVers have arrived at the same conclusion.
No innovative businesses at the BTC conference
Henslee notes that aside from block reward miners, wallets, and apps to facilitate speculation, there’s nothing innovative going on in the BTC ecosystem.
“There’s nothing disruptive, nothing innovative, and nothing that will make the future that much better,” Henslee says. He rightly reflects that the only people benefiting from BTC are the early speculators who still have their coins.
The greed and lack of innovation can be summarized nicely by a quote from BTC conference attendee Mike Novogratz in his keynote speech. He told people to “get in the tent, and get more people in the tent.” The message here is clear: buy BTC and get more people to buy BTC to drive the price higher. “It’s a straight Ponzi scheme,” Henslee says.
Dismissing ideas like SegWit and Taproot, Joshua says that these are not improvements or innovations. Instead, they are risks, and any fundamental changes to the Bitcoin protocol risk bringing the entire house of cards down, as Bitcoin’s inventor has warned repeatedly.
DeFi and blockchain gaming at BTC Miami
Henslee says that there were some discussions about altcoins and other blockchains at the conference. These centered around DeFi and blockchain gaming.
One of the ideas floated at the conference was JPEG (NFT) backed mortgages.
“Anyone with more than a two-day memory will know that this is probably a terrible idea,” he states.
Henslee is right in saying this, as one attempt to resell Jack Dorsey’s first Tweet as an NFT illustrates. He emphasizes how this is even riskier in an economic environment where the Federal Reserve and other central banks are flirting with aggressively raising interest rates.
Henslee doesn’t totally dismiss the idea of NFTs being linked to mortgages, but he imagines a very different scenario than mortgages backed by Bored Ape JPEGs. What he’s talking about is utility tokens used to track ownership on public blockchains and other innovative use cases.
Reintroducing the old banking system with a BTC twist
Overall, Henslee says that the agenda in BTC-land is to reintroduce the old debt-based financial system with a BTC twist. This is contrary to the early Bitcoiner dreams of banking the unbanked, unbanking the banked, and changing the world for the better. These days, BTC advocates don’t care about any of that. They’ve sold out for the gains, encouraging debt, leverage, derivatives, and trading instead of revolutionizing the world financial system.
However, all is not lost, and much of the original Bitcoin dream is alive in BSV. Henslee says he went to a club in Miami and met a rap group intending to drop an album on BSV music app Jamify. He believes that music NFTs have the potential to bring a whole new user base into the BSV ecosystem.
Henslee notes how it’s becoming difficult to keep up with all of the new releases on BSV. This will only accelerate as new users who aren’t part of the insular BSV community enter the space. He also notes how many BTC advocates are much more open-minded in person than the extreme personalities that troll and attack people online.
Wrapping up, Henslee goes back to his main point about the greed that permeates the BTC ecosystem.
“Every time in these markets, you always hit a wall. You’re on a train, and you don’t see the wall, or you think you’ll go straight through it,” he says.
He reflects that when people get greedy, that’s when smart people quietly take the other side of the trade.
Watch: CoinGeek Bitcade in Miami Beach highlights
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