Patrick Thompson joined Brittany Bitz to talk about leveraging blockchain solutions, whether there’s room for other blockchains and digital currencies, and much more.
Introducing Patrick Thompson
Faslun welcomes Thompson to the podcast, greeting him for the first time since they met at Bitcoin Miami. She asks him to fill us in on what he’s been doing recently. He says he now works full-time with Satoshi Block Dojo and will be opening a Miami office in January 2023.
BSV is bigger than Dr. Craig Wright
Faslun circles back to the Miami convention, reminding Thompson how so many people put a huge emphasis on Dr. Craig Wright. She acknowledges that he’s a big part of it, but he’s not the whole of it and asks how those involved in the ecosystem can shift the emphasis from him to the technology itself.
Thompson says his journey into BSV wasn’t BTC-BCH-BSV, as it was for many others. Instead, he was a general ‘crypto’ guy and found BSV due to its technical superiority as a blockchain.
He points out that many others followed Dr. Wright and others to BSV, but that isn’t always the best thing because it’s better to find that the technology is the best solution to your problem and come from that angle. He believes this approach—looking at the technology—could shift the focus away from Dr. Wight and onto the bigger picture.
How could other digital currencies fit into an economy with Bitcoin?
“A multi-coin approach isn’t evil,” Thompson says, noting that some companies that exclusively offered BSV now offer support for other digital currencies.
Giving the reasons for his belief that a multi-coin approach is fine, Thompson says:
- Blockchains are like accountants. There are many of them doing the same job. The things that might attract you to one versus another are small, simple things like fees and that they might have sparkling water in the lobby.
- People are still speculating to a large extent, generating interest. There’s a chance for others to discover BSV by entering through other blockchains or vice versa.
- There’s a lot of benefit for companies in serving holders of many different coins rather than just one. Opening up to a much larger market can multiply profits and entice new players to enter.
“I see multi-coin being a thing for quite a bit of time to come, and I personally don’t have a problem with it,” Thompson says. Faslun sees the benefit of it in the sense that bringing in new people to the BSV ecosystem by supporting other coins could bring in new ideas and innovation. Thompson agrees, noting how it actually took BSV longer to get NFTs than many other inferior blockchains.
Thompson also notes that BSV is “engineer-heavy” and that this type of person tends to build products that appeal to other engineers rather than everyday consumers. Faslun notes that when she first entered the BSV space, it took her a while to digest everything because the level of thinking is on a higher level technically. Both agree that this can be both a good and a bad thing.
“A lot more people are blockchain agnostic than you would probably think,” Thompson says, noting that Twitter tends to bring out the loudest extremists. In the real world, people are after solutions and don’t care what blockchain it is built on.
The Unbounded Capital Summit in New York
Faslun asks Thompson about the general vibe at the recent Unbounded Capital Summit in NYC. She says that Joshua Henslee said it was great and wants to get Thompson’s perspective.
Thompson says it was primarily an investor audience consisting of family offices, VC firms, and angel investors. There were also some new investors who were starting out in blockchain. He notes that they asked serious questions and were locked in and interested.
“They’re looking for something that makes sense and something that makes money,” he says.
On the whole, Thompson feels it was a great conference that focused on BSV as a technology that can solve problems. He hopes to see more of this in the future.
On Dr. Wright’s court cases
Commenting on the ongoing court cases Dr. Wright is caught up in, Thompson says there is some value in winning them.
As for whether they can decide whether Dr. Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto or not, Thompson says he doesn’t think it matters. Whereas it might have counted a lot in 2015-2018, he doesn’t think it will have that much of an impact in today’s environment.
Should we be thinking more about the price in BSV?
Faslun notes that most people in BSV have given up on trying to “pump our bags” and have stopped focusing on token price. She’s curious to hear Thompson’s take on whether or not this is a good thing.
“I love price,” Thompson says, reiterating that he came in via ‘crypto’ rather than following the various Bitcoin forks and protocol wars. “Overall, I think price is not a bad thing,” he says. In the short term, consumers are still going to drive much of the market action and trends.
That said, he thinks it’s a good thing that the brightest minds in the industry line up to sing BSVs praises, and he reminds us that enterprises approach things from a very different angle. In his view, those involved in BSV are very good at seeing what’s around the corner, but it will take years to come to fruition. Ultimately, this will be more sustainable than short-term price pumps and trends.
Regulations and their impact on the industry
Sticking with the thread of thinking about the future, Faslun asks Thomspon for his opinion on how regulations will impact things.
Thompson begins by saying he was recently at a conference with lots of bankers, auditors, and others in associated professions. They talked about “digital assets” and “distributed ledger technology.”
“They think blockchain and digital assets are a joke,” he says, pointing out that while they think stablecoins are better than more volatile digital currencies, they’re not threatened by any of it.
Speaking about stablecoins specifically, Thompson points out that while much of what the issuers do might not fly in the U.S., they’re not registered there. “They know what they’re doing. That’s why they’re registered in places like Puerto Rico and the Cayman Islands,” he says, pointing out that while regulations might be passed in America, Europe, and elsewhere, it’s challenging to pin operations like Tether or Binance down.
On a potential proof-of-work mining ban
After talking a little about the global economic situation, Faslun wonders whether some governments might ban proof of work mining to ease energy costs, particularly in the European Union.
“I think it would totally make sense,” Thompson says, pointing out that it’s an easy target when there’s an energy crisis going on. One of the keys to countering this is education about how PoW works and explaining its benefits.
Watch: The BSV Global Blockchain Convention presentation, Enabling the Real World Metaverse
New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.
