Stephanie Tower for the CG Pulse Episode 45

The CoinGeek Pulse Episode 45: Elon Musk tweets blocksize and low fees, Bitcoin flippening, Bitcoin Pizza Day

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Following his tweet on Tesla dropping Bitcoin as a payment option for its products, Elon Musk initiated block size conversation on Twitter and triggered small-block supporters.

Early this week, Musk tweeted his intent to increase Dogecoin’s block size and lowering its fees, which met criticism from the BTC group of developers and supporters. It is only one of the few ironies of Musk and small-blockers relationship. One day, they are all praises and love him, and the next day, they will all come running after him for abandoning the so-called rocket going to the moon.

Musk replied, “100X higher transaction volume with 100X lower fees means total fees earned stay same. Low fees & high volume are needed to become currency of Earth.”

Bitcoin Association Founding President Jimmy Nguyen joined in on the blocksize Twitter conversation and thanked Musk for explaining why blockchain scaling matters. Nguyen tweeted, “Transaction capacity: Low fees & high volume are needed to become currency of Earth. That’s why BTC, ETH and others do not work. It’s exactly why BSV does work.”

Musk’s tweets came days after Tesla stopped accepting BTC, citing concerns about the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuel for Bitcoin mining. Recently, Al Jazeera published an article that mentions BTC and Ethereum as the most ‘environmentally unfriendly.’ It enlists digital currencies from the highest to the lowest annual carbon footprint of PoW coins measured in terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity consumption. BTC tops the list at 114 TWh, while BSV proves to be the environmentally friendliest with less than one TWh.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s tweets pressed a button and opened wounds within the Bitcoin space. For years, lifting off limits and increasing the blocksize of Bitcoin have been a constant conversation and a battle among groups of developers. That war has ended with Bitcoin SV emerging as the single largest public proof of work database in the world.

This week also saw the first of many flippenings in the Bitcoin space. Bitcoin SV’s total data stored on-chain has now exceeded BTC. BSV is now considered the largest public blockchain when measuring total data stored using this type of technology.

In an article, CoinGeek’s Chief Historian Kurt Wuckert Jr. shared, “BTC proponents want to keep the total size of BTC as small as possible so average people can run full copies of the blockchain.” He explained, “Big blockers believe that the cumulative data on the ledger is itself a valuable commodity that the proof of work secures, and so profit-seeking nodes should want more data that can be used in commerce from the blockchain.”

Speaking of commerce, did you know that on May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz made history with the world’s first Bitcoin Transaction? Laszlo purchased two Papa John’s pizza with 10,000 Bitcoins. 11 years after, this unassuming move is still being celebrated and has certainly influenced the world. Just ask investor Anthony Pompliano who launched Bitcoin Pizza this week to raise funds and support BTC development. The most ironic fact here is this—you cannot buy Bitcoin Pizza with Bitcoin.

Here’s the latest in the BSV ecosystem.

HandCash released handcash.me. Now, anyone can share their handcash.me link on social media to receive tips and to create predefined payment requests or invoices.

Bitcoin Association has announced the 4th Bitcoin SV Hackathon with $100,000 prize pool at stake. The event will take place entirely online from June 14 to July 26. Registration began May 16 and will end at the conclusion of the coding round on July 26 at 12:00 p.m. (GMT).

Lastly, the recently concluded Bitcoin SV DevCon 2021 was a huge success. For those who were unable to watch the sessions, you still can! Just go to Bitcoin Association’s YouTube page.

Watch Bitcoin SV DevCon 2021 Day 1.

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Watch Bitcoin SV DevCon 2021 Day 2.

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New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.