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On this episode of Untangling Web3 (UW3) Podcast, CoinGeek’s Kurt Wuckert Jr. made a special appearance, joining Alec Burns and Jack Davies to talk about the history of Bitcoin, scaling and its future direction.
The origins of Bitcoin
After a brief introduction of Wuckert’s Bitcoin journey which began back in 2012 when he received it as payment for a print job, Davies jumps right into the history of Bitcoin. He wants to know when it really began, noting that most of the technology it uses existed before Satoshi Nakamoto put it all together.
Wuckert says the ideas that created Bitcoin could go all the way back to the Roman Republic and the Medici era in Florence. There are lots of ideas rooted in those days that inform aspects of Bitcoin, including around the control of money, double entry accounting and more.
However, Bitcoin’s formation was more directly impacted by the decades directly preceding its release. In 1971, the United States broke the gold standard, and around the same time, libertarians and cypherpunks began pushing back against globalization, government snooping and other forms of authoritarianism. They explored encrypted communication and thought money could run the same way.
However, it wasn’t until Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin that scalable digital cash was solved. There were at least 50 attempts before his, and they all failed. He put together all the pieces of the puzzle in a new and unique way, combining blockchain, hashing and other things which had existed before Bitcoin.
Scaling, hash wars and the fight for Bitcoin
Wuckert missed the very early days of Bitcoin. When he got involved, it was only $100 per coin. He found Roger Ver inspiring but says that he has become a disappointment in many ways.
Back then, the culture was different. Satoshi had already left the project, but there was still fierce debate over his ideas, and Bitcoin factions had already formed. Wuckert says the debate over scaling started on the very first day when a forum user called James Donald told Nakamoto it wouldn’t scale, and the Bitcoin creator explained to him how it did. He notes that Nakamoto was also dead against the ‘crime money’ narrative and was deeply concerned over Bitcoin’s links to the Silk Road and Wikileaks.
How much data can you settle every 10 minutes? This is ultimately a computer science question. In Wuckert’s view, the 1MB block size limit may have made sense when the network was small and vulnerable to attack, but it doesn’t make sense any longer. Of course, as his regular viewers know, it was kept this way deliberately, even though it was supposed to be temporary.
Who conspired to cripple Bitcoin and limit its capabilities? Wuckert has written an article called the Mastercard Bitcoin conspiracy which sheds some light. However, Digital Currency Group (DCG) is one player in the equation, and they have funded almost every promising startup in Bitcoin, swaying them to the small blocker side.
After the hash war, which Wuckert says BCH was destined to lose from the outset because it added Replay Protection, big blockers began to fight among themselves. Eventually, this led to the BSV and BCH camps with BSV restoring 98% of the original capabilities of Bitcoin. As a result, it can do much more novel things, handling data as well as just pure monetary transactions.
Bitcoin will become what we use it for
Davies reminds Wuckert that he once said, “Bitcoin will become what we use it for,” and he wants to know if that explains how we got here and what Bitcoin will be used for in the future.
Long ago, Wuckert said it should be used as money lest it be regulated as an asset and taxed as such. That’s exactly what has happened, proving that if we use it as an asset, it will be seen and treated as one.
Instead, we should get people to use it as a tool to enhance privacy, data integrity and to create a digital identity. It solves all of these problems and more, but few understand this. We need to take back digital sovereignty or people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos will continue to be more powerful than elected governments in the same way the Medicis were back in Florence.
What is Bitcoin? What is Web3?
Wrapping up, Wuckert answers the question the hosts always ask. To him, they are the same thing: everything. Bitcoin should integrate into and on everything. It should be like a virus with no vaccine and should spread as such. The economic opportunity it provides is unlike anything else, and it should be used to harness that.
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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.
