In my last article, I made some suggestions about the things I think the BSV economy needs, and submitted a challenge that if my list triggers you, then show me I’m wrong with “transactions, profits and hash power.” It was also tweeted asking for feedback about what I missed or got wrong. Thank goodness for the people who have helped me see what this follow-up will be about!
Mark Wilcox kindly let us know why we’re not gonna make it, but let’s dig deeper!
Lawsuits
This is probably the best kickoff point for a lot of the comments received on the previous article because it’s both the most and least important thing in the BSV economy. It’s the most important thing for reasons of cultural and historical significance for Craig Wright, and correcting the narrative about the last seven years of Bitcoin’s story. But critics perceive the on-going “legal strategy” as problematic because it has alienated BSV from the “crypto” boom of the last two years. That may be the case, but it was probably also inevitable. The world hates Bitcoin, and has, so far, stopped at nothing to snuff it out.
Wright’s lawsuits are also completely tangential to the success of BSV as a whole. In what world do Wright’s personal fights to reclaim his own sovereignty equate to success of a technology? This analogy has been beaten to death, but guys like Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs and John Rockefeller were unpleasant, competitive and difficult to work with too. They made claims that people didn’t like, and they upset whole industries with their disruption. The only reason people are so triggered by Wright is because they are softer than warm ice cream, but with a lot less integrity.
They don’t matter. History won’t even talk about these suits. They will talk about Bitcoin and the war to destroy its creator. That’s a fight worth fighting, and so is the war to build awesome stuff on, in, and with Bitcoin itself.
Incubators
Another great point is that BSV startups could use more diverse capital, mentorship and general business expertise. This is starting to happen too as work groups in Germany, Poland and the U.K. led by guys from Twetch and Satoshi Block Dojo respectively are paving the way for more independent developers, and the South Florida Citadel is looking to make waves on this front too in the fertile Miami blockchain market. But there is still tons of room to grow on this front!
Exchanges
BSV has low liquidity in the marketplace right now after several years of campaigns to “delist BSV” and then exchanges not having the budgets or the motivation to maintain BSV nodes in order to support trading or data services. The solution to this is multifaceted. We need people to be reaching out to exchanges to get BSV listed, and we need infrastructure providers to be offering API access to streaming blockchain data for lower than the cost of running a BSV “node” on exchanges and block explorers.
Marketing
This gets brought up all the time. “BSV needs better marketing” is basically a meme at this point. Whose job is this? CoinGeek? Bitcoin Association? Someone else? I have personally been a meetup host, podcast guest and social media advocate of Bitcoin since 2013, and really ramped up in 2017. This is something I did on my own accord simply because I wanted to explain Bitcoin better than it was being done.
We need more people volunteering to host and attend meetups, discuss the strengths of the Bitcoin protocol and generally seek profits in what is probably the largest economic opportunity of a generation.
Furthermore, there are lots of brands in the BSV space that could use better marketing, social and comms management. If you’re good at those things, make yourself available to the brands you love!
Documentation
This was glossed over in the previous article, but it’s a crucial tool that needs to be looked at. Money Button exploded in popularity a few years ago because it was the only wallet with good documentation and a posture for data application use. As time has gone on, there are more docs on toolkits and the like, but there is a ton more room to document token protocols and developer kits, and someone really needs to tackle this at the application level, script level and the protocol level so we can get to the other side of the confusion about how to use bitcoin.
Art, culture and community
We need to be very careful not to become a culture of “gotcha” about the Bitcoin protocol. The beauty of Bitcoin isn’t about knowing the most about Bitcoin, it’s about CREATING the most WITH Bitcoin. For this, the NFT community deserves some credit, but we need to see much more art in the form of visual, audio and video built and distributed. Atop that, we need communities to develop around the art that is being created. This can be fandoms, DAOs and various other types of social clubs.
Bitcoin is awesome, but we need to transition from being the BSV community and into being communities around real consumable digital products that have their own culture outside of the prerequisite of being really interested in magic internet money.
And for those who understand that, there is incredible money to be made being a community organizer or a concierge that ushers people into those niches like a digital sherpa.
In closing…
BSV is growing. None of the above is a criticism, and I am incredibly hopeful and bullish on our future. But we need to be extremely effective with our dollars, time and bitcoins. My best piece of advice: get out there, and sell something the economy really needs! There is a growing ecosystem of developers, investors and business management professionals looking to help.
Keep reaching!
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