This week, Unbounded Capital Managing Partner Zach Resnick appeared on the Ten to the Ninth podcast. This podcast focuses on investment, business and startups.
Resnick talked about blockchain, investing in Bitcoin-focused startups, and BSV with host Ash Mishal.
Blockchain is the most secure database in the world
The conversation kicked off with a broad overview of what blockchain is for listeners who are not familiar with the technology. In keeping with the mainstream view on things, the host asked Resnick if the true value of blockchain is to democratize finance and eliminate the middleman.
Resnick disagreed, saying the true value is in immutable truth and the things that can be built with blockchain, and how it can change the world in the future. He highlighted how blockchain can process data more efficiently and how this could change the world in profound ways in the same way the internet did.
“Is blockchain the new internet?” host Ash Mishal asked.
“No,” answered Resnick. It’s just a helpful analogy to allow people to understand the transformative powers of blockchain technology at scale. Just as the internet reorganized and changed almost everything about our lives, so too will blockchain technology if it reaches its full potential.
Zooming in on BSV
If you’re familiar with the BSV ecosystem, you’ve probably already heard of Unbounded Capital, the fund in which Resnick is a managing partner. Mishal was interested to learn more about BSV and why Unbounded Capital had chosen to focus on it.
Resnick explained how Bitcoin SV is the original version of Bitcoin, whereas BTC is the more popular one today. He explained how on BSV, you can send money instantly for 1/100th of a penny and that both speed and cost will continue coming down as it scales.
Mishal asked why BSV is ignored by many in the digital currency and blockchain industries. Resnick explained how its association with Dr. Craig Wright, who many views in a negative light, has caused many to overlook BSV so far.
He went on to explain how he had initially fallen for this rhetoric and had largely dismissed BSV, even as a fund manager with fiduciary responsibilities to his investors. However, after attending a tech conference, he became aware of BSV’s technical capabilities and unbounded scaling ability.
What’s so impressive about BSV in Resnick’s view? Whereas blockchains like BTC can only do 7-10 transactions per second, and Ethereum can only do about double that, BSV can already do 70k TPS. Resnick believes that it will be able to do tens of millions of transactions per second within 5-10 years.
We’ve seen evidence of BSV’s scaling abilities this year when the popular game CryptoFights went viral and started doing more than a million transactions per day without causing any bottlenecks. The Technical Director of the BSV Infrastructure Team Steve Shadders demonstrated 50k TPS at CoinGeek Zurich earlier this year.
Green Bitcoin
If you’ve been paying attention to news headlines recently, you’ll know that an increasing number of people are expressing concerns about Bitcoin’s environmental impact. Mishal brought this up, wondering how Resnick would answer critics who criticize Bitcoin from this angle.
Resnick reiterated that a distinction needs to be made between BTC and BSV. He acknowledged that BTC is more popular for speculative purposes and agreed that it is “environmentally costly” due to its capped block sizes (currently 1MB) which only allow for around 7 transactions per second. However, on BSV, there’s no block size limit, and therefore, an unlimited number of transactions can be present in each block for the same or less energy input. This makes intuitive sense to anyone who understands how Bitcoin could potentially scale to trillions of daily transactions without using any more energy than it does today.
Resnick also believes BSV will drive green energy adoption over time. There’s even a book about it called Green Bitcoin, which is available for downloaded here.
How does Unbounded Capital decide what to invest in?
Getting down to the main point of this podcast, Mishal wanted to know how Unbounded Capital makes its investment decisions.
Resnick explained that this firm is thesis-driven. Its main points are connectivity, data, and payments, which means they say no to many investors who are building on unscalable blockchains.
Because they focus on BSV, Resnick pointed out that Unbounded Capital can build good relationships with entrepreneurs, and because the BSV ecosystem is still relatively small, they can focus on a relatively small number of potential deals rather than being overwhelmed.
While connectivity, data, and payments are the main investment thesis, this still gives plenty of investment opportunities. Unbounded Capital is invested in NFT and derivatives platforms that are doing things they could not do on other blockchains. The unlimited scaling and extraordinarily low fees on BSV open the door to use cases that developers on other blockchains can only imagine.
Unbounded Capital’s biggest winners
When asked about its biggest winners so far, Resnick highlighted RUN—a tokenization, smart object, and smart contracting platform on BSV. He mentioned how RUN is already doing 1.5 to 2 million daily transactions, more than the entire Ethereum blockchain does daily.
RUN allows developers to write smart contracts using simple Javascript rather than using Bitcoin’s more complex script language. Resnick pointed out that Bitcoin always had this ability, but protocol changes made in 2015 disabled it.
What about the big picture view? Resnick explained how the BSV blockchain has the potential to restructure the way the internet itself works. While right now, users who visit the likes of Amazon.com might be pulling from thousands of different databases, BSV can unify all of this into a single database.
This could make firms like RUN bigger than Amazon, Netflix, etc, as it will make the web and the processing of all financial transactions more efficient. In time, it will become a multi-trillion industry with one or two dominant players. Resnick and his partners intend for Unbounded Capital to have a piece of the pie.
Watch: CoinGeek New York presentation, BSV Technical Update
New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.
