Calvin Ayre: CoinGeek Live will be ‘making a bit of history’

This article was originally published on CoinGeek on September 20, 2020.

CoinGeek Live will be hosted in studios in New York and London and, for the first time, is designed for the online audience and is free to attend. 

Calvin Ayre, the founder of Ayre Group and CoinGeek, is excited about the prospects: “I don’t think anybody on any platform has done what we’re attempting here. So this is kind of making a bit of history. If this event goes off like we think it will, I think we’ll be in fine spirits.” 

CoinGeek Live is the latest of a series of conferences that Calvin says is “moving around and evolving.” This will be the sixth—the first having been in Hong Kong, back in May 2018, with later conferences in London, Seoul and Toronto. Each has been bigger than the last and they now cover a wide range of subjects including technology, consumer apps, enterprise solutions and finance. 

Calvin sees that diversity as leading to more changes ahead: “I see a future where we’re going to have smaller, more mobile multi-channel conferences and then larger ones which will have specialized channels. This might be the last of the large ones that has everything kind of mixed together.”

If there is a particular focus to the three days of this conference, it’s provided by its location in New York, with access to Wall Street: “We’re really going to be focusing this one at enterprise and finance because of the finance community in New York.”

One feature for which CoinGeek conferences are rightly famous will sadly be missing this time: the after party. Calvin says it just wasn’t an option, unfortunately: “Even if it was possible to put one on, we just didn’t want to do it because there’s just too much stress around parties right now.” 

That doesn’t, of course, stop people organising their own fun: “I’m pretty sure there are going to be some celebrations because I hear there are some big announcements coming.” 

Calvin himself will be following the action from the Bitcoin Association’s new offices in Zug, Switzerland: “We’ve got it all set up …and we’re going to be watching it. And we’ve invited some of our friends who are interested in Bitcoin in the local community as well.”

To register for your free, virtual pass for CoinGeek Live, please visit coingeekconference.com.

Why Enterprise Adoption and Venture Funding is good for Bitcoin BSV Ecosystem

This article was originally published on CoinGeek on September 23, 2020.

I am sure I speak for a lot of you out there concerning the sheer frustration at the nonsense that gets published on social media. Some of it is just inexperienced innocence clearly, but some of it is far more malicious sock puppetry and shill accounts showing up saying a few positive things to get a following and then changing to spew toxic fiction. I figure rather than commenting in bits and pieces in exposing these shills, I will lay it all out here on CoinGeek.

Let’s start with the attacks on Enterprise adoption. Enterprise adoption is ONLY good for the massively scaling original Bitcoin BSV ecosystem. Enterprise rollout proves to the world that original Bitcoin works and solves real world problems at massive scale using its two superpower global monopolies of nano-transactions and massive immutable data storage and indexing on a public blockchain. In fact BSV can subsume all other chains and the entire rest of the world and put a value to all worthy data in existence through the Metanet. All this with its existing world’s lowest transaction fees of $0.00002 US dropping even more as it scales. As more of this is proven in daily growth and usage, the trolling that loves to declare that Bitcoin BSV is a scam will die.

As the evidence becomes more concrete to the public that Bitcoin solves real world problems at scale, it will attract the massive external investment that is needed to speed up the build out of the capital intensive infrastructure component of the ecosystem that is critical to all other industry segments. This infrastructure makes it easier and cheaper to bang out consumer facing applications and anything else you can imagine this platform can solve. Enterprise adoption also brings mainstream media attention which creates a positive feedback loop that educates the world on what this technology can do.

In other words, Enterprises bring Venture Capital (VC) attention and capital to the industry. This then creates more (and more competitive) capital raising options for all startups, even consumer facing ones. This is a tool. If you require this, it will be there in the most accessible manner, and if not, that’s fine. VCs are not the enemy; they are in fact your friend if you need them and can sell them on why your project makes sense. Anyone attacking VCs are either extremely inexperienced or are just trolling and trying to confuse everyone in a never ending misinformation campaign. I myself started in business on a shoestring and did not use VC funding so I am all for anyone going at it alone like I did, but I recognize that some projects cannot be done this way and that is when the VC “tool” is useful to create a successful startup. There is no one size fits all in any of this and anyone selling simple slogans as such should be treated suspiciously.

Enterprise use also blows up transaction volume and value. This in turn, drives up the price of the native BSV token and strongly incentivizes all exchanges and wallets to roll out a BSV function on their platforms or they will die. Ironically even the criminal exchanges involved in the unethical delisting attack on Bitcoin will be forced to adopt BSV or they will die. The result of all of this is that this will put BSV in the hands of everyone making merchant adoption and peer to peer payments finally make sense. Yes, merchant adoption is actually one of the last things that will happen and it’s why the focus is not here at present. This will only happen when everyone in the world is already using BSV for one of the new applications that can only exist using its globally monopolistic super powers.

My CoinGeek conferences are going to evolve to have industry channels at the bigger events and have a broad overview of all areas in smaller mobile versions. There will be a consumer app industry segment for example. The intricate details of the plan are actively being developed and not yet public. The NY event is intended to be aimed at Enterprise and Finance segments primarily. This is on purpose to educate this space on what is possible with this technology. This does NOT mean we are not going to continue to aggressively support Consumer applications.

I also support hackathons. In fact I am one of the biggest supporters of hackathons in the world. I would love nothing better than to have those who complain about there not being enough hackathons to get up and actually do something about this. Bitcoin is a locked protocol and open to the world. Anyone can build anything on top of it without requiring anyone’s permission because of this fundamental reason. Developers love to build on predictable and stable foundations, BSV provides them that opportunity. Nobody controls the protocol. The original Bitcoin protocol empowers developers to build, and it empowers organizers because it invites developers… I call on all who vent their frustrations on social media to go out there and make great things happen. Everyone can play a part.

The last thing I want to address is the difference between the real world and social media. What happens on Social is mostly not real. Do not get distracted with the reality distortion fog on social media and forget that the original Bitcoin Protocol (BSV) has NO competition for its two main superpowers. No amount of shilling, misinformation campaigns, troll farms and whatever else the faceless throw from the shadows will alter this fact. The infrastructure being built to support Bitcoin is accelerating. Original Bitcoin BSV has already won the platform wars for all areas concerning actual utility. My advice to you all is to focus on finding a way to create something of value to the world that uses these super powers and do not allow the social media nonsense get you off this focus.

I am extremely excited about where the Bitcoin industry sits today. Look at how far it’s come since that day in June 2015 that Dr. Craig S Wright, Stefan Matthews and I met on the deck of my Penthouse in Vancouver, Canada, and decided to work together to save the original Protocol. There is still hard work ahead, but I would not trade this for anything. I love nothing better than to build companies and industries and prove the doubters wrong. I welcome everyone to jump in and enjoy this with me.

To find out more about the amazing things happening on this unique to the world technology, I wholeheartedly invite you to join us at CoinGeek Live next week.

Looking to build on Bitcoin? Ayre Group Ventures provides capital to scalable, high-growth businesses building in the Bitcoin Protocol (BSV) ecosystem. We invest in innovative ideas and projects and support their expansion with our extensive network and industry partners. You can reach us at https://ayre.group/portfolio.