Metanet: The better, more inclusive and dynamic internet
By Calvin Ayre | 10 June 2024
From the start of my digital asset journey, I took Satoshi Nakamoto at his/her word that blockchain technology and digital assets were intended to be used. Not hoarded as ‘digital gold,’ not endlessly flipped in pursuit of speculative riches, but used—for the wide variety of purposes that only enterprise blockchain technology is capable.
It’s for that reason that Ayre Group is now the world’s largest venture capital investor in Metanet apps that rely on unboundedly scaling public proof-of-work enterprise blockchains like BSV. My support for BSV-based projects is well known, but that support stems from the fact that BSV is the only legally- and regulatory-compliant enterprise blockchain that can scale to make Metanet a reality.
What is Metanet? It can best be described as an economically integrated online system that enables cost-effective, instant micropayments. An even simpler way to say it is that Metanet represents the vision of a better, more inclusive and dynamic internet.
A long time ago, major corporations hijacked the original peer-to-peer vision of the internet in favor of routing all traffic through their centralized (and proprietary) hubs. Now, with the growing rollout of the IPv6 standard, end users can assign unique IP addresses to each and every one of their devices. Little by little, device by device, this is helping to restore that original peer-to-peer internet model.
All these devices talking to each other—many of them autonomously, such as the ever-increasing army of Internet of Things (IoT) devices—will require the help of artificial intelligence to ensure digital messages arrive safely at their intended destination(s).
The combination of AI, the exponential rise in IP addresses and the friction-free, cost-effective micropayment capabilities of BSV will help make Metanet a reality. Free from the high transaction fees and slow processing times of traditional financial systems, individuals will be able to easily access and monetize webpages, services, every single piece of online data, with each of these transactions costing tiny fractions of a cent.
This global democratization of access to data and services will empower individual creators to engage in a direct-to-consumer model, free from the grasping middlemen that would render such a model unworkable. Metanet represents a world unconstrained by bureaucracy, allowing individuals to rely solely on merit, innovation and their will to succeed.
Metanet also promises to upend the current model of cross-border transactions, including remittances, by eliminating the fees and delays imposed by intermediaries. Metanet’s decentralized nature will also bring enhanced security and trust to digital transactions, while offering greater control over one’s personal data.
Industry will also benefit as developers leverage Metanet’s capabilities, creating new applications and services in fields like education and healthcare that could benefit from Metanet’s flexibility and security.
And these developers can work with confidence, knowing that BSV can trace an unbroken history back to the Bitcoin Genesis block. This means that the blockchain on which developers are building is the only one with a locked protocol since 2008, ensuring that applications developed today won’t be compromised by unnecessary protocol revisions.
I have been fortunate enough to enjoy great success in a number of fields since I began my business career all those years ago. But I have made it my life’s mission to bring Metanet from the drawing board to the real world. Metanet’s potential is simply too great to ignore.
It’s for that reason that I have made London Blockchain Conference ground zero in this conjoining of enterprise blockchain, IPv6 and AI that will create Metanet. Next year’s event—the 11th in this entertaining and informative series—will have an even greater Metanet focus. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you there, so together we can marvel at all the impossibilities that Metanet is helping to make possible.
AI needs guardrails; enterprise blockchain has a role to play
By Calvin Ayre | 27 September 2023
In an astonishingly brief period, artificial intelligence (AI) has gone from the stuff of science fiction to a very real presence in the here and now, with significant ramifications for the world as we know it.
Not a day goes by without fresh reports of AI making further inroads—welcome or unwelcome—into different avenues of society. These reports illustrate AI’s capacity to disrupt any number of sectors, everything from business, the arts, science, government operations… few sectors appear immune.
All disruptive technologies spark similar concerns, stretching back to the original Luddites following the introduction of machinery into English textile mills in the early 1800s. I’m not yet convinced that AI must inevitably lead to the kind of malevolent ‘self-aware’ systems envisioned in the Terminator movies—although James Cameron is already making the rounds warning of the dangers of AI’s weaponization—but there will definitely be people who’ll need to retrain for different skills as AI’s capacities grow.
The growing awareness of AI’s capabilities followed the public being granted access to a number of programs that create text, images, videos, and musical compositions based on text prompts. The resulting creations left a lot of users slack-jawed after reading, seeing, or hearing the seemingly impossible.
As might be expected, some AI-generated images, videos, and music are better than others. The image software can struggle to render things like hands, while many of the singers belting out other people’s songs are easily detectable as bogus.
There are concerns regarding AI text generators’ tendency to sound authoritative even when they’re talking utter bullshit—potentially fatal bullshit. A New Zealand grocery chain recently found itself doing damage control after its in-house chatbot responded to a customer prompt for making an economical meal from water, ammonia, and bleach. The resulting ‘Aromatic Water Mix’ suggestion was, in reality, a recipe for chlorine gas, which hasn’t been popular since World War I.
The need for adult supervision
Public opinion may be split on whether AI will be our savior or our downfall, but one thing is clear: it can’t be the former without some technological guardrails, which is where enterprise blockchain comes in.
The basic problem with large language model (LLM) text generators is a formula as old as time: garbage in = garbage out. Simply put, randomly ingesting all available online information will invariably suck in as much bogus data as verifiable truth.
There are also occasions when AI makes up what it doesn’t know. Consider the lazy lawyers who submitted an AI-generated court filing rather than spend time doing their own research. Their failure to abide by the ‘trust but verify’ maxim led to their being sanctioned by a court for attributing fake opinions to real judges. (The court of public opinion may yet leave these attorneys without a practice.)
The situation will get progressively worse as AI models reabsorb AI-generated ‘alternative facts,’ making each new iteration that much further from the truth. Conversely, an AI model trained purely on authentic data from publicly verifiable sources would be a world-beater.
Research groups would benefit from a blockchain-backed AI system by allowing end users to confirm that reports and studies do, in fact, represent the legitimate output of these entities.
Blockchain-based AI could also ensure artists of all sorts (verbal, visual, aural, etc.) are properly compensated for derivative works based on their creations, assuming that ownership of those original creations is registered on the blockchain.
One chain to rule them all
Which is where the BSV Blockchain comes in. BSV is the only blockchain that has proven its ability to scale unbounded, making it the only blockchain capable of handling the immense data management needs of enterprises and governments. (BSV also stands alone as the only digital asset that doesn’t have to worry about financial regulators classifying it as a security rather than a currency.)
BSV is also the only blockchain capable of completing the internet’s development. It’s the only chain capable of handling the immense volume of new addresses possible under IPv6. The only chain that’s also economically equipped to handle all this data, thanks to transaction fees measured in fractions of a penny.
For a while, all you heard from ‘crypto’-focused VCs was the promise of Web3, but that roar has since become a whisper. It wasn’t because Web3 was a bad idea; it was because none of the blockchains that these VCs supported could scale to the level necessary to take Web3 beyond the theoretical.
Web3 is about reversing the transfer of power that occurred between the internet’s early days and the Web2 centralized data-harvesting model that followed. Returning control over personal data to the end user will allow individuals to effectively negotiate who has access to their data, how much of that data can be accessed, how often and for what purpose.
The role that an infinitely scalable blockchain will play in realizing all of the above was all the justification Ayre Ventures needed when it recently made the single-largest blockchain IP investment to date. The CHF500 million ($549.2 million) equity acquisition of nChain was based on its patent library, which Forbes described as impacting “everything from the US$1 trillion cryptocurrency market to corporate implementations built by some of the largest companies in the world.”
Technological advances can (and do) inspire both optimism and fear, but it’s up to us to determine how these technologies impact society. With a little help from blockchain, AI doesn’t present any challenges that we can’t meet while offering opportunities too good to pass up.
Observations on Sam Bankman-Fried, philanthropy and fishing
By Calvin Ayre | 31 May 2023
As a prominent backer of the BSV Blockchain and its legion of utility-focused and legally-compliant applications, the criminal escapades of the ‘crypto casino’ community never cease to amaze me. Even senior citizens with no blockchain experience whatsoever are now familiar with FTX and its mop-headed ringleader Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), who presided over one of the largest frauds in American history.
For this article, I want to focus on SBF’s efforts to mask his mendacity through philanthropy. Specifically, his highly public embrace of the so-called Effective Altruism (EA) movement. Like most things about SBF, his preferred version of altruism appears to be both self-aggrandizing and seriously suspect.
I’ll say right off the top that my understanding of EA is in no way encyclopedic. EA purports to be ‘utility-based,’ so given my focus on BSV’s utility, EA should be right up my alley. But from where I sit, a lot of EA proponents seem to spend more time philosophizing about how to help others rather than actually helping, i.e., engaging in interminable debates over the most optimal solution rather than just getting on with it.
In SBF’s case, his efforts were all the more suspect in that he appears to have used other people’s money to fund his charitable charade. Also, I don’t quite get how buying a multi-million-dollar castle as a retreat for EA big shots was supposed to benefit anyone other than these individuals.
SBF is hardly the first public figure to be accused of using philanthropy as a form of reputation-washing. For public figures, even the most noble intentions can be misconstrued. Like Bruce Lee said—and yes, I know he wasn’t the first to say it—you’re pointing at the moon, but everyone’s staring at your finger.
This has always been the subject of some debate, namely, whether it’s better to publicize one’s philanthropic efforts in the hopes of drawing attention to a problem and motivating others to give/help, or to do it quietly with no reward other than the satisfaction of having identified a problem and done what you could to make the situation better.
I was raised with the understanding that if you were fortunate enough to experience great success in your life, you had a duty to give something back to those who hadn’t been as fortunate. As a broke-ass student at university, my charitable efforts were limited to making donations to large organizations such as Greenpeace. This made me feel like I was doing something, but I soon grew disenchanted with this approach.
For one thing, these groups would regularly inundate me with fancy four-color brochures asking me to buy hats or shirts emblazoned with their logos. In time, I started to wonder what portion of my donations was funding all these revenue-generating/publicity-seeking efforts instead of the actual causes I was hoping to support.
When I finally started making some real money, my philanthropic options expanded. Along the way, I’d met a few individuals with the intelligence and energy to make something of themselves, but lacking the wherewithal to pay for the education they needed to take that next step. Providing them with the funds they needed, then having them reward my faith by excelling in their studies reaffirmed my view that education is a great way to help individuals. Like the old adage about teaching a man to fish, education gives people the tools with which to overcome their current limitations.
Sometimes its entire institutions that need a leg up. Years ago, when I was living in Costa Rica, I decided to formalize my philanthropic efforts by launching the Calvin Ayre Foundation. One of its first actions was what we called our Adopt-a-School program, based on one of my local employees detailing the dire conditions of many of the region’s smaller schools.
We solicited some feedback from principals on what we could do to help their particular schools. While some asked for new computers or athletic equipment, we ultimately chose a school where the principal asked for a simple meal program so that the impoverished kids—many of whom went to school without much more than a cup of coffee and a tortilla in their bellies—would be able to focus on their studies. We felt this principal truly had his students’ interests at heart, and so this is where we decided to plant our flag. Later, when I moved to Antigua, the Foundation brought these education-focused efforts with us.
In 2017, Antigua’s sister island of Barbuda was nearly flattened by Hurricane Irma, and the Foundation embarked on a relief effort, as it had following natural disasters in a number of other locations, including Haiti and the Philippines. In these situations, it’s sometimes better to provide money and supplies and let experienced relief organizations handle the logistics, but we still try to exert some oversight of how our donations are allocated.
Most recipients of charity are proud people who, while welcoming help in times of need, would nonetheless prefer to do something in return for the assistance they receive. Accordingly, philanthropy doesn’t have to involve pure handouts. It can be as simple as expressing confidence that individuals already have what it takes to improve their situation, provided they’re presented with the right opportunities.
I was born in Canada, a nation with a long history of welcoming immigrants. As a transplanted citizen of Antigua, which has been my principal residence for nearly two decades, I have some understanding of what it’s like to be a guest in someone else’s land.
I’ve launched some major real estate development projects in recent years and have primarily chosen Antigua as the place where shovels meet Earth. There are any number of places that I could have chosen to locate these operations, but the Antiguan people—from government representatives to the guys selling fruit on the side of the road and everyone in between—have always made me feel right at home and I’ve never doubted their ability to help make my projects successful.
Later this year, we’ll start work on a new $250 million Nikki Beach resort property in Antigua’s Jolly Harbour area. The project will require the efforts of a significant number of local workers, and it’s my hope that the finished resort will serve as a beacon for both international tourists and foreign companies eager to explore all that Antigua has to offer.
If we can retrace our steps back to SBF for a moment, I would humbly suggest that empowering others is by far the most effective form of altruism. The time spent in my adopted homeland has left me with no doubt that the Antiguan and Barbudan people are sharp, capable, and eager to make the most of any and all opportunities that come their way.
I was fortunate enough to catch the odd break here and there along my entrepreneurial journey. I hope that my commercial endeavors will offer not only jobs during construction and operation, but also similar breaks to budding entrepreneurs looking to gain valuable on-the-job experience as they reach for the next rung up this ladder.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll even make some new fishing buddies.
Venture capital’s desperate pursuit of a government bailout of tech-focused Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) not only exposed the lies behind VC’s libertarian pose, it offered lessons on how they conned the public into believing the neutered BTC protocol was Bitcoin.
SVB’s recent near-death experience sent a shiver down the spine of many a tech exec, that is, until the federal government stepped in with their don’t-call-it-a-bailout-bailout. Employees of tech start-ups will continue to be paid after the feds agreed to guarantee all SVB deposits, even those above the FDIC’s $250,000 insured maximum.
SVB’s major crime was seriously misjudging the Federal Reserve’s willingness to raise interest rates. SVB plowed a bunch of capital into long-term bonds that lost value as interest rates spiked. When too many of SVB’s tech-focused customers began dipping into their savings, the bank was forced to redeem these bonds at a loss, leaving a nearly $2 billion hole in its balance sheet.
But SVB also relied far too heavily on a single business sector, with predictable results. Many of its tech clients were equally at fault for putting too much of their capital – in some cases, all of their capital – into a single financial institution.
Some VCs reportedly pressed their portfolio companies to bank exclusively with SVB, apparently because that made the companies more likely to qualify for SVB loans, thereby alleviating the need for the VCs to pony up additional cash themselves.
Prior to Sunday’s bailout news, panic-stricken pleas were issued on social media by prominent VCs, all of whom had apparently undergone a 180-degree conversion from staunch Randian objectivists to enthusiastic Keynesian interventionists. The minute they feared their funds were in danger, these rugged individualists began crying for their federal mommies to save them.
Perhaps the most galling element of this campaign was the VCs’ apocalyptic warnings that failing to make them whole would cause SVB’s woes to spread to other banks. It wasn’t for their sake that a bailout had to happen, but to protect society. Without immediate intervention, America would resemble something out of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (minus the mitigating presence of Charlize Theron).
They calmed down once the grown-ups reassured them that the monsters under the bed were all gone. But while these VCs might now claim they were never, like, really worried, their ‘get government off our backs and let us innovate’ schtick won’t play anymore. As countless others have observed over the past week, there are no atheists in a foxhole and even fewer libertarians in a bank run. And the feds definitely aren’t helping by turning moral hazards into mulligans.
Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?
Before the feds stepped in, many VCs had signed a joint statement of support for SVB, claiming that if the bank were “purchased and appropriately capitalized, we would be strongly supportive and encourage our portfolio companies to resume their banking relationship with them.”
Notably absent from the hundreds of VC names appearing on this statement were prominent crypto investors a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Paradigm and Pantera Capital. Presumably, they were among the lucky few who managed to get their cash out of SVB before the doors were locked.
Also absent was Founders Fund, whose partner Peter Thiel reportedly helped spark the single-day $42 billion bank run that brought SVB to its knees. Founders Fund withdrew the entirety of its deposits from SVB before it shut and urged its portfolio companies to do likewise. Since then, neither Thiel nor Founders has spoken publicly about SVB.
But Thiel’s escape – and his pulling up the drawbridge behind him – didn’t go unnoticed. G Squared founder Larry Aschebrook called it “truly unfortunate that several GPs and companies are making a tough situation for SVB worse by pressing the panic button. SVB has supported entrepreneurs and GPs at all stages of their businesses and that partnership should run both ways.”
Following SVB’s collapse, Upfront Ventures’ Mark Suster expressed annoyance at certain VCs who were “telling people to run for the door and congratulating themselves for it … I’m seeing emails from VCs to their [limited partners] – of which I am in some firms – and they are forwarding these things like ‘Aren’t I super smart?’”
You get the heroes you deserve
Unlike the faux libertarian VCs who got out their begging bowls, Thiel’s actions are the epitome of Randian self-interest. That Thiel would act to preserve his own interests at others’ expense isn’t illegal. It’s arguably not even unethical. But his selfish actions did shift the worst-case scenario from theoretical possibility to guaranteed outcome.
Not that Thiel’s ethics weren’t already suspect. As detailed in Max Chafkin’s book, Thiel’s early stint as PayPal CEO included him urging the board of directors to turn over the company’s cash so that he could invest it with his Thiel Capital hedge fund. The board reportedly viewed this as evidence of Thiel’s ‘lack of a moral compass.’
Thiel’s PayPal tenure also demonstrated a willingness – if not eagerness – to ignore ‘know your customer’ regulations in order to rapidly grow the company. Thiel called his more compliant competitors “insane” for following the rules. In other words, Thiel was a perfect match for crypto.
Thiel’s crypto involvement has focused primarily on BTC, although the Founders Fund portfolio includes crypto-friendly payment processor Stripe and Paxos, which until recently issued the BUSD stablecoin. Thiel is also a founder of Valar Ventures, whose portfolio included the crypto exchanges Bitpanda and (now bankrupt) Vauld, as well as the XanPool fiat-crypto gateway.
In January, the Financial Post revealed that Founders Fund netted $1.8 billion after selling its BTC holdings in March 2022. Just one week after that sale, Thiel gave a speech at a BTC conference in Miami in which he held up several hundred-dollar bills, declaring them to be “probably not very good as toilet paper. It’s not good as wallpaper. It’s sort of this crappy fiat money.” He then tossed the bills into the audience and openly mocked those who scrambled to pick them up.
Thiel justified his stunt by declaring that BTC “is telling us that the central banks are bankrupt, that we are at the end of the fiat money regime.” Thiel neglected to inform the audience that he’d recently traded his massive BTC holdings for that archaic, crappy fiat money.
Why the subterfuge? Perhaps Thiel is just a fame whore and can’t live without occasionally basking in the adulation of a room full of sycophants who haven’t yet realized that he thinks they’re rubes. Thiel also might have been aware of the furious tongue-lashing his former PayPal partner Elon Musk received in absentia at the 2021 conference from Max Keiser, who repeatedly yelled ‘Fuck Elon!’ after Musk’s own massive BTC sell-off was revealed.
Thiel would also have been all too aware that fiat money might be crappy but BTC will never be money, because BTC in no way resembles the vision of peer-to-peer electronic cash described in Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 Bitcoin white paper. BTC transactions simply cost too much for it ever to serve as a currency. What’s more, its transaction capacity is so constrained, BTC could change to a ‘proof of carrier pigeon’ consensus mechanism and few would notice.
Thiel’s Miami speech declared that BTC “is a movement, and it’s a political question whether this movement is going to succeed, or whether the enemies of the movement will succeed in stopping us.” That is, unless the enemies are already inside the castle walls and secretly sniggering at the peasants still lining up to trade their filthy fiat for magic BTC beans.
Just like yesterday
A long time ago, Bitcoin was electronic cash, until some greedy grifter types realized there was an opportunity to fence in the financial commons that Satoshi had gifted the world. The BTC Core developers did the rest, kneecapping Bitcoin in order to force transactions off Layer 1 and onto proprietary sidechains.
The Frankenstein’s monster that emerged – forget ‘digital gold,’ it’s a digital gelding – became known as BTC. Many of the same opportunistic swindlers cited above would have you believe that BTC is Bitcoin. Don’t buy their bullshit. They were lying then and they’re lying now.
I’m dating myself here, but The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again was part of the soundtrack of my youth. The line about how “the morals that they worship will be gone” kept popping in my head as the SVB debacle played out. Just like the Core developers’ enforced dogma that ‘BTC = Bitcoin’ always brings to mind the line “they decide and the shotgun sings the song.”
Me? I’ll get on my knees and pray that we don’t get fooled again. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. BSV is Bitcoin.
CoinGeek TV: Calvin Ayre talks BSV growth over the years and the future it holds
By Guest Contributor | 05 June 2022
This article was originally published on CoinGeek on July 5, 2022.
Calvin Ayre joined Kurt Wuckert Jr. on CoinGeek TV to discuss why he is still fighting for Satoshi’s vision despite the opposition and what he believes the future holds for Bitcoin SV.
Ayre is the founder of Ayre Ventures, a global investment group through which he has invested in many of today’s biggest Bitcoin ecosystem’s success stories. He is also the founder of CoinGeek. He joined Wuckert on Day 2 of the BSV Global Blockchain Convention in Dubai, which incidentally was also his birthday.
As Wuckert noted, the Dubai event is the biggest by far, attracting the highest number of attendees and online streamers. “I can feel the energy building,” Ayre stated while announcing that the next event will be in London, and he expects that to be even bigger.
“The difference with what’s going on here compared to when we started the conference series in 2018 is that right now people are talking about their products with actual performance metrics. Before, it was theoretical,” he said.
The event was the first in Dubai, a city that’s gained global recognition for its blockchain adoption and integration. Ayre believes that this recognition is deserved as Dubai has a government that’s always willing to invest in and experiment with new and emerging technologies. Dubai, and the wider United Arab Emirates, have especially embraced BSV blockchain because the focus is on utility and not hype.
Ayre has been in Bitcoin for several years now and he says the journey has been “frustrating in a good way.” He would want to see things move much faster, but he appreciates the Bitcoin ecosystem’s growth over the years.
On why his tune never changes regarding Bitcoin, the gambling industry pioneer told Wuckert that it’s “because no other product can do what this technology does…if you’re really trying to solve enterprise-size data problems, you’ve got no other choice. This is the only game in town.”
Bitcoin SV is technically superior to any other blockchain network in the market by a wide margin, the other blockchain networks are called hobby platforms. And since the detractors couldn’t fault BSV on technical or application grounds, they have focused on attacking the personalities, with Dr. Craig Wright being the prime target. However, he has an impressive record in court case, and this is positively impacting BSV.
“That’s helping change the narrative around this product because that cloud of misinformation targeted at the technology by attacking the person is lifting,” he said.
However, even more importantly, more and more people building on BSV are proving that ‘the technology works as advertised.’
BSV is an enterprise blockchain, and with this, it has attracted several companies handling enterprise-level data. This ranges from those solving supply chain and social media challenges to games that process millions of transactions a day. And as the ecosystem grows, there will be more synergy between different players with shared tools that make developing an application on Bitcoin SV way easier than it is today, Ayre noted.
This growth will continue and even accelerate in the coming years. Ayre expects BSV to attract more and more companies each year, telling Wuckert that while what BSV has achieved is quite notable, it’s quite a small ecosystem compared to the size of the industries we’re trying to revolutionize.
One of the biggest factors for growth in the coming years is targeting regions other than North America. As Ayre noted, most of the people threatened by Bitcoin’s unbounded scaling are based in the United States, and as such, BSV gets much better reception in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
In closing, Ayre has this piece of advice to everyone: Take your time and do your own research on what Bitcoin is capable of.
Watch the BSV Global Blockchain Convention Dubai 2022 Day 1 here:
Watch the BSV Global Blockchain Convention Dubai 2022 Day 2 here:
Watch the BSV Global Blockchain Convention Dubai 2022 Day 3 here:
CoinGeek TV takes us to New York for new insights on metaverse and investments in Bitcoin SV
By Guest Contributor | 13 October 2021
This article was originally published on CoinGeek on October 13, 2021.
Patrick Thompson caught up with Calvin Ayre, the founder of CoinGeek and the main event sponsor via his VC firm Ayre Ventures, for the first installment of CoinGeek TV on Day 1 of the CoinGeek Conference in New York.
Speaking at the conclusion of the morning session, Ayre said he was particularly inspired by the discussions around BSV and gaming. Coming from the gaming industry, Ayre stated he is trying to get his friends in the sector to understand how powerful BSV is as a technology. While that mission has been complicated by the fog of digital currency, he said it was refreshing to see the power behind the movement towards adoption in gambling and gaming at the CoinGeek Conference.
He predicted the New York conference would come to be seen as a tipping point for the technology, with big changes to how the world will look at Bitcoin SV coming down the track.
On the choice of pitching up in New York, Ayre said it was time to get more exposure to the U.S. market. New York was chosen as the center of media, finance, large industry, and the largest population base in the U.S., giving CoinGeek a strong platform to spread the word about Bitcoin SV.
Addressing the rapid pace of change in the sector, even since CoinGeek Zurich, Ayre said it was refreshing to see gaming apps adopting BSV so readily. While this is the way it should be, he commented that so many people couldn’t see the vision he was articulating for BSV in gaming until recently, which he marked as a point of personal satisfaction.
He gave the example of CryptoFights, which as a single app is bigger than the entire Ethereum platform. In fact, during some spikes, it is bigger than the whole digital currency ecosystem, through this one app powered by Bitcoin SV alone.
Ayre wrapped up by saying the epiphany for so many people in the sector is going to be the realization Bitcoin SV will take over, and there will be no reason for digital currency to exist at all, because this one platform can do it all and more.
Next up, Thompson was joined by Robert Rice, a familiar face in the Bitcoin space, to discuss AR, VR and the Omniscape metaverse. Rice said the only tech that ties all these pieces of new technology together is BSV, presenting a platform that was like Pokemon Go for brands.
Rice explained the metaverse as the idea of all the things around us—augmented reality, virtual reality, data, IoT, blockchain, and bringing this whole world of data into a 3D format.
At present, Omniscape has apps available for all the different legs of this—for 3D, for AR, and so on. The next focus was on linking them up, so users can see all these elements in the same place, or can visit anywhere in the world through the VR interface, with access to the full suite of features.
Interactions in AR are currently through smartphones, allowing users to see 3D objects, click on them, rotate them, pick them up, and much more. But in the near future, Rice sees this moving a step forward, with the likes of 3D glasses from Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook. Over time, he said, these interactions will become way more natural, moving far beyond the mobile-first world they currently inhabit.
Asked about the exciting developments going on with Omniscape, Rice said it was hard to narrow it down. The company is currently in the middle of a seed round, which he stated had led to amazing investors coming on board, and a rapid scaling and acceleration of the development roadmap.
He also spoke about the 3D scanner, a scanner that creates photorealistic 3D copies of people, animates them, and tokenizes them, creating a digital avatar that can be seen in AR via the app—just another example of what’s going on at Omniscape.
