Calvin Ayre: CoinGeek New York a tipping point for Bitcoin SV

This article was originally published on CoinGeek on October 8, 2021.

In a year’s time, we will look back at CoinGeek New York as the tipping point after which Bitcoin SV exploded and showed the world just what’s possible on Bitcoin. This was the message from Calvin Ayre, the founder of Ayre Group and CoinGeek. Ayre joined CoinGeek Backstage to talk about why ‘It’s About Time’ for Bitcoin SV and what the future holds for the industry.

CoinGeek Conferences have been held at a number of cities across the globe, from Seoul to Zurich and London. However, none of them can match New York’s importance to global finance and media industries, Ayre told CoinGeek’s Stephanie Tower.

“There’s a big media concentration here, there’s a financial concentration, the surrounding areas have got a lot of industries and this technology [BSV blockchain] can be used to solve data problems for anybody that touches big data, and nowadays, that’s a lot of different industries. It’s a good place for us to be getting a footprint,” he stated.

Bitcoin SV is at a point in which it has attained a critical mass of people that understand and appreciate Bitcoin, Ayre said. While other blockchain projects have gone after cheap gains from speculation, Bitcoin SV has focused on solving data challenges, and finally, the world is noticing.

“We’re going to look back at this being a tipping point, where the momentum of people that understand this technology is going to become a weight upon itself,” Ayre said.

The theme for CoinGeek New York was “It’s About Time,” and Ayre believes that it couldn’t have been more apt. It’s about time the world realizes that the BSV enterprise blockchain can solve the data challenges that affect almost every other industry. As the world gets into a digital era with phenomena such as the Metaverse, only Bitcoin SV can power the next frontier, the gambling industry legend noted.

“This is the start of a gold rush,” Ayre said. “This technology is going to take on a life of its own.”

He compared what’s happening in Bitcoin right now to the early 2000s when the Internet was in its infancy and some of today’s trillion-dollar Internet behemoths were being launched. Those who don’t get into Bitcoin today will regret a few years down the line when the early adopters will be seeing their ventures become global brands.

Watch CoinGeek New York 2021 Day 1 here:

Watch CoinGeek New York 2021 Day 2 here:

Watch CoinGeek New York 2021 Day 3 here:

Calvin Ayre joins CoinGeek Backstage in Zurich: BSV is about solving data problems

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

CoinGeek Backstage is back, and Becky Liggero Fontana kicks off the series with an interview with CoinGeek founder Calvin Ayre backstage at the CoinGeek Conference in Zurich. She began by asking Calvin, why Zurich?

Ayre said that the CoinGeek Conference had toured a number of major international cities already, and with Zurich’s reputation as a financial center, it was a logical next step. Zurich is also of strategic importance to the region in spreading the word about the BSV enterprise blockchain, providing an ideal launchpad for the technology across the German speaking markets of central Europe.

He discussed how CoinGeek has evolved from covering the origins of Bitcoin in those early days, with cyberphunks and anarchists looking for alternatives to government systems, through to the much more mainstream technology platform espoused today. He said with BSV blockchain, there had been a move towards enterprise and governments, bringing a maturity and credibility to the space that was previously lacking. For Ayre, only governments and enterprises can propel the technology to the mainstream—and this happens once they understand how BSV blockchain can solve their practical data problems.

Liggero said a lot of the events of this type in the digital currency sector are blockchain talking to blockchain, and fail to reach beyond a core digital currency audience. However, at CoinGeek Zurich, there were representatives from the likes of PwC and IBM. Ayre said that there are digital currency events, then there are blockchain events—for him, CoinGeek is the only real blockchain event, because there is only one blockchain with the scale capacity to actually solve problems in the real world.

They spoke about the need for a rebranding, and a move away from the baggage of Bitcoin for BSV. Ayre said there was a desire to get rid of the brand confusion disaster caused by BTC. If governments or enterprise clients hear ‘Bitcoin,’ they immediately roll their eyes, having reached the wrong conclusions of what the BSV blockchain is about.

According to Ayre, this is about solving data problems, and there is a need for a campaign around that aimed at government and enterprise to alert them to what this technology does and why they need it—without any of the baggage that comes from ‘Bitcoin.’

Rounding off, Ayre urged viewers to look out for a CoinGeek Conference in their local city.

BSV is not slowing down: CoinGeek TV premieres with Calvin Ayre and Connor Murray

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

Day 1 at CoinGeek Zurich conference saw an action-packed agenda of speakers, panel sessions and presentations, covering a mind-boggling array of real-world applications for BSV enterprise blockchain. CoinGeek’s own Charles Miller and Claire Celdran caught up with Calvin Ayre and Connor Murray for the premiere of CoinGeek TV, where they discussed the conference and some of the key issues affecting the future direction of the BSV blockchain.

Ayre, founder of Ayre Group and CoinGeek, first spoke of his morning session highlights, including Steve Shadders’ demonstration of 50,000 transactions/second volumes.

Ayre also pointed out how Switzerland was a key strategic location for the BSV network, not just as a launchpad into German-speaking markets, but also as an emerging hub for the sector. As the location of Bitcoin Association, TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (CSE:TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF), nChain and others, Zurich was also a natural choice for a CoinGeek Conference, helping put BSV blockchain on the map in the region.

Asked about the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on events like CoinGeek conferences, Ayre said it was fortunate that the ecosystem had continued to grow strongly throughout the period, with influential developers still able to carry on their work from home. Emerging at the other side of the pandemic, he said he had consolidated the number of influencers in government and enterprise who understand BSV blockchain’s value lies in its utility, the blockchain of choice for enterprise scale projects.

“I don’t really think that there’s been much of an impact because the ecosystem keeps moving ahead with people working at home, so I don’t think there’s a major impact,” Ayre said. “I think coming out of the pandemic though, we’ve consolidated the number of influencers in government and enterprise that understand why this blockchain is different than the crypto space, of course, BSV isn’t crypto at all, it’s a utility blockchain, enterprise scaling utility blockchain, so I think we’re going to come out of here, and you’ll see a tipping point, we’re going to get a lot more attention from mainstream media. I’m excited for what’s coming ahead, but I don’t think the pandemic’s really slowed us down.”

Notably, some delegates from IBM attended the conference to learn more about BSV, though Ayre conceded it was not yet at critical mass with big business, due to linger confusion about how BSV differs from BTC. In Ayre’s words, the speculative side of BTC and token trading was an unfortunate offshoot of the original invention of Bitcoin, which in itself was created to solve data challenges. Ayre predicted more big businesses would join the next conference in New York, in the same way as IBM, to learn more about what BSV blockchain has to offer.

He was joined in the morning interview session by Connor Murray of Britevue. Murray began by saying the debate around scaling Bitcoin is as old as Bitcoin itself. He praised Calvin Ayre specifically for being the reason BSV took the lead on scaling, as was always intended through the founding white paper.

He described the sheer number of companies currently using BSV blockchain for data or for payment use cases as incredible, and said he was amazed at the progress in the BSV community since the early days. Despite the roadblocks placed there by others, he said he is very excited for the future trajectory of the BSV network.

“I think that this space has evolved so rapidly and it’s not slowing down. The amount of companies that are leveraging the global blockchain for data use cases, for payment use cases is actually incredible,” Murray said. “I actually am amazed at how far we’ve come since the first BSV conference in London, you know, BSV has not slowed down despite the roadblocks that people tried to put in front of it. I’m excited for where BSV is and where it’s going.”

Britevue is a consumer facing business, using micropayments to monetize transactions that would otherwise be monetized by ads. Microtransactions, according to Murray, provide an inherent opportunity to monetize content with BSV. Arguably the biggest use case for BSV in his view came through using the ledger as a timestamp ledger. Britevue makes use of this by providing tokenized proof of purchase, which can then be tied to consumer reviews—Murray said this makes verified reviews easy to validate on the blockchain, something that can only be possible on a low fee blockchain like BSV.

Murray is also building a business platform that allows companies to own their location on the blockchain, without having to rely on the likes of Google, Amazon, and Yelp to control and manage their data. With the help of BSV blockchain, companies no longer have to lobby a third party to manage their own data—they can simply manage that data on the blockchain, and also issue rewards and other incentives for reviews and other feedback.

According to Murray, the benefit of the CoinGeek Conferences comes from the networking opportunities, and the chance to meet people in real life. So much of Bitcoin is hidden behind avatars and profile pics online, and having actual conversations and networking opportunities with people in the flesh is good for innovation, cooperation and community cohesion. Murray says all BSV stakeholders share the same ultimate goal—they are all incentivized for BSV to succeed, and there is a lot of cooperation going on at these events.

Watch CoinGeek Zurich Day 1 – morning sessions here:

Calvin Ayre on ‘Hashing It Out’ premiere: Operators will drive gaming industry’s transition to blockchain

This article was originally published on CoinGeek on April 26, 2021.

Gambling is all about being innovative and having interesting content offerings, but let’s face it, innovation in the gambling industry has slowed down in the last couple of years—something that blockchain technology can help with.

In the premiere episode of Hashing It Out with Becky Liggero, Calvin Ayre, founder of Ayre Group and CoinGeek, talks about the closure of CalvinAyre.com and how the gambling industry fits right in to what’s happening in Bitcoin.

“My prediction is everything exciting that’s going to happen in the next 10 years in online gaming—other than the games themselves—but everything else, in the running of business, the operating of the business, the payments of the business… that’s all going to be done on the blockchain,” Ayre said. “But the decision to shut [CalvinAyre.com] down was really my realization that there’s no need to have the other site anymore because all the fun stuff that I’m attracted too—of course all the innovation and craziness—that’s happening on CoinGeek.”

The transition to blockchain—the original Bitcoin (BSV), in particular—is going to be operator-driven, according to Ayre.

“How it’s going to work is operators are going to wake up to the fact that they can run their entire business on it, and it’s the cheapest way to get money in,” he said. “I think also this year, you’re going to see that there’s more gaming sites that are going to wake up to the fact that BSV is the only payment platform that makes sense as well because it’s the cheapest one out there and it’s the safest one, and you can scale it and it gets even cheaper.”

Ayre and Liggero started discussing Bitcoin as early as 2012-2013, when the gambling industry was exploring the technology for payments. But the technology—as designed following the original Bitcoin whitepaper—is capable of doing more as “it’s fundamentally a data management evaluation platform.”

“BSV is this platform from 10 years ago that was originally launched that was then killed and so the one’s 5 years ago didn’t work and we brought the original platform back and it actually works again like it did 10 years ago. Everybody that says blockchains don’t work hasn’t checked out what BSV can do. This technology is actually ready for enterprise adoption today,” Ayre said. “We’re building real businesses that use the data management powers and we’re solving real enterprise problems or companies that aren’t even in this industry that have a data problem that this technology is uniquely able to solve.”

At the moment, there is still a lot of misinformation around those “crypto speculative casino nonsense stuff” that are leaving a lot of people confused about the true capability of the original Bitcoin protocol. Ayre believes there will be tipping point where people will realize that BSV is different from the other protocols, and that’s when the gambling space—and other industries as well—will jump on board with the technology.

“My fundamental prediction is with all these, looking back in hindsight at this whole kerfuffle over what’s the real Bitcoin, what’s best and all that, it’s all going to look stupid because scaling is the only thing that matters. It’s not only important, it’s the only thing important. All of them that can’t scale will disappear, and this platform is going to penetrate everything and everywhere, and it’s going to disappear. Ten years from now, everybody’s going to be using it and nobody’s going to even know what it is,” Ayre said.

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.