Calvin Ayre fully supports Antiguan government’s long stay visa initiative and passing of digital assets bill

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

St. John’s, Antigua –August 20, 2020: Imagine being able to choose between 365 beaches for your morning jog and then working while overlooking the ocean.

These are just a few of the perks to which anyone can look forward to if you choose to reside in Antigua and Barbuda for up to two years. Economic Envoy for Antigua and Barbuda, Ambassador Calvin Ayre, says he fully supports of the Government’s long-stay visa program designed for persons who can work remotely and are desirous of doing so from a safe Caribbean island. Details of the program will be launched on a dedicated government website shortly.

The idea behind this initiative is to grant eligible persons a special resident authorization that will be valid for up to two (2) years in the first instance. Antigua and Barbuda has successfully and impressively managed the COVID-19 pandemic, limiting infection and spread to comparatively very small numbers. Further, its reliable and fast telecommunications network offers a unique setting to work comfortably in an idyllic setting. All applicants would be subject to due diligence and COVID-19 pretesting.

According to the World Economic Forum, it is estimated that approximately 50% of “information workers” in the United States (U.S.) are presently working remotely. Companies in Europe with a work from home policy are at a high of 88%, up from 4% that was reported prior to the health crisis.

With many technology-based companies, such as Twitter, becoming more open to the decentralizing of their workforce, many are supporting employees in working from anywhere in the world.

Antigua and Barbuda’s long-stay program will allow persons and their dependents to reside in Antigua, enjoy the ease of working from a “COVID-controlled”, luxury destination, and also be able to enjoy all the wonderful amenities that the island has to offer.

With one of the focuses of the Ayre Group being Real Estate, Ayre is ready to offer first-class accommodation, fully equipped with high speed internet and nearby to convenient amenities and, of course, the beach.

Having established his Ayre Group headquarters in Antigua and Barbuda, he strongly considers the island as a prime location for high net-worth individuals to be able to live and work. It is his hope that others, especially knowledge-based experts, will in turn, be motivated to invest and contribute to the diversification of the workforce, through a transfer of knowledge.

The recent passing of the Digital Assets Bill provides significant scope for such knowledge and skills sharing.

Digital Assets Bill

This Bill provides a framework for the establishment of digital assets companies in Antigua and Barbuda and improves the commercial prospect for existing local businesses.

These recent regulations provide an appealing environment for leading players and participants in the digital eco-system, as businesses will, in short order, be able to accept digital currency as a payment option.

Johnny Jaswal, General Counsel at The Bayesian Group, believes that the Antigua and Barbuda legislative framework hits the right balance of regulation and industry flexibility so companies can operate effectively. Governments will use Antigua and Barbuda’s forward-thinking legislation as a benchmark for how to bring safe, credible and regulated digital asset businesses together to foster economic innovation. ”

Roy Bernhard, CEO & Chief Visionary of The Bayesian Group, added – “We were impressed to see the Government of Antigua and Barbuda pass such progressive and well-rounded legislation. It is clear that much thought for, not only, the current digital asset business & fintech industry, but also its many potential future uses, were taken into consideration.”

Against this backdrop, Antigua and Barbuda offers the ideal remote-work solution.

Reports of issues in “unplugging after work”, will no longer be, as persons will have enough motivation to step away from the desk and enjoy Antigua and Barbuda’s rich recreational options. Get ready to #WorkWhereYouVacay.

Calvin Ayre: 2020 is Bitcoin’s Year of Enterprise Adoption & Kick Ass Utility

After Bitcoin was restored to its original protocol, Bitcoin SV unleashed limitless possibilities. In this article, Calvin Ayre talks about what’s in store for Bitcoin SV and how harnessing the power of BSV will allow businesses to reap the economic benefits from using this scalable, public blockchain as a universal data ledger. This article was originally published on CoinGeek on January 1, 2020.

For Bitcoin, if 2019 was the Year of Scaling, 2020 is the Year of Enterprise Adoption and Kick Ass Utility.

As I pointed out last year, Bitcoin was hijacked by protocol developers early on in its existence, which stunted its growth and potential over the last decade. Bitcoin was finally freed from its captors a little over a year ago on November 15^th 2018, with the emergence of BSV as the name and ticker symbol for the original Bitcoin protocol. Since Bitcoin Independence Day, we have seen an explosion of growth on BSV and it is just getting (re)started in 2020.

Genesis will restore Bitcoin’s true potential

After the Genesis Hard Fork locks in on February 4th, the original Bitcoin protocol will finally be mostly restored and back on track to being “Set in Stone” just like Satoshi Nakamoto intended. Restoring the miners at the center of Bitcoin’s economic incentive model just like Satoshi’s design always envisioned, and removing protocol developers from dictating rules of the network will restore the true potential of Bitcoin in 2020. A stable Bitcoin protocol is exactly what Enterprises want to see before they spend millions of dollars building on it.

In 2020, more Enterprises will start to realize the economic benefits of harnessing the power of a scalable public blockchain as a universal data ledger for their businesses. We will see several Enterprise use cases roll out as the year progresses on Bitcoin SV. This increase in application development on BSV will drive more and more transactions on-chain. Since Bitcoin Independence Day, BSV has generated significantly more daily transactions than BTC. BSV is currently neck and neck with ETH (and on some days surpassing ETH) for daily transaction volume heading into 2020. By the end of Q1, BSV will be the undisputed highest daily transaction blockchain, massively surpassing all others.

Source: Bitinfocharts

Smart investors will see BSV is the real Bitcoin

As Enterprise usage on BSV increases, the utility value of the token will increase and the price will start to reflect its true value. BSV is considerably undervalued at the moment. The illusions and false narratives of the other chains have started to unravel, we will start to see more and more smart investors in the space realize that BSV is the real bitcoin. This will trigger a shift out of the altcoins, including especially BTC, BCH and ETH, into BSV. There will also be an influx of new savvy investors flocking to Bitcoin SV startups in addition to investing in the token itself, in 2020.

The market cap migration already started on a small scale in early 2019, it was cooled off by the coordinated delisting attacks. But with exchange regulation on the horizon, we will see this migration pattern from the altcoins back into Bitcoin accelerate in 2020. BSV is the only scalable distributed blockchain solution capable of supporting a global enterprise platform. By the end of the year, I think the price of BSV will be higher than any other token including BTC.

Miners to increase BSV hashing power diversity

Application development, transaction volume and market cap won’t be the only things migrating to the Bitcoin SV blockchain in 2020, miners will as well. New and established bitcoin miners will continue to increase the diversity of hashing power on Bitcoin SV throughout the year. This trend started in the second half of 2019 (after the Quasar protocol upgrade) and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. The increased competition in the bitcoin mining space will spur benefits to the entire BSV ecosystem as professional mining operations look to innovate and specialize. The inclusion of ‘miner id’ will allow for customized specialty mining business models to evolve.

Source: coin.dance

As transaction volume continues to increase on Bitcoin SV from Enterprise usage, so too will revenue from transaction fees making it the only viable option for miners looking to turn a profit after the halving. As one of the biggest bitcoin miners on the planet, I understand the importance of additional revenue streams required to make that side of my business sustainable long term. That means unlimited block size caps and lots of microtransactions paid for by micropayments. Bitcoin miners will move to the chain that has the most revenue potential for their proof of work. Bitcoin SV is the only chain in town.

The BSV blockchain will also see variable rate mining for the first time in Bitcoin’s history. This will allow the miners to lower the amount they charge per byte of data (and thus per transaction) for high volume customers which will further increase demand for on-chain transactions. New features will also enable miners to dynamically peg their fees to fiat currency prices (rather than only satoshis per byte), to give enterprise users the price certainty they want for budget planning purposes. This type of fiat currency pricing is exactly what publicly traded companies and other big enterprises need to start increasing their use of the Bitcoin ledger for applications, price stability and future clarity.

Teranode is coming

The Genesis upgrade is not the only big scaling development for BSV in 2020. The Teranode Project will also roll out later in 2020; it is an enterprise-class version of the Bitcoin SV Node software, re-building the Bitcoin code from the ground up using a micro-services architecture approach to create better functionality for big business users. Developed by nChain, the global leading research, development and advisory firm for blockchain technology, Teranode will insure Bitcoin SV will scale to massive use as global adoption increases.

Blockchain developers currently working on dead end tech elsewhere, will continue to migrate off what I call the “hobby platforms” on to BSV because it scales. Developers will begin to experience their own FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and will start racing to build their existing projects on the stable Bitcoin SV protocol before someone steals their big idea or use case.

Regardless of what others want you to believe, the blockchain protocol wars are over, the other chains are dead men walking. In the end, there will only be Bitcoin SV, don’t take my word for it, take my proof of work.

We have an exciting time ahead in 2020. I look forward to seeing all of you in London February 20-21 for the CoinGeek Conference which is expected to be the world’s largest ever Bitcoin conference focusing on application development on top of a public blockchain, so don’t miss it. Happy New Year!

The Bombay Manifesto – Redux

Calvin Ayre looks back at his 1997 Bombay Manifesto, where he talks about the foundational principles that lead the Bodog Group of Companies to success. This article was originally published on CalvinAyre.com on November 17, 2009.

During an email conversation a couple of weeks ago one of our senior staff members had asked me if I had a copy of “The Bombay Manifesto” kicking around. It took some serious digging on my part but I did eventually find it. Anyway, I thought it might be kind of fun to share that document with you now, on my blog. Keep in mind that this article was written back in a time when the Internet was still young, the World Wide Web was still very new…and I had recently switched from Tanqueray to Bombay Sapphire gin.

But I digress.

I started what became the Bodog Group of Companies in the early 1990s. At this time the world was just feeling its way through the thorny issue of what a website really is. Hyperlinks were a fringe concept restricted to a few abstract thinkers and sci-fi writers. I, however, was convinced that the Internet and more specifically the Web in the case of this article would be significant forces in a global societal change that was already under way. The Bodog Group was no exception.

We were so much ahead of the curve that we had no online references to go by. Everything we did we had to invent from scratch using real world examples. At this time the technical guys were making all the decisions, but I thought this was backwards. I remember thinking that the end users would be average Joes, so it was really they that should be driving the design of the user interfaces, not highly skilled, and in many cases, highly intelligent technology professionals.

I did not really qualify for the “average Joe” title, but I did have a background that I thought would make me more qualified to design user interfaces than many others in the industry. While I was going to University, instead of getting a summer job I bought an old 5-ton truck with an insulated box and a refrigeration unit. I fixed this truck up, took it over to the local fruit orchards, loaded it full of whatever was in season and headed out on a 20-hour drive to the prairies to sell fruit on the side of the road in small towns. This was my first business.

In the countless hours I spent selling fruit for a number of summers while going to university, I got an opportunity to really get inside the consumers head by selling products as basic as peaches and cherries. The reality is that all purchase decisions are basically handled the same. These same lessons, ingrained in my brain so many years ago, were pulled back out in designing our websites. I believe that the basic principles of design that we pioneered are a big reason for the success of the BoDog.com group today. Our websites are designed from start to finish with the end user experience in mind, and we have easy, and prompted (we ask for it), feedback systems in place to let the end users have direct input into the evolution of our web site.

This process is also driven by a philosophy that every person in our organization, and every point of contact (web, etc), are all inextricably part of the customer service we offer. By the end of the 1990’s we had a very good website design and were responsible for many of the innovations that are considered mainstays for any company in our industry. While sitting in my office one evening in Costa Rica I got to thinking about all we had learned over the years. I thought I would codify some of this knowledge to use as a training tool for our team.

Since I was sipping on an ice cold Bombay Gin Martini at the time, the document was somewhat imperially titled “The Bombay Manifesto”. This email was then forwarded to the entire company at the time. I got on with my affairs and forgot entirely about even doing this until talking to some of the developers at our spring Bodog bonus party and one of them mentioned The Bombay Manifesto. I got a bit of a laugh out of this since I clearly remember writing it. I asked if anyone had a copy of it and sure enough they all said they still did and still referred to it once in awhile.

The next day I got it forwarded to me in its original form with the date and time still attached. Though our thinking has certainly evolved since I did this up but here’s a copy of the original “Bombay Manifesto” as it appeared on our website, over 4 years after I originally wrote it. It’s in its original form, with all of the spelling and grammar mistakes included.

Here’s a copy of the original “Bombay Manifesto” as it appeared on our website, over 4 years after I originally wrote it.

The Bombay Manifesto

Saturday, December 23, 1997 7:08 PM

I am sitting here in the back of the call center, admiring how well things are running these days compared to the past… quietly sipping on an ice-cold Bombay martini (I cleaned out the one store that carries my favorite brand of gin a few days ago) and started thinking of our websites. I have been dumping a lot of advice over the last little bit due to changes in webdev and customer service and recently have been thinking of putting some basic principles down that are working well for us that everyone can take advantage of. Anyways…here is my opinion on why our website is so good in general principles (note this is customized for our industry and not in order cause I am too lazy now that I have most of my first drink polished off):

1. End user psychological profiling drives everything. We need to be in their heads so we can simultaneously give them what they want while getting them to do what we want.
2. Speed is always important.
3. The less clicks the better…any way you can remove steps – do it. Lowest possible barrier to entry always.
4. Never let the users be more than one click away from customer service. We have a customer service email link on every page in the same spot.
5. Use graphics to excite the players to get them to do things we want, but once they start doing what we want… keep the process the definitive utilitarian maximization…clean and fast. When you do use graphics…use the right amount (see 2. above!).
6. Do not make anyone think if you can design it so they do not have to…keep it simple.
7. Outsource the management of any content you can since this is not our core business. Our embedded research links gives us the best info available to our players at almost no management cost to us.
8. Use pop-ups properly…they can be a huge advantage for sophisticated users or a huge pain in the ass if not done properly. Avoid multiple replication of the same pages in different windows and make sure the pop-ups are named properly so users can manage them.
9. Make sure the repeat users do not have to suffer through something just cause the newbies will like it.
10. Do not collect useless information…just to “let” someone do business with us. Again…lowest possible barrier to entry.
11. Put the “meat” of the site out front…let them drill for the insignificant stuff.
12. No dead-ends…if there’s nothing there, don’t let them in.
13. If you have a link on the site…make sure it works.
14. If you change the site…make sure the site copy (the information) is still accurate.
15. The first level of customer service is the web site (actually being able to easily and simply use the product is the ultimate customer service) itself… the users will only call in because the system or site design is not good enough. Improve the site using customer “advice”.

I gotta go refill my glass, so anyone else that can think of anything I didn’t touch on can add to this and someone can actually do up a more formal web site manifesto from this that can be used as a training aid for the entire team. Anyway…gotta go fill my glass. 🙂

Calvin Ayre talks iGaming and Bitcoin on the My Big Break Almost podcast

This article was originally published on CoinGeek on April 14, 2020.

This article first appeared on CalvinAyre.com.

Calvin Ayre has led quite a life, going from humble beginnings to becoming a leader of both the online gaming and Bitcoin industries. On the podcast My Big Break Almost, hosts Paul and Lindy spoke with Ayre, exploring his history and what he’s up to now.

Phoning in from his COVID-19 quarantine home in Panama, Ayre first spoke about his current mission, which is to round up personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies for Antigua. He’s happy to be in Panama, where facilities are top notch, and where he visited many times when he previously lived in Costa Rica.

Paul has been a big fan of Bodog, and asked Ayre to talk about how the company got started. The name came from a list of criteria to make it as memorable and marketable as possible. Otherwise, having been raised on a Saskatchewan pig farm, Calvin started the company with a mere $10,000, and a lot of hard work. “To make a company, you have to use your own time when you’re starting companies,” he said. “You have to use your time as a substitute for capital.”

That doesn’t mean everything went perfectly, but Ayre notes that there’s nothing he regrets about what he’s built. “I don’t really have a big, I wish I wouldn’t have done that moment,” he said. “I kind of seem to have a skill for taking disasters and finding a way to make it work into something positive.” The bottom line for the Bodog founder is that he rather take the risk of trying something, than to always wonder what could have been.

A big part of the Bodog brand has always been the parties, and that helped keep the company so interesting to Ayre for so many years. “What made it so fun, because it was an entertainment brand, partying was part of the brand,” he said. He noted that parties weren’t just a perk, but a strategy of building the brand into something bigger, using them to attract, influence and partner with several influential people in the industry.

The hosts of the podcast showed a curiosity about the billionaire life throughout the podcast, and Ayre noted that, unlike other tycoons that might be into cars or other extravagant purchases, his interest has been in building houses. He likes to be personally involved in designing and building homes all over the world, with houses in Antigua, Canada, Thailand, and the Philippines.

Ayre’s current focus is on Bitcoin, and he had to explain to the hosts the basics of what Bitcoin is and its purpose to allow microtransactions and act as an immutable ledger. It’s also capable of monetizing data. He explained further:

“What I’ve done, I’m working with Craig, myself and others, and we’re bringing the original design back that had been abused by people, after he let it go in the wild, and it’s now trading on the exchanges as BSV, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, and it’s the only one in the world that scales massively, has utility and does all of the things, it’s the original design that he launched in 2009.”

He also noted the real world utility that is already possible on Bitcoin SV. Pointing to the American healthcare company EHR Data, Bitcoin SV is being used to help track healthcare data and combat the opioid epidemic in the United States.

Ayre expects to see a thriving Bitcoin industry next 2-3 years, when “the industry will take on a life of its own.” But he’s not really focusing on running a company in the space; his emphasis is on being an advisor and investor in a totally new industry.

That’s not all Ayre is working on though. He teases that he’s getting pretty involved with technology related to wellness. He notes that the next wave of health and wellness will come from customizing diets and supplements based on an individuals’ needs. By testing a person’s genome and getting all of their bodily indicators, Ayre notes that a specific nutritional plan can be devised that suits them best.

When asked by the vegetarian hosts what his diet currently consists of, he notes he’s currently on a Mediterranean diet with intermittent fasting, which immediately ended acid reflux. While he notes that he’s currently testing this idea on his own body, “the idea is to create a business out of it at some point.”

Finally, the hosts asked what advice Ayre would give to entrepreneurs who might want to follow in his footsteps. “If you’re going to start a business, because you think it’s going to make money, but you don’t like the industry, it’s going to be painful,” he said. “I think I would advise people to find an industry that they’re naturally attracted to, because it’s going to be a lot of work, and if you’re doing work in an area that you like, it doesn’t feel like work.”

If that industry happens to be the gambling industry, and building on Bitcoin SV, Ayre is looking to help you get started. The Ayre Group is looking to invest in companies who hope to get to the next level, and do so on the original Bitcoin SV ecosystem.

In the meantime, if you want to hear more from Ayre himself on how he’s done so well across several industries, check out the My Big Break Almost podcast below.