On the eve of COPA v. Wright, Zach Weiner and Alex Vidal hosted Josh Petty, aka Elon Moist, the CEO of Ordinals, and BSV entrepreneur Richard Boase. The discussions revolved around Ordinals, scaling blockchains, and what COPA vs. Wright might mean for Bitcoin. Check it out via the link here.
CoinGeek Discussions kicks off the way it usually does, with each guest being asked what they think is the biggest news in the blockchain space this week.
For Zachary Weiner, it’s Meta (NASDAQ: META) seemingly leaving the COPA alliance. This means their funding will be seriously hampered.
Josh Petty thinks some new ideas surrounding tokens on BTC are big news. He’s not focused on the COPA vs. Wright stuff.
Richard Boase seconds the idea that Meta leaving COPA is the biggest news. He points out that their stock price has increased dramatically recently, too.
Alex Vidal reminds us that BSV bookmaking platform Lil Bit is offering bets on the outcome of the COPA trial.
Josh Petty’s Bitcoin story and what he is up to.
Petty got involved in Bitcoin in 2014 and started working on some side projects soon after discovering it. He was interested in how Bitcoin could do things like Ethereum, such as tokens and smart contracts, and he and his team built Twetch. Recently, he returned to the BTC blockchain to build Ordinals Wallet.
What has Petty learned from his experience building Ordinals Wallet? He says he is most surprised by how open-minded the BTC community is regarding data on the blockchain, scripts, smart contracts, etc. He encourages BSVers to build bridges with them rather than taking an adversarial stance.
Vidal says that LaMint CEO Daniel Street said the appeal of Bitcoin is twofold: owning your own data and earning micropayments from it. Petty says that while these ideas appeal to some, they don’t change lives today. What people really want is the opportunity to speculate and trade. He says Twetch was too early, and we have to focus on fulfilling the needs and wants of the market right now.
Weiner thinks Petty is spot on regarding BSVers taking an adversarial stance to BTCers. That needs to change, connections must be made, and understanding must be fostered. Petty says he has made progress via conversation, but there’s a small group of people who spoil it all. He says that BTCers are realizing they have a problem, and you can’t come at them with a sledgehammer and expect them to receive that well.
What is Richard Boase up to now?
Boase was previously associated with the Block Dojo, but he says he has nothing to do with it these days. He’s now working on BSV Mint and BSV X, a token-minting platform and an exchange, respectively.
Boase recalls how he was writing for Bitcoin Magazine before David Bailey bought it. He says he comes from a publishing family and wants to make money from ads. Boase learned to handle people like this with kid gloves and thinks we should treat BTCers the same way.
Unlike Petty, who has a short-to-medium-term strategy of going where the money is, Boase says he wants to build on BSV in anticipation of people coming. He acknowledges that building on other chains can serve business and strategic purposes in the short term, but he’s not interested in doing that himself.
While Petty doesn’t think the outcome of COPA vs. Wright will make any significant difference to Bitcoin right away, Boase thinks it could be a black swan event.
“This situation is coming to a head,” he says, and the scales will fall from many people’s eyes if Dr. Craig Wright wins the case.