On New Year’s Eve 2024, Kurt Wuckert Jr. hosted a special episode of CoinGeek Weekly Live Stream to summarize the past year. To him came the entrepreneur and big block OG Eli Aframcreator of AnonSurvey.comthe first scalable blockchain voting platform.
A year of sobriety and a worrying trend
Wuckert starts the weekly live stream by giving thanks RockWallet and Champions TCG to be sponsors this year. The two fast-growing companies advertised on the live stream throughout 2024, which Wuckert describes as a “sober year” with many highs and lows.
On the one hand, 2024 was one leap yearwhere miner earnings declined significantly. The drama of Dr. Craig Wright’s legal case was another low light for BSV, but it wasn’t all negative. On the positive side, Teranode goes from strength to strengthand TAAL recently mined the first Teranode block. number of words continued to be popular throughout 2024, and many new people became interested in scaling and the underlying technology because of it.
Wuckert reminds us of that Bitcoin has always been about the system and what it can disrupt in the long term. But the industry’s incentives are currently skewed. Every dollar invested has likely underperformed simply by holding BTC, and while many people are making money now, it’s a concern in the long term.
Wuckert invites us to imagine this trend on a grand scale—MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) has shut down its original software business and now focuses solely on stacking BTC — what if other companies did this? It would lead to a widespread economic downturn with serious consequences.
Yet, as if that is not worrying enough, President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce. CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald (NASDAQ: ZCIIFX) are “Tether’s bankers’ banks,” meaning the shadowy characters at the helm of the stablecoin company are one step closer to the center of the network. Wuckert is concerned that the scams and early emotional plays could be appealed and Tether could reach “escape velocity.” Afram wonders if at this point there is some government involvement in Tether, to which Wuckert replies that it almost certainly is since they are one of the largest bond holders.
The almost religious sentiments in blockchain and the disappointing outcome of COPA v. Wright
Wuckert and Afram briefly discuss their Christian backgrounds before the latter makes an astute point: there are many similarities between religious ways of thinking and those in the blockchain industry. In this industry, people get upset when the technology or coin they believe in is criticized; it’s almost like it’s become part of their identity, and they can’t see things rationally. This is only compounded by the fact that they often have a lot of money at stake, and being wrong has real costs.
Wuckert believes this is partly because many people do not have another anchor in life. If they had families and communities it wouldn’t be so intense. But for many, their favorite coin is their community, and they will fight to defend it.
Speaking of faith, the couple switched The COPA v. Wright lawsuit earlier in 2024. Afram says he honestly thought Wright would win. Wuckert says he was always wary given how powerful COPA players are and how many holes there are in Wright’s story. He points to the sterility of the evidence as a reason why he wasn’t 100% sure like so many others were. Afram says he still believes Wright is Satoshi but accepts he could be wrong. He admits that he found some of the emotional reactions bizarre and exaggerated.
So close, yet so far – the affair that never was
Afram reveals that before the COPA v. Wright ruling, he and his team at Amleh spoke with Peter Schiff and held as many as 20 meetings. He says Schiff began to understand that and understand how the BSV blockchain could be used to create immutable records. While Schiff had heard some negative things about BSV, he remained open-minded. But the outcome of the COPA vs. Wright lawsuit led to a marked change in tone, and ultimately the discussions never went anywhere. “We were close,” says Afram.
Speaking of business, sales and marketing, Afram says he thinks some BSVs have thrown too many stones and burned too many bridges. Also terms like ‘Turing complete‘ means little to most BSVars, let alone to outsiders. He believes we need to focus on putting things on layman’s terms for outsiders and on a more positive message that everyone can understand.
Wuckert agrees, but he thinks it’s because it’s too difficult to explain the politics and nuances of it all to newcomers. It is also because the other side is excellent at marketing; after all, they are Silicon Valley bros and has pioneered marketing for companies like Uber (NASDAQ: UBER), which are less successful in reality than their pictures might show.
Despite the potential deal with Peter Schiff going through, real things are happening in BSV. Wuckert points to success of the Champions TCGwhich has a real card game in shops all over the country. Although it does not generate many transactions on the chain, it uses the BSV blockchain in new ways.
What is so incredible about Teranode?
Wuckert says he doesn’t know the exact release date for Theranodebut he suspects it will be in January. The team has been saying Q1 2025 for a while, so it could be anytime in that window.
Afram wonders what is so special about it apart from the one million transactions per second processing capacity. Wuckert highlights how efficient it is: it’s orders of magnitude more efficient than SV Node, and it allows operators to focus on what’s going on, e.g. script or token transactions, and increase the capacity to handle it without having to hardwire it all. In a nutshell, it’s super efficient and smart, and it’s a huge improvement overall.
Watch: Memetics and the Mechanics of Information
