Firstly I wanted to say thank you Dr Craig Wright for agreeing with this Q&A. I have tried my best to break it down into 3 broad sections: Personal, Business and Technical, these questions are from myself (mostly personal & business) and various community members — mostly technical ones. You have a wealth of knowledge and experience, both in practical life and in Crypto and we can learn and gain more knowledge, about Bitcoin and about yourself and a chance to not read and rely your twitter :)
All questions are optional and please feel free to put “No Comment” on certain questions due to NDA’s etc. Bitcoin referred here relates to BCH
Personal
- What is your favourite colour?
- Who are your top 3 favourite authors and top 3 books?
- If there was just one book you could give to the world to read, what would it be?
- What are your top 3 favourite Movies and TV Shows?
- What is your favourite country visited?
- Who did you look up to, in terms of role models in the past and present?
- What are your 3 biggest regrets and mistakes?
- Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years and 10 years and what would you have liked to achieved?
- You have a wealth of experience both practical and academic knowledge through multiple disciplines. Sometimes people who have a single area of expertise develop tunnel vision, and only think that X is the right way forward, and fail to see the bigger picture or at a different angle. In terms of your varied academic knowledge, when have you and how do you deal with when 2 or more of your knowledge sets argue or have different views on a specific topic/problem? e.g your Law knowledge brain shows X angle, economic knowledge shows Y angle and IT knowledge shows a opposing view at Z angle.
- I know you enjoy studying and wish to continue this, which academic disciplines are you thinking of or planning to take going forward?
- Are there any specialists in the field that you respect and from whom you can still learn things? As well as us to follow.
- How many hours do you sleep on average per day?
- How do you manage your time to do research, run companies, write 1000s of papers and take new doctorates, while constantly tweeting?
- How would you describe your own personality, how do you think your family & friends would, and how do you think other people do, who have never met you in real life?
- Do you sometimes try and be controversial on purpose?
- Do you think people misunderstand you or misunderstand Bitcoin?
Business
17. We are now starting to see how Bitcoin CAN and DOES scale on-chain, from the recent stress tests, could you share your views on, why do you think or what was the main reason and agenda behind blockstreams strangle and takeover of BTC?
18. As there is a big misunderstanding on patents and licences, could you share your thoughts on the following:
- Can you please clarify, confirm and provide a quick overview, on what will not/cannot be patented and what actually has or going to been patented
- For the BCH Patent/license” (e.g. for free us of patents, the CoinGeek token contest, etc.) in case of, if there was a chain split? Which side of a fork is still allowed to use that technology?
Can you confirm and clarify, how nChain intends to use its patents/licences:
- Option 1 — Start charging ridiculous absurd fees and target individuals and restricting almost all access (like Martin Shkreli, as a Patent troll)
- Option 2 — Normal Business practice and offer paid licences to all and/or inreturn for royalties for Bitcoin Cash
Here is a list of the “Global 2018 companies list blockchain patents” — As we can see and notice, how IBM and Bank of America are there and leading ahead. (Please see references below for more details)
19. From the above patent list we can see how IBM and numerous other listed companies, have already being developing and exploring blockchain technology.
- What are your thoughts and views on private permissioned blockchains and their role, such as IBM’s HyperLedger going forward?
20. Stability at protocol level. I agree and share your views that Bitcoin needs to be locked down and kept stable, as most business will never adopt bitcoin at this stage and rate. This may be going a while back to your early accounting days, but in the early 1470s Luca Pacioli developed the “double entry system” in accounting, almost after 500 years, that exact system and fundamental principles are still being used by every single business every day and will be for the future. I also watched a talk, on how a project lead commented, on how the actual barriers and challenges for companies to implement their blockchain, proved to be more challenging than initially expected, due to different communication styles and ideas with their team and expectations vs their clients ability to understand.
Given how in the personal section, I mentioned about your the ability to look at things from multiple views,
- Do you feel this picture sums up the current situation and fragmentation in the space, and barrier for business adoption and should there be more of a KISS in Crypto — an acronym frequently used business and design, which stands for “Keep it simple, stupid”?
21. Can you clearly enunciate your views or philosophy on scaling that seems to be: Put it to the market, if there’s pressure the market will find a way which seem to be opposite to others philosophy on scaling which seems to be: no-child left behind.
22. What do you think is the biggest hurdle for you in the future and for Bitcoin?
23. How do see mass adoption occurring, and what is your strategy for this to occur.
- As better UI and Apps are now being developed (Handcash, Money Button etc) should there be more marketing in the community for projects like Handcash and Pop? As a lot of people are unaware of about the fact they implement double-spend alarm even when others claim it cannot be done.
24. What kind of apps/services does you feel are lacking in the space, after better wallets and UI?
25. Would you agree or disagree, in terms of Bitcoin’s use and the targeting/marketing differently to developing countries vs western countries.
- In lower developing countries, there is a greater need and chance for people to use Bitcoin directly as cash, due to no access to traditional banking services and as a better safety to store their currency, without the risk of having it all stolen, or having to spend and store all their cash in property, and then the risk of losing all of that that due to environmental damage. As well as if they are required to leave their home, due to conflict or other issues, they can still easily transport their currency across borders, not having to financially start from 0. The low fees help given the significant remittances costs to and from overseas.
- Whereas in the western countries, there is a need to bring more awareness of how bitcoin is immune to inflation and cannot be debased, as this helps and favours people who have deferred gratification, rather than instant gratification. Why should the former be penalised and continue to lose their purchasing power over time, because of continuous monetary policies, which debase their local currency, leading to a rise in inflation and their overall purchasing power ability to fall and leading to a less desire to save?
- I also feel the need that businesses in the western who export goods and services, especially digital services, would have the most benefit, it would reduce business risks such as financial, credit defaults and fx changes of sellings goods and services across the border. As there will be a rise in demand for services, in developing countries, of those who have gotten past the issues highlighted in the first section. It will allow businesses to sell goods more easily, with reduced risks and cater for these untapped markets and have a chance increase their market share, given how most western countries markets have reached saturation point.
26. How and when do you think, ordinary people will be able to save in Bitcoin, such as a traditional savings account, whereby one can lock an amount of BCH as a term deposit to save and earn interest e.g €1,000 on your savings account for a year with a term deposit rate of 10% and after that year you get +100€ of interest, having a total of €1,100. These traditional types of regular financial products, but bitcoin backed?
27. Why are there or what do you think is the reason behind 21m coins? Does it reflect the image below, and/or are there any other further meanings or reasons behind 21?
28. Will a USD/FIAT bitcoin cash token be the gateway to encourage adoption?
29. What is the roadmap to reach 5 billion users of Bitcoin Cash?
30. When do you think will be the inflection point of the global adoption?
31. In which continent do you think have the first country with a national cryptocurrency, and given the current Venezuela situation what would have been the most practical approach to deploy Bitcoin?
32. Do you think certain countries will switch and launch their own pure digital currencies, as there was a article in the UK, whereby the Bank of England is considering a digital currency, if so when and will this be on a permissioned private blockchain or can you see it occuring on Bitcoin Cash, via being tokenized?
33. How will be the source code governance when Bitcoin Cash scales?
34. Hashpower — Can you explain from a non-technical view, the role of hashpower and how would you compare or what do you compare it to in order to visualise it?
35. What are your views on the role and news in regards to ETFs? Do you feel this is a step in the right direction going forward, or will this hinder growth and adoption?
36. In a previous podcast you explained in quite in detail about India and Nehru and the economic state at that time and briefly talked about Spain and their hoarding of gold.
- Can you please expand on how Spain’s hoarding of gold doesn’t mean anything, when they don’t trade, because trade is essentially the creation of wealth? Can explain the history of that, what really happened? As well as some good resources for this piece of history?
- You also mentioned how countries should trade more, this is dependent on the ability for the country’s agriculture, raw materials, weather that leads to tourism (Dubai) If hypothetically there was a country, with poor infrastructure, no raw materials, poor education, terrible weather hence leading to no tourism, what would be the best way to move forward?
37. Are you or are any of the nChain related companies working on or collaborating with anyone on a compiler/utility to map higher level languages into script? (if there are specific NDA’s please skip)
38. You mentioned how there were internal tests of 300+GB blocks already, could you provide further updates and where and when may this test data, be released publically?
39. Will nChain ever create a FIAT exchange, as i think there needs to be more Fiat on and exit points, globally? Which exchanges are safe and would you recommend? — CoinBase, Kraken?
40. I read a few tweets, how you mentioned that the SEC and other regulatory bodies will slowly come out and start to clamp down on ICOs and use their legal powers and various altcoins will also die. Could you provide and add to that by a quick and brief summary on the following:
- What will happen to future ICOs
- Numerous altcoins
- The overall Crypto market, in the short term e.g 1-2 years and the long term 5–10 years.
- Decentralised exchanges
41. Do you see Bitcoin playing a role in the future of IoT devices, with micropayments?
42. What are you views on future AI, as more and more news is comming out, recently OpenAI was used to create and perfect Human dexterity hand movements, which traditionally was extremely challenging and in time I think there will be more and more robots, with human like physical attributes in the long term future. Are there any other new technological breakthroughs, you see in next 25–50 years
43. Would you care to explain what the fine line between privacy and anonymity is? Would you say there’s ever a legitimate need for anonymity, such as in exposing government (particularly tyrannical) abuse where leakers’ and their loved ones’ lives may be at stake?
44. Are there plans to further improve Privacy?
45. Is anonymity a myth or can it be possible to have true anonymity? Do you think there is a future for pure anonymity coins such as Monero and will they continue to exist and operate and can you have true anonymity? Can you share your views on anonymity, add/comment on my views and add/comment on other users
- I think privacy is 100% needed and better and more privacy will need to be developed, but I do not think anonymity can be done and I personally don’t think it is feasible and it may be due to my limited knowledge in IT and media propaganda.
- Given the amount amount of current data, location, tracking, access logs, websites visited, biometrics, mac address recorded etc across all devices is already happening. This will continue and increase going forward for the foreseeable future. If a government agency wishes to suspect and investigate X person for tax evasion, they can and will. If 2 parties want to transact and want to ensure, there is absolutely no public record or track, in order to avoid taxes, how do they do this? If someone was to send a transaction from X to Y person on Monero, while it cannot appear live publicly blockchain, surely if there was a person B was standing behind X when s/he was sending the transaction, it would not be anonymous…- doesn’t the NSA/or a government have the ability to deploy remote administration tools, which is essentially doing the same action of person B, but remotely?
- Furthermore to move from county to country requires full ID passports, now starting to have biometirect checks and one day this may be cross checked to location history, financial data etc and in the future it seems to be inevitable all cash will be digital and all payments would be linked biometrics and or there would be IoT direct transactions, in the long term distant future.
Whereas other users in summary commented on there should be a on and off option:
Anonymity is that, only the sender and receiver know that there was a transaction between them, and that there is no record from the transaction, and we don’t need to know each other’s identity.
Crypto customers, most of the time, use crypto, because of the improved anonymity. And when other coins focus than more and more on the anonymity, BCH will be no option for people who like anonymity.
But sometimes, I like that there is a record from the transaction, or that we know each other’s identity. In a perfect coin, I like to have the option to choose what I wish to do. You can either send a transaction on the public blockchain or have no record on the blockchain at all
Something that BTC and the combination from Lightning Routing.
If I use my Lightning wallet:
- For a record on the block chain, I use the standard bitcoin transaction.
- For anonymity, I use LN routing.
- They can use BTC in combination with Lightning Routing. Here they can choose, standard bitcoin transaction, if they like a record on the blockchain, or complete anonymity when they use Lightning routing.
What are the advantages of BCH compared to, in combination with BTC Lightning routing, or Monero, or Dash? — (assuming hypothetically these actually work)?
46. Finally what do you see and think will be next after global adoption?
Technical
47. Can you provide some info on the new mining pool SVPool and how the plans to compete against the existing more established pools?
48. Can you explain and share more details on why the BMG node were the best in the scaling test?
49. Most people would like to know what will happen in November in regards to this uncertainty fork/split and who will keep BCH ticker symbol. Can you provide a update for the following:
- What do you want to happen in November?
- What do you think will happen in November?
- Why do you think and what are the reasons why other’s are opposing the changes?
- Do you have any fear about the delay or possible decline/destroy of merchant adoption because of the current drama and a possible chain split/ABC drama?
50. To what extent is BCH a field within which different groups compete and to what extent must we focus on presenting a relatively unified front in our competition with other cryptos and payment methods?
- Where do you draws the line between healthy “competition” and “dirty tricks” like “proof of social media” or DoS attacks. Related, is it not possible for too much “competition” within the community working on a single coin if the result is loss of investor confidence?
51. Can you provide update and reassurance on:
- Why you are reintroducing the opcodes and why the implementation computes a different function than in the original Satoshi client?
52. Do you think there any any possible potential attack vectors on BCH? If so what do you think these may be? and how vulnerable does you think all the other Bitcoin forks are to a 51% attack?
53. Is the reorg, orphan, 51 %attack threats a marketing stunt or something he honestly want to do, if the situation were to arise?
54. In regards to the Nakamoto Consensus, and if SV failed to get majority hash (Which I don’t personally see happening) rate in November, would you then capitulate and join the longest POW chain, or split off, as you mentioned there will be no split. Also what if a Proof of Social Media attack were successful and the economic players in the system rejected Nakamoto Consensus, or they all wore NoCraig hats and successfully were able to do a proof of troll (as Ryan X Charles calls it) takeover of BCH. Would you consider Bitcoin broken if that scenario were able to succeed?
55. You mentioned how mining will be more business focused with independent companies in the long term, how many miners do you see in the short term and long term in?
56. What you have considered a year ago to engage in a hash battle that would have seizes BTC from Blockstream and if so what prevented it?
57. Do you think there is a specific group hidden in the background who control BTC??
58. Apart from Bitcoin getting hijacked, what else do you regret what happened to the protocol in the last 10 years?
59. As we all know the 1mb block limit was a temporary measure against spam, and then the Blockstream took over and the rest follows…as far as I am aware with generic software and real life manuals etc, in most cases there is the FAQ page or section section. Hypothetically, if in the very early days you had the chance and were to have created a Top 10 FAQ/Notes for the Bitcoin whitepaper. What would this look like? I guess I can start it off by….
Top 10 FAQ
- Nodes referred in the Whitepaper = Miners
- There will be a initial Temporary block size limit of 1MB to prevent Spam. This is to be completely removed by the end of the 1st having
- …..
- …..
- …..
- ….
- ….
- ….
- ….
- ….
60. Finally if you would like to send a open message to anyone, on anything else not covered or any updates or news that would be appreciated.
61. How true is this for you “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” I strongly believe that education is key and can empower people to, move out of poverty, create and drive change and growth.
But do you feel and realise that compared to average people, you are 1 in a million? “Your greatest strength is sometimes your biggest weakness” You are just, way too fast and way ahead of everyone, and because we don’t understand instantly and need more time to learn and understand certain things from different views, it may frustrate you? Or are you using the Socratic method of teaching, to encourage logic, and let people figure things out on their own. This may be where some of your and other groups of misunderstandings are coming from. It feels like people and groups become more alienated, which the opposite of what people want and what is not needed.
We are not born equal. We do not remain equal. No two people have the same level of intelligence, the same aptitude and nor do we have the same proclivities
Some of us are born communicators. Some are good in mathematics. Some of us like to code. Some enjoy fitness and outdoor activity and others would rather sit in front of the computer and develop computer programs.
There has been many research and findings, how people always fear the unknown and dislike change, because they do not understand it. As you are a academic, there was research which concluded that, in order for change to be most effective, requires education (which you vastly exceed) but also communication, participation and facilitation and negotiation for the group or average person to understand and accept it (Kotter and Schlesinger 1979).
Bitcoin is nearing 10 years, and I strongly believe people, groups and the crypto space in general want it to succeed, see the orignal vision go forward, and be used as cash, and help billions of people. But it seems like a constant battle one thing after another, again and again, but there are definitely good people who do believe and want Bitcoin to succeed.
Thank you very much for agreeing to this and for your time. I look forward to your thoughts and answers, as would many others.
References/Other
https://cointelegraph.com/news/is-blockchain-about-to-become-a-patent-war-battleground
http://www.iprdaily.cn/news_19746.html
https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/hyperledger
https://nchain.com/en/blog/canonical-transaction-ordering-bitcoin-critical-evaluation/
https://youtu.be/0s8ZG6HuLrU?t=35
https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/bitcoin-cash-sees-record-breaking-23-mb-bch-block-mined-by-nchain-bmg-pool/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/30/bank-england-plots-bitcoin-style-digital-currency/
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8439/why-was-21-million-picked-as-the-number-of-bitcoins-to-be-created
https://www.iasplus.com/en/standards/ias/ias38
https://medium.com/@craig_10243/equality-9948207d20e
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/30/17621112/openai-robot-dexterity-dactyl-artificial-intelligence
https://hbr.org/2008/07/choosing-strategies-for-change
Why do you always choose the maverick, combative approach to communication?
Even when you are expressly exploring something that you don’t have a perfect handle on, you still adopt the mantle of someone who is coming down from on high to educate the poor unfortunates who are not as enlightened as you and need a clip in the ear to get them in line. The best example of this I’ve ever seen was the situation with the proof of burn addresses backing wormhole and counterparty; you didn’t understand that the last six characters of the addresses were necessarily deterministic checksums based on the prior content of the addresses, even when subtle attention was drawn to this, you silently let it blackhole without correcting yourself or noting the implication of what you were saying.
In my experience, this combative personality is symptomatic of an environment in which you have constantly had to struggle with people who are honestly not capable of understanding your ideas and insights, and are in turn trying to steamroll you with what they believe is important, but is in fact not, usually social status or some associated nonsensical window dressing, and the only way you can pull them in line is to trample over them with the facts until they submit. And if you’re always right, and never wrong, the simple fact is this approach works.
But at some point in our lives, we come into a situation where our peers are not necessarily just useless cattle parroting truisms that they don’t actually understand and trying to engage in social power games. They have their own genuine insights into the subjects under discussion. When you treat those people as if they were useless cattle, it ends up alienating them, and is directly contrary to moving the field forward as well as your standing within it.
I know how you grew up, I know the kind of society that you dealt with, and I know how it’s the perfect breeding ground for the aforementioned attitude. But that realm isn’t the high level cryptocurrency community.
I humbly submit that you consider moving past this, in order to genuinely share the unique and valuable insights that you have proven you have, rather than providing ammunition for those who would seek to engage in character assassination against you and sideline those points which are inconvenient to their sometimes objectionable goals.
u/etherael
The long term incentives for innovation and growth from patents.
I agree and support patents and how they help to drive innovation and growth, in the real world. (I am presuming and hope, Dr Craig has picked option 2 from above)
Here is a basic situation for those who are unsure and the importance of the need for patents and how they help to to create and or drive growth
- Scenario: A Drug has a 60% chance for complete survival rate. Multiple companies manufacture this drug, and make a small profit, Company A, B,C,D.. K, etc
- Company A, invests $5m in R&D (research and development) in Year 1, in order to create a new drug with 85% survival rate. They fail in Year 1.
- In Year 2 they spend another $5m and they fail.
- In Year 3 they spend another $5m and after they succeed. They have incurred costs of $15m.
- Option A — Patents: They now have a new Drug and have been granted a patent. The patent allows them to have exclusive rights and can therefore licence out their drug to Company B,C,D, K etc for an annual fee of 750k, the payback period would be another 3 years (It will take another 2 years to recoup their R&D costs, from licencing their drug to 10 companies).
- Option B: There are no patents, Company B,C,..K etc can freely create the new drug at practically zero cost. Company A has spent $15m on R&D costs and will get nothing back.
What incentives does Company A have to create the new drug, move forward and incur costs to invest in R&D? What’s the point of spending $15m for no return, as when there were no licence agreements and everyone could produce the drug at zero cost. Hence, without patents and licences, the new 90% survival drug would have never existed, restricting innovation and growth. The patent and ability to licence out for a fee, will be the incentive for company A to spend more in R&D today, for rewards in the future.
Company D may now see how it takes 2 years to recoup the R&D costs, and may start to do more internal research and push for a Drug that gives 95% survival rate — This drives changes and creates growth. I hope this will be the case in crypto going forward and nChain/IBM etc licence out their patents.
Disclaimer:
I will provide more information on later my background, reasons for this post and thoughts after the A.