The following is a written transcript of our five part video series “Short BTC, Long Bitcoin (BSV)”. The video version can be found on our YouTube channel.
What is Bitcoin? Part II
Moving away from theoretical discussions about databases, what are the tangible properties and businesses this network enables.
Micropayments
Micropayments are low value payments, think small fractions of a penny, which are now possible through bitcoin. Changing user balances on the Bitcoin database is computationally cheap. This is why BSV is able to send amounts orders of magnitude smaller than any existing digital payment solution. Average BSV fees are currently hundredths of a cent and falling. The crippled version of Bitcoin, BTC, has fees of around 50 cents, which has spiked to over $50 in times of high traffic. Because Bitcoin as BSV is able to send such small amounts of value, internet businesses currently generating revenue through ads could start directly charging for their services, a tenth of a cent google search as an example. The removal of ads in favor of micropayments can improve poor user experiences and enable entirely new business models.
UptimeSV
Consider UptimeSV, a service that helps business owners know if their websites are operational in various geographies. If you run an online business you want to be sure your website is functional in your target geographies at all times. UptimeSV pays people with smartphones in various locations to ping their customers’ websites to ensure the website is live in that area. Because the value of an individual ping is quite low, UptimeSV’s business model is only possible thanks to Bitcoin as BSV’s ability to send fractions of a penny for each ping. Over time, people who volunteer their phone service to provide data for UptimeSV will accumulate real value from thousands of tiny payments.
Own-your-Data Paradigm
The ability to own one’s online data was a technical impossibility prior to the invention of Bitcoin. When a user signs up for a service like Twitter they are agreeing to create valuable data for Twitter in exchange for the right to use the platform. The popular observation here is that “if you don’t pay for the product, you are the product”. Because you are the product for Twitter, you have fewer rights over your data than you might prefer. If you were to post something that was against Twitter’s opaque terms of service, you could be suddenly kicked off the platform, losing both your data and your following. For users whose Twitter following is substantial and tied to their ability to make a living, this is a significant drawback and puts them at the mercy of Twitter. Even if one can get a copy of their data, the ability to transfer that data to other apps is either cumbersome or non-existent prior to BSV’s public database. The legacy options before bitcoin were local storage that you own or online third-party storage that you don’t.
With BSV as the public database, there’s now an alternative to the existing technical scheme and business model of owning and selling user data. Because BSV enables user owned data storage on a massively interconnected public database, users now have the benefit of using apps like Twitter without needing to give their data rights to a third party.
Twetch
Twetch is a great example of an own-your-data social network on BSV. Twetch provides a similar user experience to Twitter, but Twetch as a company doesn’t own any user data. Instead, all interactions with the website are really interactions with BSV’s public database. Users post text and photos, or like posts by writing to the BSV blockchain. Twetch provides the familiar Twitter-like-user experience to display this data to end users. If the Twetch webpage were to disappear tomorrow, all user data would be preserved on bitcoin’s database. If Twetch were to begin implementing features that users disliked, competitors would be able to serve the same data to former Twetch users. If Twitter disappears so does your data. If Twetch disappears, your data is unaffected. You can see how the tech giants who own and sell personal information of users may have to adjust to this new paradigm. If own-your-data schemes become the norm, tech giants will have to change their business models or risk being outcompeted by new companies.