CoinGeek Backstage with Joe Thomas: What’s next for 4th Bitcoin SV Hackathon winner Bitcoin Phone?

CoinGeek Conference doesn’t only showcase a renowned array of panels and speakers in the Bitcoin space but also reveals the projects of the Bitcoin SV Hackathon finalists. This year CoinGeek New York featured a presentation from the winner of the 4th BItcoin SV Hackathon, Joe Thomas, a Canadian developer who created the Bitcoin Phone.

Thomas joined CoinGeek Backstage host Stephanie Tower to talk about the winning application and his next steps for the Bitcoin Phone.

Thomas aims to bring transactions and real-time network communication to the BSV blockchain, and his solution is the world’s first voice-over-Bitcoin protocol. “Bitcoin Phone is an application that uses Bitcoin to let people stream audio over the internet bidirectionally. So I’m able to stream audio to you in exchange for money and you’re streaming audio to me in exchange for money, potentially. And since we have a two-way audio stream, we’re basically in a phone conversation,” he explained.

The 4th Bitcoin SV Hackathon took a six-week coding round on which participants were challenged to create an application or service that can leverage ‘peer-to-peer’ capabilities of the BSV blockchain, and according to Thomas, the ideation of the application took the longest time to manifest.

“Well, ideation took a long time. So, I’ve been reading all these things from Craig Wright and Ryan Charles and all these other people, very, very smart people. I think it started way back when I understood the nSequence channels that Craig keeps talking about and after I really in depthly understood it,” he said.

Thomas also mentioned that people keep on saying that building applications like the Bitcoin Phone can only be possible ten years from now when infrastructure is developed, but Thomas realized it’s possible today.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, we could do this today.’ It’s like people keep saying these things are only possible ten years from now when we have like infrastructure developed, but I realized it’s possible. And then I just had to start from scratch during the Hackathon and just build the first application I could think of: building a phone because like it’s the most obvious thing that people can see it—people can see it working, they can hear it, and they understand it.”

When asked what was the most memorable moment when he was developing the app. Thomas replied, “I think in the middle of July when I finished, and I got a friend to test it out. Like the first time it actually worked, and it worked. My friend, he’s like, ‘whoa, this is so cool we need to record it right now.’ So, he started recording it and then we had like the first conversation on Bitcoin, and it was amazing.”

Towers wraps the interview by asking what the 4th Bitcoin SV Hackathon winner will do with the prize money. Thomas stated that he and his team are looking to find people in sales and marketing.

“Right now, we need to find people in sales and marketing. After the first stage of the Hackathon, I got some other people to help me out developing the Bitcoin Phone more. We have a nice UI. They’re back home. They’re continuously working. They’re very hardworking people. We have the tech side down. We have the product down. We need more marketing focus now,” he said.

Bitcoin Phone can broadcast voice data over the Bitcoin network by leveraging the non-finality of nSequence to enable close to real-time data streaming. During Thomas’ presentation at the conference, he showed the potential of the Bitcoin Phone protocol and how it works and links to Bitcoin micropayments to eventually revolutionize the tutoring and language service industry. This will allow tutors to compete on the price of their services and be paid instantly without the common issues present in current internet-based platforms today.

Watch CoinGeek New York 2021 Day 1 here:

Watch CoinGeek New York 2021 Day 2 here:

Watch CoinGeek New York 2021 Day 3 here: