CoinGeek Backstage with Marcel Gruber: ‘Bitcoinizing’ experiences online with videos

CoinGeek Conference New York featured presentations from the three finalists of the 4th Bitcoin SV Hackathon. The first project to take the stage was Marcel Gruber, co-founder of CATN8, which he described as the world’s first-ever embeddable, interactive, and monetizable streaming video player built on the BSV blockchain.

Gruber joined CoinGeek Backstage host Stephanie Tower on the sidelines of the conference and discussed his experiences as the third finalist of the hackathon.

So what is CATN8? According to Gruber, it is a video player that can support any use cases: “It is a smart video player that can support a rich experience. So, it’s kind of a fusion between video and, in theory, whatever you want it to be. It could be quizzes or training where you click on certain areas of the video. You can pay the content creator directly. They can pay you. Advertisers can pay you. There are many use cases.”

Gruber said his team has more vision for the product that he couldn’t squeeze in the 10 minutes allotted time in the CoinGeek conference.

He said they aimed to spearhead “Bitcoinizing” interactions and experiences online by using videos as a blank canvass. “We really want to spearhead the effort in bitcoinizing experiences online and interactions with videos and the sharing of videos the networks involved in that.”

When asked what his inspiration was for creating CATN8, he shared that it was the passion of a colleague in creating videos and the fact that video has a big market. “It was actually Dave on the team. For some reason, he’s a very passionate fellow about video. When I first met him, it made a lot of sense because video is such a big market. There are so many different things you can do with it, and I wanted to get in.”

Gruber also mentioned how the Hackathon had made a significant impact on his team. “The final week was extremely busy. The deadline is looming, and we knew we had to get the polish in. We were all working overtime and built a good connection as a team.”

When asked what the next step for CATN8 is, Gruber said they first want the product to be available to the public and collaborate with other businesses in the BSV ecosystem, such as Handcash and TonicPow.

“One of the great things about this competition for me, personally [is how] it has inspired me to get [CATN8] in the hands of the people as soon as possible,” he said.

“We want to look at some of the low-hanging fruit probably in collaborating with other businesses in the ecosystem already such as HandCash, and perhaps, TonicPow. In our demo, we actually showed that you can get paid for watching a video, and in many ways, that’s what TonicPow kind of does.”

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