CoinGeek Weekly Livestream 2023 episode 5: AMA with Kurt Wuckert Jr.

Episode 5 of the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream saw Kurt Wuckert Jr. answer questions related to Bitcoin and blockchain.

The South Florida Bitcoin Citadel

Wuckert reminds us that he’s streaming the show from the Bitcoin Citadel in South Florida. He says there’s an increasing amount of activity going on there, with typically five or six people working there at any time.

“Come down to Florida if you want to be part of all the cool stuff we’re doing,” he says.

One of the great reasons to go down to the Bitcoin Citadel is to learn from others. Wuckert is always educating people about BSV, and he once again explains that it’s not necessary to run a full node. Thanks to JungleBus, it’s possible to get served only the data that’s relevant to your business or project. He announces that they will have a workshop this Friday to teach people how to use the tools. This workshop will also be available online.

Later in the show, a potential visitor asks Wuckert if he should make an appointment to come by and ask for some help with his app. Wuckert says this would be a good idea as there aren’t always developers there, and if they are, they may be busy with something else at any given time. He says sending him a DM is a good way to get the ball rolling.

What is happening with TULIP?

Wuckert notes that this could mean many things—there’s the Tulip Trust, Tulip Trading, and potentially multiple other entities linked to the Tulip name. Dr. Craig Wright uses this name for multiple entities linked to Bitcoin and related businesses.

Tulip Trading Limited is the plaintiff in a legal case against Bitcoin developers, Wuckert explains. Giving some backstory, he explains that a hack on one of Dr. Wright’s servers contained private keys to some of his bitcoins.

Dr. Wright claims that the developers have fiduciary duties over the network and has requested that they reassign his coins. Initially, the U.K. judge threw the case out, but Dr. Wright appealed, and it was agreed that it should go to trial.

“He’s making the argument that the fiduciaries over the network have the ability and the authority to put a patch into BTC, BCH, XEC, and BSV and give him his coins back,” Wuckert says.

Do you think Binance is going to make an FTX move?

“I think in the longest term, all exchanges will trend towards bankruptcy,” Wuckert says. In the short term, he believes token prices will pump for a while—maybe a quarter or so.

However, by the end of the year, he sees another significant move down for various macroeconomic reasons and the fact that liquidity is tight in the industry. As the dollar gains strength, primarily due to Federal Reserve monetary policy, other assets will lose value against the U.S. dollar, and Binance will struggle with this.

Binance could be insolvent, illiquid, and many other things, but it’s all based on speculation. As long as Tether exists, it will be difficult to tell the reality.

COPA ‘wen’?

In case you don’t know, this question is asking when the COPA case will occur. Wuckert says it won’t happen until next year, and he doesn’t know much more about it.

Can you talk about your and Dr. Wright’s exchange regarding separate service companies for credit card processing?

Wuckert explains how he tweeted about issues GorillaPool is having due to being associated with the ‘cryptocurrency’ business. The company is attempting to allow people to purchase power (linked to mining) on their credit cards in an automated way, but card issuers are saying they don’t allow using their cards to purchase coins. He has repeatedly explained that they don’t sell digital currencies, but they classify it as the same business due to company policies.

Dr. Wright suggested setting up a separate company that only does order processing to solve this issue. It can receive credit card payments and then pass through payments to GorillaPool.

Is Kurt on the Geist Gang on RelayX club?

Wuckert answers this one in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. No, he is not involved in any of the RelayX clubs. He says that while he and RelayX have had a slightly contentious relationship, he’s very impressed with the clubs and will check them out.

Why did you transition from XMR and BCH to BSV? Why did you feel BSV was fundamentally a better project?

Wuckert replies he thought Monero was super cool during the Bitcoin civil war. The limitations imposed by BTC Core caused him to look into altcoins as he thought Bitcoin was dead.

He liked Ethereum because of the ability to issue tokens. He also enjoyed mining, so his attention was drawn to Monero (XMR). He was impressed by the fact it wasn’t a Bitcoin fork—it was truly its own unique thing designed from scratch. He started mining Monero and learned more about it.

Pretty soon, Bitcoin Cash came along, and he was drawn back to big-block Bitcoin. At the same time, Monero went through an episode to do with ASIC resistance. Wuckert says he realized then that it was centrally controlled by developers who had just ordered by decree that something was no longer Monero.

“If you can just say one week that this is gold and the next that is gold, then it’s not gold,” he says.

By this stage, Wuckert was already excited about big block Bitcoin making a comeback. However, it didn’t take long for the infighting to start, and the small blocker versus big blocker debate played out again, with some proposing a 32MB limit on blocks.

Big blockers decided they were going to fight for Bitcoin Cash. When the split happened, it was a “Stab in the back,” according to Wuckert. It was supposed to be decided by a hash war, but ABC had already decided to keep the ticker and implement things like rolling checkpoints, making BSV a new network. It wasn’t an honest fight, and he went with the BSV camp because he felt stabbed in the back by the BCH people and the limitations they wanted to impose on Bitcoin.

How can a junior software developer learn to build apps on BSV? What are some of the best resources and tools?

Wuckert says that learning javascript is a good start. sCrypt.io gives concepts, example code, and documentation on using Bitcoin script to create tokens and other interesting things.

He also recommends Run.network and the BSV Academy for general education. There’s also a BSV Discord group where anyone can ask questions. Lastly, he suggests the Bitcoin Schema for a wealth of information on data definitions for Bitcoin applications.

What are your thoughts on the ramifications of NFTs on BTC? Is it a threat to BTC, and does it validate BSV?

Wuckert thinks Ordinals is the most bullish thing to happen to BTC in five years. It adds profitability for miners and utility to BTC. “It’s a good thing for BTC,” he says.

However, he says the small blocker cult is furious, even going so far as to roll back their ‘code is law’ and ‘censorship resistance’ narratives. Many narratives are getting smashed, and he isn’t sure how some of these cultists will back down from their previously stated positions to deal with this.

What does he think will happen next? A night of the long knives scenario where some code gets pushed, and people’s NFTs start breaking. Some of them are worth tens of thousands of dollars, so it will tick some people off, perhaps sparking a nasty civil war within BTC. This could lead to some of the supporters of Ordinals becoming allies, given that BSVers have already been through this.

“All of these make a lot of cases for BSV. It shows that people do value data on-chain,” he says. From a narrative standpoint, this is really good for BSV because people will recognize this doesn’t work so well on BTC and some will realize it does work well on BSV.

Did you talk to Peter Schiff after your last interview?

Wuckert says he has reached out a couple of times but has yet to hear back. He thinks Schiff is very careful about who he talks to in the blockchain space.

CSW said the world will end up on one chain. How will it be regarding geopolitical differences? Will Western countries be able to shut out countries like Russia and Iran?

Wuckert says Bitcoin is an open protocol like the internet. All you need is a computer and the ability to connect to it.

However, there are also different protocols, such as the Chinese internet and the dark web. Using Bitcoin, you can also create a DAG with its own logic and rules. Therefore, even if the world uses BSV as people use the web today, China can still have its own version with its own rules.

Watch: Build on Blockchain: Common Challenges & Tools to Make it Easier