Timechain Labs’ Rohan Sharan talks Bitcoin adoption in India on CoinGeek Weekly Livestream

Rohan Sharan started Timechain Labs to help transform India’s tech talent into BSV developers and entrepreneurs. He recently joined the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream to discuss his mission and what’s going on with blockchain technology in India.

Wuckert on hash following price

As always, Wuckert kicks things off by inviting viewers to read his CoinGeek article, Hash Follows Price. It touches on how mining profitability continues to decline post-halving.

Instead of making money processing transactions as intended, miners are doing so by selling stock, carbon credits, and other means. This fundamentally messes with Bitcoin’s economic model. How will miners cope as the block subsidy diminishes with each cycle? We’ll have to wait and see.

Rohan Sharan and Timechain Labs

Sharan has spent the last few years building Timechain Labs. It all started back when the BSV Conference in India happened. Since then, Sharan has been building the community, educating developers, and funneling talent into the BSV ecosystem.

There have also been many meetups, hackathons, and workshops, as well as practical education. Currently, this talent is spread across eight key cities in India, creating a network of BSV-focused talent.

Sharan believes anyone can learn blockchain development. As such, he’s offering internships, classes, educational materials, and connections. For example, he’s taking developers who prove themselves and connecting them with companies in the BSV ecosystem, whether they be startups or more established firms.

Wuckert notes that the various BSV events and workshops in Florida attract many ETH and SOL developers. He wonders if the same is true in India. Sharan says that maybe 5-10% have some link to other blockchains, but the majority are university students, so there isn’t too much pushback, and they learn about BSV quickly.

He has noticed that great developers “work close to the metal.” Thus, Bitcoin Script being based in Forth isn’t a problem for them.

Is Timechain Labs looking to create generalists or specialists? The material it teaches does zoom in and focus on some areas, and there may be tasks related to specific token protocols, but the aim is to create courses that give a broad overview of BSV and how it works.

So far, Timechain Labs specializes in fintech solutions. It has built DeepFinance, an app specializing in supply chain finance for smaller players. The app is seeing lots of business in Europe and India.

How can we bring Bitcoin out of the niche economy and into the mainstream?

Sharan believes we need stablecoins and possibly some CBDCs. Blockchain is a backend technology and must become invisible.

While sound money is close to Sharan’s heart, he doesn’t think Bitcoin will be used for payments anytime soon. We need tokenized money, real-world assets, and much more. Money, markets, and goods and services must be represented on the ledger so that blockchain can underpin the real economy.

Viewer questions

To wrap things up, Wuckert asks viewers questions that he and Sharan will answer.

Q. Has anyone come over from Ethereum?

Yes, some have done so in the past year. Sharan expects to see more in the future.

Q. What was the process of India’s history in web development? Were the cities Sharan is focused on involved?

The IT industry in India developed around IBM (NASDAQ: IBM) mainframes. Many Indian service companies popped up to help with them, and seeing the money these jobs paid, many people went after them. India is renowned for its tech workers, but Sharan points out that many are returning to seize the country’s opportunities.

Q. What’s the biggest hurdle in educating people about blockchain technology?

Sharan says we must tailor the education to the type of person we’re dealing with. How we teach a developer about Bitcoin’s UTXO model might not be the ideal way to teach a salesperson. The biggest hurdle is comprehending the ledger and its capabilities. We’re still far away from that, he says.

Watch: ‘Disruptive’ blockchain can be useful for India