The BSV Blockchain Association recently sponsored the first annual Unbounded Capital Summit in New York City at Dream Downtown. The exclusive event was invite-only and featured some 80 attendees including prominent venture and hedge fund managers, fintech and blockchain entrepreneurs, and institutional and family office investors.
The summit was hosted by Unbounded Capital to help promote a network and provide excellent opportunities for on-chain companies to meet experts and investors.
One of the keynote panels at the event was hosted by Mike Hennessey (Senior Advisor at Unbounded Capital) who spoke to Zach Resnick (Managing Partner at Unbounded Capital) and Jimmy Nguyen (CEO of Blockchain4All) about why they are bullish about the long-term prospects of BSV.
Blockchain is still in the early stages
Nguyen started the presentation by detailing his background as an Intellectual Property lawyer and how he became involved in the BSV ecosystem. He also spoke about BSV adoption globally and some of the different ways it is being adopted across businesses and governments.
‘I have spent most of my life travelling around the world, including to territories that don’t have a lot of blockchain technology adoption yet. Such as Pakistan, Vietnam, Rwanda and Sudan. I would say that around the world, and even in our Western countries, blockchain adoption is still at a very primitive stage.’
‘It is limited to trading and the use of blockchain for NFTs and DeFi products which allow for fast trading and fast transactions. The adoption of blockchain for data transactions, smart contracts and things that are more useful is very limited.’
Nguyen added that a lot of countries which are interested in this technology face the conundrum of regulating it first. He added that many governments are keen to explore this interest further but that there is hesitancy around cryptocurrencies in particular.
‘A lot of these countries have to get their arms around regulating and permitting the trading of digital assets in a way that their central banks and governments are comfortable with to send a signal that blockchain technology is welcome in the country.’
Nguyen noted that most blockchain adoption around the world right now is driven by how many coins a chain is willing to offer students or enterprises in a region, with little focus given on why a chain is better for one particular region.
‘Why I’m bullish about BSV’
Resnick said one of the key reasons why he is bullish about BSV is because it is the only protocol that offers true scaling.
‘As more people use the blockchain and more transactions occur, does the transaction cost get cheaper or more expensive? We did an analysis of every other popular blockchain in the world today, and there is no other blockchain that has that property.’
The second major reason Resnick is bullish about BSV is the long-term prospects for the blockchain. He noted that the crypto-asset industry attracts a lot of short-term businesses and investors.
‘I think the quality of founders in the crypto sector is quite low compared to other technology markets. But if you are building on BSV today, you are picking the blockchain you think is most likely to give you long-term success. It shows you are a long-term thinker and that you can make hard decisions that are not popular.’
Resnick pointed to the large number of quality developers building on the BSV blockchain, as well as the fundamental tech stack.
This was echoed by Nguyen who noted that the Bitcoin protocol is ‘battle-tested’ and that BSV at scale has all of the ingredients to be successful.
Using BSV for enterprise data
While the BSV blockchain is already being successfully used for its micropayment and scaling features, Nguyen said it is going to take a longer time for large enterprises such as Amazon to adopt the blockchain for its data capabilities.
‘If you are talking about supply chain data, it’s a great use of blockchain. But you can’t just get one company to do it. Ideally, you want most of the companies in the supply chain to use the same application.’
‘The advice I would give is to identify smaller ecosystems, either regional or sub-specific portions of an industry.’
Nguyen said that one sector which could see adoption quicker is Intellectual Property, with counterfeit goods and infringement orders a good fit for blockchain technology. Resnick added that while there was initial short-term excitement about the use of enterprise, this has lessened once people understood how long this process would take.
How investors see the BSV blockchain’s future
Resnick said that the development of the Internet and Intranet technologies is instructive for looking at the future of blockchain. He noted that in the mid-1990s, most capital was invested in the intranet for individual companies. However, the internet won out.
He added that this is likely to be the case for blockchain technology where all of the different blockchains are likely to fall away in favour of a singular vision. He added that smaller, niche blockchains that are trying to avoid government regulation are likely to continue to exist, but that it is extremely unlikely that more than one blockchain will be used by businesses.
Nguyen noted that there are far too many blockchains right now – a direct result of Bitcoin not being allowed to scale originally.
‘The answer is nobody really does know. This has ultimately slowed down blockchain adoption as companies have had to invest all this time and due diligence to pick a chain and basically take a bit of a gamble on it.’
‘I do think it will consolidate into a leading set of chains with different usages. I also believe that although BSV can scale to hold all of the world’s data, not everything belongs on a blockchain. Just because you can put data, information or files on the blockchain, it doesn’t mean you need to.’