After attending the BSV Global Blockchain Convention in May, David Capablanca had a chance to meet some of the key figures in the industry. This week, he decided to reconnect with sCrypt’s Xiaohui Liu to delve deeper into BSV to benefit his audience.
Introducing Xiaohui Liu
After speaking with John ‘Jack’ Pitts on his podcast several months ago, Capablanca decided to attend the BSV Global Blockchain Convention in Dubai this year. He begins by saying how impressed he was with the convention and how much he enjoyed Liu’s presentation.
Liu details his history and how he studied a Ph.D. in computer science before working for Facebook as a research scientist. He got interested in blockchain technology after his friend began mining various digital currencies. He explains that he was immediately curious about how computation could generate value in the form of digital coins. He began running lots of experiments, eventually leading him to quit his position at Facebook and dive into blockchain full time.
Liu explains that in these early days, most of the experiments failed because of the technical limitations of the blockchains he ran them on. However, all that was about to change when a fateful invitation to a conference in Hong Kong led him to Bitcoin SV.
How did Liu meet Dr. Craig Wright?
Liu explains that, after a period of running different experiments related to blockchain technology, he accepted an invitation from a friend to attend a conference in Hong Kong. While there, Dr. Craig Wright gave a presentation, and Liu was immediately impressed. He says that Dr. Wright comes across very differently in person and that this was when he began to understand how negative and misleading the media can be.
Liu says that after his encounter with Dr. Wright, he went “down the rabbit hole.” He discovered the original Bitcoin and Dr. Wright’s many papers and patents. For him, they are definitive proof that Dr. Wright is Bitcoin’s inventor.
“He’s either Satoshi Nakamoto, or he knows more about Bitcoin than anyone else out there,” Liu says.
Capablanca nods knowingly, explaining how in his own industry of financial trading, the media can be extremely misleading. It often lies by omission and will almost always spin things a certain way.
Liu agrees, delving deeper into why he believes Dr. Wright’s claims to have invented Bitcoin. While some in the industry demand that he signs publicly with Nakamoto’s private keys, Liu is more convinced by his “proof of knowledge.” Explaining what he means by this, he asks Capablanca to imagine someone claiming to be a person he knows, such as an old friend, and what he’d think if that person then proceeded to answer endless questions about that person, shared memories, etc., accurately. For Liu, that’s what Dr. Wright has done regarding Bitcoin—he’s answered endless questions accurately, and every other so-called expert has answered them incorrectly. The probability of this being down to chance is slim to none for him.
On Liu’s online classes with Dr. Wright and BSVs’ capabilities
Liu runs regular online classes on Bitcoin SV development, and Capablanca asks him to explain more about them.
He answers that they are a way for him to translate what Dr. Wright wants to express into a more “developer-friendly” language. In his interactions with Dr. Wright, he’s found that because his knowledge base is so broad, everyday people have a difficult job understanding what he’s saying. Liu takes these high-level concepts and breaks them down so that developers can grasp them. The classes are on all sorts of things related to BSV development, such as smart contracts using sCrypt.
Through these classes and other research into BSV, Liu has learned that everything that can be done on other blockchains can be done on Bitcoin SV better and less expensive. He wonders why the 30,000+ other blockchains even exist.
Capablanca interjects that when he thinks about it, that exchanges would delist and ignore BSV makes a lot of sense. He likens them to stock brokers and traders who make fees from trading. If BSV is as capable as Liu and other experts say, and if it kills off those other blockchains, then they lose out on all the fees associated with trading the coins linked to them.
Delving deeper into BSV’s capabilities, Liu explains that claiming Bitcoin is only for payments is equivalent to saying iPhones are only for making phone calls. He says that, even now, as people wake up to the power of BSV for micropayments, its programming capabilities are still underestimated and underexplored. He explains how sCrypt is a lot like Javascript and other high-level languages, allowing developers to create advanced applications on Bitcoin. He reminds the viewers that he’s not just claiming this—he has proven it and it all works today.
Liu’s latest projects and where people can learn more
Capablanca asks Liu what projects he’s currently working on and where his viewers can learn more about Bitcoin SV. He replies that consuming the publicly available material on BSV is a good start. He recommends BitcoinSV.com and CoinGeek and reminds viewers to look past negative headlines and do their own research.
Leaving viewers with food for thought, Liu asks them to consider why exchanges like Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) and Binance have listed almost all of the top 100 digital currencies by market cap except for BSV? He reminds them that it’s the antithesis of ‘crypto,’ focusing on real utility rather than pumping coins for short-term gains, and that, just as we’ve seen reality catch up to the industry in recent months, there’s much more to come.
Watch: The BSV Global Blockchain Convention presentation, Smart Contracts and Computation on BSV
New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeek’s Bitcoin for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoin—as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto—and blockchain.
