The Rise of Bitcoin SV: Joshua Henslee on the Cryptocurrency Theory Podcast

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Joshua Henslee recently logged on to the Cryptocurrency Theory podcast to talk to Chad Bailey about Bitcoin SV, ordinals, and more.

How Henslee and Bailey got into digital currencies and blockchain technology

Henslee presents himself as a bitcoin maximalist and lays out his position that the original bitcoin had everything we needed.

Bailey asks Henslee about his Bitcoin story, what initially attracted him to the technology, and why it’s important to him. Henslee tells his host about his experience integrating enterprise software, payment systems and credit card processors. He explains to viewers that it is a technical nightmare and very inefficient.

When Bitcoin ran in 2017, Henslee started paying attention. He read the white paper and immediately understood it. Since then, it has fallen down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Bailey relates to this, saying he fell in love with it immediately. He says he’s always amazed how few people understand technology, including people working or studying IT, who would expect to be up to date on cutting-edge technology. He then asks Henslee, why Bitcoin SV?

Why Bitcoin SV?

Henslee begins by providing some context. The reason he became interested in Bitcoin in the first place was because he knew it was light years away from the credit card processing solutions he worked with every day. He reminds us that Satoshi made it clear that peer-to-peer transactions without a trusted third party is how Bitcoin transactions are supposed to happen. This is the polar opposite of how credit cards work, which is the reason for their problems.

After small blockers caused Bitcoin fees to rise exponentially from what they were at the start, Henslee began looking into Ethereum, Litecoin, BCH, and other blockchains. He finally consolidated in the BCH, and when a dispute broke out in this camp, he landed on the side of BSV.

What Satoshi designed has nothing to do with what BTC is today, Henslee tells the audience. He explains how the Bitcoin script enabled smart contracts on the blockchain; there was no block size limit, it scaled and had low fees, etc. Ethereum only exists because Bitcoin Core devs disabled the script, he tells Bailey, remembering how BTC Core devs chased Vitalik Buterin and told him what he wanted to build n’ was not allowed.

Bailey takes a moment to remind his viewers, many of whom are new to digital currencies, that BCH and BSV are far from broken. He reminds us that they had a huge impact on the whole ecosystem when the forks happened, and the other day BSV soared 30% on massively increased volume.

A huge BSV price pump in 2020

Bailey directs viewers to Henslees video analyzing historic BSV price. He asks Henslee to say more about these events and their causes.

Henslee replies that two come to mind. The first came after the CoinGeek conference in Toronto in May 2019, and the other was caused by a false rumor from China that Dr. Craig Wright had publicly signed with the keys to Satoshi Nakamotos; this caused BSV to rise rapidly against other digital currencies and independently of them.

On this second pump, BSV entered the top five coins by market capitalization and surpassed BCH for the first and only time to date. BTC maximalists collapsed, sensing the threat of miners moving to the BSV chain, and moved to attack BSV.

Henslee says he once again noticed BSV and BCH moving independently of the rest of the market last week. This is due to concerns about whether ordinals will cause the BTC chain to split or cause the BTC blockchain to fail. He says it could happen faster than people think.

BSV only needs to reach around 5% BTC to start causing trouble, he tells viewers.

Ordinals, JPEGs and larger BTC blocks

Bailey asks Henslee to explain how a 4MB block on BTC was possible and what ordinals are.

Henslee explains that Ordinals are possible due to specific modifications made by BTC Core developers to the original Satoshi, SegWit, and Taproot design. An indie developer found a way to put data on the blockchain even though BTC Core had explicitly blocked it.

The whole crypto market felt like you can’t do data on BTC. That changed in January 2023, he says.

Henslee describes the innovation and activity on BTC since Casey Rodarmor found the loophole as a rebirth. It dives into Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) and Fungible Tokens (BRC-20), explaining how exchanging BTC for tokens like $ORDI on the BTC blockchain is possible. So far, returns for this particular token have been outrageous, proving that the market has reacted positively to these developments. Henslee once again reiterates his position that this is a game-changer.

Mining on BSV

Bailey concludes by asking Henslee if he thinks BSV only having two miners might be a problem.

Henslee explains that there is no real incentive to exploit BSV in the larger ecosystem; the price of coins is low and the fees are so low that they barely register. This opens up the chain to potential attacks, and there have been attacks such as the Void Block Miner in 2022.

The only way to solve this problem is higher coin prices or more transactions, says Henslee. He notes that transaction fees could increase, but this debate has already taken place at BSV, and fees remain low.

Understanding the Bitcoin Whitepaper | First section: the introduction

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeek’s Bitcoin for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about the Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto and blockchain.

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