Why I left BTC to The Real Bitcoin — BitcoinSV – Shem Booth-Spain – Medium By 30 Ladies & Gentleman… So a few people asked about why I left Btc and moved to BitcoinSV. I hope this gives a good understanding of my personal crypto journey.. Every story has a start.. Although not a programmer I come from an arts background. I understand media, advertising, technology and when I discovered Bitcoin I was blown away by its application to transforming commerce and our world for the better. I Studied BA(Hons) fine art & visual arts (Kent Institute of Art & Design) and MA Sonic Culture, Arts and Media in the Digital Age at the University of East London.
I began a PHD in computing & mathematical sciences at Greenwich University but ran out of loans to finish, Im a Artist/Musician (The Singing Pictures) — & Producer of experimental electronic music/sound art. Released a new album call “Notions of Synthetic Life” and am based in London Uk & part of the art collective PH7, Harmony Label plus my own label Element 115.
Main research areas of interest are synesthesia, (Greek, SYN=together + AISTHESIS= perception) which is where one sense becomes mixed with another, Cyberpunk culture, Human-Computer interaction, New Media/Arts. I have traveled to art labs under artist residencies, spoken at tech/art conventions and involved as a artist in cyberpunk collectives working on art/media projects such as experimental music, Multimedia Arts.
Id always been a rebel in my early 20’s. rocknroll, music, art. I always counted myself as a think outside the box kinda person and as a lover of new innovative disrupting technologies. I sought out technologies at thin end of the wedge, Transformative technologies that could make the world better. After reading the news on bitcoin breaking 1k post mount gox i read about bitcoins innovative marketcap of 21 million — the notion of a stable p2p currency immediately pricked my ears and set about a journey that forever changed the course of my life.
It wasn’t the idea of some hidden money or lambos that got me into it, it was the fact that money, debt based money and the order of money on planet earth need improvement for the betterment of humanity future, it always seemed the one thing no movement or political party would modify or develop and here had it arrived! Exciting times!! I bought some bitcoin @ $250 dollars and sought about learning to send/spend and use, dark markets was never my thing as clearly the new technology was being watched with envious eyes and merkle trees of activity would be followed retrospectively for those that pursued it for illicit purposes would have karma knocking at their door.
For me, it was the speedy quickness, as email had transformed the message beyond the postman and postbox, to me Bitcoin innovation was programmable money and its ability to unify the world under 1 currency and not “the beast” as written/ tracking and locking humanity under its reign, to me Bitcoin is a freeing of the monetary shackles of humanity’s predicament, ultra fast portable liquidity with global reach, empowering economies and driving business to new dazzling heights… I hodled from Mt gox through the 2yr bear market keeping my head low and learning and watching, it seemed everyone was for the mission, global unifying money that could free humanity. but things started to change around the segwit upgrade, honestly as im not a programmer or coder the noise from the BTC/BCH segwit fork passed way over head, I wasn’t aware of the technical underpinnings of segwit, or the implications of the chosen path or political sides of the VS’s, blockstream or miner groups that made up the ecosystem, perhaps naively I swam the crypto seas with the rest, with the herd hoping for the big break in the crypto waves to cascade a sea of adoption as it would take the world by storm like it had myself,,, wishing, wanting, waiting… Through the 2017 fork to the ath of 20k I myself was consumed by the euphoria of the time and all of the errors that come with base emotions and noob trade phycology, I could have plotted my emotional state in time with the BTC price ticker had one been developed, the exhilarating high of numbers never seen in my life, i studied wealth, learnt to manage my money and finances, Bitcoin did change me, it taught me to get my shit together, it taught me politics, economics, the process of fiat, fractional reserve currency. Once entering the rabbit hole (excuse the pun) it just gets deeper, it travels as far as one allows themself to fall, truth of systems never known is a drug that never afraid id inject more and consume all information pertaining it to understand the greater system of crypto and the forces that governed it. Its funny how humans organise too, we form groups, fall apart, come back together and id always been aware of that so I did keep my head down even up to the ATH of 2017 i was pretty much off the radar with fear that I would get hacked or doxxed or just some crypto folk would bury my reputation through social media, in all of this though I found myself slowly swallowing the star wars memes and feeling “part of BTC” defending the old guard of crypto, defending the bastion of Bitcoin BTC itself without question… Id even reached out to Blockstream to help them first hand (rejected of course!). I was through & through a Bitcoin Maximalist.. and wore the badge proudly hidden… But something changes post ATH…. I remember talking a friend into bitcoin and as my eyes widened he too could see how amazingly pumped I was, it was infectious, but he returned a week later saying “i bought TRON TRX”…. I was like WTF?, this for me as the ATH prices had hooked the next round of speculators the explosion of ICO’s, altcoins and various shitcoins I couldn’t believe a victim was born of the crypto scene.
this for me really summarised the problem, these bag holders had bought top with promises of cryptos unheard of and untested,, But it got worse, as the price ebbed down from ATH, Every crypto was proclaiming to be the NEW BITCOIN/ the iphone upgrade of crypto or the innovation humanity was waiting for,,, I found myself drawing sword and charging into the crypto verse ready to defend the principle of bitcoin, how could we have 1 central unified currency when the proliferation of altcoins had bleed devs away from BTC, muddled the waters and diluted branding, it was bad enough with Ethereum around and id never even bothered with Litecoin (punting itself as the silver of crypto.
. PMSL). I saw rather than the changing market cap of coins who would come and go we saw contenders entering to take the throne of Bitcoin, Pump strategies of bot nets appearing and all manner of scammy projects and business slapping a crypto coin on a no tech and pricing their business at 350million. My motivation was always unification, Simple, Humanities monetary unification.
Now things get really interesting..
Id participe in the crypto community shows and get involved working hard to speak of the innovation of bitcoin, then I got a slot at the world crypto community youtube channel with my show Bitcoin 2049 talking about the future application of bitcoin and its innovation. around summer 2018 we was covering things like Paper bitcoins vs Bitcoin BITCOIN 2049 — Paper Bitcoins VS Bitcoin — SBS & AngryDentist — Caitlin Longand also academic Saifdean Ammous BITCOIN 2049 — Shem Booth-Spain & AngryDentist — Saifedean Ammous — World Crypto But something came up again that got my interest, BitcoinCash was having a fork it emerged, as I dug deeper I saw that bch was to split to BitcoinSV and BchABC (althought bchabc took the bch ticker) the distinct layer 2 proof of burn technology being applied to BCHABC made me very aware something was cooking big! Bitcoin 2049 — All out war in BcashLand! 128mb CSW vs Jeehans — WORMHOLE Around this time I started to see how BTC so called og’s where just asking people to keep buying btc in the next hope a ATH, futures CME/etc was compressing price, innovation was stagnating and for at least 6months we had all been banging on about Lightning Network with no actual adoption and decent usage taking place, everyone and there exchange was getting into crypto stable coins and the whole space in Bitcoin BTC has started to take on socialist, marxist theme, people where coming into the space and co opting Bitcoin and placing a “ism” onto it. Everyone was suddenly a OG and the tech stagnation of the space left me feeling that hollow words and politics was taking over. What about 1 coin, what about programmable technologies on bitcoin, the fractured crypto market had become a place of lambo dreaming speculators, real base emotions that thought nothing of sound global money, it was all about the high, all about the next all time high! We started doing shows in the run up to the bch fork, discussing more and investigating I learned about onchain more, someone shared an image to me — I post it below… he said to me “Shem do you know what this image means” really do you know? I didn’t really but he explained it and I looked closer, I could understand how bchABC was forking away from bitcoin cash, but id never know the onchain bch,, i refused to believe it,, You only grow good plants when you prune back.. As the hash war was heating up I found myself unable to communicate to any BTCers, I did try to a select few, but they scoffed as i begged for us to assist in the first hashwar..
However truley, Bitcoin Btc wouldnt understand and community was so militant to seeing any other way I couldn’t stand by as nakamoto consensus was being attacked by bch proof of burn wormhole and defended by BitcoinSV, even as Bch or Bcash we would mockingly call them I could see there plight, I could see no one in the BTC space speaking of support for them or even defending. The very rules of Bitcoin Mining was under attack and no one else in crypto wanted anything to do with it.
if the very notion of nakamoto consensus is not defended, then what does Bitcoin Proof of Work mean? Nothing…Bitcoin means nothing… At first I perceived wormhole as a bigger threat but then as i watched every Dr Craig Wright video I saw a passionate inventor defending his invention. A man unwavering in his believe and vision and unchanged through the passage of time in his objective, One does not keep this up if its bullshit….. when I turned and looked at the so called masters of BTC space i saw few men of honour and few with this level of vision. It was a hard pill to swallow, could i be on the wrong team? defending a crypto that doesnt work and will not function as originally planned? had i got swept up… yes! Even though BCH was sworn enemies of BTC I found myself feeling anger at the attack was on BitcoinSV. Could they be the real bitcoin? Is BTC even the real BITCOIN I thought?, Confused i kept my cards to myself and started to trickle support to BTC side hoping we would stand by with them and help, after all BTC had a lot in common with BSV no one in BTC came to assist. Bitcoin 2049 — WeatherReport — The First Hashwar — BitcoinSV Our first show regarding the subject we stumbled on our words trying not to let off our opinions wildly but tease ideas and trickle thoughts in the hope BTC community would pick up the signals, knowing we would be booted off the bitcoin maximalist show,,, Hashwar Starts.
. It felt like history was being made on the start of that day, something never before done in crypto, a new underdiscovered country, crypto evolution of the strongest in action, I was dying for a reorg on bchabc chain, that will show the power of nakamoto consensus and lead to a completely new landscape, I was turning to BSV, I helped assist in anyway I could, social media, marketing, information warfare, I wanted to help change minds and gain support for BSV, undercover I made calls, phoned contacts, pulled out the little crypto blackbook, I was going in to assist in anyway possible, Lets ride with satoshi! obviously unless mining your a spectator but i was climbing onto the racetrack! I couldn’t let on though overtly across my traditional contacts, a lot of people was gonna be pissed in Bitcoin BTC, I had to break out but I thought deeply before moving personally to support BitcoinSV, I realised BitcoinSV was restoring the bitcoin protocol, id never know how bitcoin BTC has been mutated over time to be not the same bitcoin satoshi used in 2009, it was a distant mutated stunted technology and the application of lightning network was a overarching technological decision that ment forcing a mesh network of IOU’s upon bitcoin btc. Dr Craig Wright’s vision was unlimited, he wanted metanet — the ability to store data in bitcoin transactions, Instant transactions, the speed & value of bitcoin born again, scalability, security and stability. It was a difficult and stammering show below but we wanted to drive the knife into BTC, I was prepared for the ultimate sacrifice of BTC if it means we could bring stable honest global money to the world.. Bitcoin 2049 — A NEW CRYO LANDSCAPE — BitcoinSV BSV, 2K BTC / Market Shift On the day night of the hashwar we saw how ABC pulled mining power from BTC, we saw a 10% mining movement a 50% price drop on BTC, all the stars of crypto coming to the aid of BCHABC & blowing more smoke up eachothers ass’s than ever and patting themselves on the back with a first night victory! I almost puked in my mouth, did they know they were destroying the very notion of Bitcoins proof of work aka nakamoto consensus? did they know they were the “wrong side”. still today they dont…. It was the equivalent of fighting in a boxing ring then calling in a bigger opponent mid fight, the crypto natural laws were broken and a fair fight did not happen, As the video says ABC was well aware the modifications they made to survive the siege that BSV had them at ment that a reorg we all wanted never came..
HASHWAR | We F***d Up By Using Centralized Authority I was quickly rejected from the world crypto network and others within the BTC Community, there wasn’t even debate, just rejection which a few of us knew was coming once they realised we was deeply embedded into BSV hashwar efforts. I opened up the SV Youtube Channel & explained in a series of christmas shows my personal thoughts and why I left Bitcoin BTC, I realised it wasn’t even bitcoin no more, and I wasn’t alone, many from crypto had joined the exodus, from different parts too, different coins. Bch was no more,.. But something amazing had happened, A new renewed focus on what Bitcoin was was alive and kicking in the BSV space, Building had replaced Hodling, people where unified against the “shitcoins” which fragment and water down efforts, there can only be one is the mantra, uncomfortable to the weak lambo speculators and comforting to the learned cause and global monetary crusade… So folks this is where I arrived, It is Atlantis, and Atlantis is indeed rising….
