TAAL Distributed Information Technologies is well-positioned to be a dominant player in blockchain infrastructure, president Chris Naprawa believes.
Mr. Naprawa sees blockchain technology, in particular Bitcoin SV’s (BSV), as being the most transformative technology of this generation. Every few decades a new protocol comes along, whether it be digital wireless, TCP/IP or this particular blockchain, and it drives innovation due to its unchanging nature that makes it applicable even as the industry grows.
BSV’s strengths include its stability and massive scalability at low cost, Mr. Naprawa explained. Apps can easily develop and mature on it.
“Our goal is to be the largest player,” he stated. “That means lots and lots of data at really low prices. Someone’s going to emerge as the Amazon Web Services of blockchain and why not us.”
When Satoshi released the Bitcoin Whitepaper its words were chosen very carefully, Mr. Naprawa observed. It was envisioned to be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. It didn’t say electronic banking system, electronic gold or store of value, three terms many use to describe Bitcoin.
“The word cash has very specific meaning,” Mr. Naprawa said. “Cash is a medium. It isn’t just a monetary thing, it’s a medium of trust between you and I.”
And that’s where the applications become interesting. Looking specifically at trust mechanisms, there are a world of problems BSV-based applications can solve for because its chain is functional.
“Bitcoin’s is useless,” he said. “BSV’s (blockchain) can already do more transactions than the Bitcoin network.”
The end game for BSV-based applications is similar to the Internet’s where everyone uses them every day but doesn’t think about it, Mr. Naprawa said. But for that to happen you need to massively scale because of the amount of data being processed. Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains are slow and expensive so you won’t be building on them, he reasons. They also hog massive amounts of power and that will limit their appeal and value. Contrast that with the BSV where mining consumes one-half of one per cent of the power that Bitcoin’s does.
A cryptographically secure blockchain adds a digital layer of trust for all system participants in, say a supply chain where as much as $2 TRILLION is locked up on a daily basis.
“That’s a big number and that is something that is worth challenging,” Mr. Naprawa said. “We all know it. We all sense it.”
TAAL envisions hundreds of billions of transactions per client, trillions overall. But that won’t happen on an Ethereum network where transactions could cost two bucks a pop.
I asked Mr. Naprawa for a practical application and he shared the story of a client’s seafood supply chain. Put that on the blockchain and everyone can see where the fish was caught, when it was inspected, where it was shipped and at what temperature it was stored.
“All those friction points in the supply chain are gone and then a byproduct of that is consumer choice,” Mr. Naprawa said. “Consumers want to know what they consume.”
Don’t sit back and wait for your opportunity in this space for things are already moving fast, he added. Much like the shift he saw to digital when he was a communications executive, this is a case of something unique at this year’s convention that becomes table stakes by next year’s.
And people will know it’s what they want even if they don’t know why.
“When people focus on the problem and not the category a lot of things can happen and I think in this day and age this protocol shift is going to be one of the fastest we’ve ever seen,” Mr. Naprawa said. “People don’t know what 5G is they just know they want it because it’s the better thing.”
TAAL focuses on the enterprise level and supply chain is only the beginning. Think about the redundancies in health care record keeping and how one doctor doesn’t know what the other prescribed or how three different specialists could send you for blood samples because the information is coordinated. Put those patient records on the blockchain and let the consumer control their data and who gets to see it. Researchers need to do a study? A few clicks on your phone and you can opt in.
“There’s something that seems so simple. Just so simple,” Mr. Naprawa said. “Want better outcomes? When you can clearly show better patient outcomes due to data continuity, why not?”
Then there is social media, where every company has a loyalty program. They better deliver, because consumers expect something in return. All those microtransactions for rewards have to be processed somehow.
“If Facebook wants your engagement, make them pay for it,” Mr. Naprawa said. “Isn’t that what everybody wants?”
Next is the Internet of Things, which hasn’t yet taken off because there is no central way to host data, Mr. Naprawa said. Whether it be smart cities, smart houses or smart cars, TAAL can improve outcomes and solve for infrastructure inefficiencies.
“Blockchain solves for that and it solves for it beautifully,” Mr. Naprawa concluded.
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