Power Users of Bitcoin – Mungojelly

This is the latest article in a series where we interview actual users of Bitcoin SV (BSV) applications to understand which applications they use, their pain points, and what is needed moving forward to scale and reach mass adoption. This series intends to learn the thoughts of those with “boots on the ground” instead of just entrepreneurs and developers.

I interviewed power user Mungojelly, who I have observed uses many BSV applications and has some quite interesting thoughts on the pricing of micropayments.

What is your favorite application built on Bitcoin and why?

Mungojelly: If you’ve seen my show, Send More Dogs, you know I’m a huge fan of Durodogs (I refuse to write it “Duro Dogs,” sorry). It’s an excellent game that makes excellent use of BSV—specifically, I enjoy how it uses the rarity of the doggie clothes NFTs to create Veblen goods, which facilitates a signaling aspect that gives life as style to what would otherwise be only silly cartoon game item, but I’m most interested in it because it feels to me like the best option we have right now to invite new people on chain so that we can escape the many horrors of the internet as quickly as possible.

What application(s) do you use on a daily basis and why?

Mungojelly: As well as Durodogs, I also check daily my HandCash notifications, Blockpost, and Bitchat, and I’m an active user of Knovigator, which doesn’t post anything to the chain yet except tips, but it’s a really interesting design. Not quite daily, but a couple of times a week, I’ve been checking Windbell and the Mornin’ Run classifieds. There isn’t enough happening there yet to use it daily, but I’m also excited about the new stickdoodz.net, so hopefully, I’ll be using that more as it develops!

How long have you been a digital currency user?

Mungojelly: I first heard of cryptocurrency when the people starting Litecoin spammed literally every channel on Freenode on the pretext that that meant they were having a very fair launch, so I happened to know that the day that I first knew that Craig Wright’s system existed was October 13th, 2011, but it wasn’t until early 2013 when I first used Bitcoin myself.

What other digital currencies do you use, if applicable?

Mungojelly: Lately, I’ve only been using BSV, except that I have used the fake ‘BTC’ a few times just as a way to buy BSV since no one will sell me BSV for cash locally yet. I had fun with the Dogecoin meme for a while, and I still feel nostalgic every time I pass the pole on my street where there’s just a few sticky remnants of the Dogecoin sticker I put there, but unfortunately, there’s just as little left of the Dogecoin spirit in Dogecoin itself since it’s so long ago so thoroughly jumped its shark.

Part of what I try to do with Send More Dogs is bring back into Bitcoin the spirit of open humble joy that made Dogecoin a very special meme.

What do you think the Bitcoin SV space needs the most?

Mungojelly: Well, users. But to put that more constructively, it needs to become where the party’s at! We need more fun things to do together, like your excellent “/rain” command on the Retrofeed chat! We need to get the data flowing properly on bSocial so there’s a growing social media space people can enter into. On a spiritual level, we need BSV to be a safe, welcoming place where people feel free to make space for themselves. We need to shed all the dead memes and the feeling of exclusivity and start inviting everyone at once into new creative explosions.

Are you still bullish on the BSV price?

Mungojelly: Ridiculously. I expect each BSV to be worth millions of dollars—and I mean today’s dollars, not just that the dollar will collapse! I do think there’s still a substantial chance that the system could completely fail, but at this point, that seems most likely to involve bribing BSV holders as part of killing it, like how they tried to vastly elevate the price for the false ‘BTC’ while really removing all of its true ability to change society. I hope and intend to be brave enough to stick to the plan of creating an open microtransaction system for the whole world, whatever bribes or threats anyone may next use to try to distract us.

What overall impact (positive, negative, neutral) do you feel that Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre have on the space?

Mungojelly: Craig Wright, by inventing Bitcoin, has made it possible for us to continue the project of using computer networks to connect humanity. Calvin Ayre, by saving Bitcoin in a moment of crisis, has brought a working, living Bitcoin to the present moment so that that hope hasn’t died. I have deep disagreements with both of them about politics and probably many other things, but that doesn’t dilute my immense gratitude for how they brought us Bitcoin.

Do you believe BSV needs better marketing? If so, why?

Mungojelly: Obviously!? The BSV brand is somehow simultaneously completely unknown and also broadly hated. Yet also, it’s ready now for people to use it for free, and as soon as they use it, they’ll love it. Has anything in history ever been more in need of a proper marketing campaign?! If marketing has at long last any beneficial purpose to our blessed little blue-green world, then let it be this.

What are your pain points and frustrations when it comes to using applications that integrate Bitcoin SV?

Mungojelly: Everything! I suppose I should be more specific. My main frustration is trying to get new users involved. Things are simple enough for me to use, but as I said, I’ve been doing this for coming up on a decade now. The main problem is the paradigm that every user of everything is an individual atom taking personal responsibility as an operator of a wallet sending transactions, so then for people to do anything at all, they need to adopt a complicated, uncertain, newly invented identity tying them to a technology they don’t yet understand.

I need instead to be able to invite people to structures that are entirely familiar except given new powers by Bitcoin. For instance, paying a few sats to open up a space that people can be invited to without needing to sign up for anything new, and then within that space, there are bots and features where those who do have sats can do interesting things that provide value for everyone– like “come to this cool place I paid some sats to create, it’s at this ordinary URL and doesn’t require any unusual tools, here I’ll pay a few sats to put some cool art on the walls for us.”

Then the conversation about how to get a wallet comes when someone wants to do it themselves because they’re already seeing the value flowing and want more control over it.

What is the biggest risk, in your opinion, to Bitcoin achieving mass adoption?

Mungojelly: Bitcoin is so good that the first major attack on it was a nearly identical system also named “Bitcoin.” The concept of “Bitcoin” will continue to be Bitcoin’s largest vulnerability. We have to keep our gaze steady on the underlying goal of allowing all of the people of the world to freely communicate and trade and ignore anything that’s just called “Bitcoin” that doesn’t really empower its users in these fundamental practical ways.

What is a hot take you have on the space?

Mungojelly: Well, I think you hit on my hottest take with your next question, lol, thanks for hearing me, so I’ll just answer there.

I have noticed you making comments on Bitchat and other socials that the pricing of NFTs, services, etc., needs to be cheaper due to the micropayment capabilities of Bitcoin. Can you elaborate on that?

Mungojelly: To be clear, it’s not that I want the price of unskilled online labor to be low. I’m not proposing how I think things ought to be. I’m literally a communist, and I’d like the price of labor to be as high as possible, please! What I’m saying that people haven’t wanted to hear, so thanks for giving me this forum, is specifically that the price is currently naturally low and that just denying that reality won’t itself change it. There’s less than a quarter million sats per person on Earth. Most of those sats aren’t currently trying to purchase casual labor online. There are literally billions of people who can do stuff online, and they’re currently working for exactly zero sats! I give my labor away to the richest people in the world all the time for zero sats per forever—getting just one sat for tweeting, or Facebooking would be an infinity percent raise. Allow the price to be what it really is, and we’ll all be better off as the sats start to flow.