Gavin Mehl: Small casual payments transform content creation biz

This week, on episode 33 of the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream Season 4, BSV content creator and media personality Gavin Mehl joined Kurt Wuckert Jr. to talk about how small casual payments can better transform the content creation business.

Who is Gavin Mehl?

Mehl is a YouTube sensation in the BSV space for those who don’t already know him. He’s been creating content for many years, but he really started to make a name for himself in and around the COPA v Wright trial, and he’s been creating content about the BSV ecosystem ever since.

Mehls says he’s always been entrepreneurial. He had a large mortgage business with around 100 employees just before the crash in 2008. After that, he began creating content online and found Bitcoin relatively early, but he didn’t buy any, like so many others.

After playing around with Ethereum and ICOs back in that era, Mehl began to listen to Ryan X. Charles and learned about BCH. He was drawn to the idea of small, casual payments, and as a content creator, the concept made sense to him. He didn’t find out about BSV for another few years when he met Jimmy Nguyen and was convinced to fly to Dubai for the blockchain conference held there in 2022.

What happened to small, casual payments?

Mehl admits he can’t fully understand the more technical aspects of the Bitcoin white paper, such as the math. However, he can read it as a layman, and what instantly struck him was the idea of small casual payments. He wonders why everyone has forgotten about this and what happened to that revolutionary idea.

Wuckert says it did start out that way, pointing to Silk Road as an example of how people used Bitcoin as cash on the internet. He says the site was a double-edged sword; on the one hand, it showed that Bitcoin could be used as electronic cash, but it tainted its reputation for years.

Only when the digital gold narrative began to take off did the culture change, and then the Bitcoin Civil War happened. However, many relative newcomers to Bitcoin don’t remember any of that, Wuckert reminds us. They’re open-minded and see all the potential use cases.

Mehl says there’s still lots of conversation about small casual payments at the conferences he goes to. He can see how they would allow him to monetize his content without selling out to advertisers he doesn’t align with as many others do.

Wuckert points out that a tremendous amount of commerce is done at sub US$1 worldwide. People who engage in this would benefit significantly from a frictionless, electronic cash system, and when combined with concepts like blockchain-based identity, it could solve many problems for them.

Sadly, so many in the Western world got caught up in seeing who could become richer from trading digital gold, but that’s slowly changing as people rediscover Bitcoin’s true capabilities.

Viewers questions and answers

Wuckert takes some questions from livestream viewers as he usually does at this stage of the broadcast.

Q. How can Bitcoin ensure only authentic votes are counted?

Mehl says he went to Dubai to talk to nChain’s Owen Vaughan about this. At the time, he was working with a Congressman in Arizona and was focused on making each vote count. While technically possible, everyone agreed it was too early to consider such a project.

Wuckert points out that the real challenge here is logistical: how do we get wallets into the hands of every voter? His grandma still uses paper checks because she’s suspicious of digital payments, so the older generations would not likely trust such a system.

Q. What is Mehl’s special announcement?

Mehl is investing in Daniel Street’s company LaMint. He has never officially backed any company in the BSV space, although he is a fan of what many of them are doing. He officially invested after he became convinced Street and his team had a workable way to make small, casual payments work. “The perfect storm is brewing,” he says, mentioning the stablecoin MNEE is in place.

Q. Which protocol will be used for tokenized fiat currency on BSV?

Wuckert says 1Sat Ordinals is the best option. While others, such as STAS, have their merits, they are the simplest and have many other benefits, such as compatibility with smart contracts.

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