nChain is the Dr Craig Wright backed blockchain enterprise company. Dr Wright, the controversial technologist in the Blockchain world, founded nChain in 2015 and is employed as the chief science officer.
The investment of CHF500million ((€516 million/£443 million) deal believed to be the single largest enterprise blockchain IP investment to date and now marks Ayre as the major shareholder. The sum consists of an equity acquisition of nChain by the Ayre Group, an IP licensing deal for Ayre Ventures portfolio companies, and a line of credit.
This announcement comes hot on the heels of another legal case in the UK Court of Appeal going against Dr Wright’s favour. Dr Wright had won an original defamation case against influencer and Bedford FC owner Peter McCormack. In the original case, Justice Chamberlain found against McCormack for defamation but only awarded £1 in damages as he said Dr Wright had materially lied in his arguments pre trial. Dr Wright appealed the reduced damages and on 26th July, 2023, the appeal was turned down. This is also open to appeal should Wright wish to continue to slug it out further.
By contrast, Ayre is adamant that Dr Wright is indeed the original Satoshi Nakamoto. In response to being asked this question last week, Ayre replied: “He absolutely is. There’s no question about it. Absolutely. No question about it.”
This also plays into Ayre’s investment in nChain. Ayre was a minority investor and shareholder previously: “I’m doing this entirely because of the patent portfolio that you’ll see in the company.”
Of the thousands of IP patents filed by nChain, Ayre reckons that maybe one or two may have been invented by someone else, but his faith in Dr Wright is strong:
“There might be one or two or the 1000s that don’t have Craig’s fingerprints on them. But mostly it’s Craig, the guy can come up with three inventions a week. He’s a prodigious inventor, and he might actually go down in history as the largest filer of patents in the history of IP patent space.
“This patent portfolio is one of the most significant patent portfolios in the world. And though of course, it’s optimized to work on top of BSV, it’s actually blockchain agnostic. So, it can work on any blockchain.”
His investment will in Ayre’s words allow nChain to speed up and change the patent filing, software development and product development. According to Ayre: “And I want us to get out there and start solving real world problems for enterprise and government.”
Ayre sees no discrepancies between the original concept of Open Source or indeed that Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) Dr Wright’s blockchain that forked from open source code, and the new move to put everything behind patents. Ultimately, he sees there only being one blockchain and that is BSV. According to Ayre, Dr Wright released the original open source and hence is entitled to act as he wishes.
“Craig’s the one that released it open source. So, of course, we’re supportive of open source. But that doesn’t mean that everything Craig invents needs to be open source.”
Ayre understands that public blockchain wouldn’t work if it wasn’t open source but compares it to the internet.
“The apps that you build on top of the internet don’t have to be open source – same as blockchain.”
To date, nChain has been awarded nearly 800 technology patents with over 3,000 more presently awaiting approval, a wide-ranging intellectual property library representing the fundamental building blocks on which these next-generation internet products and services will be built. nChain’s IP is the DNA of the new internet, encompassing Web3 precursors, no-fungible tokens, smart contracts, and everything in between.
A recent, well publicised Forbes article by Michael del Castillo on July 12, 2023, leans in this direction too. del Castillo regards Dr Wright’s claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto as irrelevant and that the patents are the thing. While this article was behind a paywall it attracted much attention but more commentary was generated by the headline than the final conclusion by the journalist.
It took Coingeek, the publication created by Ayre to be the ‘Wall Street Journal of blockchain enterprise blockchain news and reporting’, to pinpoint the real crux of the argument. Jon Southurst wrote on July 17, 2023,that there is one more reason to use BSV blockchain micropayments than any other option: “Dr. Wright’s company nChain holds patents covering micropayment technology.”
So this move would appear to be an attempt for Ayre to rewrite his legacy, from gambling tycoon to blockchain guru. He is bullish that the BSV chain is the blockchain to unite all blockchains. He points to the scaling technology solutions offered by BSV to be its superpower and the nano transactions possible putting the token firmly in the utility section and not as a security.
The scaling and rate of transactions on BSV according to Ayre are so substantial as to make the Proof of Work (POW) blockchain green.
“it’s actually a green product. The fact that POW on an unbounded scaling block blockchain is actually a green product. It’s actually good for the environment.”
Finally, Ayre floats again above the blockchain argument:
“I don’t consider myself to be in Bitcoin. I consider myself to be a venture capitalist who invests in companies that are in the data space.”
And so he has in this recent investment.
