Understanding Bitcoin mining was one of the first things that made me really grasp what an insane and brilliant system Bitcoin truly was...
If you still think it's just some gamified ponzi scheme, I urge you to take a few minutes and watch this 👇
Inspired by @freddienew tirades against "unexpected" ecnomic news and @satmojoe's @satsvsfiat allegory, I've written a picture book about "Mr Unexpected".
A bitcoiner is forged by coming up with 100 different ways that Bitcoin could fail and then meticulously debunking them, one-by-one, from first principles.
Introducing: “What’s The Problem?”
Let’s help *everyone* get to the starting line.
Accessible to all, the story of Fiatello and the Big Red Button is something we can all send *before* the first Bitcoin book / podcast / video.
Please share it with everyone you care about (link below).
Thank you Bitcoin 🧡
@satmojoe
2024 was year one of institutional Bitcoin.
The year that Bitcoin truly established itself as a must-own asset.
But 2025 will take things to a new level.
The ETFs are the superhighway that allow trillions of dollars of capital to flow into Bitcoin.
But the greatest ETF launch of all time is just the starter.
Wall Street has taken note of the energy and excitement around BTC.
And they see the massive opportunity to create a whole new suite of Bitcoin products.
Microstrategy has proven how much demand there is for structured products that offer varying degrees of Bitcoin exposure.
And the growing base of hodlers is a huge untapped market for lending products done right.
Once the rules change, banks will enter the Bitcoin lending game.
These products will make holding Bitcoin even more attractive, and will make selling unnecessary.
The largest institutions in the world are all on board.
It's a massive growth opportunity for them.
And now that they have a supportive administration - we should expect things to accelerate in 2025.
A Strategic Bitcoin Reserve could arrive by late January.
If it includes a purchase program, then you better rethink everything you think you know about Bitcoin "cycles"
There will still be volatility both ways.
But Bitcoin being aggressively bid by the United States is a completely different asset than Bitcoin being bid by Joe Blow who heard about it from his barber.
And it will need to be repriced accordingly.
We're at $100K and it's still the very beginning of this journey.
Less than 1 year after ETF launch.
You need to be bullish.
You need to be optimistic.
You understood this before the big guys arrived.
Now it's time to reap the rewards.
When we sent this letter and briefing paper to @RachelReevesMP and @TulipSiddiq in July, suggesting it would be prudent to develop a national Bitcoin strategy for the UK, the country's holdings were at about £3 billion.
Today they're at £5 billion. Without any supportive UK policies.
These holdings are rapidly filling up that £22 billion black hole.
Imagine how much more quickly this might happen if the UK finally started taking Bitcoin seriously?
Come on @CryptoUKAssoc and @TheFCA - let's align on the need for a study at least.
Leverage in the hands of an experienced, talented person is great. If you give Bernard Arnault £10Billion to go buy and build luxury brands he will quadruple the money - because he knows exactly what he's doing.
If you give a lunatic £300Billion to run around creating say "a green energy revolution" it's highly unlikely that person will have the ability to deploy the capital, get a result and a return on investment. It's much more likely they will waste almost all of the money.
In the hands of surgeon, a scalpel is useful - but dangerous for anyone else.. In the hands of an amazing singer a loud microphone is useful - but terrible for anyone else. In the hands of a skilled investor capital is useful - but likely to cause destruction if you give it to a politician who's out of their depth.
Isn't it weird how France has the highest taxes and the biggest budget deficit and Singapore and Dubai have the lowest taxes and a budget surplus....
... It's almost as if high taxes kill the economy and low taxes generate opportunity! Worth considering.
There are a lot of very stupid things being said on the family farming tax, by people who are proving themselves to be entirely ignorant of British agriculture.
The farm may be worth millions, but it's worth NOTHING until it's sold. So when the farm is passed down, and this huge tax bill arrives - what is the family supposed to do? They don't have hundreds of thousands of pounds sitting in the bank...
Farming is not a lucrative career. It does not make much money. The land is valuable, but the returns are not.
Running a farm is bloody expensive - profits are minuscule in comparison to the value of the actual farm.
This is really not a complicated principle, yet I see idiots parroting utter nonsense.
Labour's farming tax will force thousands of farming families to sell the farm to pay the inheritance tax bill. Farms that have been in those families for generations - if it were not for this tax, they would never dream of selling.
It's really that simple, and it will change British farming forever.
This is a tax drawn up by people who have NO understanding of agriculture. There are three farming MPs in Parliament, I am one of them...
Trust me when I say this - Labour does NOT understanding farming. It would be laughable if they were not running the damn country.
I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of Labour MPs believe that potatoes grow on trees. These are urban people who think that a farm is a family day out, an opportunity to feed the sheep and ride the tractor.
Clueless. On farming, and so much else.
I will be standing alongside thousands of other British farmers tomorrow. We must make our voices heard.
Reeves must reverse her cruel assault on British family farms. Either she does it now, or we'll do it in 2029.
@gbritaintoday @bitcoinpolicyuk This is one of the biggest issues slowing adoption. If the US gets rid of CGT on Bitcoin the UK ‘may’ follow suit, but don’t hold your breath!
Full response:
Helena @helenavieira1, as managing editor of the LSE Blog, I request a full retraction of the article "The large environmental consequences of bitcoin mining"
Reason: the conclusions are no longer supported by the scientific consensus or contemporary dataset.
Moreover the studies done (de Vries et al) have been quadruply debunked in academic literature. For this reason there are very few new articles on Bitcoin mining that claim negative environmental impacts, either in the media or in the scientific literature - and when they are it is all because the authors
1. used historic 2021 datasets that no longer accurately reflect the current and predominantly sustainable-energy based Bitcoin network
2. cited the debunked work of de Vries / digiconomist
3. were unaware that 10 of the last 11 peer reviewed articles cite positive environmental consequences from Bitcoin mining.
Source: https://t.co/NASdI1W4Zr
Specifically, the blog post has the following issues 1. The "per transaction" method of evaluating bitcoin energy, upon which many of the conclusions in the blogpost rest, has been refuted by four subsequent authors in academic literature including Sai & Vranken (2023).
2. The data used is now more than 3 years old. This matters materially because high-fossil fuel using countries such as Kazakhstan now ~1% of global mining (River survey, 2023), not 20% as your article claims. As a result of migrating to more sustainable-energy based countries, Bitcoin is now 56.7% based on sustainable energy, which is more than any other global industry Source: Digital Assets Research Institute https://t.co/Qf08cfGBwA
The contemporary data does not support your claim "fossil fuels remain a primary source of electricity in many mining regions" - which should be withdrawn.
3. The statement "If left unchecked, the energy requirements of these innovations could pose further challenges to global climate mitigation efforts" is non-evidence-based conjecture that is in fact unsupported by data which shows (see chart below) that as Bitcoin price and hashrate has grown, emissions has not. Source: https://t.co/Uzg6gUTe1j
4. The suggestion that Bitcoin should consider "an alternative consensus mechanisms like proof of stake" is not a suggestion that anyone who has taken the time to understand blockchain consensus mechanisms would make. For one thing, it would break Bitcoin mining's evidence-based ability to mitigate methane, use stranded renewable energy, and balance grid, but more fundamentally it would break Bitcoin as money. These reasons are well understood to anyone with a domain knowledge of Bitcoin mining, and can be found here, alongside other key information for people writing about Bitcoin for the first time https://t.co/QDf98Laa2n
5. The most concerning issue with the article however is that either through unawareness or through intentional omission (I will assume it is the former), there is no mention of the large body of peer reviewed research that suggests positive environmental externalities from bitcoin mining. These have been documented by the Digital Assets Research Institute (https://t.co/vuqlZcxIOk).
Any objective analysis of bitcoin mining impact should consider both positive and negative externalities. The fact that this significant body of research is not mentioned renders the article by definition non-objective. The authors are not entirely to blame for this blogpost. There has been a lot of misinformation on bitcoin for some time. While much of this has now been corrected in academic work, not everyone is yet aware of this. That said, as an academic institute yourself, it is part of your responsibility to be domain-aware of the body of work in the areas you write. For these reasons, I request this article be retracted. If you are sincerely interested, my conference keynote (see link below) addresses point by point how we came to live in a world with so much misinformation about Bitcoin, and how to filter the noise from the signal. https://t.co/mXb4Jn5RJM
You are welcome to your opinion
Equally, when you say "Bitcoin is useless", you are saying that each and every one of the recorded usecases of Bitcoin is useless
In other words, you are saying:
1. Helping bring energy abundance to these 1800 African villagers have no value https://t.co/bgOaasQeUG
2. Getting aid to 1000s of war refugees is useless https://t.co/WKD4FNPGlq
3 Developing energy independence for Bhutan is useless https://t.co/fKBkfEKDea
4. Protecting National Parks in Africa is useless https://t.co/455ChX6f9P
5. Helping 19.4 million Afghanastani women avoid State-level financial discrimination is useless
https://t.co/GsClHWJn7H
6. Establishing the economic sovereignty of 14 African nations still experiencing French financial colonization is useless https://t.co/s18NsVHKKT
7. The idea of creating an alternative to a monetary system which can and does elongate wars, increase wealth gaps, bail out bankers but fail to protect employees and small businesses is useless https://t.co/T6D7yoGZdz
8. The potential to provide banking to up to 2 Billion unbanked is useless https://t.co/fKBkfEKDea… https://t.co/T4mjBZ8oRo
9. Providing a financial system that is harder to use for money laundering than fiat currency is useless https://t.co/CLghbaZfU5
10. Removing the risk of financial reprisal for running humanitarian campaigns in autocratic nations where 5.7Billion people live is useless https://t.co/2KM9kuAUQp
11. Providing 250 Million people in countries experiencing hyperinflation a means to stop 50%+ erosion of their family savings per year is useless https://t.co/7Yu7IpSSpd
12. Allowing people in developing nations to receive remittance payments from family without delays and without heavy fees is useless https://t.co/NWTeMOLUny
13. Having a secure, permissionless, decentralized, 24/7 store of value with fixed monetary supply is useless https://t.co/J75wOAXWzS
14. The accomplishment of becoming the world's most sustainably powered industry is useless https://t.co/llglfd47WY
15. Accelerating the renewable transition by making renewable generation more profitable is useless https://t.co/4SCHxTMRBu
16. Reducing more emissions from landfills than the largest DAC project in the world ever achieved is useless https://t.co/5IysyKbWrg
17. Developing an monetary financial system with significantly lower emissions and emissions intensity than the banking system is useless https://t.co/RIiW2jx63R… https://t.co/IGf5oq4Fv9
Arguing that even one of these things is useless, or that Bitcoin does not deliver this promised value would I think be difficult. Though, have a go if you wish.
But arguing that all 17 have are useless (which you'd need to do in order to contend that Bitcoin is useless)? That would require mental gymnastics beyond the level to justify flat-earth theory.
It's rare I see a technology with one benefits akin to the ones above. But to have 17 usecases of such world-changing dimension - that is a once in a generation technology.
How high can Bitcoin go?
Most people can't handle the answer to this question.
Right now it's the 8th most valuable asset in the world.
It's market cap is comparable to Google, Amazon, and Saudi Aramco.
But Bitcoin has vastly higher upside than those companies.
Investors are slowly realizing that Bitcoin is on a path to matching, and then surpassing gold's market cap.
That's a 14x from here.
~$875K per coin.
But even that is just the beginning.
How many people do you know that use Gold as a primary store of value?
Most value is stored in equity indexes, bonds, and real estate.
There's roughly:
- $115 Trillion in equities
- $380 Trillion in real estate
- $140 Trillion in fixed income
= $635 Trillion in "wealth" stored in assets that are all inferior to Bitcoin in some crucial way.
Equities can be endlessly diluted, rely on business execution, have competitive risk, regulatory risk, trust-busting risk, jurisdictional risk, key man risk, etc.
Real estate has maintenance costs, property taxes, physical risk of deterioration or complete loss, insurance costs, etc.
Debt instruments have default risk, currency risk, and no fixed supply.
Bitcoin is comparatively simple:
- Fixed supply
- Known issuance schedule
- Neutral. Not tied to any single country's future
- Can be held indefinitely at zero cost
So instead of comparing Bitcoin to individual equities or gold...
We should be asking what percentage of the $635 Trillion of wealth it can eat.
A modest 10%?
That's $3,256,410 per coin in today's money.
But then the question is - what will the remaining bond, equity, and real estate holders do when Bitcoin is sitting at $63 Trillion market cap and has had 3,200% gains since hitting $100K?
Keep in mind there's no theoretical upper limit for Bitcoin valuation.
Unlike a business that's anchored by its revenue, Bitcoin doesn't become "overpriced" in the same way.
It's meant to suck in all the monetary premium in the world because it's simply the best store of value that humanity has ever seen.
And so we return to the earliest price prediction ever made: $10 million per coin.
Shortly after receiving the first ever Bitcoin transaction, polymath Hal Finney speculated that Bitcoin would one day reach $10 million per coin.
And as we near the $100K per coin psychological barrier, that prediction appears more prescient by the day.
You are not late to Bitcoin.
This journey is just beginning.
And you have the rest of your life to enjoy the gains.