NOTE: The methodology and underlying figures (specifically, emission rates for gold and banking) mentioned throughout are generally derived from my 2014 & 2018 works. The 2018 works is available as an easier to digest 10-part medium series, here)
Bitcoin’s energy consumption and environmental impact is something that is commented on very regularly, but ultimately, is something that is rarely understood. The majority of arguments stem from comparisons of Bitcoin to particular nation states, or some other apples to oranges comparison. Critics can’t even separate “energy use” from “electricity use”.
Over a billion people on Earth are not hooked up to…
That said, it’s not always easy to get the very busy (and skeptical) Ray Dalio’s of the world to sit down for a few hours, so I hope this cover letter can encourage him to have an open mind, and give Bitcoin a few hours of his time. ROI on those few hours could be bigger than any return he’s witnessed in his highly illustrious and successful career.
Bitcoin is most definitely not an “easy…
People hate Bitcoin analogies. But Bitcoin is so hard to understand for so many, concessions need to be made.
VCs are a group of people demonized in the Bitcoin industry for not understanding Bitcoin’s value proposition. Well, how do you expect a VC to value Bitcoin if they’re only used to valuing startups?
Here is a framework that will hopefully help. It tracks the development and evolution of the Bitcoin ecosystem in discreet “fundraising rounds”, which coincide with Bitcoin’s Reward Eras. An organization is defined as “an organized group of people with a…
As always, we commence by sending thanks and good tidings to Satoshi Nakamoto — The Creator and First of the Believers, General of the Byzantines, Breaker of Banks and Fighter of Fiat — and to Hal Finney and The Apostles and The Disciples thereafter, and to The Stoic and Patient True Believers, who keep their tithe holy, and stack sats for their salvation. Oh you who believe, fear the day of economic reckoning, and do not face the Angel of Hyperbitcoinization as a nocoiner, for punishment awaits them in the hereafter.
Religion has always been a touchy subject, with tens…
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2029
It is the year 2029, and Bitcoin is finally no longer a teenager. The price has reached another new high of $420,000, climbing in a surprisingly stable fashion since the 2020 halving. Bitcoin’s market cap exceeds that of gold, and almost 10% of the World’s 6 billion adults are now actively using and buying Bitcoin on a regular basis. There has been huge growth in developing markets thanks to online microtransactions on Bitcoin’s 2nd, 3rd and experimental 4th layer.
We are in Bitcoin’s 6th reward era, and only 225 bitcoins are being mined per day, meaning…
To understand how to quantify the cost and sustainability of Bitcoin, we must understand what makes a miner tick. The following is a 4-layers deep, overly-simplified, intro to Bitcoin Mining Economics and miner decision-making. This piece will be completely unreferenced, with all data and references coming from my in-depth “Cost & Sustainability of Bitcoin (August 2018 Edition)” — which was broken down in these 3 earlier medium posts:
In my recent 10-part article series study on The Cost & Sustainability of Bitcoin, I opened with a piece on what my personal interpretation of “Energy” was so that I could set a context for my study. You could also take it as assumed reading (or watching on YouTube on 1.25 speed) so as to keep this piece as short as possible.
I argued that EVERYTHING was “Energy” in one manifestation or another, and I made a firm distinction between money and currency. I also made a distinction with capitalisations, showing that Energy is…
All data used in this piece is as at Block 556,416 mined on 31 December 2018 (EoY), the 276th Difficulty Change. Network Difficulty was roughly 5.6 trillion. Hash Rate was roughly 40.22 EH/s. Price on the Bitfinex exchange was roughly USD$3,900. The changes in mining ecosystem metrics since the August 2018 edition of this report are shown below:
This story is an updated and abridged version of my report, “The Cost & Sustainability of Bitcoin (August 2018 Edition)[i]”. The reader is asked to refer to the original paper for detailed references and deeper discussion. …
The bell-curve is a beautiful thing and generally reflects “the natural order of things” in Life and Nature. Most of the population gather around the mean, with fewer on either side. Individuals move closer to, or further away from the mean due to natural factors. It’s natural to see the curve skew one way or the other, but it’s rarely a very extreme skew.
Since a picture speaks a thousand words — here’s a standard normal distribution
If the world’s wealth was normally distributed, there’d be a concentration of 60 to 70% of wealth around a strong middle class, with…
Updated 4/12/2018
According to https://diff.cryptothis.com/, we are on track for a 14%+ drop in Network Difficulty this difficulty epoch.
This will the biggest drop in difficulty since November 1, 2011–7 years ago. That particular drop was 18%, the largest in history. The preceding difficulty epoch saw what was the largest drop in history up to that point, 13.09%. It still holds the record for 2nd biggest drop in history, but that record is now being challenged.
The third biggest drop in history, 11.59%, happened in the difficulty epoch immediately prior to the first halving at block 210,000 (shown in yellow…
Hass McCook
Bitcoin Evangelist. BEng MEngSc MBA
