2021W21 - WTF has happened in bitcoin this week?
Bitcoin is a green technology.
TLDR: Ark Invest accumulates Bitcoin, Bitcoin Mining Council forms to promote green energy, Banks trained personnel to advice bitcoin as investment, Australian population willing to accept bitcoin as part of their salaries.
Hey there niblings, it’s uncle Bam again, with a summary of the most insightful events in the Bitcoin space. Back at it again digesting all the important news for you.
This week we had the announcement of the Bitcoin Mining Council, a group of North American Bitcoin Miners gathering together with Michael Saylor and Elon Musk behind closed doors with the objective to promote energy usage transparency & accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide.
The event has clearly gave mixed feelings to the Bitcoin Community for diverse reasons such as: “Why do they form a council?” “Why meeting behind closed doors” “Why Michael Saylor and Elon Musk were there?” “Why meeting with MARA which has declared intention on censoring blacklisted transactions?”
I do not have concrete answer to these questions, but I can speculate and argue why this could be needed at this moment in time. Right now there is a false narrative being spread saying that “Bitcoin wastes energy” & “Bitcoin has a big carbon footprint, and its boiling the oceans”, which we have counter-argue in the last issue of WTFBitcoin, and to add up to this, Elon Musk was not helping the case, it would be fair to say that he was spreading miss information to the public. And yes, he has an enormous reach.
As far as we know, the Bitcoin Mining council will only help on increasing the commitment from the Mining companies in being more transparent. And this has started to play out. It is possible that Mining companies around the world begin to share their energy source distribution just as Bitfarms and Digihost Technology have already done so, showing us that Bitcoin is a green technology for them.
All in all, uncle Bam is completely against censorship, and doubts the council could lead to this in the future, certainly hopes it does not. For the moment being, Bitcoin Mining Council play, might seem more as a PR stunt, which might be indeed needed to shift the narrative into Bitcoin being environmentally friendly and driving towards investment on renewable energies. If in the future the council was to miss behave, it is the responsibility of the Bitcoin community to offset the behavior by creating other “councils” around the world. This only reiterates and proves Bitcoin resiliency.
And this is how the week started.
1. Ark Invest has purchased ~$20 million worth of Bitcoin.
Cathie Wood says that bitcoin could still rise up to $500,000.
”These drops are not uncommon, and they can be very healthy to exploit during bull runs, so sophisticated investors are now returning to accumulate.” - Cathie
2. Globant, a public software company worth $8.7 billion, has bought $500,000 in Bitcoin.
3. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Assosiates, the largest hedge fund, admited to own bitcoin and to prefer it over bonds, in an interview for Consensus.
“I have some Bitcoin” - Ray Dalio
4. Goldman Sachs, a global leading investment bank, finally accepted Bitcoin as a new asset class.
”Bitcoin is now considered an investable asset. It has its own idiosyncratic risk, partly because it’s still relatively new and going through an adoption phase" - Mathew McDermott
5. Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC), one of the big four consulting firms, reports that 21% of cryptocurrency hedge funds predicts Bitcoin price to be between $100,000 and $150,000 at the end of year.
6. Michael Saylor and Elon Musk, met behind closed doors with a group of North American miners, to create the Bitcoin Mining Council, with objective to promote energy usage transparency & accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide.
7. Marathon Digital Holdings announces binding letter of intent with Compute North, to host 300 Megawatts of Bitcoin mining at new data center.
8. Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners, announced in an interview to just have trained 4,000 financial advisors at Morgan Stanley on how to sell Bitcoin. Then he added that the same is happening at Goldman Sachs.
9. A carbon-neutral Bitcoin ETF proposal has been filed with the SEC by One River Asset Management.
10. U.S. billionaire and one-time cryptocurrency skeptic Carl Icahn is contemplating a potential $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
11. London's leading finance lobbyists call on UK policymakers to set global pace on bitcoin and digital currencies.
12. Jared Polis, Colorado’s Governor who was first U.S. politician to also legally accept bitcoin as campaign donations in 2014, says he will push to allow state residents to pay their taxes with bitcoin.
13. Apple posts a job position, hinting on moving onto accepting bitcoin and digital asset payments. They are actively looking for a “Crypto expert for business development manager”
14. The website Finder, found out through an interview that 24% of Australians, (~4.7 million), are willing to accept Bitcoin as part of their salaries.
15. The Bitcoin Community has joined forces to sponsor the first Bitcoin Car to debut at Indy 500. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the exchange FTX, has pledged $100,000 to supporting Bitcoin open-source development.
16. William Clemente shares with us that Long-Term Holders have added +221,598 BTC to their holdings in the last months. Independently of the current price, Bitcoiners continue to stack sats fervently.
”There is no group of people that believe in anything as strongly as Bitcoiners believe in bitcoin” - Uncle Bam.
As a summary note..
The price action has definitely been difficult for the bitcoiners who started in 2021. Some might think, if all these good things are happening on a weekly basis, “Why does the price plunges?”. The honest answer is: Bitcoin is volatile, and one can’t expect to have a compounded annual growth rate of over 200% over the last years and onwards, without experiencing volatility.
It is normal to sometimes have your emotions linked to your investment, we should not, but it is normal. It is not crazy to have come to think “Have I made the right decision investing in Bitcoin?” “Will it ever go back up?” “How can I be so dumb!” “I should have sold, and bought at these prices”..
Choosing Bitcoin is the correct decision in the long term, and these moments are exactly the reason of Matt Odell’s famous phrase “Stay humble and stack”. It is definitively impossible to predict the short term price, but we can clearly see the upward trend over the years, the increasing adoption as an asset class, an escape to financial censorship, store of value and even medium of exchange.
If you feel doubtful, go back and read the previous issues, see how Bitcoin has been and continue attracting people to it as an insurance against our inflationary financial system.
picture source: anilsaidso
Have a great weekend niblings.
Stay humble & stack sats.
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Ln address: LNURL1DP68GURN8GHJ7MRWW3UXYMM59E3XJEMNW4HZU7RE0GHKCMN4WFKZ7URP0YLH2UM9WFHXZMT984EKZATVV938YMG270TLF
Reference:
1.https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/ark-invest-buys-20-million-in-bitcoin
2.https://news.bitcoin.com/q1-sec-filing-shows-argentinian-tech-giant-globant-invested-in-bitcoin/
3.
4.https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/bitcoin-is-officially-a-new-asset-class-goldman-sachs/ar-AAKjI5t
5.https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/pwc-finds-bitcoin-price-will-hit-100000
6.
7.
8.
9.https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/one-river-carbon-neutral-bitcoin-etf
10.https://www.coindesk.com/carl-icahn-bitcoin-crypto-big-way
11.https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/105957/london-lobby-finance-crypto-policy
12.https://www.coindesk.com/jared-polis-colorado-governor-consensus-2021
13. https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/106130/apple-seeks-crypto-expert-for-business-development-manager-position?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
14. https://news.bitcoin.com/every-fourth-australian-willing-to-be-paid-in-bitcoin-poll-finds/
15. https://www.coindesk.com/the-first-bitcoin-sponsored-racing-car-to-debut-at-indy-500