2021W39 - WTF has happened in bitcoin this week?
Bitcoin can not be banned
TLDR: Bitcoin Price Surges, El Salvador starts to mine bitcoin with 100% renewable energy, U.S. Politicians says to give away bitcoin to its citizens. FED Chairmans says there are no plans on banning bitcoin.
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.
The price jumps again, while there is fear spreading on the financial markets lately, bitcoin proved to be uncorrelated and and blessing us with a 10% green candle, this weekend as we started the month of Uptober, I mean October.
One little thought I wanted to share with you nibs is the following:
Bitcoin can not be banned.
It is a normal fear I hear from people (non bitcoiners) when I share my thoughts on bitcoin, the fear of bitcoin being banned, is usually higher than the fear of their savings being stripped away due to monetary debasement, or inflation “due to the money printer going brrr”.
We have already a great piece on this by Parker Lewis on 2019 explaining why bitcoin can not be banned, as bitcoin is a functional and inclusive monetary network and a representation of freedom.
“Bitcoin represents monetary savings that comes with the opportunity cost of other goods and services. Banning bitcoin would be an affront to the most basic freedoms it is designed to both provide and preserve… To believe that all the people in the world that have adopted bitcoin for the financial freedom and sovereignty it provides would suddenly lay down and accept the ultimate infringement of that freedom is not rational.” - Parker Lewis on Bitcoin Cannot Be Banned.
These month we have already had two great signals:
China confirming banning bitcoin mining and exchanges operating with mainland customers
U.S. FED declaring no intentions to ban bitcoin.
The first one is not a a bullish sign, but it generated a big drop of hash-rate and fear in the market, only to recover stronger after a couple of months. And the latter? Well, it clearly is a signal that game theory could start kicking in. As smaller governments start adopting bitcoin, and as we see the escape of bitcoiners and miners to friendly jurisdictions, this create incentives to become more attractive to this industry, as there are only 21 million bitcoin, and better to have the most of them within your jurisdiction, in case it plays out well, as we have seen it can not be stopped.
And this is how the week started.
1. El Salvador starts to mine bitcoin with 100% renewable volcano energy. Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, released a new video showing a geothermal facility with Bitcoin mining machines operating on the side of a volcano.
2. President Bukele revealed gas stations in El Salvador will begin selling each gallon of fuel at a $0.20 discount for those who pay using the bitcoin Chivo wallet.
Chivo wallet continues to grow, allowing 2.2 million people be financially included globally, while recieving more than $1 million in remittances daily. Big success given the app was rolled out less than a month ago, and only 1.8 million Salvadorans have a bank account.
3. Bitcoin Depot, the popular bitcoin ATM network now has over 5,000 machines scattered across the U.S. and Canada to meet mainstream demand.
4. Missouri Mayor Jayson Stewart plans to give every household in Cool Valley $1000 worth of Bitcoin. The funds are already approved, and the intentions are to educate the residents on how to use bitcoin, to store it, and it’s long time benefits.
5. Midwest Utility, Missouri's largest utility with 1.2 million customers, is mining bitcoin to better match demand and manage variability on the grid. The company is utilizing bitcoin mining rigs when electricity is cheap and demand is low as an alternative to ramping up its power plants output up and down to match demand.
6. Yellow Card, a Pan-African bitcoin exchange, announced yesterday that it raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Valar Ventures, Third Prime and Castle Island Ventures. Square, Coinbase Ventures and Blockchain.com Ventures also participated in helping fund the exchange's operations in 12 countries across the African continent.
7. Thoma Bravo, cofounder of a private equity firm, billionare and bitcoiner, told CNBC that institutional adoption would fuel higher prices over the next years.
8. Payments solution giant Verifone announced it will enable consumer bitcoin payments on in-store and eCommerce Cloud Services platform purchases in the United States.
9. Coinbase is rolling out an auto-convert feature to seamlessly make coinbase your bitcoin account and receive a part of it in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Even though it is an interesting feature, let’s not forget Coinbase is basically a casino, which could make it easy for people to attempt and outsmart the market by looking for the “new bitcoin”. Be careful niblings.
10. As China enforces their bitcoin ban, and force exchanges not to provide services to their mainland citizens. Huobi Exchange said that its platform would not be serving any user from China by the end of the year.
11. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell confirmed that the U.S. has no plans to ban bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
12. Australian-based bitcoin exchange Amber is set for its U.S. launch in 44 states via a public beta release.
13. Sparrow, the open-source desktop wallet, now allows users to CoinJoin directly to cold storage after a configurable number of mixing rounds.
14. Umbrel partnered with The Bitcoin Machines to offer a plug-and-play all-aluminum node and server combo.
FUNDAMENTALS
The bitcoin hashrate, which dropped after the rumours and confirmation of China banning bitcoin miners, has strongly recovered in the last 24 hours, signaling miners have distributed to friendlier jurisdictions. There is a strong debate over the Bitcoin space:
- Does price follow hash rate?
- Does hash rate follow price?
Whatever it is, it seems miners are optimistic, and price is nowhere close to the previous all time high of $64,000. But guess what? Adoption is just getting better and better.
As a summary note..
As the bitcoin tipping integration featore on Twitter rolled out, using Strike’s API, the bitcoin community proved the power of the technology by sending tips to whoever they could.
Jack Mallers, the founder of Strike, received more than $3,565 of donations, which he then decided to forward as a donation to Human Rights Foundation.
They say bitcoin changes you, it definitely changed me. And I guess is truly hope for humanity.
Have a great weekend niblings.
Stay humble & stack sats.
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Thanks, informative and entertaining