2021W44 - WTF has happened in bitcoin this week?
Bitcoin is demanded in payrolls.
TLDR: Politicians getting paid in bitcoin, NFL players getting paid in bitcoin, Native Americans thriving due to bitcoin, El Salvador affording building schools thanks to 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.
Bitcoin continues to range above $60,000 dollars, and event though we as humans tend to forget easily and some might feel the price action was boring this week, it is still great news to see the price consolidating on what would have been “high” or “unimaginable” price levels a year ago.
With every day that goes by, Bitcoin continues working, block by block, issuing new units while protecting the network, as it continues growing in value and popularity. Bitcoin is becoming the apex predator of all assets.
So far humanity has store value in Real Estate, Gold, Oil and Equities. When people criticizes bitcoin’s energy consumption, they often focus on comparing solely on the energy needed for creation, while bitcoin uses energy for: creation, protection and transportation.
For any other asset they also carry a monetary premium that we defend with human lives, and it is often dismissed. Having gold on a vault means risking peoples lives to protect the asset, having properties (buildings, houses, etc) means the need of a government, military and police to enforce peace for its protection.
With bitcoin, the protection is included on the same process of creation and transportation of the asset. In the issuance of a new blocks every ~10 minutes. The question now becomes; How much is this worth for humanity?
To me this is worth everything, and I can see the entire monetization of gold, real estate, oil, and equities, getting absorbed by bitcoin as a better vehicle of storing and transporting wealth in a secure manner.
”Not having to waste human life to defend monetized wealth is worth every watt.” Jason Lowery
And this is how the week started.
1. Mayors in the U.S. have announced to take part of their paychecks in bitcoin.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez committed to take his salary fully in bitcoin.
Eric Adams announce to take first three paychecks as NYC Mayor in bitcoin.
Scott Conger, Mayor from Jackson Tennessee to take his next paycheck in bitcoin.
Tampa Mayor, also hinted to join the move and take the next paycheck in bitcoin.
2. Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers quarterback legend, announced on twitter that he has partnered with Cash App in order to take a portion of his NFL salary in bitcoin, while at the same time offering some form of a giveaway of $1,000,000 in bitcoin to his fans.
3. Joe Rogan, the world's most successful podcaster and comedian has accepted a Bitcoin payment of $100,000.
4. The Canadian Bitcoin miner HIVE Blockchain has secured another purchase of bitcoin mining rigs from Canaan machines. The company will receive 6,500 last-generation Avalon bitcoin miners as a follow up order from the 10,400 machines purchased earlier this year.
5. Riot Blockchain holds nearly 4,000 bitcoin all produced in-house. This October it produced 464 bitcoin, a 433% increase compared to same month previous year. The company has 27,720 miners with 2.8 hashrate capacity and plans to increase its capacity to 8.6 EH/s for next year.
6. Compass Mining announced a partnership with Red Jar Digital Infrastructure to host a new mega facility in Ontario, Canada. Through the partnership, Compass is able to near-double their capacity from 140MW to 240MW, becoming the largest service of its kind in the world. According to the announcement, this new facility will be 95% clean energy, as it is powered mostly with nuclear and hydro, providing energy below 8 cents per kilowatt hour to retail miners.
7. The Navajo Nation, one of the largest Native American tribes with nearly 400,000 have started its path towards prosperity through mining bitcoin.
8. NYDIG, the institutional Bitcoin services company bought Bottlepay, the European Lightning Network payments app, for an undisclosed amount.
9. Bitcoin personal server and node developer Umbrel announced it has raised $3 million in seed round funding.
10. FTX leads $150 million fundraise of African fintech, Bitcoin unicorn app at a $2 billion valuation.
11. Commonwealth Bank, Australian largest bank, will reportedly enable its 6.5 million customers to buy, sell and hold bitcoin in 2022
12. The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele has announced the nation will build 20 schools with bitcoin profits. This announcement comes after the president recently announced the construction of a veterinary hospital with profits.
13. The government of Laos reported to expect earnings of around $190 million in revenue from bitcoin mining next year. This is a game changer since the country's expected GDP for the following year amounts to approximately $2.8 billion, where bitcoin represents 15% of this amount.
14. Steve Wozniak, the programmer behind the first Apple computer drew parallels between the "artificial" U.S. dollar and the "mathematically pure" Bitcoin.
15. U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) shared in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that she believes bitcoin is a decentralized commodity, and that the other crypto assets behave like securities.
As a summary note..
It seems that bitcoin is gaining traction at a governmental level. There is a saying that goes:
“Two is company, three is a crowd”.
Well this week we have 4 Mayors from U.S. and two being from big cities Miami and NYC, who have committed to take their full salary and the first three paychecks in bitcoin. Being paid in bitcoin instead of U.S. dollar is starting to shift from occurrences, to a movement, and the more it begins happening at these levels, where the participants have a lot of influence over millions of people, the more normal it becomes to accept bitcoin as payment.
It would not surprise me, if more public servants start demanding to get fully paid in bitcoin. Oh but yeah, some might say that bitcoin is going to get banned, and it is too risky.
Have a great weekend niblings.
Stay humble & stack sats.
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