2022W6- WTF happened in Bitcoin this week?
Bitcoin incentivizes investment in renewable energy
TLDR: Bitcoin Mining is necessary, Bills to exempt bitcoin tax in Tennessee, FreedomConvoy continues to raise funds,
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 I made a little research regarding Bitcoin Mining companies, and let me tell you, it looks very promising. We often hear criticism about bitcoin’s consensus algorithm Proof Of Work as it spends a lot of energy. Naively people divide the energy consumed by the number of transactions as if the energy was soley used for transacting, ignoring two very important things:
The value created by mining is greater than the energy spent
The energy spent is protecting the value stored of every participant, the entire network.
If we want to have decentralized money which is hard to confiscate or censor, then there is the need to protect this network.
So how does bitcoin miners come into play? Well, miners have been increasing their capacities as the value of bitcoin grows, which makes them utilize more energy, Whether the energy is off grid or from the grid, there are some great incentives not only for the miners, but for society as a whole.
In this video the CEO of Marathon explains how Bitcoin is the key towards achieving a world of renewable energy. Many jurisdictions usually have energy demand spikes certain times throughout the year. Given energy can’t easily be stored or shipped long distances, in order to satisfy these spikes, the energy producers have to overproduce for quite a while, or else they won’t have enough energy for the citizens in desperate moments, or but it could also mean to shut down their operations as they can’t store more than their capacity.
But if there is an overproduction of energy being sold to bitcoin miners, whenever the energy demand spikes come, miners can shut down their machines on an instant, allowing the energy to flow towards the grid, making them a sort of buffer or battery for the grid.
The example talked about is California, where there is so much renewable capacity, that the grid tells operators to shut down and wasting potential energy that could otherwise produced almost $700 million of revenue for the energy producers, while creating many jobs for the bitcoin mining companies.
In essence, governments want to make a move to renewable energies, without realizing that Bitcoin Mining generates an incentive for energy producers to invest in infrastructure to increase their capacity, while energy storage and transportation technology continues to improve.
To me it means one thing, I don’t see an incentive of development of energy infrastructure in off-grid places or small cities if the low demand won’t be able to make the investment any profit.. until bitcoin miners entered the game.
THE NEWS!
1. A total of 21.85 bitcoins have been raised to support the FreedomConvoy2022, after the centralized crowdfunding sites GoFundMe and GiveSendGo funds were stopped.
2. CashApp integrates Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, allowing users to make instant bitcoin payments to anyone in the world.
3. The Canadian member of KPMG’s global organization of independent firms bought bitcoin through Gemini for its corporate treasury.
4. La Haus, the Latin American real estate platform, secured a deal in bitcoin for an apartment in Natura City, in the north of Colombia.
5. Valkyrie’s Bitcoin Miners ETF started trading in Nasdaq under the ticker “WGMI”.
6. Marathon reports to have mined 462 bitcoin in January, holding a total of 8,595 bitcoin on their balance sheet.
7. Core Scientific, the public miner mined over 1,000 bitcoin for the second month in a row — they now hold over 6,300 BTC.
8. Intel, the semiconductor giant, announced its bitcoin mining chips will ship later this year. Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square) and GRIID Infrastructure are among their first customers.
9. FTX to give bitcoin giveaway during its super bowl advertisement.
10. Wells Fargo said Bitcoin is nearing a “hyper-adoption phase” similar to the internet in the mid-to-late 1990s.
11. Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager is reportedly planning to offer bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading to its investor clients.
12. U.S. Department Of Justice recovers $3.6 billion in bitcoin stolen in Bitfinex Hack.
“Today’s arrests, and the department’s largest financial seizure ever, show that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals” - Lisa Monaco, Deputy Attorney General
13. Compute North raises $385 million in capital growth round.
14. OpenNode, a company focused on building infrastructure for the future of money and helping everyone participate in the growing bitcoin economy, raises $20 million at $220 million valuation
15. The Russian government published a document on Tuesday night outlining principles for regulating bitcoin and cryptocurrency in the country.
16. Russian City Yurga wants to mine bitcoin with local petroleum to create jobs
17. Two bills were introduced on the same day in Tennessee.*
To allow state and municipalities to invest in bitcoin
A study seeking to make Tennessee the U.S.’s top destination for Bitcoin enthusiasts.
18. Missouri State Representative has tabled a bill to exempt Bitcoin from property taxes.
FUNDAMENTALS
The Lightning Network continues to display growth despite the price oscillating for the last year. With 20,200 nodes, and a total of 3,444 bitcoins, the infrastructure development for instant peer-to-peer transactions continues being built.
As a summary note..
The DOJ has seized 94,000 bitcoin which were stolen from a Bitfinex hack back in 2016. This does not mean they were able to hack a bitcoin wallet, or makes bitcoin insecure in any substance. Per the report, the DOJ obtained access to a cloud server where the keys holding all the bitcoins were stored.
There is no announcement of whether the bitcoin should or will even be returned. For all we know right now, United States is the owner of 94,000 bitcoin, making it the nation with the largest bitcoin holding at the moment.
Use cold storage and do not put your keys on the internet. Secure your keys as if they were the most valuable possession you had, because if it isn’t now, it likely become.
Have a great weekend niblings.
Stay humble & stack sats.
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How to buy bitcoin? (With Relai through Revolut)
If you are in Europe, I made a pretty simple guide with 3 steps, which avoids you having to set up an account on an exchange, give them all of your personal information, plus custody of your funds.
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