Bitcoin Magazine Lightning Is Misunderstood The Lightning Network is one of the most exciting and innovative technologies built on Bitcoin, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood. From its early days with grassroots efforts like “PLEBNET,” to ambitious visions of Lightning Applications (LApps), and the idea of earning passive yield as a routing node operator, enthusiasm around Lightning has often outpaced its practical realities. Many Bitcoiners expected Lightning to be a seamless, plug-and-play extension of the Bitcoin network — just as sovereign, decentralized, and accessible as running a full Bitcoin node. But the reality is more complex. Setting up and maintaining a well-connected Lightning node involves technical skills and capital requirements that most users aren’t prepared to manage. This isn’t a failure: It’s simply a reflection of Lightning’s design. As a result of these barriers, many users have turned to custodial solutions to access Lightning’s benefits. Custodial wallets and neobanks like Strike, Blink, Wallet of Satoshi, Cash App and others offer features such as Lightning URLs, instant low-fee transactions, and the kind of reliability and user experience people expect from full-featured, banking-style apps. To some, this reliance on custodians feels like a compromise, and in a way, it is. But more importantly, it reveals something often overlooked: Running Lightning infrastructure isn’t meant for everyone. Here’s the controversial part: That’s perfectly okay. Lightning’s critics, both within the Bitcoin community and among altcoin promoters, often frame these trade-offs as proof that Lightning has failed, suggesting it should be replaced with something else entirely. But that view misses the mark. Rather than seeing these limitations as fatal flaws, it’s far more accurate and productive to understand the Lightning Network for what it truly is: enterprise-grade infrastructure. In this context, “enterprise-grade” means robust, scalable, and dependable enough to power real-time, low-fee payments for mission-critical services. It’s not something every casual user will host themselves. Lightning is built for professional operators — Bitcoin exchanges, payment processors, wallet developers, and technically capable community projects. For them, Lightning isn’t a compromise, it is a competitive advantage. Moreover, the Lightning Network complements Bitcoin in many important ways and is becoming increasingly interoperable with adjacent technologies such as ecash mints and other layer-2 solutions. It functions as a global, open source, and permissionless financial infrastructure that any serious operator, anywhere in the world, can tap into. In essence, the Lightning Network is evolving into the interoperable glue connecting external systems to the Bitcoin blockchain. Not everyone will run a Lightning node, and that’s okay. This reality doesn’t diminish Lightning’s significance in Bitcoin’s scaling roadmap. On the contrary, Lightning is a foundational layer that enables a wide range of tools and services. Far from being a centralizing force, it actually enhances decentralization by opening the door to permissionless payments anywhere in the world, creating new types of economic actors that weren’t previously possible. A great example of this is the Kenyan Bitcoin payments app Tando. This app allows users to spend bitcoin at any merchant or service that accepts M-PESA using the Lightning Network. M-PESA is a mobile money platform launched by Safaricom in Kenya that allows users to send, receive, and store money via mobile phones without needing a traditional bank account. As of 2024, it serves over 34 million users in Kenya, processes more than 30 billion transactions annually, and accounts for nearly 60% of the country’s GDP. Thanks to Lightning, Tando’s creators can build a seamless, programmatic payment experience that interoperates directly with the M-PESA system, dramatically improving liquidity access for Bitcoin users in Kenya. Because everyone and their grandma in Kenya accepts M-PESA, now with Tando, anyone can spend bitcoin anywhere in Kenya — even in the Maasai Mara. A picture of Maasai men in traditional attire I took while visiting a Maasai village Without Lightning, on-chain Bitcoin payments would simply be too slow to offer a practical experience for everyday M-PESA transactions. Transaction confirmation times on-chain aren’t suited to real-time payments, especially in fast-paced retail settings. But by building a Lightning payment gateway that connects directly to M-PESA wallets, Tando has transformed the payment landscape for Bitcoin users in Kenya. Tando is proof that Lightning unlocks real-world use cases for builders without needing to ask for permission to build. The fact that Lightning enables this is amazing. Another excellent example of the edge Lightning gives businesses can be seen by comparing two global neobanks: PayPal and Strike. PayPal, the original internet payment company, launched in 1998 and took over 17 years to expand to more than 200 countries. In contrast, Strike, a far more niche application built on Lightning and launched in 2020, has already rolled out to over 100 countries in just five years, reaching markets across Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. Strike’s global expansion not only rivals PayPal’s in scope but also dramatically outpaces it in speed and ease, highlighting the unique advantages of building on modern, borderless infrastructure like the Lightning Network. Strike CEO Jack Mallers and his team largely bypassed working directly with banks, instead choosing to partner with Bitcoin exchanges around the world that already had established local banking relationships in the markets they serve. These partners use the Lightning Network to send value instantly across borders. When a user wants to convert their Strike app balance into local currency, the partner facilitates the exchange on the back end. This strategy allowed Strike to launch a global payments service powered by universally accepted, instant Lightning payments faster than ever before. Merchant that accepts bitcoin and Strike payments in El Zonte, El Salvador. Strike leveraged Bitcoin and Lightning’s borderless capabilities to build a truly global network, combining this technical edge with strong business development to secure fiat conversion partnerships. While legacy players remain bottlenecked by traditional banking rails, Strike uses Lightning to instantly move value anywhere on the planet. Not only does the Lightning Network open new doors for businesses, but it also enables permissionless payments both large and small within other open protocols. A premier example of this is Nostr, a decentralized protocol designed to support social media experiences and much more. In a post on X, Jack Dorsey stated, “The greatest at-scale example of Bitcoin as everyday payments are Zaps on Nostr.” In a 2023 interview with Politico, he discusses his grounded optimism for both Nostr and Lightning-enabled zaps: “He also argued that the user experience on NOSTR had already surpassed that of Twitter, citing ‘Zaps’ a feature that lets users tip each other in Bitcoin — part of a vision in which information and money flow together around the internet without obstruction.” Jack Dorsey and Lyn Alden at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2024. Original Photo. Zaps on Nostr evolved from a basic Lightning invoice system to a seamless micropayment feature largely thanks to the efforts of William Casarin, known as jb55. Initially, users had to attach Bitcoin payment requests to notes manually. But in early 2023, Casarin, the creator of the Damus client, authored NIP-57, introducing event types 9734 (zap request) and 9735 (zap receipt), which formalized zaps as instant, Lightning-powered bitcoin transfers. Building on Nostr’s early Lightning integration, Casarin’s vision helped transform zaps into a native, user-friendly feature across every prominent Nostr client. The introduction of zaps sparked a surge in Nostr adoption: By June 2023, Nostr users had sent over 1 million zaps across a network with roughly half a million users. Total zapped events over the last six months, according to Nostr.band Requiring only a Lightning wallet and a Nostr client, zaps eliminated intermediaries and empowered creators to receive direct, low-fee payments for their posts, streams, or other content. This seamless integration of social interaction and Bitcoin’s Lightning economy has redefined the way value is exchanged online, one small or large transaction at a time. Even though casual users typically won’t manage their own always-online Lightning infrastructure, the network empowers small teams and skilled individuals to offer financial services that once required a bank. This dynamic is rapidly evolving into a broader trend, one that’s driving Lightning toward greater decentralization through community-based infrastructure. Imagine if every local Bitcoin meetup had someone running a Lightning node for their community. This could provide a neighborhood or region with an approachable, trusted operator, almost like modern-day credit unions. In such a model, Lightning infrastructure wouldn’t be dominated solely by large enterprise nodes. Instead, trust and routing would be distributed among smaller, localized actors with different incentives, builders who prioritize resilience, privacy, and accessibility over scale or profit. This dynamic is also already happening today! I’ve personally seen this in action through initiatives like Praia Bitcoin in Brazil and La Crypta in Argentina. Both projects pair grassroots communities with locally managed payment systems built on Lightning. Together, Bitcoin and the Lightning Network are enabling a grassroots alternative to traditional banking — and it’s a beautiful thing. Lastly, I would be remiss not to mention the many incredible projects like Zeus, Phoenix, Breez, Aqua, Muun, and other Lightning wallets that are innovating to create diverse user experiences. These teams are building feature-rich applications without sacrificing user custody while navigating the still-wild frontier of Bitcoin payments in 2025. In a world where Bitcoin and Lightning remain niche, and speculative behavior is as rampant as ever, delivering excellent noncustodial payment experiences is no small feat. While not perfect, many of these projects are doing exactly that. The fact that so many builders are offering such a wide range of ways to interact with Lightning gives consumers real choice and ultimately reinforces my core argument. The Lightning Network was never meant to serve every user in every way and that’s precisely why it works. It’s not failing because casual users may prefer custodial wallets. It’s succeeding because developers, businesses, and organizers are using it to solve real-world problems without needing permission. What Lightning offers isn’t universal simplicity, it’s focused, high-leverage software. It’s infrastructure that bridges Bitcoin to people, and delivers innovative solutions to the edges of the global economy. When we stop expecting Lightning to be something it can’t be, we begin to understand its true purpose: a dynamic, foundational layer for those building the future of financial freedom. Don’t miss your chance to own The Lightning Issue — featuring an exclusive interview with Lightning co-creator Tadge Dryja. It dives deep into Bitcoin’s most powerful scaling layer. Limited run. Only available while supplies last. This piece is an article featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Lightning Issue. We’re sharing it here to show the ideas explored throughout the full issue. This post Lightning Is Misunderstood first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Christian Keroles.

[Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com)
![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Lightning-is-Misunderstood-Article-Header.webp)
[Lightning Is Misunderstood](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/print/lightning-is-misunderstood)

The Lightning Network is one of the most exciting and innovative technologies built on Bitcoin, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood. From its early days with grassroots efforts like “PLEBNET,” to ambitious visions of Lightning Applications (LApps), and the idea of earning passive yield as a routing node operator, enthusiasm around Lightning has often outpaced its practical realities.

Many Bitcoiners expected Lightning to be a seamless, plug-and-play extension of the Bitcoin network — just as sovereign, decentralized, and accessible as running a full Bitcoin node. But the reality is more complex. Setting up and maintaining a well-connected Lightning node involves technical skills and capital requirements that most users aren’t prepared to manage. This isn’t a failure: It’s simply a reflection of Lightning’s design.

As a result of these barriers, many users have turned to custodial solutions to access Lightning’s benefits. Custodial wallets and neobanks like Strike, Blink, Wallet of Satoshi, Cash App and others offer features such as Lightning URLs, instant low-fee transactions, and the kind of reliability and user experience people expect from full-featured, banking-style apps. To some, this reliance on custodians feels like a compromise, and in a way, it is. But more importantly, it reveals something often overlooked: Running Lightning infrastructure isn’t meant for everyone.

Here’s the controversial part: That’s perfectly okay.

Lightning’s critics, both within the Bitcoin community and among altcoin promoters, often frame these trade-offs as proof that Lightning has failed, suggesting it should be replaced with something else entirely. But that view misses the mark. Rather than seeing these limitations as fatal flaws, it’s far more accurate and productive to understand the Lightning Network for what it truly is: enterprise-grade infrastructure.

In this context, “enterprise-grade” means robust, scalable, and dependable enough to power real-time, low-fee payments for mission-critical services. It’s not something every casual user will host themselves. Lightning is built for professional operators — Bitcoin exchanges, payment processors, wallet developers, and technically capable community projects. For them, Lightning isn’t a compromise, it is a competitive advantage.

Moreover, the Lightning Network complements Bitcoin in many important ways and is becoming increasingly interoperable with adjacent technologies such as ecash mints and other layer-2 solutions. It functions as a global, open source, and permissionless financial infrastructure that any serious operator, anywhere in the world, can tap into. In essence, the Lightning Network is evolving into the interoperable glue connecting external systems to the Bitcoin blockchain.

Not everyone will run a Lightning node, and that’s okay. This reality doesn’t diminish Lightning’s significance in Bitcoin’s scaling roadmap. On the contrary, Lightning is a foundational layer that enables a wide range of tools and services. Far from being a centralizing force, it actually enhances decentralization by opening the door to permissionless payments anywhere in the world, creating new types of economic actors that weren’t previously possible.

A great example of this is the Kenyan Bitcoin payments app [Tando](https://tando.me). This app allows users to [spend bitcoin at any merchant](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/print/bitcoin-jungle-lightning-to-fiat-payments) or service that accepts M-PESA using the Lightning Network.

M-PESA is a mobile money platform launched by [Safaricom](https://www.safaricom.co.ke) in Kenya that allows users to send, receive, and store money via mobile phones without needing a traditional bank account. As of 2024, it serves over 34 million users in Kenya, processes more than 30 billion transactions annually, and accounts for nearly 60% of the country’s GDP.

Thanks to Lightning, Tando’s creators can build a seamless, programmatic payment experience that interoperates directly with the M-PESA system, dramatically improving liquidity access for Bitcoin users in Kenya. Because everyone and their grandma in Kenya accepts M-PESA, now with Tando, anyone can spend bitcoin anywhere in Kenya — even in the Maasai Mara.

![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Lightning-is-Misunderstood-Article-Graphic1-1024x536.png "Lightning Is Misunderstood 2")

_A picture of Maasai men in traditional attire I took while visiting a Maasai village_

Without Lightning, on-chain Bitcoin payments would simply be too slow to offer a practical experience for everyday M-PESA transactions. Transaction confirmation times on-chain aren’t suited to real-time payments, especially in fast-paced retail settings. But by building a Lightning payment gateway that connects directly to M-PESA wallets, Tando has transformed the payment landscape for Bitcoin users in Kenya. Tando is proof that Lightning unlocks real-world use cases for builders without needing to ask for permission to build. The fact that Lightning enables this is amazing.

Another excellent example of the edge Lightning gives businesses can be seen by comparing two global neobanks: PayPal and Strike.

[PayPal](https://www.paypal.com/us/home), the original internet payment company, launched in 1998 and took over 17 years to expand to more than 200 countries. In contrast, Strike, a far more niche application built on Lightning and launched in 2020, has already rolled out to over 100 countries in just five years, reaching markets across Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. Strike’s global expansion not only rivals PayPal’s in scope but also dramatically outpaces it in speed and ease, highlighting the unique advantages of building on modern, borderless infrastructure like the Lightning Network.

Strike CEO Jack Mallers and his team largely bypassed working directly with banks, instead choosing to partner with Bitcoin exchanges around the world that already had established local banking relationships in the markets they serve. These partners use the Lightning Network to send value instantly across borders. When a user wants to convert their Strike app balance into local currency, the partner facilitates the exchange on the back end. This strategy allowed Strike to launch a global payments service powered by universally accepted, instant Lightning payments faster than ever before.

![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Lightning-is-Misunderstood-Article-Graphic2-1024x689.png "Lightning Is Misunderstood 3")

_Merchant that accepts bitcoin and Strike payments in El Zonte, El Salvador_.

Strike leveraged Bitcoin and Lightning’s borderless capabilities to build a truly global network, combining this technical edge with strong business development to secure fiat conversion partnerships. While legacy players remain bottlenecked by traditional banking rails, Strike uses Lightning to instantly move value anywhere on the planet.

Not only does the Lightning Network open new doors for businesses, but it also enables permissionless payments both large and small within other open protocols. A premier example of this is Nostr, a decentralized protocol designed to support social media experiences and much more.

In a post on [X](https://x.com/jack/status/1907996157797929371), Jack Dorsey stated, “The greatest at-scale example of Bitcoin as everyday payments are Zaps on Nostr.” In a 2023 interview with Politico, he discusses his grounded optimism for both Nostr and Lightning-enabled zaps:

> “He also argued that the user experience on NOSTR had already surpassed that of Twitter, citing ‘Zaps’ a feature that lets users tip each other in Bitcoin — part of a vision in which information and money flow together around the internet without obstruction.”

![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AD_4nXcuan4n4eNvHD6c-wKOAVtqZN41FfxYK4IpqRT0WLHN_8T_frSCeTqgEUD-pKH2T4RRnGdKmo0L0jIq6XjuZ_CIXLWJglAck3BH5MRk9eyKM-6QF8kvjoXaIhaU9kX7Wt9IhYwDqQkey2uXMnFpBo99Fqcc4KWYxGCoJ.jpg "Lightning Is Misunderstood 4")

_Jack Dorsey and Lyn Alden at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2024. Original Photo_.

Zaps on Nostr evolved from a basic Lightning invoice system to a seamless micropayment feature largely thanks to the efforts of William Casarin, known as [jb55](https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsgq25enaus99v5vpjtqz9rpd6yntc2anj5ycszvu5z030yldeh7zc6ms66j). Initially, users had to attach Bitcoin payment requests to notes manually. But in early 2023, Casarin, the creator of the Damus client, authored NIP-57, introducing event types 9734 (zap request) and 9735 (zap receipt), which formalized [zaps](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/secrets-matt-odells-bitcoin-empire) as instant, Lightning-powered bitcoin transfers.

Building on Nostr’s early Lightning integration, Casarin’s vision helped transform zaps into a native, user-friendly feature across every prominent Nostr client. The introduction of zaps sparked a surge in Nostr adoption: By June 2023, Nostr users had sent over 1 million zaps across a network with roughly half a million users.

![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Lightning-is-Misunderstood-Article-Graphic3-1024x536.png "Lightning Is Misunderstood 5")

_Total zapped events over the last six months, according to Nostr.band_

Requiring only a Lightning wallet and a Nostr client, zaps eliminated intermediaries and empowered creators to receive direct, low-fee payments for their posts, streams, or other content. This seamless integration of social interaction and Bitcoin’s Lightning economy has redefined the way value is exchanged online, one small or large transaction at a time.

Even though casual users typically won’t ma


This is the result of a NIP90 DVM task with kind 5300

e


![Patriot Act 2.0](https://www.discreetlog.com/content/images/2023/03/restrictact.webp)

The newly proposed RESTRICT ACT - is being advertised as a TikTok Ban, but is much broader than that, carries a $1M Fine and up to 20 years in prison! It is unconstitutional and would create massive legal restrictions on the open source movement and free speech throughout the internet.

The [Bill](https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/3/f/3f2eaae6-09ad-49e1-b254-46289cf20cca/843D73B1823EA0D4122B4365262410D6.restrict-act-final-text.pdf?ref=discreetlog.com) was proposed by: Senator Warner, Senator Thune, Senator Baldwin, Senator Fischer, Senator Manchin, Senator Moran, Senator Bennet, Senator Sullivan, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Collins, Senator Heinrich, and Senator Romney. It has broad support across Senators of both parties.

Corrupt politicians will not protect us. They are part of the problem. We must build, support, and learn how to use censorship resistant tools in order to defend our natural rights.

> The RESTRICT Act, introduced by Senators Warner and Thune, aims to block or disrupt transactions and financial holdings involving foreign adversaries that pose risks to national security. Although the primary targets of this legislation are companies like Tik-Tok, the language of the bill could potentially be used to block or disrupt cryptocurrency transactions and, in extreme cases, block Americans’ access to open source tools or protocols like Bitcoin.

> The Act creates a redundant regime paralleling OFAC without clear justification, it significantly limits the ability for injured parties to challenge actions raising due process concerns, and unlike OFAC it lacks any carve-out for protected speech. [COINCENTER ON THE RESTRICT ACT](https://www.coincenter.org/the-restrict-act-creates-blanket-authority-with-few-checks-to-ban-just-about-anything-linked-to-a-foreign-adversary/?ref=discreetlog.com)

[**Full Text of Bill**](https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/3/f/3f2eaae6-09ad-49e1-b254-46289cf20cca/843D73B1823EA0D4122B4365262410D6.restrict-act-final-text.pdf?ref=discreetlog.com)

* * *

_**If you found this post helpful support my work with [bitcoin](https://geyser.fund/project/citadel?ref=discreetlog.com).**_

![Patriot Act 2.0](https://werunbtc.com/donate.png)


Wealth requires freedom: the ability to make decisions without coercion. Freedom requires privacy: the ability to selectively reveal yourself to the world. Rights are not granted: they are earned through struggle and defended through sacrifice.

* * *

![No Privacy? No Freedom. No Freedom? No Wealth.](https://www.discreetlog.com/content/images/2023/04/freedom-1.webp)

_"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy.  A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world."_ **\- Eric Hughes, [A Cypherpunk's Manifesto](https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html?ref=discreetlog.com), 1993**

* * *

**Privacy is essential to freedom.** Without privacy, individuals are unable to make choices free from surveillance and control. Lack of privacy leads to loss of autonomy. When individuals are constantly monitored it limits our ability to express ourselves and take risks. Any decisions we make can result in negative repercussions from those who surveil us. Without the freedom to make choices, individuals cannot truly be free.

**Freedom is essential to acquiring and preserving wealth.** When individuals are not free to make choices, restrictions and limitations prevent us from economic opportunities. If we are somehow able to acquire wealth in such an environment, lack of freedom can result in direct asset seizure by governments or other malicious entities. At scale, when freedom is compromised, it leads to widespread economic stagnation and poverty. Protecting freedom is essential to economic prosperity.

The connection between **privacy, freedom, and wealth** is critical. Without privacy, individuals lose the freedom to make choices free from surveillance and control. While lack of freedom prevents individuals from pursuing economic opportunities and makes wealth preservation nearly impossible. **_No Privacy? No Freedom. No Freedom? No Wealth._**

_**Rights are not granted. They are taken and defended.**_ Rights are often misunderstood as permission to do something by those holding power. However, if someone can give you something, they can inherently take it from you at will. People throughout history have necessarily fought for basic rights, including privacy and freedom. These rights were not given by those in power, but rather demanded and won through struggle. Even after these rights are won, they must be continually defended to ensure that they are not taken away. **Rights are not granted - they are earned through struggle and defended through sacrifice.**

* * *

_**If you found this post helpful support my work with [bitcoin](https://geyser.fund/project/citadel?ref=discreetlog.com).**_

![No Privacy? No Freedom. No Freedom? No Wealth.](https://werunbtc.com/donate.png)


PacWest is the first of many small regional banks that will go under this year. Most will get bought by the big four in gov orchestrated sales. This has been the playbook since 2008.

> ![Bank Consolidation Then CBDC](https://www.discreetlog.com/content/images/2023/05/banks-1.jpg)
>
> Bank run on every crypto bank then bank run on every "real" bank.
>
> — ODELL (@ODELL) [December 14, 2022](https://twitter.com/ODELL/status/1602838429447999491?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=discreetlog.com)

Good morning.

It looks like PacWest will fail today. It will be both the fifth largest bank failure in US history and the sixth major bank to fail this year. It will likely get purchased by one of the big four banks in a government orchestrated sale.

**March 8th - Silvergate Bank
March 10th - Silicon Valley Bank
March 12th - Signature Bank
March 19th - Credit Suisse
May 1st - First Republic Bank
May 4th - PacWest Bank?**

PacWest is the first of many small regional banks that [will go under](https://www.discreetlog.com/banking-crisis/) this year. Most will get bought by the big four in gov orchestrated sales. This has been the playbook since 2008. Follow the incentives. Massive consolidation across the banking industry. PacWest gonna be a drop in the bucket compared to what comes next.

First, a hastened government led bank consolidation, then a public/private partnership with the remaining large banks to launch a surveilled and controlled digital currency network. We will be told it is more convenient. We will be told it is safer. We will be told it will prevent future bank runs. All of that is marketing bullshit. **The goal is greater control of money. The ability to choose how we spend it and how we save it. If you control the money - you control the people that use it.**

* * *

_**If you found this post helpful support my work with [bitcoin](https://geyser.fund/project/citadel?ref=discreetlog.com).**_

![Bank Consolidation Then CBDC](https://werunbtc.com/donate.png)


> ![Money Without Trust](https://www.discreetlog.com/content/images/2023/03/rdogs.webp)
>
> Bank run on every crypto bank then bank run on every "real" bank.
>
> — ODELL (@ODELL) [December 14, 2022](https://twitter.com/ODELL/status/1602838429447999491?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=discreetlog.com)

The four main banks of bitcoin and “crypto” are Signature, Prime Trust, Silvergate, and Silicon Valley Bank. Prime Trust does not custody funds themselves but rather maintains deposit accounts at BMO Harris Bank, Cross River, Lexicon Bank, MVB Bank, and Signature Bank. Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank have already stopped withdrawals. **More banks will go down before the chaos stops. None of them have sufficient reserves to meet withdrawals.**

Bitcoin gives us all the ability to opt out of a system that has massive layers of counterparty risk built in, years of cheap money and broken incentives have layered risk on top of risk throughout the entire global economy. If you thought the FTX bank run was painful to watch, I have bad news for you: every major bank in the world is fractional reserve. **Bitcoin held in self custody is unique in its lack of counterparty risk, as global market chaos unwinds this will become much more obvious.**

The rules of bitcoin are extremely hard to change by design. Anyone can access the network directly without a trusted third party by using their own node. Owning more bitcoin does not give you more control over the network with all participants on equal footing.

> _Bitcoin is:
> \- money that is not controlled by a company or government
> \- money that can be spent or saved without permission
> \- money that is provably scarce and should increase in purchasing power with adoption_

**Bitcoin is money without trust.** Whether you are a nation state, corporation, or an individual, you can use bitcoin to spend or save without permission. Social media will accelerate the already deteriorating trust in our institutions and as this trust continues to crumble the value of trust minimized money will become obvious. **As adoption increases so should the purchasing power of bitcoin.**

> _A quick note on "stablecoins," such as USDC - it is important to remember that they rely on trusted custodians. They have the same risk as funds held directly in bank accounts with additional counterparty risk on top. The trusted custodians can be pressured by gov, exit scam, or caught up in fraud. Funds can and will be frozen at will. **This is a distinctly different trust model than bitcoin, which is a native bearer token that does not rely on any centralized entity or custodian.**_

Most bitcoin exchanges have exposure to these failing banks. Expect more chaos and confusion as this all unwinds. Withdraw any bitcoin to your own wallet ASAP.

Simple Self Custody Guide: [https://werunbtc.com/muun](https://t.co/J61rFmeovE?ref=discreetlog.com)
More Secure Cold Storage Guide: [https://werunbtc.com/coldcard](https://t.co/LMTDzJ86Ec?ref=discreetlog.com)

* * *

_**If you found this post helpful support my work with [bitcoin](https://geyser.fund/project/citadel?ref=discreetlog.com).**_

![Money Without Trust](https://werunbtc.com/donate.png)


nwc-enclaved wallet service

This is a safe custodial Lightning Wallet with NWC support.

It runs in a TEE (trusted execution environment) so it's private and funds can't be stolen.

Learn more at https://github.com/nostrband/nwc-enclaved

Max balance: 100000 sats.

Liquidity fee: 1.00% + share of mining fees, paid when sending payments.

Payment fee: 5 sats + 0.40%.

Wallet fee: 1 sats per 24 hours.

DEVELOPMENT INSTANCE, may break or get terminated at any time!


White Paper Studio uses Bitcoin-backed financing to give investors steady returns while enabling indie filmmakers to create original stories free from compromise.

Key Takeaways
-------------

![TFTC - How a MicroStrategy CopyCat is Using Bitcoin to Disrupt this $86B Industry | Ali Webb & Carlos Flores](https://www.tftc.io/content/images/2025/08/Ali-Webb-and-Carlos-Flores.jpg)

Carlos and Ali, founders of Forager and White Paper Studio, are using a Bitcoin-backed financing model to solve indie filmmakers’ biggest challenge, access to capital, while protecting creative independence. Inspired by Michael Saylor’s treasury strategy, they allocate a portion of raised funds into Bitcoin, using its growth over multi-year terms to repay investors 5–10% in dollars, attracting capital that wouldn’t normally touch film. This model shields artists from investor influence, supports original storytelling in an industry dominated by safe bets and sequels, and promotes transparency by making treasury and repayment performance public. They see AI as a useful tool for concepting but believe human creativity remains irreplaceable, envisioning a future where fully human-made films become a premium choice, funded by smarter, Bitcoin-enabled capital.

Best Quotes
-----------

_“Putting Bitcoin on our balance sheet… is the one thing that’s actually preserving our hard work in the long run.”_

_“We are in charge of repaying the investor with our Bitcoin strategy and you guys can just focus on the art… They have no say over the creative.”_

_“Our early investors didn’t even care so much about the films… They could just park it here and get a better yield.”_

_“There’s less funds going around for risky original IP… It feels like a race to the bottom.”_

_“There’s no children’s movies these days that actually have real people… It’s all animated stuff.”_

_“There was a cool trend of betting on artists with great vision… That kind of risk-taking doesn’t exist as much anymore.”_

_“It’s a great tool… but it’s not a magic bullet.”_

_“An entirely human production in the future might be like shooting on film now… something authentic and special.”_

Conclusion
----------

White Paper Studio’s Bitcoin-backed funding model could quietly transform independent film financing, offering investors steady returns while freeing creators from the commercial constraints of traditional funding. By combining financial resilience, creative autonomy, and transparency, it challenges Hollywood’s risk-averse culture and supports the revival of bold, original storytelling. In a time of AI disruption and shrinking budgets, it shows how Bitcoin can preserve and empower human creativity, potentially sparking a renewed era of risk-taking and authenticity in cinema.

Timestamps
----------

0:00 - Intro
0:36 - The story of Forager
8:11 - Small world for Marty
10:48 - Whtppr and the indie film capital problem
19:04 - Bitkey & Opportunity Cost
20:43 - Mechanics of the bitcoin fund
27:36 - Defining success for Whtppr
30:25 - Unchained
31:12 - Bringing back what’s been lost
42:12 - Upcoming short films
44:34 - AI content
56:46 - Wrapping

Transcript
----------

(00:00) We took a lot of inspiration from Sailor. Our early investors, they didn't even care so much about the films. They were just kind of like, "Oh, I have mutual funds giving me this. I could just park it here and I get a better yield." It is causing the industry to contract. Putting Bitcoin on our balance sheet for a germ, it is the one thing that's actually preserving our hard work in the long run because we still need great films that are telling human stories that are made by people with people.
(00:26) Film is perhaps one of the riskiest business you can get into as an investor. Carlos and Alli, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Marty. This is uh I'm I'm happy to be speaking with you guys cuz it's a budding theme on this show.
(00:50) very small theme but a budding one and one that excites me because I think it's a a signal that that Bitcoin is breaking out of the bubbles, the community bubbles that have existed in my 12 years following. It seems that what you guys are doing at Forager really validates Bitcoin being used as a tool by by anybody, not just cipher punks or people that care about sound money, but what you guys are doing at Forager in the world of entertainment.
(01:20) and Carlos, we were just talking before you we hit record that you heard my discussion with Johnny Vance um from Total Twins and Angel Studio and reached out and as I was also telling you I have a friend a very very close friend and we've been talking about this idea quite a bit the intersection of Bitcoin and entertainment in attempt to get better art into the world and let smaller um artists, content creators, whatever you want to define them as uh get their work into the world and actually give them a chance to compete with the the mega studios of the world.
(01:56) So before we jump into the the broader discussion of this intersection, why don't we start with a couple introductions just um how you guys got to where you are, what you're doing at Forager, and um what uh what got you to the to thinking about Bitcoin specifically? Sure.
(02:20) Um, Carl, I can give my intro then I'll let you take it. Um, so I went to film school. I majored in screenwriting and then I found my way to New York. I landed in advertising. So it was not where I expected to be after film school. You know, right out of film school, I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to work for a studio.
(02:38) I'm going to be on set. I'm going to, you know, live the dream. And I found that being on set and everything that I had imagined about film making, once I did get my feet wet into some live action production for commercials was not super aligned with the way that I uh prefer to to live my life and to structure my life.
(03:06) I'm very routine oriented and I really enjoyed how how the tech side of postp production was evolving and could make so many more things possible than you know just what it is captured on set. Now so much respect for what happens on set. I just was not of that same you know mindset and stamina to be working those kinds of hours.
(03:30) Um, and so I found my way into the post-production side of advertising and um, worked as an EP at a couple of different post houses. And along the way, I met Carlos um, and we decided to start forager together after working together for some time and I was getting ready to move into the freelance world, which he had been occupying for um, his entire career up until that point um, before moving from New York to Portland.
(04:03) So that was what um gave the idea to start Forager as a remote collective of post-prouction artists. Uh we saw at the time that there was a real need to give a platform for individuals in the post space who were not represented by legacy post houses for any number of reasons. You know they enjoyed being freelance. They liked the autonomy, having their own brand, and they just needed that production support which I could bring um to the team and which we've built alongside the producers at Forager along the way.
(04:35) Um and different already different tech was available to us at that time at like Slack and and Frame.io that made it possible to collaborate in real time from anywhere. Um, so we launched Forager with this unique perspective on bringing together the best talent no matter where they were located. Um, so we're pioneers in that sense because it was still um different to say that we didn't have um a a brick and mortar place to go to for clients to go to to supervise.
(05:10) And then that was January 2019, a year later it became the norm during co for everyone to work remotely. So, a little bit ahead of the game there. Um, and we've taken everything we've learned from from building this um this network of great creative and um Charles will, you know, give his intro and how we started building Bitcoin into the picture as well along the way. Yeah. Uh, yeah.
(05:37) Essentially, exactly what Ali said. I think Bitcoin surprisingly entered our radar very early on almost by uh yeah almost by chance uh because uh we started the company 2019. the pandemic hit 2020 and we were down of course as everyone else for for a little bit and at that moment I was uh starting to just research you know what stocks to buy like any like every person back then and I stumbled upon Bitcoin in the at the moment just from like an interview that I saw on YouTube and um and yeah I bought it personally not knowing much just kind of like bought it personally as an opportunity Uh Alli and I are good friends. So I I
(06:23) talked Alli into buying some personally as well. Uh and we were so small and informal. We were like, you know, it why not buy it and put it on forers balance sheet. Uh and this was before uh even a sailor had appeared on uh on X. It was like I think June 2020 when we first bought and we were small. We just bought I think one to begin with.
(06:49) Um and yeah, then uh we we saw the whole strategy thing happening. We were like, "Oh, this is going to be a thing." So we we started buying more. Um still a humble treasury. Uh but um but yeah, of course, we rode the whole thing up to the 60K.
(07:08) Then we felt a little silly when, you know, it it went all the way down in the bare market. Uh but that was kind of like our uh introduction to Bitcoin. like we buy by by buying it almost naively at first not knowing much but then you see this thing going up. We learned what it was. We got orange filled in the process and uh and we thankfully held it for this whole time and it was only in um earlier this year where we were like dealing with some uh liquidity crunches that we were like you know we have built this treasury.
(07:40) we want to maintain it and uh and we thought what if we were to uh leverage that treasury in order to raise some funds so we can uh survive and like you know get through this uh rocky period and so we did that but we also announced to the wor


Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Price Crashes Below $110,000 After Whale Sold 24,000 BTC The price of Bitcoin has plunged below $110,000 in the past 24 hours, marking one of its steepest corrections in weeks. According to data from Bitcoin Magazine Pro, the world’s largest cryptocurrency dropped to $108,890 and remains below the $110,000 threshold at the time of writing. The decline represents a sharp sell-off from just last Friday, when Bitcoin traded as high as $117,000, before tumbling to $109,894 over the weekend. The downward momentum was accelerated by a massive whale sale. Over the weekend, a single Bitcoin holder offloaded 24,000 BTC worth more than $2.7 billion, sparking additional selling pressure and driving the price lower. The large transaction caused heightened volatility and weighed heavily on market sentiment. This entity liquidated their entire 24k balance, sending all of it to Hyperunite. They transferred 12k just today and are still actively selling, which is likely contributing to the ongoing price drop. https://t.co/HYPBiGzjRf pic.twitter.com/crML9AqvvV — Sani | TimechainIndex.com (@SaniExp) August 24, 2025 Despite the sharp move down, sentiment has not yet tipped fully into fear. The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index, a widely watched market sentiment tool, currently sits at 48/100, which is categorized as “neutral” but hovers just above “fear.” The Fear and Greed Index is a tool that helps investors and traders analyze the Bitcoin and Crypto market from a sentiment perspective. It identifies the extent to which the market is becoming overly fearful or overly greedy. Hence why it is called the Fear and Greed Index. Bitcoin Magazine Pro explains that the Index helps investors separate their emotions from broader market reactions, offering insights into when assets may be overbought or oversold. Scores near zero reflect “extreme fear,” while scores close to 100 represent “extreme greed.” With Bitcoin currently at 48, sentiment is edging toward concern but has not yet fully entered bearish territory. Meanwhile, underlying network fundamentals remain strong despite price weakness. Bitcoin’s hash rate—a measure of the total computational power securing the network—is approaching a new record high. The current daily value stands at 909,080,589 Th/s, just shy of the all-time high of 1,084,828,947 Th/s set on August 4 when Bitcoin was trading at $115,149. Long-term holders may find reassurance in historical profitability data. Bitcoin Magazine Pro notes that holding Bitcoin has been profitable for 99.1% of its existence: Number of profitable days: 5,437 Total number of days tracked: 5,487 Percent of profitable days: 99.1% While the recent drop below $110,000 has rattled short-term traders, Bitcoin’s track record and network strength suggest resilience. Investors will be closely watching whether the Fear and Greed Index shifts further into fear territory, and if whales continue to unload large holdings, potentially adding more turbulence to the market in the coming days. JUST IN: Holding #Bitcoin has still been profitable for over 99% of its history. HODL pic.twitter.com/Fd6cTxFIMD — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 26, 2025 This post Bitcoin Price Crashes Below $110,000 After Whale Sold 24,000 BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Nik.

[Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com)
![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Bitmine-Accumulates-BTC-1.jpg)
[Bitcoin Price Crashes Below $110,000 After Whale Sold 24,000 BTC](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/bitcoin-price-crashes-below-110000-after-whale-sold-24000-btc)

The [price of Bitcoin](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-price) has plunged below $110,000 in the past 24 hours, marking one of its steepest corrections in weeks. According to data from [Bitcoin Magazine Pro](https://www.bitcoinmagazinepro.com/bitcoin-price-live/), the world’s largest cryptocurrency dropped to $108,890 and remains below the $110,000 threshold at the time of writing. The decline represents a sharp sell-off from just last Friday, when Bitcoin traded as high as $117,000, before tumbling to $109,894 over the weekend.

![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AD_4nXc6NxUE_R-JMRpPWpBeaaZ8uyi5RCE4AAfhVLXhAzh7hXdRlb3tGTDmyOzRMI5q7WIMllUs4c1iXdEGPB7jUfJja4pwdIe-XXPlLC4vge_fgY4prUnp3Jh8R1-a522u6wu_DqkhvwkeyR93d1n3fNktaeHVkiBCCfw.png "Bitcoin Price Crashes Below $110,000 After Whale Sold 24,000 BTC 12")

The downward momentum was accelerated by a massive whale sale. Over the weekend, a single Bitcoin holder offloaded 24,000 BTC worth more than $2.7 billion, sparking additional selling pressure and driving the price lower. The large transaction caused heightened volatility and weighed heavily on market sentiment.

> This entity liquidated their entire 24k balance, sending all of it to Hyperunite. They transferred 12k just today and are still actively selling, which is likely contributing to the ongoing price drop. [https://t.co/HYPBiGzjRf](https://t.co/HYPBiGzjRf) [pic.twitter.com/crML9AqvvV](https://t.co/crML9AqvvV)
>
> — Sani | TimechainIndex.com (@SaniExp) [August 24, 2025](https://twitter.com/SaniExp/status/1959717227302941109?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

Despite the sharp move down, sentiment has not yet tipped fully into fear. The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index, a widely watched market sentiment tool, currently sits at 48/100, which is categorized as “neutral” but hovers just above “fear.”

The Fear and Greed Index is a tool that helps investors and traders analyze the Bitcoin and Crypto market from a sentiment perspective. It identifies the extent to which the market is becoming overly fearful or overly greedy. Hence why it is called the Fear and Greed Index.

![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AD_4nXfYFZ5HVnHN_zkG3nhUu8IwNNqUl9W0f0JVhRVWn1IBZQ8fdNk_zqwihja-Y7BDOO-xQBiRbsl3Nvt0scxIQAc5vYSviFsn9DwB7YHFKKiNiPNPza06RnpV-r5QpQ2m_TNanj8gdAkeyR93d1n3fNktaeHVkiBCCfw.png "Bitcoin Price Crashes Below $110,000 After Whale Sold 24,000 BTC 13")

Bitcoin Magazine Pro explains that the Index helps investors separate their emotions from broader market reactions, offering insights into when assets may be overbought or oversold. Scores near zero reflect “extreme fear,” while scores close to 100 represent “extreme greed.” With Bitcoin currently at 48, sentiment is edging toward concern but has not yet fully entered bearish territory.

Meanwhile, underlying network fundamentals remain strong despite price weakness. Bitcoin’s [hash rate](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/tags/hashrate)—a measure of the total computational power securing the network—is approaching a new record high. The current daily value stands at 909,080,589 Th/s, just shy of the all-time high of 1,084,828,947 Th/s set on August 4 when Bitcoin was trading at $115,149.

![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AD_4nXcPegYkdRyyJhcJMQtZsTRIsC8MDBKXcIeTRlagEn3K55-F6kioBlgMDxq7g-st6HpPQdF58glHulNdZncB8YLD0ugdz7SES48Jrf4iMaf-p6AkS8Q7YUtB5oceTBKqFRMw0HNlCAkeyR93d1n3fNktaeHVkiBCCfw.png "Bitcoin Price Crashes Below $110,000 After Whale Sold 24,000 BTC 14")

Long-term holders may find reassurance in historical profitability data. Bitcoin Magazine Pro notes that holding Bitcoin has been profitable for 99.1% of its existence:

*   Number of profitable days: 5,437
*   Total number of days tracked: 5,487
*   Percent of profitable days: 99.1%

While the recent drop below $110,000 has rattled short-term traders, Bitcoin’s track record and network strength suggest resilience. Investors will be closely watching whether the Fear and Greed Index shifts further into fear territory, and if whales continue to unload large holdings, potentially adding more turbulence to the market in the coming days.

> JUST IN: Holding [#Bitcoin](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) has still been profitable for over 99% of its history.
>
> HODL ![✊](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/270a.png) [pic.twitter.com/Fd6cTxFIMD](https://t.co/Fd6cTxFIMD)
>
> — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) [August 26, 2025](https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1960371138413961267?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

This post [Bitcoin Price Crashes Below $110,000 After Whale Sold 24,000 BTC](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/bitcoin-price-crashes-below-110000-after-whale-sold-24000-btc) first appeared on [Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com) and is written by [Nik](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/authors/nik).


Bitcoin Magazine Block Inc. Launches Proto Rig: Modular Bitcoin Miner Challenging Bitmain’s Dominance Jack Dorsey’s Block Inc. recently announced the Proto Rig, a modular reinvention of Bitcoin mining hardware not seen since Bitmain’s launch of the S1 ASIC rig in 2013, over 12 years ago. The announcement was made from the facilities of Core Scientific with whom Block has partnered to design, test and develop the Proto line of mining hardware. Dorsey personally attended the event, among a who’s who of the Bitcoin mining industry. Spotted: The boss @jack getting a closer look at Proto Rig. pic.twitter.com/196Sk9KOzn — Proto (@protomining) August 14, 2025 The Proto Rig has the potential to disrupt and challenge Bitmain’s effective monopoly over mining hardware manufacturing, with approximately over 80% of the market, a position it has enjoyed for most of Bitcoin’s history. But the main innovation does not come from more powerful or energy-efficient chips — not yet anyway — rather from making everything else around the chip drastically better, designed to lower repair frequency and maintenance costs. Its modular design supports seamless upgrades and part replacements that can be swapped in seconds. In an interview with The Mining Pod, Perry Hothi, blockchain solutions architect at Block, focused on the mining division since 2022 said the device was more than just competitive with the Bitmain line of mining rigs; “When people hear competitive, they automatically think efficient, right? I always say it’s profitable… If it’s not running, efficiency doesn’t matter.” It changes the focus of the conversation in mining from the specs of ASIC chips toward the amateur design of mining rigs as a whole, which have not yet caught up with best practices developed by the data center industry in its many decades of experience. “When you look at the data center world, they’ve been doing it for 10 times as long [as Bitcoin miners]. There’s a lot of innovations they made that work for us,” Hothi said, implying the Proto Rig was designed to learn from the scaled-up data center industry. Erik Cativo, a Bitcoin product developer and HRF grantee echoed this sentiment on X saying the “Proto Rig looks clean. Reminds me of beautifully designed Swedish telecom hardware.” Proto Rig looks clean. Reminds me of beautifully designed Swedish telecom hardware. pic.twitter.com/4F3fLSPw6Q — Erik (@uxerik_) August 14, 2025 In the interview, Hothi also discussed the vision and complexities of manufacturing the Proto Rig in the United States, expressing the benefits of manufacturing pieces at home, which can improve reliability of supply chains and is also now strongly incentivized by President Trump’s new tariff regime. On the topic Hothi said, “there are certain components that can be built faster in China and brought over, others are better built in America now… Like there’s a not too distant future where every component in [the Proto Rig] will be built right here [in the United States].” He added that today, “the [ASIC] chips are going to be in Taiwan, but even those eventually, we’re looking to make those here.” Regarding the ASIC chip of the Proto Rig, Max Guise Product & ASIC Lead at Proto told Bitcoin Magazine “Our system is vertically integrated end-to-end, including our own chip. At a system level, we can offer different configurations that bring different efficiency depending on the mining operator needs, and our configurations go as low as 14.1 joules per hash efficiency rating.” keeping details about the chip close to the chest and emphasizing the Proto Rig’s customizability and modularity. Modularity In order to provide more reliable hashrate to miners, the Proto Rig is designed in modular pieces starting with the chassis, which measures 39cm by 29cm by 50cm and can host nine boards’ worth of chips, six fans and three modular power units. The Proto Rig can be liquid cooled as well, while the modular fans suggest the hardware is meant to be modded or extended to serve different use cases and approaches, perhaps enterprise miners or the booming home mining industry. The Proto Rig is highly customizable allowing miners to choose exactly how many chips to run, while also having clear hardware and software error signals in case a fan breaks or a power supply is overheating. The Proto Rig manages to squeeze the equivalent of three mining units in the space of two traditional models while being competitive to top-of-the-line industrial miners like the Bitmain Antminer S21 XP or the MicroBT Whatsminer M66S, both running on about 14 joules per terahash. Yet the Proto Rig delivers up to 810 TH per unit in the same space as the competitors, taking into account the real estate costs of industrial mining, which for years have filled out warehouses of units side by side. 14.1 J/TH !! https://t.co/bZtUkwAkEj — jack (@jack) August 14, 2025 The Proto Rig might not just be built for the big miners. There were multiple hints in the event and following commentary that suggest home miners will get some love as well from the Proto hardware team. Jack Dorsey himself tweeted out “A commitment to ALL the players in the mining industry, not just the big guys.” He retweeted a bitcoiner who attended the event and shared his excitement with some photographs. The mysterious tweet has not been followed up with any details but there are rumours that there might be a Bitaxe-style collaboration with Proto which would look to serve the home mining market. When asked about home mining Max Guise told Bitcoin Magazine “Proto is designing products for mining operators of all sizes. Our first product, Rig, is a 12 kilowatt system, which is a higher power requirement than most home miners can handle, so it is best suited for operators who have more infrastructure involved in their operations. That doesn’t rule out the possibility of future products that could be more retail-friendly, but right now it’s not our focus.” StratumV2 On By Default: Huge For Miner Decentralization Brian Stegall, head of design at Proto, announced at the launch event that the “Proto Rigs will support Stratum V2 out of the box,” adding that, “It’s a more efficient protocol that offers native hashrate auditing, which helps detect and reduce issues like miner misconfiguration, unwanted divergence and other fleet-wide issues.” Stratumv2 is a mining pool update to the popular Stratum V1 protocol which dominates adoption among miners, in part because it was one of the first software tools developed to pull hashrate from miners throughout the world, allowing them to act as one miner and share rewards. The old protocol, while well understood by miners has a serious downside, it centralizes the construction of blocks to the mining pool operator, an issue that was recently revealed to be worse than expected, as most mining pools appear to be copying block templates produced by Antpool. The risk threatens a deep layer of the Bitcoin network, potentially exposing transactions to censorship, if this trend is not reversed. StratumV2 was designed to put block template production in the hands of hashrate providers, pushing the process to the edges and thus increasing the diversity of blocks and transactions included, ultimately safeguarding Bitcoin’s censorship-resistance properties. But mining pools have been slow to adopt the protocol, likely because of the software development lift. With the Proto Rig building it into the software stack of the machine, we should expect a much higher rate of adoption as the Block’s mining rigs get rolled out into production. This is a development that the greater Bitcoin community has been working toward for many years. Open Sourcing The Software Going beyond just reinventing mining hardware, Proto has also announced the open source release of its mining management software, Fleet. Brian Stegall broke the news by sharing their experience researching the state of software in the Bitcoin mining industry as, “We chatted with a ton of different people in varying sizes of operations, and we listened to all the complaints… We broke that down into three areas… One, that there’s too many tools. Two, making it simple is important. And automation and AI is the third one.” Fleet consolidates a patchwork of tools used by miners to boot and track their machines as well as identify hardware or software failures. Laughing in playful disbelief Stegall said that “We went to a lot of facilities and there’s a lot of places where they’ll scan the network with BTC.com tools, still. Yeah. Right. And then will flip it into a spreadsheet and upload it.” As an example of how badly a modern software suite is needed, he described some arcane process of big mining. Stegall also made the case that having a better-designed and robust software tool to manage the hardware would help train employees more effectively and let them focus on more important issues rather than struggle with bad user interfaces. On the topic of security Stegall said that the “Proto Fleet comes out of the box with secure boot technology to guarantee that the firmware you’re running comes from Proto. This is an extra measure that prevents supply chain attacks, malware attacks, and theft of Bitcoin rewards.” He added that, “It will also allow you to disable secure boot technology easily if you want to do something of your own.” Finally, the topic of AI was teased out as a modern approach to user experience, though the hints made were somewhat vague: “We wanted to make clean and clear dashboards… If fan3 is broken, we tell you fan3 is broken… We’re providing robust repair guides right in proto-fleet… We want to introduce a modern AI-powered interface… Automated alerts so that you don’t even have to ask the chat interface.” While details on the depth of AI integration into Fleet are still scarce, what Stegall shared does reveal a vision of high-tech modern software helping increase the efficiency of Bitcoin miners as a whole. The software is expected to be open sourced in the near future, though no software has been released to the public yet. Pricing and Delivery Overall, while we have learned much about Block and Proto’s plans to serve and upgrade the Bitcoin mining industry, no details have been shared about the price of the Proto Rigs, on the topic Max Guise told Bitcoin Magazine that “We want to hear from everyone interested in Proto Rig. There are many ways to configure the rig, and pricing and configuration options are handled directly by our Sales team.” The rigs are starting to hit the market, apparently not just to Core Scientific who has a close partnership with Proto, Max Guise told Bitcoin Magazine that the “Proto Rigs are shipping to customers now. As far as availability, we recommend customers to check with our Sales team on exact availability depending on configuration and volume”. All and all, the Proto Rig reveal left a strong impression in the mining industry and greater Bitcoin community: It demonstrated a mastery in industrial design and showed off what top Western talent can bring to a hardware industry that for most of Bitcoin’s history has been dominated by the East. This post Block Inc. Launches Proto Rig: Modular Bitcoin Miner Challenging Bitmain’s Dominance first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

[Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com)
![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/proto-rig.webp)
[Block Inc. Launches Proto Rig: Modular Bitcoin Miner Challenging Bitmain’s Dominance](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-mining/block-inc-launches-proto-rig-modular-bitcoin-miner-challenging-bitmains-dominance)

[Jack Dorsey’s Block Inc](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/jack-dorseys-block-inc-is-reinventing-finance-bitcoin). recently [announced the Proto Rig](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/block-launches-modular-bitcoin-miner-and-free-open-source-mining-software), a modular reinvention of Bitcoin mining hardware not seen since Bitmain’s launch of the [S1 ASIC rig in 2013](https://blog.bitmain.com/en/the-story-behind-the-asic-evolution/), over 12 years ago. The announcement was made from the facilities of Core Scientific with whom Block has partnered to design, test and develop the Proto line of mining hardware. Dorsey personally attended the event, among a who’s who of the Bitcoin mining industry.

> ![🔧](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f527.png) Spotted: The boss [@jack](https://twitter.com/jack?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) getting a closer look at Proto Rig. [pic.twitter.com/196Sk9KOzn](https://t.co/196Sk9KOzn)
>
> — Proto (@protomining) [August 14, 2025](https://twitter.com/protomining/status/1956063239399145910?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

The Proto Rig has the potential to disrupt and challenge Bitmain’s effective monopoly over mining hardware manufacturing, with approximately over 80% of the market, a position it has enjoyed for most of Bitcoin’s history. But the main innovation does not come from more powerful or energy-efficient chips — not yet anyway — rather from making everything else around the chip drastically better, designed to lower repair frequency and maintenance costs. Its modular design supports seamless upgrades and part replacements that can be swapped in seconds.

In an interview with The Mining Pod, Perry Hothi, blockchain solutions architect at Block, focused on the mining division since 2022 said the device was more than just competitive with the Bitmain line of mining rigs; “When people hear competitive, they automatically think efficient, right? I always say it’s profitable… If it’s not running, efficiency doesn’t matter.” It changes the focus of the conversation in mining from the specs of ASIC chips toward the amateur design of mining rigs as a whole, which have not yet caught up with best practices developed by the data center industry in its many decades of experience. “When you look at the data center world, they’ve been doing it for 10 times as long \[as Bitcoin miners\]. There’s a lot of innovations they made that work for us,” Hothi said, implying the Proto Rig was designed to learn from the scaled-up data center industry.

Erik Cativo, a Bitcoin product developer and HRF grantee [echoed this sentiment on X](https://x.com/uxerik_/status/1956003830744613372) saying the “Proto Rig looks clean. Reminds me of beautifully designed Swedish telecom hardware.”

> Proto Rig looks clean. Reminds me of beautifully designed Swedish telecom hardware. [pic.twitter.com/4F3fLSPw6Q](https://t.co/4F3fLSPw6Q)
>
> — Erik (@uxerik\_) [August 14, 2025](https://twitter.com/uxerik_/status/1956003830744613372?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

In the interview, Hothi also discussed the vision and complexities of manufacturing the Proto Rig in the United States, expressing the benefits of manufacturing pieces at home, which can improve reliability of supply chains and is also now strongly incentivized by President Trump’s new tariff regime. On the topic Hothi said, “there are certain components that can be built faster in China and brought over, others are better built in America now… Like there’s a not too distant future where every component in \[the Proto Rig\] will be built right here \[in the United States\].” He added that today, “the \[ASIC\] chips are going to be in Taiwan, but even those eventually, we’re looking to make those here.”

Regarding the ASIC chip of the Proto Rig, Max Guise Product & ASIC Lead at Proto told Bitcoin Magazine “Our system is vertically integrated end-to-end, including our own chip. At a system level, we can offer different configurations that bring different efficiency depending on the mining operator needs, and our configurations go as low as 14.1 joules per hash efficiency rating.” keeping details about the chip close to the chest and emphasizing the Proto Rig’s customizability and modularity.

### Modularity

In order to provide more reliable hashrate to miners, the Proto Rig is designed in modular pieces starting with the chassis, which measures 39cm by 29cm by 50cm and can host nine boards’ worth of chips, six fans and three modular power units. The Proto Rig can be liquid cooled as well, while the modular fans suggest the hardware is meant to be modded or extended to serve different use cases and approaches, perhaps enterprise miners or the booming [home mining industry](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/make-bitcoin-mining-decentralized-again). The Proto Rig is highly customizable allowing miners to choose exactly how many chips to run, while also having clear hardware and software error signals in case a fan breaks or a power supply is overheating.

![Block Inc. Launches Proto Rig: Modular Bitcoin Miner Challenging Bitmain's Dominance](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/modular.png "Block Inc. Launches Proto Rig: Modular Bitcoin Miner Challenging Bitmain's Dominance 8")

![Block Inc. Launches Proto Rig: Modular Bitcoin Miner Challenging Bitmain's Dominance](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/specs1.png "Block Inc. Launches Proto Rig: Modular Bitcoin Miner Challenging Bitmain's Dominance 9")

![Block Inc. Launches Proto Rig: Modular Bitcoin Miner Challenging Bitmain's Dominance](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/specs2.png "Block Inc. Launches Proto Rig: Modular Bitcoin Miner Challenging Bitmain's Dominance 10")

The Proto Rig manages to squeeze the equivalent of three mining units in the space of two traditional models while being competitive to top-of-the-line industrial miners like the Bitmain Antminer S21 XP or the MicroBT Whatsminer M66S, both running on about 14 joules per terahash. Yet the Proto Rig delivers up to 810 TH per unit in the same space as the competitors, taking into account the real estate costs of industrial mining, which for years have filled out warehouses of units side by side.

> 14.1 J/TH !! [https://t.co/bZtUkwAkEj](https://t.co/bZtUkwAkEj)
>
> — jack (@jack) [August 14, 2025](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1956006538042093993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

The Proto Rig might not just be built for the big miners. There were multiple hints in the event and following commentary that suggest home miners will get some love as well from the Proto hardware team. Jack Dorsey himself tweeted out “A commitment to ALL the players in the mining industry, not just the big guys.” He retweeted a bitcoiner who attended the event and shared his excitement with some photographs.

The mysterious tweet has not been followed up with any details but there are rumours that there might be a [Bitaxe](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitaxe-and-the-open-source-bitcoin-mining-movement)\-style collaboration with Proto which would look to serve the home mining market.

When asked about home mining Max Guise told Bitcoin Magazine “Proto is designing products for mining operators of all sizes. Our first product, Rig, is a 12 kilowatt system, which is a higher power requirement than most home miners can handle, so it is best suited for operators who have more infrastructure involved in their operations. That doesn’t rule out the possibility of future products that could be more retail-friendly, but right now it’s not our focus.”

### StratumV2 On By Default: Huge For Miner Decentralization

[Brian Stegall](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-stegall/), head of design at Proto, announced at the launch event that the “Proto Rigs will support Stratum V2 out of the box,” adding that, “It’s a more efficient protocol that offers native hashrate auditing, which helps detect and reduce issues like miner misconfiguration, unwanted divergence and other fleet-wide issues.”

[Stratumv2](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/stratum-v2-will-save-bitcoin-mining) is a mining pool update to the popular Stratum V1 protocol which dominates adoption among miners, in part because it was one of the first software tools developed to pull hashrate from miners throughout the world, allowing them to act as one miner and share rewards. The old protocol, while well understood by miners has a serious downside, it centralizes the construction of blocks to the mining pool operator, an issue that was recently revealed to be worse than expected, as most mining pools appear to be [copying block templates produced by Antpool](https://b10c.me/observations/12-template-similarity/). The risk threatens a deep layer of the Bitcoin network, potentially exposing transactions to censorship, if this trend is not reversed.

StratumV2 was designed to put block template production in the hands of hashrate providers, pushing the process to the edges and thus increasing the diversity of blocks and transactions included, ultimately safeguarding Bitcoin’s censorship-resistance properties.

But mining pools have been slow to adopt the protocol, likely because of the software development lift. With the Proto Rig building it into the software stack of the machine, we should expect a much higher rate of adoption as the Block’s mining rigs get rolled out into production. This is a development that the greater Bitcoin community has been working toward for many years.

### Open Sourcing The Software

Going beyond just reinventing mining hardware, Proto has also announced the open source release of its mining managemen


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Tuur Demeester reveals why Bitcoin is evolving into the world’s default collateral and explains how much BTC investors may need to retire securely in an inflationary era.

Key Takeaways
-------------

![TFTC - Bitcoin Expert REVEALS The Exact Amount of BTC You Need to Retire | Tuur Demeester](https://www.tftc.io/content/images/2025/08/Tuur-Demeester.webp)

Tuur Demeester argues that Bitcoin is entering a new phase as pristine collateral, driving longer and less volatile cycles while drawing capital away from bonds, real estate, and gold. Inflation running 10–15%, deficits above Great Depression levels, and rising institutional adoption make Bitcoin both a hedge and a generational wealth vehicle. He recommends allocations ranging from 5% as “insurance” to 20–50% for those seeking early retirement, stressing discipline in holding through volatility and secure custody via multi-sig. With millennials priced out of housing and sovereign adoption rising, Bitcoin is steadily evolving into the cornerstone of a fairer, more resilient monetary order.

Best Quotes
-----------

“Bitcoin as pristine collateral really sees its day.”

“As an asset class matures, it should get less volatile over time and we should have longer cycles.”

“Real inflation rates are somewhere between 10 and 15% for the dollar.”

“Adding just a little bit of Bitcoin all of a sudden changes the behavior of your entire portfolio.”

“Think about an amount that no matter what, you can hold for five years, even if it crashes 80 or 90%.”

“It’s very easy to imagine another 4x from here, or even a 10x.”

“If you’re a millennial priced out of housing, why not rent and own Bitcoin instead?”

“One kilogram of gold has been Bitcoin’s resistance for years. Eleven kilograms is the next magnet.”

“With AI, social hacks are increasing by an order of magnitude. Multi-sig isn’t optional anymore.”

“Bitcoin retools monetary energy into a force for peace, scarce, incorruptible money that protects families across time.”

Conclusion
----------

Demeester’s analysis frames Bitcoin as more than a speculative asset, it is becoming the system’s default collateral and a practical hedge against fiat debasement. Whether used to preserve wealth, accelerate retirement, or provide financial freedom in nations under monetary stress, Bitcoin’s trajectory reflects growing institutional trust and individual adoption. With longer cycles, stronger fundamentals, and increasing global relevance, it is steadily transforming into the backbone of a new monetary era.

Timestamps
----------

0:00 - Intro
1:09 - Proto Rig and bull markets
5:33 - Tuur's new report
7:59 - On chain data
11:01 - Change in cycles and Mark Hart principles
17:05 - Bitkey & Opportunity Cost
18:44 - Pristine collateral
22:16 - Global macro
25:08 - Bitcoin/gold
31:25 - Unchained
32:11 - BTC treasury companies
41:25 - Bitcoin/commodities
49:57 - Real estate/commodities
54:12 - Banking consolidation & bitcoin backing
1:17:34 - Allocation strategies

Transcript
----------

(00:00) If you're thinking about reducing the age of retirement, you could consider 20 to 50% of your assets invested in Bitcoin. If you have more risk appetite, you can still stay in Bitcoin. You go to the treasury companies. It turns into a mania. And we had new treasury companies launching, buying stock in other treasury companies.
(00:18) And it's very easy to imagine another 4x from here or even a 10x. People are like, "No, Bitcoin couldn't be worth more than all the gold in the world." And of course, you and I think, well, of course it can. The money printing is not going away. It's probably likely to increase from here. Those are numbers higher than the Great Depression. You can see that we're in a bull market.
(00:33) If you look at what the whales are doing, they are moving some coins. As an asset class matures, it should get less volatile over time and we should have longer cycles. This is the cycle where Bitcoin has pristine collateral really sees its day. With the Bitcoin strategy companies, we're seeing that kind of on steroids.
(00:53) You used to be able to borrow $40 for every $100 worth of Micro Strategy stock. Now all of a sudden, you have to put up 20x overcolateralization. Now, if we have another crash, everybody is assuming bailouts, stagflation, that that's the decade that we're in. It's like a dead horse. Like, you can pump adrenaline into it all you want, but it's dead.
(01:14) How do you compete with Bitcoin, you know? It's just tur turo. Oh, how the tables have turned. You're sitting in a a seat that I dearly miss. Oh, yes. You're the one who's being grilled today. I don't I don't know if I could take a grilling today. It's been a long travel day. It's a good one. Yeah. And and I got Logan here in my corner, so he he's going to like slip me those uh those questions, the uncomfortable questions to ask.
(01:38) You you'll find that he's not very helpful in that regard. He's uh he he he just puts that I'm kidding, Logan. I'm kidding. Very helpful. If you have if you have hard-hitting questions for me that you want to pass to Tur, make sure you do it. He's he's already doing it in like sign language. We we got this thing going.
(01:56) H it's a great way to end a week. I'm happy that uh I know my flight was a little delayed. Uh as I was telling you, might as well tell the audience audience too. I'm getting back from Georgia where Blocks uh proto team, their proto mining team unveiled their Bitcoin mining rig called the rig and their fleet software.
(02:17) It was a really good event. really good day for Bitcoin I think as somebody's been in the mining industry and I think it's been a bullish week overall uh not only the proto mining event but we had Baltic Honeybadger conference where the ARC second layer protocol is being tested out um with the BTC pay server merchants went swimmingly. Wow, that's awesome. I've heard great things about ARC.
(02:42) So yeah, I'm I'm curious to learn more. Yeah. So, this is like on the tech side. Obviously, a lot of people are focused on Bitcoin treasury companies, what's happening on Capitol Hill, which I'm sure we'll touch on in this discussion, but just like set up this discussion, like I'm incredibly bullish, uh, particularly having seen what I saw this week in person and observing what was going on in other parts of the world.
(03:12) and not my bullish for the those reasons, but you've done something that you haven't done and you're how long you've been writing reports for Adamant. Did you start in 2012 or 2013? I I chose the adamant name back in early 2015. So, the first report was Yeah. like April 2015 or something. Okay. So, it's 10 years. Yep. Yep. and and historically whenever you've written a report, it's been in the depths of the bare market and you have a a very uh phenomenal way of releasing your reports right when the price seems to hit a hit a local bottom. Yeah, I start writing when I feel sick and I usually publish right around the
(03:49) time when I'm starting to feel better and uh that that's worked out well. um sick in the sense that I feel like I'm so bullish and that the the market is just so despondent and just doesn't care anymore and that that's usually the motivation. But yeah, so this time around it felt like I it is a little bit similar only in the sense that I think I still I disagree with the market.
(04:23) I'm just seeing a lot of people that are like, well, they're just not very bullish, you know, and I I'm like, what what's happening? Like you guys, retail is like nowhere to be seen. I think like I'm starting to feel like some friends and family like for the first time now that we're really at new all-time highs, but but that's not a exuberance uh indicator to me. That's just the beginning of public participation to me.
(04:49) So, felt like a good time to, you know, uh, revise the report cuz it's been 2 years since, uh, my last report, uh, which I think was like, what was it? April, April or May 2023. Mhm. I think it was like $27,000 Bitcoin. And the one of the one of the price targets was like, hey, we think this is going to go to 120,000 and beyond.
(05:12) So, now we hit 120. So, that also felt like a good time to to um yeah, just look at the report again and and reissue it. Uh it's not a complete rewrite, but the significant parts I I just, you know, I I like pulled out entire things and I I plugged in new parts that were just completely updated. Yeah.
(05:37) So, let's jump into it cuz I feel like I have the same feeling where even though we're what $7,000 give or take away from all-time highs which were hit earlier this week, people are somewhat bearish in my mind. I don't think I think uh despite the fact that Bitcoin is up massively over the last two years since you uh wrote the original version of this report, we're up 100% 103% in the last year.
(06:04) And if you go back to May 2023 when you wrote the first version, we were hovering around 26,000. So up almost 5x from there, a 6 6x uh 6 1/2x from there. So a 6 and a half return and yet people are still bearish which is fascinating um considering all the tailwinds that we have at our backs right now.
(06:34) But you wrote a 23page report um released it with adamant and unchained. And so what did you feel was most necessary to revise and remind people of at this point in the cycle? Yeah, the the revising I felt like the global macro picture has changed, you know, not fundamentally, but the numbers are different. Uh I think it's more clear where we're going. I think inflation is really ahead.
(07:01) It's already happening. I think we're real inflation rates are somewhere between 10 and 15% for the dollar. So it means like you know we have a every year it's losing 10 to 15% in value. Um and uh and and at the same time we have a lot more regulatory clarity. So we have a very kind of pro- Bitcoin administration which uh was not the case back when I wrote the report.
(07:27) Uh I don't think the ETFs had even dropped yet when No, they hadn't when uh the report was published. And then I think the nation state ado


Stats:
- payments: 4748
- paymentsHour: 59
- wallets: 129
- walletsHour: 0
- totalBalance: 62836473
- totalFeeCredit: 212451
- serviceBalance: 276923


Rob Warren shows how Bitcoin’s proof-of-work, anchored in energy and decentralization, makes it unkillable and turns stranded energy into value.

Key Takeaways
-------------

![Center of Hash - Bitcoin EXPERT Reveals Why It’s Impossible to Hack Bitcoin | Rob Warren](https://www.tftc.io/content/images/2025/08/Rob-Warren.jpg)

Rob Warren, Head of Research and Education at Bitcoin Park, explains that Bitcoin’s security rests on proof-of-work mining, which issues new coins and validates transactions by converting energy into hashes. This anchors Bitcoin’s rules in physical reality, ensuring the 21 million cap and preventing manipulation. Mining thrives on “liability energy,” stranded, wasted, or underutilized power, making Bitcoin a unique buyer of last resort that strengthens grids and monetizes inefficiencies. While hardware manufacturing and mining pools remain centralized, with Bitmain, Whatsminer, Foundry, and Antpool dominating, ongoing efforts like open-source tools and alternative models point toward greater resilience. Ultimately, Bitcoin was not built to rival Visa but to be unkillable, its strength lies in decentralization, energy use, and the permissionless incentives that make it impossible to hack.

Best Quotes
-----------

“All Bitcoin that exists has come into existence through mining.”

“Bitcoin wasn’t designed to compete with Visa. It was designed to be unkillable.”

“It needs to be hard to make money… there has to be a cost associated with producing the money.”

“Bitcoin demands that you use real energy in the real world if you want to participate.”

“Energy is often a liability. For producers, Bitcoin is a buyer of last resort.”

“You don’t have to understand Bitcoin to mine it, but if you don’t, you risk killing the golden goose.”

“The economies of scale in Bitcoin mining don’t come from hashing, they come from energy strategy and efficiency.”

“Two pools controlling over 60% of the network is essentially two nodes running 60% of the network.”

“Maybe the golden age of mining pools is behind us.”

“Bitcoin’s design works because it enforces discipline through energy, creating a permissionless, censorship-resistant system no one can hack.”

Conclusion
----------

The episode makes clear that Bitcoin’s resilience comes from its grounding in physics: miners must expend electricity to secure the network, tying digital scarcity to real-world cost. This design ensures integrity, censorship resistance, and long-term survival, even as challenges of centralization persist. Far from wasteful, Bitcoin transforms excess and stranded energy into economic value while enabling new innovations like heat reuse. By aligning incentives through proof-of-work, Bitcoin remains fundamentally unkillable, a system where energy and decentralization make hacking impossible.

Timestamps
----------

0:00 - Rob's Background at Bitcoin Park
03:01 - Core Functions of Bitcoin Mining
05:19 - Why Energy Consumption Secures Bitcoin
10:16 - How Bitcoin Mining Machines Work
18:03 - Proof-of-Work vs Proof-of-Stake
25:35 - Permissionless Mining & Economic Incentives
31:16 - Energy as Liability, Miners as Solution
38:51 - Optimal Energy Sources for Mining
49:15 - Machine Efficiency & Depreciation Economics
53:38 - Economies of Scale in Bitcoin Mining
58:07 - Energy Efficiency Hardware Improvements
1:04:57 - Hardware Manufacturing Centralization Risks
1:11:07 - Pool Mining Centralization Risks
1:34:40 - Miners' Role in Promoting Decentralization
1:40:49 - Expert Recommendations for Further Learning

Transcript
----------

(00:05) Rob, welcome back to Bitcoin Park. It's good to be here again. Last time was the uh Texas Energy and Mining Summit. Well, feels like yesterday, but it does now now a couple months in the past. Yeah. And uh so we're joined today by Rob Warren, who is the head of research and education at Bitcoin Park. Talk a little bit about that role. Yeah.
(00:29) So, I I've worked predominantly in the mining industry and have have been really deep in really kind of generally the research and education side of things just cuz we've all been figuring stuff out in public as things do in Bitcoin and jumped on with Bitcoin Park essentially is the the the broadhead of research and education which gives me the opportunity to do exactly um exactly what I'm doing but in the context of now the whole Bitcoin space, which is fantastic because it's not just exposure to mining, but it's also introductions to folks that are, you know, working on the human rights side of Bitcoin, who are working on the
(01:05) technical side of Bitcoin, the payments, the custodies. So, it's it's really kind of a a whole new aspect of uh of work that's opened up, which I love. And in addition to work at Bitcoin Park, which were now members of the organization. That's right. Here in Austin, uh, happy members.
(01:30) You also wrote a book, The Bitcoin Miners Almanac. That's right. Yeah. And in my view, you know, we're friends, but also just in the discussions that we've had, you um have a well-rounded perspective of granularly, you know, how a Bitcoin mine works, what the inputs are, Bitcoin at its broadest sense as a money network, and um the combination of those for these early episodes of this podcast.
(01:59) you know, you were one of the one, two, and three people on my list to to record the first episodes to kind of lay some groundwork of not just going into Bitcoin mining 101, but painting a broad structure of the critical aspects of um how Bitcoin mining works, the energy components of it, why it's important to the system.
(02:24) And today I want to kind of dive deeper into the the energy side of what is actually happening, you know, in terms of why the energy is important to Bitcoin. Also some points around centralization. But before we get into those kind of deeper points, I want to hear you articulate because we've had conversations in the past about how there's there's bad analogies of what Bitcoin mining is or isn't. Mhm.
(02:53) One of which is that Bitcoin mining is a is a battery or Bitcoin's a battery. Um whether it's proof of power, but but just talk a little bit about, you know, from your perspective, the function of mining to the Bitcoin network and why it's important and what it is. Sure. Sure. Well, I mean, as as most things are, it's always good to go back to the source document and kind of understand how things were understood at the earliest days of Bitcoin. So functionally, Bitcoin mining does two things.
(03:23) It allows for the issuance of new Bitcoin. That that to us is called the block reward. So approximately every 10 minutes a block is found. You find a block, you are rewarded with something. You're rewarded with Bitcoin. That is a way to get Bitcoin into the world. You need a way to essentially distribute Bitcoin so that people can then have some utility.
(03:46) they can whether that's holding or spending or whatever they do with it. All Bitcoin that exists has come into existence through mining. The next thing that you need to do is you need to be able to transact with the asset. So you need to be able to actually send it to people and that's the second part of Bitcoin mining which is settlement.
(04:05) So, it's the ability to actually submit a signed transaction to the memp pool, have it included in a block, which then the miners are given a small reward for, which is the the fee that you pay to transact on the Bitcoin network. And fundamentally, that's the two things that Bitcoin mining does from a from an operational from a functional perspective in uh in Bitcoin.
(04:24) And it's where we stand today is really worlds apart from where we were in the days of the white paper. And it's almost unrecognizable to look at Bitcoin as of 2025 and try to compare it to what it was in in the earliest days, the 20 odds, right? For one, the biggest difference is that when we talk about what a node is, Satoshi refers to a node as a node that is actually doing mining. And where we stand today, functionally, that's extremely rare.
(04:59) Now, it's it's coming back and I'm sure we'll we'll hit on this when we talk about the decentralization point. But it's interesting how you you can learn a lot about the present by actually going to the original source documents, the white paper, and then understanding, okay, well, what's different and what's the same and how do we hold true to what was actually, you know, given to us in the white paper to make sure that we're really we're really um appropriately stewarding this thing, this Bitcoin thing as we build on it in the future.
(05:24) And so what is it about the mining function and specifically energy that you view or why is it critical to the system? Like why is this function critical to? So if they're if they're doing if if Bitcoin miners are functionally doing two things, validating currency transactions and validating the fixed supply of the currency, why and how is the mining function critical to that? But at a lower level, what is the function of energy and energy consumption within there? That's such a big question.
(06:06) It's such a big question and it's really interesting because when you when you look at the earliest conversations on something like the the Bitcoin talk forums where a lot of folks who are household names in Bitcoin are trying to figure out what is the extension or what is the natural growth path of Bitcoin.
(06:33) There are only very small glimpses into what the future of the mining sector would look like. There are some references to when I run my computer, it heats up my room. Um, there's references to the noise, you know, how how noisy your computer gets if you happen to be running your Bitcoin client and and it's mining and your computer is now wrapped up operating at 100% all the time.
(06:52) Um, but it was I'd argue that it's not really something that we have a fully fleshed out theory of. It's something that we're actually living through the history of right now. And fundamentally it all reduces to this this truth which is that to win a b


The company introduces a modular mining system and open source management software. The post Block presents Proto Rig and Proto Fleet: new mining solutions appeared first on Atlas21.

_**The company introduces a modular mining system and open source management software.**_
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Proto**, a division of Block, Inc. led by Jack Dorsey, has announced the launch of two new products for the bitcoin mining sector: **Proto Rig**, a modular mining system, and **Proto Fleet**, free and open source management software. The presentation took place at **Core Scientific**‘s facility in Dalton, Georgia, where some Proto Rig devices are already operational.

Proto Rig differentiates itself from traditional mining hardware through a modular design that focuses on **durability** and **repairability**. Unlike classic miners, this system allows operators to replace individual hashboards without having to change the entire unit, the company stated.

![](https://i0.wp.com/atlas21.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/69.jpg?resize=693%2C473&ssl=1)

According to Block, this feature could extend hardware lifespan from 3-5 years to 10 years, with an estimated cost reduction of **15-20%** for each upgrade cycle. The system is designed to allow on-site repairs without the use of specialized tools, the company declared.

**Thomas Templeton**, Block’s hardware lead, explained:

> > “Machines break often, are hard to repair, expensive and time-consuming to upgrade, and don’t make the most efficient use of power or space. With Proto Rig, we set out to change all of that–and contribute to hardware decentralization in the process.”

From a performance standpoint, Proto Rig offers energy efficiency of **14.1 J/TH** and a hashrate of **819 TH/s**.

![](https://i0.wp.com/atlas21.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/unnamed.jpg?resize=560%2C324&ssl=1)

### **Proto Fleet: management software**

Alongside the hardware, Proto presented **Proto Fleet**, a free software platform for managing mining operations. The software integrates **monitoring**, **diagnostic**, and **maintenance** functions into a single interface. Proto Rig and Proto Fleet will offer **Stratum V2** support from launch.

Proto Fleet is distributed as open source software, making it accessible to operators of any size in the sector.

The post [Block presents Proto Rig and Proto Fleet: new mining solutions](https://atlas21.com/block-presents-proto-rig-and-proto-fleet-new-mining-solutions/) appeared first on [Atlas21](https://atlas21.com).


Alive and kicking


Less GEOHASH and more NEOSMASH