Bitcoin Magazine 200 Days of the Bitcoin President — Is Donald Trump’s Second Term Cause for Celebration or Concern? Donald Trump has held office as the 47th president of the United States since January 20, 2025. At a little over 200 days, it seems a good time to recap where the “Bitcoin President” has paved the way to make the United States the proclaimed “crypto capital of the world,” and where we will go from here. First, under Trump’s second presidency, many prominent industry actors have seen favorable outcomes to the legal troubles they had faced under previous administrations. Terra/Luna founder Do Kwon reached a plea agreement with the Department of Justice, finding him guilty of just two of the total nine charges for losing investors over $40 billion over the course of days. The second circuit overturned the conviction of former OpenSea product manager Nathan Chastain for insider trading. The SEC dropped its cases against the cryptocurrency exchanges Gemini and Coinbase, paused its lawsuit against Binance and reportedly ended its investigations into Consensys, Robinhood, and Uniswap. Meanwhile, Tron founder Justin Sun, who didn’t just face charges by the SEC over offering unregistered securities but was reportedly also subject to a DOJ investigation, now dines with the president. On the regulatory side, things are also looking up, with everybody and their mother announcing plans to issue stablecoins, from Ripple to the state of Wyoming, thanks to the only legislature that has so far made it into law: the so-called GENIUS Act. And while we still have no idea how much bitcoin the U.S. Government holds, as 200-plus days are apparently not enough to round up a comprehensive audit, the cheer for the bitcoin strategic reserve continues — except that the government appears to have no plans to actually buy the bitcoin, but will rather pivot to seizing it from, well, you. Everybody Is A Money Transmitter What’s most notable is that each one of the aforementioned industry players relies heavily on the development of open source technologies. Without open source, not a single one of the mentioned platforms would have anything to trade, let alone to build. And for the developers of open source technologies, the president’s plans seem more than grim. In July, Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill pleaded guilty to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, facing up to five years in federal prison. A week later, Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm was found guilty by a jury in the Southern District of New York of the same offense. Both prosecutions proceeded despite a memo issued by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in April, which was widely celebrated to put an end to the DOJ’s attempts to make new laws through prosecutions explicitly calling on the DOJ to no longer charge developers of software for the actions of their users. While widely celebrated, the memo left so much room to continue exactly such prosecutions that it was about as reliable as the Trump administration’s promises to release the Epstein list. Regulatory clarity for developers has since been at an all-time low. According to the outcomes in Samourai Wallet and Tornado Cash, noncustodial software developers may no longer be charged for not having a money transmission license, but they may be charged for the transmission of illicit proceeds. So, are noncustodial software developers money transmitters that could face criminal charges in the U.S.? Your guess is as good as mine. What’s clear is that the verdict against Roman Storm has set a so-called persuasive precedent, meaning that anyone building non-custodial tools could be charged with a federal offense at the DOJ’s discretion. Bringing the PATRIOT Act to Digital Assets In terms of digital asset legislation, the last months have also been turbulent. While the GENIUS Act was much anticipated — though arguably more so by those who wear suits and those who pay for them — it also opened the door to the application of the Bank Secrecy Act, a law that mandates anti-money laundering and KYC requirements. While the GENIUS Act officially codifies certain rules for stablecoin issuers as financial institutions, the Treasury has since requested public comment on the application of digital identities to so-called DeFi services in relation to the GENIUS Act that would require non-custodial service providers to check a user’s identity credentials before executing transactions. Overall, the Treasury’s idea is that it’s acting in accordance with one of Trump’s first executive orders on Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology, which aims to promote the “responsible growth and use of digital assets, blockchain technology, and related technologies” — keyword being “responsible.” What is meant by such “responsible” growth was finally revealed in the first White House Digital Assets Report last month, tasking Congress to create new sub-categories in the Bank Secrecy Act for digital assets, as well as asking FinCEN to consider next steps in the Biden-era mixer rule: This regulation that would outlaw pretty much any chance at transactional privacy, including the use of new, non-KYC addresses. If this may sound unconstitutional to you — since, you know, code is speech in this country — I regret to inform you that where we are going, we won’t need a Constitution. The majority of ideas floated by the president are governed under the PATRIOT Act, which the White House has asked Congress to specifically expand to digital assets — and the PATRIOT Act trumps the Constitution every time, pun very much intended. In short, the Bitcoin Presidency may sound great on paper, but in reality, the environment to develop code in the U.S. has never been more hostile. The Trump administration must drastically change course if it aims to actually fulfill its promises to Bitcoin users. Until then, it seems we would be well advised to issue caution when the government invites us to “come home” to build our services in the crypto capital of the world, as you may only get to see it from the inside of a prison cell. This post 200 Days of the Bitcoin President — Is Donald Trump’s Second Term Cause for Celebration or Concern? first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by L0La L33Tz.

[Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com)
![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Trump-legal-L0la-Bitcoin-sitting-at-the-Resolute-Desk-wearing-sunglasses.webp)
[200 Days of the Bitcoin President — Is Donald Trump’s Second Term Cause for Celebration or Concern?](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/legal/recapping-200-days-trump-president)

Donald Trump has held office as the 47th president of the United States since January 20, 2025. At a little over 200 days, it seems a good time to recap where the “Bitcoin President” has paved the way to make the United States the proclaimed “[crypto capital of the world](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UxAUryUKXM),” and where we will go from here.

First, under Trump’s second presidency, many prominent industry actors have seen favorable outcomes to the legal troubles they had faced under previous administrations.

Terra/Luna founder Do Kwon reached a plea agreement with the Department of Justice, finding him guilty of just two of the total nine charges for losing investors over $40 billion over the course of days. The second circuit overturned the conviction of former OpenSea product manager Nathan Chastain for insider trading. The SEC dropped its cases against the cryptocurrency exchanges Gemini and Coinbase, [paused its lawsuit](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26316&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1756062107444039&usg=AOvVaw3BRC3y23VbA8yRH4PIK7bT) against Binance and [reportedly](https://www.wired.com/story/sec-is-giving-up-biggest-crypto-lawsuits/) ended its investigations into Consensys, Robinhood, and Uniswap.

Meanwhile, Tron founder Justin Sun, who didn’t just face charges by the SEC over offering unregistered securities but was [reportedly](https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/justin-sun-trump-crypto-dinner-7efd5367) also subject to a DOJ investigation, now [dines](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/us/politics/trump-crypto-dinner-attendees.html) with the president.

On the regulatory side, things are also looking up, with everybody and their mother announcing plans to issue stablecoins, from Ripple to the state of Wyoming, thanks to the only legislature that has so far made it into law: the so-called [GENIUS Act](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/u-s-house-passes-the-genius-and-anti-cbdc-act). And while we still have no idea how much bitcoin the U.S. Government holds, as 200-plus days are apparently not enough to round up a comprehensive audit, the cheer for the [bitcoin strategic reserve](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/glossary/strategic-bitcoin-reserve) continues — except that the government appears to have no plans to actually buy the bitcoin, but will rather pivot to seizing it from, well, you.

Everybody Is A Money Transmitter
--------------------------------

What’s most notable is that each one of the aforementioned industry players relies heavily on the development of open source technologies. Without open source, not a single one of the mentioned platforms would have anything to trade, let alone to build. And for the developers of open source technologies, the president’s plans seem more than grim.

In July, Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill pleaded guilty to conspiracy to [operate an unlicensed money transmitting business](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/founders-samourai-wallet-cryptocurrency-mixing-service-plead-guilty), facing up to five years in federal prison. A week later, Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm was [found guilty](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/tornado-cash-trial-concludes-roman-storm-found-guilty-of-one-of-three-counts) by a jury in the Southern District of New York of the same offense.

Both prosecutions proceeded despite a [memo issued](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/legal/crypto-privacy-legalized-tornado-cash-and-samourai-cases-suggest-uncertainty-remains) by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in April, which was widely celebrated to put an end to the DOJ’s attempts to make new laws through prosecutions explicitly calling on the DOJ to no longer charge developers of software for the actions of their users. While widely celebrated, the memo left so much room to continue exactly such prosecutions that it was about as reliable as the Trump administration’s promises to release the Epstein list.

Regulatory clarity for developers has since been at an all-time low. According to the outcomes in Samourai Wallet and Tornado Cash, noncustodial software developers may no longer be charged for not having a money transmission license, but they _may_ be charged for the transmission of illicit proceeds. So, are noncustodial software developers money transmitters that could face criminal charges in the U.S.? Your guess is as good as mine.

What’s clear is that the verdict against Roman Storm has set a so-called persuasive precedent, meaning that anyone building non-custodial tools could be charged with a federal offense at the DOJ’s discretion.

Bringing the PATRIOT Act to Digital Assets
------------------------------------------

In terms of digital asset legislation, the last months have also been turbulent. While the GENIUS Act was much anticipated — though arguably more so by those who wear suits and those who pay for them — it also opened the door to the application of the Bank Secrecy Act, a law that mandates anti-money laundering and KYC requirements.

While the GENIUS Act officially codifies certain rules for stablecoin issuers as financial institutions, the Treasury has since requested public comment on the application of digital identities to so-called DeFi services in relation to the GENIUS Act that would require non-custodial service providers to check a user’s identity credentials before executing transactions.

Overall, the Treasury’s idea is that it’s acting in accordance with one of Trump’s first executive orders on [Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/strengthening-american-leadership-in-digital-financial-technology/), which aims to promote the “responsible growth and use of digital assets, blockchain technology, and related technologies” — keyword being “responsible.”

What is meant by such “responsible” growth was [finally revealed](https://www.therage.co/white-house-digital-assets-report-financial-privacy-primary-money-laundering/) in the first White House Digital Assets Report last month, tasking Congress to create new sub-categories in the Bank Secrecy Act for digital assets, as well as asking FinCEN to consider next steps in the Biden-era mixer rule: This regulation that would outlaw pretty much any chance at transactional privacy, including the use of new, non-KYC addresses.

If this may sound unconstitutional to you — since, you know, [code is speech](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech) in this country — I regret to inform you that where we are going, we won’t need a Constitution. The majority of ideas floated by the president are governed under the PATRIOT Act, which the White House has asked Congress to specifically expand to digital assets — and the PATRIOT Act trumps the Constitution every time, pun very much intended.

In short, the Bitcoin Presidency may sound great on paper, but in reality, the environment to develop code in the U.S. has never been more hostile. The Trump administration must drastically change course if it aims to actually fulfill its promises to Bitcoin users.

Until then, it seems we would be well advised to issue caution when the government invites us to “come home” to build our services in the crypto capital of the world, as you may only get to see it from the inside of a prison cell.

This post [200 Days of the Bitcoin President — Is Donald Trump’s Second Term Cause for Celebration or Concern?](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/legal/recapping-200-days-trump-president) first appeared on [Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com) and is written by [L0La L33Tz](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/authors/l0la-l33tz).


Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Price Drops Again — And Nope, It’s Still Not Because of the Fed ..aaaand, we’re back at it again — a misbehaving bitcoin price. Sunday evening bitcoin flash-crash dipped a red candle the size of Jupiter; and more eerily, it kept dropping down on Monday morning, touching below $111,000. Now, around here in the land of bitcoin price therapy, we say that nobody knows why prices move. But sometimes, we do… though not as well as we would like. Today, I discuss two things: the last 24 hours’ worth of shenanigans and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s remarks late last week. An Unruly Bitcoin Price Late Sunday (European time) was pretty disgusting: It’s hard to say “nobody knows” when a chart looks like that; somebody knows what happened to plunge the bitcoin price some 3,000 in a matter of minutes. If it’s not a specific macro event, like last week, the only thing eating through order books like this are a) massive orders, and — what amounts to the same thing — b) mass liquidations. Yesterday, there was some indication of both: Quien de ustedes fue? pic.twitter.com/lizlwaDFPD — Nico ₿丰 (@bourbonni) August 24, 2025 or… 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 This is an underdeveloped market, and it’s ridiculous how small we are and how illiquid the bitcoin market is: still able to get wacked around by individual market actors. (As always in Bitcoinland, there is some schmuck willing to turn a verifiably bad thing into a good thing.) The 2.5% instant drop in bitcoin price last night might be a one-off due to a whale selling or some liquidations, but the gradual, diagonally down movement during the night and Monday morning (bitcoin price crashing below $111,000) is much more worrying. Ignore the big, noisy whale… wth is happening? Why are we slowly dying when we should be winning, son! All the macro arrows of the world are pointing in the right direction: Why is the bitcoin price trading down, in this range, when any sane assessment puts it double or triple from here…? (And no, we didn’t drop below $111,000 as or because or in relation whatsoever to Metaplanet announcing buys). Price does whatever it wants; shitcos do whatever they please. Bitcoin price therapy definitely needed: Bitcoin price just does whatever it wants, with no regard for sanity or rational assessment. Not a care in the world for the most bullish of bullish circumstances. Maximum pain, I’ve heard it said. Not even Saylor’s million-dollar-cost averaging made much of a dent: Strategy has acquired 3,081 BTC for ~$356.9 million at ~$115,829 per bitcoin and has achieved BTC Yield of 25.4% YTD 2025. As of 8/24/2025, we hodl 632,457 $BTC acquired for ~$46.50 billion at ~$73,527 per bitcoin. $MSTR $STRC $STRK $STRF $STRD https://t.co/KCrM0ffClo — Michael Saylor (@saylor) August 25, 2025 One of these magic tea leaves reading techniques (128-day moving average), tells us our Bitcoin Magazine Pro team today, is at $108,500… so we’ll probably go there. Saylor et al have already sold their kidneys and chairs, so I wonder what’s left. More interesting/terrifying is that it keeps falling afterwards, hitting new lows. Our most scoop-like explanation is that all of these shitcos — of which Mr. Bailey, the owner of BTC Inc, runs one, having recently incinerated some $41 million — gobbling up all these coins during the spring couldn’t hold on to them and are now burping them back out again; some, in liquidation-infested red candles, and others in slow, grindy, time-weighted price. A certain Cypherpunk OG seems aware of the structure: have they not heard of TWAPs? do they not like money? such clumsy market activity. normally people with that kind of money would be smarter. — Adam Back (@adam3us) August 25, 2025 Bitcoin Price and Powell’s Bowel Sometimes we actually (sort of) do know what happened in markets — like last week, Aug 22, at 10 am Eastern: Released on Fed website was the statement/upgrade to Fed’s monetary policy framework. It was widely interpreted as future easing of monetary policy in the cards. How do we know this? Because every (hard) asset jump on the minute, and the dollar index fell: 9:59:49…bitcoin price = $112,393, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro’s chart. 10:00:49, one minute later, it’s 113459… a few minutes after that, we hit 115,000, bitcoin price rising 2.3% on the news. This is the kind of shit that moves markets, and the instant, large moves make us pretty confident that THIS is the cause. (for reference: 9.59, DXY = 98.7; two minutes later, 98.15; another minute, 97.8. That’s 1%, in a blink… That’s a big move for the DXY!) Now we’ve located the source — Powell’s speech and/or the release of the statement. Which bit of his statement is what shocked markets so? What happens on releases like this — or inflation numbers or unemployment by BLS — is that simple trading algorithms scrape the websites for instant updates and make a split-second assessment, often with second-order trading effects following. The move itself often get reversed ten, twenty, thirty minutes later when human and intelligent assessment have gotten involved. It was all a nothingburger, after all. That wasn’t the case this time, as the bitcoin price traded high over the weekend (until someone ruined the fun on Sunday…). Powell’s statements last week revealed that inflation is a little elevated, but under control and coming down GDP growth had slowed markedly unemployment was steady and balanced (but “a curious kind of balance” where both supply and demand fall together) → risks altogether up. …and they’ll scrap this entire mistaken idea of average inflation target (over some time period nobody ever specified). “In the near term, risks to inflation are tilted to the upside, and risks to employment to the downside — a challenging situation” Yet Powell concluded that those risks “may warrant adjusting our policy stance.” Powell confirms the Fed is abandoning its 2% average inflation target. pic.twitter.com/7J2W3cNyHL — TFTC (@TFTC21) August 22, 2025 In the minutes and hours after the speech and the release of the statement, bitcoin price peaked at $117,000, before falling back to $116,000; that’s market participants dissecting and assessing, organically, what this new state means. Here’s where my “Nobody knows why” take still holds: Nobody knows which part of Powell’s statement mattered, since new information is always mixing and merging with the expectation market participants had going in — and we can only rarely tell what those were. What we’re doing when we’re playing these catch-up, ad hoc, after-the-case explanations is playing post-rationalization games. Not that impressive. Altogether pathetic. We need Bitcoiners rich and flourishing, not impoverished and distraught. Bitcoin price therapy out. See you all in Hong Kong for Bitcoin Asia. This post Bitcoin Price Drops Again — And Nope, It’s Still Not Because of the Fed first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Joakim Book.

[Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com)
![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Bitcoin-price-up-cartoon-ish.png)
[Bitcoin Price Drops Again — And Nope, It’s Still Not Because of the Fed](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/bitcoin-price-drops-again-and-nope-its-still-not-because-of-the-fed)

..aaaand, we’re back at it again — a misbehaving [bitcoin price](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-price). Sunday evening bitcoin flash-crash dipped a red candle the size of Jupiter; and more eerily, it kept dropping down on Monday morning, touching below $111,000.

Now, around here in the land of bitcoin price therapy, we say that [nobody knows why prices](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/bitcoin-price-falls-nobody-knows-why) move. But _sometimes_, we do… though not as well as we would like. Today, I discuss two things: the last 24 hours’ worth of shenanigans and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s remarks late last week.

An Unruly Bitcoin Price
-----------------------

Late Sunday (European time) was pretty disgusting:

![bitcoin price flash-crash Sunday Aug 24](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AD_4nXd35hrDk7UmnY8Uh3gEgWUyZtDClrST-huibIaGSRFaRWpvuOYxlZDOxHkOLpyqNMKBcZr86iYoglxjI_FpJOrbDgfR_nIx3H5Z6exDm34ts_aleWSm6ZFvIy9ANRj5oS5TzgUkuAkeyAbzPohwnoS-CUSOq_gx4g.png "Bitcoin Price Drops Again — And Nope, It’s Still Not Because of the Fed 15")

It’s hard to say “nobody knows” when a chart looks like that; _somebody_ knows what happened to plunge the bitcoin price some 3,000 in a matter of minutes. If it’s not a [specific macro event](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/takes/jerome-powell-blinks-at-jackson-hole-bitcoin-rips-higher-as-fed-signals-dovish-shift), like last week, the only thing eating through order books like this are a) _massive_ orders, and — what amounts to the same thing — b) _mass_ liquidations.

Yesterday, there was some indication of both:

> Quien de ustedes fue? [pic.twitter.com/lizlwaDFPD](https://t.co/lizlwaDFPD)
>
> — Nico ₿![⚡](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/26a1.png)丰![🧉](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f9c9.png)![🇦🇷](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f1e6-1f1f7.png) ![🤙](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f919.png)![💜](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f49c.png) (@bourbonni) [August 24, 2025](https://twitter.com/bourbonni/status/1959708941925138831?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

or…

> 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)

This is an underdeveloped market, and it’s ridiculous how small we are and how illiquid the bitcoin market is: _still_ able to get wacked around by individual market actors. (As always in Bitcoinland, there is some schmuck [willing to turn](https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsqwmupnef36e6predd6fp5ekacvl3u9jl7ap8a44lj9qr3r8kgmkcu7c3j0) a verifiably _bad_ thing into a _good_ thing.)

The 2.5% instant drop in bitcoin price last night might be a one-off due to a whale selling or some liquidations, but the gradual, diagonally down movement during the night and Monday morning (bitcoin price crashing below $111,000) is much more worrying. Ignore the big, noisy whale… _wth is happening? Why are we slowly dying_ _when we should be winning, son!_

All the macro arrows of the world are pointing in the right direction: Why is the bitcoin price trading _down_, in _this_ range, when any sane assessment puts it double or triple from here…? (And no, we _didn’t_ drop below $111,000 _as_ or _because_ or in relation [whatsoever to Metaplanet announcing buys](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/bitcoin-price-drops-below-112000-as-metaplanet-announces-to-buy-11-7m-worth-of-bitcoin)).

Price does whatever it wants; shitcos do whatever they please.

Bitcoin price therapy _definitely_ needed: Bitcoin price just does whatever it wants, with no regard for sanity or rational assessment. Not a care in the world for the most bullish of bullish circumstances. **Maximum pain, I’ve heard it said**. Not even Saylor’s million-dollar-cost averaging made much of a dent:

> Strategy has acquired 3,081 BTC for ~$356.9 million at ~$115,829 per bitcoin and has achieved BTC Yield of 25.4% YTD 2025. As of 8/24/2025, we hodl 632,457 [$BTC](https://twitter.com/search?q=%24BTC&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) acquired for ~$46.50 billion at ~$73,527 per bitcoin. [$MSTR](https://twitter.com/search?q=%24MSTR&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [$STRC](https://twitter.com/search?q=%24STRC&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [$STRK](https://twitter.com/search?q=%24STRK&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [$STRF](https://twitter.com/search?q=%24STRF&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [$STRD](https://twitter.com/search?q=%24STRD&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [https://t.co/KCrM0ffClo](https://t.co/KCrM0ffClo)
>
> — Michael Saylor (@saylor) [August 25, 2025](https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1959949666482561098?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

One of these magic tea leaves reading techniques (128-day moving average), tells us our [Bitcoin Magazine Pro team](https://bmpro.substack.com/p/will-falling-rates-spark-bitcoins) today, is at $108,500… so we’ll probably go there. [Saylor et al](https://www.strategy.com/press/strategy-acquires-3081-btc-and-now-holds-632457-btc_08-25-2025) have already sold their kidneys and chairs, so I wonder what’s left.

More interesting/terrifying is that it keeps falling afterwards, hitting new lows. Our most scoop-like explanation is that all of these shitcos — of which Mr. Bailey, the owner of BTC Inc, runs one, having recently incinerated some $41 million — gobbling up all these coins during the spring couldn’t hold on to them and are now burping them back out again; some, in liquidation-infested red candles, and others in slow, grindy, time-weighted price.

A certain Cypherpunk OG seems aware of the structure:

> have they not heard of TWAPs? do they not like money? such clumsy market activity. normally people with that kind of money would be smarter.
>
> — Adam Back (@adam3us) [August 25, 2025](https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/1959803871506620669?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

Bitcoin Price and Powell’s Bowel
--------------------------------

Sometimes we actually (sort of) _do_ know what happened in markets — like last week, Aug 22, at 10 am Eastern: Released on Fed website was the statement/upgrade to Fed’s [monetary policy framework](https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/why-is-the-fed-revising-its-framework/). It was widely interpreted as future easing of monetary policy in the cards. _How_ do we know this? Because every (hard) asset jump on the minute, and the dollar index _fell_:

*   9:59:49…bitcoin price = $112,393, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro’s chart.
*   10:00:49, one minute later, it’s 113459…
*   a few minutes after that, we hit 115,000, bitcoin price rising 2.3% on the news.

This is the kind of shit that moves markets, and the _instant_, large moves make us pretty confident that THIS is the cause.

![bitcoin price, Bitcoin Magazine Pro chart](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AD_4nXd5xaBX97gbdsI_Tfgxj0hAO-9xS53AhyqznQfnG6kUxz5j08kYuJd8f3uYzDpEVnzB2xrAXH2gwf2km3bOdgjm4GvWukobZbTnvB_WBcqGaAH8XkgGu8x9p960A6jHlOFasevdkeyAbzPohwnoS-CUSOq_gx4g.png "Bitcoin Price Drops Again — And Nope, It’s Still Not Because of the Fed 16")

(for reference: 9.59, DXY = 98.7; two minutes later, 98.15; another minute, 97.8. That’s 1%, in a blink… That’s a big move for the DXY!)

Now we’ve located the source — Powell’s speech and/or the release of the statement. _Which_ bit of his statement is what shocked markets so?

What happens on releases like this — or inflation numbers or unemployment by BLS — is that simple trading algorithms scrape the websites for instant updates and make a split-second assessment, often with second-order trading effects following. The move itself often get reversed ten, twenty, thirty minutes later when human and intelligent assessment have gotten involved. _It was all a nothingburger, after all._ That wasn’t the case this time, as the bitcoin price traded high over the weekend (until someone ruined the fun on Sunday…).

Powell’s statements last week revealed that

*   inflation is a little elevated, but under control and coming down
*   GDP growth had slowed markedly
*   unemployment was steady and balanced (but “a curious kind of balance” where both supply and demand fall together) → risks altogether up.
*   …and they’ll scrap this entire mistaken idea of _average_ inflation target (over some time period nobody ever specified).

> “In the near term, risks to inflation are tilted to the upside, and risks to employment to the downside — a challenging situation”

Yet Powell concluded that those risks “may warrant adjusting our policy stance.”

> Powell confirms the Fed is abandoning its 2% average inflation target. [pic.twitter.com/7J2W3cNyHL](https://t.co/7J2W3cNyHL)
>
> — TFTC (@TFTC21) [August 22, 2025](https://twitter.com/TFTC21/status/1958918130518171765?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

In the minutes and hours after the speech and the release of the statement, bitcoin price peaked at $117,000, before falling back to $116,000; that’s market participants dissecting and assessing, organically, what this new state means.

Here’s where my “Nobody knows why” take _still_ holds: Nobody knows _which part_ of Powell’s statement mattered, since new information is always mixing and merging with the _expectation_ market participants had going in — and we can only rarely tell what those were. What we’re doing when we’re playing these catch-up, ad hoc, after-the-case explanations is playing [post-ration


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


Bitcoin Magazine An Excerpt From Bitcoin Circular Economies: The Beginning When people picture a tropical beach with volcanic sands, warm waters and dreamy surfing waves, they are describing El Zonte, in El Salvador. It’s hard to think that this natural paradise was once the battleground of Latin America’s most savage and violent gangs for decades. According to a UNICEF report, the homicide rate in 2015 was 103 per 100,000 inhabitants. The result was thousands of children orphaned and vulnerable to be recruited by the drug cartels, where the only option for a better life seemed to be to migrate to the United States. Chimbera was born in the community of El Zonte, where opportunities were divided by a road which separated the beach from the mountains. “In the past if you were born on the beach, you were a fisherman, like my father and grandfather. If you were born in the mountains, you were a farmer; while women were mainly housewives. The only hope for a better future for young people was to emigrate to the United States or Canada. We learned with sadness that the opportunities were there, the land of freedom where dreams supposedly came true. Paradoxically, these words come from a smiling face. It is very easy to fall in love with Román Martínez’s smile; known as “Chimbera” to his closest friends and family. His contagious joy comes from someone who knows in depth the darkest sides a society can fall into. His smile tells a story of collective overcoming, where a group of people believed that a better future was possible and, without expectations but with tireless determination, transformed a fishing village in one of the poorest and most violent countries in the world into a hub of technological innovation and human development. Something unusual in modern history. Chimbera looks to the sky before continuing to reflect on dreams. “We believe in God and in the law of attraction of different things, but it is fundamental to believe in something that moves you to commit and work every day for that dream. In the beginning, the dream was to help kids have more opportunities in the community, keep them out of delinquency and get them to start dreaming.” The problem, Román highlights, is that many times they tell you “fight for your dreams” but they don’t give you the tools or the knowledge to be able to achieve them. “That’s how our dream began: Jorge meeting with the children on the street, supporting them and inspiring them to dream of a better future. It’s hard not to get emotional with Jorge Valenzuela as he tearfully explains why they decided to create Hope House. “We sought to give these children the opportunities that our friends didn’t have and the reason why many of them are no longer here with us.” Like most of the residents of El Zonte, he too has a story to tell. Some twenty years ago, Jorge made his living from farming. He had a heart for surfing and the waves, but the sad reality around him forced him to keep his feet on the ground. At that time, the job market only offered two options: to become a gang member or to be hired as private security on a property. The sad and violent reality of those years presented a dead end. “There was a lack of employment, educational and personal development opportunities in general. Faced with this, many sought to emigrate and look for them elsewhere,” Jorge explains clearly. During those years, in the mornings, when the sun began to peek over the mountains, Jorge knew what he wanted to do. He would take his board and go down to the black sand beach. There, on his back, with his board stuck in the sand and his eyes on the horizon, Hirvin was waiting for him. Together they learned to read the sea, to feel the direction of the wind. They used to warn strangers about the treacherous currents that dragged the unsuspecting out to sea, and over time they began to pass on their knowledge of the sea and surfing to the youngest members of the community. Patience is the greatest virtue of surfers, for those who know how to wait are the ones who manage to ride the perfect wave. Both spent their afternoons sitting on their boards, looking for the best strategy to get ahead, to help their community. It was there, floating in the sea, where Hirvin and Jorge identified an area with enormous potential. “We took tourism as a main tool, as a window that would connect us with other countries, to whom we could show the beauty of our land and invite them to visit our community”. They were confident that they could generate new jobs in the town. “I was a surf instructor at the time and I felt that this sport would be fundamental for everything that happened later in El Zonte,” says Jorge. No one could have imagined that on that beach, surrounded by humble houses and dirt roads, the world’s first Bitcoin circular economy would emerge. Soon, Jorge and Hirvin’s paths would cross with the person who would change their lives. “For some twist of fate, people like Mike, Melissa, Carlos and Alex decided to move to El Zonte and dedicate their time and effort to help our community,” recalls Jorge. The beach and surfing were their rallying point. “We were kids, I remember they started teaching us English, they put us in contact with the tourists that were arriving, and that cultural exchange was what began to change our minds. This allowed us to dream, something we were not used to in El Zonte. They showed us that, no matter the circumstances, if we have dreams and commit to them, things can change.” Jorge evokes the figure of Mike Peterson and, in a moment, he realizes that his life could have been very different if he had not met him. With Mike’s incorporation into the project, they began to systematize the community work on the beach. The idea was simple: create opportunities and hope for young people. Empower them as leaders and give them the necessary tools so that they do not have to emigrate or get involved in gangs. Fill the “children’s love tank,” as Jorge defines it in his own words. “When we were little they taught us some words in English, they helped us to read and write better, but it was when my daughter, who is 17 today, was born that I understood that we had been children with an empty love tank.” A community where children grew up without parents or older siblings present to give them love, support and an example to follow. “We all have a tank, it can be empty or it can be filled with love and hope. That’s what the kids in our community needed.” Mike wasn’t just a blue-eyed gringo who came to El Zonte and fell in love with its beaches and people. Peterson arrived as a surfer but soon became a dream maker. Discover more in Bitcoin Circular Economies This excerpt is just the beginning. Dive deeper into how Bitcoin is transforming communities worldwide in Bitcoin Circular Economies. The e-book is available now, and the paperback is open for pre-order for only $21 for a limited time. Order your copy here This post An Excerpt From Bitcoin Circular Economies: The Beginning first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Gabriel Kurman.

[Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com)
![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/BCE-1200x628-Article-Header-V2-1.webp)
[An Excerpt From Bitcoin Circular Economies: The Beginning](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-books/an-excerpt-from-bitcoin-circular-economies-the-beginning)

When people picture a tropical beach with volcanic sands, warm waters and dreamy surfing waves, they are describing [El Zonte](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/el-salvador-bitcoin-news/dare-to-dream-a-film-unveiling-the-genesis-of-bitcoin-beach?utm_source=chatgpt.com), in El Salvador. It’s hard to think that this natural paradise was once the battleground of Latin America’s most savage and violent gangs for decades. According to a UNICEF report, the homicide rate in 2015 was 103 per 100,000 inhabitants. The result was thousands of children orphaned and vulnerable to be recruited by the drug cartels, where the only option for a better life seemed to be to migrate to the United States.

Chimbera was born in the community of El Zonte, where opportunities were divided by a road which separated the beach from the mountains. “In the past if you were born on the beach, you were a fisherman, like my father and grandfather. If you were born in the mountains, you were a farmer; while women were mainly housewives. The only hope for a better future for young people was to emigrate to the United States or Canada. We learned with sadness that the opportunities were there, the land of freedom where dreams supposedly came true. Paradoxically, these words come from a smiling face. It is very easy to fall in love with Román Martínez’s smile; known as “Chimbera” to his closest friends and family. His contagious joy comes from someone who knows in depth the darkest sides a society can fall into. His smile tells a story of collective overcoming, where a group of people believed that a better future was possible and, without expectations but with tireless determination, transformed a fishing village in one of the poorest and most violent countries in the world into a hub of technological innovation and human development. Something unusual in modern history.

[![](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/BCE-970x250-1.png "An Excerpt From Bitcoin Circular Economies: The Beginning 7")](https://bm.b.tc/4mexI2G)

Chimbera looks to the sky before continuing to reflect on dreams. “We believe in God and in the law of attraction of different things, but it is fundamental to believe in something that moves you to commit and work every day for that dream.  In the beginning, the dream was to help kids have more opportunities in the community, keep them out of delinquency and get them to start dreaming.” The problem, Román highlights, is that many times they tell you “fight for your dreams” but they don’t give you the tools or the knowledge to be able to achieve them. “That’s how our dream began: Jorge meeting with the children on the street, supporting them and inspiring them to dream of a better future.

It’s hard not to get emotional with Jorge Valenzuela as he tearfully explains why they decided to create Hope House. “We sought to give these children the opportunities that our friends didn’t have and the reason why many of them are no longer here with us.” Like most of the residents of El Zonte, he too has a story to tell. Some twenty years ago, Jorge made his living from farming. He had a heart for surfing and the waves, but the sad reality around him forced him to keep his feet on the ground. At that time, the job market only offered two options: to become a gang member or to be hired as private security on a property. The sad and violent reality of those years presented a dead end. “There was a lack of employment, educational and personal development opportunities in general. Faced with this, many sought to emigrate and look for them elsewhere,” Jorge explains clearly.

During those years, in the mornings, when the sun began to peek over the mountains, Jorge knew what he wanted to do. He would take his board and go down to the black sand beach. There, on his back, with his board stuck in the sand and his eyes on the horizon, Hirvin was waiting for him. Together they learned to read the sea, to feel the direction of the wind. They used to warn strangers about the treacherous currents that dragged the unsuspecting out to sea, and over time they began to pass on their knowledge of the sea and surfing to the youngest members of the community. Patience is the greatest virtue of surfers, for those who know how to wait are the ones who manage to ride the perfect wave. Both spent their afternoons sitting on their boards, looking for the best strategy to get ahead, to help their community. It was there, floating in the sea, where Hirvin and Jorge identified an area with enormous potential. “We took tourism as a main tool, as a window that would connect us with other countries, to whom we could show the beauty of our land and invite them to visit our community”. They were confident that they could generate new jobs in the town. “I was a surf instructor at the time and I felt that this sport would be fundamental for everything that happened later in El Zonte,” says Jorge.

No one could have imagined that on that beach, surrounded by humble houses and dirt roads, the world’s first Bitcoin circular economy would emerge. Soon, Jorge and Hirvin’s paths would cross with the person who would change their lives. “For some twist of fate, people like Mike, Melissa, Carlos and Alex decided to move to El Zonte and dedicate their time and effort to help our community,” recalls Jorge. The beach and surfing were their rallying point. “We were kids, I remember they started teaching us English, they put us in contact with the tourists that were arriving, and that cultural exchange was what began to change our minds. This allowed us to dream, something we were not used to in El Zonte. They showed us that, no matter the circumstances, if we have dreams and commit to them, things can change.” Jorge evokes the figure of Mike Peterson and, in a moment, he realizes that his life could have been very different if he had not met him.

With Mike’s incorporation into the project, they began to systematize the community work on the beach. The idea was simple: create opportunities and hope for young people. Empower them as leaders and give them the necessary tools so that they do not have to emigrate or get involved in gangs. Fill the “children’s love tank,” as Jorge defines it in his own words. “When we were little they taught us some words in English, they helped us to read and write better, but it was when my daughter, who is 17 today, was born that I understood that we had been children with an empty love tank.” A community where children grew up without parents or older siblings present to give them love, support and an example to follow. “We all have a tank, it can be empty or it can be filled with love and hope. That’s what the kids in our community needed.”

Mike wasn’t just a blue-eyed gringo who came to El Zonte and fell in love with its beaches and people. Peterson arrived as a surfer but soon became a dream maker.

**[Discover more in _Bitcoin Circular Economies_](https://bm.b.tc/4mexI2G)**
This excerpt is just the beginning. Dive deeper into how Bitcoin is transforming communities worldwide in _Bitcoin Circular Economies_. The e-book is available now, and the paperback is open for pre-order for only **$21 for a limited time**.

![👉](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f449.png) **[Order your copy here](https://bm.b.tc/4mexI2G)**

This post [An Excerpt From Bitcoin Circular Economies: The Beginning](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-books/an-excerpt-from-bitcoin-circular-economies-the-beginning) first appeared on [Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com) and is written by [Gabriel Kurman](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/authors/janebitcoinmagazine-com).


Bitcoin “Crossing the Chasm” and the DEATH OF ENERGY MISINFORMATION

I am an impact investor, more recently specializing in climatetech. Before that I was I ran a technology company. These experiences gave me some insights into the challenges that all new technologies face in achieving mainstream adoption. Bitcoin currently faces this same challenge. Let’s zoom in to where the chasm could be crossed, and what currently is holding it back. There is 65 Trillion of institutional investment that wants to invest in bitcoin but thinks they can’t (30 Trillion in impact funds, and another 35 Trillion in Sovereign Funds excluding Central Banks). The reason they think they can’t is they believe Bitcoin is a bad ESG story. This article investigates this claim in depth, against the backdrop of other disruptive technologies, so we can better spot trends, and filter out likely good information from likely misinformation. When I first heard the claim that Bitcoin could be positive for the environment, as an environmental campaigner and climatetech investor I was skeptical. After considerable due diligence however, I realized that there was a strong evidential basis to this claim, which I outline here. This question if very important, if not the most important question Bitcoin’s supporters must answer to the next group of potential Bitcoin adopters, because the “early majority” care deeply about environmental impact. In order that Bitcoin “crosses the chasm” from early adopters to the early majority, addressing Bitcoin’s (true) environmental impact must be addressed. There is no bypass, no shortcut for this. Unless and until this issue is addressed, Bitcoin will not “cross the chasm”. In Bitcoin’s adoption curve, the estimated 4.7% who hold Bitcoin are the early adopters. The next wave includes institutional investors, which in turn includes sovereign funds and ESG funds. They are the early majority. The early adopters tend to be highly suspicious of mainstream media. However the Early Majority are only somewhat skeptical. As a result, they have different beliefs about Bitcoin today. Here is a sample of statements that people who interface with, or sit on the Compliance Divisions and ESG Investment Committees of Sovereign Wealth Funds shared with me recently about Bitcoin. I have limited knowledge about Bitcoin other than “it’s bad for the environment, don’t touch.” “It’s conflicting with the idea of a Central Digital Currency so it can be very confusing for someone who’s not in the space” “We have other issues we have to solve before we think about Bitcoin” “I’ve heard of a lot of backlash against Bitcoin because of criminal activity and the dark web” “It’s using so much water. It’s using drinking water.” While these messages are not anchored in fact, they do represent the current opinion-set. Existing Bitcoin proponents must meet these people where they are at if they are to have any hope of changing this opinion-set, no matter how good the data. There are 3 stages to shifting these perspectives so that that early majority can invest in Bitcoin without value conflict Screening out noise Identifying false signal Reading pure signal Let’s address each in turn. 1. Noise Reduction The best way we can clear most of the noise around Bitcoin is not to start with Bitcoin, but to understand something I learnt while running my first technology company: if you’re going to bring a disruptive technology to the planet, you better be prepared for a lot of gaslighting from the people you disrupt. This has happened to every disruptive tech since the telegraph in an unbroken chain of 21 technologies across 160 years. Let’s zoom in. Here’s some samples of how disruptive technologies and devices have been greeted through in the last 160 years. As we can see, long before Bitcoin was labelled by the media as an existential threat to humanity, the teddy bear was! Let’s zoom in a little more. I could have chosen anyone one of 21 industries but have chose two that like bitcoin disrupted multiple industries. The first was the bicycle. When the bicycle first rose to prominence in the 1890s, it disrupted horse drawn transport, riding apparel, public transit and the railway industry. As the disrupted industries launched their counteroffensive, new junk science came in almost immediately. Next, without empirical evidence, medical experts and academics started referring to four invented conditions you that you could supposedly get by riding a bicycle This created the environment of moral outrage where regulators and policymakers, who gained their information primarily from mainstream media, felt the right thing to do was to call for bans and restrictions. Source The prevalence of the term “bicycle face” serves as a guide as to when misinformation about the bicycle peaked, and how long it took to eventually die out. source: Google Ngram Viewer The bicycle was no one off event. The response to another technology that disrupt multiple industries, the radio, followed an almost identical pattern. Immediately after the radio began rising to prominence in the 1920s, junk science about the radio was reported in the mainstream media. The radio was blamed for everything from jailbreaks to snowstorms. Next, without empirical evidence, medical experts and other authority figures started referring to four conditions that you could supposedly get by listening to the radio. Once again, this created the environment of moral outrage where regulators and policymakers, who gained their information primarily from mainstream media, felt the right thing to do was to call for bans and restrictions. source: pessimistsarchive.org The chart on radio misinformation in mainstream media took on an uncannily similar shape to the earlier bicycle misinformation chart: an initial peak around 7 years after inception, but then a long tail with several smaller peaks within that tail. The similarity is even more striking when we view the charts side by side. Bitcoin’s journey has been almost identical to that of the bicycle and the radio. Bitcoin disrupts (at least) four industries: Central Banks, Banking, The Gold Industry and Remittance Payments. Bitcoin has been met with similar junk science, as we will investigate in the next section “false signal”, which has again created the environment where policy-makers and regulators who rely heavily on mainstream news sources for information have felt it appropriate to call for bans and restrictions. We are currently about here in the media cycle around Bitcoin and energy. The key takeout is this, the early majority does not have to suddenly trust the media as little as the early adopters. They simply need to see that trusting mainstream media sources for accurate reporting on a disruptive technology during the first 16 years is, based on history, an extremely risky approach. Seeing Bitcoin as just another disruptive technology, which inevitably follows the same “rite of passage” towards eventual acceptable after an elongated baptism of misinformation fire can help the early majority screen out 80% of the noise about Bitcoin, and regain the intellectual curiosity to take an objective look at Bitcoin. Step two: identify false signal In Radio and the Bicycle’s case the false signal was supplied by medics. In Bitcoin’s case it was a data a see scientist named Alex de Vries who in May 2018 wrote a five-page commentary called Bitcoin’s Growing Energy Problem The word commentary is important. According to Nature, commentaries are shorter, have a lighter review process and generally reflect the author’s perspective, rather than reporting new empirical data. De Vries’s article was a commentary, and the perspective he put forward was “We can measure Bitcoin’s use of energy per transaction to show that the Bitcoin network cannot scale without vastly increasing emissions. His commentary was a hit. In 2017 there was 1 article on Bitcoin’s energy usage. In 2018, the year of de Vries’ commentary, there were more than 400. The problem is that his perspective was invalid because Bitcoin’s energy use does not come from its transactions, meaning it could handle 1000 times more transactions, yet use no more energy. Cambridge University called the per transaction measure “not a meaningful metric”. But the media and other authors kept citing it anyway. Then the regulators, Central Banks, and NGOs joined them. The per transaction metric was refuted a further four times, this time in academic journals (Masenet et al, Dittmar et al, Sedlmeir et al and Sai & Vranken). But the metric not only kept on spreading, it mutated. Specifically, energy per transaction mutated into three other variants. Emissions per transaction eWaste per transaction Water use per transaction All three were new variants of the original strain stemmed directly from new commentaries or papers authored by Alex de Vries. De Vries under his own name or that of his blog Digiconomist, became the most frequently cited researcher in the media. His commentary was the origin point for every academic article on Bitcoin’s environmental impact over the next five years, which have now amassed collectively over 4500 citations. In the Whitehouse’s 2022 report on cryptomining, de Vries/digiconomist was referenced not just more than, but four times more than anyone else. He was also the most cited author in GreenpeaceUSAs ChangeTheCode campaign. There are two fundamental issues with metric upon which this narrative was built. The first is as we have said that there is actually no causal connection between transactions and Bitcoin’s energy consumption, meaning the network can easily scale its transaction volume without adding to emissions. Just as it’s been doing over the last 4 years already, as we can see from tracking the pink emissions line in the chart below, where hashrate (orange) has increased eight-fold and price (blue) has increased six-fold, but emissions have remained static over a full four year cycle. The second issue is “semantic ambiguity”. Here’s an everyday example of how semantic ambiguity can mislead. Imagine I agree to pay you one million dollars for a job. You finish the job, ask for payment and I send you one million Zimbabwean dollars. You would probably feel aggrieved. Just as “one million dollars” has a very different meaning based on location, so does the word “transaction”. In the traditional finance world, a transaction means a ledger entry. In the Bitcoin world, a single blockchain transaction can contain over 2000 traditional transactions, and using the layer-2 network (Lightning network) billions of traditional financial transactions. Just as the idea that radio waves could shatter windows, kill birds or trigger snowstorms is now viewed as absurd, ten years from now people will be looking back at us, and these news reports that a single Bitcoin transaction could cost $100 in electricity, create two cellphones of ewaste, drain a swimming pool, emit 3 households of co2, and and say “those crazy people in the 20s, did they really believe that junk science about Bitcoin & Energy in the media? Surely not.” Yet this false signal has helped persuade a large number of impact investors, regulators and environmentalists away from adopting Bitcoin. I was almost a casualty. Part 3: Pure Signal In the last 2 years, something unexpected and remarkable happened. The quality of academic reporting on Bitcoin has now improved not just a little bit, but beyond all recognition, across a range of metrics – articles replaced commentaries, datasets are no longer anecdotal, and methodologies are now anchored in how the blockchain works. As a result, we are now getting a pure signal in stereo, both from academic consensus(10 of the last 11 papers on bitcoin and energy) and those in the field who’ve observed bitcoin firsthand. And the signal we are hearing is that Bitcoin solves major environmental problems, stabilizes the grid while providing a rare profitable path to destroy one of our most potent greenhouse gases. And the media is catching on and catching up. Media coverage on Bitcoin and energy has dropped away. And the remaining articles are now mostly picking up on the pure signal. At the same time, the eWaste issue was debunked with ERS, one of the world’s top electronics recyclers stating that Bitcoin mining units are “100% recyclable. None of the parts go into a landfill. They are easier than other electronics to recycle because they don’t have the same toxic metals”. We also discovered that far from creating water scarcity, Bitcoin was helping to resolve it in dry countries including UAE, where Bitcoin mining company MARA is recycling heat from Bitcoin mining units to run water desalination plants more efficiently, one of just 8 examples of how Bitcoin heat gets recycled. The concept that Bitcoin was only used by criminals … was laid to rest by the US Treasury, who in their 2024 National Money Laundering Report stated “the use of virtual assets for money laundering continues to remain far below that of fiat currency” So who is using Bitcoin? Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation showed 19 humanitarian use cases for bitcoin, already likely positively impacting over 100M people, most of whom are unbanked, in energy poverty, refugees, or experiencing hyperinflation. He documented these humanitarian benefits in a recent conference address. There are now 21 documented environmental benefits to Bitcoin. We won’t go into all 21 here, but here are a few highlights. Building on the Cambridge model, the Digital Assets Research Institute showed that Since 2021, Bitcoin has become the world’s most sustainably powered industry. As of Nov 2024, Bitcoin Mining has risen to 56.75% sustainable energy powered. It is also the industry with the lowest emission intensity. That means that Bitcoin is now likely reducing net emissions by replacing their fossil fuel dependent prequels: banking as a medium of exchange, and gold as a store of value. Numerous studies, including this Cornell study from decorated scientist Fengqi You, found the same thing the grid owners found, that Bitcoin mining is a buyer for wasted renewable energy generated at a time or in a place other consumers cannot use it, making the renewable generator more profitable. The profit is reinvested to build more solar and wind power faster, accelerating the renewable transition. Carbon Debt and Payback Period Outside the climatetech sector, most people don’t realize that all climatetech starts off emitting more than it offsets. So as a climatetech investor, I’m interested in the net emission reduction potential and the payback period. Solar had a carbon debt for 57 years. Carbon sequestration’s carbon debt looks on track to be similar. The companies we invest in, we aim for under 30 years. Bitcoin, we estimate will be ~ 23yrs, less than half the time it took solar. But this is what excites me the most. Bitcoin mining can do something that other industries cannot do at scale, it can profitably use stranded methane as a fuel source that would otherwise have vented into the air. By destroying methane, a potent gas 84x more warming over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide, Bitcoin mining helps meet the UNs methane reduction goals without need for government incentives. The UN has called methane reduction our strongest lever to reduce climate change in the next 25 years. Unlike any other technologies, Bitcoin can profitably mitigate methane in any jurisdiction without waiting for political will. One of our 3 major storehouses of climate-change causing methane is landfills. Unreported by the media, there are now 5 Bitcoin mining companies on landfills and a total of 29 Bitcoin mining companies overall profitably carbon negative destroying methane emissions from landfills, oil fields and farms. Collectively they already mitigate 7% of the bitcoin network’s emissions. When will it reach 100%? 35 mid-sized venting landfills is all it takes to take the entire Bitcoin network carbon negative. This is something no industry has ever achieved without offsets. Bitcoin Mining and Landfills Peter Drucker once said “the best way to predict the future is to create it. So my third climatetech fund is an infrastructure fund that invests in Bitcoin mining companies using landfill gas for power. They are literally turning trash into digital gold. And because they destroy a greenhouse gas, they also generate carbon credits, which improves everyone’s returns. The landfill owner turns an environmental hazard into money. The Bitcoin mining company gets power at the bottom third of the cost curve. And as the infrastructure financiers, we get the returns of a CCC-rated asset class with the risk profile of a BB-rated one. But more importantly, this mitigates 45 times more emissions per dollar invested than the equivalent investment into photovoltaics. Summary Misunderstanding and misinformation is not new, it is the price you pay for being a very disruptive technology. Bitcoin, like all nascent disruptive technologies has followed the same rite of passage of initially being misunderstood by the masses, understood by the few. Eventually, this information asymmetry will be corrected and the masses will wish they saw Bitcoin unencumbered by the noise and false signal earlier. Bitcoin has been the best performing asset of the last 10 years by far, and for the reasons outlined above, I expect it to be the best ESG asset of the next 10 years. If it can achieve this, it will not only have “crossed the chasm”, it will be approaching the ubiquity of the Internet; something entirely possible given its current growth rate.

I am an impact investor, more recently specializing in climatetech. Before that I was I ran a technology company. These experiences gave me some insights into the challenges that all new technologies face in achieving mainstream adoption.

Bitcoin currently faces this same challenge. Let’s zoom in to where the chasm could be crossed, and what currently is holding it back.

There is **65** Trillion of institutional investment that wants to invest in **bitcoin** but thinks they can’t ([30 Trillion](https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/insights/sustainable-finance/esg-aum-set-to-top-40-trillion-by-2030-anchor-capital-markets/) in impact funds, and another 35 Trillion in Sovereign Funds excluding Central Banks).

The reason they think they can’t is they believe **Bitcoin** is a bad ESG story. This article investigates this claim in depth, against the backdrop of other disruptive technologies, so we can better spot trends, and filter out likely good information from likely misinformation. When I first heard the claim that Bitcoin could be positive for the environment, as an environmental campaigner and climatetech investor I was skeptical. After considerable due diligence however, I realized that there was a strong evidential basis to this claim, which I outline here.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-19-at-11.54.49-AM-1024x633.png)

This question if very important, if not the most important question Bitcoin’s supporters must answer to the next group of potential Bitcoin adopters, because the “early majority” care deeply about **environmental impact**.

In order that Bitcoin “crosses the chasm” from early adopters to the early majority, addressing Bitcoin’s (true) environmental impact must be addressed. There is no bypass, no shortcut for this. Unless and until this issue is addressed, Bitcoin will not “cross the chasm”.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-6.41.21-PM-1024x519.png)

**In** Bitcoin’s adoption curve, the estimated [4.7%](https://woocharts.com/bitcoin-total-users/) who hold Bitcoin are the early adopters. The **next wave** includes institutional investors, which in turn includes sovereign funds and ESG funds. They are the early majority. The early adopters tend to be highly suspicious of mainstream media. However the Early Majority are only somewhat skeptical. As a result, they have different beliefs about Bitcoin today.

Here is a sample of statements that people who interface with, or sit on the Compliance Divisions and ESG Investment Committees of Sovereign Wealth Funds shared with me recently about Bitcoin.

_I have limited knowledge about Bitcoin other than “it’s bad for the environment, don’t touch.”_

_“It’s conflicting with the idea of a Central Digital Currency so it can be very confusing for someone who’s not in the space”_

_“We have other issues we have to solve before we think about Bitcoin”_

_“I’ve heard of a lot of backlash against Bitcoin because of criminal activity and the dark web”_

_“It’s using so much water. It’s using drinking water.”_

While these messages are not anchored in fact, they do represent the current opinion-set. Existing Bitcoin proponents must meet these people where they are at if they are to have any hope of changing this opinion-set, no matter how good the data.

**There are 3 stages to shifting these perspectives so that that early majority can invest in Bitcoin without value conflict**

*   **Screening** out noise
*   **Identifying** false signal
*   **Reading** pure signal

Let’s address each in turn.

1\. **Noise Reduction**
-----------------------

The best way we can clear most of the noise around Bitcoin is not to start with Bitcoin, but to understand something I learnt while running my first technology company: if you’re going to bring a disruptive technology to the planet, you better be prepared for a lot of gaslighting from the people you disrupt.

This has happened to **every** disruptive tech since the telegraph in an unbroken chain of 21 technologies across 160 years.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-6.54.32-PM-1024x572.png)

Let’s zoom in. Here’s some samples of how disruptive technologies and devices have been greeted through in the last 160 years.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-6.56.02-PM-1024x589.png)

As we can see, long before **Bitcoin** was labelled by the media as an existential threat to humanity, the teddy bear was!

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-6.56.33-PM-1024x563.png)

Let’s zoom in a little more. I could have chosen anyone one of 21 industries but have chose two that like bitcoin disrupted multiple industries.

The first was the bicycle. When the bicycle first rose to prominence in the 1890s, it disrupted horse drawn transport, riding apparel, public transit and the railway industry.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-7.34.47-PM-1024x575.png)

As the disrupted industries launched their counteroffensive, new junk science came in almost immediately.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-7.35.52-PM-1024x569.png)

Next, without empirical evidence, medical experts and academics started referring to four invented conditions you that you could supposedly get by riding a bicycle

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-7.36.57-PM-1024x568.png)

This created the environment of moral outrage where regulators and policymakers, who gained their information primarily from mainstream media, felt the right thing to do was to call for bans and restrictions.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-7.39.12-PM-1024x304.png)

[Source](https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/uhr/1999-v28-n1-uhr0646/1016555ar.pdf)

The prevalence of the term “bicycle face” serves as a guide as to when misinformation about the bicycle peaked, and how long it took to eventually die out.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-7.40.23-PM-1024x835.png)

**source**: [Google Ngram Viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=bicycle+face&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cbicycle%20face%3B%2Cc0)

The bicycle was no one off event. The response to another technology that disrupt multiple industries, the radio, followed an almost identical pattern.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-7.44.31-PM-1024x571.png)

Immediately after the radio began rising to prominence in the 1920s, junk science about the radio was reported in the mainstream media. The radio was blamed for everything from jailbreaks to snowstorms.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-7.46.52-PM-1024x574.png)

Next, without empirical evidence, medical experts and other authority figures started referring to four conditions that you could supposedly get by listening to the radio.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-7.50.08-PM-1024x573.png)

Once again, this created the environment of moral outrage where regulators and policymakers, who gained their information primarily from mainstream media, felt the right thing to do was to call for bans and restrictions.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-8.08.36-PM-1024x720.png)

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-8.09.14-PM.png)

**source**: pessimistsarchive.org

The chart on radio misinformation in mainstream media took on an uncannily similar shape to the earlier bicycle misinformation chart: an initial peak around 7 years after inception, but then a long tail with several smaller peaks within that tail. The similarity is even more striking when we view the charts side by side.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-8.14.01-PM-1024x552.png)

Bitcoin’s journey has been almost identical to that of the bicycle and the radio. Bitcoin disrupts (at least) four industries: Central Banks, Banking, The Gold Industry and Remittance Payments.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-8.22.28-PM-1024x576.png)

Bitcoin has been met with similar junk science, as we will investigate in the next section “false signal”, which has again created the environment where policy-makers and regulators who rely heavily on mainstream news sources for information have felt it appropriate to call for bans and restrictions. We are currently about here in the media cycle around Bitcoin and energy.

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-16-at-8.21.00-PM-1024x643.png)

The key takeout is this, the early majority does not have to suddenly trust the media as little as the early adopters. They simply need to see that trusting mainstream media sources for accurate reporting on a disruptive technology during the first 16 years is, based on history, an extremely risky approach.

Seeing Bitcoin as just another disruptive technology, which inevitably follows the same “rite of passage” towards eventual acceptable after an elongated baptism of misinformation fire can help the early majority screen out 80% of the noise about Bitcoin, and regain the intellectual curiosity to take an objective look at Bitcoin.

**Step two: identify false signal**
-----------------------------------

In Radio and the Bicycle’s case the false signal was supplied by medics. In Bitcoin’s case it was a data a see scientist named Alex de Vries who in May 2018 wrote a five-page commentary called Bitcoin’s Growing Energy Problem

![](https://batcoinz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Screen-Shot-2024-10-17-at-12.37.16-PM-1024x670.png)

The word commentary is