The great bitcoin debate: #ossification vs. #innovation
🗣 The #bitcoin community has contrasting opinions on the future of the bitcoin network.
Some people are “monetary #maximalist” and believe that Bitcoin should remain as it is, as it’s already performing the function it was aimed for: transferring value across the world, in a censorship-resistant manner, with close to immediate finality and at a low cost 💸 .
Other people are “platform maximalist” and believe that Bitcoin protocol should extend its functionalities well beyond its monetary use case and that introducing new features is necessary to address #scalability issues, improve user experience, and expand use cases beyond store of value.
⛔ This debate is as old as Bitcoin and it will probably never end.
Advocates of ossification strongly believe in the fundamental properties of #decentralization, #security and #immutability of the network: Bitcoin has these three properties and we should not risk extending its utility beyond its monetary use case.
Any change to the protocol, despite being tested and retested by core developers, might bring unintended consequences and create vulnerabilities and potential attack surfaces to Bitcoin.
The Taproot update was thought to increase privacy, scalability and security, but has created the possibility to create “inscriptions” and to mint ordinals on-chain. 🤡 Monkey jpegs and other valueless NFTs, originally created on other blockchains, started to be written also on the Bitcoin blockchain, driving away extremely scarce and valuable blockspace from transactions to pure gambling activities.
This is a major unintended consequence of a protocol upgrade and represent a risk that ossificators don’t want to face.
Platform maximalists would like Bitcoin to be the everything protocol, where you can directly interact with various decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts, similar to platforms like Ethereum 💩 .
They envision a future where Bitcoin serves as the foundational layer for a wide range of financial services, decentralized exchanges, and even social networks, all built on top of its secure and censorship-resistant infrastructure.
👨💻 Introducing additional functionalities to Bitcoin's protocol requires careful consideration of trade-offs between innovation and maintaining the network's core principles. There are concerns about potential security risks, scalability issues, and decentralization.
Satoshi gifted humanity the best form of money ever invented. Absolutely scarce, transparent, and immutable money which removes state monopoly on the creation of currency and can grant real freedom to individuals, by allowing them to travel the world with their wealth transported in their minds 🤘 .
🐢 I believe that #innovation in Bitcoin shall come as fast as a turtle with a broken leg. What’s your position?
Demand-Response (DR) Programs: Another Benefit of #Bitcoin #Mining
🚨 Energy grids serve the function of bringing energy from anywhere it is produced to the end users: residential buildings, offices, industrial companies, and any other sector of the economy.
Technical offices of engineers monitor daily maps of energy distribution, demand and load flexibility, to direct energy where it is required at any specific time, so to not overcharge or undercharge the grid and create imbalances.
🔌 Energy grids facilitate the transmission of electricity generated from fossil fuel sources or renewable plants and allow to carry it around via specific infrastructure.
Fossil fuels tend to generate #baseload #electricity, where energy is produced constantly. #Renewable sources (e.g., solar and wind) tend instead to produce peak-load power due to the intermittent nature of their sources and create imbalances to the electric grid any time the immediate supply doesn’t meet the exact energy demand.
Production peaks 📈 cause the owners of the PV or wind farm to sell electricity at negative prices 📉 during hours when electricity demand is low, not allowing the plant to be economically feasible and survive without any government subsidy.
DR programs are created to stabilize the grid and mitigate the effects of excess supply or demand: specific buyers in need of electricity can turn on when energy is abundant (and cheap) and curtail activity once the energy is needed elsewhere.
⛓ Both consumers and grid operators benefit from DR. For consumers, DR programs can lead to lower energy bills by offering incentives for shifting usage to off-peak hours when electricity prices are lower. Grid operators enjoy higher grid stability, reduced reliance on expensive peaker plants, and improved overall efficiency.
Bitcoin miners represent one of the best flexible loads to make effective DR, via:
- adjusting their energy consumption patterns to times of the day when renewable energy is abundant and traditional electricity demand is low ⬇ .
- quickly ramp up or down energy usage in response to fluctuations in grid demand, helping to stabilize the grid and prevent blackouts or brownouts.
- temporary reduction or suspension of their mining activities ⛏ during periods of high electricity demand or grid congestion by voluntarily curtailing their energy consumption, while earning incentives or rewards from grid operators.
In a world where the energy mix is tilting towards the intermittent nature of sources like solar and wind that create imbalances in supply and demand and destabilize the grid, Bitcoin miners can step in as a flexible energy consumer that allows renewable sources to be properly integrated with the electric grid.
✳ DR programs are a win-win strategy for all stakeholders involved, promoting cheaper electricity prices to consumers, a more balanced grid, and allowing a decentralized, immutable monetary network to work on the cheapest electricity available.
Hey #nostr community
I’ve been offline for about 10 days, who can tell me more about
@Michael Saylor and
@ODELL situation, as well as about 10 mining pools having one single custodian?
Really eager to learn here.
Thanks in advance
💡 Waste Heat: A Benefit from #Bitcoin #Mining
Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive business which transforms any source of #electricity into global #capital.
During the #mining process, electricity is used to power specific computers that perform a trial-and-error process to find the correct solution to a mathematical puzzle.
♨ This computational effort creates #waste #heat as a byproduct of mining, which is one of the reasons why Bitcoin in the past has been attacked for “heating the world”.
Different mining companies have started to develop strategies to capture and manage the waste heat and make it useful for other purposes.
In the 🇳🇱 , natural gas was the energy used to generate heat in greenhouses to let tulips flourish during the cold winters. Since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and the gas price spiked, Bitcoin Brabant developed a way to use waste heat from Bitcoin mining to warm greenhouses containing tulips 🌷 . The servers and computers are powered by solar panels on the building’s roof, creating an environmentally sound carbon-negative way to mine Bitcoins and grow tulips.
In 🇦🇹 and 🇩🇪 , 21energy has been developing space heaters that harness waste heat from mining and provide sustainable heating in residential or industrial complexes. In this way, the cost savings from not using gas to heat the home are redirected into electricity to mine Bitcoin. Waste heat keeps the house warm and the mining process generates revenues in bitcoin over the medium term.
🚜 Another application comes in the so-called Agriculture Mining sector:
In 🇸🇪 , EcoDataCenter has partnered with a local agriculture cooperative to utilize waste heat as a warming method for vegetable cultivation. By channelling waste heat into the greenhouse, crop growth is enhanced and the growing season extended, leading to increased agricultural productivity and profitability.
In the 🇳🇱 , @Koepon Farm has implemented bitcoin mining to use heat byproduct to maintain optimal temperatures in its barns and dairy facilities 🐄 . This innovative approach allows to reduce heating costs while increasing energy efficiency and sustainability in agricultural operations.
@Green Tech Solutions, in collaboration with the local municipal authorities, has been the pioneer of a district heating project in 🇳🇴 . They have developed a specific heat recovery system, which converts the heat directly in the data centre in a more usable form, to then be channelled to the district heating network 🌡 . The district heating network delivers hot water or steam to buildings, where it is used for space heating, domestic hot water, and other heating purposes.
Overall, the harnessing of waste heat from mining operations presents a dynamic frontier in sustainable energy innovation.
♻ Efficiently repurposing waste heat not only drives cost savings and energy efficiency within mining operations, but could also drive many #sustainability initiatives for a greener future.
👑 #Bitcoin 2024-2034: The Ultimate Gold Mining Rush
In the history of human civilization, there have been moments when the discovery of precious metals sparked unprecedented economic booms and reshaped societies.
From the California Gold Rush of the XIX century to the Klondike Gold Rush of the early XX century, these periods of rushing into mining and finding new #gold discoveries symbolize the need to store wealth into something sound and created many opportunities 🧠 and applications around the metal.
Bitcoin’s fixed supply schedule, with new coins mined on average every 10 minutes, is about to undergo its 4th halving whereby the new mined coins per block will halve from 6.25 to 3.125.
~19.7 million bitcoin are in circulation, about 94% of the total supply. The #halving coming in April will mark one of the last two époques where a “significant” amount of bitcoin can be mined every ten minutes.
In 2028, the total supply mined will be 97%.
In 2032, 98.4%.
👀 By 2034, 99% of the total bitcoin supply will already be in circulation and the world will have to contend the remaining 210.000 bitcoin to be issued across approx. 106 years, until 2140.
Public media has always attacked bitcoin #mining as bad for #environment, wasting major sources of electricity and creating huge CO2 #emissions – therefore marking a negative news flow on Bitcoin (the asset and the network).
But such narrative has started shifting during 2023 as new research has brought to light objective benefits resulting from bitcoin mining. 🌱 The harnessing of any stranded source of energy, the efficiency improvements to energy grids, the development of energy infrastructure in rural areas of Africa or South-East Asia which was not economically feasible before bitcoin mining.
Bitcoin mining monetizes any type of #stranded #energy in a global, incorruptible, and censorship-resistant form of capital 💰
Any energy company will integrate bitcoin miners ⛏ in their operations, as it will make their business more efficient and less prone to waste. Many other companies will also integrate mining in their activities and will use waste heat from mining computers to dry crops, power heat pumps or provide a new form of district heating.
Applications are numerous today and will be many more in the years to come.
As the Bitcoin network grows further and onboards its first billion users while the mining sector becomes the most competitive on the planet, the period from 2024 to 2034 could be aptly described as the "Ultimate Gold Mining Rush" of the digital age.
Price discovery is upon us!
No more clouds and blue skies ahead 😎⚡️
🍊💊 to friends becomes officially easier to give.
#bitcoin
Controversial thoughts on Satoshi Nakamoto’s treasury ⚱️
Much is being said about Bitcoin’s creator lately, due to the false claims from Craig Wrigth that he is the inventor of #Bitcoin.
He, she or they, whomever #Satoshi actually is. This topic should not bother anyone. The greatest invention of our time, digital, peer-to-peer money with no trusted intermediary was given as a gift to humanity and should be all that matter.
🥷🏻 Satoshi did not premine any coin for himself. He did not allocate bitcoin to a company’s foundation. He created and made available to the world the best money ever invented without looking for any personal recognition or acknowledgment. His only desire is to remain anonymous. And many people are just trying senselessly to attribute a face to him/her/them.
When people ask me “How can you trust money which has been invented by someone anonymous?” I always make efforts not to care, while I point at the brilliance and simplicity of the system he has created. Bitcoin operates on a #transparent, #decentralized #ledger where trust is not placed in any single individual but in the collective power of the network's participants ⚡️, which are expending energy to keep it decentralized and secure.
Others seem to be worried that Satoshi’s wallet contains approx. 1 million bitcoin. This is true. Satoshi’s wallet has only accumulated btc in the early days, mining ⛏️ the coins like anybody can do, and never spent any output – it is one of those few wallets appearing in the #Hodl waves with holding time > 10 years.
In his communications with the cypherpunk community, Satoshi defined any lost coin as a “donation to other bitcoin holders” as that btc supply remains inaccessible and is therefore contributing to increase the value of the other coins.
For how I see it, Satoshi’s wallet could be activated 10 or 15 years from now and could be the catalyst to drive price down 📉 from $ 1,500,000 a coin to $ 300,000 a coin.
Would this change my view on the reliability of the Bitcoin network or Bitcoin’s value proposition? NO.
I would see this as an additional gift to humanity, considering that coins available by then will only be those who are left to be mined, and Satoshi’s 1 million bitcoin could improve the distribution of coins in the world and allow many “plebs” to increase their bitcoin position. 🔅
In the end, Satoshi's anonymity and the mystery surrounding his identity serve as a testament to the decentralized and #trustless nature of Bitcoin itself. Satoshi’s wallet, whether will be activated or not, ultimately represents an opportunity for redistribution and further decentralization within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Whether these coins remain dormant or are eventually reintroduced to market, their impact on the network's integrity and the principles of decentralization will be nil.