 Bitcoin since its inception has had a tremendous amount of renewable energy connected to its network. Not simply because it's the right thing to do from an ecological standpoint, but it's the most economical thing you could do. Green energy tends to be cheaper per kilowatt. Simply printing money is far more damaging to the environment and far more energy intensive than any cryptocurrency on the planet. The idea that Bitcoin mining is too energy intensive to be considered a green energy is a straw man. Simply not true. Bitcoin has always incentivized using green energy. Our current system requires us to burn fossil fuels to prop up our currency. One of the ways the United States taxes the rest of the world is through its partners at OPEC. It forces the entire world to trade for oil in U.S. dollars. If you need more petroleum to run your economy, you have to have U.S. dollars in order to buy that petroleum. So the need or demand for fossil fuels creates by pressure for U.S. dollars, which is why we often call the U.S. dollar the petrodollar. It is pegged to the price of oil. So as long as that remains true, and as long as U.S. dollars remain the global reserve currency, we will not stop burning fossil fuels. Yes, the Bitcoin network does use a lot of electricity. It also locks in over one trillion dollars in value, though. And the value that you're seeing in the Bitcoin network is, in some ways, the electricity that's being used to secure it. Can we do better, though? Yes. Yes. And there's a race to do better, both in the Bitcoin network and in cryptocurrency at large, to make networks that are far greener and far more eco-friendly. Well, proof of work mining is not crypto. Bitcoin uses proof of work mining, but Bitcoin is simply one cryptocurrency in an entire field of cryptocurrencies. The second largest cryptocurrency in the world, Ethereum, is moving towards a proof of stake mining system, which is far less energy-intensive than proof of work. So yes, proof of work mining is very energy-intensive, and we can debate whether that is justifiable or not. I will assert that it is because it's relative to the amount of value that's being locked up in the network. But it's not something we need to be overly concerned about because the industry as a whole is moving on from proof of work mining. I think attacking proof of work mining and suggesting that its energy uses are somehow problematic would be a mistake. And if you compare it to the legacy financial system you find it is far greener and uses far less energy, there's an economic incentive to frame cryptocurrency as problematic as being associated with criminals or being a dirty energy. Because it bolsters the existing system's position and it makes commercial banking and US dollar system and the euro system seem far more reliable and stable than they actually are. If we start to move all of our economic inputs away from fiat systems, what will happen is they will collapse in on themselves and the game is up at that point. It's one of the biggest rackets in the world. It's important for people to realize that there is a tremendous incentive to keep you away from these assets and to keep you away from these new currencies. Because the moment you do, the game is up. The legacy financial system and legacy banking will no longer have total dominion over your economic lives the moment you switch away from their systems. So there's a concerted effort and a disinformation campaign to paint cryptocurrencies as problematic from every angle. And this is something that began at the very beginning of cryptocurrency. I would also like to remind everyone that's also what they used to say about the internet though. The internet used to be a den of thieves where nothing but pornography and prostitution pervade, but 20, 30 years down the line that starts to seem a little ridiculous. The same thing is going to happen with cryptocurrency. People are going to realize that it's an amazing tool, an amazing technology that is generally beneficial to us as individuals and us as a civilization. It's simply a matter of time before they realize that. Well, fiat literally means by declaration. It's only money because they told you it's money. We might argue that fiat currencies such as US dollars and euro is very useful because other people will give me something for it. It's important to remember though that it's the other people that are important, not the money itself. So if I as a market participant say that I'm willing to accept Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of the other cryptocurrencies that are available in the market, then those become valuable too because I'm willing to accept goods and services for it. Bitcoin's utility is that it is riding on an uncensurable, unsanctionable transaction network that could be used from anyone in the world, from anywhere in the world where there's an internet connection. I would also suggest though that every network has different utility. Ethereum's value proposition is different than Bitcoin's value proposition. And Ethereum's utility is very different but also very useful and that allows for the issuance of unstoppable code and smart contracts. The value of Ethereum is relative to the perceived value of that utility. The market has already spoken quite astoundingly that these things are valuable and they have utility and they are willing to trade goods and services if not directly for the cryptocurrency but then for the money that you could get the fiat currency you could trade that cryptocurrency for. So fiat currency is problematic though in that the inflation and distribution policy is controlled by a very small centralized group and when they create new dollars or new euros they get to determine who gets those dollars and euros and in doing so they determine everything about your civilization and that's an attack vector on civilization as a whole and something that we need to protect ourselves from. If crypto is a fad then so is the internet and so is mobile phone usage and so is personal computing. It's simply observably untrue. In 2013 we heard that crypto was a fad. It was something that was going to come and go and in fact pretty much every market cycle which is about four years long there's a whole group of people that say bitcoin is dead or cryptocurrency is dead right it's going to go away and yet it still remains. Not only does it remain it's the top performing asset class in the world. The idea that cryptocurrency is going to disappear or stop existing would be akin to saying that there's going to be no more electricity or no more internet. It's simply not true and if it does ever happen it means that there's been a cataclysmic event of such tremendous proportions that you're not really worried about that's that's not the the major concern right you're more concerned for your livelihood and your well-being at that point. There's no such thing as a stable currency. The US dollar has never been stable and it is losing value every second of every day and that's generally why you have to invest it in order not to lose your money. If you're looking for complete stability that just doesn't exist in the real world. The real world is amorphous and changing and always moving forward. The question is how do you navigate that and how do you use it as a tool that still gets you what you want from life. The worst thing that could happen is you just have a stagnant market which is no opportunity and no way for you to make money. That would be highly problematic right what would happen then is you'd have an entrenched oligarchy who had all the money and there was no way for you to improve your position. So volatility is a great thing if you know how to navigate it's kind of like I'm saying that the ocean is a dangerous place and we should never sail out into it and yet that's where all the opportunity has been historically right. If you're a young man who wanted to find opportunity and improve his life for much of human civilization one of the ways you could do it is get on a ship and navigate the dangers of the seas to go abroad and participate in global trade. Well cryptocurrency is no different. Generally volatility in the crypto markets goes in the direction that I like. It's not simply up and down. It's up trending in a general direction every epoch every four years. Cryptocurrency is much higher than it was during the last epoch of four years. So I think that's an important distinction. When you have a market that's volatile and moving around. That's an opportunity for you to increase your spending power. It's also a way where you could lose a lot of money and you need to recognize that and you need to give it the amount of respect it deserves just like as if you were sailing out into the ocean you cannot do so haphazardly. And if you're scared of doing so then don't go. Don't participate in the markets. Stay out of it. It's not for everyone to participate in the markets as an active participant. You don't have to be a day trader or even an investor at all. But you ignore the volatility and you ignore these markets at your own peril because there's a tremendous opportunity there. In fact the largest economic opportunity of our lifetime to exist in the cryptocurrency markets because it's going to be the largest transfer of wealth in human history. And to miss out on that would be a kind of saying well the dot com markets were very volatile right. Does that mean that you should never have invested in Amazon. Does that mean you should never have invested in Facebook or any of these organizations. No there were all opportunities. What we need is better education and better guidelines around what to look for. Volatility isn't a bad thing. Volatility is an opportunity. And I would invite you to explore that opportunity to the best of your ability. This idea that cryptocurrency is just for crypto bros. The statistics say otherwise right. Most of the data suggests that less than 20% of the market falls into that demographic. So who else is it servicing crypto adoption is higher in developing nations where there's mostly brown people right. It's mostly in Latin America or Turkey. We have much much higher crypto adoption than we do in the United States or the rest of Europe. And those are generally not populated with you know white crypto bros. I think anyone regardless of your place of birth or your ethnic origin has equal rights to participate in these markets and has equal opportunity. The people that are using cryptocurrency the most are the people that have the least voice because most of them are in developing nations. Right it is not mostly being used by European Americans who are well off. They're just the ones that have the largest voice in the market. So I believe that is a smear tactic. It's a way of getting people to avoid making smart investments or for participating in these meaningful markets because the longer we wait to transition to new currency the longer we wait to transition to actual sound money the longer the existing racket of fiat currency gets to exist. El Salvador is an example of a nation state realizing that there's a tremendous market opportunity here and in doing so they're positioning themselves to be the wealthiest nation in Latin America. So the market opportunity exists at the individual level and at the nation state level but I think it's important to realize that cryptocurrency is bigger than both. It's not just about me and it's not just about nations. It's about civilization as a whole and the opportunity is present for every participant in the system regardless of whether you're a privileged European American born to an upper middle class family or you're someone who is born living below the poverty line in a developing nation. The opportunity is good for both sides of that equation and I think that's important. I think it's important to create tools that benefit everyone including the people that you may not agree with or not like for whatever reason. Everyone gets to use the internet. Any nation state that thinks they could regulate a global distributed system will find the harsh reality that they could only regulate within their borders. They could only regulate their own population and in doing so they're only harming the very people they claim to be protecting. China is outlawing cryptocurrency, right? They're banning cryptocurrency transactions, banishing mining from their borders and they're making sure that they don't lose control of the money supply within their borders. I think that's the real game but I also think that is doomed to failure and on a long enough timeline these efforts are going to be seen as futile because you cannot stop a distributed system once it's at a global distribution level. Once there are nodes all around the world and many different nations being operated by many different people, that network will not be shut down by any force on earth. Short-term it could seem a little scary as if there's gonna be less investment dollars in the marketplace. That's simply not true, right? The money is still showing up. Bitcoin is still trending towards all-time highs. The cryptocurrency market is getting bigger every day. With or without China, with or without any nation state it does not need a single regional market in order to continue to grow. That cat's already out of the bag, right? The only question now is who's gonna participate and at what level?