dsbatten
Daniel Batten

I like turning waste into power. Landfill gas. Eroding currencies. The human potential.

danielbatten.co

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Last Notes

2026-07-30 20:20:50 UTC

Why do most people still have a negative impression of Bitcoin?
87:1 negativity bias
For context, the news media has a negativity bias anyway which is 9.1:1 in US and less in other places.
But this is 9.5x more extreme than the most extreme negativity bias outside Bitcoin reporting.
Imagine you amplify the static on a beautiful music track you listen to by 87x til you can no longer hear the real music.
That's why the most people never hear the real signal.
https://blossom.primal.net/d79bbc9335683439a88f34fe3af307f436d61612d9c8ddb231ceca14bc7408d0.png

2026-07-29 15:19:34 UTC

What are the 3 biggest determinants of your behavior?
According to the research it is
1. your genetics
2. your peer group
3. your parents
In that order (that may come as a surprise)
You can't choose 2 out of those 3 things. But your peer group you can.
Yet most people have no idea how important an influence on the direction of life, their decisions, their actions, their choices their peer group is.
The research tells us that it is an even more important influence on your behaviors and habits than your parents.
(Harris, Psychological Review 1995)
A 2007 study by Christakis & Fowler found that person's odds of becoming obese rose about 57% if a friend became obese.
57% !
And even when researchers stopped letting people pick their own friends and assigned them at random, it held. College students who drew higher-performing roommates got better grades themselves. (Sacerdote, 2001)
A 1999 study by Drigotas, Rusbult et al found that this effect worked equally strongly in the positive too. Dubbed the Michelangelo phenomenon they found that close others sculpt you toward your ideal self, simply through affirmation.
No discipline, no effort, no willpower required, you just place yourself in an environment with the people you want to become more like
If you want to get really good at drinking - hang out with people who drink a lot.
Want to get really good at complaining? Hang out with other people who complain.
Want to become an expert at finding reasons why due to some external obstacle, you can't do what you want to in life? Hang out with people who do this on a regular basis.
Want to become a better criminal? Go to prison
Want to grow a mission that has a global impact, while developing strong health, resilience and connection to family and community at the same time? Make sure the peer group who influences you most lives this way.
Don't get me wrong - discipline, willpower and drive are all important markers of success too.
But they are overrated.
Or rather, the importance of your peer group is underrated.
Trying to achieve a goal using willpower without sorting out your peer group is like heating a house with the windows open.
You may still achieve your goal, but it will take you a lot longer, you will use more energy, and it will be a lot more expensive.
So given that your peer group is the 2nd most important influence on your behaviors, decisions, habits and actions - who is your peer group?
And are they supporting you in the direction you want to move in?

2026-07-29 02:38:11 UTC

I'm biased because Luke is one of my clients, but I'd say this anyway - this is the most uplifting Bitccoin podcast I've heard this year.
A reproducable story about how a couple have orangepilled their local community, using the principles of game, service-mindset and hope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a0OlSfAnGQ

2026-07-28 23:50:22 UTC

JUST IN: Bitcoin is now 59.4% sustainably powered
🥇Higher than any reported global industry
⬆️Up 7.0% since last Cambridge survey 14 months ago
🌊Largest power source: hydro
Source: Cambridge 2026
https://blossom.primal.net/93fadca290d4b69a7bc535ebbfb0f7680c3a9c4c6ecfb0d57430640fc28a33d4.png

2026-07-28 23:33:26 UTC

The "waste of energy" argument doesn't survive a cold one.
https://blossom.primal.net/e3323b04e7cd605dfac0286a1a0638926232e7309e0ee428e33ff82402eeb3ee.png

2026-07-28 14:41:15 UTC

"El Salvador is Bitcoin country" was largely a very good marketing pitch
"The nation states are coming" was hopium.
"6 of the largest energy companies in Brazil are now actively evaluating Bitcoin to monetize their stranded energy" is real
You are looking in the wrong place for evidence of Bitcoin adoption.
Energy is the stealth-bomber in Bitcoin's adoption story.
https://blossom.primal.net/32d3e5e5080ce6e5a461dc40bf594af2c9f0164d60d49989f1fc609652db5b0c.png

2026-07-28 14:39:18 UTC

Bitcoin mining is a practical, scaleable and proven solution to 3 of the world's major energy problems (grid instability, methane mitigation, replacement of fossil-fuel heat with electrical heat)
So why to so many people still think it has an energy problem?
Look no further than what news gets amplified. Hard to get a pure signal when the noise is amplified 58x above the signal.
https://blossom.primal.net/80237f6b971fbdac92703de911966693838225659d6db4c7126ee06e34052b5d.png

2026-07-27 15:40:21 UTC

Mainstream media has a negative:positive news reporting ratio of 9.1: 1
Source: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28110/w28110.pdf
But when the subject is Bitcoin mining, the negativity ratio is order of magnitude higher.
This, in one image, is why many people still believe Bitcoin mining has a negative environmental impact, even though the data, 30 peer reviewed papers, Cambridge's current reporting and 100s of real life case studies say the opposite.
https://blossom.primal.net/ffe163668dac64d2a5052c3eca84902f713eec4da897a1648226bed87faaa4e7.png

2026-07-27 12:41:43 UTC

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there should be!

2026-07-27 01:20:40 UTC

It is my duty to remind you that Bitcoin will use all the world's power by 2020.
https://blossom.primal.net/526134aad558e601f95694121aaf6d282cb0113deca94beb7d896deac76bee46.png

2026-07-27 01:05:07 UTC

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This is the vocal analysis of the voice of one of my clients who is doing his next capraise.

2026-07-27 01:03:23 UTC

I’ve been investing into technology companies since 2004, and working in tech startups since I was an early employee at a startup who was first to use the Internet for utility billing in 1996.
The 3 technologies with the most use-cases and the most potential value to humanity I’ve seen in that time are The Internet, Bitcoin and AI … with plenty of air until the next grouping.
The difference is that with Bitcoin, the ratio of positive to negative uses of the technology is much higher - inherently it is order of magnitude harder to use Bitcoin for crime than traditionally currencies, but the social and environmental usecases for the technologies are significant, supported by many peer reviewed studies, and growing each year.
That, combined with the fact Bitcoin, unlike any technology I've seen, is benefitting the Global South at scale before it is benefitting the West, make it the most promising technology for social and environmental justice I've seen in a generation.

2026-07-24 14:58:36 UTC

I'm seriously geeking out on this image right now.
You can now use AI to help transform the 2nd-most recognizable part of you: your voice.
OK, some context. Years ago I wrote a book on pitching.
But it is really a book about any sort of situation where you seek to influence someone (like helping Bitcoin adoption through orangepilling).
I use the principles myself when changing people's minds about the Bitcoin and energy, and I also teach it to clients, who have a 91.1% success rate with their investment pitches (Industry average is apparently 10.4%, so seems like it works).
The book is a manual for improving all elements of influence: message, deliver, tactics and mindset. Unless all are strong, influence is unlikely to occur.
I was lucky enough to have spent a lot of my 20s doing acting for stage and TV, so I learnt how to improve delivery during those years and teach it to others. But I've never had a tool to objectively show people that their delivery has improved.
Now I do. This is just a snippet of a more extensive analysis that also gets quite technical with difference aspects of voice resonance. This client was someone I'd worked with previously to win his seed investment, but he came to me because when approaching seed-SeriesA he was getting feedback that his delivery was flat from his own team, and he agreed.
They were right! So we did a solid 2 months of voicework, and the harsh objective lens of AI is now saying his monotone is not only gone, but he's now speaking in the dynamic range.
Voicework has always tended to be something that felt subjective, but now thanks to AI it is appealing to analytical people who like the data too
We are only just beginning to tap the potential for AI for self-improvement.
https://blossom.primal.net/2781b5e0196e5a205e79b39fdbdaa0daa7b66344ba9f27221e29a761e7a85852.png

2026-07-24 03:32:47 UTC

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52.4% sustainable energy is from Cambridges 4th Mining report. April 2025. 40% sustainable for visa (using global gridmix) is from Our World in Data.

2026-07-24 00:58:55 UTC

This analysis is not something I did after the fact to justify how good bitcoin mining is for the enviroment, this is the analysis I did after running 2 climatetech funds and asking "what type of technology can we invest in that will maximize emissions reduced per dollar"
The answer: Bitcoin mining projects using the stranded vented methane coming out of half the world's landfills.
https://blossom.primal.net/54f0459ada99972d7a6b2f94fde8dc72cdbdc4f6fbac750d85073e607086ada5.png

2026-07-23 22:19:41 UTC

In July, Brazil stopped evaluating Bitcoin mining and started switching it on.
On July 1, Adecoagro (the Tether-backed agribusiness) began commercial mining in Mato Grosso do Sul: 10 MW, 1,280 machines, powered by surplus energy from its own sugarcane mill (source: https://iviagora.com.br/noticia/35957/mineracao-de-bitcoin-com-energia-da-cana-comeca-em-julho-em-ivinhema-mato-grosso-do-sul))
At Renova's Alto Sertao III wind complex in Bahia, 42 MW of mining is already running: the share of their wind power the grid cut fell from 65% in January to 17% in March (source: https://diariodonordeste.verdesmares.com.br/opiniao/colunistas/mariana-lemos/usina-da-casa-dos-ventos-no-nordeste-recebera-data-center-de-mineracao-de-bitcoins-1.3749091)
Casa dos Ventos, one of Brazil's biggest wind producers, is commissioning a mine at a wind plant right now, expected to cut its curtailment losses by up to 50%. (source: https://diariodonordeste.verdesmares.com.br/opiniao/colunistas/mariana-lemos/usina-da-casa-dos-ventos-no-nordeste-recebera-data-center-de-mineracao-de-bitcoins-1.3749091)
3 companies, 2 different fuels, and the same underlying principle: Bitcoin mining is the buyer of stranded energy nobody else can take.
Energy is the adoption story.

2026-07-23 13:49:29 UTC

Arguably the biggest problem in Bitcoin adoption as that those who have adopted Bitcoin don't know how to talk about Bitcoin
Which is why things like this are great!
https://beyourownceo.ai/orangepilling/

2026-07-22 22:47:44 UTC

Texas has begun replacing its most flexible load with its most inflexible one.
Hmmm.
https://blossom.primal.net/cf819e55b37c8c425412e1afbac4b903b17b7ec2d00a753267602f0287556f3f.png

2026-07-22 22:40:30 UTC

Bitcoin payments are not only the fastest to settle (instant) and the lowest fees, they are also the most enviromentally friendly.
When you choose visa etc over Bitcoin/lightning, you are choosing a network that is slow, dirty and expensive over one that is instant, clean and fair. https://blossom.primal.net/eaf314ae737d6430176244cc78bbc65b30b62522c7e859e5ca25383c5a585ef5.png

2026-07-22 22:36:56 UTC

Monarchies (like Bhutan and UAE) like Bitcoin so much?
Ironically, because they are authocratic and centralized they can make decisions very fast that benefit their people, rather than their own chance of re-election.

2026-07-22 22:23:44 UTC

How a nuclear meltdown catalyzed Bitcoin Mining in Japan
https://x.com/DSBatten/status/2080054733226528992

2026-07-21 20:50:23 UTC

The obvious story the media reports on: "AI solves Bitcoin miners' revenue problem."
The less obvious and more interesting story they're not reporting: "AI solves Bitcoin miners' exit problelm"
More interesting because it opens up Bitcoin mining companies to something no investor has been keen on til now: equity investment.
... and that has all sorts of consequences not just for Bitcoin mining, but for Bitcoin itself.

2026-07-20 14:27:01 UTC

Monetary incentives via govt subsidies have not been to get renewable energy used, but to get renewable capacity built.
Bitcoin mining is now helping to fix the distortion caused by this false signal. At scale!
https://blossom.primal.net/630bcd5d5533617547d4d4736acdeead7f4801ee64272afe31dbe59872512f05.mov

2026-07-20 03:18:01 UTC

Four of Brazil's biggest power generators are now evaluating or piloting Bitcoin mining to monetise the renewable power they currently waste.
They are Brazil's largest
* electricity generator - Already operating (Axia)
* private generator. Actively evaluating (Engie)
* wind developer, building a bitcoin mine this year (Casa dos Ventos)
* centralized solar generator - actively evaluating (Atlas Renewable Energy)
Probably nothing

2026-07-20 03:17:09 UTC

Monetary incentives via govt subsidies have not been to get renewable energy energy used, but to get renewable capacity built.
Bitcoin mining is now helping to fix the distortion caused by this false signal. At scale!
https://blossom.primal.net/630bcd5d5533617547d4d4736acdeead7f4801ee64272afe31dbe59872512f05.mov

2026-07-20 01:45:01 UTC

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I did an article called "The changing narrative on Bitcoin" which is on X and LinkedIn. It has all 30 articles.

2026-07-20 01:42:07 UTC

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thank you 🙏

2026-07-17 15:02:37 UTC

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Thank you for proof of work and your exploring of the nuance Joe.

2026-07-17 14:34:37 UTC

In case you hadn't noticed, LLMs have now displaced wikipedia, and the world is better for it.
Run an AI query on "Bitcoin renewable" now and you will get
- an objective appraisal based on the latest 2025 data from the in Bitcoin and ESG (Cambridge University) that is the gold standard for policymakers and regulators
- fact and data
- a summary of over 30 peer reviewed articles on Bitcoin mining and energy
- case studies
- input from specialists in the fields of grid stabilization and methane mitigation
Run a wikipedia on Bitcoin mining and you will get
- citations of historic papers from the 2018-2022 period that were debunked in 2023 by Sai and Vranken
- Editorial opinions and narrative
- the results of a page curated predominantly by retired sociology professors with an anti-Bitcoin bias
No one who understand Bitcoin mining bothers to update it and correct it any more because, in the words of one former editor of that page
"I kind of gave up on Wikipedia btw (in general not only for btc). Fewer people using it. The source of truth is now LLMs and not wiki."
Wikipedia, once a reliable and independent information source, is now a historical footnote alongside Alta Vista, Encyclopedia Britanica and Kodak.
Not only has AI usurped Wikipedia, but it no longer puts much weight on wikipedia when developing its own information synthesis.
It's not perfect, but it is a meaningful step up from what we had before.
https://blossom.primal.net/23a98104e9c5d343fad9d3a4191211a179c71023024b53ed7c50a33eb2f241cb.png

2026-07-16 14:42:52 UTC

Just put together my new website.
The old one was 6 years out of date and didn't reflect any of my Bitcoin work. It does now!
Grateful for 2 things
1. For how Bitcoin has grown me as a person,
and ...
2. That we have Nostr, so I can put an external link in a message and not have to endure a 90% derate.
Here's the site. The homepage also backlinks to all my Bitcoin&Energy research
https://danielbatten.co/

2026-07-15 16:41:46 UTC

One trend rarely commented on is that bullrun in ASICS prices didn't happen last cycle
An extraordinary development considering how closely ASICS price once mirrored Bitcoin price
The mining industry is maturing. CAPEX volatility is gone.
Bitcoin mining companies who earn ancillary revenue are doing very well https://blossom.primal.net/1332f0416804a8b6b816242e366b898b675c2ec3e6a6289520154212defca6f4.png

2026-07-15 16:15:29 UTC

Don't know how this happened so fast, but suddenly I've coached over 40 Bitcoiners! (this picture is now out of date)
I'm a bit overwhelmed by how much they've advanced Bitcoin since. Between them, they're now
- they've secured funding (including Tim Draper, Ego Death Capital)
- successfully launched 2 new Bitcoin policy institutes
- created an in-house solution that stabilizes Sweden's grid
- shifted Bitcoin policy through conversations with political leaders and energy ministers in 3 different countries
They did this not only because I know something about how to bring out the best in people, but also because Bitcoiners are amazing people and something phenomenal happens when they work as a peer network
My vision is to help Bitcoiners become as antifragile as Bitcoin, operate with a full stack of self-belief, while being the change they want to see in the world.
You're the average of the 5-6 people you hang out with most often. So the impact on your focus, habits, and self-belief and progress of those people being highly committed Bitcoiners while also having a coach who helps you overcome your blindspots is very net positive for you, and for Bitcoin.
If you'd like to find out more, reach out.
https://blossom.primal.net/2b36c9be074f248e72e0bd81ac353ce15f657f407a9f49169bebcbe9c50eecd3.png

2026-07-15 15:03:03 UTC

The world is, and will continue to embrace Bitcoin's ability to solve an energy problem before it embraces Bitcoin's ability to solve a monetary problem. Because ... incentives. https://blossom.primal.net/065465a8b6f186c1f237084fd0fb8144667dda4f1f52e018d20dc30959263a07.mov

2026-07-14 16:48:48 UTC

One Brazilian solar plant wastes enough power to mine an estimated $20-25 million of Bitcoin a year.
The whole country's live Bitcoin mining captures just $3 million.
Other power producers are now moving to close that gap, a pattern I have not found anywhere else outside the US.
In Brazil, as with other countries, Bitcoin is being adopted as an energy solution
I cover this in my latest newsletter.
https://www.batcoinz.com/p/brazil-just-made-the-case-for-bitcoin

2026-07-14 16:27:32 UTC

I coach my clients to go for 10x goal because they are more likely to work than aiming for a 2x goal.
Here's what the science says on the subject. https://blossom.primal.net/725f967d8e47712715982907474145e4393f182e107b04f5a325e95d1140214e.mov

2026-07-14 13:45:53 UTC

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Ricky has a great new show too. The full interview is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxDqEa2fd7c

2026-07-14 13:43:43 UTC

In 5 minutes, this is the remarkable story of why Bitcoin mining is the only economically sustainable solution to the collision of the 2 biggest megatrends in the history of electricity
https://blossom.primal.net/f8be404e4e031ad6d0b382484d5b0562f71fdace72b9ea7c1f77cae6d6ff7b16.mov

2026-07-13 01:39:13 UTC

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Neither self-judgment nore self-justification cause growth. The middle path of self-compassion does

2026-07-13 01:36:54 UTC

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I agree. Those are important too. NGU helps by giving fuel for FGU and FGU brings more people to Bitcoin which helps NGU. That's why I worded this as a statement of what I'm personally most interested in, rather than a claim about which is more important. They both are.

2026-07-10 14:15:32 UTC

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absolutely !

2026-07-10 13:06:16 UTC

The bitcoin projects I am most interested in these days are the ones that are agnostic to price action.
Thankfully, there are many such projects like that, and they are only growing.

2026-07-10 02:19:06 UTC

Thank you Lloyds for the free Bitcoin marketing
https://blossom.primal.net/7efac0b8684a4e16d3377d19ae2c9193285f3d6cc36211a0b624c7ea511de4e9.png

2026-07-09 23:39:10 UTC

For 2 years I've run the environmental module on Cambridge's course for digital-asset regulators.
Which means the supervisors from 11 G20 economies now know that, by a climate investor's own framework, the no-energy coins - Ethereum, Solana, Cardano - are not climate tech.
Bitcoin is the only one that can be.

2026-07-09 20:46:35 UTC

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TL;DR: "self-compassion increases self-improvement motivation"
https://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/selfimp.motivation.pdf

2026-07-09 20:20:19 UTC

The research is clear: the intention behind your goal matters more than you think. The surprise is where it lands - it has some bearing on whether you hit the goal, and a much stronger one on what happens next.
Let's imagine two people set the same goal: lose 15 kilos. The goal could be anything, but weight loss is so measurable and visible that I'll use it as the example.
One motivation is running away from something you don't like in yourself. "I'm lazy. I look terrible. I'm a disgrace."
The other is running toward something that inspires you as a latent potential within you. "I want to be strong, and present for my kids in twenty years."
In weight-loss trials, autonomous motivation - the "toward" kind - predicted the initial loss and, more tellingly, whether the goal stuck 2 years on. The controlling kind, the drive to fix a flaw, causes adherence to goal for a short time, but here's the kicker: maintenance of the goal once achieved was almost nil.
(source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1479-5868-9-22).
It goes deeper. Self-criticism can spark a short burst, then it gives you back shame, and shame produces avoidance
(source: https://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/selfimp.motivation.pdf).
And as an aside, when the goal is about appearance, even if you reach it, it tends not to make you feel better - the people who feel better are the ones whose intention was to do with health or connection
(source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167296223006 ).
Even "be there for my family" can be pressure in disguise, if guilt sits underneath it.
So don't trust the words of the goal.
Instead, notice whether holding it feels like choice or coercion.

2026-07-09 15:05:00 UTC

A short story about trusting yourself
Until 2020 I had a very simple, and very effective website. A homepage, a sparse amount of menu, a video on the homepage and a "let's go" button if people wanted to take the conversation further.
The simple, clear, direct message and path typically led to one new coaching client per quarter who found me on the website.
Then I met a marketing expert.
He told me I was doing it all wrong. "People need to get to know you before they'll connect with you", "There's not enough context, or story about who you are", "And the design is sparse and not warm".
I trusted his viewpoint. After all he was a marketing expert. What would I know?
We rebuilt the website in what was a long, involved process. The result looked visually appealing and told a far more complete story about who I was.
But ...
after a year, there had been no new enquiries.
after three years, still no new enquiries, let alone clients
Six years later, one enquiry off the website and still zero new clients.
Here's what he realized:
Yes, there are some people who need to "get to know you" before they contact you. But people who take a long time to make decisions have never been my clients. My best clients by results have always been those who have the capacity to implement a new idea fast.
I'd just invested money in creating a website that matched my marketing expert's belief about how people buy, not how I already knew my best clients engaged with me.
But the mistake was on me. I didn't trust my gut, my own process, and allowed the words of an "expert" to override not just my intuition but my own direct experience.
Worse, because I'd "invested so much in building it" I was reluctant to go back and fix it, because that would amount to admitting to an expensive mistake, the real expense being not the initial cost, but the compounding loss of business over a growing period of time as I continued to procrastinate.
This year I got real with myself and admitted the mistake, and within a month built a new website.
The site follows all the exact same principles that I used until 2020. But it's better because, well, I have done some extra cool things and become a better coach too since then.
Here's the finished result if you're curious
https://danielbatten.co/
But the point of the story is this:
No matter how much expertise someone has, you are the expert on you. Don't trade that inner knowing for someone else's domain knowledge lightly. You know context they don't, and ignoring that can be expensive.

2026-07-09 14:48:40 UTC

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Full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K2wOko4iYo

2026-07-09 14:47:36 UTC

If someone says to you "Bitcoin is bad for the environment" here's my 2.47min coaching on how to respond. https://blossom.primal.net/9e118a42f7af696ecaa5b5a924541450891d7343c1a55150b7d29941e722cdbc.mp4
~95% of Bitcoiners currently don't do this, and it is a simple (and powerful) fix.

2026-07-08 16:03:11 UTC

"The headwinds Bitcoin faces, the more hills we have to climb, the more rarefied air starved of the oxygen of positive media appraisal - the stronger we become"
https://blossom.primal.net/3045654eea05ee40c05c9479a6953e5934362fdbb6691e90ca0ed96b9b24a615.mp4

2026-07-07 14:36:55 UTC

Whatever you think about most, you become like that, which is why most revolutions fail.
For this reason, be motivated by love of the world you want to create, not hatred of the fiat world which has gone before.
https://blossom.primal.net/16e7ab8bec21a960537052729fe882db97982afffe11c54b331aa3b733d7c129.mp4

2026-07-07 03:30:20 UTC

There's a piece in this week's Miner Weekly, from TheEnergyMag, that anyone interested in Bitcoin mining's usefulness to the grid should be aware of
https://theenergymag.com/news/2026-07-02/miner-weekly-flexible-ai-load-steal-bitcoin-mining-grid-pitch
It asks whether flexible AI load can steal Bitcoin mining's grid pitch, and it is a fair, careful piece. It concedes the AI trials are tiny, early, and backed by parties with an interest in the answer, and it acknowledges the nuance that most coverage misses: the flexible part is training, while real-time inference (the part that is growing much faster thanks to AI chat tools) remains non-interruptible.
So credit where it is due. AI load is becoming more interruptible, and that is good for grids.
Here is the context the article leaves out. Its own best figures are a 30% cut in 40 seconds and 25% for three hours while protecting service levels. Bitcoin mining powers down almost fully in about 0.7 seconds, holds at zero for as long as the grid needs, and does it as hundreds of trillions of independent computations per machine rather than a handful of priority-tiered jobs. It also does not need fibre, so it can sit on stranded gas or curtailed solar where no data centre can follow.
And miners were forced to develop all of this out of necessity. The margin on the coins alone is so thin that flexibility became a matter of survival, built over years of real-world operation rather than a single funded pilot.
Flexible load is a decathlon. To be a good one, you have to be strong in every event: how fast you power down, how long you stay down, how modular your power-up and power-down are, where you can go, and what it costs to sit idle. AI is training hard to catch up in just one of the events.
Bitcoin mining holds the record in all of them except speed-of-power-down, where it is 2nd only to battery.
In other words, interruptivle training-AI is a good innovation that will continue to improve, and it is a very very long way from competing as a flexible load consumer with Bitcoin mining.

2026-07-06 17:14:45 UTC

Few know this: one of the world's largest utilities is now making the environmental case for Bitcoin mining.
Engie's largest solar plant anywhere, 753 MW, sits in Brazil.
At midday it makes more power than the grid can take, so the surplus is wasted. These cuts have already cost Brazil's solar and wind sector billions of reals since 2023.
Engie's country manager says one fix they are currently weighing is Bitcoin mining.
It would buy the power that is now thrown away, which protects the plant's economics, while providing additional profits with which to build more renewables (a phenomenon already widely covered in several peer reviewed studies)
The argument about the environmental and economic utility of Bitcoin mining is increasingly coming from the Utilities and Grid operators themselves.

2026-07-06 14:13:24 UTC

"There are 2 things that are good to invest in. One is Bitcoin. The other is yourself."
https://blossom.primal.net/4af29e640de31668b35514c2c1467dcdc5bbecfaa8f205434483413068aa7ee7.mp4

2026-07-06 04:29:12 UTC

“If you want to be happy for an hour, take a nap. If you want to be happy for a day, go fishing. If you want to be happy for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want to be happy for a lifetime, help someone else.”
Chinese proverb

2026-07-06 04:13:55 UTC

In 20 years of coaching here's the most regularly occurring beliefs I here that
A: hold back early-stage tech companies
- "I just need to meet the right investors."
- "it's going to be a roller coaster"
- "I'm going to have to work outrageous hours"
- "it's hard to find the right people"
- "I can't do due diligence on them, it'll look like the tail trying to wag the dog"
B. hold back mid-stage tech companies
- "it's rude/too forward to ask someone for their budget / to suggest next steps"
- "we're not allowed to speak to them"
- "it's margin or volume - you can't have both"
- "referrals are not that important"
- "silos is just one of the realities in any company above a certain size"

2026-07-06 02:02:41 UTC

Once a technology is good, advancing it is largely a function of having the right conversations with the right people
I can't reach all the right people.
But I can help make sure that when Bitcoiners do, they have the right conversations.
Behind the scenes over the last year, I've been coaching Bitcoiners about what is the right conversation to have when they met with political leaders and energy ministers in France, Chile, NZ, Australia, Ethiopia, Senegal.
These conversations have gone well, and an increasing number of the main political parties across each of these 6 countries are now favorably disposed to Bitcoin mining.

2026-07-04 14:26:52 UTC

An inspiring story about how one antifragile Bitcoiner single-handedly changed the direction of the world's 5th larges utility
https://blossom.primal.net/260656a6f47d775ffce193041c115e26ed7d9bd6a05fc3d73e6bce4aa48f2d28.mp4
From my podcast with Paula at The Bitcoin Edge
Full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K2wOko4iYo

2026-07-03 13:36:04 UTC

What's happening on the Swedish grid right now is surprising a lot of people in the Bitcoin community. And it is a window into the future regarding the usecase the world embraces first.
https://blossom.primal.net/3682f37ce6fa14f1756b10667dea9811bb20a866d341cb6e3cf514cf29084048.mp4

2026-07-02 17:06:49 UTC

Issue #049 of The The Bitcoin Adoption Forecast is out.
Check your email and spam filters
https://www.batcoinz.com/p/the-110-billion-blindspot
TL;DR:
Three conversations are happening right now about the future of electricity grids. They’re happening in parallel swinlanes, without awareness of each other. This lack of awareness won’t last forever and all 3 paths point directly to Bitcoin mining.

2026-07-02 15:42:30 UTC

Another 19 new business owners recently adopted Bitcoin
Their assessment a month+ later
- "This feels cleaner"
- "This feels like a better form of money"
- "Now 1 in 8 transactions is in Bitcoin"
- "20% of my business income is in Bitcoin now."
One couple created this in their spare time when they weren't running 3 businesses and 6 children!
https://blossom.primal.net/83e3e3cb90d23550608aed5258ab66f254c0fc44f898a53ef8cde8bcf1b3626e.mp4

2026-07-02 00:42:04 UTC

Here's what everyone who cares about social justice should know about Bitcoin
... but almost certainly doesn't
https://blossom.primal.net/917765a02852cc76d759603240bdb5f4c557fa7a72ea7cbe1e56a4733555f36b.mp4

2026-07-01 15:18:43 UTC

For 2 years I've taught the environmental module on Cambridge's digital assets course for regulators.
Which means 348 of the people who write the rules (1/3 were divisional heads) now know that Bitcoin mining is the flexible load that can absorb the grid stress AI is about to cause.
Probably nothing.

2026-07-01 14:19:48 UTC

In May, Ray Dalio explained why central banks won't hold Bitcoin: "Transactions can be monitored and potentially controlled, which is why central banks aren't looking to hold it."
Source: https://x.com/RayDalio/status/2053938354425602279
For the last two years I've taught the environmental module on Cambridge's digital assets course for regulators.
His privacy claim is contested (to say the least)
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/ray-dalio-says-bitcoin-is-not-the-answer-the-community-responds. But that has been well countered already and isn't my focus here.
The claim I can speak to is "aren't looking" because this is factually incorrect: the regulators I teach are doing exactly that.
In the two cohorts I taught, the attendees came from 24 central banks, several of them G20 monetary authorities, others from across the emerging world.
They enrolled, paid, and worked through eight weeks of their own accord to understand digital assets properly. More than a third were department heads or directors. The rest were the supervisors and analysts who apply the rules.
In short: the data says that the institutions many (including Ray) assume are asleep on this are quietly sending their staff to class.
A few have also moved past class.
For example: in November 2025 the Czech National Bank made its first Bitcoin purchase: a small test portfolio, explicitly a two-year experiment before any decision on reserves. Its governor is openly making the case for it.
Source: https://www.cnb.cz/en/public/media-service/interviews-articles/Governor-Michls-thoughts-on-bitcoin-a-test-portfolio-in-CNBs-foreign-exchange-reserves/
In June 2025 Ukraine introduced a bill to let its central bank hold Bitcoin in reserves - permission rather than obligation. The door is now legally open.
Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/ukraine-introduces-bill-to-allow-bitcoin-in-national-reserves
Granted, none of this means central banks are about to hold Bitcoin at scale and Dalio may be partially right that many never will. But "aren't looking" is a different claim, which the data already contradicts.
24 central banks are already looking into it, 1 already holds a test position, another has recently passed a bill to allow it.
For a man who built his career on following the data, that is a strange thing to miss.

2026-07-01 00:56:21 UTC

Charisma is something almost everyone seems to want more of and seek out in others. Yet remarkably, almost no one knows what it is, let alone how to increase it. It turns out it isn't one trait.
When researchers actually measured it, it resolved into two halves:
1. influence, the ability to guide and lead people, and
2. affability, the ability to make them feel at ease (Tskhay, General Charisma Inventory, 2018).
Most people only work on the first half. Status, authority, looking impressive. It matters, however ... it is the smaller of the two levers.
The second half is quieter, and it is the one most people underrate.
Charismatic people carry and express calm, positive emotion, and other people catch it.
Follower moods track the leader's mood, a process called emotional contagion.
Bono and Ilies measured it in 2006: a leader's positive emotion measurably lifts the mood of the people around them.
So here is the working model I am testing on myself: the affable half of charisma is largely nervous-system regulation. Settle your own state and you settle the people around you, often without saying anything. This is leadership through presence.
You cannot hold the first half for long if the second is missing. And you build the second the way you build anything steady in the body, through breathwork, meditation, and daily attention to your own state.
Work on your nervous system and you are working on (at least) half of what makes you more charismatic, and ... the half most people ignore competely.

2026-06-30 20:07:35 UTC

We're winning on one front!
... and this front can shed has some lessons in terms of how we win the other narratives too.
https://blossom.primal.net/5c762bbeb849f8b972101915e27e4522e94617f9b4b19cbeab4ead7d65f9980c.png

2026-06-30 19:37:13 UTC

The first rule of growing Bitcoin is you doing talk about Bitcoin

2026-06-30 19:35:47 UTC

France now has parties across the spectrum, from the far-right to the communist left to the center, adopting pro-Bitcoin-mining positions (with the Greens the notable exception).
Probably nothing.

2026-06-30 15:26:11 UTC

Last year I taught the environmental module on Cambridge's digital assets course for regulators. Across the two cohorts, the room held 348 financial-sector officials, from 24 central banks and 43 countries.
I went in to give the people who write the rules a different way to look at the question.
Energy use is not environmental harm. I made that point the way I assess any technology as a climate-tech investor: carbon debt, carbon displacement, carbon payback. Bitcoin already runs on 52.4% sustainable energy, the highest of any global industry, per Cambridge.
Coming from an investor rather than a Bitcoiner changes how it lands. It lets a regulator lower the environmental risk they assign to proof-of-work, without feeling they have gone soft on digital assets. Risk perception is the input to restrictive policy. Shifting it is the highest-leverage thing you can do in that room.
It also pre-empts the standard objections. The per-transaction energy claim, the country comparison, the water and e-waste lines - all answered with data, in advance. The estimates that started the energy panic were debunked in four peer-reviewed studies. A regulator who has already heard that won't be swayed by those lines the next time someone repeats them.
The timing did some of the work. Grid strain from AI data centres is the live issue on their desks. Bitcoin mining is the flexible counterpoint to inflexible AI base load. That moves it from problem to part of the solution at the moment they are grappling with it.
What other regulators are already doing moves a regulator more than the argument does. And the data points one way.
Since 2020, 47 countries have given mining more access and only nine still ban it. The biggest way nation states take Bitcoin exposure now is to mine it themselves. Once a regulator sees other countries doing this and benefiting, staying out looks riskier than stepping in.
I'm not suggesting this equates to "proven policy change", and the audience for this education is self-selected. But Cambridge knew the content in advance, there was no pushback (because it was all backed by data, so on-brand for them), it was the highest-rated session, and I was invited back. For a neutral academic programme briefing regulators, that is the signal the argument landed.
Those 348 came from the institutions that write the rules, many of them in senior, cautious roles. Each one takes what they learned back into their institution, and into the policy it shapes.

2026-06-30 14:29:48 UTC

Satoshi observed firsthand the non-independence of banks, central banks and govt and commented on this in email messages.
He observed how the banking sector's financial losses were socialized and yet gains were privatized.
Bitcoin was created at the time that the 1% had just done over the 99% and the first lines in the genesis block reflected this.
In short: social justice was at the core of Bitcoin's creation.
https://blossom.primal.net/19ae530cb96624a0a9da662242593919f978159c8d7eb0ff71e57b7b04d569cd.png -

2026-06-30 13:52:19 UTC

Diamond hands start with low cortisol
Cortisol is commonly known as the stress hormone. It turns out it is also a hormone that influences how we are remembered by others. A leader with high cortisol is not just more likely to lose their composure and treat others badly - high cortisol also degrades the exact faculties that a highly effective leader needs on a daily basis: working memory, impulse control, sleep. Outside of work, stress is also estimated to play a role in 60-80% of primary-care visits.
In a randomised field study of executives, a three-day SKY breathing course (a type of breathwork which I've been teaching for about 20 years) significantly lowered blood cortisol and stress while lifting life satisfaction and emotional stability. A year on, the gains had held for the people who kept the practice going, without having to repeat the course. The same pattern showed up in working employees with calendars: a three-day programme cut anxiety and lifted thriving.
The cortisol-lowering observation is not unique to breathwork. Plenty of things have been shown in studies to effectively lower cortisol: walking, a holiday, or even a simple relaxation routine measurably drops it too. What is unique to breathwork are the other factors that accompany the stress reduction.
The same practice that brings your cortisol down is the one sharpening the attention, improving your heart-rate variability, defending the deep sleep, all at once. Lowering cortisol is common. Lowering it alongside eight other measurable gains, all of which matter for how you lead, and all from one practice, is rare.
When I ask leaders in workshops to recall the most important quality in the leader that they most admired, two answers that I consistently hear are "They were always so present. When I was in the room, they were completely undistracted and it felt like I was the only thing that mattered" and "They were the one everyone looked to for calm and direction when there was a storm going on" (they literally used those words, "storm" and "present").
A lower cortisol baseline means calm in the stormy moments that decide how a leader is remembered. It means undistracted presence in the moments when you are in the room with them.
Cortisol is what tightens your chest as you talk. It is what makes you do something impulsively without thinking of downstream consequences, like panic-selling into a drawdown you would have held through with a clear head. It is what tips your tone a notch sharper than you meant to when giving feedback.
https://blossom.primal.net/d8d672ec97e9907d9aaac9c38703b1d778c5eeb824bc9fd214b0b9d20479c1bf.png A lower cortisol baseline can make the difference between people recalling you as the inspirational leadership example in workshops run by people like me, and you being the example when I ask "Can you recall a counterexample of great leadership?"
I suggest breathing techniques to the founders and leaders I coach because it changes not just the way they communicate and decide, but the ripple of impact they have on people's lives years into the future.

2026-06-29 17:15:16 UTC

The world is just a hair's breadth away from seeing that Bitcoin mining solves the energy trilemma
That's why it has now been embraced by the political left, center, and right, in France
And the irony is - AI datacenters are what has brought Bitcoin mining's moment of truth closer to our awareness.
https://blossom.primal.net/39b20700d1a808465139b6cf4d61746c76b4e35413866e5501bb5bb742b5cb79.mp4
Full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlzpFwE7Wuk

2026-06-29 16:50:13 UTC

Superior knowledge or insight creates an edge. This allows better identification of mispricings, higher-probability opportunities, or structural advantages where the downside is limited (or knowable) while the upside is large.
TL;DR asymmetric returns -> potential for asymmetric knowledge
some of the most asymmetric knowledge right now in Bitcoin is:
1. How profitable Bitcoin mining companies are, who have found ancillary revenue through solving an energy problem (heat recycling, methane mitigation or grid stabilization)
2. How many of these Bitcoin mining companies are in Europe
It's one of the reasons we're looking to invest in Bitcoin mining companies who mitigate methane from landfills. But there are many other equally good investment opportunities in Bitcoin mining if you know what to look for (the ones that solve a problem and earn most of their money through something other than SATs)
Not investment advice.

2026-06-29 14:56:21 UTC

Just in: Sovereign Green energy backed Bitcoin mining is one of the new trends this cycle
And the Middle East and Africa are now leading the charge, using Bitcoin mining at scale to stabilize grids, accelerate rural electrification and accelerate green energy development
Article source: https://www.kucoin.com/blog/middle-east-africa-green-energy-crypto-mining-growth

2026-06-24 21:58:22 UTC

Low time preference is trainable.
We talk about low time preference like it's something that the process of holding sound money does to us.
Hold Bitcoin, and you defer gratification by default. ie: don't spend today what could be worth more tomorrow.
This is true, holding Bitcoin does lower our time preference. It's also a skill you can build directly
Turns out that part has been measured across hundreds of studies.
The underlying skill is the ability to choose the larger reward later over the smaller one now. You train it with your own imagination.
When people picture a specific future in vivid detail, they discount it less and wait for the bigger reward more often.
Researchers call it "episodic future thinking". In randomized tests it measurably lowered how steeply people discounted the future.
If you make your future concrete enough, you will value it enough to wait for it.
One concrete example (of many): put friction between impulse and action, such as the "wait 10 minutes" rule before a purchase, snack, or reply to someone who just said something ignorant about Bitcoin on social media. You're not banning the thing. You are inserting a delay so the impulse passes and the deliberate choice gets a chance to take over. Over time, the pause becomes automatic.
Low time preference is a muscle that can be trained.

2026-06-23 13:50:42 UTC

Question:
Bitcoin mining companies, especially in Europe, seem to be expanding fast to meet the demand from both the grid and AI datacenters for flexible load.
When they do this, they often have short term financing needs (due to short lags between equipment purchases and deployments), which can be secured by slow-depreciating assets such as transformers and other electrical infrastructure (not fast-depreciating ASICS)
Many seem prepared to do short term finance, paying up to 2% per month, so they can expand faster.
I'm not personally familiar with this sort of fully secured short term loan financing, but keen to see if I can support the growth of Bitcoin mining on our grids.
Any ideas who does this sort of thing?

2026-06-23 13:42:35 UTC

When I was in Madrid for the MadBitcoin conference, i got talking to Michal Nydrle about how Bitcoin mining's potential to transform our grids
He say he'd had his mind blown. Have had several comments like this since.
Turns out, how Bitcoin mining transforms the way humans do energy is as much of a rabbit hole as how Bitcoin transforms the way humans do money.
https://blossom.primal.net/e91557d71d786e0f77edc9b400a270b791c0f76133096b51d715ad30f6054c7a.png

2026-06-22 23:21:50 UTC

- reply

Correct. It is a real issue!

2026-06-22 16:29:16 UTC

Almost nobody is connecting Bitcoin mining profitability-squeeze to the rise of Bitcoin mining companies earning grid-revenue
We are moving from the age of mining monoculture (Sats only) to mining permaculture (multiple revenue streams, multiple uses in parallel)

2026-06-22 16:27:23 UTC

If you read news media about mining this week: you'll get the "20% of miners unprofitable", "below production cost for five months", "hashrate down 12%"
- in other words, you'll get the un-nuanced, single-dimension, skewed-negative coverage that every one else gets.
If you listen to people on the inside, you'll get the real story
- Mining will never be unprofitable because there are multiple ancillary revenue sources
- You can mine for an effective -2.67c/KWh if you're also providing grid stabilization through your ASICS
- Bitcoin mining (where the miner has ancillary revenue) is an attractive asymmetric bet because never has it been so clear it solves so many of the world's energy problems in parallel. The world's utilities and grid operators are now a hair's breadth away from realizing this.
Not investment advice.

2026-06-22 14:03:50 UTC

This year you'll see me do a lot more of this: jumping on non-Bitcoin podcasts to educate people about the value of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining
Contrary to what you might thing: most people are curious and highly receptive.
This pod was with people in the energy sector who said to me afterwards it was one of the most mindblowing podcasts they'd had.
Listen on Wired For Energy website:
https://www.wiredforenergy.org/bitcoin-climate-villain-or-solution-with-daniel-batten/
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6GkN3w5Z8guaMnRuXXo3pu
Apple:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-climate-villain-or-solution-with-daniel-batten/id1808796551?i=1000773196932

2026-06-22 13:40:36 UTC

- reply

Correct! Batching social media entries is proving a good innovation. I posted that to hold myself to account as much as anything!

2026-06-22 13:36:13 UTC

Just in: Oman just launched a (mandatory) National Bitcoin Mining Pool.
Interesting paradox:
It is also a State-Backed Push for Regulatory Control that will help decentralize mining pools, particularly if more governments do this.
Context: Oman is in the middle of a $700M+ push into industrial-scale Bitcoin mining

2026-06-21 21:47:03 UTC

Carbon fiber for spacecraft was an accidental secondary application from the textile industry
GPUs had an accidental secondary application that changed the world for AI, originally from the gaming industry
Bitcoin's accidental secondary application could also change the world faster than its original application.
https://blossom.primal.net/7a3d662554741a41a5cadfe1645f704bd29597291c176fd4fffc128a69dd33f6.mp4

2026-06-21 19:50:19 UTC

Everyone in Bitcoin knows that Bitcoin solves a money problem
A subset know that Bitcoin also solves an energy problem
And yet ironically ... the energy problem is likely to be the one the world sees value in first, for a very simple reason
https://blossom.primal.net/d2a2c94a334942131b0a050761afedef282286ee9890e8b73f85504496bc334d.mp4

2026-06-21 15:42:32 UTC

Bitcoin mining was gaslit for a long time (as we know all too well). As a result, grids using it won't tell anyone (overtly). But that doesn't mean they aren't using it
A lot!
They'll call it flexible load. They'll call it data centers, grid stabilization, demand response. Basically anything but Bitcoin mining while reaping the benefits that only Bitcoin mining offers a grid.
I jumped on a pod with Nik Bhatia to talk about this recently
https://blossom.primal.net/c9f21405abb758418d725d5106c9e8819e4c21f4cb6769cca4000c038e3a7eca.mp4

2026-06-19 21:43:12 UTC

One tech founder I coached told me the story of his father (also a tech-founder) who arrived home from a work trip after a week. His mom said "your dad is back", to which he replied "Oh, has he been gone?"
He vowed to be a more present father to his kids. When his company exited a few years ago and we shared a moment of celebrating, what we really celebrated was not the exit, but that he'd done it in a way that meant his daughters had experienced the different quality and level of fathering from him, than he'd had at times had from his own Dad.

2026-06-19 20:32:42 UTC

You cannot build a low-time-preference life while rehearsing high time preference every hour.

2026-06-18 22:14:53 UTC

Bitcoin is most owned where it solves very real problems.
For example of the top 14, here's the problems it solves.
UAE: Remittances.
The world's highest-migrant-share workforce sends money home through banks that skim 6%+ a transfer. Bitcoin moves it for a fraction.
Source: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/more-uae-residents-remitting-using-bitcoin-other-cryptocurrency
Vietnam: Bank-account control.
The state deactivated 86M+ bank accounts in a single AML sweep. I spoke to people this happened to who lost their savings. They had left Vietnam years before, and found the account that held their money simply closed. A bank that can freeze you for going quiet is the whole argument for holding your own keys.
Source: https://vietnamnews.vn/economy/1721534/more-than-86-million-bank-accounts-to-be-terminated-from-september-1.html
United States: Investment.
Here the driver is portfolio allocation. Spot ETFs opened the door and institutions walked through, pulling roughly $14.8B into the funds in 2025.
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/12/18/u-s-bitcoin-etfs-see-strongest-inflows-for-over-a-month-as-btc-dominance-hits-60
Philippines: Remittances.
Overseas workers wire billions home each year. Bitcoin rails undercut the high-fee operators they are otherwise forced to use.
Source: https://www.tranglo.com/blog/the-state-of-digital-currency-and-remittance-in-the-philippines/
Iran: Sanctions.
Locked out of the dollar system, Iran mines its subsidised energy into Bitcoin and spends it on imports the banks can't touch.
Source: https://www.elliptic.co/blog/how-iran-uses-bitcoin-mining-to-evade-sanctions
Brazil: Inflation hedge.
Brazilians hold Bitcoin as hard money against a currency that keeps losing ground, and as a serious investment asset.
Source: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2024-latin-america-crypto-adoption/
Saudi Arabia: Returns
Most Saudis are under 30, digitally native, and chasing upside under Vision 2030. They are one of the fastest-growing Bitcoin markets in the region.
Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/saudi-arabias-crypto-market-to-hit-50-billion/
Singapore: Zero capital gains tax.
Capital and wealth managers cluster where Bitcoin profits aren't taxed.
Source: https://www.ainvest.com/news/singapore-crypto-ownership-hits-16-0-capital-gains-tax-attraction-2508/
Venezuela: Hyperinflation
As the bolivar collapses, Venezuelans move savings into Bitcoin to hold value the state can't erase
Source: https://www.ccn.com/education/crypto/venezuela-inflation-bitcoin-usdt-p2p-crypto-lifeline/
El Salvador: Conviction.
The IMF stripped the legal-tender mandate in 2025, so nobody has to touch Bitcoin. Around one in ten Salvadorans still do, by choice.
Source: https://gfmag.com/economics-policy-regulation/el-salvador-drops-bitcoin-legal-tender/
Ukraine: War.
When ATMs capped withdrawals and savings froze, Bitcoin crossed borders money couldn't, and funded the defence.
Source: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/can-crypto-deliver-aid-amid-war-ukraine-holds-the-answer/
Argentina: Inflation.
After decades of a falling peso, Argentines save in Bitcoin to protect what their melting-icecube currency keeps eroding.
Source: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2024-latin-america-crypto-adoption/
Thailand: Investment
Thais treat Bitcoin as a high-return asset class, and the state is courting crypto tourists. A spot Bitcoin ETF was approved in 2024.
Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/business/digital-assets/40052606
South Africa: Hedging the rand.
The rand has devalued 8x against the USD since 2000. A weak, volatile currency and a deep investor base push South Africans into Bitcoin as an alternative asset.
Source: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/subsaharan-africa-crypto-adoption-2024/
Notice the common theme? With the exception of US, Singapore, Thailand and Saudi Arabia, all the other countries are using Bitcoin to solve problems that affect basic livelihood in ways most of us struggle to imagine even being necessary in the West.
There is a name for this: "Solipsistic". It means treating one's own experience as the only reality.
But the more common term is "Tone-deaf".
Those who continue to maintain Bitcoin "has no value" are actually saying (either wittingly, or unwitting "the lives of people who are not like me have no value". Increasingly "Bitcoin has no value" sounds like Marie Antoinette declaring "let them eat cake" - a wilful or careless plea from the elite who genuinely can't conceive of scarcity.
https://blossom.primal.net/73dfabcfa07f536043a2c85a2b6621431b4720e96c67ff76067959f6b279ffc6.png

2026-06-18 21:16:44 UTC

97% of the Bitcoin conversation is about money. Last week, I jumped on a podcast with Nik Bhatia to discuss how the use case the world understands first might be the one almost no one is discussing.
https://blossom.primal.net/2a5672ebca32eb3c153485173f9e0ecd714cbf933a4a2190dabb27741397ee12.mp4

2026-06-17 15:37:29 UTC

Little known truth: Bitcoin mining stabilizes the world's grids which are facing 2 destabilizing forces in parallel
Probably nothing
https://blossom.primal.net/6f202bed5e67f08b5dbe62fef1840c26bd5759e2248159102e445439d264828a.png

2026-06-17 14:56:01 UTC

- reply

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlzpFwE7Wuk

2026-06-17 14:55:39 UTC

Last month, I asked a Bitcoin miner operating in Sweden what his electricity actually costs him per kWh.
The answer was a negative number. And most of his revenue isn't coming from mining at all. I shared the story with Nik a couple of days ago.
Like Bitcoin itself, Bitcoin mining is super antifragile.
https://blossom.primal.net/87026fa8e743859ecd5280504f42813217b1c1d441f07e880118c0b594e4e35a.mp4
Link to whole interview in comments

2026-06-16 17:19:39 UTC

If you want to be a great leader, you have no alternative but to also be a coach. If you want to be an average leaders, becoming a coach is not necessary. Here's why.
https://blossom.primal.net/7ba8c594d5d2dbaf8595294dc9403c3aaa3306490f2dceb678ca2f7d1b3acae1.mp4

2026-06-16 14:51:55 UTC

The world doesn't need more thoughtleaders. The world needs more people who are an example of that which they are talking about
https://blossom.primal.net/28d3441f6ac131380ef40e7a767538c5a8025180233cb4a1ed0ec61d03641a10.mp4

2026-06-15 17:02:19 UTC

Probably nothing
https://blossom.primal.net/e236c4257f0ca64af9a1581bae491fc80d7458103f263b69051cfb6115b91852.png

2026-06-15 16:02:19 UTC

"The first rule in the adoption of Bitcoin is you don't talk about Bitcoin"
To give context, this is not a theory, but rather a conclusion that I've slowly arrived at, as have others who are at the forefront of adoption.
On our Bitcoiners' mastermind call a couple of days ago, one of our people from the mining sector said "If I talk about Bitcoin mining, the walls go up, but if I talk about helping monetize wasted energy, or stabilizing the grid, or removing a methane problem - people lean in and really want to talk to me."
Another member of the Mastermind said "It's the same onboarding businesses. We've found that if we talk about Bitcoin, we get resistence, but if we simply go in wanting to serve them and help them have more autonomy, freedom, and do business in a cleaner way that helps their family and reduces fees and friction at the same time - then they are very open"

2026-06-12 22:39:11 UTC

There's a giant skull on display in the Bitcoin Museum in Nashville. It was created in 2023 for GreenpeaceUSA's campaign against Bitcoin mining, and its job was to make the world see Bitcoin as an environmental villain. So how did it end up in a museum built by the people it was designed to shame?
I was close to most of what happened next. But it took me until this year to see what the story was actually about.
Early 2023 was the high-water mark of the environmental case against Bitcoin. Tesla had stopped accepting Bitcoin payments, citing environmental concerns. Most press on mining was hostile. And GreenpeaceUSA's "Change the Code" campaign, funded with $5 million from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, had just unveiled its centrepiece: the Skull of Satoshi, a striking sculpture by the artist Ben Von Wong.
Troy Cross (environmentalist, philosopher, Bitcoiner) saw a different way in. Troy's insight was and always had been to turn a public debate into a 1:1 conversation fast. He did that much better than was ever my nature, and he did it with Ben. It was Troy who invited Ben to talk to him: environmentalist to environmentalist, peer to peer. The conversation ended up lasting four days.
Troy made the case most of us would have made: how mining soaks up wasted renewable energy, how it can stabilise grids. And it worked, for hours at a time. Ben would shift. Then he'd check in with GreenpeaceUSA, and the campaign would pull him back to the script. At one point they brought in Alex de Vries, the central-bank employee whose since-debunked research the campaign was largely built on, to talk to Ben directly. Two steps forward, two steps back.
Then Troy stopped.
He told me later that the breakthrough came "when I stopped trying to spell out the case for Bitcoin and just said, 'OK, let me lay out all the reasons why I think you're opposed to it.'"
Read that again. The turning point in the most public fight over Bitcoin's environmental story was a man offering to argue his opponent's case.
I've coached founders and CEOs for twenty years, and I recognised the move the moment Troy described it. When a person is defending a position, their mind is occupied with protection, and almost nothing you say gets processed. Data bounces off a defended mind. When you lay out someone's case better than they've articulated it themselves, the defence has nothing left to push against - you've proven you understand them before asking to be understood (Aristotle noticed the same thing about character twenty-three centuries ago).
And those first days of arguing weren't wasted. They showed Ben who he was dealing with: an environmentalist who knew the data cold and never once raised his voice. By the time Troy held up the mirror, Ben trusted the man holding it. The order matters. People accept evidence from a messenger they trust, inside a conversation that feels safe, and at no other time.
What happened next is on the public record. Ben wrote a thread that has stayed pinned to his profile for three years: "I made the Skull believing that Bitcoin Mining was a simple black-and-white issue. I've spent my entire career trying to reduce real-world physical waste, and PoW felt intuitively wasteful. Of course, I was wrong. Few things in the world are black and white. Dumb me." The "Dumb me" included - his words, on his profile, by his choice, for three years now.
Ben never became a Bitcoin advocate. His position is neither for nor against: he let better information redraw the picture in shades of gray, publicly, which takes more intellectual honesty than switching teams.
Then Ben did something nobody asked of him. He set up meetings between the campaign's director, Josh Archer, and four of us: Troy, Margot Paez, Trey Walsh and me. What was said in those rooms stays private, and that's how it should be. What I can share is that I found Josh genuinely interested. A few months later, he left the campaign. Then he left GreenpeaceUSA altogether.
The campaign wound down. Not one node owner changed the code.
In April last year, I reached out to Ben to ask whether we could procure the skull, so it could have a second life somewhere better than a warehouse.
The reply never came. Six weeks later I found out why: Ripple, the company whose co-founder had funded the campaign, had already bought it under NDA, to unveil at the Bitcoin Conference and gift to the Bitcoin Museum in Nashville. The sculpture commissioned to bury Bitcoin's reputation was donated to Bitcoin's museum by the campaign's own funder. You couldnt script it.
At the Bitcoin Conference, Ben got back to me with a message: "I think you were right in some ways in that Bitcoin really has been the fastest greening technology out of all the other ones. And looking at how other technologies have gone backwards, Bitcoin hasn't ... yet, anyways." I asked whether I could share it publicly. He replied: "Sure thing go for it. Thanks for asking I appreciate the transparency."
That "yet, anyways" at the end is what intellectual honesty sounds like in two words: the verdict stays open, and the evidence keeps the casting vote. Few things in the world are black and white - and Ben writes like a man who means it.
The skull arrived in Nashville exactly as Ben built it. What moved was everything around it: the artist, the director, the funder, the story. And all of it moved one conversation at a time, human to human.
And Troy's four days were one thread of many. Nobody appointed him to talk to Ben. Nobody appointed Margot, Trey or me to sit down with Josh. Nobody coordinated the Bitcoiners who met every campaign post with their own data, day after day, in numbers no press office could match. The campaign ran on $5 million, a media plan and the brand of a well known NGO. The defence was a group of decentralized individuals with no budget, no leader, and no titles, where one key person decided without needing to ask anyone's permission to talk to another human being directly.
Satoshi's whitepaper described electronic cash that needed no intermediaries. It turned out the defence of his network needed none either. That's what the skull means to me now. A network designed peer to peer was defended peer to peer.

2026-06-08 20:57:20 UTC

- reply

Number of blocks mined per hour remains constant. But the amount of hash
power competing to mine those blocks becomes more variable.

2026-06-08 20:56:05 UTC

- reply

Yep

2026-06-06 23:14:34 UTC

The gap between these bars is the largest asymmetry in Bitcoin right now
https://blossom.primal.net/ce451bfeddda70f9430b82190e9466a5bc5b42fbc1f3f6c42069f630c3b80d36.png