What if I told you that Bitcoin mining now supplies 2% of
Finland residential heating, replacing fossil fuels and
accelerating their energy goals. Daniel Batten is back on Bitcoin
for millennials to breakdown tree game changing trends that
are rewriting Bitcoin's story in 2025.
We'll explore how Bitcoin is heating homes, how pension funds
holding trillions are finally joining the party, and how
Bitcoin is unlocking real humanitarian power in places
where it's needed the most. And the most surprising driver
of bitcoins next wave. That's the one that isn't really
talked about much yet. All right, let's dive in.
Yeah, let's just kick it off. Our first topic is Bitcoin
mining slash energy energy abundance.
This is a fascinating one because when we think Bitcoin,
we think about a monetary revolution, and obviously that's
what Bitcoin is. But it's not only a monetary
revolution, it's also an energy revolution.
And for me that's equally pronounced, the positive impact
that can have on humanity and equally exciting.
And how that's enabled is completely accidental because
Sudoshi never in his wildest dreams could have imagined that
in creating a protocol called Bitcoin, which was driven by
proof of work, that over time you would need so much energy
that you'd have these massive, sometimes publicly listed mining
companies who are doing nothing else other than mining Bitcoin.
Who'd be using vast supplies of energy, which would create an
industry which was unique in the world that we've never had
before. And that's because, Bram,
there's not a single other energy industry in the world
apart from Bitcoin mining, where around 80% of your entire
expense line is spent on power. We've never had that.
And because of that accident, it means that Bitcoin mining
companies, unlike any other company in the world, it
suddenly becomes economically viable for them to go chasing
cheapest stranded energy. So I'll give you an example.
So I'm the managing partner, as you said, at a company called
Chapter 4 Capital. So we specialize in giving
infrastructure financing to Bitcoin mining companies who are
using landfills emissions as their power source.
Sounds pretty niche, right? And the crazy thing is, we've
known about this issue about landfills leaching gargantuan
quantities of methane, which is not only a pollutant, but it's
responsible for around 1,000,000 premature deaths every year.
It's a contributor to smog, all sorts of horrible things, but
we've never had a way to basically wipe out all that
methane that makes economic sense.
So what people have tended to do is they've just burnt it,
they've fled it. But the problem is that unless
you have a regulatory stick which is forcing you to do so,
then no one's going to flare it because it costs a lot of money.
You've got to buy the infrastructure, you've got to
buy the flare stack, you've got to maintain them.
It's expensive and ultimately just waste energy.
So in most places in the world, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin
America, you name it, India, Pakistan, these landfills simply
vent directly into the air. Huge quantities of pollution
slash energy. Now, because Bitcoin mining
companies have such a large percentage of their budget being
power, it's actually worth it for them to go chasing that
cheap energy because as you can imagine, it's not so convenient
setting up on a landfill and just hooking up to the grid,
right? So why would you do that?
Well, the reason you do it is you can get power for one cent
per kWh, but to access that power, you've got extra costs.
You've got to pay for gas capture and collection.
You've got to pay for these huge generators that turn the power
from the methane into power, and you've got to purify that
landfill gas, that bio gas. So it only makes economic sense
if 80% of your expenses is power.
So these Bitcoin mining companies have found a place on
landfills in oil and gas fields using flare gases, using
stranded renewable energy, which exists around the world.
Wherever you have energy, which is renewable, you'll have
stranded energy. Maybe it's from a hydro jam that
was built as all dams are to deliver for today's capacity.
No, to deliver capacity for 20 years time.
So they have way more power capacity than they're using lots
of wasted energy or solar and wind farms that were built
through government incentives, but without thought about how
you transported that energy. So often it just gets wasted.
And again, so Bitcoin mining companies are coming into these
solar farms, these wind farms, these hydro facilities, these
landfills, these oil and gas fields, and they're just soaking
up all of that wasted energy. And what happens when they do
that? In the case of oil and gas
fields and landfills, they're solving A pollution problem.
And in the case of these other sources, such as hydrate, wind
and solar, they're solving a problem which has stopped these
sources of renewable energy being profitable.
And as a result, because the utility is getting more power,
they're able to redeploy that extra revenue to build out more
renewable capacity or to build out more transmission lines to
reach more people, which in places like Africa means more
rural people who are in energy poverty.
So it's facilitating these energy revolutions both in the
West and outside the West, making energy more profitable
and lowering electricity bills, which is the opposite of what
you might read. But this is absolutely the case.
You ask any grid operator who's used Bitcoin mining.
In fact, I was talking to a Bitcoin mining company just two
days ago who said that they were doing some work with a grid
operator who said the reason we're looking at Bitcoin mining
is we've done our research and we've realized that we've had a
threshold and we can't put more renewable energy onto the grid
unless we have more flexible load to counterbalance its
intermittency. And we've done our research and
we've worked out the best flexible load in the world is
Bitcoin mining. So that's why it's leading to
these energy revolutions. And it's tremendously exciting
because without that, we're going to have to make choices
about, well, do we have more renewable energy or do we have
more reliable, affordable energy?
And Bitcoin says you don't have to make that choice.
You have it all. When we are talking about where
we're at in 2025, I think you are doing the work to share how
this is so beneficial. And we're slowly seeing this
actually being picked up more in, in, in the, in the
scientific realm, right? That's right.
And what's happened since last time we spoke is we're starting
to see this happening at scale. So for example, one of the most
amazing side benefits of Bitcoin mining is that they produce
heat, right, Because they get really hot as they're hashing.
In fact, 100% of the energy is transmitted into heat.
So if you can capture that heat, you can do some really useful
stuff because it turns out that half of the world's energy goes
into heating stuff up. Now, obviously it's not going to
produce enough heat to melt steel or to melt silicon, but it
can produce enough heat to heat up residential areas or hot
water. And so that's tremendously
valuable because right now Finland, not many people know
this, but 2% of the district heating.
So that's the heating that goes through pipes and heats up homes
throughout Finland during the long winter time is now supplied
by Bitcoin mining. So that's more than 100,000 in
total. Residents are getting their
homes heated through the exhaust heat through Bitcoin mining.
So Mara is up there, they've done 80,000 homes.
There's other companies up there who are doing it as well, doing
this amazing work. And the amazing thing is that
what are what's Finland using right now for their just
heating? What's their power?
Well, it's coal, gas, little bit of renewables and peat, but
mostly fossil fuel. So when you're replacing those
predominantly fossil fuel and peat's horrible stuff, it's
worse than coal. When you burn it puts all sorts
of carcinogens into the air. So when you replace those heat
sources with predominantly clean renewable energy based heat
sources, which are coming from clean electrified energy, it's
helping Finland to reach its net 0 emission targets by 20-30 for
district heating. So they love it.
And this was covered in a report by Cambridge recently who said,
yeah, we found that now the coin mining is 52% using sustainable
energy. It's obviating the need for
fossil fuel based heating at scales for heat recycling.
There's methane mitigation happening all around the world
through companies such as Cruzo back in the day.
Now companies like Mara and other companies who are doing a
lot of methane mitigation in the oil and gas industry and also
companies on landfills, and it's helping to stabilize the grids.
And we're getting these really good, robust independent
studies. In fact, we've had eight of them
now, which are saying this is not for the Bitcoin mining
ecosystem. This, these are independent
reports saying, yeah, this is solving some really key energy
challenges. There they are, yeah.
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That's gemini.com/brom. There was a jurisdiction in
Norway that had the really smart idea of saying let's ban Bitcoin
mining, and they did. They banned Bitcoin mining.
Within two weeks, everyone's car prices went up 20%, widely
covered in the media. So we know it in theory, we know
it in practice, and we have the receipts to prove it.
Yeah, it's so cool that you know, these these topics that
that I talk about a lot with regard to Bitcoin, for example,
you know that it aligns incentives is something that you
that you see here, right? Like the fact that people have
to pay a penalty to discard of the energy that they created
with, you know, a project that they already invested to
invested in, right? Is, is just absolutely bonkers,
you know, and, and the fact that also also, you know, certain
principles that have worked before are also working here,
right? It's like I have to think of
Uber, right? Like Uber identified in the
beginning, there are like black car drivers in New York City
that are hired for a day, but when they drive someone in the
morning and they drop them off at their office, they're just
hanging out the whole day, right?
So they have this asset, this black car and this, this, this
person who is neatly dressed and just the experience of a black
car. And then they realize that that
is something that you can monetize, same as with Airbnb,
if you have spare room at etcetera.
And so here it is the same, right?
Like no one ever really, no one ever really fought before about,
oh, I can actually sell my methane emissions of my
landfill. Like, you know, it is something
so new and, and I I think that it's just so fascinating in a
sense that this is also quite early, I would say, right?
We, we still have, well, we have some coverage now that we are
talking about it. We we also brought this, right.
So we mentioned the papers, these are the the journals.
This is this is something that that you are obviously
following, right? But more and more we're getting
this coverage of yeah, the power, the power of Bitcoin
mining basically. And then if I, if I switch to
this one, this is the one that I absolutely love because when we
see all the FUD, right, it is all the, you know, the more
transactions are on Bitcoin or the more people that adopt
Bitcoin, the more energy it's going to use, etcetera,
etcetera. But yeah, maybe you can explain
this because I think this is kind of like the ultimate FUD
Buster, but also for people that are not really following this,
this is this is massively interesting.
Sure. So this will helps adoption
enormously because in order for the mainstream and large
financial institutions to adopt Bitcoin, they have to feel
comfortable that it's going to be a net good to humanity.
And so the fact we've now got 22 peer reviewed journals showing
that it is net good to the environment, that it does help
to stabilize the grid, to accelerate the green energy
transition, to mitigate methane, to recycle heat, to obviate gas
peaker plants, to make batteries more efficient, to reduce the
cost that it takes, the time that it takes to get solar and
wind operators profitable. It's tremendously important.
So it's been a big part of turning around perceptions and
really does increase adoption. And at the same time, what's
happened is a lot of those first generation studies on Bitcoin
have been widely debunked. There was some papers that
suggested, for example, that as hash rate increased and as
Bitcoin price increased, that Bitcoin's energy use would go
out of control and its emissions would get out of hand.
And it's just not the case. And it's not the case for a
couple of reasons. Firstly, there were some
fundamental flaws in the research.
They assumed, for example, that energy came from its
transactions. As just about everyone in
Bitcoin understands, it does not come from its transactions, it
comes from mining it. So you can have 1000 times more
transactions on the Bitcoin network.
It does use any more energy at all.
It would be completely independent.
And what this graph is showing is that over a four year period,
so over an entire harming cycle, price went up six times, hash
rate went up 8 times, but the amount of emissions stayed
static over a full 4 year period.
And that happened for two reasons #1 the use of more
efficient machines, yes, but that's right, people tend to
forget Moore's law when making these predictions.
But the second thing was Bitcoin was migrating to cleaner energy
sources, so using predominantly sustainable net 0 emission
sources of energy now. And so this single graphic has
actually helped put a lot of policy maker and regulator mines
at risk because they can see, oh, good, we're not going to
boil the oceans from using Bitcoin.
In fact, not only that, but if you compare it to the banking
network, whereas its computational power goes up from
its data center use, emissions don't stay static there.
They're not using more renewable energy, right?
They're using the same as they always were, which is grid mix,
which might be improving 1% per year, but it's not the the
accelerated rate that Bitcoin is.
And so every time that you're using Bitcoin for a transaction,
not the banking network, I would argue that it's actually net
emission reducing because you're migrating to a less emission
intensive network. Every time you use Bitcoin
rather than gold as a store of value, I would again say it's
net emission reducing because the environmental footprint of
gold and it's emission intensity is off the charts.
It's one of the most dirty energy industries you can
possibly imagine. It's environmental impact is
devastating, leads huge scars on the landscape and that's just
not the case with Bitcoin. It works very synergistically
with the land, with the environment and with renewable
energy operators and its emission intensity is way less
than gold. So in the same way that you hop
in an EV, you're using fewer emissions.
And if you hop in a fossil fuel driven car, when you use Bitcoin
to transact rather than banking network, again, you're reducing
the net emissions, the net load on the planet.
I, I remember from our last conversation that, that we
talked about the people having FUD and the haters and that we
should actually love them, right, instead of burning them
on Twitter. But you know, with this, I just
think like I, I, I, I think This is why I think about Bitcoin
every day in a sense that it's, it is just so ultimately
transparent, but also righteous in a, in a certain way, right?
Like it is actually showing that it's a net good for the world in
multiple ways. I don't think we have this
graph, right, but the current Bitcoin mining sustainability,
the percentage is 52% I think or or maybe it's already higher,
right. But but it's over 50%, yeah,
like you said, let's let's look at the banking industry like
where are they at? They, they have their mouth full
about ESG and all these things. And, and we're doing, you know,
and in their marketing, we're doing the best for the world,
etcetera. But are, are you actually right?
And again, with Bitcoin, this is, this is again really proof
of work. It's showing that its incentives
again are positively aligned to eventually end up with now
currently over 50% sustainable energy resource, right?
So I, I, yeah, I, I just think it's very cool.
The trend here is also up, right?
It's progressing so. Getting more and more every
single year. And and there's no comparison
between the bank sector. The bank sector doesn't mitigate
any methane. The bank sector doesn't
stabilize. The bank system doesn't help the
profitability of renewable energy.
It doesn't obviate fossil fuel. It doesn't do any of those
things. It doesn't do heat recycling and
it uses way more emissions, right.
So it's and it's tendered to the grid.
So it's the mercy of whatever the grid happens to be.
It doesn't incentivize the usage of wasted energy.
It doesn't encourage innovation in the energy sector and it
doesn't help stabilize grids. It doesn't help bring down power
prices. So again, when you're using
Bitcoin, you have all of those other benefits to humanity that
come along benefits the environment, benefits to
humanity and benefits the energy sector that come with it.
So every time you you're using Bitcoin to transact, you are
helping promote a more, I would say a technology that is more
part of the life economy rather than what other people would
call the death economy. Yeah, maybe one thing to add,
right? This also helps what we're
talking about. It also helps this is the
literal security of Bitcoin, right?
So if Bitcoin gets more adopted, price goes goes up, more people
are incentivized to to mine if they can find cheap, cheap
energy sources, which eventually makes security go up and so on
and so on, right. So it's a very big part of the
flywheel that mining or using Bitcoin mining for these use
cases, for example, when it becomes more popular, it
actually helps Bitcoin as the network, right?
It, it makes it more valuable because the security goes goes
up. And so that eventually also
helps adoption as we're now going to talk about, right.
So there's, there's this flywheel in, in, in this
adoption of Bitcoin and, and, and the mining is a very, very
big part. So I.
First started getting interested in sovereign and pension
adoption of Bitcoin because Bitcoin's perceived
environmental impact at the time back in 2022 was a barrier for
them being able to adopt it. That's all changed a lot, but
still it's one of the tick boxes they have to get comfortable
with. They have to get comfortable
with how do we custody the asset they have to get comfortable
with. It's not volatile as long as we
have a long investment time frame, which you should if
you're a pension fund or a sovereign fund.
And so I show them the 200 week moving average chart a lot and
they have to get comfortable with the risk adjusted returns.
So I show them the sharp ratio chart a lot comparing it to the
stock market and it's always been higher for its risk
adjusted returns, but they have to be comfortable with that.
It's, it's positive for the environment and it's positive to
humanity as well. And this is good for Bitcoin as
well because if you look at institutional capital, the
largest pools of capital in the world are tied up in sovereign
funds or in pension funds. These over $60 trillion of
assets in those funds. Now if those funds took Larry
Fink's recommendation, they haven't yet, but they will,
which is to allocate 3% of their portfolio into Bitcoin.
The, the impact of that on Bitcoin would be gargantuan.
I mean, price would be triple where it is today.
So obviously there's a big number go up consequence, but
there's an even more significant consequence with which is that
it, it normalizes Bitcoin and, and it means that once you have
those large conservative institutions who are comfortable
with it, everyone's comfortable with it from, from an
institutional investment standpoint now, and they will
really help to propagate the message amongst their peers
about why this is a prudent investment in every fund.
So the language is changing from it's risky to include Bitcoin to
it's risky not to include Bitcoin.
And the reason it's risky not to include Bitcoin is secondly,
what's been the best performing asset for the last 10 years.
It's had the best risk adjusted returns for the last 10 years.
So if you're looking at other funds, you, you, you risk losing
people's interest as people get more comfortable with Bitcoin
because they're going to increasingly start asking the
question, why are you not including Bitcoin?
Look at Vanguard who failed to have an ETF.
Look at the amount of customers that they lost across to
BlackRock and others who did have Bitcoin ETFs and BlackRock
who launched the Bitcoin ETF now within a what, a year and a
half? They are an NTF, which is larger
than the gold ETF, which took several decades to get to that
same size. So you end up losing a lot of
potential returns. You end up losing a lot of
investor interest. And because year after year
after year, you have more Gen. Z, you have more millennials who
are looking to invest and they use Bitcoin at a much higher
rate than baby boomers do. So you can see what's happening.
There's this kind of this this curve, right, of people who are
wanting digital assets and, and they're wanting to get exposure
to them at an institutional level as well.
And if institutions can't offer them, then they're going to go
somewhere else. So it's a risk not toll Bitcoin.
So we're seeing a tremendous change in mindset around these
big sovereign funds and pension funds.
And the other interesting thing that's happening is at a
sovereign level, you know, the way that most nation states are
getting exposure to Bitcoin, it's not through buying it for
corporate treasuries, it's through mining it.
There are now 10 nations who have got Bitcoin corporate,
well, Bitcoin treasuries, right? This is nation state corporate
treasuries and they've acquired it through mining Bitcoin.
And why has it proven to be an easier path?
Well, the same reason that in the states they've said we have
to acquire Bitcoin in a budget neutral way.
So in other words, if they seem to be using quote, UN quote
taxpayer dollars to buy Bitcoin, that's going to get political
pushback. But if they can use it in ways
which is budget neutral, then it won't.
So mining is the best way to do it because it's completely
budget neutral because you're not buying Bitcoin at all.
You're creating it. And if you're doing what
Bhutan's doing it and you're creating it using energy that
otherwise would have been wasted because it flowed over the top
of the dam, that's just bounty for everyone.
And the Bhutan story is incredible.
The IMF had all sorts of dire warnings about it destabilizing
the the country, the economy and the energy sector.
It's all ended up stabilizing all three.
And so now people saying, well, do who do we trust?
Do we trust the IMF who have made these predictions that
haven't turned out? Or do we trust reality?
Do we trust our own eyes? And, and our own eyes are
telling us that Bhutan avoided needing an IMF loan because of
mining Bitcoin. Our own eyes tell us that they
were able to upgrade the airport, they were able to
increase their government salaries by 50%, sometimes 7065%
through using a small fraction of their Bitcoin treasury.
And they now have Bitcoin strategic reserves, which is 40%
of their entire GDP. That's massive through mining.
Bitcoin. That's Bitcoin maxi.
Territory the exemplification of stay humble.
Yeah, maybe that's a side path, but I think countries that are
less, let's call them less fortunate on the economic side,
but very fortunate on the energy side.
Like if they start waking up to this, right?
I, I still think that that is like an undiscussed geopolitical
game theoretic subject because it can go very fast as well,
right? I mean, if Bitcoin goes to half
a billion that that 40% is maybe going to be 70%.
Correct. Right.
And it's this will be a Bitcoin nation.
Already you're getting this copycat behavior.
So Pakistan's saying, hey, we want our own yeah, Bitcoin
National Treasury as well. You've got Kurdikstan and
Kazakhstan who are also saying it.
You've got other countries behind them who are saying, hey,
we're watching what's happening in Bhutan.
Hey, we have some stranded energy as well.
Why don't we mind Bitcoin too? And so suddenly you're seeing
multiple nation states saying we want to copy that playbook.
Ethiopia $220 million the state owned energy utility earned over
a 12 month period through mining Bitcoin and they've.
They're mining one Bitcoin, sorry for for like 2421 thousand
dollars or something I saw like that number, I don't know it's.
Less than in other parts of the world because the amount of
energy cost is pretty low over there and absolutely.
So what that means is they're able they've got $220 million
they otherwise wouldn't have. Or they may have had it, but
they would have had to export it to another country, but they
would have cost them a lot to build out the transmission lines
to that other country. So maybe they'd only have 50
million. Yeah, but also they would have
invested in building transmission lines to take
energy away from their country, which means they're not
delivering energy to their own people.
So what we've done instead is they've got 220 extra
$1,000,000. This is just through the
contracts to other Bitcoin mining companies.
That's apart from the money they've got mining it
themselves, but just in the sale of energy, 220 million.
And they've used that to fast track the building out of
transmission lines and substations, which means now
rural Africa is getting electrified at a faster rate
than it would have were it not for Bitcoin mining.
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You know, nation States and pension funds.
What? We're talking about they are
actually the ones that should have a long term outlook, right?
So that what they're doing you, you, perhaps by some definition,
you couldn't even call that investing in a sense, right,
Because they, they, they have a long term outlook, especially
the pension funds have certain obligations, right for, for
payments in the future from, from the people that, that, that
put money in. So it it is so logical that they
end up with with Bitcoin. But now we kind of also see the
intricacies right, of the of the first topic we talked about,
like there are certain hurdles that they have to go through.
But now that that is becoming more and more clear this so this
is Mohamed El Al Aryan, who is a well known professor and and
like finance guy says per per CNBC reporting the strategy
favoring gold and Bitcoin now has a name JP Morgan analysts
are calling it the debasement trade.
And obviously this is something that you know, bitcoiners have
been talking about for for for years, right?
But. More common that people use in
that language. Larry Fink has used similar
language. Ray Dalio has said that it's a
hedge against currency debasement or it's Larry Finger
said it's a hedge against the US government defaulting.
So people are starting to normalize the exactly the things
that Bitcoin Maxis have been talking about for years and say
it's completely legitimate. And if you look at the countries
that are adopting Bitcoin, they have two qualities #1 and 2 is
UAE and Singapore. And if you look down the list,
you see countries like Switzerland, Hong Kong, Saudi
Arabia. What do all those countries have
in common? They have great ease of doing
business, and they have very sophisticated financial markets,
are very advanced. But then you also see countries
like Thailand, Vietnam, South Africa, Venezuela, Argentina,
Turkey. What are those countries have in
common? Well, the last two have
hyperinflation, so massive currency debasement.
So if you don't have Bitcoin, then what are you going to do?
You're just going to watch your your pesos or your lira spreader
away in value. Or those countries like Thailand
or Vietnam, they have very low trust in the banking sector.
And there's a reason for that. That's because the banking
sector, and it's been doing a lot of this just over the last
two months, is freezing a lot of bank accounts.
Of course, the the official reason is we're reducing scams,
but they're closing a lot of bank accounts of people who have
legitimate bank accounts. Maybe they did some work in
Vietnam. Maybe they were digital nomads.
They have an account, but now their account's been closed.
They can't access it. And the only way they can access
it, they have to fly back to Vietnam and then they have to
have a digital ID card, which they don't have.
So basically they just lose their money.
And so this is happening. This is rife.
And then countries like Lebanon where you put your money into
the bank and good luck if you ever see it again because
they're just closing the doors and saying no, you can't have
it, or maybe you're allowed to have 10% of it.
So these are countries where you don't have high trust in the
banking system or you don't have high trust in your national
currency. And so those are the two
flavours of nations that are adopting Bitcoin the fastest,
even they're the most innovative or they're the most desperate,
but it's the people in the middle.
They're kind of comfortably numb.
They're not that innovative, but they're not that desperate
either. They're the ones who have really
been the laggards in facilitating Bitcoin adoption.
11 countries I think have the US dollar.
As their national currency, 10s, maybe hundreds of millions of
people that actually get the reward for their time and energy
in a currency that another nation can print infinitely,
which is just insane to to think about, right?
And so the, the fact that sovereigns are also waking up
not only on the energy side, but also on, you know, the, the
influence of currency side, I would say is, is very
interesting. And I think you shared, you
shared a report before there, which is this one.
So let's just mention it so people can look it up, right?
It's from the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
Yeah, I can't understand why this isn't getting more
circulated because it's so important, the work they're
doing. But what they've shown is that
the the level of nation state adoption is, is way more than
what we had imagined, that there's now 56 countries this is
at nation state level that have some sort of exposure to
Bitcoin. Yeah, which is incredible.
And most of them are doing it through mining, as we said, but
also there's a number of pension funds and sovereign funds who
have started to adopt Bitcoin in these nation states.
And so it's incredible. It's much more advanced than you
would know if you were to read the Financial Times or the New
York Times. So it it's actually happening
way faster. So it's a classic story where
what you're reading on Bitcoin Twitter, in this case from the
Bitcoin Policy Institute, is giving you an insight into
what's actually happening. But there's been really crickets
when it comes to the mainstream media.
It's just not reported at all for whatever reason.
Different nations are looking for ways creatively based on
their own unique circumstances to gain Bitcoin and to create
Bitcoin friendly regulations. Just today, Thailand removed
capital gain tax on Bitcoin. So you can imagine when a whole
nation does that, then suddenly a whole lot of people were
saying I wouldn't mind liquidating a little bit of my
Bitcoin, but maybe if I was a tax resident of Thailand, that'd
be more attractive. And suddenly it's going to
attract people to that country, It's going to attract digital
nomads, it's going to attract innovation.
So these are very smart moves because again, we're so early,
it's only three, four, 5% of the world who have exposure to
Bitcoin. But as that rises, the countries
who are ahead of the bull in terms of creating these
attractive environments that embrace Bitcoin are going to do
extremely well. Not only through the Bitcoin
strategic reserves that build up value both in Fiat denominated
terms and in Bitcoin denominated terms, but in the the talent
they can attract to the country. Yeah, I think two things here.
What I find interesting is, and I wonder what you think
actually, if if you adopt Bitcoin as a country, I think
you're also incentivized to start mining, to start start
securing the network to having a certain percentage of the hash
rate to later on make sure that whatever transaction you want to
go through, you know will will eventually go through.
And that by accident, you also mine your adversaries
transactions, which is the which is the point of Bitcoin, right?
I think that is the very, very big picture is that eventually
This is Money for your enemies and you will be incentivized to
also mine the transactions of your enemies.
But if you want to make sure that yours also true, you have
to start contributing to the hash rate as well, right?
Which as we talked about kind of adds to that, to that flywheel
and makes Bitcoin even more attractive.
And 2nd to that, I had a few weeks ago someone told me that
for example, in the US now that Bitcoin is also in a lot of
pension funds, right? Or my strategy is in a lot of
pension funds that now that that has been allocated the political
motivation or the opportunity, I would say to, to possibly ban
air quotes, a Bitcoin has kind of disappeared, right?
It, it has become an unpopular thing to add to your platform.
And I thought it was very interesting because I never
really realized that. But this one election perhaps
even did that around the world, Although, you know, I, I just
made a joke, but I think in Europe, the hate for Trump also
makes them dismiss Bitcoin, for example, right?
Like he's crazy. Then Bitcoin sucks as well,
which it's kind of fine because it ties into more like the
global game theory. Like if you stay behind with,
you know, the, the gunpowder example of safety and like, you
can discuss whether or not you want gunpowder, but by the time
you've made a decision, you have a headshot basically and, and,
and, and you're too late, right? And so, yeah, I think that's
also something that is slowly happening.
But yeah, what what are your thoughts there?
Is that something you see too? Yeah, it's an interesting point
in terms of adoption. The whole neuro association with
Bitcoin and Trump has it's it's had some real positives, there's
no doubt about it. And it's also meant that some
other people have stood at the sidelines for, for, as you say,
for no reason more sophisticated than, well, Trump's using it.
He's my enemy, therefore Bitcoin's my enemy, which is
crazy. It's like saying back in the
day, someone is using the Internet, who is my political
enemy, therefore I'm not going to use the Internet.
All that's going to happen is you're going to get behind.
Your best recourse is to use that for the values you care
about, because otherwise your values.
Are not going to be well spread if you'd avoid the Internet and
if you avoid Bitcoin then you're going to be avoiding well
firstly the best asset class of the last 10 years and the next
10 years and beyond. But but also all of those things
that that gives you all those benefits of Bitcoin by shutting
yourself out. So Bitcoin is for anyone who
wants to use it. And I think most people
understand that the the majority of people around the world and
say, well, So what if Donald Trump's using it?
So is Bhutan and they're using it in a more socialist way.
A lot of people don't agree with how bit points using it.
They say what a waste of money putting up government salaries.
They should be cutting the government workers.
Well, that's up to them what they want to do with it.
Let them do what they want to do.
So people use it in libertarian ways, people use it in
conservative ways, people use it in socialist ways.
People use it in whatever way they want which is consistent
with their values. It's a tool which is open to
anyone who wants to use it. And to say my enemy, my
political enemy is using it, therefore I won't is actually
quite funny I think. And to your earlier point,
you're absolutely right. Countries are geopolitically
incentivized to mine it so that no country can gain too much of
the network securitization ability.
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
And that's also something that I heard you talk about on I think
another podcast where you shared that like the, the, the biggest
miner in Bitcoin has like 6% and it's like 5 1/2, five, etcetera.
We're not talking about pools, right?
We're talking about individual companies and then you mentioned
like there there isn't any other industry that is actually that
decentralized in terms of usually there's like 1 to
perhaps three players that have, let's say 80% of a of a market,
right? But in Bitcoin that is, is not
the not the case. Can you share a bit about?
We'll look at search. For example, how many search
engines do you have that people use?
You have 1 maybe, I don't know, is there any other search
engines? Some people may still use Bing,
but there's basically one. Let's look at phones.
How many types of phones are there?
There's basically two or three manufacturers of of smartphones.
So we don't have this massive choice.
Let's look at automobile manufacturers, which is much
more decentralized. What is the market share of the
largest one? Well, it's over 10%.
And then if you start to look around the world, these
different industries, it's very rare that the largest example of
that industry has less than 10% of the entire industry.
So when you have Bitcoin and the largest one, the largest two,
number two at the moment is cango #1 is Mara.
And you're talking 6%, five and a half percent.
These are tiny amounts relatively.
So it's already very decentralized.
And because of the economic incentives we were talking about
beforehand, which encourages you to go to the edge of the world
to source cheap energy, it's becoming more decentralized all
the time. Yeah.
All right, so let's switch to to our last topic, but I wanted to
show one more image that you also shared.
So there are still countries that outlaw Bitcoin, which is
funny, of course, because it's it's it's an open source
computer protocol and and anyone can use it so.
You. You could ban it, but you cannot
stop anyone from using it. I saw Algeria here, Morocco a
little. Great little image.
This is put out by river. They put out some really nice
data, but what it shows is that there are 15 countries who have
unbanned Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining and only nine countries
who still ban it. So you're in the minority if
you're still trying to, you know, ban the Internet, ban
gunpowder, ban Bitcoin. The same thing is happening
that's happened to all of those industries, which is you're in a
a very increasingly lonely minority and all you're doing is
you're holding your country back.
And this is perfectly fine, right?
Because this is also part of which you're entitled to do of
of the game theory. So yeah, this is great.
All right, let's move on to our last topic, which is the social
and humanitarian value of of Bitcoin.
You brought you, you shared 2 two things with me.
I think this is. One report, yeah, this is
something I'm really excited about because again, if you look
at how is it that you're going to get more Bitcoin adoption in
the general population, one thing I think we can all agree
with is this cycle, retail has really set it out.
For the most part, the retail adoption has not increased in
the US certainly it was 48 million last year, it's 48
million this year. That's that's zero rate of
increase. Other parts of the world are
growing exponentially, but retail investors in the West do
not seem to be. And part of the reason is that
people saying, well, is it really for me?
It seems to be for my ideological enemies, which again
as we've discussed is it's a flawed way to look at it, but
that is the newer association that's there.
So it's really important that we share stories which appear and
appeal to people's values just right across the political
spectrum. And one of the the best ways to
do that is to share more of the humanitarian benefits of
Bitcoin. So This is why the Human Rights
Foundation is one of the most important organizations we have
because they are continually promoting and documenting people
who are using it for human rights, people who are using it
for social good day in day out. Now this report here is put
together by the Digital Assets Research Institute.
It was funded with the support of the Human Rights Foundation
and it was looking at how are people outside the West using
Bitcoin and particularly one community of people who hasn't
been widely researched before and that's refugees.
And what they were interested in is saying, OK, we know that in
theory. We've heard stories, we've heard
anecdotes. There was the one through I
think CNNA couple of years ago about the Ukrainian refugee.
You probably heard of Bram, who fled across the border, I think
to Poland. And he had two thousand U.S.
dollars on this little thumb drive, and it was a Bitcoin.
And he used that in order to set up his livelihood again.
And so then the question came, well, how many people like that
are there around the world? And so the Digital Assets
Research Institute put together a study and they looked at how
many refugees they were. They were in the world.
They looked at the Bitcoin adoption rates for these
countries. They looked at whether you were
more likely or less likely to use Bitcoin if you're a refugee,
and they came up with some very conservative actually
projections of how many people we think have been using it
already. And the number was over 300,000.
Refugees have used Bitcoin to flee across borders.
Now, this is phenomenal because what that means is 2 things.
Number one, a lot of countries around the world are trying to
stop the inflow of refugees because politically they're seen
as being a drain on the economy. They bring nothing and we have
to subsidise them and support them.
That's the narrative not from everyone, but from some people
in in the countries that refugees are coming into.
But imagine if these refugees actually brought wealth with
them. Of course they bring many
wealths. They bring cultural wells, all
sorts of wells. But imagine if they also were
able to bring financial wealth with them, which they can't
currently. They have to leave everything
behind. Try taking gold across the
border. Try taking cash across the
border. Try queuing at an ATM during the
outbreak of war, as people tried to do in Ukraine, when they have
like $40 cash limits and queues that are three hours long and
you have to risk your life to queue to get a meezy little bit
of money. Not going to happen.
But you can take Bitcoin across borders.
So what happens if governments cannot freeze your bank accounts
and you can take your money with you?
Now you come to another country and you have the assets that you
had, and if you were smart and you put all of your assets into
the digital economy, you have 100% of your assets preserved
and able to be reused anywhere in the world.
That now completely changes the equation of how many refugees
can be welcomed into the country.
It stops that political pushback you might have, but more
importantly to the refugee themselves, it means that you
can start with something rather than starting with nothing.
It means you're not destitute. It means you don't have that
feeling of being dependent upon other people to support you
financially. You have something to which with
which to re establish your life and 300,000 people have that.
The projection is it'll be more than 6 million people by 2035 S
I just find it fascinating that it's still possible people can
say where's the use case for Bitcoin?
We're right under our own eyes, just one community, people.
We're seeing one of the most phenomenal use cases at an
existential level towards the basic human dignity of being
able to take your assets with you when you're forced to flee
across the border. It's extremely exciting.
And it's one of the stories that that when people hear those
stories, they start to soften their stance towards Bitcoin.
They start to realize that, OK, yeah, my political enemies might
be using it, but so are destitute people, so are people
in more torn countries. And maybe I need to look a
little bit outside my own world of privilege to the way the rest
of the world looks to a little bit more than what I have today,
Open up my eyes and say, wow, this is actually solving some
existential problems. And you start there and then
before you know it, you realize that for every refugee who's
using Bitcoin, there are maybe 30 people who are using it
within their country. In a way which is just
important. Either to avoid the erosion of
wealth through hyperinflation, to be able to receive remittance
payments and not lose 15% of it, or simply to be able to protest
against your government safely without fear of being tracked or
having reprisals, or having your funding cut for saying the wrong
thing or doing the wrong thing. And Bitcoin provides all of
that. It it already immediately shows
you that the system you're participating in doesn't make
you an actor, but the better subject, right?
And so there is no difference in that sense, again, between
basically people anywhere in the world because all the money
systems are, are, are the same. So you are just lucky if you're
in a Western country. But you, you eventually have the
same problem. Yeah.
I don't know if you saw this today, but this is a new essay
from Alex Gladstein, who's chief strategy officer at Human Rights
Foundation. Yeah, very cool.
It's, it's why Bitcoin is freedom money.
And it's like a collection of these, these stories.
So there's 99 parts. So if you look up Gladstein on
X, you can find this this post. And then there's amazing
examples of using Bitcoin as a currency inside Afghanistan.
How you know, French colonial history in Central and West
Africa, by the way, Also amazing, right?
The Central African African Frank, where there's like 7
countries, I think that use the currency that still controls and
prints, right? So yeah, Bitcoin is a solution
to problems that are here today, maybe not where you live in the
Western world, but slowly but surely, by the way, but
definitely in, in other places in the world.
And so, yeah, I thought this was a really interesting publication
that I I put on my my reading list.
Yeah, it's really important work.
And my goodness, once you start looking into the Central African
franc and you realized just what a freedom removing system that
is to have your whole national currency printed in another
country and therefore able to be debased within another country
without your permission overnight, as has happened
multiple times, and wake up in the morning and find that the
dollars, well, they're not dollars, but the currency you
hold is now worth 40% less. You can only buy 60% of what
you're used to yesterday. It's not reasonable, but this is
the many countries in the world. Yeah, well, and the natural
resources export of your country to the country that is creating
your currency, that's the most obvious scam that.
The complete scam yeah, military colonialism has finished, but a
much better instrument and a much more subtle and invasive
one has taken its place, which is financial colonialism.
And that's exactly the way it works because yeah, you debase
the currency, suddenly you can extract uranium for your.
The French nuclear program for a song from these countries that
were former colonies but really effectively still are.
It's incredible. It would just look at the
economics of it. And The funny thing is that any
country, they might say, well, why don't they form their own
currency? But you know, there's a funny
thing that happens when these former French companies do that.
Then suddenly, coincidentally, there's these coups that just
randomly happen. These people get replaced.
It's very coincidental. And it seems to happen routinely
every single time without fail when someone tries to institute
their own currency. But you can't do that with
Bitcoin. So it's really as hopeful, not
just these fourteen countries that are on the Central African,
Frank, and not just the entire African continent.
But as you say, we're starting to see how even in the West, we
don't see it to the same extent, but we started to get hints of
it, and we're not immune to some of these same issues ourselves.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think this were like or are
three topics that are in my opinion also not not talked
about enough. Perhaps they well, I, I think
definitely they are more impactful than just price go
going up. That gets a lot of attention
obviously. But yeah, I think this also kind
of shows that it, it is not an investment.
It is just way, way more than you think on the surface.
And it takes time to to to see that, right.
But I think it's very cool that, you know, compared to 2013,
1415, yeah, this wasn't even in the picture, right.
And within 10 years, we have very serious things going on
that yeah, actually make the case for Bitcoin even more
substantial, right. And, and, and I think also the
possibility of it surviving and, and becoming the thing that we
think it is also there. So I think it's very, very cool
that we got to shed a light on that.
Is is there anything that you would want to add to, to what we
discussed that you think we missed?
I. Want to say one thing, and that
is that number go up and freedom go up ready to go hand in hand.
One supports the other. Because the ironic thing is when
number goes up, then a lot of these freedom go up projects
become more viable, of course, because there's just more money
in the whole ecosystem. And similarly, when we allow
these stories about freedom go up, these stories about that,
Alex Placestein's telling, Human Rights Foundation's telling, the
Digital Assets Research Institute's telling about how
Bitcoin is being used as a tool of freedom around the world.
It inspires people, inspires people in sovereign funds and
pension funds. It inspires governments, it
inspires regulators, it inspires policy makers, it inspires
retail investors to get behind Bitcoin.
And that has an impact on number go up.
So I don't see them as these distinct groups.
I see that one supports the other and they both go very much
hand in hand. So I know there's a lot of
people who say, well, why are we talking about sovereign funds
and pension funds? That's not what Bitcoin is
about. Bitcoin is about everything.
It's like, that's like saying we shouldn't have banks using the
Internet. It's like everyone can use the
Internet. Institutional investors can use
it, peace activists can use it. It's a tool which is going to
create net good for humanity across the board and some very,
very unique ways. So number go up and freedom go
up. They support each other.
Awesome. I think that's a great wrap up.
Thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it.
And yeah, now maybe we can have a certain cadence with a little
less time in between, but I think we'll definitely.
Seems are involved. These stories are evolving
pretty fast, aren't they? So that'll be fun.
Awesome. And well, thanks so much.
I appreciate it. Cheers.
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