Battery or Sink

Every passage, on the record.

1. 00:00Analogy

   I like to think about it in the terms of Bitcoin as a battery... when you want to use it, well beforehand you have to plug it into a wall, you have to get energy from the wall and then it goes in there and it's stored in there. And then you can take it with you and it can be mobile and it can last for a little bit. And in bitcoin's case the idea behind Bitcoin being a battery is that the energy that is inside of that portable battery will last forever.

2. 00:48Claim

   It won't go away. You don't, if you leave it for a year when you come back it will still be there, you'll still have that energy that is inside there, you clamp it down and forever it is forged into this energy that you can use at any time you wish.

3. 01:46Idea

   And energy is key, that is the whole point of this podcast, is it's the way I think about everything now is in energy, and it has completely changed the way that I view everything, every interaction has changed. It's now all energy.

4. 02:17Claim

   It doesn't bleed energy, so you don't have to worry about energy expenditure from the past getting diluted into the future. You don't want any leaking energy. Your actions today have permanent energy weight going forward until you decide to transform that energy into whatever manner you see fit.

5. 02:57Analogy

   You and I, we are the energy that is being pumped into the system. We are the solar, we are the photons of light that are hitting the Bitcoin panels and transforming entropy in the world.

6. 03:30Analogy

   I imagine the old tiny, like when you were in the post office or when you were in an old time bank and they used to have those little vacuum tubes where you could send documents from one desk to another.

7. 03:30Quote

   Every time someone deposits their energy that they unlock in the physical world, the Bitcoin monolith lights up gold and it goes shooting around the place.

8. 04:03Claim

   I have found some process through innovation, through understanding, through specialization, through division of labor. I have found a way to unlock energy that was previously required for something else.

9. 04:37Claim

   Bitcoin is allowing you to have access to a certain percentage of it for that energy contributed, for that value that you contributed to the system. And you will always have access to that percentage of the current system, of the world's global supply of accessible energy.

10. 05:09Analogy

    Every time you do it, it gets bigger, like a marshmallow man in Ghostbusters. It eats and it grows stronger and more powerful. And we are giving it life.

11. 05:09Reference

    like a marshmallow man in Ghostbusters. It eats and it grows stronger and more powerful.

12. 05:09Prediction

    The whole world doesn't need to adopt Bitcoin. Bitcoin will grow at incredible rates if we just maintain the numbers of people that are plugging their energy into the system naturally.

13. 05:41Prediction

    You will have access to more energy in the future than you do right now, based on how much you are plugging in to the network. The price to people like me makes no difference.

14. 06:12Claim

    The person who's depositing the energy in that system, the system that is helping the world, they do it in most cases because it is best for themselves.

15. 06:51Quote

    Bitcoin really is the world's best incentive scheme.

16. 06:51Claim

    No one can use that energy without contributing to the system. You can only benefit from Bitcoin by choosing to opt in to the battery and participate.

17. 07:22Claim

    We don't need to convince anyone else or any billionaires out there who might be a step behind.

18. 07:22Prediction

    Necessity will bring the volume. That is for sure. All Bitcoin needs is energy.

19. 08:00Claim

    It turns out in the mining situation, it's actually Bitcoin isn't a battery. It's more of a sink.

20. 08:00Claim

    In the store of value narrative, saying Bitcoin is a battery is basically saying that Bitcoin is a store of value. It's the same thing. It's just easier for people to understand, easier for people to visualize who may not have as much awareness in the financial markets of what a store of value actually means.

21. 08:31Idea

    No matter how much electricity is poured into Bitcoin, into the mining process that is used to solve for the blocks, the output is always the same. Like the distribution of new coins is always the same. Right now, it's 6.25 Bitcoins. It doesn't matter how much energy you put into that system. It's just the sink that goes down. It is the difficulty adjustment.

22. 09:03Claim

    So yes, in a sense, for actual energy now, for electricity now, in the present day, Bitcoin is a sink. But that value gets stored. The value of the energy gets stored. So to think about it, Bitcoin is a battery for value, not a battery for electricity.

23. 09:34Analogy

    I imagine the world's most elaborate locking system shooting off to my special vault. All these different locks and cogs and wheels turning the finality of a press. And all of a sudden, this thing is forged into a percentage of the Bitcoin protocol.

24. 09:34Quote

    2.1 quadrillion safety deposit vaults encrypted behind the world's most powerful energy network.

25. 10:09Claim

    The market determines what the energy will be worth, whether it will be more or less in the future. Maybe prices change, electricity changes, access to electricity changes, so it will fluctuate up and down.

26. 10:09Prediction

    The more energy in the system, the more valuable, becomes the more utility, the more usefulness, which means that there will be more demand for that usefulness. Which if you follow that path through to its logical conclusion, you end up having access to more energy in the future than you did when you locked that Bitcoin in the vault.

27. 11:15Claim

    Just think about the leverage that you have, or the upper hand that you are afforded when you think in Bitcoin terms, when you judge energy expenditures from a Bitcoin lens... how that makes you more valuable as a lower of entropy, as a human being, is to take what is around you and condense it into usable forms to unlock energy.

28. 11:49Claim

    If something is more beneficial for you as an individual, it is more beneficial for everyone in the system as an individual and think about the gains that can come from that.

29. 12:20Quote

    In a time where things have never been bleaker, you've never had access to more information.

30. 12:20Claim

    Bitcoin gives us hope, and it's not even hope in the sense that I hope it comes true. No, but actual positivity in the future, better than it is right now, that sort of hope.

31. 12:57Prediction

    Because it is inevitable, it will win. People will find it because it will still be here. It will outlast everything else. It will outcompete every other form of money.

32. 12:57Analogy

    They line up in front of the great monolith and they start to plug their energy into the system and it grows bigger and it grows stronger. And you come back 10 years from now and you withdraw some of that energy.

33. 13:33Quote

    It can't be debased. No one can screw with it. It is outside of our control.

34. 14:07Analogy

    Every day it feels like we are getting closer to the point where the snowball is growing bigger, but it is growing uphill. The snowball is being pushed uphill by all these people that are plugging their energy into the system.

35. 14:07Prediction

    Eventually there will become a point where we have reached the top and one more nudge of introducing energy into the system will push it over the edge.

36. 14:38Prediction

    That is when the adoption will be so quick it will be mind-boggling how fast it will occur.

37. 15:09Quote

    So yes, Bitcoin is a battery for value. It is a battery for energy. Human energy. Accessible energy. You plug it in, you will have more later. Because other people are plugging in their energy that they have unlocked.