🍀 Does bitcoin consume too much energy?

Welcome back everyone,

And happy Friday. The price of bitcoin has crept back up to pre-FTX collapse levels, inflation is ticking lower and the FTX restructuring team has found a new $5bn. Celebration time.

That helps balance some of the bad in the space - like the Game of Thrones NFT collection that came out yesterday and looks like this:

People are calling it as bad as the 8th season of the show. Ouch.

Anyway - today we're going to talk about one of the most contentious issues in crypto in general: does bitcoin - and crypto in general - consume too much energy? is it green? and are you a terrible person for believing in it?

If you've ever spoken to friends, family, colleagues, or your uncle at Thanksgiving dinner about crypto, at least ONE of them is bound to have brought up bitcoin's energy usage.

"Yeah but it's so bad for the environment""It consumes more energy than an entire country!""But what about the turtles??"etc...

You get the picture.

Now, maybe you were well equipped to explain to them how bitcoin miners are incentivized to use otherwise wasted energy and how bitcoin's energy usage is no bigger than that of many companies they use every day - like Amazon, Google, etc.

And maybe you argued that for a network that provides tens of millions of people with a secure and decentralized Swiss bank account in the cloud to stand up against inflation and theft, SOME energy was necessary!

Or maybe not. Maybe you were left with nothing amazing to respond, besides "uuuhhhh."

I know I certainly have been there.

But that all stops today.

From this day onward, you'll be equipped with an actual understanding of bitcoin's energy usage, and arguments for this year's Thanksgiving dinner (when your relatives hopefully think you're a genius because bitcoin has continued to soar...)

And to help us do that, we're going to turn to Lyn Alden.

✅ Task: earn $10 in BTC for learning about bitcoin's energy usage

If you hang out too much on Twitter like I do, you might already be familiar with Lyn Alden. She's an investment strategist, and she frequently covers bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general.

More specifically for our purpose, she's written a killer overview of Bitcoin's energy consumption, and it's something you should definitely read if you want to understand it better.

And that will be today's task: to read the article and summarize it in your own words.

Step #1: Read "Bitcoin's Energy Usage Isn't a Problem. Here's Why"

Step #2: Summarize it in your own words, and send us your summary by filling out this form. Make sure to include your public bitcoin address so we can pay you.

You have 48 hours to complete this week. The two best summaries will win $10 each in BTC.

Next week, we'll continue upping the ante - with both prizes and cool content.

Speak to you then, and enjoy your weekend.

Alex.