Bitcoin, A Battery of Value
A white paper on the energy of Bitcoin by Aníbal Santaella
Bitcoin is a distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) system; as such, there is no server or control point. Bitcoin’s architecture is peer-to-peer because each participant in the network communicates using the protocol on the same level. There are no special nodes, no master nodes; all nodes are equal. Bitcoin is, therefore, a completely decentralised system by design and free from a central control authority. This design prevents the existence of a “single point of failure” that could be attacked or corrupted by external antagonists or that can internally manipulate or impose some form of authority on the system. Bitcoin is an autonomous system where autonomy replaces authority.
The invention of Bitcoin is the result of decades of research in cryptography and distributed systems, it is the culmination of several failed attempts to create non-government issued digital currencies. Bitcoin’s operation is made possible by a set of four fundamental innovations brought together in a unique and potentially effective combination:
- A decentralised peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The Bitcoin protocol.
- A public record of transactions in chronological order. The Blockchain, an unbreakable time chain.
- A set of rules for independent transaction validation and currency issuance. Consensus Rules
- A mechanism for reaching an emerging decentralised global consensus on the valid blockchain. Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm mining.
Decentralised Security
The combination of the four key innovations enables Bitcoin to decentralise trust. The essence of Bitcoin is the ability to operate in a decentralised way without having to trust anyone. Bitcoin revolutionises trust, it is an autonomous system where autonomy replaces authority.
Mining
Is the mechanism by which Bitcoin security is decentralised, it uses the concept of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm to achieve consensus in an emergent way without the need for a trusted central control authority, mining creates a security model based on a competition (game theory) that implies a risk and an incentive.
The risk “staking energy”
The risk is represented by the stake of a universal resource extrinsic to the system in the form of investment: staking energy, which the miners are committing and putting in guarantee that they will carry out the security work correctly, in other words, miners deposit a guarantee in the form of energy use and demonstrate it by solving the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm, which is an asymmetric mechanism in difficulty, that is, difficult to solve but easy to verify by the rest of the competitors.
Proof-of-Work is an extrinsic commitment system/mechanism, which means that what the miners are committing is outside the system –energy. The energy has value in a market independent of the system and is a universal resource
The incentive “the currency: bitcoin”
On the other hand, there is a reward scheme that seeks to align miners’ actions with network security and encourages miners to keep working honestly. In order to have a significant incentive, there is an intrinsic and native asset in the form of a currency: the token “bitcoin”, which all miners seek to obtain and keep them competing in an honest and fair manner.
Miners receive two types of rewards:
- Block subsidy: newly minted bitcoin, it is the mechanism by which the monetary emission in Bitcoin is carried out.
- Fees: commissions paid by the transactions included in the blocks for using the network resources.
Block Reward = Block Subsidy + Fees
The block reward refers to the amount of bitcoin that miners can claim as part of the incentive system for creating a valid block, and is equal to the sum of the block subsidy (new coins) plus the transaction fee paid by the transactions included in the block.
Consensus
The currency, in turn, has value in a free exchange market, which means that this security model is also based on the forces of a free market, if it did not have a value incentive, there would be no basis for competition, without the bases for a competition, security could not be obtained in a decentralised way. This creates the correct set of incentives and disincentives for the system to work achieving the “Emerging Decentralised Global Consensus”. Every time consensus is achieved it is recorded permanently and immutably on the blockchain, achieving consensus in simple words means reaching “an agreement on a single truth that represents the up-to-date state of all transaction record history and currency creation of Bitcoin”. The brilliance of the Nakamoto consensus in Bitcoin works probabilistically, instead of all nodes agreeing on a value, the protocol works in a way that all nodes agree on the probability that the value is correct.
Having a decentralised system without any central authority or trusted third party in control provides neutrality and resistance to censorship to a global, open, free and borderless network, since the process of validating transactions and creating new coins are not controlled by no central authority to be trusted.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention is the best solution to decentralisation of trust that has been proposed to date and has seen wide adoption.
The incorrect energy theory
The theory that Bitcoin wastes and burns energy is commonly read in the media, but that is an incorrect theory. Bitcoin consumes energy to run an autonomous transaction “settlement and clearing” system that does not rely on human intervention and has no operating hours. In Bitcoin, there is no such thing as “business days”. That energy is what keeps an autonomous system running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without interruptions. The Bitcoin network has been functional for 99.9854968317% of the time since its inception on January 3, 2009, 02:54:25 (GMT). In the link below you can follow this:
How much energy does Bitcoin consume?
At the time of writing this document on June 2, 2022, an approximate number of Bitcoin energy consumption is 119.53 TWh per year and this is similar to the energy consumption of a country like Argentina (121.8 TWh), United Arab Emirates (122.4 TWh), Netherlands (111.0 TWh), Pakistan (103.5 TWh). Data source:
Here are some references of the energy that Bitcoin consumes with respect to the total world energy.
Bitcoin’s share of the world’s total yearly electricity production and consumption
- Total electricity production is 26,730 TWh, and Bitcoin represents 0.44%.
- Total electricity consumption is 22,315 TWh, and Bitcoin accounts for 0.54%.
In reference to global energy production to account for the wide array of industries that primarily rely on sources other than electricity (e.g. diesel fuel).
- Total energy production 167,716 TWh, Bitcoin represents 0.18%
Bitcoin mining against other industrial and residential uses of electricity (or energy, depending on the nature of the activity).
- Gold mining 131 TWh per year. Bitcoin 119.53 TWh per year (91.44%)
Others references:
- T&D electricity losses in the USA 206 TWh per year, could power the entire Bitcoin network 1.7 times.
- A global gas flaring recovery potential 688 TWh per year, could power the entire Bitcoin network 5.8 times
- Renewable curtailment in China 105 TWh per year, could power the entire Bitcoin network 0.9 times.
Analogy
Now let’s see where that amount of energy is expressed in terms of computational security in Bitcoin. At the time of writing this document on June 2, 2022, the total computing power of the Bitcoin network is around 201 ExaHashes per second (EH/s, data source: personal node), which means:
201,000,000,000,000,000,000 Hashes per second (it reads 201 quintillion EH/s).
Hash rate refers to the amount of computation miners use to validate the Bitcoin blockchain. Think of the total network hash rate as the total computing power dedicated to the network by all miners. The more power, the greater security.
We can make an analogy with rough numbers between Bitcoin and the number of equivalent home computers in terms of total computational power on the Bitcoin network, a computer can compute SHA-256 hashes within this range of 1 MH/s (low end) — 10MH/s (high end).
CPU range = 1,000,000 H/s (low end) — 10,000,000 H/s (high end)
Networkhashps = 201,000,000,000,000,000,000 EH/s
Number of CPUs (low-end) = 201,000,000,000,000 ( it reads 201 trillion)
Number of CPUs (high-end) = 20,100,000,000,000 (it reads 20.1 trillion)
In a nutshell, we can make a “simple assumption” that the total computing power securing the Bitcoin network would be “equivalent” to having 201 trillion low-end computers computing 24x7 non-stop or 20.1 trillion high-end computers computing 24x7 without interruptions. Note that other factors apply, but this is a simple analogy to have an assimilable reference for the human mind in general.
Imagine a stack of MacBook Air laptops (1.61 cm thick) on top of each other, if we form a stack of 20.1 trillion laptops it would reach a height of 323.361 million kilometres which would represent a distance greater than Earth to the Sun (151 million km) in fact more than double the distance.
It is worth mentioning that Bitcoin uses SHA-256 as its proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm. Currently, the most efficient mining equipment to mine Bitcoin are the “ASIC Application Specific Integrated Circuit” devices, these devices use a microchip designed and manufactured for a very specific purpose and in the case of Bitcoin mining, it is to compute that cryptographic function SHA-256 in an efficient way and cannot be reprogrammed to anything else as the logics are encoded on the chips’ silicon wiring. But keep in mind that you can have ASIC devices for any purpose, as long as they are designed and built for it.
It should also be noted that ASIC miners are highly efficient, and this makes the cost of energy consumed by them infinitely small compared to the cost of energy that would be consumed by home computers computing at the same hash rate.
There is nothing quite like Bitcoin, so this analogy can only provide a partial and thus necessarily incomplete picture.
A battery of value
The “Voltaic Pile” was the first electric battery that could continuously provide an electric current to a circuit, its creator was Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist, chemist, and pioneer of electricity and energy, whose invention of the “Voltaic Pile” in the year 1799 provided the first source of direct current. Volta showed that electricity could be generated chemically and discredited the prevailing theory at the time that electricity was generated only by living beings. Volta discovered that animal tissue was not necessary to produce a current, this caused a lot of controversy between the followers of animal electricity and the defenders of metallic electricity, but with the announcement of the “Voltaic Pile,” the existing debate reached its end.
Volta’s invention was based on Luigi Galvani’s 1780 discovery of how a two-metal circuit and a frog’s leg can make the frog’s leg respond. Volta showed that when two metals and cloth or cardboard soaked in brine are placed in a circuit, they produce an electric current. In 1799, Volta stacked several pairs of alternating copper (or silver) and zinc discs (electrodes) separated by cloth or cardboard soaked in brine (electrolyte) to increase the conductivity of the electrolyte. When the top and bottom contacts were connected by a wire, an electric current flowed through the voltaic cell and the connecting wire.
The pile was a great success. It not only placed the scientific community on the side of Volta in the ongoing debate, but it was immediately recognized as a useful device and enabled a rapid series of other discoveries, including the electrical “electrolysis” decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle in 1800, and the discovery or isolation of the chemical elements sodium (1807), potassium (1807), calcium (1808), boron (1808), barium (1808), strontium (1808), and magnesium (1808) by Humphry Davy.
In the 1830s, Michael Faraday used a battery in his groundbreaking studies of electromagnetism. Other inventors made improvements to the original Volta design, and soon it was powering telegraphs and doorbells. Volta’s discovery opened the doors to a new era full of innovations.
The entire electrical industry of the 19th century was powered by batteries related to Volta’s, for example, the Daniell cell and the Grove cell; until the advent of the dynamo –the electric generator– in the 1870s.
In the year 2008, two centuries after the discovery of Volta, Satoshi Nakamoto discovered that a decentralised form of digital money that is global in nature and inclusive by design could be generated from energy. Nakamoto debunked the prevailing theory that digital money could only be created through central entities or authorities and that its value could only be conferred by them.
Bitcoin is a battery of value, it takes energy through the mining process, the mechanism by which the security of Bitcoin is decentralised, it uses that energy as collateral to reach the “Emerging Decentralised Global Consensus” which supports and secures the system. The miners receive a reward in the form of an incentive that aligns their actions with the security of the network, this incentivizes the miners to keep working honestly. The reward is in the form of “bitcoin” coins and includes new coins issued within this process plus transaction fees that are validated in the same process; it is an inherently codependent mechanism.
Bitcoin acts as a battery not only because of the alchemy process itself, which allows energy to be transformed into value “money”, but it also serves to store that energy in the form of money, Bitcoin is an alternative to generate and be a store of value using energy that is not consumed or residual fuels. The energy that cannot be consumed or stranded energy is the cheapest form of energy, but if it cannot be stored it is wasted, the same happens with residual fuels if they cannot be stored, used to deliver work or produce energy, they must be burned or disposed of. Bitcoin represents an option to harness these energies and fuels in the form of “a battery of value.”
The invention of Bitcoin was an act of alchemy by Satoshi Nakamoto, based on the transformation of energy into value through computational processing.
Bitcoin currently represents an alternative to the use of energies such as:
Not consumed energies
Energies from generating sources that produce a surplus to their demand, generating sources that cannot take advantage of a maximum delivery capacity already installed and that are underutilised due to lack of infrastructure for the distribution of said surplus or due to a lack of coincidence between the availability of energy and its demand.
A case study is renewable energies, those energies that are obtained from virtually inexhaustible natural sources, either because of the immense amount of energy they contain or because they are capable of regenerating themselves by natural means.
Renewable energies include wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal, solar, wave, biomass and biofuels.
Wind energy
Wind energy is the energy obtained from the wind or, in other words, it is the use of the kinetic energy of air masses that can be converted into mechanical energy and from it into electricity or other useful forms of energy in daily human activities.
In order to take advantage of wind energy, it is important to know the diurnal, nocturnal and seasonal variations of the winds, the variation of the wind speed with the height above the ground, the entity of the gusts in short periods of time, and the maximum values that have occurred. in historical data series with a minimum duration of 20 years.
Wind energy is fairly stable and predictable on an annual scale, although it does show significant variations on smaller time scales. As the proportion of wind energy produced in a given region or country increases, it is essential to establish a series of improvements in the local electricity grid. Various energy control techniques, such as increased energy storage capacity, a wide geographical distribution of wind turbines, the availability of backup energy sources, the possibility of exporting or importing energy to neighbouring regions or the reduction of demand when wind production is lower, can help mitigate these problems to a great extent. In addition, wind energy production forecasts are extremely important, since they allow electricity grid managers to be prepared and anticipate the foreseeable variations in wind energy production that may take place in the short term.
Bitcoin can serve as a way to store wind energy, an alternative to mitigate the variability of the winds, although this is predictable in the long term, there is an option in bitcoin mining since the energy consumption of Bitcoin is constant and uninterrupted, the wind is a driving force with low marginal cost but with inconsistencies in availability, which means that there is no total coincidence between the delivery of energy from installed capacity and the demand for energy consumption. Bitcoin can be used as a battery of value to monetize the energy that cannot be stored and as collateral to maximise the efficiency of the wind energy business model.
Solar energy
Solar energy is renewable energy, obtained from the use of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun. The solar radiation that reaches the Earth has been used by humans since ancient times, through different technologies that have evolved. Today, heat and light can be transformed into electrical or thermal energy. It is one of the so-called renewable energies or clean energies, which could help solve some of the most urgent current problems facing living beings.
Peaks in solar radiation occur during midday, but peaks in power demand occur in the morning and late afternoon, representing a discrepancy between power generation and demand. This results in excess power being generated which ends up being cut off, wasted or sold at low or negative prices, bitcoin mining constantly consumes power, it provides a demand response mechanism that can help stabilise the power grid by eliminating price spikes, levelling energy demand and realigning economic incentives, reducing negative prices that enable continued growth in renewable energy sources.
Bitcoin can be used as a battery of value to minimise the effects of the discrepancy between energy generation and demand, a means of backing up energy consumption (locally) on-site and at the time of its availability.
Residual fuels also have an alternative use in Bitcoin, they can be used to create energy and dedicate that energy to Bitcoin mining.
Residual Fuels
Residual fossil fuels resulting from industrial processes, stranded natural gas and associated natural gas that is flared are the most representative at this point.
Flaring
A gas flare, alternatively known as a flare stack, is the flaring of natural gas (mostly methane, CH4) is a way of disposing of residual gas used in industrial plants such as oil refineries, chemical plants or processing plants natural gas, as well as in areas where this gas is produced, including oil wells, gas fields, and landfills. Flaring is known in the oil industry as “flaring” and has several purposes.
In industrial plants, flares are primarily used to burn flammable gas released by pressure relief devices during unplanned surges in plant equipment, a so-called “safety burn.” During start-ups or shutdowns — partial or complete — they are also often used for the planned combustion of gases for relatively short periods. Flaring protects equipment at many oil and gas extraction facilities from the dangers of overpressures.
Another use, when oil is extracted from offshore or inland fields, the natural gas associated with this oil (APG) is also brought to the surface, this practice is called routine burning, also known as production burning, it is a method and a current practice of removing large amounts of unwanted associated petroleum gas (APG) during crude oil extraction. The gas is first separated from liquids and solids downstream of the wellhead, then released into a vent and burned in the Earth’s atmosphere; usually in an open diffusion flame. Where it is made, the unwanted gas (primarily methane-dominated natural gas) has been considered unprofitable and may be referred to as stranded gas, flue gas, or simply “waste gas.” Routine burning should not be confused with safety burning, maintenance burning, or other burning practices characterised by shorter durations or smaller volumes of gas removal.
Routine flaring occurs especially in parts of the world where there are no gas pipelines or other gas transportation infrastructure — for example, liquefaction plants, or gas-to-liquid (GTL) conversion plants — the vast amounts of this associated gas are generally burned as waste or unusable gas. The burning of said gas can be carried out at the top of a tower or, at ground level, in a specific burning pit.
These practices are considered “a waste of valuable resources, as well as a significant source of greenhouse gases”. One option is to reinject the associated gas into the reservoir, thus saving it for future use, and also keeping the good pressure high, thus facilitating oil extraction (producibility).
Stranded Gas
A stranded gas reserve is a natural gas field that has been discovered but remains unusable for either physical or economic reasons. Gas found in an oil well is generally called associated gas rather than stranded gas but some flared gases from oil wells are stranded gases that are unusable due to economic reasons.
A volume of gas can become economically stranded for one of two reasons:
- The resource is remote from a market for natural gas, making the construction of a pipeline prohibitively expensive.
- The resource may be in a region where gas demand is saturated and the cost of exporting gas beyond this region is excessive. Such a reserve is likely to be tapped in the future when existing sources begin to run out.
Gases are expensive to transport over long distances, especially on scale. One obvious solution to this problem is to convert the gas (mainly methane) into liquid fuels such as methanol, which would be easier to transport. Despite intensive efforts, methods for the conversion of methane to methanol have not been established. The crux of the problem is that the partial oxidation of methane to methanol is rapidly followed by further oxidation of methanol to carbon dioxide, i.e. complete combustion
A physically stranded gas, which is a gas field that is too deep to drill or is under an obstruction, can be considered physically stranded. The continuous development of drilling technology provides access to many fields that are difficult to access.
Unlike other industries, Bitcoin mining is relatively mobile. In their quest for cheap and abundant energy sources, miners can set up new facilities fairly quickly all over the world, including in the most remote areas. As a result, Bitcoin miners can tap into so-called ‘stranded’ energy assets that cannot easily be put to productive use by other industries. In those cases, Bitcoin miners are not competing with other industries or residential users for the same resources but instead soaking up surplus energy that would otherwise have been lost or wasted.
Bitcoin mining facilities are known to directly tap into energy assets at the production point rather than procuring electricity via the regular grid.
Bitcoin is an option for oil & gas producers, flaring can be reduced, using Bitcoin as a battery of value, and specifically speaking Bitcoin mining is an alternative to using residual fuels such as stranded gas and associated gas. They can use Bitcoin as an energy currency as an incentive to use these fuels, Bitcoin mining is a mitigation vehicle to subsidise the processes. Is a way to monetize stranded energy assets, exchanging them for on-site use of that energy.
Here are some initiatives that are already underway:
Great American Mining
Great American Mining is an American Bitcoin mining company that aims to provide a solution to oil and gas producers and power producers that have stranded energy that cannot be brought to market. We bring the market to the molecule.
Oil & Gas Producers can increase production, reduce flaring, and make more money from their gas with Great American Mining.
Bitcoin mining is a low friction solution to flared and vented natural gas for the oil and gas industry.
An innovative solution to a growing problem. Underutilised, stranded, and otherwise wasted energy exists throughout the world. Large amounts of energy are required for mining Bitcoin. This is part of the trust-less design of Bitcoin’s incentives for honest behaviour. Bitcoin is freedom money, and Bitcoin mining is a great way to “spend” this wasted energy.
Great American Mining believes in a future where all hashrate will become mobile. We are working to build the world’s largest fleet of mobile hashrate.
Fix the money, fix the world.
Upstream Data Inc.
“We help oil and gas producers reduce emissions and operate more efficiently.”
Since 2017 we have been pioneering a creative solution for vented and flared natural gas at upstream oil and gas facilities, a problem that has persisted since oil production began with the Drake Well in 1859.
Our solution is to pair modular bitcoin mining data centres to natural gas engines, together waste energy is converted into useful work and monetized. Our data centres do not need costly utilities such as pipelines or power lines. All that is required to start is a natural gas source and a low-cost internet connection such as cellular or satellite.
We design our products to be operator friendly with remote applications in mind. While we focus on the oil and gas industry our portable Ohmm data centres are viable in all bitcoin mining applications.
At Upstream Data our goal is to build and deploy data centres for customers all over the world. We want to help distribute hashrate ownership across the globe so we can decentralise the production of bitcoin and help make the network more robust.
Vespene Energy
Fueling the transition to a renewable energy future. Vespene uses landfill methane to fuel Bitcoin mining.
Mission
00. We aim to repurpose otherwise wasted energy from landfills. We convert landfill methane into a valuable energy source and financial value for landfill operators. Using Bitcoin mining, we turn methane streams into revenue for our customers, requiring no grid connection or pipeline buildout.
Why Vespene
Mitigate Emissions
01. We set up onsite data centers to help you mitigate and monetize your landfill methane, reducing routine flaring and maintenance costs.
Comply with Mandates
02. Our technology reduces methane, VOCs, CO2 and NOX emissions to help you comply with regulatory requirements. Our team understands the regulatory landscape and will help you navigate it.
Earn Profit
03. Create an off-grid revenue source by capturing landfill methane for Bitcoin mining. With our profit-sharing program, our landfill partners earn a percentage of net profits.
Do Good
04. Be part of the renewable energy revolution. By reducing methane emissions with Vespene, your operation becomes more environmentally sustainable and beneficial for the planet.
We envision a fully renewable energy future.
Key takeaways
Bitcoin and its technologies not only have the potential to engine/power a monetary system with unique properties: permissionless, open, borderless, decentralised, uncensorable, neutral, and secure. The bitcoin currency is a cutting-edge form of money and its nature is to be available, it was designed by applying monetary engineering and monetary philosophy. The applications of the capabilities of this protocol are endless things that are difficult to imagine today, if we name some industrial sectors where Bitcoin has been a catalyst, we have:
- The mining hardware industry.
- The money industry, and the financial sector.
- The data storage industry, in the blockchain, saw an innovation.
- In the cryptographic industry, Bitcoin fueled the largest civilian deployment of public-key cryptography in history, because it turns out that people only protect keys when those keys are bound to a value.
- In the industry of trust, society runs on trust, and any application of trust in society can find a new architecture in these networks of trust.
- The programming and computing industry.
- The education and content creation industry, a set of innovations and new paradigms to educate and share with people.
- The energy industry in some sectors.
- Among others.
Now Bitcoin can be a catalyst and the basis for an industrial revolution for the use of residual fuels not only in the oil and gas industry but also as an option for the use of fuels and energies that cannot be consumed in general, regardless of the source. Bitcoin is a battery of value.
Bitcoin is neutral, the protocol is not serving the ends or objectives of an organisation, institution, group, legal fiction, or nation-state. Bitcoin serves people, let’s think of Bitcoin as a country without borders where the benefits and risks, incentives and disincentives, capabilities and properties are freely accessible and that in order to operate uninterruptedly uses energy, the greater the energy consumption, the greater the security of the network. Bitcoin is a festival of the commons, and the sharing of network risks and resources is a pillar of its functionality.
Bitcoin is an alternative to allocate universally available resources such as energy, mining entities obtain benefits while contributing to the security of the network that is the basis for a completely decentralised and open monetary system, money is value, you cannot generate solid money in a cheap way.
Bitcoin contributes to decentralising power generation and energy markets. Bitcoin mining subsidises energy producers by providing a means of consuming energy that is not consumed due to a lack of local demand; this energy can secure the Bitcoin network while it is consumed on-site. This can have a great impact on the energy sector, on the preservation of the planet’s resources and help climate change.
It is a relationship of mutual benefits, the Bitcoin mining industry also has a great alternative in the use of these energy sources that represent lower costs of electricity rates, this encourages the participation and decentralisation of mining in terms of geographic location and ownership.
The value of bitcoin has no upper limit and is the result of the seamless interaction of the forces of supply and demand in a free, global, open and censorship-resistant market. It is a value discovery mechanism free from the intervention of monetary authorities, therefore, there is no limit on the amount of energy that can be allocated to produce the total computing power dedicated to securing the Bitcoin network.
I close this document with an excerpt from a book that I translated into Spanish “El Internet del Dinero, vol. 2” by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, chapter “Immutability and Proof of Work”:
“Bitcoin is not simply an accounting system; it is the first digital artefact that provides forever-history, that provides true immutability digital. There is no other system that provides digital immutability at that level. It is a planetary-scale, thermodynamically-guaranteed, self-evident system of immutability. Planetary-scale, because in order to do it you need to marshal resources that only exist in a planetary-scale effort. Thermodynamically-guaranteed, because you can calculate the exact amount of energy it took to create it, and there’s no shortcut. Information theory tells us that to flip x number of bits, it takes this y number of joules, and there is no other way to do it. Self-evident, because the number that is produced as proof-of-work tells exactly how much work has been done cumulatively. It really is a monument.”
Acknowledgements: 21 million thanks to Enrico Carrara and Guillermo Romero for their contributions that helped me write this document.
Aníbal Santaella
Mechanical Engineer and Bitcoiner
If you want to buy me a beer 🍺 you can do it to the following Bitcoin address: 3KouoLjZMgXimRWpjK6AuEfVX61nyGzWvz
