So... Bitcoin's using all the electricity and killing the planet, right?
I gave a lecture about Bitcoin's energy consumption and its effect on the environment, as part of our renewed, relocated Salon lectures. These are my speaker notes.
Two AI hosts, one of them walking through the session as if they'd been in the room. Then I spent way too many hours editing it. Transcribing, cutting, re-cutting, syncing it back to the slides. The result isn't AI slop. It's a produced episode.
What I didn't expect was how much the format adds. Having two hosts discuss and dissect the material, highlight what stands out, and build on each other's reactions brings a dimension the slides alone can't. It's a different way into the same content.
In this eye-opening deep dive, hosts Alice and Bob break down a fascinating presentation on Bitcoin's energy consumption and its surprising relationship with renewable energy.
While Bitcoin has faced criticism for its electricity usage, this conversation explores how mining operations are increasingly powered by renewable sources, can monetize otherwise wasted energy, and might actually accelerate the clean energy transition. From reviving century-old hydroelectric plants to capturing methane from abandoned wells, discover how Bitcoin's economic incentives are creating unexpected environmental opportunities.
In the previous chapter, we covered the history of money. Then, in 2009, everything changed. A new kind of money was born. One that didn't rely on governments, gold, or trust in central banks.
In this chapter, we'll see how it works - and what it takes to keep it secure.
Chapter 2: Keeping Money Secure
So... It's one thing to create money. It's another thing entirely to keep it safe.
Let's talk about what it really takes to secure value - whether it's gold, fiat, or something entirely new.
It's not enough to lock money in a vault. If it leaks value every year, you're still being robbed - just more politely.
So if locking it in a vault isn't enough, who do we trust to protect money?
That brings us to the real gatekeepers - the trusted custodians: kings, banks, governments.
They've all secured money with walls, weapons, and the power to enforce.
They don't just guard the vaults - they decide how much money exists in the first place.
We trust them to issue it, protect it, and punish anyone who tries to mess with it.
I designed a 3D printed chassis for a standalone RaspiBlitz appliance.
RaspiBlitz is a DIY Bitcoin full node running together with a Lightning node on a Raspberry Pi with a touchscreen display. It was created by developer Christian Rotzoll and is backed by Fulmo, a Berlin-based Bitcoin startup that runs Lightning Network hackathons worldwide.
Running your own Bitcoin node means you don't have to trust anyone else as your source of truth. If you accept Bitcoin payments through someone else's node, that data can be spoofed. "Not your node, not your rules", as the RaspiBlitz docs put it. It's the infrastructure layer of financial self-sovereignty.
The Lightning Network runs on top of the full node as a second layer for fast, low-fee payments. Still experimental, but plenty of people are running it anyway out of enthusiasm and a desire to push the network forward.
Named my node Barracuda, a play on the words Barak (ברק) and Lightning.
There were a few non-obvious gotchas. The initial Bitcoin blockchain sync takes days, not hours. A Lightning channel can only be opened after that sync completes. Finding good peers and covering the on-chain fees for opening channels was more involved than expected. To receive Lightning payments, you also need inbound liquidity, channel capacity on the remote side. You can buy funded channels or use a looping service to rebalance. In total, my node forwarded 335,497 sats, for a 21.6 sat fee.
Update, June 2023: For gaining some hands-on experience with Lightning, I established a few channels and sent transactions between my node and a wallet hosted on BlueWallet's LNDHub. They apparently shut down the service, and users were expected to move funds out by end of May. I didn't get the memo. I filled out a form, but have little hope. Yet another reminder - not your keys, not your coins.
Ten years ago today, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block, embedding a headline from The Times into Bitcoin's first transaction: "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks". Timestamp and thesis in one sentence.
To mark the anniversary, BitMEX took out a front-page ad in that same paper reading: "Thanks Satoshi. We owe you one. Happy 10th Birthday, Bitcoin". Fitting, too, that today's lead story in that paper is "Universities face fresh credit crunch as debt spiral".
In 2009, Chancellor Alistair Darling was considering a second £37 billion injection into British banks. Satoshi responded by launching a system that doesn't need bailing out.
Five years ago, I tried to get my hands on original copies of that edition. Three came from Historic Newspapers, ordered in December 2013. A fourth came from Bygone News in January 2014 - the last copy they had. The fifth came through Bitcointalk. A UK seller named jonny1000 had posted his copy on January 3rd, 2014, Bitcoin's fifth anniversary. He'd originally listed it at 0.1 BTC. By the time he'd finished calling the archive services to try to source more for buyers, the price had changed. He called three companies. All three told him January 3rd, 2009 had sold out in the last few days due to, as he put it, "something to do with Bitcoin and extremely high demand".
The scramble was widespread. GettingPersonal couldn't source copies after multiple follow-ups. Papers Past found two copies but they were the Scottish edition. I paid 0.589 BTC for jonny1000's copy on January 30th - roughly $470 at the time - with shipping to Tel Aviv included. He e-mailed me a photo of his driving license next to the newspaper with my name written on a note before I sent the transaction. It arrived via Royal Mail a week later.
