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In our Friday articles, we take a deep dive into the current state of Bitcoin. Every Friday we will continue to publish brief State of Bitcoin newsletters to keep subscribers up to date on news from the Bitcoin industry. For full disclosure, Brandon and Daniel are strong believers in Bitcoin and both have allocated portions of their portfolios to BTC (HODL baby).
Dan’s top 3 stories from the week:
ConocoPhillips pilot testing a bitcoin mining project: Oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) announced this week that they are currently running a pilot project to use flared gas to power bitcoin miners. They did not disclose which mining company they are partnered with, but made it clear that a third party owned and operated the mining equipment. In my opinion, it’s only a matter of time before all major oil and gas companies follow suit. Gas flaring is a colossal waste of energy, and on-site bitcoin miners offer a much more economically viable capture option than the infrastructure that would be needed to capture, transport, and process the gas elsewhere.
Intel releases more information on their ASIC chip: Intel announced in January that they would be debuting a new, ultra-low voltage ASIC chip for bitcoin miners. Late last week they provided several updates on their progress, including that Argo Blockchain, Block (formerly known as Square), and GRIID Infrastructure have already placed orders for their upcoming chip. Also, according to the update, their “innovations will deliver a blockchain accelerator that has over 1000x better performance per watt than mainstream GPUs for SHA-256 based mining.” Similar to my point above about oil and gas companies, I think it’s only a matter of time before all major players in computer hardware get involved in bitcoin mining. In addition to chip manufacturing, I see a huge market for new cooling and noise-reducing technologies.
Charlie Munger, still a bear: Hold the phones, did you hear? Legendary investor and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger remains bearish on Bitcoin. On Wednesday, at the Daily Journal’s annual meeting, the 98 year old Munger, said that the “crypto” market is run by "people who want to get rich quick for doing very little for civilization." He added, "I don't think it's good that our country is going crazy over bitcoin and its ilk…I hate it." But he didn’t stop there - Munger called Bitcoin "rat poison" and likened crypto in general to venereal disease. According to the CDC, approximately 20% of Americans were diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection in 2017-2018 (to be fair, this number is staggeringly higher than I thought it would be). Compare that to the 73.6% of U.S. adults who were classified as overweight or obese in 2017-2018. I bring this up, of course, because Munger is potentially the world’s largest Coca-Cola bull.
Brandon’s top 3 stories from the week:
Colorado to Accept Bitcoin for State Taxes: Governor Jared Polis said that the state of Colorado will accept bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for taxes. Colorado also plans to accept bitcoin for state related expenses such as driver’s license. This is bullish for overall adoption in my opinion, but I am very skeptical on the amount of people who will actually pay taxes in bitcoin. Personally, I would want to keep my bitcoin far away from the government but everyone views their bitcoin journey a little differently. Overall, I believe it is bullish for adoption but I doubt very many people will use this as an opportunity to increase adoption.
Canadian Government Investigating Wallets from Trucking Convoy: The Canadian government is investigating 34 different crypto wallets that are helping the trucking convoy protesting the vaccine mandates. Bitcoin showed its use case in an unfortunate situation when GoFundMe shut down and did not allow funds to be sent to the truckers. Bitcoiners around the globe began sending sats to truckers and protestors in order to fund the protest and now the Canadian government is attempting to crack down on this. This is bullish on the use case of bitcoin but the fact that the government is attempting to crack down on the truckers freedom for protest. Bitcoin’s ethos is around freedom and at GC we unapologetically support everyone’s desire to be free.
US Senators introduce new legislation investigating El Salvador's adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender: The United States Senators are now trying to investigate the internal affairs of another sovereign and independent nation. El Salvador is not a colony or under the rule of the United States, therefore looking at the risks of bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador is not within the realm of the US Senate. Bukele the President of El Salvador did not take this well and had a very public response which is par for the course for “Big Balls Bukele” as GC has dubbed him. Don’t believe us, see for yourself in the tweet below:
Quick word about stacking tax-advantaged sats!
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A quick look on chain:
Current price: $40,588 (last week -6.4%; last month -4,2%; last year -22%)
Market Cap: $808.9B
Spent Output Profit Ratio: 0.9979
Current block height: 723821
Mean block interval: 9min. 14sec.
Meme of the week
What would the BTC community do without memes? Every week on State of the Coin, we feature our favorite meme of the previous week. If you create or see a meme that you like and want us to consider featuring it, tag us on Twitter or instagram (both @Greencandleit)!
Video version!
For our complete rip, check us out on the pd:
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Happy Friday everyone - get after it this weekend!
Dan and Brandon
Disclosure: The authors of this writing hold positions in cryptocurrency mentioned in this article. That cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. The article was written by Daniel Kuhman, Brandon Keys, and occasionally a guest writer; it expresses the author's own opinions. They are not receiving compensation for it. The information presented in this article is for informational purposes only and in no way should be construed as financial advice or recommendation to buy or sell any stock or cryptocurrency. None of the authors of this article are financial advisors. We encourage all readers to do further research and do your own due diligence before making any investments.