For the audio version, check out my podcast A Boy Named Pseu where you can download it on all podcast platforms. (read starts at 8:54)
If bitcoin is dead, then everyone abandoned the network
By mere speculation the, WSJ piece claimed “one reason for the slowdown could be the sobering reality that creating new global monetary standards requires more than computer code.”
Yeah, they’re right…
In fact, it takes an entire network of individuals to voluntarily download the required software/client to their computer and connect to the Bitcoin Network.
In order to run a fully-validated node to ensure that each of their transactions is kosher, it takes approximately 8 hours — a couple days to download over 11 years worth of every single transaction on the ledger.
Additionally, miners have to invest in the necessary mining equipment (should they choose to partake in such a role) where ROI is not guaranteed. For more of an in-depth, yet high-level explanation on the technicalities of the Bitcoin Network, I highly recommend Yan Pritkerz’s Inventing Bitcoin: The Technology Behind The First Truly Scarce and Decentralized Money Explained.
Luckily, the growing industries that are surrounding bitcoin are commoditizing supplies and resources to mine and issue the currency. In fact, the need for efficient mining operations is incentivizing the use of renewable energy. Now, nearly 80% of the energy consumed in bitcoin mining is renewable.
Short story long, code is peanuts to the remaining requirements of a new global, monetary policy. It takes the cooperation of strangers all around the world to plug into the network while investing their own resources with the uncertainty of financial gain in return.
Despite all these tedious requirements, this miraculously never stopped anyone from joining the network that is adamantly growing as more people continue to learn about bitcoin from bull-run hypes, and bearish periods of learning, researching, and developing in the ecosystem.
What matters to these voluntary participants is that they collaboratively nurture and cultivate bitcoin’s main end-goal: provide a solution to the failed monetary policy that is the central banking cartel. Their dedication to till the soil of the decentralized, validated, trust-less currency is what helps keep bitcoin alive.
The issuing of the bitcoin currency itself and the participants that operate around it is what powers the network. But that’s only one piece of the pie.
But, you know. Bitcoin is dead.
