With the petrodollar fading, bitcoin and renewable energy can integrate in an Internet of networks — a new, more resilient, functionally unified energy/monetary system.
What Is Energy?
Energy is everything and in everything. Nothing exists without energy, which is the first principle of all other first (second, really) principles.
So, what is energy? The best and simplest way to define energy is to describe it as work. And what is work? In physics, work means using a force to move something. And what is a force? It’s an action by an agent changing the position or the state of something.
Anything’s capacity to carry out work is energy. …
Stranded natural gas used to power bitcoin mining is a false solution in search of a real problem. This article explores the relationship between bitcoin and stranded natural gas, the bond that ties these two seemingly disparate entities — energy — and how different forms of energy impact bitcoin as sound money. We all need energy, and we all need money, but the way we harness the former and manage the latter both contribute to climate change. What might appear a match made in heaven between stranded natural gas and bitcoin mining is at best a marriage of convenience that will hurt the planet in the long run.
A Match, But Not Made in Heaven
Natural gas is a fossil fuel used to generate energy. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency whose very existence depends on energy, which is used to prove that work was carried out to secure the soundness of its monetary foundations. In other words, consuming energy is the condition upon which the bitcoin network records a transaction and verifies its validity, creating new coins in the process as a form of compensation for these services.
Some see oil companies’ large supply of stranded natural gas and bitcoin’s large demand for cheap energy as a match made in heaven — a win-win situation. Oil…
