A waste management consortium recently took over an country's landfills because they were emitting methane, causing harm to residents and deterring tourism They concluded Bitcoin mining was the only viable solution We just booked by tickets to visit them Probably nothing

Of the peer reviewed papers on Bitcoin, >90% of them are on Bitcoin and energy Of Cambridge's report on Bitcoin, >75% of the report is on Bitcoin mining Of countries forming National Bitcoin Reserves through vehicles other than confiscation > 90% have done so using Bitcoin mining (only El Salvador purchased Bitcoin) Of people routinely talking to political leaders about Bitcoin (including Prince Filip, Adam Back, myself) almost all of the leaders want to talk about Bitcoin and energy (versus a much more muted response to "Bitcoin and money") Bitcoin is a fire waiting to burn. The Bitcoin-as-money conversation is the big log in the fire. It's the ultimate place we want to end up. But it's not the starting point. We've been trying to start a fire by holding a match to a big log. Bitcoin mining is the kindling, it's the fire starter, because it solves so many energy problems that people have, and political leaders are struggling to find solutions to, right now! Once Bitcoin mining creates acceptance of Bitcoin, from there it will be so much easier for the big log of Bitcoin-as-money to catch alight.

Reflections post BTCHEL conference.

The one misleading narrative about Bitcoin that has been killed completely in mainstream media: the "Bitcoin is bad for the environment/uses too much energy" Because of this, its no longer a reputational risk for people to talk about Bitcoin mining solves energy problems. As a result, Since 2024, a group of Bitcoin mining advocates is now making good strides forward across the world in talk with energy companies and governments about getting Bitcoin mining helping solve major and concurrent problems around their ailing grids, behind-schedule NZE targets, and near-EOL renewable and battery subsidy programs.

If you want to speed up bitcoin adoption, that means help bitcoin acceptance. If you want to help bitcoin acceptance, talk about how bitcoin solves a problem the person you are talking about has. For store owners - that’s “how do I increase foot traffic and reduce card fees” For anyone in govt, it’s often “how do I keep my grid stable and increase energy security?” For an environmentalist it’s often “how do we phase out peaker plants and gas flaring while accelerating the green energy transition” For policymakers and regulators it’s often “how do we adopt transactions in a way that’s much harder to use than traditional currency?”

"Bitcoin (mining) as an energy solution" is the Trojan horse for Bitcoin as a monetary solution

Of all the govt ministers I've met with, none of them wanted to talk about bitcoin as a monetary asset. All of them wanted to find out more about how bitcoin supports their energy and environmental goals. This corresponds with the experiences of other people I've cross-referenced with who are meeting with senior members of Government, including Prince Filip, who recently said that the Bitcoin&energy conversation is the one they are most interested in having.

I've recently met with 3 Government Ministers to talk about how with bitcoin mining, you don't need gas peaker plants to accompany new AI load, and how you can also reduce methane emissions.

I am convinced that once Bitcoin mining is accepted as a necessary grid stabilizing and renewable expansion technology, the world will be able to finally accept Bitcoin as an important and impactful technology, and adoption will increase significantly.

Just finished keynote in Helsinki on the (real) energy that powers Bitcoin. No data. No charts. Instead I told 5 stories ... and based on the feedback it was probably my best talk yet.

In the last 3 months we've gone from one landfill project in the pipeline in one country with us struggling to find a Bitcoin mining company wanting to take it on, to multiple landfill projects in multiple countries with multiple Bitcoin mining companies wanting to be involved, and landfill consortiums saying "we know we can't sell that power to the grid and that Bitcoin mining is our only realistic option, when are you doing site a visit?" Probably nothing

In 2006 I made a decision which meant I was working much more behind-the-scenes, but my impact went up about 10x At the start of this year, I made a very similar decision, with the hope it would have a similar impact on the lives of people I care about working for Bitcoin

Issue #53 of the Bitcoin adoption letter is out. Check your email and spam filters.

What Hashrate Did

Bitcoin’s hashrate has always done the same thing through every bearmarket 2009: gone up. But it has now been falling for 259 days. This has tw...

Included - Analysis on how far through the BTC->AI datacenter Transition we are - 2 reasons the hashrate decline has been good for thinks Bitcoiners care about - Pretty charts based on new data - And something different: what this could meet for trading hashprice and hashrate

“Knowing the Bitcoin→AI transition consequence on hashrate” is to trading hashprice as “knowing about which large pension fund are about to allocate AUM to Bitcoin”, is to trading Bitcoin price. Tomorrow's newsletter will have a section and some pretty charts about this.

Luke and Brooke Cortese are Bitcoin legends The rate at which they are orangepilling both businesses and everyday users is something we've not seen before.

Why are so many of the inspiring stories about Bitcoin adoption coming out of Africa and Latin America?

3 years ago the mainstream press had one Bitcoin mining story: and it was about wasted electricity. Since then, as they started to better understand the technology, the narrative flipped on its head. None of them framed it as a change of position, so nobody noticed there had been one. Here's my favorite 21 quotes on Bitcoin and energy from major news outlets since the narrative turned. BBC "The bitcoin mine now accounts for around 30% of the plant's revenue allowing them to keep the prices down for the local town." Wall Street Journal "Bhutan now boasts a stash of bitcoins worth $1.3 billion, or roughly 40% of the country's gross domestic product, according to cryptocurrency platform Arkham." Al Jazeera "In 2023, the Bhutanese government sold $100m of cryptocurrency to double the salaries of civil servants." Euronews "The country's crypto mines could, at least on paper, have little to no carbon footprint at all." CNBC "At one of the Gridless pilot sites in Kenya, the hydro plant dropped the price of power from 35 cents per kilowatt hour to 25 cents per kWh." Business Insider "Numbers from Ethiopia Electric Power show the country raked in over $55 million from electricity sales for Bitcoin mining in 2024 alone—18% of their total revenue." UnHerd "This initiative flips that narrative by using Bitcoin mining to fund energy in parts of Africa that are too poor or remote to merit connection to grids, but which do have plentiful supplies of potential power sources." MIT Technology Review "We're making Bitcoin out of surplus energy and monetizing something that otherwise has no value." Financial Times "The cryptocurrency could allow previously unprofitable, small electrical grids linked to local renewable energy to become "financially viable" in developing countries and in turn improve electricity access" The Independent "Solar and wind energy installations could earn hundreds of millions of dollars by mining bitcoin during periods of excess electricity generation, according to a new study." Reuters "Engie is looking at installing storage systems or bitcoin mining data centers at its new solar plant in Brazil to make the facility more profitable" Fox Business "Some 52.4% of sustainable energy sources are used for mining, led by 42.6% renewables, including wind and hydropower, as well as 9.8% nuclear." Times of India "excess heat from [Bitcoin mining] computing could support crop production while reducing fossil fuel use" The Street "partners in the transition to renewable energy" Forbes "bitcoin mining is the only technologically viable solution for mitigating methane emissions" Reuters "MARA's process captures gas that would have been flared" Flares leak around 9% of the methane straight through. A generator destroys nearly all of it, which is why capture beats burning. Bloomberg "Iceland has become a refuge for Bitcoin miners as energy costs soar and regulatory pressure on cryptocurrency operations mount in the US and other countries." What draws them is a renewable surplus Iceland has no other way to sell. Fast Company Bitcoin mining "could help address a chronic clean electricity oversupply problem, which has cost energy companies ~$1 billion in the last two years" That is Brazil, and the billion is what the oversupply has already cost. South China Morning Post "Now, in a bid to turn this excess into economic gain, the government is embracing the energy-intensive business of cryptocurrency mining." Laos built the dams first. The excess is hydro it cannot otherwise use. NRK "The data center accounted for 20 percent of Noranett's revenue. Now it's the remaining electricity customers who have to pay that bill." The town had campaigned to close that site over the noise and cheered when it went. Grid tariffs then rose 20%, around 2,500 to 3,000 kroner a year per household. Inc "Once online, miners become part of the energy ecosystem and oftentimes adjust their daily power use to help balance the grid." A smattering of negative coverage still runs. What has changed is that the positive coverage is no longer rare. In fact - it is now outnumbers the amount of negative coverage. The shift started happening well before the media started reporting on AI datacenters, and was as a result of a number of researchers and Bitcoiners who put in the work to make this possible. 21 positive stories on Bitcoin and energy, and not one of them written by a Bitcoiner. Worth celebrating!

I've just crunched some numbers on the BTC->AI transition on the ERCOT (Texas grid). TL;DR: there's a lot more switching still to come. *This chart doesn't factor in that at least some ASICS are being sold to smaller BTC mining co's who are staying on ERCOT.

If you happen to be in Finland or close by later this month ... 25-26 Sept

BTCHEL2026 – The Nordic Bitcoin Conference.

Adoption stalls when orangepilling fails And our orangepilling has been failing a lot of late But it doesn't have to. This is one of the models I take the Bitcoiners I coach through, which has been working. So I thought I'd open source it.