Bitcoin volatility mirrors the inherent volatility of life. And what looks like the down are often not so. For example, without Greenpeace USA's campaign against Bitcoin, people like me would never have come to Bitcoin in the first place. Fighting Greenpeace USA was like running up a hill in rarefied air. Everyone who did it returned to earth with a bigger lung capacity to advocate Bitcoin better than we could have: we had better messages, more practice dealing with critics, more resilience, and were more connected to each other as a team.

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.

The amount of things I know about Bitcoin adoption/Bitcoin mining and cannot say publicly has reached an all time high ... and all of it is bullish for Bitcoin and the mining industry!

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.

If you don't have Bitcoin mining on your grid, you're likely paying more for electricity than you should be. Bitcoin mining recently dropped the price of power on one grid in Kenya by 28% to those who could least afford to be paying that premium. In Norway, it dropped the price of energy 20%

How Bitcoin mining reduces power prices for residents, often substantially. The best qualified to comment on this is the grid operator themselves, because they are independents, who see the impact of Bitcoin mining on grids firsthand. Brad Jones, Former CEO of Texas’ grid ERCOT stated in 2022 that Bitcoin was “helping keep the cost of electricity low for all Texans”. He then went further to state the 2 ways it does this 1. "Bitcoin ... by participating in [ancilliary] services in a competitive market necessarily drives those costs down for all consumers" (Bitcoin mining creates a more competitive market for demand response, saving costs ) - Brad Jones, 2023. Interim CEO ERCOT (Grid of Texas) 2. Monetizing wind and solar energy that would otherwise have been wasted. As Jones put it, Bitcoin mining helped "find a home for otherwise wasted wind energy." Because of that, those wind and solar operators were more profitable, decreasing overall price pressure This is the 4th post in a series on how Bitcoin lowers power prices. Check out Mon-Wed posts for the other 3

Was talking to the inspiring Rachel Geyer the other day, and she said something from her experience worth repeating. "When I talk about Bitcoin being sound money, they look at me like I'm part of a sect. When I say I'm putting on an energy conference about using Bitcoin mining as flexible load, they take me seriously." People need to recognize the problem before they want the solution. Lead with how Bitcoin solves an energy problem.

France's center, left and right just did something they never do: agree on something And ... Bitcoin mining brought them together Bitcoin mining is not just a grid stabilizing force, it's a political stabilizing force kudos to INBi (French Bitcoin Policy Institute) Link to full story:

The 150 Terawatt-Hour Ghost

When I was in Lisbon recently, I watched Bastien Desteuque walk onto a stage and make a claim so large that the room went quiet. Bastien is the d...

Running next Breathwork course 4-6 Sept 12-2.30pm ET, online Perfect for - ⬆️ energy levels - ⬆️attention, memory, focus, calm - restoring deep sleep - ⬇️ stress, feelings of "grind" We learn SKY breathing from Art of Living This one's just for Bitcoiners Comment of msg if keen

"Bitcoin is used by criminals" Source: criminals

France's center, left and right just did something they never do: agree on something And ... Bitcoin mining brought them together Bitcoin mining is not just a grid stabilizing force, it's a political stabilizing force kudos to INBi - Institut National de Bitcoin (France’s national Bitcoin institute), Bastien Desteuque and EBEA - who are producing great Bitcoin stories faster than I can document them! Full story:

The 150 Terawatt-Hour Ghost

When I was in Lisbon recently, I watched Bastien Desteuque walk onto a stage and make a claim so large that the room went quiet. Bastien is the d...

The surprising power of the peer group BTW: these posts go on Nostr, not X - because X derates any post that is not about Bitcoin so much, they actually get more engagement here, even though I have less than 10% the followers on Nostr OK, on with the story A couple of years ago, I was running our first group call after our mastermind retreat. One of the five founders could not make it. He came onto the group call the following week and listened in as the other four one after the other described what had changed for them since retreat. He listened, and spoke last. When his turn came, he reflected: "I was in the complete opposite mindset." He shared that he’d had a bad week at work. I asked “What was it like hearing the others’ wins.” His answer surprised me. He said it was uncomfortable at first, but … “that discomfort was what sort of catalyzed a lot of the reflection, and the others are reminding me of what I know I need to do with their wins” The following week, something extraordinary happened. He’d completed his first full draft ready for their first US customer, his productivity changed, and he had an energy level that he said surprised him. How did this happen? He had not been at the retreat He hadn’t received any specific coaching guidance from me that week He hadn’t gotten any pristine new information from a book. Nobody held him to account for anything he had said he would do. One thing happened: he sat in the presence of four peers who were moving ahead. I even asked whether anyone had told him anything he did not already know. He reflected: "No. It was being able to recognize that these [actions the others were taking] were the things that I kinda knew I should be doing." Often the coach gets the credit when a client gets a great result. That’s at best only half the story. I recently discovered what the research says matters even more. Harris for example (Psychological Review 1995) found that for social behavior generally, the peer group is more influential than one’s own parents. But this was the cleanest firsthand evidence I saw ever for the power of the peer group. Because the other variables that could have turned around his behaviors were all stripped out. Yet he still changed his behavior fundamentally inside seven days, based purely on being in a group with four people who inspired him to a different standard. Who is your peer group? And are they helping you to become the next version of yourself, or supporting you to remain the version that doesn’t threaten them?