What's happening on the Swedish grid right now is surprising a lot of people in the Bitcoin community. And it is a window into the future regarding the usecase the world embraces first.

Issue #049 of The The Bitcoin Adoption Forecast is out. Check your email and spam filters

The $110 Billion blindspot

Dear Subscriber, Three conversations are happening right now about the future of electricity grids. They’re happening in parallel swinlanes, wit...

TL;DR: Three conversations are happening right now about the future of electricity grids. They’re happening in parallel swinlanes, without awareness of each other. This lack of awareness won’t last forever and all 3 paths point directly to Bitcoin mining.

Another 19 new business owners recently adopted Bitcoin Their assessment a month+ later - "This feels cleaner" - "This feels like a better form of money" - "Now 1 in 8 transactions is in Bitcoin" - "20% of my business income is in Bitcoin now." One couple created this in their spare time when they weren't running 3 businesses and 6 children!

Here's what everyone who cares about social justice should know about Bitcoin ... but almost certainly doesn't

For 2 years I've taught the environmental module on Cambridge's digital assets course for regulators. Which means 348 of the people who write the rules (1/3 were divisional heads) now know that Bitcoin mining is the flexible load that can absorb the grid stress AI is about to cause. Probably nothing.

In May, Ray Dalio explained why central banks won't hold Bitcoin: "Transactions can be monitored and potentially controlled, which is why central banks aren't looking to hold it." Source:

X (formerly Twitter)

Ray Dalio (@RayDalio) on X

While Bitcoin gets a lot of attention, it hasn’t played the safe-haven role many expected. In my view, there are a few reasons why. First, Bitco...

For the last two years I've taught the environmental module on Cambridge's digital assets course for regulators. His privacy claim is contested (to say the least) Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/ray-dalio-says-bitcoin-is-not-the-answer-the-community-responds. But that has been well countered already and isn't my focus here. The claim I can speak to is "aren't looking" because this is factually incorrect: the regulators I teach are doing exactly that. In the two cohorts I taught, the attendees came from 24 central banks, several of them G20 monetary authorities, others from across the emerging world. They enrolled, paid, and worked through eight weeks of their own accord to understand digital assets properly. More than a third were department heads or directors. The rest were the supervisors and analysts who apply the rules. In short: the data says that the institutions many (including Ray) assume are asleep on this are quietly sending their staff to class. A few have also moved past class. For example: in November 2025 the Czech National Bank made its first Bitcoin purchase: a small test portfolio, explicitly a two-year experiment before any decision on reserves. Its governor is openly making the case for it. Source:

Governor Michl’s thoughts on bitcoin – a test portfolio in CNB’s foreign exchange reserves - Czech National Bank

In June 2025 Ukraine introduced a bill to let its central bank hold Bitcoin in reserves - permission rather than obligation. The door is now legally open. Source:

Bitcoin Magazine

Ukraine Introduces Bill To Allow Bitcoin In National Reserves

Ukraine has introduced a bill that would give its central bank the legal right to hold Bitcoin and other assets as part of its national reserves. T...

Granted, none of this means central banks are about to hold Bitcoin at scale and Dalio may be partially right that many never will. But "aren't looking" is a different claim, which the data already contradicts. 24 central banks are already looking into it, 1 already holds a test position, another has recently passed a bill to allow it. For a man who built his career on following the data, that is a strange thing to miss.

Charisma is something almost everyone seems to want more of and seek out in others. Yet remarkably, almost no one knows what it is, let alone how to increase it. It turns out it isn't one trait. When researchers actually measured it, it resolved into two halves: 1. influence, the ability to guide and lead people, and 2. affability, the ability to make them feel at ease (Tskhay, General Charisma Inventory, 2018). Most people only work on the first half. Status, authority, looking impressive. It matters, however ... it is the smaller of the two levers. The second half is quieter, and it is the one most people underrate. Charismatic people carry and express calm, positive emotion, and other people catch it. Follower moods track the leader's mood, a process called emotional contagion. Bono and Ilies measured it in 2006: a leader's positive emotion measurably lifts the mood of the people around them. So here is the working model I am testing on myself: the affable half of charisma is largely nervous-system regulation. Settle your own state and you settle the people around you, often without saying anything. This is leadership through presence. You cannot hold the first half for long if the second is missing. And you build the second the way you build anything steady in the body, through breathwork, meditation, and daily attention to your own state. Work on your nervous system and you are working on (at least) half of what makes you more charismatic, and ... the half most people ignore competely.

We're winning on one front! ... and this front can shed has some lessons in terms of how we win the other narratives too.

The first rule of growing Bitcoin is you doing talk about Bitcoin

France now has parties across the spectrum, from the far-right to the communist left to the center, adopting pro-Bitcoin-mining positions (with the Greens the notable exception). Probably nothing.

Last year I taught the environmental module on Cambridge's digital assets course for regulators. Across the two cohorts, the room held 348 financial-sector officials, from 24 central banks and 43 countries. I went in to give the people who write the rules a different way to look at the question. Energy use is not environmental harm. I made that point the way I assess any technology as a climate-tech investor: carbon debt, carbon displacement, carbon payback. Bitcoin already runs on 52.4% sustainable energy, the highest of any global industry, per Cambridge. Coming from an investor rather than a Bitcoiner changes how it lands. It lets a regulator lower the environmental risk they assign to proof-of-work, without feeling they have gone soft on digital assets. Risk perception is the input to restrictive policy. Shifting it is the highest-leverage thing you can do in that room. It also pre-empts the standard objections. The per-transaction energy claim, the country comparison, the water and e-waste lines - all answered with data, in advance. The estimates that started the energy panic were debunked in four peer-reviewed studies. A regulator who has already heard that won't be swayed by those lines the next time someone repeats them. The timing did some of the work. Grid strain from AI data centres is the live issue on their desks. Bitcoin mining is the flexible counterpoint to inflexible AI base load. That moves it from problem to part of the solution at the moment they are grappling with it. What other regulators are already doing moves a regulator more than the argument does. And the data points one way. Since 2020, 47 countries have given mining more access and only nine still ban it. The biggest way nation states take Bitcoin exposure now is to mine it themselves. Once a regulator sees other countries doing this and benefiting, staying out looks riskier than stepping in. I'm not suggesting this equates to "proven policy change", and the audience for this education is self-selected. But Cambridge knew the content in advance, there was no pushback (because it was all backed by data, so on-brand for them), it was the highest-rated session, and I was invited back. For a neutral academic programme briefing regulators, that is the signal the argument landed. Those 348 came from the institutions that write the rules, many of them in senior, cautious roles. Each one takes what they learned back into their institution, and into the policy it shapes.

Satoshi observed firsthand the non-independence of banks, central banks and govt and commented on this in email messages. He observed how the banking sector's financial losses were socialized and yet gains were privatized. Bitcoin was created at the time that the 1% had just done over the 99% and the first lines in the genesis block reflected this. In short: social justice was at the core of Bitcoin's creation. -

Diamond hands start with low cortisol Cortisol is commonly known as the stress hormone. It turns out it is also a hormone that influences how we are remembered by others. A leader with high cortisol is not just more likely to lose their composure and treat others badly - high cortisol also degrades the exact faculties that a highly effective leader needs on a daily basis: working memory, impulse control, sleep. Outside of work, stress is also estimated to play a role in 60-80% of primary-care visits. In a randomised field study of executives, a three-day SKY breathing course (a type of breathwork which I've been teaching for about 20 years) significantly lowered blood cortisol and stress while lifting life satisfaction and emotional stability. A year on, the gains had held for the people who kept the practice going, without having to repeat the course. The same pattern showed up in working employees with calendars: a three-day programme cut anxiety and lifted thriving. The cortisol-lowering observation is not unique to breathwork. Plenty of things have been shown in studies to effectively lower cortisol: walking, a holiday, or even a simple relaxation routine measurably drops it too. What is unique to breathwork are the other factors that accompany the stress reduction. The same practice that brings your cortisol down is the one sharpening the attention, improving your heart-rate variability, defending the deep sleep, all at once. Lowering cortisol is common. Lowering it alongside eight other measurable gains, all of which matter for how you lead, and all from one practice, is rare. When I ask leaders in workshops to recall the most important quality in the leader that they most admired, two answers that I consistently hear are "They were always so present. When I was in the room, they were completely undistracted and it felt like I was the only thing that mattered" and "They were the one everyone looked to for calm and direction when there was a storm going on" (they literally used those words, "storm" and "present"). A lower cortisol baseline means calm in the stormy moments that decide how a leader is remembered. It means undistracted presence in the moments when you are in the room with them. Cortisol is what tightens your chest as you talk. It is what makes you do something impulsively without thinking of downstream consequences, like panic-selling into a drawdown you would have held through with a clear head. It is what tips your tone a notch sharper than you meant to when giving feedback. A lower cortisol baseline can make the difference between people recalling you as the inspirational leadership example in workshops run by people like me, and you being the example when I ask "Can you recall a counterexample of great leadership?" I suggest breathing techniques to the founders and leaders I coach because it changes not just the way they communicate and decide, but the ripple of impact they have on people's lives years into the future.

I've been coaching for 20 years, but I've never come across a group of people as responsive to coaching as Bitcoiners. I suspect it has do with agency (self-sovereignty). When you get coached: your single biggest gain is in self-regulation. This is the capacity to set your own direction and steer toward it without a deadline or any person standing over you. Source: https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amle.2022.0107 (A meta-analysis of RCTs on coaching) Self-regulation makes you more likely to take proactive action by yourself, less likely to procrastinate, more likely to self-motivate. Bitcoiners are already highly self-motivated when it comes to DYOR. Coaching helps this pre-existing head-start flow into all other areas of life.

Not many people know this. I was an advisor to MARA for 2 years. Part of what I did was challenging journalists who wrote takes about Bitcoin mining that were factually unsound. I was doing this work anyway, but engaging with MARA meant I could spend a lot more time doing it, and gave me the bandwidth to write to a number of journalists directly. Result: 4 retractions, 2 changed editorial policy. Numerous article amendments. Most never wrote FUD again. Actions I took during 2025 included: - Negative articles on Bitcoin and energy rebutted: 102 - Letters to authors of those articles: 57 - Letters to researchers who published inaccurate data on Bitcoin mining: 3 - Regulators & Policymakers presented with Bitcoin pro-ESG narrative: 162 The gig ended at the start of this year, so presenting these after 6 months of having no engagement with MARA. But let me say this: I'm very grateful to them, because they played an important part in replacing the remaining non-factual accounts of Bitcoin mining in the mainstream media, by fact-driven reporting.

The world is just a hair's breadth away from seeing that Bitcoin mining solves the energy trilemma That's why it has now been embraced by the political left, center, and right, in France And the irony is - AI datacenters are what has brought Bitcoin mining's moment of truth closer to our awareness. Full interview:

Superior knowledge or insight creates an edge. This allows better identification of mispricings, higher-probability opportunities, or structural advantages where the downside is limited (or knowable) while the upside is large. TL;DR asymmetric returns -> potential for asymmetric knowledge some of the most asymmetric knowledge right now in Bitcoin is: 1. How profitable Bitcoin mining companies are, who have found ancillary revenue through solving an energy problem (heat recycling, methane mitigation or grid stabilization) 2. How many of these Bitcoin mining companies are in Europe It's one of the reasons we're looking to invest in Bitcoin mining companies who mitigate methane from landfills. But there are many other equally good investment opportunities in Bitcoin mining if you know what to look for (the ones that solve a problem and earn most of their money through something other than SATs) Not investment advice.

Just in: Sovereign Green energy backed Bitcoin mining is one of the new trends this cycle And the Middle East and Africa are now leading the charge, using Bitcoin mining at scale to stabilize grids, accelerate rural electrification and accelerate green energy development Article source:

KuCoin

Rise of Sovereign Green Energy: How the Middle East & Africa Disrupt Traditional Bitcoin Mining| KuCoin

Bitcoin mining is entering a new era where energy strategy, sovereign power control, and renewable infrastructure matter as much as mining hardware...

Each time I run a retreat with a client, I set myself one goal: improve at least one thing each time. This time it was the "make everything we do as memorable as possible" The leading device is simple, and research-backed. We anchor what we learn to where we learn it. Sit in one room the whole time and it blurs together. Move through different places, each with its own sounds, sights and smells, and every conversation gets its own anchor. So in Costa Rica where I live, we sat outside whenever we could, beside birdsong in different parts of San José. One session was at a local slow food restaurant serving some incredible local cuisine. Paid for in Bitcoin, of course (check out La Galería Slow Food and say "hi" to the owner Jorge next time you're in). Here are some of the places we sat in the montage below. The results: He just left me a voice note "I feel like a completely different person. and I still can't believe how much we covered in just 3 days." He sent out new proposals while we were there, and he says his clients are picking up on his new vibe. Not all of this was down to where we sat. Some was the breathwork he's now integrated, and plenty was other aspects of the co-work we did together. But this is my 40th retreat I've run, and if I can make every one 2% better, then this one is roughly121% better than my first. Next retreat is in a couple of months, and this time it is a group retreat. The last innovation is locked in, and I've just started brainstorming what the next innovation will be that can make it even better.

Low time preference is trainable. We talk about low time preference like it's something that the process of holding sound money does to us. Hold Bitcoin, and you defer gratification by default. ie: don't spend today what could be worth more tomorrow. This is true, holding Bitcoin does lower our time preference. It's also a skill you can build directly Turns out that part has been measured across hundreds of studies. The underlying skill is the ability to choose the larger reward later over the smaller one now. You train it with your own imagination. When people picture a specific future in vivid detail, they discount it less and wait for the bigger reward more often. Researchers call it "episodic future thinking". In randomized tests it measurably lowered how steeply people discounted the future. If you make your future concrete enough, you will value it enough to wait for it. One concrete example (of many): put friction between impulse and action, such as the "wait 10 minutes" rule before a purchase, snack, or reply to someone who just said something ignorant about Bitcoin on social media. You're not banning the thing. You are inserting a delay so the impulse passes and the deliberate choice gets a chance to take over. Over time, the pause becomes automatic. Low time preference is a muscle that can be trained.