🥛 The #1 Bitcoin explanation of all time 👀
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GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter tha–
**Milk Man sprints into the scene and kicks intern off the keyboard**
Sorry. No time for an intro today.
I was ambushed over the holiday weekend…
Not by gunmen. Or a group of bears.
Worse. My family. (the ones that hate crypto)
Luckily I had my go-to-explainers.
They’re like go-to dance moves you can always fall back on when you’re stuck awkwardly on the dance floor (or family dinner).
Today, I’m gonna give you 3 to add to your collection:
The best Bitcoin explainer of all time
Bitcoin is becoming a safe haven for Turkey
How “The Land of Fire and Ice” is benefitting from Bitcoin mining
BONUS: Bitcoin payments are coming to DMV’s in Colorado
THE BEST BITCOIN EXPLAINER OF ALL TIME
Meet Dr. Peter Van Valkenburgh. He’s:
the Director of Research at Coin Center – a non-profit focused on helping regulators understand crypto
testified before Congress
a Doctor and wearer of the “Van” name, so he’s automatically 10x cooler/smarter than the rest of us
In 2018 he was called on as a witness to speak to the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
That’s when Dr. Van Valkenburgh dropped one of the best Bitcoin explainers ever. It’s 5 years old, but it’s like fine wine – it gets better with time.
It’s worth the 6-minute watch, but I’ll save you 5 and give you the Milk Notes:
What is Bitcoin? The world’s first public blockchain network.
What does it do? It lets you send and receive value to and from anyone in the world using nothing but a computer and an internet connection.
Why is it revolutionary? It’s the world’s first public digital payments infrastructure and, unlike anything before it, you don’t need to trust a middleman.
Before Bitcoin the only public payment infrastructure we had was cash.
However, paper money only works in face-to-face transactions.
If you want to send cash to someone in another part of the world, you can’t use public infrastructure.
Instead, you need to rely on a private bank or company. This entity opens up its books and adds a ledger entry that debits you and credits the person you’re paying.
The problem is that the companies that control the private payments infrastructure are becoming fewer, larger, and more powerful.
This creates riskier systems with single points of failure.
When they do fail, the consequences are exponentially bigger.
The solution: Bitcoin – the world’s first globally accessible public money.
It doesn’t matter your race, nationality, religion, gender, or if you pour the milk into the bowl before the cereal (psycho)…. anyone can use Bitcoin to send money across the world.
Is it perfect? No. But neither was the internet when it was first invented…
And the same way that the Internet revolutionized public infrastructure for information (i.e. anyone can search for anything with the Internet), Bitcoin will do the same thing for money.
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BITCOIN IS BECOMING A SAFE HAVEN FOR TURKEY
Turkey is home to 85M+ people. It’s also home to:
One of the worst inflation rates in the world (59% in August)
One of the most depreciated currencies in the world (the value of Turkish lira has decreased by over 50%)
The result: Turkish people are getting rekt.
Which is why Bitcoin is slowly becoming a safe haven for Turkish people.
According to a recent survey by KuCoin:
~52% of participants are invested in crypto (a 12% increase from 18 months ago).
The most popular cryptocurrencies are BTC, ETH, and other stablecoins like USDT.
Many are using Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this trend either.
Places like Lebanon and Cyprus have been plagued with high interest rates, depreciating fiat currencies, and corrupt financial systems – forcing people to look for an alternative, like Bitcoin.
Many people around the world are having a “come to Jesus Satoshi” moment.
HOW THE LAND OF FIRE AND ICE IS BENEFITTING FROM BITCOIN MINING
I recently fell down a rabbit hole on everything Iceland-related…
It has unique ecosystems like volcanoes, glaciers, etc.
It has a cool nickname – The Land of Fire and Ice. (some Game of Thrones-type sh*t)
The whole country almost runs entirely on renewable energy. In fact, it historically has a surplus of energy.
Last week Bloomberg dropped a video on how Bitcoin mining is helping Iceland with its unique problem…the country creates more energy than it needs, and most of it is going to waste.
You see, usually, excess energy can be bought/sold between companies.
But in Iceland, a lot of the excess energy is what’s called “non-guaranteed power” – meaning the power could be used or it could be forced to shut down when the electrical grid goes crazy.
It’s a coin toss.
The big problem: No one in Iceland wants to buy this “non-guaranteed power”.
Factories don’t want it. Greenhouses don’t want it. Households don’t want it. No one wants it.
That’s because most power consumers need to be online all the time (or most of it) and can’t afford to be shut down randomly.
You know who doesn’t need any of that? Bitcoin miners.
Which is why a handful of mining companies have been buying up Iceland’s extra energy.
Bitcoin miners get access to cheap, renewable energy. Iceland gets to monetize its extra energy instead of wasting it.
It’s a win-win. **firm handshakes all around**
BITE-SIZED COOKIES 🍪
Kraken Pro has become the one-stop shop for Pro Traders. Packed with new trading and analytics tools, a polished UI, and a fully customizable trading interface, it’s Kraken’s most powerful trading platform – ever.*
The Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is accepting crypto as payment for online services. DMV customers can pay for driver’s licenses, vehicle registrations, etc. using crypto. Is this cool? Yes. Is the DMV still Hell on Earth? Also yes.
Stake.com (a popular crypto gambling site) got hacked for ~$41.3M yesterday. The crypto-gambling site suffered a “private key leak” and was drained across 3 different blockchains.
The London Stock Exchange is considering launching a new blockchain-based market exchange. The goal? Make buying, selling, and holding traditional assets easier with blockchain technology.
A proposal has been approved to make dYdX the native token for its new Layer 1 blockchain. The proposal almost got 100% of the votes from the community. There were only 4 wallets that voted against it. (There’s always at least one…)
Binance’s Global Head of Product quit and left the company over the weekend. This is the 4th Binance executive to leave the company over the last few months. (Milk Road Rule #44: Where there’s smoke, there’s probably fire.)
*This is sponsored content
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Sep 5, 2023
DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.
