Bitcoin (mis)understandings?

Like many things in life, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency and NFT’s are an area where I know next to nothing but find expositions from experts immensely fascinating to glean from. Two recent podcasts from the Tim Ferriss Show and Jordan Peterson Podcast shared two ideas that are game changing.

Now I must say at this point I may have completely got the wrong end of the stick here and may have got my wires well and truly crossed, but here are the ideas as I remember and understand them. They both relate to the age-old problem of energy distribution and storage.

One solution is the ‘Bitcoin Battery’. With energy production you must create energy when there is demand. But how do you know when there is going to be sufficient demand? Presently it’s a lot of guesswork and surmising. But pretty accrue guesswork mind you. For example, a certain TV show ends at 8pm. Likely many will put on their kettles to brew a hot drink during the adverts. Hence the grid is given more electricity. So on and so forth. But that gets tricky in the age of Netflix and smart homes. Inevitably there is more power produced than is required at any given point. So, what do you do with it? Perhaps store it in a battery? Well despite recent advances in battery technology that is still not an option. You would need football fields upon football fields of expensive batteries just to store a fraction of the excess energy.

But what about a Bitcoin battery? When the power grid has excess energy - which has cost the producers money - instead of wasting it they can use this excess to power to mine Bitcoin. This digital currency can easily be stored thus converting this excess energy back into currency, which can be used at a later date to produce more energy for the grid.

The second concept relates to the transfer of cheap energy. Distance can be the nemesis of cheap energy production and distribution. You may be able to produce cheap electricity in one geographic location but without expensive infrastructure - aka wires and cables - you can’t transfer it to market in another. Thus, nullifying the economic gains. But now with Bitcoin harvesting you can use your cheap energy in one place to mine for Bitcoin and then send the spoils securely over the internet and spend them as and where they may be needed.

I’m constantly amazed at the ingenuity and creativity of the most talented and gifted in society. Especially is this evident where money and profit is involved. But I do hope that we can start to harness this kind of brainpower to tackle arguably more vital problems. Ones where profit should not be the be all and end all. Housing. Agriculture. Sanitation. To list but a few. We need more of this out of the box thinking.