Daily Archives: April 2, 2021

Posted: Apr 1, 2021 / 12:22 PM EDT / Updated: Apr 1, 2021 / 12:22 PM EDT

On April 1, National Burrito Day, Chipotle will give away $100,000 in free burritos and $100,000 in Bitcoin. This occasion makes Chipotle the first U.S. restaurant brand to offer a cryptocurrency giveaway to consumers.

(NEXSTAR) Chipotle is giving away $100,000 worth of burritosandBitcoin in celebration of National Burrito Day, but youll have to play to snag a freebie.

Chipotle says the contest is the first time a restaurant brand has given away cryptocurrency.

Ten-thousand people will win one free burrito, 50 will win $500 worth of Bitcoin and three lucky individuals will get $25,000 in Bitcoin, the company said in a press release.

To win, you must visitthis websitewhen it goes live Thursday, and then youll have ten chances to guess a six-digit code.

If players are unsuccessful in their ten attempts and endure they may be surprised and delighted with a special offer from Chipotle, the release said.

The game was inspired by Stefan Thomas, the founder and CEO of Coil,who famously cant remember the passcodeto a hard drive that stores $387 million in Bitcoin.

Thomas holds a small hard drive called an IronKey that controls access to a digital wallet containing 7,002 Bitcoin, theNew York Timesreported.Forgotten password stands between man and $240M Bitcoin fortune

But Thomas cant seem to figure out the password and he only has two more chances to get it right. The IronKey only allows users ten guesses.

Thomas said he lost the paper where the password was written years ago. Hes already tried eight of his most commonly used passwords.

I would just lay in bed and think about it, Thomas told the Times. Then, I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldnt work and I would be desperate again.

On Twitter, Thomas called the saga a painful memory and said he hopes others can learn from my mistakes.

Test your backups regularly to make sure they are still working. An ounce of foresight could have prevented a decade of regret, he said.

One Bitcoin is currently worth $58,628.

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Chipotle is giving away burritos and Bitcoin. Heres how to play - WBTW

Ether, the worlds second-largest cryptocurrency rose to $2,000 for the first time, as the rally in digital assets continues to broaden beyond Bitcoin.

The digital token for the Ethereum network gained as much as 2.3% to $2,014 on Friday. It has surged about 170% this year. The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index gained gained about 3%, while Bitcoin was little changed after more than doubling this year.

Were now really breaking higher and that will very likely attract buying activity, said Julius de Kempenaer, senior analyst at StockCharts.com. Ether is gaining in relative strength versus Bitcoin.

The token has mirrored the gains in Bitcoin over the past year amid a flood of stimulus aimed at boosting the global economy during the Covid-19 pandemic. Critics warn that crypto is a speculative bubble that will likely burst.

Ether has a market value of about $230 billion, compared with about $1.1 trillion for Bitcoin, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com.

With assistance by Vildana Hajric

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Continued here:
Ether Rises to Record as Crypto Rally Broadens Beyond Bitcoin - Bloomberg

Its all treats and no tricks at Chipotle on April 1.

The popular chain is giving away $100,000 in free burritos and $100,000 in Bitcoin to celebrate National Burrito Day, which happens to fall on April 1 the same day as April Fools Day. The company said the giveaway is the first time a U.S. restaurant has offered a cryptocurrency giveaway to customers.

How can you win?

Theres a bit of backstory here, so that first. Chipotle is launching the game with Stefan Thomas, the founder of CEO of Coil. The event will include a new interactive game called Burritos or Bitcoin, an ode to Thomass experience losing the log-in to his hard-drive that stored $387 million in Bitcoin. In response, Chipotle is encouraging fans to carry out a mock cryptocurrency rescue mission and crack the code on its digital wallet.

Each player will have 10 tries to guess a valid six-digit code for a chance to win a free burrito or up to $25,000 in Bitcoin. If players are unsuccessful in their 10 attempts and remain locked out, they may be surprised and delighted with a special offer from Chipotle, the company said in a release.

Ten thousand fans will win a free burrito, 50 fans will win $500 in Bitcoin and three fans will win $25,000 in Bitcoin.

The contest goes live April 1 at 9 a.m. PT (11 a.m. CT) and ends at 6 p.m. PT (8 p.m. CT) the same day. You can play Burritos or Bitcoin by visiting burritosorbitcoin.com.

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Chipotle giving away $100,000 in free burritos and $100,000 in Bitcoin today - syracuse.com

Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) has risen more than tenfold in the past year and has been around for more than a decade, but it still has a long way to go before it gains mainstream acceptance. In this Fool Live video clip,recorded on March 18, The Motley Fool's chief growth officer, Anand Chokkavelu, asks Gemini cryptocurrency exchange co-founder Cameron Winklevoss about the obstacles standing in the way of Bitcoin becoming a truly mainstream currency.

Anand Chokkavelu: What does Bitcoin have to do to be truly mainstream? We've seen it take such strides, we're just a dozen years in or so and obviously there were a lot of things. I remember, you got the Mt. Gox situation. I remember reading about just how, early on, when you all were setting up your keys, you were going to different banks around the U.S. and almost a covert operation thing. You've got the cold storage and things like that. But now there are lots of options. I think maybe in the last year, Bitcoin has really come into the public conversation more. What does it have to do or achieve to become truly mainstream, and how close are we?

Cameron Winklevoss: Yeah, so I think part of it is education. When we first got into Bitcoin, the common prevailing view was that it was only used for drug dealers and illicit activity and terrorist financing, all of which has been proven to be effectively false, and whatever kind of dark market activity that happens on Bitcoin, pales in comparison to other major currencies, right. We obviously monitor for that. We take it very seriously, we have obligations and we don't want bad actors in the system, but it is not a system of bad actors. But that was the narrative. So education is important. There's also this concept that Bitcoin was totally anonymous in this Wild West, and it's actually not totally anonymous. We work a lot on education, whether it's engaging with regulators to help them think through the problems, or just talking on Twitter. We're very vocal and active there and trying to get to demystify a lot of these concepts. Then COVID-19 has actually accelerated, I think the adoption of cryptocurrencies in Bitcoin, in a big way, because of all the money printing and people are looking at what's going on and like, "Wait a second, where are these trillions of dollars coming from, they're actually just being printed." What does that mean to the other dollars that I'm holding? Like COVID has accelerated the decline of a lot of brick-and-mortar. The uptake of big tech in many ways, I think it also has brought Bitcoin to the forefront faster, so there's always going to be these catalysts. In 2013, the Cyprus bail-in really brought a spotlight to Bitcoin and people said, "Wait a second. Okay. If you could have deposits in a bank account in Cyprus and the government can one day just come in and hair cut everything above a 100 thousand euros and it's just gone." It was called the bail-in, as opposed to bail out, in 2013, in that sense, the Bitcoin price. That was one of the big catalyst moments. It wasn't driven by people in Cyprus saying, "Let's now go into Bitcoin." It was really everybody around the world seeing what was happening in Cyprus and saying, "Wait, maybe I should just get some disaster insurance over here and check out Bitcoin." I think a lot of people view it as a break glass, a way to future-proof against inflation or fiat regimes just acting poorly. We've seen a lot of mismanagement over the past couple of decades. I think it's frightening and I think it's a good way to protect yourself.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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Will Bitcoin Ever Become Truly Mainstream? - Motley Fool

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The promised end of the pandemic draws closer with every shot in the arm. So in the first three months of 2021, traders raced to position themselves for a post-Covid world by girding for super-charged growth and higher inflation.This reflation trade put Treasuries on course for their worst quarter since 1980, with the global bond plunge sending yields surging to pre-pandemic levels. These sharp moves spooked investors, who were already turning away from pandemic favorites, like tech companies, into value stocks poised to benefit from economic reopening. Market fever dreams played out in cryptocurrencies and newfangled ways to take companies public. And even as the U.S. dollar proved its resilience, traditional haven currencies were battered.At the same time, recovery measures of new U.S. President Joe Biden helped to flood money markets and, if he has his way, this will soon be followed by trillions of dollars in additional infrastructure spending. All the while, the Federal Reserve shows little inclination to rein in long-end yields.Generally reflation has been the dominant driver of global price action, said Simon Harvey, senior market analyst at Monex Europe, who revised his dollar outlook this week. What wrong-footed most people coming into 2021 is just how aggressive the U.S. outperformance was going to be.Here are some of this quarters most notable moves:Treasuries RoutWith the size of U.S. stimulus putting the nation on course for a swift economic rebound from the pandemic, its no surprise that U.S. Treasuries led the global rates selloff. Theyre on track to record their worst quarter since 1980, according to Bloomberg Barclays indexes. By comparison, the retreat seen in Europe and Asia was in line with quarterly declines seen in 2019 and 2020, respectively.Treasuries extended losses this week, fueled by Bidens plans to accelerate the vaccine campaign and rebuild infrastructure. The divergence between U.S. and European markets was borne out in the spread between benchmark Treasuries and bunds, which widened more than 50 basis points. That about matched the move seen in the final quarter of 2016, and a bigger jump hasnt been seen since 1993.Read More: Bond Rout Reignites as U.S. Stimulus Bets Overshadow Quarter-EndDominant DollarThe climb in U.S. yields relative to major peers helped to drive a surge in the dollar that ran counter to many expectations for 2021 as the currency turned from a prime haven at the height of market turmoil in March 2020 into a bet on U.S. economic supremacy.Traditional havens of the currency world -- the Japanese yen and Swiss franc -- bore the brunt of the selling, with each suffering their worst quarter in years.The importance of pandemic recovery was evident across currency markets. In a change from last years Brexit wrangling, the outlook for the British pound was all about the U.K.s vaccine drive, which far outpaced the European Unions effort, setting the euro up for its worst quarter since 2015.Brazils currency, which fell more than 7%, was among the poorest performers over the period as the country struggled to contain its mounting Covid crisis. Turkey was one of the few emerging markets whose currency did even worse. While much of that is the result of a shock decision to fire the central bank chief, that move came after the monetary authority raised its benchmark in response to global rate and foreign-exchange pressures.Read More: Dollar Reigns Supreme With Rate Gaps Too Big to Be IgnoredStock RotationsBillions are on the move as investors rotate away from previously high-flying areas and toward pockets of the market that stand to benefit from a brightening economic outlook. In that environment, tech stocks -- 2020s undisputed winners -- have lagged, while smaller companies have outperformed. The Russell 2000 index of smaller firms outperformed the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 for the second-straight quarter, beating it by about 10 percentage points. Value stocks, too, stepped into the limelight, with the Russell 1000 value index beating its growth counterpart by roughly the same amount.We would expect that rotation to continue, said Adam Phillips, managing director of portfolio strategy at EP Wealth Advisors. Moving forward, its going to be more about the recovery plays, and thats not a story thats going away.But the rise in rates rattled more speculative corners of the market as investors started to question lofty valuations. Sentiment soured, for instance, on special purpose acquisition companies, a group that came to symbolize risky behavior in equities. An index tracking SPACs is down roughly 21% since its mid-February peak. Meme-stock mania also cooled: An index tracking companies including GameStop Corp. and Naked Brand Group Ltd. is down about 28% since its recent January high, data compiled by Bloomberg show.Youre seeing corrective phases in those previously hot areas, but its happening through a process of rotation, so the money is just going to other parts of the market, Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, said by phone. There was so much hype and so much appreciation that, yes, I think its natural and healthy to see rollovers in those areas.Volatility EverywhereBut while benchmark stock indexes glide along, the subsurface churn has been extremely violent. A model from Bank of America that plots how much value is being created and destroyed each day in individual stocks shows that 2021 has generated more turbulence than virtually any other year. The volatility -- which is prevalent among small-cap stocks as well -- is just being masked because up-and-down moves in different companies over days and weeks have tended to offset each other.Read more: Blowups and Rotations Making This Market Just as Brutal as 2020Meanwhile, turbulence in the $21 trillion Treasury market has been on the rise. The ICE BofA MOVE Index, a gauge of U.S. bond volatility, has been grinding higher. The measure currently clocks in at 67, higher than its one-year average of 52 and well above Septembers low of 37.Commodities SupercycleRaw materials from copper to oil have started the year off strong, with investors flocking to commodities as a popular pandemic recovery trade and to hedge against inflation.The 23-member Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index in February reached the highest in almost eight years before easing this month, and still remains on track to notch a gain this quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. even went as far as to flag the start of a new commodities supercycle. An upcoming energy transition could constrain oil supplies, while at the same time boosting demand for metals required in renewables infrastructure, JPMorgan analysts said in a report last month.Bond SalesInvestors in credit benefited from a narrowing in spreads to pre-pandemic levels, but that did little to offset the negative impact from the broader rise in rates -- the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate Bond Indexs 5% drop has it on course for its worst quarterly return since 2008.Emerging-market bond spreads drifted wider, but the shift wasnt enough to throw bond sales off track. The gap between emerging-market hard currency debt and Treasuries rose seven basis points in the quarter, according to a JPMorgan Chase & Co. index, compared with a 335-basis point jump the same period last year.That said, cracks have recently started to show on issuance front. Indonesia shrank the size of a debt offering, Russia canceled a bond sale and South African debt saw lower demand than usual.Read More: The Sweet Spot Is Behind Us: Bond Rout Hits Deals Around WorldBitcoin BoomCryptocurrencies have had a marvelous 2021 so far. Bitcoin, the worlds largest digital asset, has doubled since the start of the year, gaining 104% in its second-best quarterly performance since June 2019. Much of its momentum has been driven by wider institutional acceptance, with more mainstream firms taking a greater interest in crypto assets. At the same time, applications for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds also trickled in, with Fidelity Investments the latest firm to join the list of crypto-ETF hopefuls.Meanwhile, fans, including Tesla Inc.s Elon Musk, have argued the coin can be a great store of value -- Bitcoin gained after the electric-vehicle maker said that it put more than $1 billion into the coin.Still, others worry its run up too far, too fast and could be losing its shine as speculation grows that retail investors are becoming less involved in the market. Bitcoin hit a record of $61,742 in mid-March and is roughly 4% off its highs.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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CoinShares Partners With Canadas 3iQ to Launch New Bitcoin ETF on TSX - Yahoo Finance

As governments aim to curb carbon emissions from gas flaring, Bitcoin data centers offer a way to use this energy instead of letting it go to waste, in return for the digital currency.

Gas flaring, a byproduct of fracked shale production, produces around 1 percent of global carbon emissions at present. Companies burn the gas off at the well site, rather than using it as an energy source, because of its unprofitable nature. The alternative option is simply to vent the gas into the atmosphere, releasing methane and adding to harmful greenhouse gasses that have a knock-on effect on the environment.

However, several companies are calling for an end to gas flaring within the next decade and looking to find other uses for this energy.

Bitcoin producers realized this gas could be a great source of energy for small, transportable cryptocurrency data centers. One of the biggest problems faced by digital currency producers is the high price of electricity needed to farm the currency. But if this energy can be found cheaper from a product that would not otherwise be used, it could present the perfect solution for both industries.

In 2019, it was discovered that Bitcoin required more energy than the entire country of Switzerland for mining. This figure increased in 2020 and it is estimated that the Bitcoin network consumes around 80 terawatt-hours per year.

But the swinging price of Bitcoin and the Covid-19 pandemic deterred oil companies from making a commitment until now. Bitcoin did not appear a viable long-term option due to its volatility, especially when the future of oil was also looking bleak in 2020. While some companies took the plunge and trialed a Bitcoin-for-gas program as early as 2019, this was a widely overlooked solution to flaring and venting.

Related: ExxonMobil Set To Outperform As Oil And Gas Prices Climb

Sergii Gerasymovych, the owner of a Bitcoin mining company, EZ Blockchain, reached out to oil and gas companies a few years ago to no avail. But The market conditions have changed, he explained. Now, every oil and gas company we reached out to in 2018 is calling us back because they see Bitcoin is making a lot of money.

Story continues

Bitcoin is becoming increasingly attractive to companies looking to modernize and go digital with the price of the digital currency doubling during the last year, despite a pre-pandemic dip.

EZ blockchain has recently set up five Bitcoin mines on gas sites, the latest in Utah with independent gas company Wesco Operating Inc. Other companies using the innovative solution include Crusoe Energy Systems Inc., which has introduced low-cost/no-cost Digital Flare Mitigation programs with Bitcoin companies to put 20 data centers into action.

Other countries have also recognized the opportunity, with Russian companies developing similar projects. In January, Russian state-owned oil major Gazprom Neft has announced a successful pilot project that uses gas that would otherwise be flared to produce electricity to mine cryptocurrency at a Siberian drilling site.

Vekus was the first Russian cryptocurrency company to develop such an energy source for digital currency mining. Vekus used a shipping container to create an on-site mine, demonstrating the potential for digital currency mines to be placed on oil and gas sites around the country.

Russia is the worlds biggest gas flare producer, followed by Iraq, the U.S., and Iran, which in total accounted for 45 percent of global gas flares in 2017-2019.

Other cryptocurrency companies could make similar deals with oil and gas companies so long as they have proof of Work (PoW) option to process transactions. This could make digital currencies more sustainable in the long-term as electricity costs currently account for the majority of their production costs.

As oil and gas companies are feeling increasing pressure from regulators and governments to curb their carbon emissions over the coming decade, Bitcoin-for-gas could offer a simple solution to put an end to flaring and venting.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

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Could Bitcoin Solve The Oil Flaring Problem? - Yahoo Finance

Irish police are on high alert due to the rising number of cases related to a bitcoin-related scam targeting high-net-worth people in the country. The situation has become worrisome because suspicious high-value transactions have already been noticed by authorities.

According to The Irish Times, Garda (Irelands police) investigates what they consider a major crypto scam whose criminals could be residing in the country. A local bank already raised concerns about a suspicious transaction of 500,000 euros ($586,500) from a dormant account.

After inquiries conducted by Garda on the older customer who wanted to invest such an amount of money into what he believed was a legit crypto business opportunity, he accepted the polices advice to not send the fiat money.

But per the media outlet, it seems other similar transactions took place before they acted to block the 500,000 euros move to the criminals wallet. In fact, the victim wanted to exchange the money into cryptos and then deposit it into a bitcoin (BTC) wallet belonging allegedly to the scammers.

Although no arrests have been made as of press time, Irish police already searched on a property in south Dublin, allegedly tied to some suspects.

The report says mobile phones, computers, cash, designer handbags, and jewelry was found and seized by the authorities.

Moreover, investigations are focused on how the criminals some of them are allegedly foreign nationals and based in Dublin approached the victims and gained their confidence.

Police are worried about the destination of some of the funds received by the ostensible bitcoin scammers, as theyre trying to determine how much money was exchanged into fiat and if its being held on overseas bank accounts. Still, Garda believes funds could have reached several million.

Pat Lordan, an official of the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau, issued the following warning:

One case involved a retired professional from the midlands who lost his entire pension and savings of nearly 250,000. Our advice is simple: dont respond to unsolicited approaches, be wary of wild claims, and never ever let anyone have remote access to your computer.

What do you think about this massive bitcoin scam taking place in Ireland? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Irish Police Investigate Massive Bitcoin Scam That Allegedly Stole Millions From High-Net-Worth Individuals News Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

Gains in Bitcoin (BTC) appear faint in comparison with Ethereum (ETH) as the latters supply diminishes.

What Happened: BTC traded 0.13% at $59,285.22 over 24 hours at press time while ETH was up 4.08% at $1,925.03.

Over a seven-day trailing period, ETH has surged 21.92%, while BTC has moved up 12.77%.

CryptoQuant data indicates ETH reserves held in all walletsfell to 19.53 million as of March 31 as prices soared over $1,921.

ETH Held In All Exchange Wallets Data From CryptoQuant.com

On Wednesday, OpenSea, a non-fungible token marketplace said it would add support for trading through Immutable X, a decentralized protocol built on Ethereum, which it said would enable zero gas fee.

Why It Matters: BTC has been losing its dominance as the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization of late. This week the dominance fell to its lowest since October last year.

At press time, BTC had a 56.6% dominance, while ETH had 11.7%, according to CoinMarketCap data.

On Monday, Visa Inc (NYSE:V) announced a pilot to allow transactions to be settled through USD Coin (USDC) on its network.

Reacting to the development, analyst Michal van de Poppe said on Twitter that Ethereum was going to surprise everyone massively."

He had previously predicted a $10,000 price level for ETH.

2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Why Is Ethereum Surging, Outperforming Bitcoin Today? - Benzinga

In 2018, the global cryptocurrency market had crashed, and Sergii Gerasymovych was looking for a way to keep his Bitcoin mining company afloat. He eventually settled on a plan to make money while cleaning up two notoriously climate-polluting industries.

Gerasymovychs biggest headacheas for all Bitcoin minerswas the price of electricity. Bitcoin miners compete against one other to unlock coins by solving increasingly difficult math problems with fleets of computers. This consumes a lot of power globally: about as much as Argentina each year. Bitcoin miners profit margin largely relies on the gap between electricity bills and Bitcoins value; if the latter drops, the only way to make up the margin is to curb the former. Thats why so much of the worlds cryptocurrency mining is tied to low-cost coal and hydroelectric plants in Asia.Gerasymovych was hunting for cheap power in the US, and stumbled on an intriguing source: Flare gas from natural gas wells. Now, a number of market trends are converging to propel a nascent industry in gas-powered Bitcoin.

Oil and gas wells in hydraulically fractured (fracked) shale formations produce some waste gas as a byproduct, mostly composed of methane. Since selling this gas is usually unprofitable, its typically disposed of by burning it off. Those little flares, from thousands of wells around the world, add up. Gas flaring is responsible for at least 1% of global carbon emissions, and collectively wastes hundreds of millions of dollars worth of natural resources every year. In the US, that has made flaring a target for regulators in gas-producing states like Texas, New Mexico, and North Dakota, which are considering new restrictions on the practice. BlackRock, the asset manager that has stepped up pressure on companies to disclose their climate risks, has called for the near elimination of flaring globally by 2025.

Anticipating a crackdown, some gas companies are starting to look for their own solutions.One cost-effective way to reduce flaring emissions is to turn the waste gas into electricity with a generator, and use it to power something, like lights or pumps, on the well site. But Gerasymovych realized that crypto miners and gas drillers could both benefit by converting waste gas into cheap power. What better way to reduce emissions than supplying a data center, ravenous for cheap 24/7 electricity, that can be built into a transportable shipping container?

There was just one problem: Perhaps because of Bitcoins tumultuous price swings, gas companies werent interested. People laughed at us, Gerasymovych said. Then three things changed. First, the pandemic struck, and the price of natural gas cratered; an industry that was already on shaky financial footing found itself facing an existential crisis as drilling ground to a halt and scores of shale companies went bankrupt. Second, thanks in part to a Feb. 2021 endorsement by Elon Musk, the price of Bitcoin soared.

Third, Gerasymovych decided to tweak his business model to sweeten the deal for gas companies. Rather than buy their cheap flare gas to run his own mines, his company, EZ Blockchain, charges a few hundred thousand dollars to install and perform regular maintenance on a Bitcoin mining data center,and lets the gas company reap the Bitcoins itself. In other words, the gas company becomes the miner, and uses its own gas for free.

The market conditions have changed, Gerasymovych said. Now, every oil and gas company we reached out to in 2018 is calling us back because they see Bitcoin is making a lot of money.

On Mar. 16, EZ Blockchain announced that it had finished setting up its latest gas-adjacent Bitcoin mine, at a gas facility near Moab, Utah operated by Wesco Operating Inc., an independent gas company with 500 wells across the US. That marks the fifth mine EZ Blockchain has set up since the pandemic started, Gerasymovych said, with at least two more on the way. Steve Degenfelder, a spokesperson for Wesco, said the companys leaders first heard about Bitcoin from some young software engineers on the staff.

This was stranded gas that didnt have a market, he said. Now, weve eliminated the flaring [from that site], and greatly reduced the emissions. And it doesnt take electricity off the grid, which is getting to be the controversial issue with data centers and Bitcoin mining.

EZ Blockchain and Wesco arent the only companies with the same idea. The Russian state-owned oil company Gazprom is mining Bitcoin with flare gas in Siberia.Denver-based Crusoe Energy provides a similar service as EZ Blockchain, but usually installs the data center for free, pays the gas company for the gas, and keeps the Bitcoins itself. The company has set up 40 gas-powered mines in the US the last few years, said Cully Cavness, its president, and hopes to hit 100 by the end of 2021. Its clients include the European multinational oil major Equinor.

We have a significant backlog of projects, for months, he said. Were trying to scale quickly to meet the scale of the problem.

Some digital currency experts remain skeptical that gas-powered Bitcoin mining is really a win for the climate. Alex de Vries, an economist who published a recent paper in the journalJoule about Bitcoins massive carbon footprint, said that monetizing flare gas only creates an incentive for more drilling: Youre making fossil fuel mining more profitable, so youre not helping, he said.

Alex Trembath, deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute, a clean energy think tank, said that the approach sounds like an incremental improvement over unmitigated flaring. But no matter the power source, he said, its hard to justify Bitcoins enormous energy demand given that it benefits only a relatively tiny group of investors. Flare gas could just as well power carbon capture machines, he said, water desalination plants, or data centers that support more widely used applications, like video streaming or email (Crusoe is planning to open some of its data centers to more general cloud computing uses, Cavness said, and has donated data-crunching space to a group that studies Covid-19 protein folding).

What they all have in common is that theres a social value in those things that I dont see for Bitcoin, Trembath said.

Bitcoins bubble could soon burst, one of its founders warned last week; it has happened before. If it does, companies like Wesco will see the profit potential burn off. But with the cheapest power in the crypto mining industrytheir ownthey could at least come out ahead of other miners.

There is no price for Bitcoin at which they wont be making money, Gerasymovych said. Bitcoin cant go negativewhich, by the way, oil did.

Original post:
Bitcoin miners and fracking companies are working together - Quartz

Are people actually able to govern themselves? Well, the likely answer to that question from most people you ask would be a resounding no. After all, most would agree that humans are too blinded by their own self interests to be able to create a peaceful and just society without some form of regulation. As a result of this being the widely-held belief, throughout human history we have organized into institutions that transfer power away from individuals to a central institution in the hopes that it can regulate the problems that arise from self-interested human nature.

These institutions have taken the forms of tribes, monarchies, empires and now nation states, and have been the exclusive holders of sovereignty, or in other words, supreme or ultimate power. Often, in order to gain their sovereignty, the use of force or threat of force is necessary. This is not to say that individuals cannot enjoy individual rights and freedoms under institutions, rather, individual sovereignty transcends such rights as personal property. When an individual has property rights, they have the right to own their property, but when an individual has sovereignty, they have the power and responsibility to fully control their property.

Adopting the Bitcoin standard represents an individuals first step toward achieving personal sovereignty. By making the difficult decision to take their finances into their own hands, they are making the choice of freedom over safety. This is no easy decision to make, since the favorite phrase among Bitcoiners that it allows you to be your own bank turns out to be pretty literal. You are the only one responsible for keeping your bitcoin safe. You are the one for whom, if you are off by a single letter/number when sending bitcoin to an address, those coins are lost forever. You are the one who, if you lose your seed phrase, know that there is no bitcoin customer service agent to help you retrieve it.

Celearly, this is not the easy choice. It is, however, the price associated with freedom. The bitcoin holder now has full control over his or her monetary energy (all money is simply the energy of a unit of value) and the ability to transact with whoever they wish, without permission from any bank or government. Imagine then, that an individual can more than just transact value without permission from outside forces, but also conduct all parts of their daily lives without such pressure. When a person is able to do that, they will become a sovereign individual, and Bitcoin is the first step in making this possible.

Going back to the initial question I asked about whether individuals are capable of governing themselves, Bitcoin may provide a roadmap for changing the answer from a no to a yes. The Bitcoin network is made up of individuals incentivized to be self-interested, and yet even without a central entity in place, the network does not break down. It is a blueprint for how decentralized protocols of the future can build an infrastructure where self-interested individuals can interact with one another, without requiring an outside centralized party to ensure that everything moves smoothly.

Sovereignty, similar to freedom, is not meant to be easy. For that reason, it may be challenging to get the general population on board, since most people still choose the simple over the hard. That being said, with changes in the geopolitical landscape like a shift against civil liberties and the creation of central bank digital currencies that will only serve to cede more control from the individual to the state, the layman's hands may be forced.

Fintech firms like Square and PayPal can provide the bridge between using accounts with legacy financial institutions and becoming a hardcore Bitcoiner running your own node, by introducing hundreds of millions of users to the world of Bitcoin. Sending bitcoin to your friend by simply typing their name into a user-friendly interface rather than a clunky address on a Bitcoin wallet (a feature that Cash App recently introduced) is an easier proposal for newcomers to accept. Needless to say, once these new users go even somewhat down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, they will become just as demanding of liberty as the rest of us Bitcoiners.

Bitcoin unlocks financial sovereignty, but its ideals and technology pave the road for the possibility of a fully-sovereign individual. When the idea of the sovereign individual is realized, gone will be the constraints placed upon citizens by modern nations. Instead, individuals are liberated from the mandate to organize based on arbitrary lines drawn onto a piece of paper and will be free to form communities out of their own volition. This is similar to how people already interact in the digital world. The communities people form on sites like Twitter and Reddit disregard traditional borders and form organically from people searching for like-minded others. Interaction over the internet seeks to be borderless and soon, so too will our interaction in the physical world.

The idea of the sovereign individual is certainly utopian, but so was the Bitcoin future and that now feels all but inevitable. Many Bitcoiners are preparing for a Bitcoin future in which there is little need for nation states, and in this future, they must also be prepared to become sovereign individuals capable of governing themselves.

This is a guest post by Jack Kriesel. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Bitcoin Unleashes The Sovereign Individual - Bitcoin Magazine