Shafted: A Bitcoin Mining Story.

Somewhere deep down the rabbit hole of my Bitcoin journey I discovered Mining. Bitcoin Mining. A nonce, and the race to find it. Hashing. The block reward obtained by the lucky processor. (3.125 BTC) The SHA 256 algo. Orphan Blocks. The Mempool. Transaction fees... or lack thereof. It's a lot.

Especially when you invest $$$ willy nilly. In an industry... you know is poised to break out, and needs to be rock solid. But is somehow volatile than bitcoin itself.

Now, it definitely beats pulling coal out of the Appalachian hills, and it's no workers paradise. Bitcoin Mines are giant noisy electric farms running Asics (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) doing billions of computations every second. That takes a boatload of energy. How much? A lot. 200 thousand Kwh. Enough energy to run my home for 15-20 years. But what if the energy used to mine those coins could also heat my hot tub.

Now I'm an orange pilled homeowner who's feeling the squeeze of high prices. But let's just do the math. Having 1 electric vehicle, and an electric hvac unit in a drafty old California bungalow, I pay about forty cents a kwh. All in. And average about 1000 kilowatt hours a month. 400. 12 months is $4800 x 20 years = $96,000 A number surprisingly close to what a single bitcoin will set you back today.

So it better be worth it. And I believe it is. That the value of decentralized, uncensored hard money is worth the price. Just like i believe heating and cooling your Southern California home is also a worthwhile expense.

But here's the thing: There's a nuclear power plant in the sky here. The term 72 and sunny... is not made up. And battery technology has to improve and carry us into the 21st Century. Plus, We pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country. And many homeowners struggle to tie into the grid here in LA once they've gone solar.

Mining companies in Texas are using renewable wind and solar to mine bitcoin for 10-20 thousand dollars of energy. Sub five cents a kilowatt hour, And pushing the grid forward.

How can we?

Californians need only look up. There has to be a way to harness the sun and perfect money. Help homeowners find value not just in air conditioning and equity, but knowing that they are helping to build and secure the network and the foundation of a digital economy. Besides the byproduct of all those buzzy asics searching is heat.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed... only tranfered. A basic law of thermodynamics.

Where are the bitcoin companies looking to solve this? Looking to heat our homes, showers and dishwater. To cool us off. Where are the bitcoin home solar companies?

A future post will examine further the incredible similarities and the high contrast differences between owning digital and physical property. But one thing I'm sure of, It requires energy to produce and maintain both. Homes, Buildings and Bitcoin.

And miners stand at the crossroads.

They also construct the blocks. The batched transactions that wind up on the immutable blockchain. Commercial Miners might become the BIS of the Digital Era. A settlement layer for the Digital era of finance.

Reach out if you know someone working at one of these companies. Home mining or Commercial Miners. I need to talk to an expert. Live. In California if possible.

Why? Because I feel so passionate about it, but barely understand it. And continue to gamble on them in my portfolio. Irresponsibly bullish. A fact made abundantly clear by Episode 3 of the CryptoCabin Podcast. Shafted: A Bitcoin Mining Story. Check it out!