Looks like a bunch of favorable statistics published by someone who makes money from the volume of BTC trading … at least they qualify themselves in the fine print at the bottom.

DISC: BTC is held (until it reaches $1m … but not buying based upon this event)

@Parko5 I am not sure about going up massively on that day but with the ETF's attracting massive amounts of inflows which they have to match with bitcoin purchases there is scope for ongoing significant price rises. Halving the amount of bitcoin that can be mined will likely have a significant effect on ongoing price rises also. It is difficult to see bitcoin having a massive slump, but who knows what is around the corner - we have all been bitten by that bug before!

Nessy

disc: holder of BITB for a month at over a 50% gain!

One thing to point out is that the energy budget for bitcoin will halve in about a month and will do so again every 4 years which means that if you are worried about energy consumption you have to be very bullish on price or the issue would resolve itself over time.

There are many other arguments as to why this should not be a concern e.g. cheap energy is unwanted energy, grid load balancing, incentivising renewable buildout by improving economics, incentivising gas flare utilization, incentivising landfill methane utilisation and also that it just a good use of the energy we generate.

As an investor its hard to worry too much about the energy consumption unless you are a bull though ;)

Good luck taxing energy in Kazakhstan or wherever bitcoin is being mined these days … this data is a bit old but pretty interesting.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/top-10-bitcoin-mining-countries-their-renewable-electricity-mix/#:~:text=The%20World%20According%20to%20Bitcoin,at%20the%20end%20of%202021.

The flip side of this argument is that Bitcoin is actually a proxy for energy (I.e. underwritten by energy costs) so if the cost of coal / oil etc. stays high then bitcoin price stays elevated (until the world fully transitions to “free renewables”).

I think when the next halving occurs soon then there is twice the work to create a bitcoin (I.e. the energy required doubles) … maybe reason to be even more bearish (or bullish).

Back up the rabbit hole to the ASX Small Caps

DISC: Hold BTC and ETH IRL

Yeah, @AlphaAngle I don't think that's actually right about the energy budget halving. I am more interested in the monetary theory aspect of BTC than the computer nerd stuff, so I am no expert however.

My understanding of the halving (or the halvening as I've heard more and more numpties say lately) is that the reward measured in BTC for mining a new block is cut in half. Sorry, that part is fact, not my understanding. i.e. if you solve the big tricky math problem inherent in the current block which gives you the right to create a new block, you receive the block reward of 6.5 BTC. It took me a long time to understand that a new block is NOT a new BTC as they are created at the same time and in the same way, but they are not the same thing.

Halving the block reward in NO WAY means that the electricity used to mine each block is somehow decreased. As BTC becomes more mainstream, more and more miners will come online, and it will become more and more competitive. A whole bunch of new people competing to solve the block riddle means more and more compute (I didn't know compute was used in this way until very recently) will be used for each new block, which will initially speed up the average block time before the difficulty adjustment kicks in to ensure the average new block time remains roughly 10 minutes by making the block riddle (I've just invented that phrase, but I'm sticking with it) more and more difficult, which will require more and more compute per block. So over time, the energy used to mine a new Bitcoin will grow higher and higher.

The energy used to mine a BTC when there were only a roomful of nerds with their $2,000 laptops getting 50 BTC every 10 minutes wasn't 8 times as much as it is today - that's just not how it works.

Your second paragraph is more where it's at - that and the fact that BTC is really important and therefore a large, and growing amount of energy is warranted.

@Bogan

The miners have to buy energy. Assume the bitcoin price doesn't rise the money available to buy the energy halves with each halving cycle.

A few cycles later the energy use is minimal because only a few bitcoin are being produced. If everyone kept at it but for no reward they would all go broke. Let's assume today's price of roughly 100k aud who's gonna complain about a couple of million dollars worth of electricity?

Now say the price were to more than double then the energy budget increases because the miners have to sell bitcoin to pay their bills.

Now I think the price will go much higher therefore supporting more energy use. If you think its going to zero or even just stay at 100k then the energy use will drop.

If you are worried about the energy use long term the only logical position to take is that the price is going to more than double every 4 years in fiat terms. (Or the price of energy could halve)