ongoing by Tim Bray · Bitcoin Lessons
Here we are, it’s 2025 and Bitcoin is surging. Around $100K last time I looked. While its creation spews megatons of carbon into our atmosphere, investors line up to buy it in respectable ETFs, and long-term players like retirement pools and university endowments are looking to get in. Many of us are finding this extremely annoying. But I look at Bitcoin and I think what I’m seeing is Modern Capitalism itself, writ large and in brutally sharp focus.
[Disclosure: In 2017 I made a lot of money selling Bitcoins at around $20K, ones I’d bought in 2013. Then in 2021 I lost money shorting Bitcoin (but I’m still ahead on this regrettable game).]
What is a Bitcoin? · It is verifiable proof that a large amount of computing has been done. Let’s measure it in carbon, and while it’s complicated and I’ve seen a range of answers, they’re all over 100 tonnes of CO2/Btc. That proof is all that a Bitcoin is.
Bitcoin is also a store of value. It doesn’t matter whether you think it should be, empirically it is, because lots of people are exchanging lots of money for Bitcoins on the assumption that they will store the value of that money. Is it a good store of value? Many of us think not, but who cares what we think?
