Level39

Enriching people for low-energy services won’t save the environment, only proof of work builds a sustainable future.This is an opinion editorial by Level39, a researcher focused on Bitcoin, technology, history, ethics and energy.The notion that Ethereum’s recent “Merge,” from proof of work to proof of stake, reduces energy consumption...

Bitcoin can breathe new life into Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a 150-year old renewable technology stymied by economies of scale.Bitcoin has the potential to help unlock between 2 to 4 terawatts of clean, continuous and year-round baseload power — for one billion people — by harnessing the thermal energy of the oceans. The technology is Ocean...

One does not simply change Bitcoin’s code, as the Change The Code campaign ridiculously requests.Greenpeace USA and the Environmental Working Group (EWG), with $5 million in backing from Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen, recently launched the...

Bitcoin environmental concerns are often portrayed in misleading and exaggerated ways contrary to proper research.Bitcoin receives disproportionate media coverage over its tiny fraction of a percent of global emissions and relatively inconsequential environmental impact. Why this happens requires following the money into environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) accounting. ESG accountants appear to be...

PlanB’s S2F/S2FX models are scientifically invalid and have fundamental issues that may lead investors astray.In March 2019, an anonymous individual by the pseudonym “PlanB” astonished investors when he published “Modeling Bitcoin Value with Scarcity,” and introduced his now famous Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model. The...

Measuring Bitcoin’s environmental impact with “energy per transaction” is misleading and disingenuous.Environmentalists say Bitcoin uses too much energy. The world can’t afford it. It’s not worth it. That’s what they say. So, it must be true. Or must it? If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of the popular anti-Bitcoin “energy per transaction” narrative. You’ve seen it in many major media publications....

U.S. National Defense Fellow Jason Lowery argues that Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus model can replace our reliance on military might for digital property and money.An intriguing narrative on Bitcoin emerged this year around the physical security offered by its proof-of-work consensus method. This narrative evolved from Jason Lowery, a commissioned officer in the...

Alex Gladstein’s contributions to Bitcoin Magazine last year helped us all understand the human rights implications of adopting Bitcoin.Perhaps no contributor to Bitcoin Magazine has explored the moral and ethical imperative of Bitcoin more extensively than Alex Gladstein. Gladstein is the chief strategy officer at the...

The perpetual Ethereum difficulty bomb is evidence that blockchains can be coercive, and Bitcoin is evidence that they don’t have to be.Can open-source blockchains be coercive? In a recent debate between Erik Vorhees and Alex Gladstein, Vorhees asserted that “there is nothing in Ethereum that is based on coercion, period.” Vorhees went on to clarify:...

Unlike other cryptocurrencies, bitcoin was not premined and is in unique regulatory position to serve as property for institutions and individuals.Bitcoin is the world's most secure and most decentralized cryptocurrency — but its fair launch is perhaps one of the most poorly- understood aspects of its history and one of the things that makes it so decentralized and unique.Many altcoins will typically...

Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) built on the immutable ledger of Bitcoin can empower users to secure their own personal data on the web.On October 4, 2021, Facebook, along with WhatsApp and Instagram, disappeared from the internet. Their DNS names stopped resolving, and their infrastructure IPs were offline. They were completely...

As an arbiter of truth for the most reliable and cheapest forms of energy, Bitcoin can enable Nikola Tesla’s vision of a peaceful, abundant energy future.Many attempts to bring about the permanent end state of war can be found throughout history. “The war to end war,” mutual assured...

In denouncing Bitcoin’s proof of work and Decentralized Identifiers, Mozilla’s Tantek Çelik undermines the W3C’s own ethical web principles.On Wednesday, September 1, 2021, Tantek Çelik of the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Firefox web browser, responded to a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) web-based straw- poll mailing list “call...

The overdramatization of environmental concerns related to bitcoin mining obfuscate any legitimate conversation on the topic.Recently, an overdramatized story by Gretchen Morgenson of NBC News, about the Greenidge power plant and cryptocurrency mining hybrid on Seneca Lake,...

The adoption of bitcoin by El Salvador poses an interesting contradiction of freedoms, albeit solved on a secondary level.Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s laser-eyed President, shocked the world at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami when he announced that bitcoin would become legal tender in his country. A few days later, the "...

The two environmental FUDsters could potentially mislead bitcoin investors as they utilize incorrect analysis.More than a decade after Satoshi Nakamoto combined proof of work and bitcoin mining together, fallacious comparisons of “energy cost per transaction” continue to be spread by seemingly intelligent and well-researched individuals.We can trace much of the spread of this narrative back to Alex de...

Bitcoin may be the key piece in solving the growing demand for energy usage outpacing our ability to capture and store energy from the sun.The stage has been set for Bitcoin to incentivize renewable energy and power a greener future. Tesla and Elon Musk have the technology and ingenuity to solve one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. A dawn of optimism...