Today marks the 3rd anniversary of the “519” crash in 2021. The crash of “519” that year is closely related to a series of events, such as Musk’s “about-face” and his exclamation that BTC is not environmentally friendly, as well as the subsequent crackdown on mining by major countries.
The previous article “After the Elimination Round of Miners, BTC’s Rocket Launch” (May 18th) discussed the issue of miner income before and after the halving of production.
Looking at this issue from another perspective, it is the budget expenditure allocated by the Bitcoin system for the accounting work of computing power.
As we all know, miners are responsible for accounting, which is essentially “bookkeeping”. However, bookkeeping does not necessarily rely on computing power. Writing a ledger (block) is originally an easy task. It’s just that Satoshi Nakamoto deliberately turned this easy task into a very difficult one. So he made bookkeeping difficult through the so-called PoW (Proof of Work).
PoW is like a (fully automatic) safe that securely protects both old and new ledger data. Writing a ledger is easy, but creating this impregnable safe is extremely difficult.
Many people think that the safe is cumbersome, time-consuming, energy-wasting, and not environmentally friendly enough, so they propose to develop a green blockchain and a PoS without a safe.
At this point, I can’t help but ask a rhetorical question: In the past two years, Europe has been returning to coal burning, and even researchers have published scientific papers advocating that smog is a good thing. The history that has always been regarded as a little girl has suddenly turned into a foot-scratching man, causing the faces of environmental activists in previous years to swell. I wonder if there is still a market and funding for promoting the idea that “BTC is not environmentally friendly”?
Liujia recalls the “End of Year Report for 2023” (not yet decrypted) released internally, which asserts that “Ethereum has not been recognized by the market after switching to PoS, and the settlement layer and low-carbon narrative still need to find a buyer.” Today, ETH, which has fallen to 0.05 in the BTC exchange rate, is still struggling with this issue. When will it ever reach the shore in this boundless sea of suffering?
PoS, on the other hand, abandons the fully automatic safe and replaces it with a group of people’s private key signatures—comparable to replacing it with multiple padlocks, with each key in different hands. Its theory assumes: first, human-controlled keys are more reliable than fully automatic ones without keys; second, a sufficient number of padlocks are more reliable than copper walls and iron walls forged with power consumption.
Writing all this is not to argue about theories. From a realistic perspective, any theory, whether right or wrong, needs to “fool” and rally a group of powerful people in order to survive. Now that we can see that the faces of environmental activists in Europe and the United States have been slapped, can this low-carbon narrative still find enough people to buy it?
Foolish people pay because they truly believe, while smart people pay because they are smart enough to know that many fools will believe. However, fools are often idiots, so they are not powerful. Therefore, the most important thing for successful deception is to make smart people believe that there will be many fools who believe.
Of course, a better strategy than successful deception is to be pragmatic. With sufficient strength, there is no need to fear any questioning. All smart and powerful people truly believe. This is the most powerful theory. The victory of this theory does not rely on verbal debates, but on practical verification.
Only those who cannot achieve it will be frustrated when faced with overwhelming questioning. Those who can achieve it will simply ignore unreasonable questioning. What’s more important is to show it to the world. This is the principle of actions speak louder than words.
The fact that Satoshi Nakamoto single-handedly invented Bitcoin in 2008-2009 is something that future generations will find incredible, like a miracle. But what makes people believe that this is not a “miracle” but a real history is the C++ source code that everyone can see, compile, and run correctly, as well as the thousands of nodes and miners spread all over the world, continuously producing new blocks 24 hours a day…
On the contrary, some “miracles” that stunned people decades ago may just be miracles. The scientific level of those miracles may be comparable to our ancient myth of “Chang’e flying to the moon.”
“The old man sits on the stool. Chang’e flies to the moon. Galloping horses enjoy the flowers.” – The teacher sees through but doesn’t reveal: Since you actively seek words, I’ll give you a hint and write about my leisurely observation of this live performance of people flying to the moon.
Strength is always the foundation of justice and truth. Without strength as a backing, even if what you say is just and correct, no one will believe it. This is not the shame of justice or the stupidity of humanity, but the natural instinct of human beings to seek benefits and avoid harm.
On the contrary, with overwhelming strength, even if what you say is double standards or lies, you will gain the roaring support and trust of the masses. Moreover, if your strength is a carefully constructed and packaged illusion, as long as it is enough to blind people’s eyes, you can still achieve the same status and benefits.
This is why some people in the 1990s, after being laid off, started their own businesses and borrowed money to buy expensive clothes and hire chauffeurs. They believed that by talking business, they could increase their chances of success.
I remember someone saying in a talk show that when he first arrived in Paris, he used up all his remaining rent and meal money to buy a set of Armani clothes. After putting on the clothes, he confidently walked into a big company and successfully applied for a job. He believed that it was all thanks to that set of Armani clothes that he went from a destitute refugee to a white-collar worker in mainstream society.
The essence of money is social relations. If you don’t need to have economic relations with anyone, then money is useless to you.
Money itself has no practical value. Money is the most naked quantification of your status in the social network among all commodities.
The value of sovereign currency comes from the support of strength and becomes a symbol of strength.
The strength of a sovereign state is reflected in many aspects. Military strength is the “1” in front of all those “0s”.
Military, the word itself sounds a bit aggressive. More reservedly, it is called defense. In modern political discourse, a more abstract term, (national) security, is preferred.
(National) security, it sounds like it covers a wide range. The extension is broad, so it often includes issues beyond defense and military. For example, the long-standing debate in the United States about TikTok and new energy vehicles are both included in the category of “security”.
However, it may not be a good thing to arbitrarily expand the scope of security issues. Anything should be constrained by the economic foundation, after all, there is only so much money, and what can be done is limited. If time and budget are spent on doing useless things that are irrelevant to the overall interests and only benefit a certain group, the ultimate consequence may be the continuous decline and decline of the overall national defense.
And if all security budgets are concentrated on a single point, can’t it achieve a high “pressure effect” and achieve an invincible effect with less “defense spending”?
This is exactly the security strategy of Bitcoin.
As we all know, BTC uses all of its security budget to do one thing, and that is to create the aforementioned PoW automatic safe. Mathematically speaking, it is the task of calculating hash values.
Let’s make an interesting comparison:
Check the data and statistics, and calculate how much BTC miners’ income, which is the “defense spending” paid by the system, is in 2023.
Liujia manually counted the numbers:
2023 million$
1 601.24
2 627.12
3 755.41
4 800.4
5 919.22
6 783.76
7 865.26
8 807.01
9 753.6
10 885.05
11 1160
12 1560
sum 10518.07 (10.5 billion)
By adding up these numbers, we can know that the “defense spending” of BTC for the whole year of 2023 is approximately equivalent to 10.5 billion USD (all paid in BTC, of course).
Let’s cross-check: In 2023, the block reward is still 6.25 BTC per block, which is 328,500 BTC in a year. Roughly estimating an average price of $30,000 per BTC, the total amount is approximately $9.855 billion. It is very close to the 10.5 billion mentioned above. Considering that only the block rewards are calculated and the transaction fee income is not included, the actual amount should be even closer. Therefore, 10.5 billion USD should be a relatively reliable figure.
According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the global defense spending ranking table for 2023, the United States is definitely still in first place (over 900 billion USD!). With 10.5 billion USD, it can rank slightly higher than Iran, which is capable of launching hypersonic missiles.
So, the question is, although the US spending is 100 times that of BTC, it has to do and maintain much more than 100 times the amount, and its spending efficiency and corruption problems cannot be compared with the fully transparent, fully automatic, and corruption-free BTC system. This is a zero-sum game. Even if the US monopolizes more than one-third of the global military expenditure, it is still impossible to challenge and defeat the BTC system in the task of “calculating hash values”.
After reading this article, dear readers, you should understand what makes every BTC holder with private keys unwavering and disdainful in the face of irrational questioning or even malicious attacks from the outside world. The answer is only two words: Strength.
(Official Account: Liu Jia’s Chain. Knowledge Planet: Reply “Planet” to the official account)
(Disclaimer: The content of this article does not constitute any investment advice. Cryptocurrencies are highly risky assets with the risk of going to zero at any time. Please participate with caution and take responsibility for yourself.)
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