Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but PoW is going to become a liability in a world of energetic production. It is irrational to spend the same amount of energy on mining a digital token when it can be used to build and power actual productive robots.
If Bitcoin Core decides this is true and alters the algo to save the chain, it too will lead to collapse as a Balkanization will occur across the mining pools. The most likely outcome is disintegration.
> It is irrational to spend the same amount of energy on mining a digital token when it can be used to build and power actual productive robots
It's just as irrational as it was 10 years ago, there have always been more productive uses for energy, but it doesn't really matter, people will always chose their own short-term profit, expecting anything else is delusional
No, 10 years ago the threat was from financial collapse given the past 16 years of bubble induced recessions, energy usage was a store of value hedge against inflation. 10 years ago the first approved ETF was still 5 years away and institutional buyers were nonexistent.
People will not always consider short term profit; thinking such is an irrational expectation.
Not sure if its true, but even if it is, those two corps transact nearly the same amount as the US GDP every year.
Bitcoin's entire market cap is right now at a less than 1/10th of US GDP. Hard to say what the payment volume is since by all accounts, most movement in BTC is speculative rather than transactional.
I hate having to defend Visa and MC, but at least they using that energy to enable day-to-day transactions that real people actually use.
Also, and a bit harder to overlook... Visa/MC are able to work thousands of transactions per second in the US alone. Bitcoin can do like 7. Not seven thousand, just seven. Worldwide.
It's not even a competition, really. BTC has no future without some radical changes.
I suspect the issue is they still need cash for 1. dividends 2. Further dilution, er acquisition. They have some put away for the near term dividends. But you can see the negative feedback loop if they cant make those payments/acquisitions. Having a huge hole in the books wont help for raising cash through lending, or asset sales realizing the loss.
Re: 10% specifically, i havent checked but Im guessing thats a floor on their cost basis for a bunch of holdings going negative.
Yes their pattern is to issue bonds/equity to buy more btc and fund debt repayments. If people are no longer buying it causes problems. Not an unexpected outcome at all!
"As of early 2026, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) holds approximately $2.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents, including a $2.25 billion USD reserve specifically for covering preferred stock dividends."
To drive home the ridiculousness of this, Bitcoin traded around $126k in October. It’s now at $60k. Even if it recovers, that’s an 87% annualized loss.
after seeing the recent surge of meme stocks, 0dte option trading, sports betting, prediction markets and funny internet coins, one thing is apparent is that people just love to gamble
so i don't believe it will ever go to zero as it has intrinsic value as a casino, if nothing else
Tether actually has one of the better business models out of all of it. They take real dollars, print fake dollars, then buy bonds/treasuries (and gold) with the real dollars.
There are at least two scenarios in which “just a dollar” is a great outcome for someone purchasing a stable coin (assuming that it’s actually stable):
1. You want the convenience of digital coin transfers/payments without the variance of price swings (e.g., recent Bitcoin). This can be especially useful when you have access to a phone but limited or no direct access to modern banking facilities.
2. It’s easy to get your local currency onto an exchange, but it’s not easy or advisable to have a dollar bank account or keep large amounts of dollars in cash in your locale.
3. (I guess for completeness) You want to engage in activities that are of questionable legality (e.g., drug sales in certain places, online poker in most of the US, etc.).
This implies there is underlying fundamental analysis that can be applied to Bitcoin price. There wasn't when it was going up. There isn't when its going down. It has always, and still is, based on pure vibes. The price could be anything.
on the one hand I can't imagine it will ever go fully to zero because then people will buy them just for fun, keeping the price at least a bit up.
on the other hand there is a price where the network no longer has any incentive to operate. Whereupon... doesn't it just stop working / become easily forkable? in which case it seems like Bitcoin is perhaps uniquely unable to recover from crashing out of all things that can crash (a thesis which is consistent with it having no intrinsic value, lol)
On other hand. At some point you can't transact on it for good while. What is the price of currency you can not "physically" move? Yeah numbers of exchanges can move. But if no one spends energy mining and getting lucky there is no movement of bitcoin itself.
That's been my target for the last... wow... has it nearly been 18 years since I started futzing around with Bitcoin for the first time?
Been a swift drop this time. My buddy goes "if only I sold it all in October", what... like the rest of the people participating in the Ponzi scheme who would also like to cash out at the top?
Looks like all those stupid bitcoin treasury companies are finally unwinding.
At least no one's sitting around pretending it's going to actually do anything useful anymore.
> At least no one's sitting around pretending it's going to actually do anything useful anymore
It enriches certain elected officials (and their friends). That's why the US Government holds a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve".
Other than that if you measured the utility of Crypto assets versus AI, there's no argument that AI (even though it's in a bubble) is still more valuable per MWh than Crypto.
Oh ya, AI may be frothy and bubbly right now but there will certainly be and already are tremendous real world software and hardware products and tech flowing out of the space
This article contains multiple lies. For starters, it is not the 5th of February. Also, 1 BTC = 1 BTC, or, in dollar terms, despite the claims, $64,400.
I didn't pay much attention to the rest of it but I can't imagine it was any better.
Well I messed up my joke slightly by adding a time-dependent BTC value, which was silly of me, but I was trying to cover all bases. I should have stuck to the classic 1 BTC = 1 BTC :(
(Anyway, in answer to your question: at time of writing, it's the 6th of February, though I don't know what else you might be expecting.)
But, regardless, even if you feel you have won, this time - for how long? It won't be the 5th of February for you forever!
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but PoW is going to become a liability in a world of energetic production. It is irrational to spend the same amount of energy on mining a digital token when it can be used to build and power actual productive robots.
If Bitcoin Core decides this is true and alters the algo to save the chain, it too will lead to collapse as a Balkanization will occur across the mining pools. The most likely outcome is disintegration.
Economically, the amount spent on electricity for PoW mining will be close to and generally below the payout for that mining.
The price in US dollars for either block rewards or electricity can go up or down, but this comparison always stays the same.
> It is irrational to spend the same amount of energy on mining a digital token when it can be used to build and power actual productive robots
It's just as irrational as it was 10 years ago, there have always been more productive uses for energy, but it doesn't really matter, people will always chose their own short-term profit, expecting anything else is delusional
No, 10 years ago the threat was from financial collapse given the past 16 years of bubble induced recessions, energy usage was a store of value hedge against inflation. 10 years ago the first approved ETF was still 5 years away and institutional buyers were nonexistent.
People will not always consider short term profit; thinking such is an irrational expectation.
Further to this point, it's not like non-PoW coins like Ethereum are doing better at the moment.
I have no idea if it’s true, but i did see some estimates that the visa and mastercard systems also use the same order of magnitude of energy.
Not sure if its true, but even if it is, those two corps transact nearly the same amount as the US GDP every year.
Bitcoin's entire market cap is right now at a less than 1/10th of US GDP. Hard to say what the payment volume is since by all accounts, most movement in BTC is speculative rather than transactional.
Even if they use same order of energy. They process many many more orders of magnitude transactions.
And I doubt they use that much power. Modern developers are incapable of efficiency, but there is not that much processing to do.
> i did see some estimates that the visa and mastercard systems also use the same order of magnitude of energy
I strongly believe they don’t, but I’d love to see the math and be proven wrong.
I hate having to defend Visa and MC, but at least they using that energy to enable day-to-day transactions that real people actually use.
Also, and a bit harder to overlook... Visa/MC are able to work thousands of transactions per second in the US alone. Bitcoin can do like 7. Not seven thousand, just seven. Worldwide.
It's not even a competition, really. BTC has no future without some radical changes.
Since I've been in it, this has happened in:
- early 2018
- March 2020
- Summer 2021
- Summer 2022
- mildly in Q1 2025
- now in early 2026
This has never happened before!
Top comment of one of the standout Bitcoin-culture memes ->
"The best technical analysis anyone has done on bitcoin."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbZ8zDpX2Mg
https://archive.is/eS2Q3
> [Burry] warned that if prices fall another 10%, Strategy (MSTR) would be billions in the red and could “find capital markets essentially closed".
According to bloomberg [1] mstr is still trading at a 9% premium to the btc it owns. Why would bitcoin falling another 10% make a difference?
[1] https://archive.is/jQPYk
I suspect the issue is they still need cash for 1. dividends 2. Further dilution, er acquisition. They have some put away for the near term dividends. But you can see the negative feedback loop if they cant make those payments/acquisitions. Having a huge hole in the books wont help for raising cash through lending, or asset sales realizing the loss.
Re: 10% specifically, i havent checked but Im guessing thats a floor on their cost basis for a bunch of holdings going negative.
Yes their pattern is to issue bonds/equity to buy more btc and fund debt repayments. If people are no longer buying it causes problems. Not an unexpected outcome at all!
"As of early 2026, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) holds approximately $2.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents, including a $2.25 billion USD reserve specifically for covering preferred stock dividends."
Everything is documented on their website...
https://www.strategy.com/
> Bitcoin, down more than 40% from its October peak, is now “exposed as a completely speculative asset.”
“Now”? No; it’s always been a speculative asset. The only folks who didn’t think that were those who didn’t know any better.
To drive home the ridiculousness of this, Bitcoin traded around $126k in October. It’s now at $60k. Even if it recovers, that’s an 87% annualized loss.
That’s a 669% inflation rate.
If you want the snark to go to 11, checkout /r/buttcoin.
Excellent recommendation! The top post right now is "Bitcoin just hit $66,000. Strong support at $0."
after seeing the recent surge of meme stocks, 0dte option trading, sports betting, prediction markets and funny internet coins, one thing is apparent is that people just love to gamble
so i don't believe it will ever go to zero as it has intrinsic value as a casino, if nothing else
My prediction has always been that as soon as Tether is proved to be a fraud, the game is over. All of it will experience a massive sell-off.
Tether has already proven to be a fraud it's only a question when someone will act on that
More specifically, that it is (or was) fraud or that it's insolvent?
I've in the same boat and can't believe it hasn't happened already.
Tether actually has one of the better business models out of all of it. They take real dollars, print fake dollars, then buy bonds/treasuries (and gold) with the real dollars.
https://x.com/diogomonica/status/2019452516786925756
I am too sensible for financial markets. As such I just do not get why money would keep getting poured into the system. And not enough would exit...
At best you are buying a dollar with dollar. Just doesn't compute for me.
> At best you are buying a dollar with dollar.
There are at least two scenarios in which “just a dollar” is a great outcome for someone purchasing a stable coin (assuming that it’s actually stable):
1. You want the convenience of digital coin transfers/payments without the variance of price swings (e.g., recent Bitcoin). This can be especially useful when you have access to a phone but limited or no direct access to modern banking facilities.
2. It’s easy to get your local currency onto an exchange, but it’s not easy or advisable to have a dollar bank account or keep large amounts of dollars in cash in your locale.
3. (I guess for completeness) You want to engage in activities that are of questionable legality (e.g., drug sales in certain places, online poker in most of the US, etc.).
This implies there is underlying fundamental analysis that can be applied to Bitcoin price. There wasn't when it was going up. There isn't when its going down. It has always, and still is, based on pure vibes. The price could be anything.
FSB mirror: https://archive.ph/eS2Q3
I see the https://occupywallst.com/yen narrative more believe
I'm doubtful that Bitcoin true believers will give up after a crash and expect that there will be buyers. At what price, though?
on the one hand I can't imagine it will ever go fully to zero because then people will buy them just for fun, keeping the price at least a bit up.
on the other hand there is a price where the network no longer has any incentive to operate. Whereupon... doesn't it just stop working / become easily forkable? in which case it seems like Bitcoin is perhaps uniquely unable to recover from crashing out of all things that can crash (a thesis which is consistent with it having no intrinsic value, lol)
On other hand. At some point you can't transact on it for good while. What is the price of currency you can not "physically" move? Yeah numbers of exchanges can move. But if no one spends energy mining and getting lucky there is no movement of bitcoin itself.
> At what price, though?
When they’re personally financially desperate. Bitcoin is, in many senses, a measure of the excess capital in the economy.
Are people moving to polymarket and other gambling products?
So, how many bitcoins to a pizza would that be?
That's been my target for the last... wow... has it nearly been 18 years since I started futzing around with Bitcoin for the first time?
Been a swift drop this time. My buddy goes "if only I sold it all in October", what... like the rest of the people participating in the Ponzi scheme who would also like to cash out at the top?
Looks like all those stupid bitcoin treasury companies are finally unwinding.
At least no one's sitting around pretending it's going to actually do anything useful anymore.
> At least no one's sitting around pretending it's going to actually do anything useful anymore
It enriches certain elected officials (and their friends). That's why the US Government holds a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve".
Other than that if you measured the utility of Crypto assets versus AI, there's no argument that AI (even though it's in a bubble) is still more valuable per MWh than Crypto.
Oh ya, AI may be frothy and bubbly right now but there will certainly be and already are tremendous real world software and hardware products and tech flowing out of the space
One may think it is about quantum computers reversing the keys or something like that, but no.
This piece predicts that BTC will go to zero because it is held my MicroStrategy and is not a good hedge against stock market.
The other key piece is AI, which is where the money is going instead. It is newer, so people can hope they're getting in closer to the ground floor.
And unlike Bitcoin, it is producing something. Maybe not what people hope, but it's more than just a "store of value".
Once the speculation money starts to leave, the supply of greater fools will have run out. There will be literally nobody willing to buy it.
I will buy every single bitcoin in existence for 1 cent each.
The fact my offer exists means a zero price target is dumb.
There are about 20 million BTC mined so far, multiplied by 1 cent each equals $200,000.
That seems like a lot of money to waste.
I will buy every Bitcoin in existence for approximately one twenty millionth of a cent each.
That made me laugh :)
If after you buy those, you are unable to buy anything with them, or sell them for whatever value, the zero target will have been reached.
Your take was dumber than the zero price target.
This article contains multiple lies. For starters, it is not the 5th of February. Also, 1 BTC = 1 BTC, or, in dollar terms, despite the claims, $64,400.
I didn't pay much attention to the rest of it but I can't imagine it was any better.
Using 1 BTC = 1 BTC unironically? That's funny ngl.
What day do you think it is?
Well I messed up my joke slightly by adding a time-dependent BTC value, which was silly of me, but I was trying to cover all bases. I should have stuck to the classic 1 BTC = 1 BTC :(
(Anyway, in answer to your question: at time of writing, it's the 6th of February, though I don't know what else you might be expecting.)
But, regardless, even if you feel you have won, this time - for how long? It won't be the 5th of February for you forever!
As you posted that, it's the 6th in UTC.
TFA was on the 5th though.
Tuesday.