Episode 18 of the Go Full Crypto podcast features Billy Garrison as a guest. Billy is most active within the Bitcoin community on Twitter. His twitter handle is @Billy_BTC. Having Billy on was a real pleasure, as we got to dive deep into the world of Bitcoin with him. We discussed many topics of Bitcoin including its energy consumption, its censorship resistance, and its ability to combat inflation on a global scale. Each of these topics are entire conversations or podcasts in and of themselves, but we covered them all in episode 18. Billy is often tweeting or retweeting humorous bitcoin related tweets about Bitcoin. Here is one for example. We were happy to see Billy bring much of the humour he has on twitter to the Go Full Crypto podcast.
Billy's Background as an Environmental Scientist
The background of Billy makes him uniquely qualified to talk about the environmental impact of Bitcoin. As we discussed in the episode, the topic of Bitcoin's energy consumption is not black and white. There are several nuances to the argument that may sway you one way or the other. Roughly speaking, we must contextualize the amount of energy bitcoin uses by considering two factors. What are we (society) gaining as a result of this energy consumption? What is the primary purpose of the bitcoin network? In a nut shell, the answers to the questions are as follows.
Hard Money
We gain the ability to have hard money. This sounds trivial, but when we consider how quickly money is being printed today, and how quickly hard money is disappearing from the world stage, consuming massive amounts of electricity in exchange for a hard money system doesn't sound so bad. (Check out our other article to understand more about what hard money is.)
Bitcoin's Primary Purpose
The primary purpose of Bitcoin is to be a peer to peer electronic cash system. If we pick this phrase apart, we can hone in on 3 words in particular. Peer to Peer. The moment that something, anything can jeopardize this feature, Bitcoin becomes something different than it was intended to be. In order to be truly peer to peer, we need to have an assurance that no one can tamper with the operations of the blockchain. The amount of energy that goes into the running of Bitcoin is essentially providing security for the network. The amount of energy spent running the network is related to the cumulative amount of hash power on the network. The hash power is a measure of the security. Therefore, it can be said that the energy spent running the network is the cost of having a truly secure, tamper proof network. To many, this is a small price to pay for a global, truly censorship resistant and secure payment network.
Two Part Episode
We had such a good time with Billy that we filmed two episodes at once. If you like this episode, don't hesitate to check out the second part of this interview. In the second part, we talk about the lightning network, how it works, and the benefits of using it as a solution for scaling the bitcoin network. In order to stay up to date, and get notified when we release the second part of the interview, make sure to subscribe to our podcast or YouTube channel.
The Go Full Crypto Vision
We want to help people opt-into the world of cryptocurrency, one dollar at a time. In order to do this, people must need a reason. They need their own "why" behind discarding their government currency for the world currency of the future. Go Full Crypto is putting out content to help people discover the reason why they want to get involved in cryptocurrency.
Download Episode 18 of Go Full Crypto - Billy Garrison - Exploring Bitcoin
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