Crypto Coin Cases Extended Series - Bitcoin & Ethereum: The Juggernauts

This is a macro viewpoint - the technicalities behind the technology are extremely complex, and studying it is a lifetime journey. We don’t want to bore anyone too much; the purpose is to get across what we believe are important overall factors to consider.

If you’re wondering why freedom from separating money and state is such a big deal to people, study history, money, and technology or watch “What’s The Problem” by Joe Bryan

Bitcoin

Bitcoin continues to evolve as potentially the world’s most powerful geopolitical asset, transforming global finance, energy, and technological advancements, increasingly redefining how nations harness economic power. From its inception in 2009 to its current mainstream adoption phase, Bitcoin has (defi)ed all odds at every turn, casting a beacon of hope for global equality, freedom, and prosperity. Similar to how we use and trust other protocols, such as Google Chrome as an Internet Protocol, Google Meet as a Voice Over Internet Protocol, or Gmail as a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, Bitcoin is a Money Protocol that took over 40 years of work to launch (Dante Cook). Dating back to the start of stock market trading in 1971, digital money is not a new concept, and there have been many different iterations over the decades. Bitcoin is what it is because of its energy transformation capabilities, open-source coding, and cryptographic ingenuity that started the tokenization wave. Enduring skepticism for years on end and dismissive narratives like “Bubble,” “Tulips,” “Gambling,” or “Beanie Babies,” Bitcoin has survived government bans and is barreling its way to mainstream institutional adoption. This is the savings technology of the future, and from countries worldwide mining or buying to launching ETFs and strategic reserves, Bitcoin is increasingly recognized as digital gold — a sentiment echoed by the White House.

We are at what could be the most pivotal moment in history from the convergence of AI and cryptocurrency with more mining facilities focusing on AI/HPC (High-Performance Computing). Crypto is the currency of AI, and they both level the playing field, democratizing access to information and data globally. We are only nine years away from “Point99” in 2034, which is the inflection point of absolute scarcity where the last 200,000 Bitcoin to be mined will take 106 years; the creation of Bitcoin will then be offset by lost Bitcoin, and the supply will become fixed. There are only about 1 million out of the 21 million Bitcoin left to be mined for all of eternity, and we’ve only seen 4 out of 32 total halvings, with the last Bitcoin block slated to be mined in 2140. The “creator/(s)” of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, developed the world’s most mysterious and profound technological invention and disappeared.

Energy and Scarcity: The Foundation

It’s all about ENERGY and SCARCITY. The supply issuance schedule for the amount of Bitcoin that can be mined or rewarded for the energy transformed (Proof-of-Work or PoW) is cut in half every four years, also known as the halving, and the energy needed to mine each block becomes harder than the last. Mining is directly connected and even the foundation of blockchain technology and now AI, with thousands of nodes around the world verifying and auditing the blockchain every 10 minutes. Unlike every other asset that increases in supply with price and leads to hyperinflation, Bitcoin offers an increasingly fixed supply and less than 1% annual inflation for the rest of time. Some things to note about the U.S. Dollar are that it has lost 99% of its purchasing power in the last century like all fiat currencies, it hasn’t been backed by gold since 1971, has an annual inflation rate of about 7-10% for the last 15 years, 80% of all dollars have been printed in the last five years, and takes no energy for the government in control to decide to print more, all while wasting paper and time. Some things to note about gold, the shiny rock that is nearly impossible to use in everyday payments and has extremely low liquidity, is that they find more daily and has an annual inflation rate of roughly 1.58%, it wastes unnecessary energy to mine, transport, divide, or store with a settlement time of about 1 year, and to prove your wealth in it is fraudulent with Fort Knox not having been audited in over 50 years, and even if it did, you’re relying on corrupt centralized authorities. Some things to note about stocks are that once a stock price goes up a certain percentage, more shares are issued, causing inflation, they stand for nothing more than IOUs, they are controlled by few and easily manipulated by most, and have been trading for fewer hours than BTC (1,638 hrs/yr since 1971 vs. 8,760 hrs/yr since 2010). Real Estate has been the holy grail asset to save your money in, but only because you’re forced to; the government prints more money, which causes inflation and forces you to have to invest in assets so it deteriorates less, then they tax you in more ways than one so you can never escape inflation. Scarcity in real estate is fake, and it should be used for shelter only, leveling out prices across the board for its utility, not as an investment. Bitcoin cuts out the intermediaries and trust, not having to rely on any country, company, or human, and bridges the gap in freedom from fake. All of the energy put into mining Bitcoin is efficiently and effectively used to create the scarcest asset on the planet, converted to heat, or used as a flexible load in energy transmission.

Role in Global Economic Opportunity

For the first time in history, Bitcoin reverses centralized wealth and power, unites the world in a revolution against corrupt leadership, and gives power to the people from the bottom up with the most powerful decentralized form of money known to humanity. Every other asset comes with an extensive list of risk factors that are offset by simply being able to transfer or store value without a trusted intermediary. Half of all of the assets in the world are held just for long-term capital or a store of value; now, we have Bitcoin as the hedge against crippling inflation and perfect money for a store of value, as the best-performing asset in at least 11 out of its 16 years in existence with a 60% CAGR (compound annual growth rate). It’s scarce, permissionless, trustless, divisible, portable, borderless, predictable, immutable, immortal, censorship-resistant, counterfeit-proof, tamper-proof, and verifiable; it doesn’t decay, there’s no maintenance, it’s immune to natural disasters, it’s indestructible, it’s ethical, it’s accessible everywhere and every time with the ability to store an infinite amount without answering to anyone; it has the fastest settlement times of any other value transfer (T+1 hr-1 ms) and for minimal cost, it’s insurance and property rights, it’s used as collateral, it acts as a medium of exchange, it moves at the speed of light, it’s a bank for the more than one billion unbanked people around the globe, etc.; all by use of a cellphone and internet connection, and not even today with further developments.

The capabilities of this technology are endless. The Bitcoin Lightning Network has a theoretical throughput of 40,000,000 tps (transactions per second), while Visa sits at 20,000 and PayPal at 200. With the rise of AI and quantum computers, a fork of the chain can build in quantum resistance. It’s expanding rapidly with BTCFi enabling more borrowing/lending opportunities, L2 solutions, and unlocking trillions in cold wallet liquidity, etc. It is the digital transformation of physical and financial assets into energy that can programmed and transported through space and time (Michael Saylor). From the less secure past of bartering, shells, gold, fiat counterfeiting, and vulnerable cards to a more secure future of cryptographically authenticated privacy and identity protection onchain in the convergence of value, energy, and information into a single investable asset class. It democratizes property rights, dematerializes analog stores of value and removes monetary premiums, disrupts traditional finance, and deflates the price of all things (Dante Cook).

Technological and Environmental Advancements

When you take a step back and think of all of the technology that has changed the course of history, Bitcoin will do to the internet and the concept of money what the Internet did to all of our analog products and services. Total adoption of Bitcoin now sits at 3% of the world, which is the same timeframe as where the internet was in 1990, online banking in 1996, and social media in 2005 (River). Only about 7% of the world’s population owns crypto, so if you’re here learning and grinding, you’re earlier than most. World reserve currencies have been tied to a single country for hundreds of years and based on fake wasteful physical fiat, with the U.S. Dollar stronghold in place since the Great Depression era, and now Bitcoin is anti-ruling class, anti-megacorp, anti-tyrant technology that can serve as our world reserve currency for the rest of time as we know it. Fraud and corruption have rippled through the course of our history, and it all stems from the silent thief of inflationary fiat money and the BIG RED button (Joe Bryan); think of the double-spending, taxation theft, capital misallocation, waste on destructive nuclear war, etc. Find any other asset on Earth that will outlive a lifetime (100 years, let alone 1000 or multiple centuries).

Technology essentially allows us to do more with less, and that is what the Bitcoin Standard is all about. Global decentralized competition of the network is an equality liberation machine of resource utilization, improving economic and environmental values. Bitcoin mining can be used in tandem to boost renewable energies and act as a demand response or flexible load to power grids in the duck curve of daily energy transmission. The largest drawback of renewable energies is the inefficiency of steady power, and now mining enables us to harness excess or spoiled energy like methane (84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first twenty years after release (Renewable Energy Magazine)) and flare gas or supply energy in shortages, reducing greenhouse gases and preventing blackouts. According to Fred Thiel and Marathon Holdings, the largest public Bitcoin miner in the world, Bitcoin mining will be a core function of any device that generates or stores electricity, and mining hardware processes are now 73,000 times more efficient than they were around inception. Bitcoin mining now has the lowest emission intensity per kWh of any sector of the economy, with over 50% of all mining powered by renewable energy. About a third of the energy generated worldwide each year is lost due to inefficiency and we can make that up entirely in mining. Bitcoin mining boosts renewable energy capabilities and profitability, stabilizes/optimizes grids, enables microgrids to scale with the transmission ability to harvest stranded energies, and creates endless opportunities for energy abundance, especially in energy-rich countries that can monetize underutilized energy.

Here are some more valuable environmental insights from Daniel Batten, a climatetech investor, advisor, and Bitcoin analyst:

• California is wasting large amounts of energy by not mining Bitcoin because of their excess energy from solar farms, paying states to take the surplus

• Bitcoin mining reduces ROI from 8.1 years to 3.7 years while reducing CO2 emissions by 50,000 tonnes/year on a typical 50MW solar farm

• Developing energy independence for Bhutan: most BTC per capita in the world (27x more Bitcoin per person than the U.S. - Swan Bitcoin)

• Bitcoin mining with green hydrogen makes wind farms 73% more profitable and boosts DAC (Direct-Air-Capture) technologies

• Power grids have become the primary bottleneck for expanding clean energy in the U.S., Europe, and Asia (Nikkei Asia)

• Transformative potential in Bitcoin mining, especially demand response, grid flexibility, and methane mitigation

• Bitcoin mining reduces microgrid costs by 46%, accelerates development, and decarbonizes power production

• The amount of wasted solar/wind renewable energy in the EU+US = 480 nuclear reactors worth of power

• Bitcoin mining helps renewable developers generate more profits, accelerating the renewable transition

• Reducing more emissions from landfills than the largest DAC (Direct-Air-Capture) project in the world

• Bitcoin mining microgrid projects to establish energy abundance in African villages

• Bitcoin mining with renewable energy is profitable in 96% of cases

• Bitcoin mining to save Africa Congo’s most famous national park

• 10 of the last 11 peer-reviewed academic publications on Bitcoin & Energy show Bitcoin has strong environmental benefits

Strategic Reserves and World Competition

In March 2025, an executive order was signed by the United States to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile, signaling its historical intent to acquire substantial holdings. The government will use its existing 200,000 BTC as seed capital, making it one of the largest Bitcoin holders worldwide and solidifying its plans to be the crypto capital of the world. The Treasury and Commerce Departments can acquire more Bitcoin without increasing taxpayer costs, satisfying public scrutiny and Bitcoin advocates. This not only recognizes Bitcoin as a global standard for wealth preservation and economic opportunity but also lays the foundation for other countries to follow suit and enable game theory to play out. The majority of Bitcoin (approximately 69%) is held by individuals competing for sats (100,000,000 Satoshis = 1 BTC) against the rest of the world, including governments, countries, institutions, etc. Anyone can tap into the network and compete for winning blocks, from individual miners to large facilities, creating the world’s largest energy competition and making us focus on something larger than all of us and not fighting wars over fake fiat Ponzi scheme money.

From Strategy’s Michael Saylor’s Framework:

Strategic Bitcoin Reserve - Win the Race to Dominate Cyberspace & Own the Future

1. Acquire 5-25% of the Bitcoin network in trust for the nation through consistent, programmatic daily purchases between 2025 and 2035, when 99% of all BTC will have been issued.

2. The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) has the potential to generate $16-81 trillion in wealth for the U.S. Treasury by 2045, offering a viable pathway to offset the national debt.

3. Never Sell Your Bitcoin! By 2045, the reserve should be generating $10 trillion+ annually, continuously growing, and serving as a perpetual source of prosperity for the American people for generations to come.

A Vision for Humanity

Bitcoin is a monumental shift within the global economic and social paradigm, separating money and state, and empowering individuals with self-sovereignty in a new era of economic possibilities. Bitcoin has ignited the "Digital Gold Rush,” helping people escape from imperialism and the wealth traps of centralized systems, unlocking global liquidity like never before. As the only non-dilutive asset in the world, Bitcoin protects against monetary debasement and devaluation by governments, monopolies by corporations, and border restrictions. It democratizes property rights for all humans, supports energy independence, and finally enables a cashless society where trust is replaced by verification. It truly embodies the freedom of our constitution where money is of the people and for the people - deeply rooted in code, mathematics, and physics with rules, not rulers. Bitcoin grants humanity time to improve the quality of life instead of constantly battling against inflationary theft. From skeptics to maximalists, Bitcoin evokes hope in a combination of energy, history, politics, equality, and philosophy. It is more than an asset; It is a humanitarian movement - a moral protocol built to treat and heal global turmoil with prosperity technology. Do the right thing for the world: adopt Bitcoin (Michael Saylor).

P.s.

What else is there to do here besides trying to make Earth a better place to live and make money? Why do you think the ultra-wealthy are trying to make us a multi-planetary civilization? Do you think they would ever part ways with their precious wealth without taking it to another planet with them? How do you think it’ll get there? Every ounce of weight matters and you can’t be stacking wasteful fiat or gold in the rocket. It’ll be with the smallest microchips Nvidia can make to interact with the blockchain, like the one they reportedly sent on a rover to the moon already. The only way to accomplish this while maintaining a monetary system in the solar system is with crypto. Remember, the ground we walk on is apparently 4.6 billion years old and we wouldn’t have even been here for several reasons, but we are. This being said, unfortunately, most of human history is riddled with forever wars, destroying lives and the extremely fragile living planet. Why? Greed. Fake fiat money has devalued everyone’s purchasing power and the top 1% are the only ones who benefit. With the Bitcoin Standard, funding wars will be a thing of the past, and it creates a simple formula for all: scarce money = abundant goods.

P.s.s.

"87% of Bitcoin holders [only 3-4% of the world's population] hold other crypto" - Dan Held

Ethereum

The Journey from PoW to PoS

2015 rolls around and Ethereum emerges. Ethereum is the second-largest decentralized protocol by market cap that enables anyone and anything to build on blockchain technology, recognized as the World Computer. This starts the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) boom, similar to an IPO (Initial Public Offering) of a public stock on a centralized stock exchange. Ethereum started as PoW (Proof of Work), but phased out to PoS which is more accessible and scalable, and less energy-intensive. By 2022, PoS (Proof of Stake) comes into play when the entire Ethereum network which hosts the vast majority of crypto, completed “The Merge,” which reduced energy consumption by 99.95%, dropping annual energy consumption from 109.71 kg to 0.01 kg of carbon footprint per transaction. To compare the two, if the annual energy of PoW represented the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, PoS would equate the same to a Big Mac, or the comparison of Bitcoin’s 173 TWh of electricity per year vs. Ethereum’s 0.0026 TWh per year. Also, the transition reduced Ethereum’s yearly issuance of new Ether from 5.4 million to about 816,000. There are pros and cons to the two main consensus mechanisms, but energy efficiency is imperative for both. PoS allows people to participate in staking for a much lower entry barrier than mining PoW and selects validators based on the amount of staked Ether (ETH), which enhances scalability, security, and accessibility. Validators stake or lock up ETH and randomly select validators that propose the next block while others verify blocks of transactions, and the staking reward is paid out in ETH.

The Backbone of Blockchain Applications

Ethereum is the pioneer in many decentralized infrastructures and continues to prove it with the largest infrastructure of developers in the space. DeFi (Decentralized Finance) takes all centralized financial activities that traditional finance services do today and makes them decentralized through smart contracts. Smart contracts are programmable contracts coded into blockchain networks that automatically execute when predefined conditions are met (if-then process). They were first proposed in 1994 and gained prominence with the rise of blockchain technology, mostly after the launch of Ethereum. They eliminate the need for intermediaries or third parties to oversee transactions, reducing costs and increasing overall efficiency. They are particularly useful in industries such as real estate, finance, mortgage lending, supply chain, voting systems, and insurance. Ethereum continues to command the most smart contract settlement, with projections showing the continued trend of over 50% through 2033. Other platforms include Polkadot, Cardano, BNB chain, and many others.

The Ethereum blockchain operates with the most developers out of any blockchain and holds the most TVL (Total Value Locked) by a long shot, and has always held the number one spot. They also lead in the development of DApps (Decentralized Applications), DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), and NFT (Non-Fungible Token) minting. Some may say that it lacks in tps (transaction per second) throughput, which it does at 15 tps compared to Bitcoin Lightning Network’s 40,000,000, but it is looking to scale to 10,000 tps in 2026 by boosting L2 networks, increasing blob/rollup capacities, and exponential sharding. Ethereum’s focus is on extreme decentralization from its current 1 million or more validators and ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proof) security, helping institutions adopt web3 seamlessly. Starknet is a ZK-rollup protocol that has become the first the settle on both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Also, before the Merge, an EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) created what is called “burn.” Burning can be done in several ways like sending crypto to a dead wallet address that burns supply off of the chain or programming it into the project’s tokenomics. EIP-1559 was implemented in August 2021, which introduced a burn mechanism where a portion of transaction fees are permanently removed from circulation for every Ethereum transaction, reducing the ETH supply, which sits at about 120 million vs Bitcoin’s 21 million. Ethereum looks to increase it’s burn rate to roughly 713,000 annually which will shrink supply at an accelerated rate like never seen before. This makes Ethereum more deflationary than Bitcoin, with an inflationary supply of roughly 0.807% per year currently and decreasing vs Bitcoin’s approximate 1% or less per year.

Tokenization of Real-world Assets (RWAs)

The most robust development for Ethereum rests on the tokenization of RWAs (Real-World Assets). RWAs represent the tokenization of traditional financial assets on blockchain networks, such as derivatives, real estate, stocks, debt, commodities, art, etc. The projection for tokenization of onchain assets has surpassed the current DeFi market of trillions - projected to be in the quadrillions. It presents new opportunities for market efficiencies through smart contract settlement, liquidity of previously illiquid assets, democratized access with fractional ownership, and low barriers to entry. They level the playing field for all, speed up settlement times for all assets, reduce fraud and enhance the security of immutable networks, and ensure transparent records. Ethereum led all chains for the most revenue in 2024, hosts over 50% of all stablecoins that keep hitting records daily and are poised to completely transform financial markets, and currently accounts for roughly 80% of all tokenized RWAs.

Pectra Upgrade and Other Development

Ethereum’s largest upgrade from inception and beyond, Pectra, will officially launch in April 2025. All testnets have been successful and the days are counting down to launch the most game-changing evolution to the Superchain. Some Pectra upgrade developments include no token approvals, gasless transactions, passkey support, no re-sign for each transaction, and one signature to convert your current wallet into a smart wallet. To expand further, EIP 7702 will introduce smart wallets to the chain which are probably currently the simplest way to create a wallet today, and they will create a wave of new web3 games, EIP 7691 will increase blob sizes from 3 to 6 which helps scale transaction throughput and will attract more L2s to build on the network like public companies or banks, and EIP 7002 allows you to own your staked ETH keys which will lock millions of ETH safely and boost institutional trust.

Etheralize is a new company recently launched as Ethereum’s marketing arm to educate institutions and the public about how they can build on the technology and the layout of increasing use cases. Some of the most important use cases that we loosely covered include stablecoins for payments, settlement, and cross-border transactions, decentralized finance for trading, borrowing/lending, derivatives, etc., tokenized assets for short-term treasuries, private credit, issuing, trading, settling, and recording ownership of real assets. Other advanced use cases include decentralized identity, blockchain gaming, prediction markets, decentralized social networks, connection of grand IoT networks, modular blockchain interoperability scaling, etc. With a developer ecosystem for financial applications in exchange trading, multilateral trading, clearing, and portfolio transparency, it leads as a triple-point asset (capital asset phase, store of value phase, and consumable/transformable phase). Over 50 current household web2 names are building on Ethereum, including the largest asset manager in the world, Blackrock, one of the second largest asset managers in the world, Fidelity, World Liberty Financial, Franklin Templeton, PayPal, Google, Robinhood, Nike, etc. See the following information for a longer list that continues to build daily.

Here are some highlights of Ethereum adoption exploding, which can be viewed at ethereumadoption.com:

2017 - Enterprise Ethereum Alliance of BBVA, BNY Mellon, CME Group, JP Morgan, etc.

2018 - BBVA loan records and Fujitsu smart contract auditing

2019 - Santander bonds

2020 - EY OpsChain traceability, Ubisoft NFT game, Vermont Agency of Agriculture hemp tracker

2021 - Adidas metaverse NFTs, Budweiser NFTs, Burger King rewards program, Credit Suisse tokenized shares, Burberry NFTs, Visa USDC settlement, Mastercard integrated payments

2022 - AWS RPC service, Nike/Gucci NFTs, Google address search, BNY Mellon custody platform, Disney NFTs, Shopify NFT stores, Salesforce NFT cloud, Stripe USDC payments, Verizon NFT benefits, X tips, Robinhood transfers, Samsung TV NFT platform

2023 - UBS cross-border bond repo, WisdomTree fund, Mitsubishi stablecoins, Porsche NFTs, PayPal PYUSD stablecoin, Singapore Government document verification, Swiss Football Association NFTs, Bank of China tokenized funds, Louis Vuitton NFTs, Ralph Lauren crypto payments, LimeWire token, Spotify NFT playlists

2024 - Deutsche Bank L2, Hong Kong ZA Bank Ethereum trading, Franklin Templeton fund and token, BlackRock BUIDL fund, Nubank onchain trading, Lamborghini NFTs, Buenos Aires Digital Identity, Venmo ENS integration, Sony Soneium L2, Atari onchain arcade, Fidelity onchain NAV data, Toyota mobility-oriented account, World Liberty Financial, VanEck segmint RWA platform

2025 - Custodia Bank stablecoin, BioNexus Gene Lab ETH treasury, United States ETH reserves, China AMC dollar digital currency fund, State Street/Citi custody services, Central Bank of Nigeria stablecoin, Buenos Aires Digital License, Gelephu Mindfulness City of Bhutan ETH strategic reserves

Conclusion

The only way forward in the ever-expanding ecosystem of crypto is togETHer. We need to work together to help onboard the entire world to web3, and these two juggernauts will lead the way. There’s no reason for maxis to be against each other; competition is great, but at this critical point in history, the most important thing is to BUIDL. Don’t waste your time or energy fighting each other’s narratives to win over the masses; be encouraging and kind to those interested in joining the revolution so we can all move towards a world of financial and economic freedom. It takes confidence in the technology and action to understand the magnitude of how transformative blockchain technology will be for the globe. Let’s open the opportunities to all and let innovation thrive. Nothing stops this train. Also, price doesn’t determine anything - for everyone chirping. Zoom out!

Hop on the train and get onchain! #TCIG