Bitcoin is a decentralised monetary protocol with a fixed supply of 21 million units, secured by mathematics and energy, designed to preserve purchasing power in a way no fiat currency can. The questions below are the ones that stop most people from engaging with it seriously, and the ones that I explored for a long time before finally understanding the deeper value of Bitcoin beyond its price.
This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice. Full disclaimers.
Is Bitcoin Bad for the Environment?
Bitcoin mining is on track to make the Bitcoin network carbon negative, not merely carbon neutral, which inverts the premise of the question entirely.
The mechanism that changes the environmental calculus is methane capture. Methane is a greenhouse gas 84 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year period, and most of it is vented or flared into the atmosphere because no economic incentive exists to do otherwise.[1] Bitcoin mining creates that incentive by turning wasted, polluting energy into a productive economic input. Climate tech investor Daniel Batten has spent years studying this relationship; his research indicates that only 35 mid-sized venting landfills running Bitcoin mining operations would be sufficient to make the entire Bitcoin network carbon negative.[2]
The standard criticism compares Bitcoin’s energy use in isolation, but the question is which system is responsible for the environmental degradation in the first place? The traditional financial network runs bank branches, ATMs, skyscrapers, data centres, armoured vehicles, and gold mining operations around the globe, 24 hours a day. That infrastructure does not appear in the headlines that call Bitcoin an environmental threat.
Is It Too Late to Get Into Bitcoin?
Whether it is too late depends entirely on our view of Bitcoin: As a short-term trade or as a monetary network. As of March 2026, there are approximately 500 million Bitcoin users on a planet with 8 billion people and so the early majority has not yet arrived.[3] The protocol is following the same adoption curve as the internet: The innovators came first (2009 to 2017, mainly developers and cypherpunks), followed by early adopters including retail participants and some institutional investors since 2017. The mid-1990s internet analogy is apt; in that era, credible voices were arguing that “the economic impact of the internet” would be “no greater than that of the fax machine.”[14]
If you are measuring Bitcoin as a monetary network, the relevant question is what percentage of your savings are sitting in something designed to lose purchasing power year over year?
What Is the Difference Between Bitcoin and Crypto?
Bitcoin is a protocol; most crypto projects are singular technologies, and that structural distinction determines everything about their long-term viability.
A one-off technology gets replaced by competition. A protocol is a stack of technologies that becomes more stable, more secure, and more valuable as more participants join the network and contribute to it. Bitcoin is a protocol, with no marketing team, no CEO, and an unknown creator in Satoshi Nakamoto, and that decentralisation is precisely what makes it impossible to shut down or capture. Crypto projects are the opposite: They are businesses with known founders, executive teams, marketing budgets, and investors whose financial interests are tied to price appreciation. FTX, Terra Luna, and Celsius were the predictable outcome of that structure.[4][5][6]
| Bitcoin | Crypto | What this means | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type of technology | Protocol | One-off technology | A protocol is a stack of technologies that becomes more stable, secure, and valuable as more participants join. A one-off technology gets replaced by competition. |
| Consensus mechanism | Proof of Work | Varies (mostly Proof of Stake) | Proof of Work requires real-world energy expenditure to validate transactions, making the chain extremely costly to attack. Proof of Stake relies on financial collateral, where more money means more power, which is cheaper to simulate and concentrate. |
| Leadership | None (Satoshi unknown) | Known founders, executive teams | Bitcoin has no CEO, no marketing team, and no known creator. Crypto projects are run by identifiable people with financial interests tied to price. |
| Funding model | None | Investors, VCs, pre-mines | Crypto projects typically have backers whose returns depend on token appreciation, creating structural conflicts of interest. |
| Failure mode | Protocol survives individual failures | Project collapses with its team | FTX, Terra Luna, and Celsius were not edge cases. They were the predictable outcome of the crypto structure. |
| Can be shut down? | No | Yes | Decentralisation with no leadership makes Bitcoin impossible to capture or shut down. Crypto projects have identifiable people who can be pressured, arrested, or who simply leave. |
Is Bitcoin Used by Criminals?
Crime-related transactions represent less than 1% of all activity across the entire crypto space, and criminals are actively moving away from Bitcoin specifically because it is the most transparent financial ledger ever created.[7][8]
Every Bitcoin transaction is recorded publicly, permanently, and verifiably by anyone. That is the opposite of how criminal operations prefer to work. The UN estimates that between 2% and 5% of global GDP is connected to money laundering and illicit activity, conducted primarily through physical cash.[9] Bitcoin on-chain transactions are fully traceable; the narrative that Bitcoin is a criminal tool persists largely because data sources do not separate Bitcoin from the broader crypto industry, and they are structurally different things.
The question worth redirecting is: In which system is violence, war, and crime not merely facilitated but structurally profitable?
Is Bitcoin a Ponzi Scheme?
Bitcoin is structurally the inverse of a Ponzi scheme; the fiat monetary system, by contrast, fits the definition more precisely than Bitcoin does.
A Ponzi scheme promises returns to early participants, funds those returns with money from new participants, with no real value creation behind it, and collapses when the inflow of new money slows.[10] The fiat monetary system creates new money by issuing debt; governments, central banks, and commercial banks add trillions of dollars to the system by expanding the debt load, a process that must continue because the entire system would collapse if it stopped. This benefits those at the top of the pyramid directly while imposing inflation on everyone else.
Bitcoin’s structure inverts this: There will only ever be 21 million units, the supply cap is written into the protocol and defended by the network itself, and the system does not require new participants to sustain value. It is a global network of humans connected through scarce money tethered to energy. As Jeff Booth writes in the foreword to Beyond Money: Regaining Sovereignty, Rediscovering Humanity: “For the first time in history, each person on the planet has a choice to leave an extractive system and move to a cooperative one.”[11]
What Gives Bitcoin Value if It Is “Backed by Nothing?”
Bitcoin is backed by mathematics, physics, and a fixed supply enforced by a global network; fiat currencies are backed by trust in institutions that have a 5,000-year track record of inflating their currencies into collapse.
Since 1971, the US dollar has been backed by collective belief in its value, with no gold behind it. Every fiat currency in circulation today, dollars, euros, pesos, yen, is a currency declared to have value by decree. The belief that unlimited pieces of paper can fairly and accurately represent finite human life force energy is the foundation on which the current system rests. Bitcoin inverts this: Its rules are based on mathematics and physics, enforced by a distributed network with no central authority.
The question is whether trusting institutions that have repeatedly hyperinflated currencies throughout recorded history is the more rational default, or whether a system backed by mathematics and energy offers a stronger foundation.
Do I Need a Whole Bitcoin?
One Bitcoin equals 100 million satoshis, its smallest unit, so it is divisible. You do not need to own a whole Bitcoin.
The framing of “a whole Bitcoin” treats it like a collectible, something we either own completely or have missed. But Bitcoin is a monetary network. You can start with any fraction because the relevant measure is purchasing power preserved over time, not units held. A productive reframe is: What percentage of your savings are currently sitting in an asset designed to lose purchasing power year over year?
Is Bitcoin as Concentrated as the Existing Financial System?
Bitcoin concentration does not translate into more power or control over the network, which is the structural difference that makes the comparison to fiat wealth concentration misleading.
In the fiat system, more money produces more money through interest, leverage, and access to credit that ordinary people do not have. In Bitcoin, there are only four things you can do with your holdings: Save them, spend them, lose them, or earn more by providing value to others.
- Saving it or losing it removes it from circulation and makes every other holder’s share marginally more valuable through scarcity
- Spending redistributes Bitcoin back into the network
- Accumulating more Bitcoin over time requires providing genuine value, because you cannot print more
As Jeff Booth explained in my 2023 interview, concentration of wealth in Bitcoin does not mean more power over the network. Glassnode’s data also clarifies the headline figure: When exchange holdings (which represent millions of individual users pooled into single addresses) are adjusted for, the “2% controls 95%” narrative falls apart; the more accurate figure is closer to 2% controlling 70%, still significant but distributing over time as more people hold their own keys.[12][13]
Can Governments Ban Bitcoin?
Governments can restrict where Bitcoin is held and how it is accessed within their jurisdictions, but they cannot stop the protocol itself, and the evidence supports this.
China has banned Bitcoin multiple times; miners and node operators in China are still running. Bitcoin can operate on satellites, mesh networks, radio waves, SMS, and off-grid infrastructure. There is no central server to shut down.
What governments can control is custodial Bitcoin: If you hold Bitcoin on an exchange, that exchange is a company with an address, a CEO, and a jurisdiction, and it can be targeted. If you hold your own private keys, there is no vault to open and no third party to pressure. The distinction between self-custody and exchange custody is, in this framing, the distinction between financial sovereignty and financial permission.
Can Bitcoin Be Seized?
Bitcoin held in self-custody cannot be seized by the same mechanisms governments have historically used to confiscate wealth, which represents a structural break from every previous form of money. However, Bitcoin held with third parties can.
In 1933, the US government ordered every American citizen to surrender their gold by May 1st at approximately $21 an ounce. Non-compliance carried fines of up to $10,000, ten years in prison, or both. A year later, the government revalued that gold at $35 an ounce, a 69% markup on property it had confiscated from its own citizens.[11]
Bitcoin held in self-custody has no vault, no custodian, and no third party to compel. It exists as decentralised mathematical proof on a global network; no transaction can be authorised without the private keys to sign it. This is what “not your keys, not your coins” actually means: For the first time in recorded history, individuals can hold wealth in a form that requires no permission from any institution to access or transfer. Bitcoin on an exchange remains as vulnerable as gold in a bank. Self-custodied Bitcoin is not.
What does it mean for sovereignty, individual and collective, that a genuinely unseizable form of money exists for the first time in human history? That question sits at the intersection of monetary design and human consciousness. If this framework resonates, Beyond Money goes deeper into exactly this crossroads. You can find it at book.daniella.io.
Sources
[1] Henn, K. (2023, July 23). Reducing greenhouse gas emissions through landfill gas conversion. Tetra Tech. https://www.tetratech.com/insights/reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions-through-landfill-gas-conversion/
[2] Batten, D. (2023, February 19). The majority of Bitcoin mining is fueled by sustainable energy. Bitcoin Magazine. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-uses-mostly-sustainable-energy
[3] Caetano, G. (2025, October 9). How many people own Bitcoin in 2026? Latest statistics, insights, and ownership breakdown. Bleap Finance. https://www.bleap.finance/en-us/blog/how-many-people-own-bitcoin
[4] Ray, S. (2023, April 17). Terra Luna founder Do Kwon transferred $7 million to law firm just before coin’s collapse. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/04/17/terra-luna-founder-do-kwon-transferred-7-million-to-law-firm-just-before-coins-collapse-that-triggered-crypto-meltdown/
[5] Cheung, B. (Reporter). (2024, March 28). Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for cryptocurrency fraud [Video]. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/sam-bankman-fried-sentenced-to-25-years-in-prison-207880261762
[6] Reuters. (2025, May 8). Crypto mogul Alex Mashinsky sentenced to 12 years in prison over billion dollar Celsius fraud. Yahoo News. https://www.yahoo.com/news/crypto-mogul-alex-mashinsky-sentenced-222742667.html
[7] Chainalysis Team. (2025, January 15). 2025 crypto crime trends. Chainalysis. https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2025-crypto-crime-report-introduction/
[8] Chainalysis Team. (2023, January 12). 2023 crypto crime trends. Chainalysis. https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2023-crypto-crime-report-introduction/
[9] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (n.d.). Money laundering. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/money-laundering/overview.html
[10] U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (n.d.). Ponzi scheme. Investor.gov. https://www.investor.gov/protect-your-investments/fraud/types-fraud/ponzi-scheme
[11] Liberati, D. (2025). Beyond Money: Regaining sovereignty, rediscovering humanity. https://book.daniella.io
[12] Schultze-Kraft, R. (2021, February 2). No, Bitcoin ownership is not highly concentrated — but whales are accumulating. Glassnode Insights. https://insights.glassnode.com/bitcoin-supply-distribution/
[13] BitInfoCharts. (n.d.). Top 100 richest Bitcoin addresses and Bitcoin distribution. https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html
[14] Krugman, P. (1998, June 10). Why most economists’ predictions are wrong. Red Herring Magazine. (Note: The original article is no longer available on the current Red Herring website, but its existence and content are widely cited and verified by multiple sources)