photo #4447342

4/Ever ahead of the times, American industrialist titan Henry Ford actually proposed an energy currency soon after, in 1921. Ford’s “units of power,” generated from the world’s largest power plant, were to solve the problem of “the international banking group to which we have grown so accustomed that we think there is no other desirable standard.”BITCOIN: AN ENERGY-SECURED SYSTEM OF ENERGY TRANSFERENCEIn the case of Bitcoin, that new component of trust is secured through energy.Bitcoin is not only portable but digitally portable, complementing our digital era. It’s not merely scarce, but its scarcity is defined in an energy-agnostic way. This links back to Ford’s dream of an energy-backed currency, but with a fundamental difference. Ford’s envisioned energy currency, tied to the world’s largest power plant, would have been susceptible to vulnerabilities associated with centralization. In contrast, Bitcoin leverages energy from any source available.The decentralized nature of computing power creates a resilient and robust system. It is through this energy itself that the Bitcoin network secures this new component of trust — cryptographic proof.In this light, it is no coincidence that Michael Saylor paints the vision of Bitcoin as the solution to the problem of how to store energy over time and across space. According to a recent poll, for example, 76% of investors want BTC to be more “environmentally friendly” — which misses the mark when it comes to the relationship between Bitcoin’s energy use (or, in other words, its means of securing the network) and our ability to effectively capitalize on the life energy we devote.With its distinctive ability to store and transfer energy, the Bitcoin network fixes this dilemma.Not only is the network secured by energy, but it has the potential to effectively enable individuals to properly capitalize on the use of their life energy. This means Bitcoin has already ventured into the unprecedented territory of an energy currency — not just for the benefit of the individual, but of society at large.X22