Bitcoin Mining - Reductions In Number Effects
Bitcoin can run securely even with only 1–5% of today’s hashrate.
Miguel’s eyes warmed as his tea cooled slowly. “And seeds,” he said, “have outlasted every empire.”
Night had settled over the greenhouse, the kind of soft Oregon dusk where the air seems to listen. Alexandra was sitting on an overturned bucket, polishing the clay dust from a handful of bean seeds. Miguel had been checking a solar charger clipped to one of the trellises, watching its tiny LED flicker in the dim light. He sat down and almost seemed to have slipped into a dream.
“Are you day dreaming Miguel? And what a strange day on the markets,” Alexandra said without looking up. “Bitcoin dropped again. Everything did. Feels like an exhale no one wanted to take.”
Miguel smiled quietly. Ah yes the market, when I was growing up as a kid and someone said [the market], it meant the open-air Market and Market Hall down the street where we got food and many other of our daily needs. The Market today usually refers to giant [casinos] where many gamble on vaporware of varying kinds and just like in any casino; the house always wins! [Global Liquidity is contracting,] he said with the tone of someone naming a birdcall he’d known since childhood. “The global system breathing in.”
“Or choking,” Alexandra offered, with a wry grin.
“Breathing in can often feel like choking,” Miguel said. “The human world only trusts the out-breath — expansion, liquidity, prices rising. But contraction is the real teacher. And Bitcoin is one of the easiest assets to liquidate quickly, [help we need fiat cash, lets sell that Bitcoin thingie] and Ethereum and Solana - sorry for swearing!” Miguel giggled, enjoyably.
She rolled a seed between her fingers. “Yes of course, it’s not just Bitcoin and what amazes me is how Bitcoin doesn’t break when this happens. It bends. It sheds miners. And then its difficulty just… adjusts. As if the system quietly says, [Alright then, fewer of us will do the work.]”
Miguel looked out across the rows of young brassicas. “It’s pruning,” he said. “The same way these plants shed the weakest stems after a late frost. Stress forces adaptation; nothing artificial about that. And you know, in many ways Satoshi created or absorbed AI into physical computing networks via their work; Satoshi(s) that is.”
“So if the price drops further,” she continued, “Bitcoin survives because the difficulty shifts? Come to think of it [price] is completely subjective in any case”
“More than survives. It recalibrates itself for whoever remains. That’s what keeps disturbing me, in a good way. It behaves less like a machine and more like a living organism. However, we also have to be honest here and objective, it is the [price] perspective which has driven the wide-spread adoption to date. Hard money eventually resets fiat-flab; though, we are not quite there yet.”
Alexandra laughed softly. “So Bitcoin is a kind of digital mycelium? Oh and I love the [we are not quite there yet] my children often ask [are we there yet].”
This brought a little light laughter into the early evening air.
“Ah yes, as a great grandfather, I have heard that often over many years and that’s not far off, your reference to mycelium.” Miguel said. “It listens to energy the way seeds listen to light and moisture. When the environment becomes harsh, the system contracts its energy demand. When the environment becomes abundant, it expands. No central planner. No emergency committee. No IMF, or BIS”
She folded her hands over the seeds in her lap. “You know what keeps striking me? Fiat systems require constant rescue. Bitcoin rescues itself. And BIS, Bitcoin Instills Security?”
“Exactly,” Miguel said. “That’s the philosophical fork in the road.
One system collapses without intervention. The other becomes more efficient under pressure.”
Alexandra looked up. “Is that why you think it matters beyond money? Beyond markets?”
Miguel nodded. “Because it models a principle we’ve forgotten:
Resilience isn’t maintaining what you have; it’s adapting to what comes.
Seeds know this. Forests know this. Mycelium knows this.”
“And Bitcoin,” she added.
“And Bitcoin,” he agreed. “In fact Bitcoin has created a complete discussion matrix without trying. For instance look at all the [stars] which have emerged via YouTube videos, podcasts etc, etc.”
She tilted her head. “Do you think this is why so many people misunderstand it? They see volatility as fragility. But maybe volatility is actually its metabolism.”
Miguel’s eyebrows rose. “Yes. Precisely. In the fiat world, volatility signals loss of control. In living systems, volatility is a sign of life, as Michael Saylor has stated [Volatility is Vitality]. The wind, the seasons, the flowering, the dying — all cycles of fluctuation.”
Alexandra looked out at the greenhouse, its shadows and vines echoing with the quiet hum of night insects.
“Miguel,” she said softly, “If the price drops…and drops…and keeps dropping…does Bitcoin still adapt?”
“It adapts until the last miner is standing,” he replied. “Difficulty will fall until mining becomes profitable again. It doesn’t matter if there are thousands of miners or twenty. The system tightens around whoever remains.”
“And if just one remains?”
Miguel smiled. “Then that one miner would produce blocks more easily than the entire world can imagine today and let’s not forget the nodes. The system contracts to its smallest viable state — like a seed embryo in winter, conserving everything it needs to survive.”
Alexandra sat with that for a moment.
“A seed in winter,” she whispered. “Waiting for the thaw.”
“Exactly,” Miguel said. “And when liquidity expands again — when the world emerges from whatever cycle it’s in — the network blooms.”
She held up the bean seed she’d been rubbing smooth.
“So Bitcoin isn’t a fortress. It’s a seed.”
Miguel’s eyes warmed. “And seeds,” he said, “have outlasted every empire.”
Thank you as always for reading along with out emerging Bitseed World; more soon.