Nothing in this blog is investment advice or an inducement to make a particular investment. All views expressed are solely my opinion.
The date is February 5th, 2026, and I have to say what an insane start to the new year. Complete mayhem in Minneapolis, US operations in Venezuela, essentially all crypto gains since Donald Trump took office have been eviscerated, gold has soared to all time highs of $5500, silver hit all time highs of $121. Gold and silver prices have corrected within the last week but nonetheless, gold is still up roughly 65% in the last year and silver is up roughly 170%. Congratulations to all the gold and silver holders who have suffered from a lot of grief over the years from investors because their investments finally paid off. For some reason there seems to be a level of animosity between the precious metal and Bitcoin communities, and I have never understood this. What do the three assets have in common? They are all forms of HARD money. I challenge you to price a car or a house in gold or Bitcoin so that you can put into perspective how worthless paper money is. Each category has its pros and cons respective of each other. I could probably create an entire blog post from that subject but that will have to be another day. My goal for this post is to help people understand the core differences of Bitcoin and why it is different from the thousands of other cryptocurrencies that have flooded the market. I am also going to do my best to explain Bitcoin mining in plain English because this is a crucial part of the Bitcoin network that most people do not understand.
Five years ago, when I jumped down the crypto rabbit hole, the market itself looked a lot different than it currently does. It was an unregulated, wild west market that had not been introduced to wall street yet. There were so many narratives out there that described this vision of a new money system that would be run on the blockchains of independent utility networks. Depending on what Tik Tok your algorithm fed you that day, this could have been the likes of XRP, Solana, Ethereum and so on and so forth. It would be a direct threat to legacy banking as we know it. The debt-based Ponzi scheme of fractional reserve banking would finally come to an end. I fell for this narrative and wholeheartedly believed in it until the GENIUS Act was passed last July. The Genius Act was the first bill that gave regulatory framework for stablecoins in the United States. What is a stablecoin? A stablecoin is just a digital token that is backed 1:1 with the US dollar. In other words, it’s a digital shit token that can be created out of thin air with the press of a button instead of having to physically print the paper form. Legally, stablecoins have to be backed by cash reserves or US Treasuries but I think you get the drift here if you read the last blog I wrote. The key takeaway from the Genius Act is that it prohibits paying interest, yield, or rewards to stablecoin holders. If an independent stablecoin issuer could offer high yields to their clients, this would draw millions of dollars of liquidity from legacy banks essentially putting them out of business. You think they were going to let this happen? No shot. It is pretty apparent now that digital dollars via stablecoins is the direction things are headed. I predict every big financial institution will have their own stablecoins in the future and run on their own independent blockchain. So, this narrative of a new money system with hand-picked cryptocurrencies seems like a reality that will not exist in my opinion. If anything, I think there is a better likelihood of gold playing a part in a financial reform, but only time will tell. The other one that cracks me up is this narrative that the CLARITY Act that is supposed to pass sometime in 2026 is going to magically help the crypto market. When was the last time the government got involved with a monetary policy and made things better? It is for these reasons that the only hope I have is Bitcoin in self-custody.
Let’s move on to some of the basics of Bitcoin mining and how it works. Think of Bitcoin as a big public notebook that records every transaction — who sent Bitcoin to whom. This notebook is called the blockchain, and thousands of computers around the world keep copies of it. Bitcoin mining is how new pages get added to that notebook and how the network stays honest.
Here’s the simple version:
- People send Bitcoin transactions.
Example: You send Bitcoin to a friend. - Those transactions need to be confirmed.
Computers called miners collect new transactions and try to bundle them into a new “page” (called a block). - Miners compete to solve a puzzle.
To add the new block, miners must solve a very hard math puzzle. It’s not clever math — it’s basically guessing numbers extremely fast until one works. - First miner to solve it wins.
The winning miner adds the block to the blockchain, and everyone else updates their copy. - The winner gets paid in Bitcoin.
As a reward, the miner receives newly created Bitcoin plus transaction fees.
This consensus mechanism is called Proof of Work and is a key differentiator when compared to other cryptocurrencies. The “work” is all the computer power and electricity spent trying guesses to solve the puzzle. When people say, “Bitcoin isn’t backed by anything”, this is why there is a sound argument to suggest Bitcoin is technically backed by raw electricity. Without Proof of Work, someone could easily cheat the system. Proof of Work makes cheating expensive and difficult because solving the puzzle takes massive computing power. Computing power costs real money and electricity, meaning you cannot fake the work. So, the network trusts whoever solved the puzzle because they proved they spent real resources. The mining process is crucial in maintaining the security and integrity of the network. I would say 98% of the other cryptocurrencies that exist today use a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. Proof of Stake secures a blockchain by requiring participants to lock up coins as collateral instead of spending electricity to mine blocks. This sounds great because you don’t have to consume electricity, however I would argue that decentralization and security is extremely compromised using this form of consensus. Most Altcoins have cheaper transaction fees and faster transaction speeds when compared to Bitcoin, but at what cost? You sacrifice the core principle of decentralization in the process. In a proof of stake system, you can influence the protocol by owning a large portion of the supply, essentially a pay to play mentality no different than the corporate big dogs that rule America. Many Altcoins also claim to have a fixed supply like Bitcoin, but the rules could be changed at any time. Solana has changed the supply of their token several times that I am aware of. I prefer a fixed supply of 21 million.
Since the last time I wrote, Tucker Carlson claimed the CIA created Bitcoin and mentions of Jeffrey Epstein being tied to some Bitcoin developers from the Epstein files have been the most recent fear tactics to scare the public away from Bitcoin. It isn’t the first and won’t be the last attempt to make claims about who Satoshi Nakamoto is. It does appear that Jeffrey Epstein did donate to some developers that were working on the Bitcoin protocol back in the day. It’s also possible that the CIA could have potentially tried to influence the direction of Bitcoin in the early stages. However, time and time again my response is the same. Bitcoin ended up being OPEN SOURCE CODE. There is no backdoor, no CEO, and no allegiance to any president or government. If you take away anything from today let it be this. Bitcoin is the most secure, decentralized, scarce, and politically neutral digital money humanity has created. This is why I say that Bitcoin is not crypto. Bitcoin will continue to do what it was designed to do, regardless of who is running the country. I must warn you, do not be fooled by the influx of shit products that have come out like Bitcoin ETF’s. Do not use leverage or borrow against your Bitcoin. I believe there is a plot to centralize as much of the Bitcoin supply as possible, so handing your Bitcoin over to an institution defeats the entire purpose. Michael Saylor is a prime example of this. You cannot borrow billions of dollars to buy Bitcoin and not be subordinate to a higher power. Holding Bitcoin in self-custody on a cold storage wallet is the only sovereign route to go. That being said, I encourage you to keep doing your own research and learning about this amazing tool that has been gifted to us. Until the next time, my friends.
The Bitcoin Ag Guy 