Our Weekly Bitcoin Review

In the cryptocurrency space,  no player or asset controls the market as a whole more than Bitcoin (BTC). With this new weekly feature, Modern Consensus will give the latest updates and big news stories from the previous week. The price of Bitcoin currently sits around $56,000, while it was at a high of $64,000 earlier in the week, a significant price drop. 

Sports

Odell Beckham Jr., a wide receiver for the Los Angeles Rams and an extremely popular football player, is now accepting his entire NFL salary in Bitcoin. With a $4.25 million salary, this equates to a little more than 75 BTC a year. He announced this big change on Twitter, along with a partnership with Cashapp, which allows users to trade BTC. In addition he announced a one million dollar giveaway in BTC on the same post. This goes along with the continued adoption of cryptocurrency with major league sports. Another big piece of sports news in the crypto world is The Staples Center, home of the Los Angeles Lakers, had a name change to the Crypto.com Arena. This is only the beginning of things to come in relation to crypto in the sports world.

A Bitcoin Metropolis

The country of El Salvador is enacting its newest BTC escapade in its South-Eastern region, La Unión. In September El Salvador became the first country in the world to recognize BTC as legal tender. Now, around the base of Conchagua Volcano, the nation is building its very own Bitcoin city. Not only will they build the city in the shape of a coin, but BTC will fund the construction of the city. Geothermal energy from the volcano will be used to power both the city and the mining of BTC to fund the city. 

Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, claims the city will have no carbon emissions. Additionally the city will have no property or income taxes, making it a great place in which to live and invest. Everything in the city will be paid for and revolve around BTC; if someone is going to the movies or out to dinner, they will be paying in BTC. Bukele went so far as to claim that with the way the city is being designed, El Salvador could someday be the “financial capital of the world.” A bold claim for a country that was rated 103rd in GDP rating for 2020. The first bonds for the city will begin to be released in the start of 2022, and the government is eager to begin working on this project.

There are issues with this idea, like how will a bear market affect the construction of this Bitcoin Metropolis? How will other nations react to this idea, will they try to do something similar? This is the first city of its kind in the world, but it certainly won’t be the last. Bukele is taking an interesting risk with this move; the impacts that this will have on the country’s infrastructure and economy will be substantial in the years to come.

Mining

Texas has seen an influx of miners moving to the Lone Star State in recent months. This comes even after the state saw a series of rolling blackouts during the month of February. None of the miners seem to be deterred, it already houses 10% of the world’s BTC miners, and that number could potentially double by the end of the year. The ERCOT grid acts independently from the rest of the country’s power grid, and the state government says that they have the power issues under control. However, many remain skeptical and are nervous of what this influx of miners will mean for the power grid, mainly because the mining of BTC takes a tremendous amount of power. 

Bitcoin mining is booming in North America. Earlier this year, Celsius Network, a major fintech platform, invested $200 million in Bitcoin mining equipment with the companies Core Scientific and Rhodium Enterprises, which are both on the rise. Now the company has announced an additional $300 million investment in additional mining equipment. Celsius is already one of the largest mining companies in North America, and with this investment, it moves closer to that goal.