On Tuesday Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, released a new video showing a geothermal facility with Bitcoin mining machines operating on the side of a volcano. The original video, which Bukele shared Tuesday afternoon on Twitter, has already received nearly 2 million views. It shows a government-branded shipping container arriving at the geothermal plant. The container is full of Bitcoin mining rigs, with technicians installing them. Bukele’s caption for the video was just, “First steps…” The video appears to announce that the president is following through on promises made last June, when, just days after announcing he would make Bitcoin legal tender, Bukele invited Bitcoin miners to take advantage of new facilities being built specifically for the industry at a state-owned geothermal electric company. In just four months, the president has managed to make El Salvador the first nation to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, distribute $30 worth of Bitcoin to all of the country’s citizens via the state-sponsored Chivo app, install 200 Bitcoin ATMs within the country, purchase 700 Bitcoin for the national reserve, and begin to mine the hardest money known to man in a way that is 100% renewable. Notably, Bukele’s initial volcano Bitcoin mining plans were shared just months after Elon Musk announced that Tesla wouldn’t accept Bitcoin due to its energy usage, which is required to secure the network and $794 billion worth of monetary property at the time of writing. Since then, Musk has been unwilling to begin accepting Bitcoin payments at Tesla again, even as available energy data has undermined his company’s decisions. While Musk has shown he does not yet understand the Bitcoin network’s relationship to energy production and why it’s beneficial for his core renewable energy industry, or the humanitarian property rights issues it can solve for the world’s nearly 8 billion people, the benefits of Bitcoin are not lost on President Bukele at all, who has remained steadfast in his conviction and leadership of a Bitcoin-fueled financial revolution in El Salvador Bukele has been evangelizing Bitcoin for months. He explained his objectives for volcano Bitcoin mining at the state run geothermal power plant in detail on the “What Bitcoin Did” podcast on June 23. Bukele said, “Geothermal, it’s a very, very clean source of energy and it’s probably one of the — I would say the best, because there’s a lot of other green energy projects that are good, but it has almost no downsides.” When describing the potential of geothermal energy over other popular renewable energy sources, Bukele said, “It’s just the Earth’s energy. And it works 24/7, 365 days a year. It will probably work for the next 500 million years, or whatever, just before the Sun absorbs the Earth or something. So, it’s going to be there; it’s there 24/7”. He continued outlining plans for the first state-run volcanic Bitcoin mining plant, “It’s going to cost $480 million, so that’s going to be a legacy for the country because we are building infrastructure paid by Bitcoin.”
BITCOIN VS. DIGITAL FOOL’S GOLD
“Fool’s gold” is a common nickname for pyrite. It got this nickname because it’s practically worthless, but it has a look that deceives people into believing it’s real gold. With a little practice, there are many easy tests anyone can use to quickly tell the difference between pyrite and gold. The nickname “fool’s gold” has long been used by gold buyers and prospectors who were amused by enthusiastic fools who thought they had found gold. The ignorance of these fools caused many of them to lose their savings and fall into poverty. GOLD AND PYRITE Gold is found in nature mainly as nuggets in some river sediments or, to a lesser extent, embedded in rocks. Its name comes from the Latin aurum, which means brilliant. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, bright yellow metal that does not react with other chemicals or oxidize (it does not rust). Due to these characteristics of brightness and no chemical change, gold has always been considered precious by humans, being used to mint coins by major cultures. As it is a soft metal, it must be hardened to be used and is often mixed with silver and copper to form stronger metal alloys. The fact that gold is malleable allows it to be used for jewelry, as it is possible to mold it without breaking it. Gold is also used in the electronics industry and as a store of value. Gold is scarce, which contributes to its high valuesince humanity values scarcity. Fool’s gold, as pyrite is informally known, does not have any of gold’ main characteristics other than the bright yellow color. Pyrite is not composed of any precious metal, but rather is a mixture of iron and sulfur, forming an iron sulfide. The color and brightness of pyrite resembles that of gold and can deceive beginners and the most naive, but the similarities stop there. Unlike gold, pyrite has square or hexagonal features and reacts with other chemical elements or when heated, usually giving off a characteristic sulfur dioxide smell (rotten eggs). Pyrite, despite its similar coloring to gold, cannot be used for jewelry, as it is not malleable like gold, but rather brittle. Pyrite is also an abundant mineral and was first called fool’s gold in the California gold rush, when less-experienced miners believed this yellowish, shiny material was real gold. In the mining industry there are two categories of minerals: ores, which are the material of economic interest, and gangue mineral, which is material with no commercial value that needs to be separated from the ore. By definition, gold is an ore while pyrite is a gangue mineral. In this way, it is dangerous to believe that “all that glitters is gold,” like the lady in “Stairway to Heaven.” BITCOIN AND SHITCOINS Bitcoin is popularly known as digital gold because of one of its main characteristics: scarcity. Bitcoin is scarcer than gold itself, as its offer is inelastic. In addition to absolute scarcity, Bitcoin also has several characteristics that are irreplicable by other cryptocurrencies, such as being the only truly decentralized blockchain (and therefore the only censorship-resistant blockchain), being by far the network with the most computational power and having an immaculate design (without pre-mined tokens and no advantages for the “king’s friends”), besides having a gigantic network effect. Alternative cryptocurrencies, also known as altcoins or shitcoins, have none of these characteristics. Like pyrite, shitcoins are not scarce and there is an unlimited supply of similar and generic projects. Shitcoins aren’t decentralized either. Clear examples of this are the participation of Vitalik Buterin in Ethereum and Charles Hoskinson in Cardano. Or more generally: any coin that has a known founding team is not decentralized enough, as these coins are not immune to enforcement and blackmail, meaning they can be turned off, for example, if someone threatens family members of key participants of those teams. Decentralization doesn’t just mean running on an independent network, but also means that ordinary users should be able to validate the network themselves. In Bitcoin this is possible and the cost to run a full node is low (less than $200 in total). On the Ethereum network nodes can be run on Amazon Web Services (a centralized company) and the cost is around $175 monthly ($0.243/hour). In Ethereum 2.0 (a major update that might come off the paper someday), users will need to have at least 32 ETH to be able to run a validator node, which at current prices means almost $110,000 to be able to validate the Ethereum network. The computational power of blockchains is also a relevant factor to guarantee the security of cryptocurrencies, and as seen in the comparison above, there is only one blockchain with relevant computational power: Bitcoin. THE RACE FOR DIGITAL GOLD As with the California gold rush, there are now thousands of coins trying to attract the most naive. These are people who still don’t understand the irreplicable characteristics of Bitcoin and naively seek to find “the next Bitcoin.” After all, “it’s easier for this shitcoin to go from $1 to $2 than for bitcoin to go from $50,000 to $100,000,” or so their flawed thinking goes. And just as with physical fool’s gold, this misunderstanding of the qualities that make digital gold truly valuable does and will continue to cause people to lose their savings. But then, how do you know if a particular cryptocurrency is a digital fool’s gold? Ask yourself: Are there any known founders? Is there a marketing team trying to sell this coin? Is it possible to run your own node at low costvalue or can only the very rich can validate this blockchain? Are there coins that were pre-mined and distributed to founders or early investors? Are there people with privileges on the network who can validate transactions for the simple reason that they have more of the cryptocurrency than others (or, in other words, whoever has more can do more)? If the answer to any of these characteristics is
MULTISIG SETUP SAVES BITCOIN STACK FROM HOME BURGLARY
Bitcoin user Callum McArthur’s house was broken into last month, and the burglars stole his hardware wallet and recovery words which stored his bitcoin stack. However, even though the criminals managed to get away with McArthur’s devices, they didn’t know that the keys they took were part of a multisig setup. As a result, the burglars couldn’t spend one satoshi, and McArthur’s stack was left intact. “You have to diversify your security for your most important investments, it’s extraordinarily important. And that’s exactly what multisig is doing,” McArthur said while sharing his story on the By the Horns podcast. “Otherwise you’re generally talking about 10 to 15 years of your hard labor…and the possibility of that all being gone…you’re not getting those years back. Don’t skip on security.” McArthur used a 2-of-3 multisig service from Casa, a bitcoin services company, in which he held the majority of the keys and had Casa function as a backup provider. The company was central to helping him deactivate the robbed key and switch his setup to restore complete control over his funds after the burglary. “Provided that I purchase myself a new Ledger, deactivate that previous key, sync up my new key with Casa…I can get back to using my Ledger and my phone,” he said. “It’s an easy process, they walk you through every step of the way.” Despite protecting against burglaries, multisigs and physical separation of keys are essential to protect against another attack vector — $5 wrench attacks. In this type of attack, the criminal leverages cheap tools to torture a victim until they comply and reveal the passwords or keys to access the funds. Last week, a tech millionaire in Madrid had his bitcoin stack stolen after a group of criminals invaded his house and forced him to hand over control to an online account, Newsweek reported, effectively stealing millions in BTC.
SPORTSBET.IO DONATES 2 BITCOIN TO ENGLISH FOOTBALL CLUB SOUTHAMPTON
Betting platform Sportsbet.io donated 2 bitcoin to Premier League football club Southampton. The donation set up a new fund that seeks to “support the causes that matter most to [Southampton’s] fans,” the company said in a statement. But the club can also decide to retain, or HODL, a portion of the donation to capitalize on future price appreciation. Sportsbet.io, a popular bitcoin-led betting platform, has donated 2 bitcoin to English football club Southampton, the company said in a statement on November 10. The donation will compose a fund, Crypto Fan Fund, to aid the club in supporting the needs of its supporters. “Throughout the season, the fund will be used to support the causes that matter most to fans,” per the statement. “All decisions on how and where the fund is used will be made by Saints Voice, Southampton FC’s long-standing supporter panel, who will work closely with the club and with Sportsbet.io to determine how to make the greatest impact.” The donation consolidates the position of Sportsbet.io as Southampton’s main sponsor for the 2021/22 season while gifting the club with a scarce good that historically has appreciated dramatically in price. “Unlike traditional fiat donations, the value of the fund can shift and increase in line with the market, allowing for the potential of greater investments in future seasons,” according to the statement. “Sportsbet.io will underwrite the fund for the value of 2 BTC at the point of donation, guaranteeing the club access to at least the minimum value of the fund, plus any additional profits accrued from deflation.” Sportsbet.io was founded in 2016 and today is a leading bitcoin-led sportsbook operator, offering betting options for a wide range of sports and eSports. The partnership with Southampton seeks to support the club’s efforts to outperform the elite of English football, for which fans are utterly essential. “The opportunity to use Bitcoin in such an innovative way by setting up this fan fund is incredibly powerful,” Helen Edwards, head of responsible gambling at Sportsbet.io, said. “Supporters are the lifeblood of the game and continue to demonstrate their unrivaled passion and loyalty every matchday.”
ROBINHOOD’S BITCOIN WITHDRAWAL FEATURE HAS 1.6 MILLION PEOPLE ON WAITLIST
Robinhood COO said 1.6 million people are on the company’s waitlist for withdrawing bitcoin. The long-awaited feature would come as a cryptocurrency wallet to the firm’s trading app. It is still unclear when customers will be able to take ownership of their bitcoin. Robinhood now has 1.6 million people on the waitlist for its bitcoin and cryptocurrency wallet, its COO Christine Brown said on Tuesday, per a Reuters report. Among other properties, the wallet, to be added to its app, includes the vital feature of withdrawing bitcoin into a self-sovereign wallet of choice, something the broker currently doesn’t offer in its trading platform. The way the Robinhood trading app currently works, users buy and sell representations of BTC and any other cryptocurrency instead of the bitcoin itself — effectively an IOU. A customer can only be sure they have bitcoin once they transfer it to a wallet for which they control the private key. Robinhood opened the waitlist for the withdrawing feature in September after repeatedly hinting that it would enable such features over the past year. Since its launch, the waitlist has gathered much interest, showing customers’ desire to take ownership of their bitcoin. When evidence of the feature appeared, Robinhood CEO told Bloomberg that “the ability to deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies is tricky to do with scale, and we want to make sure it’s done correctly and properly,” hinting that it wouldn’t be a quick one to implement. However, bitcoin withdrawals should be at the top of any service provider’s priority list for the simple fact that without such a feature, users aren’t taking part in the Bitcoin network at all. Indeed, running a node is the best-case scenario, but using a self-custody wallet is the bare minimum — not your keys, not your coins.
INTERVIEW: DISCUSSING PANAMA’S CRYPTO BILL WITH ITS ARCHITECTS
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “Panama?” The Panama Canal? Please don’t say Van Halen’s catchy ode to nothing resembling actual Panama. Having gone there for the first time this September, my eyes were opened to the beauty of the people and their land in this historically key country. While its canal has been contributing greatly to the world’s physical economy since opening in 1914, Gabriel Silva and Felipe Echandi are helping Panama add to the digital economy wave that has been swelling steadily since Bitcoin’s birth. Read on to hear directly from them on this vital bill for Panama and the world. Silva is an independent deputy in the Panamanian Parliament, where he has served the 8-7 circuit since 2019. In 2016, as a Chevening scholar, he graduated with a master’s degree in public policy at the University of Oxford. In 2017, as part of the Fulbright Program, he completed a master of laws degree at Columbia University. He has presented legislative proposals related to anti-corruption, government transparency, educational reforms, and mental health among others. Echandi is the cofounder and CEO of Cuanto, a Y-Combinator-backed startup that helps creators monetize their audiences. Echandi is also an independent board member at Panama’s banking regulator. He holds an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin’s Red McCombs School of Business. How do you plan to educate the people of Panama about the benefits and accessibility of crypto assets like bitcoin as written in your bill? Silva: My team and I are trying to make the information as easily accessible as possible. When we made the proposal we did several things to educate the general population about it, including posting videos and infographics to explain the bill in English and Spanish on all social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Thankfully, the cryptocurrency community is very loud and energetic on social media so they have helped us share the message that we’re trying to portray. For example, the one-minute video I posted on Twitter about the bill was the most viewed video I’ve ever posted. We still have much to do, so we are working with influencers outside of the crypto community to help us educate people on the bill. We are also making a strong campaign on the traditional media platforms such as newspapers, radio and television stations to inform Panamanians about the proposal. The last time I watched TV for the news may have been 10 years ago, but there are many people who use that medium to get informed. Thankfully, the traditional media here in Panama have been interested in our project so we have been getting a lot of exposure there. This bill follows other bills we have proposed in Parliament to improve financial education in high school and universities. One of the topics we have included in those proposals is teaching about the digital economy, which is part of our macro strategy that we are working on with the ministry of education and the ministry of finance. This approach is to empower our young people with financial education starting from a young age. Echandi: One more thing I’d like to add, we’ve had coverage in two of our largest newspapers and it was surprisingly positive. The editorial in the largest paper covered us and basically said we need to open up to this world of cryptocurrencies as a nation. In addition to the efforts that Gabriel mentioned, I believe the good thing about setting the groundwork for an ecosystem to arise is that the people who provide utility for consumers are the best educators in the end. A good product maker or someone who creates the solution to a real problem is a better educator than any public campaign. If we manage to unlock the roadblocks in the financial system for people to innovate and create products to include people financially, this will lead to more educated consumers and users. This will empower people to move money internationally, make a living on the internet, and participate in this cutting edge of value creation with crypto assets, which will lead to a better ecosystem, because the people in it will be solving problems for their own lives. So, I believe education will come with more access to better products. The problem has been that there are so many roadblocks for the average Panamanian to access this ecosystem. You first need to have a bank account which already excludes half of the population, you then have to do international wires which is an additional complexity that is not cheap, and then you have to deal with a ton of intermediaries so the banks won’t block you and so everything works. In contrast, an American citizen for example simply connects their bank account to Coinbase or a similar solution and they have an initial contact with this world and eventually, of course, they become more savvy. I believe a good ecosystem and an openness to create certainty for innovators to create and solve problems for others will in itself bring forth a ton of education. The last point I want to make on this is in the article regarding the radical digitalization of the government that guarantees universal access to the internet. This may be seen as a by-point in the law, however it is the infrastructure for everything to actually work. Panama already has decent connectivity, especially in urban areas, however we don’t really have a deliberate policy of universal access to the internet. There are many countries that have already experimented with this so we don’t believe it is something that has to be super expensive to be guaranteed. If that happens, we don’t believe we’ll have to underestimate people’s ability to browse online and consume information from good sources. So, I’m super hopeful that with a good ecosystem in place and decent access to the internet, people will get access to education aside from the
BITCOIN HITS A NEW ALL TIME HIGH AGAINST THE EURO
Bitcoin typically tends to perform very well in Q4, and so far this year it has been sticking to that trend. On October 1, the price of BTC was around €41,000. Since then, it has done nothing but rocket upwards with more highs expected to be seen in what many Bitcoiners are calling “Uptober.” Bitcoin has been hitting new highs not only against the Euro, but against other fiat currencies such as the Australian dollar, Japanese yen, South Korean won, and Turkish lira. The U.S. dollar is expected to follow suit very shortly in joining the club of making new all time highs against Bitcoin soon. The energy around Bitcoin has been electric so far this quarter especially with the $BITO Bitcoin Futures ETF being live traded on the New York Stock Exchange today, Bitcoin nearing an all time high in USD, and many other exciting things. With all the recent events happening in Bitcoin lately — El Salvador adopting bitcoin as legal tender, ETF approvals, BTC balances on exchanges at lows not seen since 2018, and institutional and retail investors buying as much bitcoin as they can — it begs the question of how high we’ll go this bull run. It can not be underestimated where we are in Bitcoin’s history. Bitcoin has not died like many who saw it crash in 2018 thought it would. Instead, it has bounced back and presented itself front and center on the world stage as a world class currency. Those who use the euro as their vehicle for saving wealth may want to reconsider and think about adopting bitcoin instead, because as it stands, the euro is rapidly losing value against the new measuring stick of value — bitcoin.
WHY THE ANCIENT GREEKS WOULD HAVE REFERRED TO BITCOIN AS THE WORK OF DAEDALUS
Throughout the whole of history many means of exchange have disappeared. Supposing that money as we know it today, were to also disappear? The world would not miss it for a single day, for its disappearance alone would reveal that it had been replaced by something perhaps much better. We can no longer bear the sight of it; consequently, we have begun to abolish cash, just as we once abolished slaves without completely abolishing their trades. Denying, destroying and inventing have almost always gone hand in hand. It seems as if from the very moment we are born a portion of nonconformism is mixed with us in all things. It’s as if we come into the world with the duty to honor the old foundations, but without renouncing the right to tear them down in order to build them up again; as if the first thing that life teaches us is that it is necessary for many things to collapse in order to be able to build many others. Perhaps there is not a single creator who is not also a destroyer, or at least who does not have a highly non-conformist and sceptical spirit, a brain addicted to great progress, which above all also wants the means to obtain it. Nonconformism, for the creator, is characteristic of the upward march of the spirit’s development, which is why he always wishes to find a new form of maturity on earth and is not satisfied with having eyes to see without a mouth to say that it can also be seen in another way. In his case, it is natural for him to live thinking: I learn it because it can be taught, I seek it because it can be found, and I change it because it can be improved. He understands better than anyone else that in all ages, in all places and in all fields the bad always dominates, and that the good is generally the rare; that we owe the slowness of progress to the unconsidered respect for old customs, old laws and old human prejudices. Unfortunately, man almost always succumbs to inventions that he does not deserve, so that it is not enough for the creator to bring a novelty: he must also know how to transform men so that they understand it and accept it seriously. The people, at least in this respect, are very much like children, who resent receiving the same benefits over and over again. Moreover, if it were up to the masses, all revolutionary ideas would be banned, we would still live under thatched roofs, we would plow with oxen, with donkeys and with cows, and the invention of the water-powered machine would be reproached for being able to flood our houses. That, of course, is why good inventions always fail at first, because of those who are not capable of turning them to their advantage, who do not even feel the impulse to study them in order to understand them, and who, if they marvel at their discovery, do not tolerate the idea of their occupying any place in their brains. It is a very vulgar habit to find the devil’s hand behind the excellence of what human beings create. Everything old tends naturally, by every means, to destroy and to efface from life everything new, the sight of which causes it a deep abhorrence, because it hates it in the same way that eunuchs hate those who enjoy. Hence the execution of every novel idea is generally so laborious, its growth so slow, and its excellence being so distant, that its parents almost always die before they see it. It is exactly the same with this as with good books, which need a long time to be understood, while those that have been written for fairs speak loudly for a day, only to fall into oblivion the next. The best thought, indeed, is that which takes the slowest and the latest to produce its effect, so much so that it seems to be an indisputable law of the universe that great things must be given late credit. Thus, if there is anything more costly to the creator than to have to begin, it is to have to begin in the knowledge that he must convince others, who are generally opposed to all thinking and all creating: two occupations that have never done mankind any harm. Although, in any case, if there is anything that time confesses to us it would be that it is easier to slow down the universe than to stop something useful and novel once it has been set in motion: That nature is not the enemy of change, but enjoys it to such a degree that it itself is an alternation of indeterminate cycles; that those who oppose the new and extraordinary are as far behind those who invented it as those who tell the story are farther away from those who were the protagonists of it; that someday he will have to be just as posterity who could not be just as a contemporary; and that the creator, in general, is pleased to think that his creation enjoys the sympathy of a handful of intelligent people who, in an age of mental servility, have dared to have a way of thinking of their own. Bitcoin is essentially just that, a great invention, too hard even for the teeth of time and that, like all great inventions, is based entirely on a new thought: that of secure, fair, free and transparent access to property and money. To achieve this, he has put all his efforts where everything is too corrupt and centralized, trying to apply his arts where up to now man has found nothing but despicable things. He wants a lofty goal, and with that alone he already has more than half the means to reach it. For it is not enough for him to take steps that may one day lead him
DRAFT BILL SEEKS TO ALLOW BRAZILIAN WORKERS TO BE PAID IN BITCOIN
A draft bill seeking to allow Brazilian workers to be paid in bitcoin was presented to the country’s Deputies Chamber on November 5. The author, deputy Luizão Goulart (REPUBLIC-PR), shared the natural evolution of money as a cause for his proposal. “Money was one of the greatest creations in the history of humanity,” per the draft bill. “It allowed us to rise from a primitive barter-based society to an extremely complex and productive society.” Bitcoin is the natural evolution of money. Whereas all previous forms compromised on a few properties — divisibility, durability, scarcity, salability across time and space, etc., Bitcoin enabled a new paradigm in the history of money, and the deputy noticed. “At the peak of the financial crisis of 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto, in their white paper, proposes a ‘digital monetary system’ without the need of trust in a financial institution,” the draft bill reads. “Our proposition meets this modernity, establishing that a worker may optionally receive part of their income in any type of cryptocurrency existent in the Financial Market.” Brazil has been making the headlines lately when it comes to Bitcoin. A recent bill that sought to legalize BTC and cryptocurrency in the country, as well as enforce stricter rules for businesses seeking to provide related services, was misunderstood as a step in the direction of making bitcoin a legal tender in Brazil. Overall, Brazilians are big into Bitcoin; the broader cryptocurrency market has seen more activity than the stock market in the country for a few years now. But the bill is just a draft and was only presented to the chamber today. Deputies still need to discuss it and take it to a vote for the draft bill to start being considered, and there is also the possibility that this law never gets enacted. In either case, since it was recently presented, more information will emerge in the coming weeks.
US GOVERNMENT TO AUCTION 4.94 BITCOIN WORTH OVER $300,000
The U.S. government will auction 4.94 BTC worth over $300,000 in the next few days. The auction will be held by GSA Auctions, the federal government’s online clearinghouse for surplus, U.S.-owned assets and equipment it wishes to sell. The 4.94 BTC will be auctioned in five different lots of 1.5, 1.25, 1, 0.75, and 0.44 BTC. The U.S. government is hosting Fall for Cryptocurrency, an online bitcoin auction event, between October 26 and 28, 2021. Nearly 5 BTC will be auctioned in five different lots. In April, the U.S. government sold 9.45 BTC at a notable discount compared to market prices. The 4.94 BTC will be auctioned in five different lots. Source: GSA Auctions. The 4.94 BTC will be auctioned in five different lots. Source: GSA Auctions. U.S. government auctions are performed by GSA Auctions, a service of the United States General Service Administration (GSA) that functions as the federal government’s online clearinghouse for surplus, federally-owned assets, and equipment. Bitcoin auctioned by GSA is usually sold at a discounted price. In April, the government agency sold 9.45 BTC, worth $520,000 at the time, for $487,000, meaning that buyers were able to scoop bitcoin at more than 6% below market price. The argument can be made that privacy is the actual tradeoff. The buyer is, in this case, spending less dollars at the expense of their personal information, as purchasing BTC from the government is the most invasive know-your-customer (KYC) scenario possible. Some people may still find it attractive and worthy to hand over their personally-identifiable information (PII) for a small discount, in which case the GSA auction could be an opportunity. But caution is warranted, given the value proposition of Bitcoin may be compromised depending on the level of identifiable information a watcher possesses of a Bitcoin user.
