Under the Microscope: The True Costs of Gold Production
Hass McCook is a chartered engineer and freshly minted Oxford MBA. He has been researching bitcoin over the past several months and recently joined the Lifeboat Foundation's New Money Systems advisory board. This article is the second in a series on bitcoin's sustainability. Having previously examined the cost of bitcoin mining, here McCook seeks to quantify the economic and environmental factors involved in mining gold. Gold has been used for millennia as a means to project and protect wealth. As the data below indicates, 52% of all gold ever mined is used for jewellery and palatial....
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Hass McCook is a chartered engineer and freshly minted Oxford MBA. He has been researching bitcoin over the past several months and recently joined the Lifeboat Foundation's New Money Systems advisory board. This, the final instalment in his five-part series, evaluates the relative sustainability of the bitcoin network against the costs of gold production, the printing and minting of physical currency and the legacy banking system. Under the Microscope has aimed to cast a critical eye over the social, environmental and economic impacts of the way we currently transact and transfer wealth,....
Hass McCook is a chartered engineer and freshly minted Oxford MBA. He has been researching bitcoin over the past several months and recently joined the Lifeboat Foundation's New Money Systems advisory board. This is the fourth in his five-part series that compares the relative sustainability of the bitcoin network with gold production, the production of physical currency, and the legacy banking system. It is very hard to quantify the global impact of the banking and finance system, however, there are some key figures that we can draw on for an order-of-magnitude estimate. The World Bank....
Hass McCook is a chartered engineer and freshly minted Oxford MBA. He has been researching bitcoin over the past several months and recently joined the Lifeboat Foundation's New Money Systems advisory board. This article is the third in a series on bitcoin's sustainability. Having previously examined the cost of gold production, here McCook looks at the sustainability of printing and minting physical currency. Money makes the world go round, and for the past several hundred years, paper currency and coins were the physical manifestation of money. Once upon a time, most paper currency in....
Hass McCook is a chartered engineer and freshly minted Oxford MBA. He has been researching bitcoin over the past several months and recently joined the Lifeboat Foundation's New Money Systems advisory board. Here, in the first in a series of articles on bitcoin's sustainability, he seeks to analyse the economic and environmental factors involved in the process of bitcoin mining. There has been a lot of uncertainty surrounding the sustainability of the bitcoin network, with this fascinating nascent technology facing several unsubstantiated claims that it is highly unsustainable from a....
Bitcoin price is trading lower today after forming another rounded wave top. Analysis considers mining production costs and the historical relationship of market price to this fundamental metric. Bitcoin price has continued rolling over a rounded top. As outlined in yesterday’s analysis post, downside support may be found at the local rising trendline near $440. If price bounces at this level then the market may resume the journey toward resistance at $470. Continuing decline below support opens up $400 and potentially $370, we’ll need to ascertain the degree of the next declining wave to....