Stories · as read on the Mining station
Where the Coins Come From
On the eve of the 2024 election, Dell read the network numbers, a week of headlines and three stories he tied back to Bitcoin mining.
Four hundred and fifty. That is roughly how many new bitcoin miners produce each day, and it was the number Dell kept coming back to on the Mining Disrupt News Surge for Monday, November 4, 2024, the day before the U.S. presidential election. This story comes from that episode, recorded 721 days ago. Bitcoin read $68,457 on timechaincalendar while he was on air. Today it trades at $80,144.
Dell opened with his weekly line that the show is entertainment and education, not financial advice. Then he gave the reason he keeps sending viewers to the mining floor: "If you don't have miners, you don't have Bitcoin."
The network numbers that day were busy. Blocks were arriving closer to nine minutes apart than ten, 127 blocks fast, and the next difficulty adjustment was heading up nearly 4%. Fees were low, and 17,586 nodes were online.
His headlines for the week ran from a VanEck projection of $3 million per coin by 2050 to Florida's chief financial officer backing a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Microsoft shareholders were set to vote on putting part of the company's treasury into Bitcoin. They later voted no. A post from British HODL argued that MicroStrategy, buying $40 to 50 million a day, had set a floor of $89,000 against the coins miners produce. And a post from TFTC said Argentina's central bank had launched a live mining exhibit, calling it the first central bank to openly mine Bitcoin.
Dell tied those stories back to mining. If a single buyer wants that much Bitcoin, he asked, where does it come from? From miners, and their share keeps shrinking. In his words, "450 currently comes from miners. But in four years, that 450 gets cut in half." That is the halving, and it repeats until the 21 million cap is reached.
He also spent time on a story far from markets: Peanut, a pet seized and killed by officials in New York, which he used to argue for money outside state control. "This is why having a money that is not controlled by the state is so fundamentally important to freedom," he said.
On Argentina, Dell was blunt: "I wish the story got more attention." A central bank running mining hardware at all was, to him, the sleeper headline of the week.
He signed off expecting a week for the history books. Bitcoin passed six figures about a month later, then fell back. The halving schedule he described has not moved.
Mining Disrupt returns March 22 to 24, 2027, in Irving, Texas. Tickets and exhibitor spots are at miningdisrupt.com.