Chapter 7. Fair questions, honest answers

1. Six ways your own mind gets in the way: “A cognitive bias is a groove in thinking, a shortcut the mind”

   Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

2. Six ways your own mind gets in the way: “Researchers in 1988 showed that people stick with a default simply because”

   William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, “Status Quo Bias in Decision Making,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1988.

3. Six ways your own mind gets in the way: “is the tendency to feel a loss about twice as strongly as”

   Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica, 1979.

4. Six ways your own mind gets in the way: “A dollar from 1971 buys about 12 cents’ worth today”

   U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), all items, 1971 annual average (40.5) to August 2026 (334.980, 1982 to 1984 = 100), bls.gov, retrieved September 2026.

5. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “Bitcoin has fallen more than 75% from a high on four”, “People said “too late” when bitcoin cost $100 in 2013, $1,000 at”

   CoinMarketCap, “A Look Back in Time: Bitcoin Price History and Events Timeline,” coinmarketcap.com, retrieved September 2026 (crossed $100 on April 1, 2013 and $1,000 in November 2013; 2011 peak of $31; December 2017 peak of $19,834; November 2021 peak of $68,742); iShares, “Bitcoin Volatility Guide: Trends and Insights for Investors,” 2025 (declines of 80% from January 2014, 83% from December 2017 and 77% from November 2021), ishares.com, retrieved September 2026; forex.com, “Bitcoin Price History,” 2011 decline from $29.38 in June to $2.14 in November, 93%, retrieved September 2026.

6. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “A website called 99Bitcoins has logged 477 published declarations that Bitcoin”, “Forbes ran one in June 2011 with the price near $15” and 1 more

   99Bitcoins, “Bitcoin Obituaries,” 99bitcoins.com, 477 entries as of September 2026, earliest 2010; Tim Worstall, “So, That’s the End of Bitcoin Then,” Forbes, June 20, 2011, listed at a price of $15.15. Jeremy Grantham on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” June 26, 2026, as reported by Decrypt, “Billionaire Jeremy Grantham Dismisses Bitcoin, Says Crypto Will Fade ‘With a Whimper,’” June 27, 2026, decrypt.co; Bloomberg, “Bitcoin Based on Faith Has Nil Value, Grantham Says,” January 22, 2021, bloomberg.com; both retrieved October 2026.

7. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that between”

   United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Money Laundering” overview, unodc.org, retrieved September 2026 (“2 - 5% of global GDP, or $800 billion - $2 trillion in current US dollars”), drawing on UNODC, “Estimating Illicit Financial Flows Resulting from Drug Trafficking and Other Transnational Organized Crimes,” 2011.

8. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “The Treasury Department’s own 2024 money-laundering risk assessment describes bulk cash”

   U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2024 National Money Laundering Risk Assessment, February 2024 (“bulk cash smuggling and the use of cash-intensive businesses are historically favored laundering methods for many DTOs”), home.treasury.gov, retrieved September 2026.

9. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “Chainalysis, a firm that traces transactions on public ledgers for law enforcement”, “Most of that, 63%, now moves in dollar-pegged tokens rather than bitcoin”

   Chainalysis, The 2025 Crypto Crime Report, January 2025 (illicit addresses received 0.14% of on-chain volume in 2024; $40.9 billion identified, estimated to rise to about $51 billion; stablecoins 63% of illicit volume), chainalysis.com, retrieved September 2026.

10. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “In 2022, the Justice Department recovered about 94,000 bitcoin stolen from” · The Bitfinex seizure: “On February 8, 2022, the Justice Department announced it had seized” (now on the chapter page, under More from this chapter)

    U.S. Department of Justice, “Two Arrested for Alleged Conspiracy to Launder $4.5 Billion in Stolen Cryptocurrency,” press release, February 8, 2022.

11. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “In 2021, the FBI clawed back most of the Colonial Pipeline ransom”

    U.S. Department of Justice, “Department of Justice Seizes $2.3 Million in Cryptocurrency Paid to the Ransomware Extortionists Darkside,” press release, June 7, 2021.

12. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “Roughly 4% of the people on earth hold any bitcoin at all”

    River, Bitcoin Adoption Report 2025, March 2025 (about 4% of the world’s population holds bitcoin), river.com.

13. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “Roughly 26,000 reachable computers, the nodes of Chapter 4, in more”

    Bitnodes reachable node count, as reported by Newhedge, “Bitcoin Reachable Node Distribution,” newhedge.io, about 25,800 reachable nodes, retrieved September 2026; Bitnodes, “Global Bitcoin Nodes by Country,” bitnodes.io, 141 countries in its April 2024 snapshot.

14. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “The full ledger is also broadcast from satellites, and in 2019”

    Blockstream, “Blockstream Satellite,” blockstream.com/satellite, retrieved September 2026; Lightning payment over high-frequency amateur radio by Rodolfo Novak and Elaine Ou, March 2 and 3, 2019, as reported by CoinDesk, March 4, 2019; Samourai Wallet’s TxTenna relay of signed transactions over goTenna mesh radios, 2018.

15. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “In 1933, the United States made most private ownership of gold”

    Executive Order 6102, April 5, 1933; Public Law 93-373, 1974, restoring private gold ownership.

16. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “China banned bitcoin mining in 2021, and about half the network’s”

    Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Cambridge Bitcoin Mining Map, methodology notes (Mainland China’s reported hash rate “effectively plummeted to zero” in July and August 2021), ccaf.io, retrieved September 2026; Blockchain.com, hash rate chart, 7-day average of about 186 EH/s in mid-May 2021 to about 88 EH/s in early July 2021, a fall of about 53%, with the prior peak regained later in 2021, blockchain.com, retrieved September 2026.

17. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “India’s central bank cut bitcoin businesses off from banking in 2018”

    Supreme Court of India, Internet and Mobile Association of India v. Reserve Bank of India, March 4, 2020.

18. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “Nigeria did the same in 2021, and person-to-person trading grew until”

    Central Bank of Nigeria, circular of February 5, 2021 (barring banks from serving cryptocurrency exchanges) and circular of December 22, 2023 (guidelines for banks dealing with virtual asset service providers), both widely reported at the time; on the eNaira: Ree, “Nigeria’s eNaira, One Year After,” IMF Working Paper WP/23/104, May 16, 2023.

19. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “holding bitcoin is legal; the IRS has taxed it as property since 2014”

    Internal Revenue Service, Notice 2014-21.

20. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “in March 2025 the federal government established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve”

    Executive Order 14233, “Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile,” March 6, 2025, whitehouse.gov, retrieved September 2026; as of October 2026 the order remained in effect, no purchases had been confirmed, and the reserve held only forfeited bitcoin (24/7 Wall St. via Yahoo Finance, September 15, 2026).

21. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “The swings have grown smaller as the market has grown, though”, “From 2020 to 2025, prices in the United States rose about 25%” and 2 more

    iShares, “Bitcoin Volatility Guide: Trends and Insights for Investors,” 2025 (annualized volatility of about 54% as of January 31, 2025, described as having “notably declined” as the market matured), ishares.com, retrieved September 2026. Inflation: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U, annual averages of 258.8 for 2020 and 322.2 for 2025, and a 9.1% rise over the 12 months ending June 2022, bls.gov; Kitco, “JPMorgan states the obvious: demand for gold and Bitcoin is the ‘debasement trade,’” October 2, 2025, kitco.com; both retrieved October 2026.

22. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance estimates the network draws about”, “Supporters point to the same Cambridge research, which found that a” and 3 more

    Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Cambridge Digital Mining Industry Report, April 28, 2025 (138 TWh a year, about 0.5% of global electricity consumption; 52.4% of mining power from sustainable sources), jbs.cam.ac.uk, retrieved September 2026; Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, ccaf.io. Data centers: International Energy Agency, “Key Questions on Energy and AI,” World Energy Outlook Special Report, iea.org, 2026: data center electricity consumption “roughly doubling from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh in 2030,” with consumption by AI-focused data centers up 50% in 2025. Texas curtailment and AI hosting: Riot Platforms, “Riot Announces August 2023 Production and Operations Updates,” Form 8-K exhibit 99.1, sec.gov, September 6, 2023: $31.7 million in power and demand response credits for curtailing more than 95% of its load during ERCOT’s August 2023 heat wave. Conversion to AI hosting: CoinShares, “Bitcoin Mining Report Q2 2026,” coinshares.com, September 15, 2026 (IREN, TeraWulf, Cipher, Core Scientific and Keel; about $1.5 million a year per megawatt for AI hosting against about $0.5 million for mining). Larry Fink, Milken Institute Global Conference, May 2026. IREN and Microsoft, about $9.7 billion over five years, and Cipher Mining and Amazon Web Services, about $5.5 billion over 15 years, both announced November 3, 2025: Decrypt, “Bitcoin Miners IREN, Cipher Rise After Multi-Billion-Dollar Microsoft, Amazon Deals,” November 3, 2025, decrypt.co, retrieved October 2026. Proof of stake: Ethereum Foundation, “The Merge,” ethereum.org, September 2022.

23. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “Critics such as the economist Alex de Vries argue the energy buys”

    Alex de Vries, Digiconomist, Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, and “Bitcoin’s Growing Energy Problem,” Joule, 2018.

24. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “Mt. Gox, an exchange in Tokyo, reported about 850,000 bitcoin missing in 2014”

    Mt. Gox Co., Ltd., announcement of its application for civil rehabilitation, February 28, 2014 (“approximately 750,000 bitcoins deposited by users and approximately 100,000 bitcoins belonging to us had disappeared”), mtgox.com, retrieved September 2026.

25. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “In February 2025, the exchange Bybit lost about $1.5 billion from”

    Federal Bureau of Investigation, public service announcement attributing the Bybit theft to North Korea, February 26, 2025.

26. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “Voice clones that sound like a grandchild, video of a public figure”

    Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet Crime Complaint Center, “Criminals Use Generative Artificial Intelligence to Facilitate Financial Fraud,” public service announcement, December 3, 2024, ic3.gov, retrieved September 2026.

27. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers: “They can hold a Bitcoin key and send a Lightning payment of”, “In February 2026, Lightning Labs released free tools that let an AI”

    Lightning Labs, “AI for All: Powering APIs and Large Language Models with Lightning,” July 6, 2023 (the L402 protocol and LangChain tools for agents paying over Lightning), lightning.engineering, retrieved September 2026. Lightning Labs, “The Agents Are Here and They Want to Transact: Powering the AI Economy with Lightning,” February 11, 2026, lightning.engineering, retrieved October 2026.

28. How adults change their minds: “Public health found the same thing over decades of campaigns: people”

    World Health Organization, Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, 1986; Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, new and expanded edition, Harper Business, 2021, chapter on social proof.

29. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers

    Chainalysis estimate of 2.78 million to 3.79 million bitcoin lost, 17 to 23% of the supply then in existence, as reported by Fortune, November 25, 2017, fortune.com, retrieved September 2026.

30. Fourteen fair questions, fourteen honest answers

    Howells v Newport City Council [2025] EWHC 22 (Ch), judgment of His Honour Judge Keyser KC, January 9, 2025 (claim dismissed; hard drive discarded in August 2013; 8,000 bitcoin), caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk, retrieved September 2026.

31. Why Bitcoin needs no oracle: “several large thefts on other networks have come from feeding an” (now on the chapter page, under More from this chapter)

    Example: the October 2022 Mango Markets exploit of about $110 million, carried out by manipulating the prices the platform relied on; U.S. Department of Justice, “Man Convicted for $110M Cryptocurrency Scheme,” press release, April 18, 2024, justice.gov, retrieved September 2026. The trial judge vacated the convictions in May 2025.

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