The congressional hearing hilariously titled “America on ‘FIRE:’ Will the Crypto Frenzy Lead to Financial Independence and Early Retirement or Financial Ruin?” is the souvenir that keeps on giving. NewsBTC already analyzed some aspects of it, but Peter Van Valkenburgh’s testimony merits an vendible on its own. The Director of Research at Coin

" href="https://www.newsbtc.com/dictionary/coin/" data-wpel-link="internal">Coin Center got several important ideas on the record, and we’d largest register and remember them.

The previous article’s introduction still stands:

The U.S. Congress Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a hybrid hearing on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The institution summoned Alexis Goldstein, Director of Financial Policy for the Unshut Market Institute, Sarah Hammer, Managing Director at the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance, Peter Van Valkenburgh, Director of Research at Coin

" href="https://www.newsbtc.com/dictionary/coin/" data-wpel-link="internal">Coin Center, and others.

Related Reading | New 2021 FATF Crypto Guidelines Labelled as Mass Warrantless Surveillance

Since we at NewsBTC once did the job and covered the ridiculous statements of Representative Brad Sherman, it’s time to requite the mic to someone increasingly qualified and informed. Let the record reflect that a full video of the whole hearing is not misogynist at the time of writing. We’ll wiring our report on everything we could find on the unshut Internet.

What We Know Well-nigh Peter Van Valkenburgh’s testimony

Luckily for us, Documenting Bitcoin preserved the weightier bit of Van Valkenburgh’s presentation. The Director of Research at Coin

" href="https://www.newsbtc.com/dictionary/coin/" data-wpel-link="internal">Coin Center sets everything up by explaining why and how the Bitcoin network is censorship-resistant.

“… we have the wholesomeness of knowing everything that the peer-to-peer ledger tells us. It’s shared and open, it’s not a proprietary standard from a corporation. And the peer-to-peer ledger shows us how much work these miners are performing to make sure that transactions get in blocks and they’re not censored by some third party or some government that wants to coerce unrepealable transactions or woodcut unrepealable transactions. It’s this vibrant competition between miners that guarantees that the miner cannot form a cartel, and segregate to systematically exclude unrepealable persons from this financial system.”

To well-constructed this idea, let’s quote Van Valkenburgh’s own “Understanding Bitcoin’s energy use” paper.

This competition is healthy considering it ways that the effort spent securing the network scales automatically with the value of the transaction data on the blockchain—not the number of transactions. So the increasingly value there is riding on the Bitcoin network (because individuals value it increasingly as reflected in the price), the increasingly resources will be devoted to its security. 

This leads us to…

What Well-nigh Bitcoin’s Energy Usage And The Lightning Network?

This man is a House of Representatives veteran. He knew what he was doing. Van Valkenburgh set everything up, and then he goes to the meat and potatoes of the testimony. He goes for the throat and flips the establishment’s treatise well-nigh Bitcoin’s energy consumption on its head. He shifted the narrative and put a spotlight on the traditional financial sector’s known inefficiencies. 

“As far as energy usage, it’s worth noting that the traditional financial sector uses an unscientific five times increasingly energy than Bitcoin. Granted, the traditional financial sector moves increasingly money. But it’s worth noting that Bitcoin’s energy usage doesn’t scale per transaction. So, most of the financing are the stock-still forfeit of setting up an unshut peer-to-peer system that’s robust. And we have thechnologies like the Lightning Network that can stow millions of transactions into that existing system without a meaningful increase in energy. So, it’s possible that we can have an unshut financial system that’s censorship resistant using one fifth of the energy of the current financial system.”

So yeah, the Lightning Network and its wonders are registered in the U.S. House of Representatives’ record. And, plane though Bitcoin’s aim is not to outright substitute the ”current financial system,” the record reflects that Bitcoin is increasingly energy-efficient, plus censorship-resistant as a bonus. Lastly, it’s worth noting that “five times increasingly energy than Bitcoin” is an extremely generous estimate in favor of the traditional sector. 

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What Does Van Valkenburgh Think Well-nigh Regulation?

The fine people at Coindesk got hold of Van Valkenburgh’s prepared testimony. In a recent episode of their “The Breakdown” podcast, they imbricate an perfectly variegated zone of it:

There are a couple of key shifts in perception he tries to make, first, virtually the idea that crypto isn’t regulated, that’s wrong. It’s regulated all over the place at the state and federal level. It’s just fragmented. Second, crypto is for crime: wrong again, in 2020, only 0.34% of all cryptocurrency transaction volume involved a criminal sender or recipient and remember, those numbers came from Chainalysis, an organization that a huge number of government agencies spend multiple millions of dollars with every year. 

Related Reading | Bitcoin Lightning Network Sees Storm Of Activity And Adoption

This ties up nicely with the whilom discussed, and with this uncontrived Van Valkenburgh’s quote:

“For every transaction we want blocked, there’s a transaction that we should gloat for stuff unstoppable. Yes, there are criminals making payments on the Bitcoin network considering banks won’t wall them. There are moreover pro-democracy activists and Belarus and anti-police violence protesters in Nigeria, taking donations on the Bitcoin network considering local banks won’t wall them. For every decentralized app that’s trying to scam investors. There’s flipside that’s testing out ways to disperse universal vital income, will remove the corporate tenancy over social networking, or eliminate the hacking risk inherent in internal identity solutions.”

Suffice to say, this man went into the vitals of the yahoo and spoke the truth. The Bitcoin movement will be forever grateful.

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