Bear markets are for building and my greatest skillset is content marketing. So I’m creating the pocket steak version of Bitcoin explanations; no-fluff, nutrient-dense brain food. Here’s a section I’ve been working through.

*Proof of Work & An Immutable Record*

The reason the Bitcoin ledger is immutable, that the record of transactions can not be changed or altered, is because of Proof-of-Work; the consensus mechanism requiring miners to expend energy in order to add blocks to the blockchain.

Without POW, there’s no “unforgeable costliness”; there's no solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem or the double-spend problem; there’s no immutable record; and no neutral monetary system for a world where most people experience financial repression and *everyone* experiences the hidden theft of currency debasement.

Proof-of-Work (PoW) is what links Bitcoin to the physical world; allowing it to adhere to the first and third laws of thermodynamics, and for the first time in human history, create digital scarcity; a term that was a blatant oxymoron until Bitcoin reached escape velocity following the Block Size War (2015-2017). The closest tangible example to Bitcoin is gold.

“Gold is proof of work. We put in a ton of energy to find the gold deposits, to move [tons] of rock in order to get grams of gold, and then refine that into condensed proof that all that work was done." — ​​Lyn Alden