In a notable exchange on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk voiced his astonishment about Bitcoin in reaction to a tweet from Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest. Wood’s tweet, which resonated with Musk, shed light on the extraordinary statistics characterizing the Bitcoin network, eliciting a simple yet profound response from Musk: “Wow.”
Wood’s message on X emphasized the unmatched magnitude of the Bitcoin network, stating, “Bitcoin is backed by the largest computer network in the world, a network orders of magnitude larger than the combined size of the clouds that Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have built over the last 15-20 years.”
Wow
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 19, 2024
Bitcoin Is 500x More Powerful Than Supercomputers
This bold assertion was anchored in a tweet from Yassine Elmandjra, Director of Digital Assets at ARK, who aimed to counter the recent skeptical comments made by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. During an event at the World Economic Forum, Dimon, known for his consistent critique of Bitcoin, diminished its significance by referring to it as a “pet rock.”
He reiterated his 2021 view of BTC’s lack of inherent value and, despite recognizing the practical applications of blockchain technology, signaled his reluctance to engage further in discussions about Bitcoin. “This is the last time I’m talking about this with CNBC, so help me God,” Dimon asserted, adding, “I think we waste too many words on that.”
Contrasting sharply with Dimon’s skepticism, Elmandjra’s tweet shed light on the formidable computational capacity of the Bitcoin network. He elucidated the network’s recent milestone of achieving a hash rate of 500 exahashes per second.
To articulate the enormity of this achievement, Elmandjra provided vivid comparisons, illustrating that the BTC network processes 5 billion computations per second for every star in our galaxy, and it would require approximately roughly 2000 years for the entire global population, each performing one hash per second, to match the network’s current hash rate.
Furthermore, he pointed out that the network executes roughly 67 times more hashes per second than the estimated total number of grains of sand on Earth and that its performance, in terms of raw operations per second. Moreover, all Bitcoin miners outstrip the world’s most powerful supercomputer by a factor of approximately 500.
These whopping statistics highlight the monumental scale and computational prowess of the Bitcoin network, prompting reactions like Peter McCormack’s remark: “Math.”
Bitcoin Is Digital Gold
Musk’s openness for cryptocurrencies is no secret, as evidenced by Tesla’s substantial holding of 10,725 BTC. During a recent space on X with Cathie Wood, Musk voiced his perspective that BTC serves as an efficient mechanism for establishing predetermined scarcity, akin to that of gold.
He stated, “It is very good for engineered scarcity, kind of like gold or something like that.” He further proposed that a more fitting name for BTC might be “BitGold,” thereby drawing a parallel with the precious metal.
At press time, BTC traded at $41,382.
