The connection between a 2008 stoner comedy, the legalization of cannabis in Colorado, and Bitcoin seems like a stretch until you trace the timeline of public acceptance. That was the riddle behind the Mining Disrupt News Surge for Monday, April 14, 2025. On the show, the host read the Bitcoin price for Friday, April 11th as $83,000, but told viewers that was not the number to focus on.
The host opened the episode with a riddle. He listed four things, the movie Pineapple Express, legal weed, the tariff situation, and Bitcoin, and asked what they had in common. Before revealing the answer, he pointed to two numbers: the 14-day average hashrate at 877.7 exahash, which he called monumental, and public nodes at 21,000. He said he remembered the node count once sitting in the mid teens of thousands and had seen it a little over 22,000, and that its steady climb was a clue.
The Strange Bedfellows: Pineapple Express, Tariffs, and Legal Weed
His answer: all four have network effects in place. He said he asked an AI chatbot whether Pineapple Express, released in mid 2008, had any impact on the legalization of weed in Washington State and Colorado in 2012, with retail shops following in 2014. The answer he got was that a direct link would be speculative, but the movie was part of a cultural trend in which weed was showing up in more mainstream movies and TV shows and seemed less scary. The host argued Bitcoin is in a similar phase now.
He drew a parallel to 2016, when Donald Trump's win made many people decide they needed to start paying attention to politics. The tariff situation, he suggested, is doing the same thing for money. People across the internet are suddenly asking what tariffs do, what is happening with their stocks and their 401(k)s, and what an equity even is, and they are doing some research.
The Hashrate Milestone: One Zetahash
To ground the cultural argument in the network itself, the host pointed to a milestone reported by TFTC: for a stretch of time, the world's miners combined to compute one sextillion hashes every second, or 10 to the 21st power, a first for the network.
Bitcoin's hashrate surpassed one zeta hash for the first time ever earlier this week.
Moran · 1:48
The host also returned to Bo Hines, executive director of the President's Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, whom he called the architect behind much of what was happening with Bitcoin policy. Hines, he noted, did not even have 100,000 followers and drew far fewer likes and reposts than his role would suggest. He read that as another clue. So was a post from Pierre Rashard noting that Senators Tillis and Hickenlooper had reintroduced the PROOF Act, which would prohibit commingling customer funds and set proof of reserve standards for digital asset institutions. To the host, it was a sign that the Bitcoin idea of sound money was spreading.
The Cultural Shift: Beyond the Usual Circles
Another clue came from a clip Marty Bent shared: Sam Hyde talking about Bitcoin on Moist Thinkers, a video with about 385,000 views four days after it was posted. The host said Hyde talks about Bitcoin in a way many Bitcoiners don't, and that Bent says Hyde has been in Bitcoin for about a decade. The point was that Bitcoin was reaching a wide audience well outside the usual circles.
The Bookkeeper Who Didn't Understand
The host also shared a conversation with a business owner who had recently bought some Bitcoin. The owner's bookkeeper was not thrilled and listed the standard alternatives. When the owner said his Bitcoin was doing way better than those other things, the bookkeeper replied that he just didn't understand it.
Ah, I just don't understand it.
Moran · 6:19
The host predicted that at some point in the not so distant future, people will say they don't understand it and don't care, but they guess they need to get some. If something has been around for 15, 16, 20, 25 or 30 years, he reasoned, maybe it's not going away.
The GameStop Echo: The Next Cultural Lightning Rod
As for what could finally carry Bitcoin into the mainstream, the host said it would not be Strategy. It might be GameStop, though. He recalled how much coverage GameStop got and the movies that were made about it, a cultural moment he thought would wake people up to paying attention to money. It did for him and many others, he said, but something even bigger is coming, and we might be in the middle of it with the tariff situation.
It might be GameStop, though.
Moran · 6:58
The 'Weedhead' Test: Timing the Mainstream Wave
The episode closed with a prediction about timing. The host said that whatever moment finally makes people want some Bitcoin, it will arrive suddenly. By the time your weedhead buddy says he is getting some Bitcoin, he warned, it might be too late by comparison, although he added that it is never truly too late.
It's coming and when it happens, that suddenly moment is going to hit us like a ton of bricks.
Moran · 7:30
The host framed all of this as his opinion and not financial advice. His thesis was that the network effects are already in place, and only the cultural trigger is missing. The conversation continues at Mining Disrupt 2027, March 22 to 24 in Irving, Texas. When this session was recorded, Bitcoin traded at $84,897; on October 12, 2026 it was $83,316.
I'm getting that Bitcoin.
Moran · 7:53