The Mining Disrupt News Surge for Monday, February 17, 2025 went out five weeks before the Mining Disrupt Expo in Fort Lauderdale. The host ran through the week's posts day by day, then spent the opinion section on one idea: when one asset leads a field by this much, the odds of a challenger taking its place are poor.
He also set up a smaller argument at the start. Michael Saylor had said something that week that drew a lot of criticism, and the host promised to come back to it before the main segment.
The network that week
He did not read out the price. He said only that a dollar bought more than a thousand sats, and that the total market cap was back under $2 trillion. He was not worried about it.
The numbers he did give were for the network. Public nodes stood at 21,777, and the hashrate was still over 800. He asked whether it would pass 900 and said that remained to be seen.
Two solo blocks in one day
The Monday item came from Solo Satoshi, which reported that a second solo miner had found a block that day: two in one day.
This means that if you are solo mining, the chances of hitting a block is better now than ever before.
Mining Disrupt News Surge host · 1:45
He read it as a sign of the mining industry decentralizing. He said he understood why large pools form and why mining concentrates, but that he did not like seeing giant pockets of hashrate and liked seeing solo miners hit blocks.
Goldman Sachs, Lyn Alden and AI
On Tuesday, MacroScope pointed to a 13F filing in which Goldman Sachs reported holding about 24 million shares of BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), an 88% increase from its previous 13F for July, August and September.
Wednesday's post was from Lyn Alden, who wrote that one day the debate over whether AIs are conscious and deserve rights would be intense. The host said he had raised AI and Bitcoin on the show before, and that he would not get into the question of rights. His own bet was narrower: digital entities might want to be paid.
And what do you think digital entities are going to want to be paid in?
Mining Disrupt News Surge host · 3:11
His answer to his own question was that it would not be paper dollars.
Eleven million coins and one leader
Thursday set up the opinion section. Mark Moss had posted about the number of cryptocurrencies in existence, more than eleven million, and asked whether anyone felt lucky enough to pick the right one. Another post the host read listed three things to buy: something everyone in the world needs, nobody can stop and almost nobody understands. Twenty years ago that was Amazon and Apple, the post said; today it is Bitcoin.
Friday brought what the host called some of the biggest news of the week. Nick Bhatia posted that Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund owned Bitcoin, and the host said he was sure that others in the region did as well. Jeff Park added that the biggest single position in Paul Tudor Jones's portfolio was Bitcoin.
Saylor and the network
Before the main segment, the host came back to Saylor. Saylor had said that buying Bitcoin strengthens the network and selling weakens it, and replies pushed back. One reply said the network does not know whether coins were bought or sold, only whether they are spent, and told him to read the white paper. Jameson Lopp pointed out that every buyer has a seller and every seller has a buyer.
The host offered one possible reading, and said clearly that Saylor had not said it: perhaps he meant buying from a miner, since a miner who cannot sell has nowhere for the coins to go.
I don't understand how he wraps his head around the idea of selling Bitcoin, weakening it.
Mining Disrupt News Surge host · 5:14
His takeaway was not to have too many heroes. People say things that others do not understand, he said, and sometimes there is nuance that gets missed.
The 80/20 rule
The opinion section was built on the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule, which the host also tied to the Matthew effect. In his telling, most of the results in many systems trace back to a small share of the causes. His example was wealth, where a small share of people own a large share of the total.
He then showed a chart of market dominance. Bitcoin was not at 80%, he said, but it was above 50%, and everything else together was under 50%. Any one of the other coins sat somewhere in that remaining share.
Which one would overtake Bitcoin? He said he did not know, but guessed none of them. He expected the leader to stay the leader and most of the rest to fade away.
The point here is that math doesn't lose.
Mining Disrupt News Surge host · 6:46
He said the same pattern shows up in other places, and put up the Magnificent Seven as a pie chart: not 80% either, but set against the 493 other companies in the rest of the chart. When there is a clear leader, he argued, it pays to look at why it is in that position.
He allowed for the objection. Someone might say the leader does not deserve its place and another coin should have it. Maybe, he said, but he did not rate that coin's chances, however much its backers liked it. He closed with a warning: if you come at the king, you best not miss.
When this episode was published, Bitcoin traded at $96,068. On October 26, 2026 it was $79,953.