The Mining Disrupt News Surge for Monday, December 16, 2024 opened with housekeeping: a reminder that Mining Disrupt Expo 2025 was coming to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, March 25th through the 27th, and a promise that the episode would explain what World of Warcraft has to do with Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin had recently pushed past $100,000, and the show set out to connect two threads: state-level Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bills and the behavior of publicly traded miners.
The host leaned on posts from Dennis Porter of Satoshi Action, whom he described as the man in no small part responsible for some of the reserve legislation coming down the pipeline. According to Porter, the host said, the chances of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bills in Texas and Pennsylvania passing were next to guaranteed at that point.
The numbers segment came first. The host counted public nodes online at over 21,000, on-chain transaction fees still in single digits, and unconfirmed transactions in the mempool just shy of 300,000. He also noted that a dollar no longer bought more than a thousand sats: on the show it bought 982 sats per dollar.
The State Playbook: Why Texas and Pennsylvania Are Moving First
The host recalled his point from the previous week that the states are more nimble than the entire federal bureaucracy. He then read a Wednesday post from Porter on the economic weight of individual states.
many do not realize that four states in the USA count for four of the 15 largest economies in the world
Dennis Porter · 3:25
Porter's post went on to say that Russia's economy is smaller than California's and that Texas is barely bigger than New York and Florida.
strategic Bitcoin Reserve at the state level in the USA would be huge
Dennis Porter · 3:38
A day later, on Thursday the 12th, Porter posted a shorter prediction. The host paired it with a CNBC report that the Texas House had introduced a bill to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
we will have a strategic Bitcoin Reserve in the USA
Dennis Porter · 3:54
For viewers asking what an introduced bill really means, the host pointed to a podcast interview in which Porter was asked how likely the bill was to pass. The long and short of it, the host said, was that Porter called the odds really, really good, citing a group that tracks this kind of legislation.
they have a 100% accurate track record they have not missed a single time
Dennis Porter · 4:41
From Game Theory to Market Theory: The WoW Auction House Analogy
To explain why a miner would buy Bitcoin, the host turned to an unlikely source: the auction house in World of Warcraft. He described himself as a former degenerate World of Warcraft player who liked playing the auction house more than playing the game as it was intended.
I became filthy disgusting Rich by doing this what I would do is I would mine or herb or go and collect resources
Dennis Porter · 5:58
He would stockpile resources, buy up every remaining piece on the auction house on Thursday, and then slow drip it back into the economy at a large markup when players came home on Friday to gear up for the weekend. He was clear that this was not a wrong way to play, just a different one, and he argued that miners are now playing a similar game.
Why Would a Miner Buy Bitcoin?
The connection ran through a Tuesday news item. MARA Holdings said it now held 4,435 Bitcoin, and a quoted post argued that any publicly traded miner not doing what MARA Holdings was doing wasn't paying attention. Michael Saylor added that MARA had achieved a Bitcoin yield of 47.6% year to date, and Preston Pysh replied that, with only about 3% of the network, MARA would need roughly 2.4 years of mining to collect that much Bitcoin. The host's question was simple: MARA is a Bitcoin miner, so why is it buying Bitcoin?
this is what miners are doing it seems to me so if you're a miner and you get Bitcoin through mining sure but you're also buying Bitcoin
Dennis Porter · 7:46
If miners are buying Bitcoin, he asked, who is selling it? He pointed to Bitcoin's yearly chart, which he said was up 143.6% with the price over $100,000.
Quantum Computing and Other Headlines
Among the week's news items, the host read a post from Dan Held on whether quantum computing could kill Bitcoin. In the summary the host read, Held concluded that quantum machines remain mostly experimental, that the industry would know long before they become a practical risk, that Bitcoin already has some protection, and that the protocol could be updated if a genuine threat ever appeared.
The week also brought a proposal from a Russian Parliament deputy to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve in Russia, and a report that a Japanese lawmaker, whose name the host noted is Satoshi, was pushing for a national Bitcoin reserve.
The Host's Supply Shock Thesis
The host closed by tying state legislation and miner behavior together. In his view, if publicly traded miners hold what they mine and buy more on top, the coins available to everyone else get scarcer.
if minor don't sell and they're the largest producer of Bitcoin the price can only go one way
Dennis Porter · 8:21
That closing line was the host's opinion, not a forecast from any of the people he quoted. The conversation continues at Mining Disrupt 2027, March 22 to 24 in Irving, Texas. When this session was recorded, Bitcoin traded at $103,751; on October 11, 2026 it was $83,079.