An hour with @RobinSeyr on the bitcoin retirement math:

– why, on the model's default inputs, each 0.2 BTC moves the retirement date by about three years
– what waiting for a lower entry cost, at every point in bitcoin's history
– where a stack stops drawing down and starts outgrowing its spending

Historical figures and stated assumptions throughout — not a forecast. Full episode in the reply.

Bitcoin is secured by brute force: about a billion trillion guesses a second (1.01 ZH/s).

Is that growth a power law, like price? Not quite. Fit from 2011, the exponent is 10.9. From 2016: 7.4. From 2020: 5.7. Each fit is tight, and each is flatter than the last.

The network's work keeps compounding, but more slowly each cycle: at the last four years' pace it doubles about every 23 months.

The latest exponent (5.7) is now close to price's (5.5), and price leads: hash rate follows it by ~6 months.

Live charts: lastcoinstanding.com/bitcoin-hash-r…

@BitmundFreud, I remember you having a question on Bitcoin's hash rate as a power law, so cc'ing you on this in case you're interested.

LASIK eye surgery costs roughly $2,100 per eye today. In 1998, it cost $2,200 per eye. Adjusted for inflation, you are paying about 60% less for a procedure that has simultaneously become faster, safer, and more precise. That is what markets do when left alone.

Now compare that DA classified hearing aids as prescription medical devices for decades, locking you into audiologist appointments before you could buy a $3,000 device that a manufacturer could produce for $300. Or, look at insulin. Heavily regulated, patent-extended, and politically manipulated, a vial of Humalog ran over $330 in 2024 versus roughly $21 in Canada for a biosimilar. Same molecule. Different regulatory environment.

LASIK sits in a peculiar gap. Insurers rarely cover it, which means third-party payment schemes never severed the price signal between provider and patient. You shop, clinics compete, manufacturers race to improve technology. The feedback loop that markets depend on functions exactly as it should.

Regulated medical markets break that loop deliberately. The FDA's approval process costs pharmaceutical companies over $2.6 billion per new drug on average, erecting barriers that protect incumbents and punish smaller competitors who cannot absorb a decade of compliance costs. Patients then pay the premium on the back end.

LASIK is the control in the experiment. The market won.

Price bitcoin in gold instead of dollars and the power law still holds: a tight fit since 2011 (R² 0.94).

Today bitcoin sits at 0.31× its gold trend. Since 2011, bitcoin sat lower only 7% of months. In dollars, 27% did.

Idea credit: @1basemoney (Porkopolis).

Why so much lower in gold? Mostly gold, not bitcoin: gold went from $2,034 an ounce to $5,020 in about two years.

Caveat: the gold trend shifts more with the start year.

Live chart: lastcoinstanding.com/bitcoin-in-gold

See you at Bitcoin Alpha @bitcoinalphaorg

Co-founder John McCabe @LastCoinStandng is there all weekend, on stage, in the Shark Tank and in plenty of conversations in between, talking about where the Bitcoin economy goes next.

If you're there, come and say hello 👋

Bitcoin's spikes above its power law trend:

2011: 14×
2013: 12×
2017: 5.4×
2021: 3.2×
2024–25: 1.19×

Every one came back to trend (or even floor). Each spike got smaller.

A new exploration for HODLers on what that means, and what you can decide before the next one. 🧵

• Why the ceiling keeps falling
• What trimming and buying back did each cycle, including where it cost bitcoin
• Why considering borrowing at a spike becomes far more risky

Today: 0.54× trend, near the floor. Not a spike.

lastcoinstanding.com/bitcoin-spikes

Buy a house now, or rent and buy in 3 years?
20% down, or 10% with the rest in bitcoin?

Compare Housing Plans puts two plans side by side on the same savings and the same spending. Whatever a plan doesn't spend on housing goes into bitcoin.

The difference, measured in bitcoin.

Try your own numbers:
lastcoinstanding.com/compare-housin…

Four presets, four Power Law paths, and two plain what-ifs. In the default comparison, if bitcoin halves or goes nowhere, buying today comes out ahead. Everything after tax, in today's dollars.
The page shows; it doesn't pick.

Spare cash and a mortgage? Every extra dollar on the loan earns its rate, guaranteed. Bitcoin has to beat that.

New on Last Coin Standing: Bitcoin vs. Paying Down the Mortgage works out the yearly growth bitcoin would need for holding bitcoin to beat prepaying your mortgage.

At US averages (a $240K balance at 4.4%, per FHFA), that hurdle is about 5.6% a year after tax over 10 years.

The page tests it against bitcoin's record and sets out the risks on both sides. It won't tell you which to pick.

lastcoinstanding.com/bitcoin-vs-pay…

“Your” money in the bank is not yours. Bitcoin in self custody fixes this.

New Exploration: twenty bitcoin lenders, one card each: rate, the LTV lines, custody, the catch — and the price that triggers any margin call, today.

Not ranked. No affiliate links. Every figure dated and sourced to the lender's own pages.

Link below.

lastcoinstanding.com/bitcoin-lenders

Set your own loan-to-value and every trigger price moves with it. Pick a US state and the cards flag which lenders aren't available there, and which don't say. Where a lender doesn't publish a figure, the card says so. Nothing is estimated.

Imagine a kilogram that weighed a little less every year, or a meter that shrank a few percent a decade. No engineer would accept it.

We accept it from the dollar.

Bitcoin is the first money whose supply is settled. It's the denominator. Everything else is a numerator.

New essay: Is Bitcoin a Singularity?

Why bitcoin is one of a kind, why that gives it gravity, why the pull only runs one way, and four things that would prove me wrong.

lastcoinstanding.substack.com/p/is-bitcoin-a…

My x.com circle: