Bitcoin Well Podcast

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Reads: Seven ways Bitcoin is used today

Most people dismissing Bitcoin haven't seen it in use. They see a price chart and miss the system underneath.

In this episode, Zach reads "7 Ways Bitcoin Is Used Today" by Ulysses Alfaro — a breakdown of how Bitcoin is already solving real problems for real people all over the world.

This is a great episode to share with anyone who still asks "but what can you actually use Bitcoin for?"

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After months of internal conversations, working groups, and a lot of soul searching, Bitcoin Well is announcing carbon neutral Bitcoin purchasing.

In this episode, Zach reads the full press release — because it speaks for itself.

Optional at checkout. No mandates. No government program. Just individuals choosing to do more with what they have.

Personal responsibility. Voluntary action. That's what this is.

Learn more at bitcoinwell.com/ESG

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The Difficulty Adjustment and the Halving Explained - Why Bitcoin Is the Hardest Money Ever Created

Mining is a global guessing game. Computers race to find a winning number, the winner writes the next page of the ledger, and gets paid in brand new Bitcoin. Clean. Simple. Elegant.

But here's where most explanations stop and the really interesting questions start.

What stops every computer on Earth from switching to Bitcoin mining at once? What stops Bitcoin from being mined out of new supply in a matter of weeks? What stops the supply from exploding like every other commodity in history?

The answer is two pieces of code Satoshi Nakamoto quietly baked into the protocol from day one.

In this video we break down both: the difficulty adjustment — Bitcoin's built-in thermostat that keeps block times at exactly 10 minutes no matter how much computing power enters the network — and the halving — the programmed supply schedule that makes Bitcoin the hardest money ever created by mathematical certainty.

We also address the death spiral objection head-on, explain Bitcoin's stock-to-flow ratio, and end with the question the next video answers: if miners have all that power, what stops them from rewriting the code and giving themselves unlimited Bitcoin?

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Chapters:

01:05 Today's Topic

02:20 Mining Is a Global Guessing Game

02:47 What Stops Bitcoin From Being Mined Out?

03:23 The $1 Million Thought Experiment

04:13 Why 10 Minutes?

04:49 The Difficulty Adjustment

05:33 65 Million Times More Powerful

06:05 Bitcoin Manages Itself

06:15 The 21 Million Cap and the Halving

07:12 The Halving Timeline

08:00 Bitcoin vs. Gold on Supply

09:00 Stock-to-Flow

09:03 The Death Spiral Myth

10:03 What Pays Miners After the Reward Hits Zero?

11:03 Difficulty Adjustment + Halving Together

11:46 Mises and the Regression Theorem

12:05 Next Up: Nodes and the Blocksize War

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$133 million in revenue. 47% growth year over year. During a bear market.

In this special edition of the Bitcoin Well Podcast, Zach sits down with founder and CEO Adam O'Brien and capital markets expert Halston for a full breakdown of what Bitcoin Well accomplished in 2025 — and where the company is headed in 2026.

Topics covered: how Bitcoin Well's three business units performed (Bitcoin ATMs, the Portal, and Bitcoin Well Infinite), why Bitcoin Well Infinite became the primary growth driver, the white glove service for high net worth individuals on a Bitcoin journey, the vision for a legitimate Bitcoin treasury company — hold Bitcoin, generate real operating profits, be genuinely embedded in the Bitcoin industry, how the company took its private placement partially paid in Bitcoin, why Canadian Bitcoiners are more cypherpunk than their American counterparts, Bitcoin Well's US expansion and the challenges of the American payment rail landscape, how AI is being deployed to improve operations, the ATMs as a privacy and marketing engine for the Portal, and what a sub-6x ROAS on paid ads signals about product-market fit.

Adam's closing thesis: Bitcoin is the only asset you can trade your time for and launch into the future. The only asset that's reasonable to self-custody. And Bitcoin Well is on a mission to enable independence through it.

🔗 bitcoinwell.com/investors

Chapters:

00:00 Intro — Bitcoin Well 2025 Year-End Review

01:42 Adam's One-Word Summary for 2025: "Set Up"

03:58 Revenue Breakdown — Where Did the 47% Growth Come From?

04:21 The Three Business Units Explained 07:10 Bitcoin Well Infinite — Who Are the Customers?

10:17 US Expansion — Hurdles and the Self-Custody Culture Gap

13:40 Bitcoin Well's Bitcoin Treasury — 6 Bitcoin and Growing

14:53 What a Legitimate Bitcoin Treasury Company Actually Looks Like

17:26 The Private Placement Paid in Bitcoin

20:52 GNA Was Down Despite Revenue Growth — Why?

22:00 AI and the Shift Toward Marketing Spend

24:04 What's Actually Working in Marketing

26:02 The ATM Segment — Stable Revenue, Bigger Role

27:00 ATMs as a Privacy and Marketing Engine, Not Just Revenue

28:56 The Mission: Enabling Financial Independence

30:28 Closing Thoughts and How to Follow Bitcoin Well

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Most people analyze the Middle East through religion, ideology, or ethnic conflict. Useful frames — but incomplete ones. If you want to understand why wars never end and why the same regions keep bleeding across decades, follow the printing press.

In this episode of Reads on the Bitcoin Well Podcast, Zach reads his original essay "How Iran Is a Creation of Fiat Money" — a deep dive into the monetary history behind 70 years of engineered conflict.

What's covered: the 1953 CIA coup that overthrew Iran's democratically elected prime minister for daring to nationalize his country's oil, Nixon's 1971 gold shock and the birth of the petrodollar system, how fiat money funded both sides of the Iran-Iraq War simultaneously, the 2012 Swift sanctions and what happened when Iranians started looking for alternatives, why Iran became a significant Bitcoin mining hub — and why the regime couldn't control it, and why Bitcoin is the only structural solution to monetary coercion.

The story of Iran isn't about Islam vs. the West. Those are just the costumes. The underlying play is always the same: centralized control of money enables centralized control of people.

Fix the money. Fix the world.

Original Article: https://bitcoinwell.com/blog/how-iran-is-a-creation-of-fiat-money

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Bitcoin Well Explains: How Bitcoin Works - Mining and Proof of Work

Forget the guy in a hoodie with a digital pickaxe. Forget the villain's lair boiling the oceans. Neither image is even close to accurate.

Bitcoin mining is network security. It's the mechanism by which every transaction gets written, validated, and locked in permanently - without a bank, government, or central authority telling anyone what to do.

In this video we break down exactly how it works:

-What miners are actually doing (spoiler: it's a blind, relentless lottery — not calculus)

Why miners are incentivized to use energy nobody else wants

Satoshi weaponized greed to build an impenetrable shield. It's one of the most elegant systems ever designed.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro w/ Zach

03:15 What Mining Actually Is

03:42 It's Not Math — It's a Guessing Game

04:12 How the Lottery Works: SHA-256 and Hashing

05:38 Why Does Anyone Do This? The Incentives

06:44 The Coinbase Transaction — How New Bitcoin Is Born

07:47 No Pre-Mine: Why Satoshi's Fairness Matters

08:15 Can Someone Just Attack the Network?

09:23 Why a 51% Attack Makes No Rational Sense

10:47 Satoshi Weaponized Greed

11:16 "Bitcoin Is Boiling the Oceans"

11:42 Security Always Costs Energy

12:23 Bitcoin Makes the Energy Cost Visible

12:45 Unforgeable Costliness — Why the Energy Is the Point

13:25 Miners Chase Wasted Energy

14:07 Summary: How It All Fits Together

14:38 Next Up: Difficulty Adjustments and the Halving

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The Great Data War of 2026: Why Bitcoin's "Civil War" Is Actually Proof It's Working

Bitcoin is having another one of its famous arguments. And if you're new here, you might think the sky has fallen. It isn't.

What's being called the Data War is the latest flashpoint in a debate that's been simmering since Casey Rodarmor launched the Ordinals project in 2023, essentially using a loophole opened by Taproot to inscribe arbitrary data directly onto individual satoshis.

That gave us Bitcoin NFTs, BRC-20 tokens, and a community-wide argument about what Bitcoin is actually for.

Now in 2026, those opinions have hardened into two camps: Bitcoin Knots and Bitcoin Core. In this episode, Zach breaks down both sides without taking one, explains why this isn't like 2017, and makes the case that Bitcoin's resistance to change isn't a bug; it's the most important feature.

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Bitcoin has touched $76,000 as the global landscape shifts under our feet. With the US and Israel at war and the energy markets in haywire due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, we are at a structural inflection point for the global financial system.

In this session, Zach and the Peruvian Bull dive into why the "flight to safety" isn't leading to gold, but to Bitcoin. We discuss the massive influx of Iranian buyers using Bitcoin as an exit ramp from a weaponized SWIFT system and hyperinflation.

The panel also tackles the rising threat of stablecoins—framing them as a "Central Bank Digital Currency" in disguise that governments will use to maintain relevance while banning true self-custody . We explore the "Spend and Replace" journey, why we need to meet Gen Z and women where they are with simple education, and the deep moral argument that Bitcoin is the only way to protest a system that prints money to fund endless war.

With only 1 million Bitcoin left to be mined for the rest of time, the question is no longer "is it a bubble," but "how do we reclaim our sovereignty?".

00:00 Intro — Bitcoin Between 71K-76K, Iran War, 20 Millionth Bitcoin Mined

01:50 Panel Introductions

02:00 Peruvian Bull: Bitcoin Up While Gold and Silver Dump

05:00 Iranian Citizens Buying Bitcoin as an Exit Ramp

07:36 Kyle: Bitcoin as a Protest Against War Funding

10:18 The Privacy Debate — Is Bitcoin a Surveillance Trap?

16:25 Adam on Silent Payments and Bitcoin's Programmable Privacy

19:37 Fedemint and the Satoshi vs. Elon Privacy Analogy

21:50 Alex's Wrench: Will Stablecoins Eat Bitcoin's Market?

27:00 Stablecoins vs. Bitcoin — Different Assets or Real Competition?

31:00 Bitcoin Puts Governments in Competition With Each Other

34:00 Gresham's Law and Why Bitcoiners Don't Spend Their Bitcoin

38:00 Who's Actually Using Bitcoin Day to Day?

45:00 Lindsay: Two Types of Bitcoiners and the Journey Mindset

49:00 What Is STRC and How Does It Fit In?

50:30 Plug: The Adam O'Brien Show

56:00 How Do We Onboard Gen Z and Women?

1:02:00 Short Form vs. Long Form — What Actually Converts People?

1:13:00 Bitcoin Is a Moral Issue, Not Just a Financial One

1:16:00 Wrap Up

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Bitcoin Well Explains: The 3 Biggest Bitcoin Myths

Most people's first exposure to Bitcoin was a headline. Bitcoin crashes. Bitcoin used by criminals. Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. And if that's all you've seen, skepticism is a rational response.

But before you write it off, let's make sure you're working from accurate information — not recycled talking points.

In this video we break down the three biggest myths that keep people from taking Bitcoin seriously:

Myth 1 — Bitcoin isn't backed by anything (spoiler: neither is the dollar, and hasn't been since 1971)

Myth 2 — Bitcoin gets hacked all the time (the protocol has never been successfully attacked — not once since January 2009)

Myth 3 — Bitcoin is just a fad or a Ponzi scheme (there's a fundamental difference between a fad and a protocol — and Bitcoin is infrastructure)

We're not here to convince you of anything. Just to make sure the information you're working with is accurate.

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Chapters:

01:58 The Headlines That Shape What You Think About Bitcoin

03:47 Myth 1: Bitcoin Isn't Backed by Anything

04:18 What Is Your Money Actually Backed By?

05:48 What Happened in 1971

06:45 What Actually Backs Bitcoin

08:03 Myth 2: Bitcoin Gets Hacked All the Time

08:55 What Those Headlines Are Actually About

09:49 How Secure Is Bitcoin Really?

0:44 Myth 3: Bitcoin Is Just a Fad or a Scam

11:37 The Difference Between a Fad and a Protocol

12:30 Bitcoin Is Infrastructure

13:15 The Numbers Don't Lie

13:35 The Lindy Effect

14:00 Why These Myths Keep Spreading

15:21 The Real Summary

15:57 Which Myth Did You Believe the Longest?

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Reads 7: Michael Saylor Vs Bitcoin Well

In this episode of Reads on the Bitcoin Well, Zach dives into two powerful blog posts that challenge the current state of Bitcoin adoption and reclaim the meaning of financial sovereignty.

Blog 1: Bitcoin Doesn't Need Another Michael Saylor This piece by Conrad Fitzpatrick argues that while Michael Saylor was the hero we needed for institutional acceptance, his "Treasury Playbook" has led to a massive rise in "captured" Bitcoin held by third parties. As individual wallet addresses drop, we explore the need for a new type of influencer—Mitchell Mailer—who inspires everyday people to take their Bitcoin into self-custody.

Blog 2: We’re Not Selling Bitcoin, We’re Selling Freedom Chantel LilyCrop explains the fundamental mission of Bitcoin Well: why we refuse to custody your Bitcoin. Through the story of a high-net-worth client choosing self-custody, we break down why institutional "promises" are just the legacy system in a new mask. Reclaiming your keys is the first domino in a bigger awakening about what true ownership actually means.

Stop asking for permission to access your own wealth. Learn how to transition from institutional dependence to true financial independence.

00:00 Intro & Week Recap

02:32 Bitcoin Doesn't Need Another Michael Saylor

03:35 What Saylor Got Right

05:02 What Saylor Got Wrong

05:37 Lessons from Wall Street Bets, NFTs & DeFi

06:26 Enter Mitchell Mailer

07:10 We're Not Selling Bitcoin, We're Selling Freedom

07:44 A Client Who Gets It

09:13 Why We Don't Hold Your Keys

09:59 What Self-Custody Does to You

11:01 Freedom Isn't Easy

11:16 Bitcoin Well's Mission