About

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The Bitcoin Distillery

Welcome to The Bitcoin Distillery, my Bitcoin-focused blog for individuals, investors, and researchers interested in learning more about Bitcoin.

I want to help accelerate your understanding of Bitcoin adoption, mining, policy, and research.

Think of The Bitcoin Distillery as having your own private Bitcoin research team!

I don't sell anything here and there are no blog sponsors. I am semi-retired and my only paid gig is as a Science Advisor with Satoshi Action Education, which gives me enough time to do this blog on the side.

Education and Research

My main motivation for running summaries of Bitcoin YouTube episodes and a variety of research papers is research-related.

One of my specialties is horizon scanning. For example, see our Satoshi Action peer-reviewed Bitcoin mining research priorities article, coauthored by 15 people from the mining sector.

The YouTube briefing notes and research reviews that you see on this blog are added to a large 'What Bitcoiners' Said' dataset, which currently is comprised of >4,000 summarized YouTube podcasts. I use the dataset to identify and prioritize research needs that might support credible Bitcoin policymaking (2023 paper; the 2024 paper is in preparation).

I personally find it far too difficult to keep up with all the 100 or so Bitcoin YouTube episodes published each week. But I can keep up using AI summaries.

I've got most of the process automated now. I detect new episodes via an RSS feed, scrape transcriptions, then summarize those with an AI prompt I've refined over the last 2-years (I started in May 2023 with GPT3.5 and just recently moved to OpenAI GPT o3 mini high). That leaves me with the opportunity for a manual review and edit while I add hyperlinks.

In late-2024 I tried to post a blog on every new long-form Bitcoin YouTube episode that came out but there was a lot of overlapping content, so in 2025 I am picking only select episodes to summarize on the blog. The rest of the summaries just go straight to the dataset. I also have a backlog of older broadcasts that I work in occasionally with the current content.

I thought I would share my summaries publicly in a 'briefing note' format, something I used extensively while working for the Canadian government for 5-years. The notes give a quick overview of content, pertinent web links, some ideas of information gaps and research needs, and a little speculation on the wider implications for Bitcoin and its role in society.

They are much more detailed than an X thread but they are meant to be a starting point: if you find the summary interesting, I recommend listening to the original to get the full story, just in case the AI missed or misinterpreted something important to you.

About me

I am a former environmental economics and policy university professor and have >25 years of international teaching experience. I have extensive editorial experience in academic publishing and my academic writing has garnered over 6,000 citations from his >85 journal articles and technical reports.

Satoshi Action Education

Satoshi Action Education, where I am a Science Advisor, is a global non-profit 501(c)(3) dedicated to researching Bitcoin & the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism. Dennis Porter is the Founder and President of Satoshi Action Education, and Co-Founder and CEO at advocacy-oriented Satoshi Action Fund.

While they are not a sponsor of this blog, my work with Satoshi Action is what allows me to maintain this blog independently. I work with Satoshi Action because I think what they do is important. To donate, if you so choose, click on this button:

Satoshi Action Education donation page

Also, check out some briefing notes from episodes featuring the Satoshi Action crew!