Phil Lojacono – From Mining to Machine Learning: Energy Infrastructure for Bitcoin + AI

What if something people call magic internet money could actually restructure global power dominance? That’s the question I brought to the BTC Prague stage — and it’s one I’ve been thinking about for years as a Bitcoiner, a founder, and someone who grew up in Switzerland.

Why I Started Connecting Bitcoin to Politics

About five or six years ago, I started writing a blog about Bitcoin and its links to politics and macroeconomics. The more I got into Bitcoin, the more I talked to people from different countries — and I kept feeling this huge frustration. Frustration with governments, with institutions. I kept asking myself: why? And could Bitcoin help solve it?

Four Things That Make Bitcoin Valuable

Bitcoin has many advantages, but let me pick four. It’s heavily decentralized — anyone can participate. It’s censorship resistant — nobody can stop you. It’s transparent — the full ledger goes back to 2009. And it has a rock-solid monetary policy that nobody can change. The market clearly shows people want exactly these properties.

Switzerland as a Blueprint

I grew up in Switzerland. It’s not perfect — far from it — but it has something rare: direct democracy. Politicians can be challenged. Decisions can be reversed. The people sit on top. That mirrors Bitcoin closely. You run your node, you run your rules. No central authority just dictates terms.

Switzerland is also deeply decentralized. Nine million people, four languages, 26 cantons competing with each other, over 2,100 municipalities. Taxes flow 30% to the federal level, 40% to cantons, 30% to municipalities. Compare that to the UK — 90% centralized at the top. That gap matters enormously.

The Danger of Weak Money

Switzerland held the gold standard longer than almost any country — abandoning it only in the late 1990s when joining the IMF. I consider that a mistake. And my personal fear is that we’re now on the same fiat track as everyone else, just 20 to 30 years behind. The Swiss National Bank has essentially become the world’s largest hedge fund. We’re already lowering interest rates back to zero.

The effects of strong money show up clearly in output per hour worked and in the human development index. It’s not that Swiss people work harder — they don’t. The system creates efficiency. Countries running on weak money will never fully benefit from today’s technologies.

Bitcoin Is More Than Money

In the Bitcoin community we talk a lot about the devastating effects of the fiat standard. But I think we can go much further philosophically. Bitcoin doesn’t just starve corrupt power structures financially — it offers a model for decentralized global governance. Less power concentrated in few hands, more power returned to the individuals who actually create value.

Bitcoin isn’t just money. To me, it’s a vote for a decentralized future. And I genuinely hope we can all be part of building it.