Rows of bitcoin mining machines in a dim warehouse, their green status lights glowing in the cold blue light
Original AI-generated illustration.

Calacanis Calls Bitcoin a 'Dead Network' as Miners Deliver a Second 5% Difficulty Rise

NodeWitness Team 8 min read

Jason Calacanis says bitcoin has lost the crowd and should be swapped for AI. Three bitcoiners put $1 million each on the table to prove him wrong, and he has not signed. On-chain, the machines that secure the network keep plugging in, and the October 29 adjustment delivered the first back-to-back difficulty rises above 5% since early 2024.

Jason Calacanis, the angel investor and podcast host best known for an early stake in Uber, posted a short case for selling bitcoin on Tuesday, October 27 [1]. "Outflows from ETFs are signal and will continue," he wrote. "We will test the 57k low again in the next 12 months" [1]. The line that set X alight came in the middle. "Why put your resources into a dead network that offers nothing beyond a store of value?" [1]. He finished with a flat call. "Bitcoin will never break its all-time high again" [1]. The post had passed 2.2 million views by Thursday morning [1].

Calacanis has not left crypto altogether. He holds TAO, the token behind the AI network Bittensor, CoinDesk reported [2], and he told one reply on X that he is "not short bitcoin" [3]. He also does not pretend the post was a one-off. "Every month I do my Bitcoin is dead post when I'm bored," he said on his own show, in a clip shared by This Week in Startups [4].

Three bets, and no signature

The answer came with a price tag. Fred Krueger, a bitcoin investor with a Stanford PhD, offered $1 million that bitcoin exceeds $126,210.50 before October 28, 2036, with both sides placing the money in independent escrow [5]. "You said NEVER. I'm giving you just 10 years," he wrote [5]. Calacanis replied with a counter. "Propose next 12 month bet" [6].

Grant Cardone, the real estate investor, then offered $1 million on the same price with a much tighter deadline of October 28, 2028 [7]. He also took a swipe at Krueger, saying a serious bet "would not be longer than 12-18 months" [8]. Calacanis quoted Cardone's offer with "So much free money!" [9] and later asked him whether he had "an escrow or platform that can actually lock this in" [10]. By the end of Wednesday, Cardone's verdict was short. "He did not accept the bet!" [11].

The third offer came from Terence Michael, a Hollywood producer turned bitcoin educator, who matched Cardone's terms, according to Bitcoin.com News and TheStreet [12][13]. "Add [Fred Krueger's] original bet to the mix and you have $3M saying 'bitcoin is dead' is free," he wrote, as quoted by Bitcoin.com News [12]. Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong joined in with a joke. "Don't make us start an inverse-Calacanis index Jason!" [14]. Not every reply was a dare. Muneeb Ali, founder of Stacks, agreed that AI now competes for capital that once had few other frontier outlets, while arguing that the two are not a zero-sum trade [15].

The ETF part of the thesis did not age well over the following days. US spot bitcoin ETFs lost $773.5 million on October 22 and 23, then took in $110.3 million, $176 million and $137.3 million over the next three sessions, according to Farside Investors [16].

What "dead" looks like on-chain

A network's pulse shows first in its miners. Our node estimates the 30-day average hashrate at 1,024 EH/s on October 28, up 13% from 907 EH/s on August 26 [17]. It is still 7.8% below its peak of 1,110 EH/s in November 2025 [17]. Daily figures are noisier. October 28 came in at 1,006 EH/s, 23% below the single-day record of 1,305.5 EH/s set on October 24, 2025 [17].

Difficulty tells the same story with less noise. The adjustment on October 16 raised it 5.92%, from 132.72 to 140.58 trillion [18]. The next one, at block 973,728 on October 29, raised it 5.54% to 148.36 trillion [18][19]. That is roughly 12% in two adjustments (11.8%), and the first back-to-back pair of 5%+ rises since February 2024 [18]. Even so, difficulty sits about 4.9% below its record of 155.97 trillion, set on October 29, 2025 [18].

Miners are doing this for less money. Using subsidy only, a petahash earned an average of $38.22 a day over the 30 days to October 28, against $48.48 a year earlier, a drop of 21% [17][20]. On October 27 a solo miner pointed at the Solo CK pool found block 973,413 and collected 3.14 BTC, a lottery win of the kind we worked through in our solo mining odds piece [19].

The holders show little sign of leaving either. In our node's October 25 snapshot of the UTXO set, 34.21% of all bitcoin, about 6.88 million BTC, had not moved in more than five years, level with the series high reached a week earlier [21]. A year ago that share was 30.7% [21]. Ordinary use is steady. Our node counted about 1.06 million outputs spent on October 28, in line with the 2026 median of 1.07 million and slightly above 2025's 1.05 million [22].

The honest counterpoint

Fees are where the "dead" argument finds something to hold on to. Mempool.space recommended 1 sat/vB for every priority level on October 29 [19]. Over the past 144 blocks, which carried about 635,000 transactions, fees came to 2.54 BTC, or 0.56% of what miners earned [19]. Blockspace is cheap because demand for it is thin, and that leaves security riding almost entirely on a subsidy that halves again in about 76,000 blocks [23].

Price is the other soft spot. Bitcoin traded around $80,000 on Thursday morning, about 36% below the $126,200 peak of October 2025 on Binance daily candles [23][24]. Calacanis's $57,000 target is close to the 2026 low, $57,800 on July 1 on the same candles [24].

Calling a network dead is a claim about attention and price, and on those two Calacanis has a case. The machines, the dormant coins and the daily traffic tell a different story, one he has so far declined to back with $1 million.

Follow the data on our hashrate, hash ribbons and HODL waves charts, with the live estimate on our difficulty adjustment page and today's fees. What a petahash earns is covered in our hashprice analysis, and more on miners lives in our Network and mining section.

Sources

Source type in brackets. All times UTC. Accessed October 29, 2026.

  1. Jason Calacanis (@Jason), post on X, October 27, 2026, 05:46 UTC. Full text read via the X API; 2,232,671 views at 08:37 UTC on October 29. (Primary, social media)
  2. CoinDesk, Shaurya Malwa, Investor who called for AI pivot in 2023 says bitcoin is going to $57,000, October 27, 2026. TAO holding. (Secondary, press)
  3. Jason Calacanis, reply on X, October 28, 2026. "I am not short bitcoin." (Primary, social media)
  4. This Week in Startups (@twistartups), post with video clip, October 29, 2026. (Primary, social media, Calacanis's own show)
  5. Fred Krueger (@dotkrueger), bet offer on X, October 28, 2026, 04:46 UTC. (Primary, social media)
  6. Jason Calacanis, reply to Krueger, October 28, 2026. (Primary, social media)
  7. Grant Cardone (@GrantCardone), bet offer on X, October 28, 2026, 12:36 UTC. (Primary, social media)
  8. Grant Cardone, reply to Krueger, October 28, 2026. (Primary, social media)
  9. Jason Calacanis, quote post, October 28, 2026. (Primary, social media)
  10. Jason Calacanis, reply to Cardone, October 28, 2026. (Primary, social media)
  11. Grant Cardone, reply on X, October 28, 2026, 23:46 UTC. (Primary, social media)
  12. Bitcoin.com News, Jamie Redman, Jason Calacanis' Bleak Bitcoin Prediction Draws $3M in Rival Bets—but He Won't Bite, October 28, 2026. Terence Michael's offer and quote. (Secondary, press)
  13. TheStreet, Grant Cardone challenges Bitcoin bear to $1 million bet, October 2026. (Secondary, press)
  14. Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong), quote post on X, October 28, 2026. (Primary, social media)
  15. Muneeb Ali (@muneeb), post on X, October 28, 2026. (Primary, social media)
  16. Farside Investors, Bitcoin ETF flow (US$m), read at 08:41 UTC on October 29, 2026. Daily totals: −635.6 (Oct 22), −137.9 (Oct 23), +110.3 (Oct 26), +176.0 (Oct 27), +137.3 (Oct 28). (Secondary, data aggregator)
  17. NodeWitness, hash ribbons daily series (/api/node/hash-ribbons), estimated from block counts and difficulty on our node's blocks, last final day October 28, 2026. 30-day averages and the hashprice calculation by NodeWitness. (Primary, own data)
  18. NodeWitness, difficulty history (/api/node/hashrate) and live estimate (/api/node/difficulty-adjustment) read at 08:38 UTC on October 29, 2026, at height 973,665 (+5.79%, 63 blocks remaining), and the header of block 973,728 on our node, read at 19:43 UTC on October 29, 2026: 148.36 trillion, +5.54%. (Primary, own data)
  19. mempool.space, public API: difficulty adjustment (+5.78%, 62 blocks remaining, height 973,666), recommended fees, reward stats for the last 144 blocks and block 973,413, read around 08:40 UTC on October 29, 2026. (Primary, block explorer)
  20. NodeWitness, daily issuance series (/api/node/issuance), protocol subsidy per UTC day from our node's blocks, fees excluded, with Binance daily close. (Primary, own data with third-party price)
  21. NodeWitness, HODL waves (/api/market/hodl-waves/history), UTXO set snapshots at blocks 971,930 (34.213%), 973,007 (34.207%) and 921,888 (30.70%). (Primary, own data)
  22. NodeWitness, daily on-chain series (/api/node/onchain-daily) through block 973,614 (October 28, 2026). Medians calculated by NodeWitness. (Primary, own data)
  23. NodeWitness, market ticker with CoinGecko price ($80,002 at 08:38 UTC on October 29) and halving countdown from our node (76,335 blocks). (Primary, own data with third-party price)
  24. NodeWitness, Binance BTC/USDT daily candles via /api/market/ohlc. High of $126,200 on October 6, 2025; 2026 low of $57,800.20 on July 1. (Primary, own data with third-party price)

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Last updated: October 29, 2026