Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Live Not by Lies 1974

I get called cynical from time to time because I try to explain the sinister nature of our world to NPCs. I believe their lack of critical thinking as well as their unwarranted faith in institutions is misguided and dangerous. If someone is doing something immoral and egregious, I don’t think it’s cynical to acknowledge it. While it is unhealthy to obsess over it, it is vital to have at least a basic understanding of the way the world works.

I take the risk with certain people to explain things that may be difficult for them to accept because I believe that the truth matters and that lies have consequences. It’s very jarring to come to grips with how evil some people can be. I  was completely blindsided by the Covid Pandemic lockdowns, seeing the psychopathic pathology of control as well as the general populations compliance in response to it. I learned that much of what I grew up believing was a complete and utter lie. In response I felt depressed, angry, and isolated. Those feelings were incredibly important in my journey of self liberation and healing.

In medicine, if a doctor misdiagnoses a problem and prescribes the incorrect treatment, the patient will not be able to heal. Often times they even begin to get sicker and sicker. Understanding the problem is the first step towards helping a patient get better. Many doctors treat symptoms, but a good doctor is able to help the patient get to the root of the problem.

SAMHSA data for 2023 reports about 58.7 American million adults, equal to 22.8%, had a mental illness

We live in a sick society and very few people have the courage to ask, “why?” A lot of people just accept it as a reality and believe there is very little they can do about. Others spend their time rushing to try and treat the symptoms of the problem. Getting to the root of the issue is difficult because it means going against the grain of society by adopting a world view that is incompatible with the majority of people. More importantly, it means embracing facts that are so alarming it create a lot of emotional pain.

I believe the truth matters because lies have consequences so severe the consequences of ignoring reality are more dangerous than confronting it. You cannot hide from reality. If lies are allowed to fester, they will permeate and eventually find you. Lies will make you sick, your children sick, and your community sick. Truth is vital for healing.

Predators Rule The World

I’ve been trying to understand the core of the problem for a while and the best I have come up with is that predators rule the world. As a moral person, it is hard to understand the motivations of a predator who has no moral scruples and seeks power at any means necessary. To many people, perpetrating a cold blooded murder is unthinkable, but to the predator, it is just a. part of daily life. We often hear about criminal organizations and the horrific things that they do to each other and civilians, but the broader society overlooks the largest criminal organizations, governments.

The scale at which governments perpetrate crimes against humanity is unfathomable, and there are a few ways that normal individuals justify them. I won’t go into the breakdown of the anatomy of the state because Murray Rothbard has already broken it down masterfully and you can check out the audiobook in the following YouTube Video.

Normal people play mental gymnastics in order to justify their cooperation and compliance to tyrants because it is incredibly dangerous to confront them, and they want nice things. This is what the social contract actually is.

We are dealing with the consequences of living in a society that has been detached from reality for a very long time. They have accepted blatant lies. They at least to some level know they have been lied to, yet they choose to do nothing. This is because they either feel the costs of action are too high, or that in doing something they will lose the good things they have. This mentality has lead to and will lead to catastrophe. It’s difficult when confronted with evil to know what the correct course to take is, but inaction and apathy is obviously not the correct course of action.

Some Indisputable Examples of Lies: -Motivation for Iraq War and other wars

-Politicians and business leaders involvements with Jeffrey Epstein

-Central banking and inflation

-Justifications for central planning

-How taxes are used (black budget and other fraud)

-Origins of Covid19

-Mass Surveillance on US Citizens

-Covid19 Response (2 weeks to stop spread, Vaccines safe and effective)

I believe in order to be a healthy individual, you have to have some awareness of who your friends and enemies are. You have to have a basic understanding of the forces at work in world. You have to acknowledge the existence and depths of evil. We may never conclusively know the truth about any of the above, but if you moderately pay attention, it is clear to see the lies. The world is ran by war criminals, financial criminals, and pedophiles. They gaslight the general population to believe that they have to play by made up rules created by decree and subscribe to the system which protects the predators at the helm.

The predators come to agreements with each other via mutually assured destruction in order to preserve order, allowing the population to have some prosperity and the population accepts being ruled by predators because they want the newest iPhone. We are living in a time where the predators became way too overzealous and things are falling a part as a result. The population is losing their minds because it is harder to get nice things in exchange for compliance. They are struggling to realize that their compliance was actually more dangerous than courage, intellectual honesty, and facing inconvenient realities.

Consequences of Lies

The consequences of lies are horrific. All of us have been impacted in some way or another. Our society is sick and unless you are very intentional, it will make you sick as well. The food is trash, the culture is trash, the education is trash, and many people’s views of themselves is trash. There is a widespread issue of a general lack of self worth and self respect. Childhood suicide rates are rising. CDC website:https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html

Individuals are quick to oversimplify the issue and blame things like social media for being the problem. What is actually happening is very sophisticated and complicated. Children are facing adverse experiences (death of parents, sexual abuse, violence, etc), and instead of having a society capable of helping them understand these difficulties, they are fed into incredibly unhelpful institutions that in many ways normalize the problems. Why are traumatized children being given pills? Is the problem a chemical imbalance in their brains or is it the fact they faced something incredibly difficult?

One of the premiere books on trauma titled, “The Body Keeps the Score,” outlines how the professional community has faced difficulties when attempting to create guidelines on how to identify and treat trauma. The author describes how the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistic Manual), is missing some very clear diagnosis’ around trauma. The DSM is used almost universally to diagnosis and treat mental disorders. There are some conclusions that could be made which is that the predators running society are intentionally preventing a real discussion on how to heal. The incentives are clear. Predators do not want to empower their prey. In doing some research on the subject I found some alarming statistics which should make my case a bit more compelling.

Stats on Foster Care One study (“Girls in Foster Care: A Vulnerable and High-Risk Group”) found 81% of girls in foster care reported having been sexually abused at some point.PubMed

• In that same group, 68% had been abused by more than one individual.
• Mental health challenges: Up to 80% of children in foster care struggle with significant mental health issues, compared to 18-22% in the general population
• A 2025 prospective study found that nearly 30% of foster care youth had been incarcerated in young adulthood; by age 20, lifetime incarceration rates were 42%.ScienceDirect
• According to a working paper, close to one-fifth of the U.S. prison population are former foster children.NBER
• Some sources (e.g. the National Foster Youth Institute) state that 50% of the homeless population across the U.S. have spent time in foster care.The Annie E. Casey Foundation+2THE RIGHTWAY FOUNDATION+

These numbers are astounding and should be shocking, yet they are often never discussed. Individuals scream about the homelessness problem sweeping the country and the prescribes solutions never address the actual problem. Housing is expensive because the money is broken and people have mental health/substance abuse problems because they are being traumatized. The trauma is being ignored and normalized. Treatments are being prevented.

The consequences are clear. Trauma is wielded as a weapon to attack individual’s identities, break them down to be compliant, and prevent critical thinking. Younger people are anxious, committing suicide, and feeling hopeless. The financial system is breaking down and the predators are looting everyone they can because they are the only ones that actually understand how the game is being played. The consequences of accepting lies is devastating and will only continue to become more devastating if allowed to continue with it.

How to deal with it all?

This is a hard question to answer because everyone’s situation is different. If you are moral person, it is impossible to look around and not see that something is clearly wrong. The awareness of the problem is the first step in healing. I don’t know if it’s productive to try and directly confront all the predators in a direct confrontation because it’s dangerous but there are definitely circumstances where it is warranted.

Ultimately though, I believe one of the most productive ways to deal with it all is to do things in your own self interest. Be aware, use your brain and work to protect yourself as well as the people you love. Pursue a spiritual path and strive to find a sense of meaning and purpose in the things you do. Be very cognizant of the people you spend time with, their motivations and values. Work on things that matter to you.

One of the greatest lies people tell themselves is that, “This is only hurting me.” I don’t believe that we ever get to the point of being fully healed, but we can work through a lot of things that hold us back from connecting with others. This is why abuse is so horrible. People carry the impact of it with them their whole lives. When you decide to take on the process of healing, you become an example to others. Every interaction you have is informed by your experience. One of the things that makes it difficult for individuals to find hope is a lack of context in how things can be different.

In my own process of healing, I have found that I am capable of things that I previously had never thought was possible. Having a sense of confidence, conviction, and appreciation for who I am has radically changed my life for the better. I have been able to communicate, create, and connect like never before.

If horrible things have been done to you, you have the opportunity to not perpetuate them on others. You have the opportunity to break cycles of abuse. You have the opportunity to empathize with individuals who haven’t received empathy. Be kind to yourself because the way you treat yourself ultimately will inform the way you treat others.

I’m writing this not because I believe that everything is hopeless and we should all be black pilled. I am writing this because looking at the world this way has actually helped me a tremendous amount. When I realized that I wasn’t the problem and it was the sick society constantly attacking me, I actually began making some significant progress.

I don’t believe that humanity will ever eradicate evil and that we must learn how to live understanding how sinister people are but I do believe that you can live a fulfilled life by rejecting lies. There is hope for the future as long as there are people who are willing to reject living by lies.

The train that carried me from the airport sliced through a landscape that belied the headlines of the MSM or even the trending hot-potato topics on social media (whatever your preferred flavor). This was not the United Kingdom of censorship, grey bureaucracy, and urban decay. Here were green fields, old brick homes, and rustic rest left unrenovated regardless of the state of the buildings that could be seen out of the window. A different England, where whispers of hard, honest toil over cobblestones and candlelight still linger, just a breath of history away.

The town that embraced the station where I had to get off greeted me with charm and contradiction, a town breathing history yet suffocating under its future. Dilapidated walls and beautiful old townhouses rested uneasily on the carcass of fast-food chains, while the silent shadows of empty, once homely, storefronts told a tale of a culture unsure of where it is going, even as its stones remember where it has been.

And yet, hidden in that postcard paradox, gems remain, unpolished and raw. Street food stalls still serve tradition, probably just as unhealthy, but at least with a trace of local character, beyond the hollow parody that modern fish-and-chips has become.

A message lit my phone, Ben was in town and eager to go. Historical streets come with little to no parking space.

After tossing myself and my bags into his truck, greeted enthusiastically by Samson (Chief of security and good moods), we curved away from the town into something more elemental. Green grasslands and robust forests rolled past, a scenery that forces even the hurried to slow down, sometimes by nothing more dramatic than a tractor dragging hay bales through what counts here as rush hour.

At the end of a meandering road, we arrived at his citadel. There we found Chief Monkey waiting, someone I had only briefly met years ago, but well enough that both of us remembered. Together, we explored Ben’s compound, which gave the impression of a living organism in flux, bridges mid-construction, cabins mid-thought, a sauna rising like a promise across the river. Two lakes or huge ponds, each stocked with their own fish species, and occasionally a dog convinced that joy lives in every ball tossed, especially if it splashes into the water.

The three of us spoke the rest of the day,Plebian Market,Nostr,art,commerce, and the messy, sacred tension between money, meaning, and health.

More specifically about the paradox of the advanced state of modern medicine and their willful ignoring of alternative medication that could be beneficial to patients, be it complementary or as a stand-alone solution, were it not that the profits are found where solutions tend to be scarce, even if that scarcity is artificial.

In the later hours Chief and I even explored the potential path crossing of books and textile, but that is a rabbit hole that might have to be explored later.

WHAT WE OWE SNOWDEN, ASSANGE, AND REALITY WINNER

Whistleblowing in the surveillance age isn’t a leak. It’s a sacrifice.

We throw the word “whistleblower” around like it’s a protected role, a noble duty insulated by law and supported by society. But look closer. In practice, whistleblowing in the digital era means exile, prison, solitary confinement, or worse. When you expose the truth about unchecked state power, you don’t become a hero. You become a target.

Three names haunt this battlefield: Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Reality Winner.

They didn’t just disrupt the machine. They revealed the architecture of control behind it. And we owe them more than hashtags and retrospective praise.

THE DIGITAL BATTLEFIELD

Today’s frontline isn’t physical. It’s encrypted. Metadata is the new blood spatter. Leaks are acts of insurgency. The enemy is mass surveillance, algorithmic coercion, and governments that criminalize truth.

Modern whistleblowers don’t just risk jobs. They risk obliteration. Not metaphorical. Literal. Every login, call, or file transfer is tracked. OpSec isn’t paranoia anymore, it’s survival.

In this landscape, truth becomes a dangerous payload.

Snowden didn’t just expose the NSA’s dragnet. He exposed the illusion of oversight. FISA courts rubber stamped spying. Tech giants rolled over. Millions of people were spyed on in secret, without cause.

Assange, through WikiLeaks, didn’t leak for the thrill. He showed the world the unredacted brutality of empire: collateral murder, diplomatic backroom deals, CIA malware ops. They didn’t hate him for being wrong. They hated him for being right and undeniable.

Reality Winner? She didn’t get fame or asylum. She got a cell. She was given the longest prison sentence ever imposed for a leak of government information to the media. For one classified document. One. It confirmed Russian election interference. She didn’t profit. She acted out of conscience and paid with her freedom.

TRUTH TO POWER

What makes these people dangerous isn’t what they revealed, it’s that they proved secrecy is policy, not necessity.

When the state is embarrassed by a leak, it’s not because security was breached. It’s because the lie was.

Snowden proved surveillance was default, not exception. Assange proved war crimes were systemic, not accidental. Winner proved election integrity was compromised, not secure.

Each one shattered a carefully crafted narrative. That’s why they were silenced. Not to protect national security but to preserve institutional credibility.

WHAT WE OWE THEM

We can’t undo what’s been done to them. But we can refuse to forget.

Every encrypted message you send? Thank Snowden. Every leaked document you read? Thank Assange. Every journalist who knows the risk is real? Thank Winner.

But gratitude without action is hollow.

Build tools that don’t betray their users.

Encrypt by default.

Support platforms that resist data hoarding and surveillance capitalism.

Refuse normalization of spying, censorship, and indefinite detention.

And when the next leak drops, don’t ask “is it legal?” Ask: who’s afraid of the truth, and why?

THEY TOOK THE HIT. WE HOLD THE LINE.

Digital martyrs don’t want worship. They want resistance.

Whistleblowing shouldn’t be a one way trip. But in this system, it still is. The more we treat these sacrifices as isolated cases, the easier it becomes to crush the next one. This isn’t just history it’s a warning.

Assange lost over a decade of his life. Winner spent years in a cage. Snowden lives in exile.

Ask yourself: What did they gain?

Now ask: What did we?

And then ask the only question that matters:

What will you do with the truth they gave you?

-GHOSTWritten by GHOST, creator of the Untraceable Digital Dissident project.

Cold storage protects your keys. Not your face. Not your family. Not your location.

And if you’ve stacked anything worth noticing, you’re not paranoid.You’re a walking payday.

Criminals don’t need to hack your wallet.They just need to know you have one and where to find you.

Your Cold Wallet Is Safe. But You Aren’t.

Here’s the pattern: Someone posts about stacking sats or brags about hitting their stacking goal

• Lectures others about cold wallet safety, but still posts about happenings at local events
• Gets doxxed, tracked, and wrench attacked or worse, kidnapped

This isn’t hypothetical. It’s happened.In Argentina. In the UK. In the US.They come for you, not your multisig.

Because meatspace doesn’t care how clever your seed phrase storage is.

You Already Leaked the Clues

• Bought your whole stack off of a KYC exchange
• Used your home address to order that cold wallet device
• Log into location sharing socials with the same handle as your Bitcoin Twitter
• Mentioned your hometown in a podcast
• Post about your favorite pub or local eatery
• Posted photographs with metadata

All those leaks connect.And if someone’s hunting, they will find the trail.

OPSEC Isn’t Just About Surveillance. It’s About Safety.

This isn’t about hiding from governments.This is about not becoming the headline.Not giving some desperate kid or cartel soldier a map to your front door.

You’re not trying to be anonymous.You’re trying to be too hard or expensive to target.

Checklist: Personal Safety for Bitcoin Holders

1. Don’t Let Anyone Know You Hold

• Keep your stack size private
• Don’t share photos of hardware wallets or steel backups
• Don’t casually mention Bitcoin to coworkers or acquaintances

If they don’t know you have it, they can’t come for it.

2. Separate Lives

• Use a dedicated nym for all Bitcoin activity: name, email, number, everything
• Never link it to your real accounts, contacts, or home address
• No social apps. No synced cloud. No bleed over

3. Don’t Leak Location or Routine

• Don’t post from your home IP
• Use VPNs, Tor, or both when managing Bitcoin
• Rotate your paths. Don’t always do the same thing in the same way, at the same time

Kidnapping is often about pattern tracking. Break yours.

4. Protect Your Real Identity

• Use burner emails and aliases
• Avoid KYC exchanges if possible
• If you’ve already KYC’d, keep that wallet isolated and separate from your no-KYC stack

Compartmentalize. Like your life depends on it.

5. Have an Emergency Plan

• Know what to do if you’re physically threatened
• Use decoy wallets or plausible deniability setups
• Consider time locks or location dispersed multi-sig
• Share your plan with one trusted person offline, face to face

Don’t just secure your keys. Secure your exit strategy.

Final Word

You’re not just defending your money.You’re defending yourself.Your family. Your home. Your time.

Cold storage means nothing if someone can walk in and wrench it out of you.

Operational privacy isn’t for the paranoid.It’s for the prepared.

You hold sovereign money.That comes with a target.

Make it hard.Make it confusing.Make them move on.

Claw it back.Stay quiet.Stay unpredictable.Stay free.

-GHOSTWritten by GHOST, creator of the Untraceable Digital Dissident project.

The Bitcoin subculture is dying. It was always destined to die. If Bitcoin were to become a relevant and dominant global currency, it meant that it would inevitably morph into the mainstream culture. The idea that it would somehow  fix mainstream culture is rather silly and naive. We find ourselves facing a tremendous amount of conflict because those who follow mainstream culture are unwilling or incapable of coming to grips with reality. The expectation that they would have their minds changed by Bitcoin podcasters, books outlining the history of money, and influencers wielding ref links is silly.

That doesn’t mean that the Bitcoin subculture has not had an impact on larger society. It doesn’t mean that all the energy and excitement around Bitcoin was a waste of energy. But in the larger conversation, the cypherpunk ideals that many of us strongly believe in, will likely never be adopted by the masses. That is because the masses do not value self respect, thinking for themselves, and human dignity. Many of them have been sold the promise of convenience, comfort, and safety.

Most revolutionary movements are based on a collectivist set of ideals which are destined to fail. Michael Malice outlines this in masterful detail in his book, The White Pill. The book details the history of how idealists, such as Emma Goldman, aligned with the Bolsheviks in order to topple the Tzar, only to find that they had helped enable a monster to take power that was a thousand times worse than the system they had fought to replace.

In the west, the history of the Bolshevik revolution is rather fuzzy for some reason. Not only does the majority of historical discussion fail to mention the absolute carnage wrought by the Soviets, but it also fails to mention the good intentioned idealists who aligned with the Bolsheviks during the revolution.

The Krondstadt rebellion of 1921 is the perfect example of this. (link for context ) Russian sailors who had fought on the side of the Red army, for the ideals of empowering the working man, staged a protest as they saw the writing on the wall. They demanded elections, a restoration of civil rights, and more representation from other groups such as the anarchists and socialists in government. The Soviet’s response to their protest was to slaughter them with artillery.

What started as a revolution based on the ideals of equality for the worker, turned into one of the most oppressive and tyrannical forms of human organization ever created. This story is an important one for dissident groups to understand for multiple reasons. The first is the danger of disrupting existing power structures as the new one replacing it could and often does turn out to be significantly more destructive. The second is that no tyrannical power structure can last indefinitely because the human spirit cannot withstand it.

To be successful as a revolutionary, you have to be ruthless, which many of us aren’t. I’ll speak for myself here. I am not a murderer. I am not willing to kill in order to further my political aspirations. I am not willing to lie, cheat, and steal in order to conquer others. I am appalled by those who do these things and work to build my life in a way where I work as little with individuals like that as possible. If you are like me, that puts us at a serious disadvantage compared to those whose goal is to conquer the masses into believing our world view. I am not a pacifist and am willing to kill in self defense. I hope that never happens, but that is different than the belligerents who actively go on the attack in order to accomplish their goals.

Framing things in the terms of revolution is not helpful for peaceful and sane individuals. Many of us may become revolutionaries if the circumstances get dangerous enough though. I would argue that we are not there yet, though we still do live under many forms of tyranny. We may not be revolutionaries, yet find ourselves in conflict with mainstream culture, the institutions that dominate it, and often the state. There is something innate with us that cannot comply with the societal norms being force fed down our throats. We want to produce things of value, not focus on the nuances of microaggressions. We want to build a legacy, not focus on the intracies of compliance.

The idea of a revolution has been made to be seen as sexy in pop culture but the reality is that a real revolution requires the individuals participating in it to often to go to places as dark and depraved as the people they are fighting against. There is a likely chance of not living to see the end of it and facing immense amounts of danger. What many people opt in for instead are social movements larping as being a revolution because it’s safe. It can be cathartic to larp with others who are also frustrated with what’s going. But larping will likely do very little to change anything, as we are watching happen now with a good portion of the ecosystem interacting with Bitcoin.

Public perception is a mirage that is constantly getting manipulated by individuals who have incentives to try and lead the public in a certain direction. That is why it is important to mostly discard what the masses think. Much of their opinions are informed by news anchors, journalists, writers, statist pundits and philosophers who spew nonsensical garbage meant to elicit some sort of behavioral change. Whether it is to vote a certain way, behave a certain way, or purchase a product, most of the information presented to people by propagandists is not meant to empower the individual.

In today’s world, it is not a revolutionary action to join a social movement, use a certain technology, hate the shitcoins, run a bitaxe, buy a hardware wallet, or lobby a politician. Unless you have been able to achieve meaningful progress in your life for the better, becoming more confident in yourself and your abilities, you have not made any progress. The most effective thing you can do to create positive change in your life and the world around you to utilize your own brain. That action may lead you to buying a hardware wallet, but it is important to understand the order of operations here.

“Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.”

-Ayn Rand

To fix the symptoms, you have to first understand the malady. There has been a social movement that was created on the premise that if we “Fix the money, we will fix the world.” Now we watch as many of the podcasters, conference speakers, and authors that preached this concept to us are beginning to marry the establishment that they once railed against. Bitcoin is being adopted by governments and politicians. It is being accepted by the banks, by the biggest corporations in the world and it seems to be fixing very little. Privacy abuses by governments and corporations are only increasing. Taxation continues to be just as sinister as ever. Market manipulation due to central planning appears to only be accelerating. The social movement that appeared to have the most chance at disrupting all of this appears to be disappearing and morphing into the system that many of us had fought to replace.

If there is any chance that Bitcoin will have a positive impact on the world, it is not strictly because of it’s innate qualities. For Bitcoin to have a positive impact on the world, it must work to empower individuals with decency and self respect. Those individuals need to be active participants in their own lives, thinking critically about what is truly best for them and utilizing Bitcoin as a vehicle in order to be able to pursue the things they value.

My philosophy is that tyranny is impossible when individuals value themselves enough to use their own minds and are willing to fight to protect the right to do so. Bitcoin is an interesting technology because in many ways, it enables the ability to do that. The sad reality is that tyranny exists because the majority of people in our society do not value their minds. They value safety, compliance, and comfort. The choice of safety over thinking is why we are facing hard times and it will likely only get harder.

It can be discouraging when you look at the world around you. You see problems that seem self evident, but your peers fail to understand either due to ignorance or apathy. You may feel isolated and alone and likely will continue to as long as your have the belief that your duty is to change others minds. The information industrial complex wants people to focus entirely on things that they have no power over. The TV attempts to get people upset at everything outside of what is in their immediate control. Change fails to happen because individuals are so hyper focused on everything except for themselves.

You have the opportunity to change yourself despite what everyone around you is doing. Just because the general society is sick and has low self esteem does not mean that you also have to. When you change yourself and live with self respect, you become an example for others. So much of our culture is dominated by hollow influencers trying to influence how people think. They are often either blatantly full of shit, or exposed as being charlatans eventually. The goal of personal growth should not be for the purpose of trying to change other people or changing the world. It should be because you actually value yourself.

To think for yourself in modern society is a revolutionary act. It can be difficult and in many ways dangerous. Freedom is never safe. As we watch the Bitcoin subculture shift and morph into pop culture, it does not mean that we have to shift and morph with it. We will find each other and together we will build the world that we want to pass down to our children.

Subconsciously, I feel the plane tilting slightly to the left, and my newfound conditioning takes over—I dream that I’m still driving a snowmobile.

Until I wake up.

Realizing where I am, I carefully lift my ass cheek off the unfortunate passenger I landed on during my involuntary jerk. He stares at me in disbelief.

Writing about last week is both easy and hard. I could list all the incredible activities we did, the new experiences, and the fun we had. But I don’t want to end with a mere travel report. Even if it sounded amazing—or even close to bragging—it still wouldn’t capture the full picture.

The participants: Mr. Green, Mr. Rebel, Mr. Cat, Mr. Fighter, Mr. Heart, Mr. Hope, Mr. House Sparrow, Mr. Jaguar, Mr. Singularity, Mr. Honey Badger, and I.

The activities alone could be packaged into an expensive Instagram influencer’s dream—curated photo moments sold as part of a high-end travel itinerary. But no commercial business could replicate the raw authenticity Mr. Green brought to the experience, with the expert help of Mr. Rebel. Together, they kept us so immersed in the moment that we often had to remind ourselves to take pictures. And I can assure you—the most fun moments are (perhaps regretfully, for memory’s sake) not captured.

What made this special was how everything unfolded naturally. It’s something that doesn’t scale to the commercial realm, simply because Mr. Green managed to bring together a perfectly balanced group of eleven individuals. This mix allowed for rich discussions—ranging from deep philosophical debates to heated political discourse—while also creating space for profound monologues that commanded silent respect.

Silence, too, had its own spectrum. Some would slip away in smaller groups to complete a chore, others would rest or take a walk. Occasionally, a one-on-one conversation would deepen a topic the group had already exhausted.

The group flowed effortlessly, splitting into smaller clusters or embracing solitude before seamlessly rejoining—without a single “Where were you?” asked. For my part, I cherished a solo hour-long randonnée, immersed in nature. I believe everyone found their own moments of solitude in their own way.

I’m not sure why this group dynamic worked so well. It wasn’t just that we were all Bitcoiners—though we certainly shared common ground on principles like freedom. But we also deeply, yet respectfully, disagreed on many topics.

Our days were shaped by the elements—sun, snow, and biting wind. Some learned new skills, while others pushed their limits, sometimes even crossing them.

For those curious, we snowboarded, learned about setting ptarmigan traps, ice-fished, walked, snowmobiled, and engaged in a unique form of “arts & crafts”—which mostly involved fixing broken gear mid-ride or rescuing snowmobiles from tricky situations. These activities—excluding the impromptu tinkering—might be found in an Arctic adventure package, but what set them apart was how Mr. Green and Mr. Rebel approached them. We learned with an open mind, fostering self-responsibility while understanding how to stay safe. A fiat-organized excursion would have been wrapped in paperwork, disclaimers, and a long list of “don’ts.”

Perhaps the setting acted as a natural filter for the group. Half of the trip took place at an undisclosed off-grid location, appealing only to those with a particular mindset. Not many NgU-only proponents would willingly embrace the trade-offs of such an environment.

This self-reinforcing dynamic turned “optional chores” into enjoyable team efforts. For example, cutting an ice hole: Mr. Green expertly laid out the cutting grid, and under his guidance, Mr. Honey Badger, Mr. Hope, and I helped extract and haul ice blocks by sled to the ice cellar. The resulting ice hole later became the perfect cold plunge spot after sauna sessions in the evening.

Evenings were just as dynamic. Beyond cooking meals together and cleaning up, each participant was invited to give a talk or presentation.

The topics spanned Zen, psychedelics, electricity, contracts, running a BTC Pay Server, Sámi culture and history, the influence of national politics on Sámi identity, (private messaging on) Nostr, mobility, and societal structures. Each sparked further discussions and deep dives.

For my own presentation, I gained more insights from the feedback in one hour than I would have from pondering the topic alone for a week.

The deep talks, the nature, the group dynamics—it all came together in a way that cannot be replicated.

The names I’ve used in this article are the ones each participant chose months before the trip. Upon my request they each selected a word they felt best represented them. Yet, I never gave them one for myself.

Now, sitting on the plane home, I finally have a name to share with the group—and with you, dear reader.

After this week, you may call me Mr. Smiles.

Practical actions

DigitalDissidents

Digital Dissent

Boost The Creator:

 - Mr Crown
**
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Scan me with a bitcoin

 lightning wallet

Unfortunately, we found out that the content we received originally came from someone who had copied another person’s work. We absolutely do not support this, and have therefore decided to temporarily remove the digital certificate and the accompanying informational article from the website. We’re currently considering how we might bring this back in a different and more authentic way.

Cypherpunk Checklist

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Think you’ve got what it takes to protect your online privacy like a true cypherpunk? Follow this checklist and level up your digital security. If you check all the boxes, you’ll earn your very own Ungovernable Misfits Certificate—proof that you take privacy seriously.

Time to ditch surveillance and reclaim your freedom. Ready? Let’s go!

 Switch to a privacy focused browser – [Brave](https://brave.com/) (for phone, computer), [Mullvad Browser](https://mullvad.net/en/browser) (for computer) or [Zen](https://zenbrowser.io/) (for computer) will help you block ads, trackers and malicious websites.
Start using VPN – [Mullvad](https://mullvad.net/) or [IVPN](https://www.ivpn.net/) will help you hide your IP address from websites and protect your internet life from your Internet Service Provider.
Start using standalone Password Manager – [Bitwarden](https://bitwarden.com/) (online), [ProtonPass](https://proton.me/pass) (online), [KeePassXC](https://keepassxc.org/)/[DX](https://keepassdx.com/) (offline) will help you generate long, unique passwords and then save you with unparalleled security.
Enable Two Factor Authentication for your online accounts – You can use apps like [Ente Auth](https://ente.io/auth) (automatic backups) and [Aegis](https://getaegis.app/) (manual backups required), or purchase hardware keys such as [YubiKey](https://www.yubico.com/) or [NitroKey](https://www.nitrokey.com/).
Switch to Email provider who protects your privacy – [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com/) and [Tuta](https://tuta.io/) are much better than Big Tech email inboxes. But remember, email is old protocol which is not private by default, so try to limit its usage.
Start using email alias services – [SimpleLogin](https://simplelogin.io/) or [Addy](https://addy.co/)
generate new email addresses and forward all the mail to your main inbox, which will protect it from from data mining companies and brokers.
Protect your phone number – stop giving it to everyone. Check out services like [MySudo](https://mysudo.com/), [SMSPool](https://www.smspool.net/) and [SilentLink](https://silent.link/).
Switch to Open Source, End to End Encrypted messenger – [SimpleX](https://simplex.chat/) is your best option here. Try to be intolerant minority and force others to switch too, people who really want to talk to you will make the switch.
Switch to privacy-focused calendar apps – [Proton Calendar](https://protonmail.com/calendar), [Tuta Calendar](https://tuta.io/calendar), [NextCloud Calendar](https://nextcloud.com/calendar/) and [EteSync](https://www.etesync.com/) won't share your schedule with third parties, because they won't have access to it themselves.
Export your contacts from your Google Account and delete them from the Google Account.
Switch to private notes app – [Notesnook](https://notesnook.com/), [StandardNotes](https://standardnotes.com/) or [Joplin](https://joplinapp.org/) will keep your notes encrypted.
Switch from Google Drive or iCloud to private cloud solutions – [ProtonDrive](https://protondrive.com/), [Ente](https://ente.io/) and [NextCloud](https://nextcloud.com/) will keep your files encrypted.
Start using reverse Firewall – [Safing Portmaster](https://safing.io/portmaster) (Windows, Linux), [Little Snitch](https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html) (MacOS) or [NetGuard](https://www.netguard.me/) (Android) will help you block apps sending unwanted data by blocking their outgoing traffic.
Protect your privacy while shopping online – use cash or Privacy.com when choosing payment option, use Amazon Lockers or Parcel Shops for delivery, fake name and email alias to protect your information
Download Certificate
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Bitcoin’s early adopters came from many different directions, drawn in for a variety of reasons. Some were Ron Paul, End the Fed, sound-money types who saw Bitcoin as a hard-money alternative to fiat, a tool for self-sovereignty, and a way to opt out of government control. Others came from the cypherpunk movement, focused on privacy, open-source technology, and resistance to state surveillance. There were also those from the Occupy Wall Street/Mr. Robot crowd, who viewed Bitcoin as a weapon against corporate banks and financial elites. Some progressive tech entrepreneurs saw it as an experiment in decentralization, financial inclusion, or even a means to disrupt capitalism itself. Each of these groups approached Bitcoin with their own vision, but over time, many tried to reshape it to fit their own ideological goals—whether through governance models, regulatory compliance, or social justice narratives. Meanwhile, those who understood Bitcoin’s true power as a free-market system of incentives built on proof-of-work stayed focused on sovereignty, self-reliance, and economic reality.

Of all these groups, I think I most associate with the Ron Paul types, those End the Fed, sound-money revolutionaries who see Bitcoin as a self-sovereignty alternative to fiat. We all find our niche in the space, regardless of why we came to it on the first place. My favorite niche is that of a community organizer, a type much different than one of my most hated political figures, Mr. Barry Soetoro. But alas unless you have ties to political bundlers like Jeffrey Katzenberg, Andy Spahn, Penny Pritzker, George Soros, and Oprah Winfrey, or pro government collusion and censorship, progressive tech bro money like Jack Dorsey’s StartSmall LLC. Bitcoin and self-sovereignty Pleb community organizing can’t buy you more than a coffee and sure as hell can’t buy you a 6,400-square-foot mansion in Hyde Park, Chicago. But it does earn you a lot of good friends, and I place value on social, cultural, and spiritual capital just as much as I do financial, which brings me to the point of this article, accumulation of financial capital via Bitcoin mining as the primary (not the only) motivation to participate in mining.

As much as I love the fact that I heat my home with Bitcoin mining and that we at Ungovernable Misfits has a fantastic community of Bitcoin miners who have built and innovated so many great things in mining; from off grid solutions to fantastic uses for waste heat like dehydrating foodstuffs or even Krazy Karl and his immersion lamb sous vide, my main motivation in Bitcoin mining…is….FINANCIAL!!!! I don’t mine to “support the network” or out of duty, nor to make the world a better place. I mine because it is in my rational self-interest to do so, but only if I achieve a financial gain. I mine to acquire Bitcoin, generate eventual profit. Whether I find stranded and wasted sources of energy my motivation is to turn it into hard money. Whether I use excess or stranded natural gas, hydro, wind, solar, capture industrial heat to mine efficiently, turning waste into wealth with a landfill mine, I am doing it to make money. My mining operations aren’t designed to appease decentralized hashrate enthusiasts, climate hysterics, or Twitter influencers, it’s designed to acquire Bitcoin at the lowest possible cost, without KYC, and without asking permission from both bureaucratic or virtue-al regulators.

This is the opposite of the Dorsey-funded, open-source, virtue-signaling Bitcoin projects that pretend to care about decentralization while focusing the miner’s incentives towards virtue rather than profit. Their initiatives push mining towards collectivist, progressive horse shit, mining your nose off to spite your face for the sake of the “cause”.

Mining is wrought with those who manipulate the market, from regulatory-captured public miners to hardware manufacturers that are in bed with nation-state interests, Cantillionaire cronies who seem to have an unlimited capacity to borrow money to fund project after project only to run it into the ground at strip clubs well below the quality of establishments like Hash Sluts. We’ve always fought against those bitch ass motherfuckers on Ungovernable Misfits. But recently the altruistic, mining for the cause progressive has been the louder voice in room.

I’m neither, I guess, I’m just some weirdo trying to make a profit at this, trying to do it well, not do it for the right reasons. I mine because I intend it to benefit….ME. And not that I’m for some kind of purity test, but I think it’s the purest form of mining.

I’m of the mind that “me first”, for profit mining is the most Objectivist economic system ever built. It is pure capitalism. The most efficient miners thrive, and the least efficient perish. It is voluntary. No one is forced to mine, yet those who do are rewarded by the network. It is real value creation. A miner must expend energy and capital to produce hashes, just as a pizza shop owner must expend capital and labor to create a great-a pizza pie.

Back to Ayn Rand and objectivism, I’m working on it here, but I’ll eventually make the point that mining is best approached for the lens of Objectivism. Ayn Rand despised the idea of the unearned. In Francisco d’Anconia’s Money Speech in Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand wrote ‘Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter”. I may say ‘Run for your life from any man who tells you that mining for profit is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching cuckhold. Miners don’t hit blocks and are paid block subsidies and tx fees out of charity or goodwill, they receive them because they proved their work, provided real energy, and competed in an open market, and that sure as hell doesn’t make them evil. Mining doesn’t need a moral narrative, miners don’t need to justify the choices they make in their operations. The profit motive is the narrative.

There is no moral obligation to support the network. If mining isn’t profitable, it’s not worth doing. Miners have a hard enough time simply surviving. It’s challenging enough to chase efficiency, to arbitrage energy markets, fight the nanny state, placate neighborhood Karens who complain that your miners are giving their chihuahua panic attacks, besides competing for blocks against larger operations with deep pockets, so deep, so deep, put her ass to sleep.

Ayn Rand understood this, and if she were alive today, I have to think she would see Bitcoin as the ultimate individualist technology—the final rejection of collectivism in money. She’d blow copious amounts of cigarette smoke right in the faces of those who mine for ideology and praise over those who mine for profit. We’re competing against progressive soy boys yapping about decentralization while cashing checks from progressive philanthropists. While also competing against corporate miners gargling the balls of the banking class.

Ultimately, mine for whatever reason you mine, I don’t care.

In Atlas Shrugged, during John Gault’s oath of the men of Galt’s Gulch speech, he says  “I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." Let me rephrase that, I swear by my life and my love for it, that I will never mine for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to mine for the sake of mine. There’s only one true test of mining success, are you still standing, are you still hashing? That’s it. Everything else is noise.

https://ugmf.bitcoiner.guide/writings/digital-dissidents-new-generation-of-cypherpunks/Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ugmf.bitcoiner.guide/writings/digital-dissidents-new-generation-of-cypherpunks/The Legacy of the Original Cypherpunks I grew up in a time when the internet was still in its infancy. From a

Digital Dissidents - New Generation of Cypherpunks

The Legacy of the Original Cypherpunks

I grew up in a time when the internet was still in its infancy. From an early age, it was ingrained in me never to share personal details online—no real names, no identifying information, nothing that could trace back to me. This was common sense, passed down almost instinctively. Was my father also aware of online privacy in his time? I don’t know. But what I do know is that this awareness is no longer being passed from parent to child the way it once was. Today’s generation is growing up in a world where oversharing is the norm. Online presence is almost mandatory, and where digital caution is often dismissed as paranoia and convenience often outweighs privacy concerns. The original cypherpunks were visionaries who saw early on that digital freedom and privacy are fundamental rights. Their efforts laid the foundation for encryption, anonymous communication, and decentralized technologies such as Tor and PGP. The message and fight of the cypherpunks seems to be fading. Users willingly trade personal data for ease of access, feeding the surveillance economy that tech companies and governments thrive on. Every click, every search query, and every conversation is recorded, analyzed, and monetized. What started as a promise of an open and free digital space has turned into a dystopian surveillance state, where Big Tech and governments collaborate to control and profile citizens.

The Illusion of Security and Convenience

Modern digital society operates like a panopticon where data is the new currency. Social media platforms, search engines, and online services lure users in with seamless experiences while secretly amassing vast amounts of personal information. This data is then monetized, analyzed, and, in some cases, weaponized.

Most users accept this trade-off without realizing the long-term consequences. Today, it may seem harmless to share personal details or political opinions online, but what happens when laws change? Retrospective enforcement is a growing concern, with governments using old social media posts or search histories to prosecute individuals. What is legal today may become incriminating tomorrow. True privacy is not about hiding; it is about the right to control who has access to one’s personal information. Digital freedom means being able to speak, explore, and interact without fear of unpredictable repercussions.

The Responsibility of the User

Many people think privacy is a lost cause or that protecting oneself is too technical and complicated. That is a misconception. You don’t need to be a programmer to minimize your digital footprint.

Simple steps like using a privacy-friendly browser, encrypted messaging apps, and blocking trackers can already make a significant difference. But more importantly, awareness is key: recognizing data collection and manipulation. The internet is a battlefield, and every choice you make – from the search engine you use to the software you install – is a step toward digital freedom or digital oppression.

The original cypherpunks provided the tools, but technology alone is not enough. End-to-end encryption, decentralized networks, and anonymous payment systems exist, yet they remain underutilized. This is where the new cypherpunks must step in—not just developers and cryptographers, but everyday users who understand the importance of digital autonomy. Privacy-conscious behavior is a form of digital activism. Waiting for governments or corporations to change the status quo is futile—real change begins with individual action.

A New Era, A New Generation of Cypherpunks

The cypherpunk movement is far from obsolete; it is evolving. As mass surveillance continues to expand, the core principles of the original cypherpunks are more relevant than ever.

In an era where privacy is constantly under threat, it is crucial for a new generation to rise up and advocate for digital freedom. The original cypherpunks saw cryptography as a powerful tool to protect personal data and ensure autonomy.

Today, technology presents both threats and opportunities. The values of the cypherpunks—decentralization, encryption, and self-sovereignty—can inspire a new wave of activists to take control of their digital lives. But this new generation must not only be the builders; they must also be the users. Only by actively adopting privacy tools and encryption can they truly bring the principles of the cypherpunk movement to life and build a future where privacy remains a fundamental right.

Digital Dissidents Series

This article marks the beginning of my “Digital Dissidents” series. In the next piece, I will explore how to practically minimize your digital footprint—not by listing generic advice, but by highlighting individuals who have been a major inspiration in the fight for privacy. If you have your own cypherpunk heroes, I’d love to hear about them.

Street ARtas anPolitical Statement

Article

How Street Art Differs from Other Art Forms

What distinguishes street art is its location and how it is presented. It is an art form accessible to anyone passing by and can have an unexpected, powerful impact on passersby. Unlike traditional art forms like paintings or sculptures, street art is often not created with the intention of being sold. It is rather a form of public expression, a way to communicate a message or make a statement.

Historical Development as a Political Statement

Street art has deep historical roots as a form of political statement. In the ’60s and ’70s, graffiti was used as a way for young people in urban areas, particularly in New York, to voice their concerns about social and political inequality. This form of self-expression was often associated with the rise of hip-hop culture.

An iconic example of early street art as a political statement is the work of artist Keith Haring. Haring used simple, recognizable symbols to convey messages of love, peace, and social justice. His artworks, such as the ‘Radiant Baby’, were often seen as responses to the AIDS epidemic and other societal issues.

Another prominent figure is Banksy, an anonymous street artist from the United Kingdom. Banksy is known for his sharp political commentaries and provocative artworks. One of his most famous works is “Girl with a Balloon,” in which a girl loses her balloon, often interpreted as a metaphor for loss and hope.

These artists and many others have contributed to the growing recognition of street art as a powerful means of political expression and social change. Their works have pushed the boundaries of the art world and demonstrated that art is not confined to galleries, but can have an impact in public spaces, reaching a wide audience.

What consciously or unconsciously shocked the artistic establishment in the 1980s is today considered one of the most popular and investment-worthy art forms of the moment. Street art is often of extremely high quality while prices are still relatively low. Two lures for art-loving collectors

Political Motivations behind Street Art as a Political Statement

Street artists often use their creativity in public spaces to convey political messages for various reasons. Here are some of the key motivations and intentions behind this form of expression:

Accessibility and Democracy

Street art provides an accessible platform for artists to share their messages with a broad and diverse audience. Unlike in the traditional art world, where access is often more limited, street art can reach anyone passing through a particular area.

Response to Social Inequality

Many street artists feel a strong commitment to issues of social inequality, poverty, discrimination, and injustice. They use their art as a way to address these problems and raise awareness.

Resistance against Oppression

For some artists, street art is a form of resistance against government control and censorship. It allows them to freely express their viewpoints without the constraints that may apply in other artistic spaces.

Empowering Communities

Street art can be a powerful tool for uniting communities and fostering a sense of identity and solidarity. By creating art related to local issues, artists can mobilize and engage the community in political matters.

Cultural Awareness and Heritage

Some street artists use their art to honor and preserve the rich cultural history and traditions of specific communities. This can be a form of resistance against cultural appropriation and assimilation.

Protest and Activism

Many street artists view their work as a form of activist expression. They use their art to protest specific policies, political regimes, or societal injustices.

Exploration of Identity and Self-Expression

For some artists, street art is a way to express their own identity and perspective in a public space. This may stem from personal experiences with discrimination or injustice.

Stimulating Discussion and Awareness

By creating provocative and eye-catching artworks, street artists often aim to encourage discussion and reflection. They want to prompt the public to think about political issues and social problems.

It’s important to note that the motivations behind street art can vary greatly depending on the individual artist and the context in which they work. This diversity of motivations contributes to the rich and varied world of street art as a political statemen

The Symbolism of Street Art

Street art has long served as a canvas for social commentary and political expression. Within its vivid and dynamic murals, symbols emerge, conveying powerful messages of peace, unity, and freedom. Each image tells a story, provoking thought and inspiring action. In this article, we delve into the rich symbolism that defines street art, examining how these evocative icons resonate in our collective consciousness.

The Dove: Beacon of Peace and Freedom

At the heart of many street art pieces lies the graceful figure of a dove, universally recognized as a symbol of peace and freedom. Its wings outstretched, the dove becomes a fervent advocate for diplomatic resolutions in times of conflict. Amidst chaos and strife, it offers a poignant reminder of the possibility of hope and reconciliation.

The Raised Fist: A Defiant Call for Unity

The raised fist, an emblem of solidarity, strength, and resistance, boldly asserts itself on urban canvases. It stands as a rallying cry against oppression and injustice, symbolizing the unyielding determination of both artists and their audience to stand united in the face of adversity.

Chains and Handcuffs: Echoes of Captivity and Struggle

Chains and handcuffs, stark symbols of captivity and oppression, are etched onto walls and pavements, bearing witness to the ongoing fight for freedom and equality. They serve as a powerful reminder that the struggle against injustice endures, and that the quest for liberation remains unwavering.

The Mask: Unveiling Anonymity, Amplifying Voices

A mask, worn to conceal one’s identity, emerges as a powerful emblem in political street art. It signifies the courage to rise against injustice, free from the fear of retribution. The mask underscores the vital importance of fearless expression, a beacon for those who seek change.

Gas Mask Figures: Sentinels of Environmental Advocacy

Figures donning gas masks stand as silent sentinels in the realm of street art, protesting environmental degradation, from air pollution to chemical contamination. They serve as advocates for a cleaner, healthier world, a call to arms against detrimental practices.

The Wall: Bridging Divides, Forging Connections

A wall, whether it manifests as a physical barrier or a symbol of societal division, carries profound significance in the language of street art. It serves as a reminder that unity and understanding have the power to triumph over division, urging us to break down walls and build bridges.

The Butterfly: Metaphor for Transformation and Hope

The butterfly, a poignant symbol of transformation and hope, flutters through political street art. It embodies the pursuit of positive change amidst adversity, offering a reminder that even in the face of challenges, growth and transformation are possible.

The Key: Unlocking Freedom, Overcoming Limitations

A key, a potent symbol of freedom and liberation, adorns many a street art creation. It represents the quest for emancipation, the power to overcome constraints. It reminds us that within ourselves lies the ability to unlock our own path to freedom.

Influential Figures in Political Street Art

Certain artists and movements have profoundly impacted the shaping of political discourse and the creation of awareness surrounding societal issues. Here, we highlight some of the most influential figures and groups known for their political messages.

Banksy: The Enigmatic Messenger

One of the most renowned and mysterious street artists of our time is Banksy. His artworks, often accompanied by sharp political commentary, have traveled the world and left a lasting impression. Banksy’s work frequently combines humor and satire with keen observations on political subjects such as inequality, war, and the power of institutions. His revealing style has elevated him to an icon of political street art

Keith Haring: Advocate for Activism

Keith Haring was a pioneer in using street art as a means for political and social change. His colorful and recognizable symbols, like the ‘Radiant Baby’, were often associated with the AIDS epidemic, and his artworks were known for their messages of love, peace, and social justice. Haring’s work is an expression of his engagement with society and his commitment to activism.

Muralists in Mexico: The Cradle of Political Muralism

In Mexico, the tradition of political muralism flourished, particularly in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. Artists like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco used murals to disseminate the ideals of the revolution and promote the struggle for social justice. Their monumental works in public spaces tell stories of struggle, hope, and national identity.

JR: The Face of Community

JR, an anonymous French street artist, is known for his monumental portraits of people from various communities around the world. His projects, such as “Inside Out”, call for dialogue and connect people with their communities. JR’s

Cryptograffiti

Cryptograffiti, a pseudonymous street artist, stands out as a prominent figure in the realm of Bitcoin art and street art. His work is renowned for seamlessly merging technology and art, creatively incorporating Bitcoin-related themes into his pieces.

What sets Cryptograffiti apart is his ability to translate complex technological concepts into visually appealing and accessible artworks. He employs both traditional street art techniques and modern digital tools to convey his message. His creations range from paintings and murals to digital art and installations.

However, Cryptograffiti’s work transcends mere aesthetics. It carries a deeper message about Bitcoin’s potential to revolutionize the financial world. By showcasing his artworks in public spaces, he directly communicates this message to the audience, contributing to the growing awareness of Bitcoin’s possibilities.

Pascal Boyart

Pascal Boyart, a renowned French street artist, has incorporated Bitcoin into his artworks to explore the potential of cryptography and decentralized finance. He has created murals featuring QR codes that allow people to donate Bitcoin as a form of support for his work. In doing so, he bridges the world of street art with the emerging realm of digital currency.

Both artists harness the power of Bitcoin as a symbolic and technological element in their work, contributing to the growing dialogue about the role of digital currency and blockchain technology in contemporary society

The Battle over Political Street Art

Governments have diverse responses to political street art. Some regimes view it as a threat to the established order and attempt to suppress it through censorship and repression. This can range from painting over murals to arresting artists. In other cases, governments recognize the value of political street art as a form of free expression and cultural creativity. They may make public spaces available to artists or even support official art projects.

From Protest to Appreciation

Responses within communities are often varied and contingent on the political, social, and cultural context. Some people see political street art as a powerful tool for addressing societal issues and support it as a form of protest. Others may find it disruptive or inappropriate, especially if the message is controversial. There are also communities that appreciate the art as a form of cultural enrichment and a contribution to the identity of their neighborhood.

Legal Battles and Lawsuits

Censorship of political street art often has legal implications. Artists and activists may file lawsuits to defend their right to freedom of expression. Lawyers and civil rights organizations can advocate for the protection of artists against unjustified restrictions.

Digital Space and Online Activism

With the rise of social media and online platforms, artists have found a new arena to disseminate political messages. Digital space offers a degree of protection against physical censorship, though it also brings new challenges, such as online moderation and policies.

The struggle surrounding censorship and controversy in political street art remains a central theme in the world of art and politics. It raises questions about the boundaries of free expression, the role of art in society, and the responsibilities of governments toward cultural expression. The discussion on this topic will undoubtedly continue to evolve in our ever-changing world.

Street Art as a Global Political Statement

Political street art is a universal language that transcends borders and manifests itself worldwide. However, upon closer examination, there are subtle yet significant cultural differences in how this art form is employed for political purposes. Here, we explore international perspectives on street art as a political statement and the influence of cultural context on the messages conveyed.

Latin America: The Legacy of Revolution

In Latin America, political street art has deep roots in the history of social revolution and political activism. Muralists such as Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco were pioneers in using murals to spread political ideals after the Mexican Revolution. Today, this tradition continues, with artists using their street art to advocate for social justice, human rights, and political change throughout the region.

Middle East: Resistance and Revolution

The Middle East has a rich history of politically charged street art, especially in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Graffiti and murals became significant forms of expression for dissent and resistance against authoritarian regimes. Iconic images and slogans became symbols of the struggle for freedom and democracy.

Europe: From Activism to Subversion

Europe has a diverse landscape of political street art, with artists taking various political stances. From anti-establishment graffiti to artworks advocating for social inclusion and environmental awareness, Europe reflects a wide spectrum of political beliefs. Cities like Berlin, London, and Barcelona are known for their vibrant street art scenes.

Asia: Addressing Social Issues

In Asia, political street art is often used as a means to address social issues such as human rights, the environment, and economic inequality. Countries like India, Thailand, and South Korea have emerging communities of street artists focusing on local and global political issues.

North America: Diversity and Activism

In the United States and Canada, political street art serves as an outlet for a wide range of political voices and movements. Cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto are hotbeds for street artists engaging in conversations about social justice, racism, LGBTQ+ rights.

While political street art globally serves as a powerful means to convey political messages, these international perspectives highlight that context and cultural background significantly influence the nature and focus of the messages. The diversity of expressions underscores the universal need for political change while reflecting the unique challenges and priorities of different societies.

Legal Aspects and Urban Space

Political street art is not only an expression of civic engagement but also a form of creative expression often confronted with complex legal and urban challenges. These challenges can impact the opportunities and reach of street artists in conveying their political messages. Here, we examine the legal aspects and urban constraints that political street art faces.

Property Rights and Consent

One of the key legal issues for street artists is the aspect of property rights and consent. Painting a wall or public space without the proper authorization can lead to legal repercussions, such as fines or even arrests. Artists often need to strike a balance between expressing their political messages and respecting private property.

Municipal Regulations and Oversight

Urban areas often have strict rules and regulations regarding the use of public spaces for artistic purposes. This may include obtaining permits for street art projects. These regulations can vary from city to city and may affect the creative freedom of artists.

Graffiti as Crime versus Art Form

The perception of graffiti as an illegal act versus a legitimate art form remains a contentious area. Some governments and communities view graffiti as vandalism and take a strict stance against artists. On the other hand, an increasing number of cities recognize the potential of graffiti and street art as culturally and artistically valuable.

Transience and Weathering

Street art is often subject to the elements and may fade or even disappear over time. This transient nature can be both a challenge and a distinctive feature of street art. Some artists embrace the impermanence of their work as a reflection of the ephemeral nature of political issues.

Social Awareness and Activism

A growing awareness of the value of street art as a form of social and political engagement has led to changes in how governments and communities respond to political street art. Some cities now support legal graffiti and street art projects as a means to promote community involvement and artistic expression.

Zack figured out how to pair a 120v power supply to a newer generation single hash board. He’s created a printed circuit board that basically jailbreaks the hash board to accept any power supply. Using an APW3++ power supply from an older generation Antminer, you can mine bitcoin on 120v power with Pivotal Pleb Tech’s “Loki Board.”

The hash board donor machine I used is an Antminer S19 jPro 92Th. This particular machine has a stock efficiency of 29.5 joules/Th. The reason for only running one hash board is that in stock configuration with three hash boards, the S19 jPro uses around 2.7kW. This amount of power exceeds what a standard home 120v outlet can handle. Most 120v outlets are on a 15amp circuit. 2.7kW would require over 22amps.

The donor machine is running at home on 240v minus the one hash board for this single board build. I wanted to be able to continue to utilize the rest of that machine. So it is currently hashing with 2/3 board with a piece of high density styrofoam in the place of the missing hash board.

The APW3++ power supply is from an older generation S9 Antminer is readily available and cheap. It can run 1,100 watts which will power the single hash board from the S19jPro safely on 120v power outlet in your home.

Zack had shared the proof of concept, and he also shared a modification to the APW3++ power supply to up the DC voltage output allowing you overclock the single hash board. I wanted to build one of these, but begin testing a different way to assemble the single board 120v miner.

I had some ideas about how to put this together. We must have all the miner components, hash board, power supply, control board, and fans. I work in construction, and we frequently use slotted channel called unistrut. It just happens that the height of the unistrut is 1-13/16”. This is about 1⁄4” greater than the thickness of the hash board. The other thing I wanted to do is use plexiglass so you could see the hash board. Two reasons for this. One, you can see if the heat sinks are getting dirty and two, I just think it is cool to see the guts of the electronics. So sandwiched between two pieces of plexiglass, stood up with the unistrut channel I have housed the hash board.

The control board is placed near to the connections on the hash board because it has to be. The ribbon cable that connects to the hash board is short. The control board is mounted on small screws that thread directly into the plexiglass. In retrospect, I would rotate the control board 90 degrees so that the ribbon cable connection isn’t pulled so tight.

For an easy fan solution, I started using the leftover stock Antminer fans I had on hand. With the plexiglass staggered front to back just the right amount, I was able to make the 120mm fans work with them tilted on the inlet and outlets. Maybe not the most efficient way to do it, but at this point, I just wanted to see if it would work.

I decided to mount the power supply on the back of the unit. I drilled a few holes in the bottom of the PSU case and drilled and tapped the plexiglass to mount it. The power cables from the PSU to the hash board need to be heavy gauge. The stock configuration of the S19 jPro uses bus bars. With the APW3++ at 12.25v at 1,100 watts, that would be roughly 90amps.

Heavy gauge wires are required. I cut a couple small chunks of welding lead off the ground cable on my welder in the garage. I believe these are 2AWG. One thing to note is that the positive cable (yellow wires on the PSU attach to the end lug on the hash board closest to the end of the board. Don’t hook up your power with reverse polarity. To make it work, I had to modify the PSU case some to allow for the heavier lugs I used.

Zack has a hack to up the voltage output of the APW3++. He’s the expert on some of these numbers, but the jPro hash board prefers a higher voltage than the APW3++ stock 12.15v. There is a small potentiometer that can be removed and replaced with a fixed resistor which will change the output voltage. Depending on what resistance you install you can fine tune the output voltage. I opted for a 2,700 ohm resistor which would allow me to overclock and produce more hashes. The result of the upgrade changed the voltage from 12.15v to 13.25v. I was looking for a balance that would allow me to over clock but not red line the PSU. You can find Zack’s guide for the PSU modification here.

The control board is a Xilinx C71 running BraiinsOS firmware. Not too much to say about the control board, but there are some differences between them. It’s important to note that each control board may require a unique Loki board configuration.

 My initial results surprised me. I was

expecting a drop in efficiency since thisvis a Frankenstein machine. This single board from the 92Th machine makes 37Th by itself. Drawing 9.26amps at 119v equals 1,102 watts. 1,102 watts/37Th = 29.78joules/Th. So stock efficiency but producing about 20% more hashes! It’s like the 92Th machine running at 111Th. So not only can we run on 120v power, we have upgraded the performance significantly.

Once it was up and running. I found the stock fans to be too loud. I wanted to improve the cooling efficiency and slow the fan speed down some. The initial design left a gap on each side of the hash board for air to circumvent running over the heat sinks. I installed some high density styrofoam in those gaps and found that the fans ran about 15% slower.

Still looking to do better yet, I installed an AC Infinity 6” inline fan with a galvanized duct from the local home store to replace thestock fans. This further reduced the noise. I was able to rework the unistrut and moved the angle brackets forward that hold the uprights for the hash board. Then prepossessing two of the brackets, was able to mount the AC Infinity fan to one of the legs of the assembly.

The other thing to add with the AC Infinity fan is Zack’s Cloudline Njord board. It plugs directly into the control board and controls the speed of the AC Infinity fan. I’m currently using these on most of my Antminers at home to improve cooling and reduce noise.

Check out my video here that shows the install of the Cloudline Njord Board:https://rumble.com/v2l9sym-bitcoin-home-mining-upgrade-your- miners.html

A Wifi bridge was added to remove the need to run an ethernet cable to the control board. I didn’t realize how much I’d appreciate not having to run an ethernet cable. You need to plug it in initially and connect to it to set up the local wifi networks you want it to talk to. The Vonets device I’m using can be found on Amazon for about $25. The nice thing about this device is that it runs on 5v-15v so you can hard wire it directly to the PSU. I cut the power plug off and tied the wires right onto the PSU lugs. I liked this thing so much I added one to my S9 space heater as well.

The next step is to further improve the hash board housing and assembly. In my opinion there is too big of a gap between the end of the heat sinks and the plexiglass. In order to force the air through the heat sinks, the gap should be as near to zero as possible. Maybe .010”.

While some of the component prices may vary greatly on market conditions, here is a quick price list rundown…

$300 1/3 of a used Antminer S19 jPro

$40 APW3++ PSU

$130 Xilinx control board

Then if you want the fan upgade you have:

$120 AC Infinity 6” Inline Fan

$45 Cloudline Njord Board

Here you have around $500 in items needed, but maybe you have a stash of decommissioned S9’s in the basement and a broken S19 you can salvage a hashboard and control board from. Then you need the hardware to assemble a framework to hold it all. There are some other designs out there. @satstackingpleb on twitter has a build using an electronics cabinet. I like the simplicity of that, and it keeps everything contained a little nicer. My next iteration of this may utilize a cabinet like his.

An easy to assemble, efficient, 120v powered, reasonably quiet, Bitcoin miner deployed in a way to recover the waste heat will be sought after by everyone regardless of how you value Bitcoin. I hope this experiment will help more people realize the potential Bitcoin home mining offers.

If this project interests you, please feel free to send feedback, criticisms, hate mail, suggestions, whatever.

If what you found here was helpful and want to leave a tip, you can zap me on Nostr or send to my paynym.

@Bitckle npub1f928hzm4ps7ltxlmz07nhzc9766qq4akk0ue9vl7ay777ewmazjqh7d83v

Paynym +summerbar4Ca

Respectfully,

Travis Bitckle @bitckle

dictatorship with a democratic cloak

If you ask people what democracy is, you get answers such as: most votes count, the majority gets its way, and they will claim it is the most fair way to organise a society.

In itself the definition is correct, but what about the claim of being the fairest? leaving aside for a moment that I think that the minority also has the right to carry out their plans and way of life. After all, we do not all have to think and act the same way.

If democracy really worked in such a way, that representatives would make proposals out of which citizens had the deciding vote on which one really would be executed’ then we would have a real democracy: Citizens could then choose which proposal best suited them, this would also be carried out by the ruling party/parties. Unfortunately, it does not work like that!

Yes, we can vote once every few years and thereby determine which political parties have promoted ideas that we would like to see implemented in society, but subsequently we see a process whereby politicians have been stripping away the wishes of the citizens for decades and replacing them with a route that has been prepared in advance.

The wishes of the voters are used as currency to form so-called coalitions, and these coalitions simply adopt (nudge) the policies that the previous government was already working on (into another political flavor). These policies usually have nothing to do with the wishes of citizens, but with the wishes of large companies and banks. This concept has been rolled out in almost the entire western world. Everyone knows how the cookie crumbles and it seems that everyone has accepted this. Western democracy is in fact not a democracy but a dictatorship with a democratic cloak, nothing more, nothing less.

What is important in this observation is that it is not the citizens who are in charge, as the basic democratic principle teaches us, but the companies, banks and other powerful persons and/or institutions. Since they hold the real currency of party financing (not even speaking about any potential bribes).

But how should it be?

When several parties come together in an election to form a majority, it should be their duty to defend the wishes and ideas they put forward to gain the votes and to fit them into the ideas and ideas of other parties with whom they want to form a coalition. The promises made in the elections should always be central and the interests of institutions such as banks, large companies, etc. should come last. They should be at the service of the society and not as it is now, the society at the service of these companies and institutions.

Why isn’t it like that now? Well this is in fact the base of Austrian economics: the concept that social phenomena result exclusively from the motivations and actions of individuals. A.k.a INCENTIVESas long as the incentives are off we are never going to fix this. It is often spoken as a meme-phrase, but there is, like in a lot of the best memes a moral plain in sight: “Fix the money, fix the world”

Fix the incentives, fix democracy, where elected representatives represent the voters, not the party financiers.

listen to the Don’t forget the struggle, Don’t forget the streets episode

I grew up in the punk/hardcore scene. Skater, surfer, played in shitty punk bands. Wore X’s on my hands to signify I was “nailed to the X” I was dedicated to it. But as time passed and people grew, as they inevitably do, I watched the hardcore scene fall apart. Sell out. Cuck itself. The alternative music craze took over MTV, and the culture of my youth was swallowed whole. I watched straight-edge kids abandon their ethos for drugs, alcohol, and vice, or join Hare Krishna cults (not sure which is worse). Working-class skinheads morphed into long-haired Rastafarian wannabes singing Peter Tosh’s “Legalize It.” (Side note: “Pick Myself Up” is a far superior song.) Liberty spiked and safety pin pierced gutter punks went to college and eventually became professors of gender studies or whatever worthless progressive philosophy they teach today.

Back then, I had a zine. It was just a few pages folded and stapled together—nothing fancy. The only contributors were me and my friend Brian Blackburn, a guy who walked the neighborhood with a two-foot Knox Gelatin mohawk. With that zine, we were trying to get noticed, trying to be cool enough to have something featured in Maximum Rocknroll. For those not familiar, Maximum Rocknroll, it was a DIY, volunteer-run zine that embodied the worldwide punk underground. It documented the music, the scene, and the politics that made punk more than music. Punk was smashing authority, rejecting corporate control, and building something real. And Maximum Rocknroll? It was the pinnacle for any punk who wanted their voice heard beyond a microphone.

I remember one article I wrote for our little zine, that I was convinced would get published in MRR. I ranted about the founding fathers of the United States, their Masonic origins, their empire-building, their land theft, their slave trading…blah blah blah. I was 15 at the time, so cut me some slack for being shallow, but my heart was in the right place. I felt punk writing it. You get the sentiment: Fuck the government. Fuck the man. Fuck their systems of control. As Crass put it: “Big A, little A, bouncing B. The system might have got you, but it won’t get me.”

But it did. It got me too. Even I sold out, in a big way, by signing up to kill for the man.

So there it was: the skins sold out. The straight-edge kids sold out. The gutter punks sold out. The members of the punk and hardcore scene I grew up with became crunchy granola liberals, progressive college professors, and some of the biggest proponents of the nanny state and political correctness. The anti-system, DIY ethos gave way to the Seattle grunge scene and corporate copycat posers like Blink-182, Green Day, Offspring, and Rancid. Yeah, they had punk roots, but they sold out harder than George Lucas to Disney.

And here we are today. I’m getting those same vibes not from the cypherpunk, privacy, and sovereign pleb communities we exist in, but the overall libertarian sound money community right now. The DIY, in-your-face ethos is still there, but it’s fraying at the edges. Meetups like Lake Satoshi and PubKey are keeping the spirit alive, providing spaces to connect and share ideas. Our mode of communication and expression has shifted—it’s now Twitter, Telegram, and NOSTR instead of zines printed at school or the public library.

The sellouts? They’re everywhere. Some are taking Jack Dorsey money, others are kissing Elon’s ass and still more are begging Trump to save them while throwing tantrums when he doesn’t deliver in the way they expect. There are wannabe celebrities attending yacht parties, snapping open-mouthed selfies with famous influencers…looking like a nest of baby birds begging for the half-digested food of engagement. All the while, our oppressors continue grinding us underfoot, just as they’ve done for thousands of years. Enjoy your yacht party but remember—those deck chairs aren’t suitable flotation devices.

My advice? Don’t forget yourself. Don’t forget the struggle. Don’t forget the scene.

What is that scene? What is that struggle? To me, the scene is still the DIY community. It’s the sovereign plebeian who looks to God, himself, his family, and his friends as the source of his thriving. The most punk thing you can be today is a homesteader. The most punk thing you can be today is someone who works tirelessly to build your eight forms of capital, seeing financial capital as just one part of the ecosystem of sovereignty. The worldwide scene is the Meshtadel, and the Ungovernable Misfit is a node within that Meshtadel. The stronger his node, the stronger the links between us all. And the stronger we all are, the closer we are to breaking free of their chains.

To me, this is Ungovernable Misfits. This is the new punk movement, built on hard work, community, integrity, love, family, and friendship. It’s made up of people who will never sell out. The remnant who never lose sight of what brought them together in the first place.

Ungovernable Misfits will always be the remnant of that punk and hardcore scene to me. The ones who never sold out. Max and I talked to all of you about this on our first pod together over three years ago. I think that’s why he and I are friends today. We find each other. We create these gigabit links between the Meshtadel nodes. These bonds transcend culture and age. Hell, the hardcore scene was just a continuation of the ’70s punk scene and often you’d see a 14-year-old skanking in the pit with 40-year-old at all ages shows. I have this bond with so many of you in our Ungovernable Misfits community. And through this show, I hope we can build that community even even more, supporting each other, encouraging one another, and trading goods and services outside of a system that treats us like chattel.

Point being we’re an ungovernable punk scene in our own way, meeting at an all-ages show, band practice in the basement, writing articles for a zine no one reads. So, write those articles, your zine is NOSTR or your late-night ramblings on a telegram post. It can even be UngovernableMisfits.com or Bugle.news. Perhaps they are the new Maximum Rock n Roll. Express yourself through music, doesn’t have to be the AI music everyone is so excited about nowadays. Bust out a guitar, 4 power chords, intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, take that shit to the bridge, chorus, and outro and you got yourself a song. Plant a garden, raise some chickens, or better yet cows, sheep, and pigs. Teach your kids everything you know and don’t know. Lift something heavy. Eat healthy. Build big, resilient families. Run a bitcoin node and mine to that node. Get involved in your local (that’s right I said LOCAL) communities. Take a hard look at the skills you’ve lost or never learned and start working on them right now. Learn how to fix things, how to cook from scratch, how to build with your hands. Learn basic first aid and emergency preparedness to handle injuries, power outages, or natural disasters without relying on external systems. Acquire backup means of communication like a Meshtastic or a VHF/UHF handheld radio. Start preserving food by learning canning, fermenting, and dehydrating (reminds me I need some Barnjerky). Write code and build something. Help someone secure their privacy. Share your knowledge freely and collaborate to create solutions that empower the individual over the system. Start a compost pile. Upcycle or whatever the fuck they call it and start repairing instead of throwing things away and buying new. Of course, do all that without becoming a complete hoarder (I know easier said than done and I say this from experience) Develop your own source of energy be it a nat gas generator, gay ass solar panels, or bio diesel or back diesel generator, hell hook a tube up to a cow’s ass and mine Bitcoin off of that fart wind and harness that miner’s heat! Create a barter network or “Meshconomy” and trade goods and services with like-minded people in your community or the larger Meshtadel to build mutual aid and bypass the conventional cucked economy. This is the new hardcore/punk/DIY/dissident scene. These are now the most punk activities you can participate in.

Stay punk, never sell out, and be an inspiration to others, or else they’ll sell out or never even be punk in the first place. I hope this message lights a fire in all of your collective asses to never forget the struggle that brought you here. Remember the blood, sweat, and raw determination that shaped who you are and why you got involved in Ungovernable Misfits in the first place. Never forget the streets that led you here—the cracked pavement, the makeshift venues, the late-night conversations, the frustrations, hopes, and dreams you shared with your loved ones around the fire, the bonds formed in rebellion and hope. Carry that spirit forward, and let it guide you to build something greater, something real, something that cannot be bought or broken. Stay true, stay punk, stay a MISFIT, stay UNGOVERNABLE.

privacydefenders

Our story

A Symbol of Digital Freedom

In a time when digital privacy is under constant pressure, Ungovernable Misfits, in collaboration with Samourai and Ronin Dojo, introduces the “Defenders” Hoodie and T-shirt. But this is more than just clothing; it is a statement, a tribute to those dedicated to online freedom and the protection of personal data.

An Ode to Digital Warriors

The " Privacy Defenders" collection is not designed for the masses but for those with unwavering conviction. The sharp, crimson graphics on a vintage black background symbolize the resilience of privacy advocates. This design is a powerful homage to the digital pioneers working behind the scenes to ensure a world where personal boundaries are respected.

Samourai Wallet is a leading Bitcoin wallet focused on financial privacy and countering surveillance. With features such as CoinJoin, Whirlpool, and Ricochet transactions, Samourai enables users to maximize their financial privacy and anonymize transactions. The wallet offers advanced capabilities for those who want to protect their Bitcoin holdings from tracking and censorship.

Ronin Dojo serves as the ultimate self-hosted node solution for Samourai Wallet users. Running your own Ronin Dojo node eliminates reliance on third parties and ensures full control over your transactions. It is an essential tool for those who prioritize privacy and autonomy within the Bitcoin community.

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Freebee

Mobile Wallpaper

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Zelko from RoninDojo

Running a bitcoin node for the streets

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ratpoison²

Our story

Embracing the Labels

For decades, those in power have labeled financial rebels as criminals, anarchists, radicals. They called Bitcoin ‘rat poison squared.’ Good. Let them. History shows us that every great movement—every push for true independence—was met with ridicule before it was accepted. We embrace their insults and turn them into badges of honor.

Being ‘ungovernable’ isn’t about chaos; it’s about autonomy. It’s about refusing to be a pawn in their system of debt, inflation, and financial surveillance. When they say we’re dangerous, we smile—because they’re right. We are dangerous to a system built on control, coercion, and theft.

At the heart of the design is a digital head. It’s a nod to the digital world we live in—a world of data, systems, and control mechanisms. But this head is no mere cog in the system. It thinks, it decodes, it creates. It is free.

Between the hands of the head hovers a box. What’s inside? The force of uncontrollable power, rebellion, and independence. One thing is certain: this box represents freedom of thought, freedom of action, and the ability to change the world. The box carries our logo, a subtle yet strong reminder of what we stand for.

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Promo

Rat Poison Video Promo

dsfPleb Miner Redux – What is a Bitcoin Minersadf

Pleb Miner Redux – What is a Bitcoin Miner

It’s fascinating to look back at those first blocks: difficulty of 1, block reward 50 BTC, the delicate balance of the 10-minute mark not quite there yet. In reviewing this short Bitcoin history lesson, we bring light to the fact that Satoshi wasn’t running a giant mining operation with a cool name, a board with multiple investors, and billions in capital expenditures. He was possibly a guy in his basement or garage that he considered his lab. He shared the code with associates he knew online. Their goal was to discover blocks and secure the network. He mined because he was passionate about the innovation that he built. He was the original miner, he was a Pleb Miner. Sometime in May of 2010, Satoshi turned off the Patoshi miner, confident that he had passed the torch on to the next generation of miners.

All Time High

An all-time high block-height later, Bitcoin is still “runnin”. Much of the hashrate on the network is coordinated through large mining pools, like F2, Antpool, and Foundry’s pool. Companies like Core Scientific and Marathon control a commanding amount of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate. But 30% of all blocks ever discovered are labeled as found by ‘Unknown’ and 20% of all blocks categorized as ‘other’. There’s something beautifully mysterious about the fact that almost 364,000 blocks, approximately half of all blocks discovered throughout the time-chain, have been discovered by “anonymous” miners. This fact conveys the sentiment that not all the hashrate is controlled by pools or large mining operations, and that individuals have had an enormous contribution to the network. Individuals like Pleb Miners.

Everyone has their own definition of a Bitcoin Pleb. It’s not defined by the amount of time you’ve been in Bitcoin, the number of Sats in your stack, or how many followers you have on Twitter. The same can be said of a Pleb Miner. Pleb Miner is not defined by your total hashrate, how many watts are required to run your operations or the complexity of your setup. The title is not something that someone bestows upon you or that is issued to you through a rite of passage. So, the ultimate question then begs us for an answer. Who and what is a Pleb Miner?

Pleb Miner

A Pleb Miner is simply a Bitcoin Pleb who mines Bitcoin. Pleb Miners dedicated to the Bitcoin network, contributing their hash not only for the chance at finding the next block and receiving the block subsidy and transaction fees or helping his pool find the next block for a share of the reward but hashing because they know in their hearts that securing this network is a moral imperative. They mine because Bitcoin is a chance for humanity to restore sovereignty to the individual, to the family. They heed the clarion call that sound money leads to freedom. They mine knowing that for Bitcoin to be decentralized, they must be the ones to do it.

Their motivations aren’t to gain more fiat currency, their motivations areto stack more Sats and in doing so they innovate, collaborate with other Plebs, and share their mistakes as well as their triumphs. They spend time on chats offering advice to new Pleb Miners as well as learning even from the newest in our ranks. They make guides, videos, and how-to’s. They share pictures of their setups, not only to share in their innovations and to be critiqued but because they are proud of their work, as they should be. Proof of work is not just a motto for the Pleb Miner, it’s a way of life.

Plugging in machines

Pleb Miners come from all backgrounds, locales, and experiences. They bring various skillsets and craft. To be a successful Pleb Miner, you quickly learn many trades. Mining encompasses several scientific and mathematical concepts: basic physics, electricity, thermodynamics, acoustics, and cryptography. Pleb Miners quickly become proficient in or even master skilled trades: electrician, IT/Telecom, HVAC, plumbing, welding, carpentry, and more. The Pleb Miner knows that mining is much more than plugging in machines.

This entire month on The BitBuyBit Pod and Ungovernable Misfits is dedicated to you, The Pleb Miner. The stalwart that defends the network, the unsung anti-heroes of Bitcoin. No influencers, no thinkbois, just Plebs plugging in machines and hashing. The same way Satoshi and Hal did, thousands of blocks ago. In this way, we answer the question of who and what is a Pleb Miner; a Pleb Miner is you and you are all Satoshi.

Pleb miner skull

Pleb Miner

The Story Behind the Skull

The Pleb Mining logo didn’t come out of some sterile branding workshop. It was forged in the chaos of ideas, late-night calls, and the raw energy of people who don’t play by the rules. It all started with a brainstorming session between Jon, Max and Sarah.The mission? Create a logo that captured the grit, rebellion, and relentless spirit of Bitcoin pleb Miners.

From the start, Jon knew where this was headed. A skull. Raw, unpolished, and full of meaning. Something that screamed defiance. With a handful of sketches and a crew of talented misfits—like Sarah, his wife, and Mr. Crown—the vision started to take shape.

Sarah brought her creativity to the table, drawing inspiration from industrial desk fans. (A quick backstory: Jon’s got a thing for these fans, even owning one Sarah had gifted him for Christmas. That’s love and mining vibes wrapped into one.) Her designs were solid, but this was just the start.

hash is out

 Then there was Crown. The guy’s an artistic powerhouse. He’d already done some killer work for a podcast Jon had recorded during Pleb Miner Month, so Jon gave him a shot at creating something for the Telegram group. The brief? Barely more than “asic fans and industrial vibes.” But Crown crushed it, taking those minimal instructions and turning them into something that oozed creativity and attitude.

On July 28, 2022, the crew—Jon, Sarah, Max, and Crown—sat down to hash it out. Ideas flew, concepts got refined, and by the end of the meeting, they knew they had something special. Less than 24 hours later, Crown unveiled what would become the iconic skull design.

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Ungovernable Insights

Pleb Mining

The first version said “Pleb Mining,” but with a quick tweak, the final skull was born. And it wasn’t just a logo. It became a rallying symbol—a declaration of loyalty, defiance, and the unstoppable energy of the Pleb Miner Mafia and Ungovernable Misfits.

The impact? Massive. Members of the Pleb Miner Mafia proudly adopted the skull as their own. Some, like @mrcdbrown3, are still rocking it today. The community even whipped up custom GIFs featuring the skull, thanks to creative legends like @LePlebRoyale, @tachirahomestd, and Jon himself.

Community builds

Show your build

Would you like to show your build as well? Contact Mr.Crown via DM or X.

The Rust Belt, formerly known as “America’s Industrial Heartland,” reaches as far west as Milwaukee and Davenport, the western expanse carved by The Mississippi River’s mighty banks and the farm belt’s borders, the southern rust belt extends down the Mississippi to Evansville Indiana, and Owensboro, Kentucky. Travel east up the Ohio River to the gateway of the West, Pittsburgh at one time the largest manufacturer of steel in the world. Journey northeast up the Allegheny River and the western slopes of the Appalachians to New York State and the once great cities of Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. Made powerful first as a port for Mid-West food via the Erie Canal to eastern destinations and beyond, and then an epicenter for manufacturing, spurred by cheap and abundant energy from Niagara Falls.

The Rust Belt is an area in the United States that is known for its manufacturing and industrial heritage. The reasons the rust belt grew to be the economic powerhouse were first agriculture, but then a manufacturing and industry-based economy due to its abundant natural resources like coal, iron ore, and freshwater fed by the Great Lakes. Land that yielded its natural resources through toil and sacrifice. The rust belt is not isolated to the United States, our Canadian brothers enjoyed the same economic prosperity from its proximity to the freshwater of the Great Lakes, abundant natural resources, and a productive labor force. The northern banks of the great lakes create the rust belt’s true northern boundaries. You know the names of its other great cities. Chicago, Detroit, Windsor, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toronto.

The Decline

The Rust Belt’s decline began in the 1970s (WTF1971), but in some areas, earlier. A not uncommon story for western industrial powerhouses like the UK’s Industrial North, the Lusatia Region of Germany and Poland, Ostrava in the Czech Republic, Charleroi in Belgium, and many others; foreign competition, environmental regulations, and cost of labor along with Central Bank monetary manipulation, contributed to the decline of the areas. We could deep dive into the specifics of the decline, but at this point, no sense crying over spilled milk, what’s done is done. The factories have long since shuddered. The mines closed and abandoned. Once thriving and vibrant neighborhoods are now miles upon miles of urban blight. Filled with wretched social welfare pariahs who know no other way and have few options available to them to egress.

Small towns and communities that served as spokes of their greater urban hub are in sometimes worse shape than their large city counterparts. Further removed from the socialist money printer; they are down the rungs of the Cantillon ladder. If not for the fact that they have a post office and a nearly abandoned city center, there may be no reason for them to exist at all. Now they tout a bygone era of manufacturing heritage, the most they have to show for it, is a mediocre public school, a mass transit system that can whisk them away to a dilapidated city park, and a senior citizen community center. Their more educated, young, and mobile populace moving to warmer climes or areas with greater opportunities.

We don’t mind being referred to as the Rust Belt; hardly a pejorative, we wear it as a tarnished badge of honor, we are the Remnant. We have felt the loss of population, employment, and industry for the past 40-50 years, long before anyone felt the pain of the 2008 collapse. We know the pain of corporate greed, corrupt government, and a debased monetary system. Our region and the collective soul of all declining industrial regions gained wealth and success by being close to the source of production, innovation, and natural resources rather than the printing press. Our proof of work was in the vehicles you drove, the products that made modern life possible, and the food you ate. Proof-of-work is brought forth by creative tinkerers, farmers, entrepreneurs, machinists, chemists, and engineers. That spirit of hard work and innovation is still here, imbued in the steel and concrete. A spirit ground into the land as the Mississippi and Ohio rivers have carved the Rust Belt’s borders. That spirit of innovation, much like the Spirit of St. Louis is ready to fly high once again.

Empty Promises

A Rust Belt Renaissance has been proposed by every pandering politician from every frequency of the political spectrum. From corporate interests to populist presidential candidates, from grifter community organizers, and heads of organized labor. Right Wing Warhawks with the promise of weapons manufacturing. Left-wing communists offer the promise of a green utopia, yielding the saccharine fruit of “good jobs”. All grifters, panhandlers in suits. Platitude upon platitude, empty promise after empty promise, and a populace who continues to chase after the carrot of restoration, hopeful to win back the honor their blue-collar forebears earned.

We hear less often from real entrepreneurs who want to produce an actual good or service. When those entrepreneurs and innovators attempt to set up shop in the Rust Belt, they are met at the door by those same grifters. High tax and regulatory environments stifle innovation and chase capital and investment to where it’s treated best. Too many mouths to feed and not enough hands that work or have the skill or willingness to do so. I can tell you what’s been tried over the past 30 – 40 years with mixed results. Redevelopment authorities, community outreach, entrepreneurial grants, publicly funded parks, and transit systems, billions wasted with no recourse. Program after program, like Green Energy investment/initiatives and blighted community grants. Revitalization and rejuvenation. Constant vacuous claptrap like, “let’s build a park”, “we need more greenspaces”, “our educated youth are leaving, why”, and “let’s fund a study”. “What about our schools and Universities”? “We need infrastructure investment.” “We need more public transit.” I’m sorry, slews of young people with social justice degrees utilizing free public transit run on subsidized, inefficient green energy to transport them to their gigs as social workers and community organizers aren’t going to solve the problem.

That’s a lot of doom and sarcasm, eh? I understand, pardon me for coming off that way, consider the source. I’ve lived and worked in some of the most blighted, downtrodden neighborhoods and communities in the country. I am quite hopeful for the Rust Belt, as I am for all former industrial regions like the Industrial North in the U.K., Lusatia in Germany and Poland, and Ostrava, Czech Republic. How so? Because the same characteristics that enabled these regions to become powerhouses of industry and innovation can help restore them to their former glory and beyond. We can use those characteristics of fertile soil, abundant fresh water, a temperate climate, and plentiful natural resources. These elements can be utilized to their fullest potential through Bitcoin mining and regenerative agriculture to empower sovereign families and enable human flourishing.

8 Forms of Capital

I have dreamt about an economic and cultural revolution in this area all my life. My family is guilty of abandoning the Rust Belt for the Sunbelt, having left in the 80s, but something called me back. I’m not alone in that. My friend @HodlRev left his home in Michigan for some California dreamin’, he returned as well. He is a Bitcoiner and Regenerative/Permaculture farmer here in the Rust Belt. You’ll hear more from him during #PlebMinerMonth. I bring him up not only because I think his way of farming will heal the earth and provide its inhabitants with a better existence, but because he recently introduced me to the permaculture theory of, The 8 Forms of Capital. The eight from of capital are Social, Material, Financial, Living, Cultural, Experiential, Intellectual, and perhaps most importantly, Spiritual Capital.

Social Capital is the ability to wield influence and utilize a lifetime’s worth of connections and relations. Material Capital is raw and processed resources like stone, metal, timber, and fossil fuels used to create more sophisticated materials or structures. These can be turned into more complex forms of material capital like buildings, bridges, and other infrastructure and tools. Financial Capital, that’s easy, Bitcoin. Living Capital is made up of the animals, plants, water, and soil of our land. The life on this planet. Cultural Capital is a community of people who share the internal and external processes of their community. Their shared culture, their art, songs, and traditions. Experiential or Human Capital can be described as a graduate degree from the “School of Hard Knocks”. A human, family, or community’s lifetime of real-world education and experience is put to work. Intellectual Capital is your knowledge asset obtained through intentional study and research. Spiritual Capital is derived from those who practice their religion, spirituality, or other means of connection to a higher power. Rights are not granted by man to rule man, but rights are divine.

Mining the 8 forms of capital

This article is part of #PlebMinerMonth, a month of pods, articles, and resources to honor small-scale Bitcoin miners and encourage more Bitcoiners to become one. I recently drove to a thriving small Rust-Belt town to record with another Pleb Miner, @BingBong_BTC. On the drive to his home, I listened to a documentary on his hometown. You’ve never heard of it, but you may know a town just like it. It still has that community feel, they have an identity, and they have a shared culture, heritage, and history. They founded the community using the 8 forms of capital principle whether they knew it or not and still maintain the spirit. It all came together for me as I was driving to talk to BingBong and see his home mining setup and get a better understanding of who he is. The 8 Forms of Capital, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Mining, permaculture, regenerative agriculture. The Bitcoin ethos, building Pleb relationships, and low-time preference behaviors are all guiding us back on the path of healthy communities and therefore healthy regions. That’s it! That’s the solution to the woes of the Rustbelt and every other downtrodden manufacturing region.

Bitcoin, no not just the technology or the tool that is sound money, but the rabbit holes you jump down when you open yourself to its principles. We don’t need a centrally planned solution, we as Plebs are the solution. The farm that @HodlRev has built and his surrounding Bitcoin network that he sells maple syrup, meat, and vegetables to for Sats. BingBong and his HashHut, heating his home during the long cold winters, are an example to his community of how mining is not wasteful by nature, but regenerative. Moses (@urningushem) in Canada, working, designing, and proselytizing his dream to give the native tribes of Canada the ability to be sovereign by empowering them with Azolla and Bitcoin mining. The Rust Belt Renaissance is here, it exists in every Pleb that inhabits the area. The solution is the Plebs; working, building, and sacrificing. Mining not only Bitcoin but the 8 forms of capital and applying the lessons we learn as Bitcoin Plebs.

Big baller

Our story

Celebrating Our Biggest Supporters

At Podcast 2.0, we know we wouldn’t be where we are today without our incredible community. As a token of our appreciation, we’re giving back to those who have gone above and beyond to support us. That’s why we’re excited to introduce the Big Baller T-Shirt, an exclusive gift for everyone who has boosted over 1 million satoshis to our podcast.

But this isn’t just any shirt—it’s a symbol of the immense support and dedication you’ve shown us. It’s not merch; it’s a badge of honor for being such an integral part of our journey.

Your boosts don’t just support the podcast—they keep Ungovernable Misfits running. Every satoshi sent helps fuel the work we’re so passionate about. This isn’t just a hobby for us; it’s a project we pour our hearts into every day.

The podcast is about more than just sharing stories, ideas, and laughs—it’s about building something bigger: a community of misfits who embrace the ungovernable spirit. With every boost, you’re helping us pay for the tech, the time, and the effort required to keep delivering content we’re proud of.

From covering hosting fees to investing in better production tools and keeping our operation free from reliance on ads or sponsorships, your support gives us the freedom to stay authentic. And that’s something we’ll never take for granted.

So when we say thank you, we truly mean it.

What Is Podcasting 2.0?

If you’re wondering what Podcasting 2.0 is all about, here’s the deal: It’s the next evolution of podcasting. Unlike traditional models that rely on ads or sponsorships, Podcasting 2.0 gives creators more control and offers listeners new ways to engage.

One of the standout features is boosting, where listeners can directly support podcasters using Bitcoin (in the form of satoshis). Through apps like Fountain or Breez, you can “boost” an episode with sats and even include a message or “boostagram” to share your thoughts.

This Value for Value (V4V) model creates a decentralized and direct connection between podcasters and their audience—no middlemen involved!

And for Ungovernable Misfits, boosting isn’t just a fun feature—it’s the lifeblood of everything we do. It ensures we can keep creating, keep growing, and keep staying true to our mission.

Shoutout to the Monero Community

We’re also thrilled to acknowledge the Monero (XMR) community, who have supported us through XMRCHAT donations. If you’ve contributed the equivalent of 1 million sats in Monero, you’ll also be receiving a Big Baller T-Shirt.

Your generosity helps us stay independent and focused on what matters: delivering real, authentic content to our incredible listeners.

Claim Your Big Baller T-Shirt

This exclusive shirt is only available via the coupon codes we’re sending to our top supporters. It’s our way of celebrating your incredible dedication to the podcast.

Every boost, every message, and every bit of support you’ve sent our way makes a difference. You’ve helped us build something we’re proud of, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

Once again, thank you for being part of this journey. Keep boosting, keep listening, and keep rocking that Big Baller T-Shirt—you’re a true legend.

 [TUNE IN](/shows/)

#FREESAMOURAI

Our story

Privacy Is Not a Crime

The recent arrest of the developers behind Samourai Wallet is nothing short of a blatant attack on the values of privacy, freedom, and resistance against authoritarian control. For those of us who identify as ungovernable misfits, this is not just another news headline—it is a wake-up call.

Samourai Wallet has long been a cornerstone for those seeking to protect their financial privacy in a world increasingly dominated by surveillance capitalism and overreaching governments. These tools were never about enabling illegal activity, as the powers that be would like to claim. They were about something far more profound: preserving autonomy and ensuring that individuals could operate outside the ever-tightening grip of financial institutions and state control.

Let’s get one thing straight—privacy is not, and should never be, a crime. Yet, governments worldwide have continually sought to erode this fundamental human right under the guise of combating crime and ensuring public safety. The arrest of the Samourai Wallet developers is a chilling reminder of how far they are willing to go to maintain their stranglehold on our financial lives.

For years, Samourai Wallet has been a beacon for those who value privacy. Their tools empowered us to make financial transactions without the prying eyes of banks, corporations, or governments. Whirpool implementations, Ricochet, and other privacy features were not about breaking the law—they were about leveling the playing field. They were about giving individuals a fighting chance to reclaim a shred of control in a system designed to keep us docile and monitored.

video by Mr.Crown

The Fight Continues

The arrest of the Samourai Wallet developers is unacceptable, but it is not the end. If anything, it is a rallying cry for all of us who believe in the principles of freedom and privacy. We must double down on our efforts to create, use, and promote tools that defy the surveillance state. We must continue to educate ourselves and others about the importance of decentralization and individual sovereignty.

As ungovernable misfits, it is our duty to carry the torch that these developers have lit. We owe it to them, and to ourselves, to ensure that their work was not in vain. Let this moment serve as a reminder that the fight for freedom is far from over—and that we are stronger together.

Privacy is not a crime. Resistance is not futile. And as long as there are those of us who refuse to be governed, their attempts to control us will never succeed.

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Support the Cause

Temporarily Unavailable

In light of this injustice, we created an exclusive T-shirt and hoodie design to show solidarity with the Samourai Wallet developers and the principles they stand for. These designs are more than just apparel—they’re statements of defiance and support for financial privacy.

https://freesamourai.comhttps://p2prights.org/donate.html

GET.ME.SOME!

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While Solzhenitsyn was attempting to embolden individuals who had lived their entire lives in a real life Orwellian nightmare, today I am trying to embolden individuals who are living in what is developing as a horrific Orwellian nightmare. It is not too late to stop what is happening, but the only way to be successful is to defy their authority and tell the truth. Rock bottom is when you decide to stop digging.

The entire premise of the totalitarian ruling class’ appearance of legitimacy is building a society on lies. That is why they need to control the academia, media, and even the clergy. In 2020, there was a reason the churches were closed. Any dissident opinions or communities posed a grave threat to plans of the controllers.

The Soviet Union enforced their totalitarian actions through violent and strict policies against their dissenters. In western democracies, the elimination of dissident voices is more subtle, yet highly effective. Individuals are deplatformed, debanked, debunked, and then quietly delifed.

There is a common saying many mothers ask their kids which is, “If everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you do it too?” Another variation often used is, “If someone told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?” One focuses on peer pressure and the other on authority figures. In both scenarios, the mother is trying to prompt the child to critically think about their situation. This is contrary to what kids learn in government ran schools.

In the world of academia, following peer pressure and blind appeal to authority are taught as guiding principles to survive and be successful. Outside of academia, those strategies could prove to be deadly.

Hopefully in reading this, you have enough self respect to get a bit angry. The conditions we find ourselves in are not natural, not acceptable, and if allowed to run their course, will end in disaster. We are taught anger is bad, unacceptable, and even dangerous.

Anger is disruptive and we get angry when we need to be disruptive. Anger is a defensive emotion, which is natural and healthy when we allow ourselves to express it properly. If someone is hurting you or someone you love, the responsible emotion to feel is anger.

The Patriot: Col. Tavington kills Thomas

Homework: Watch the movie the Patriot with Mel Gibson and then you’ll understand this reference better.

In the movie the Patriot, Mel Gibson plays a farmer named Benjamin Martin during the revolutionary war. Gibson attempted to stay neutral despite one of his son’s fighting on the side of the revolution.

When his son was captured in front of him by British soldiers, one of his other sons tries to fight to protect him and was shot. After killing Gibson’s son, they proceeded to burn his house.

Mel Gibson’s character rightfully was angry after his son was murdered in front of him and his house burned down. His best efforts to comply failed to protect him or his family, which meant that the only options were homelessness and death, or to fight back.

His character needed to be moved to deep pain and anger in order to change. When we experience anger, it is a giant warning light telling us that action needs to be taken. Instead of allowing our anger to either consume us, or taking it out on the people around us, we must channel it into productive activity.

When feeling anger at a romantic partner, the proper course of action is to evaluate the anger and step into a place of courage. We can often feel angry when we feel threatened. Lashing out is not the proper response, but allowing the anger to be a call of action to voice a concern, set a boundary, or even just clarify something allows it to be productive.

In our relationships, if our response to our anger is to shut it down and resist it, it will likely manifest as shame, dysfunctional behavioral patterns, or come out sideways in ways we cannot control.

Our society is taught that anger is bad, dangerous, and that individuals should be passive, submissive, and weak. State educators who do the majority of parenting for us while we are growing up, teach us to avoid anger because they are incentivized to control us. Angry people using anger correctly are ungovernable.

Anger is dangerous for educators who want to chain children to desks and kill the spirit of curiosity, critical thinking, and exploration. “Listen here child, take your pills and do your algebra homework after you have been sitting in a desk for 8 hours.” A self respecting child should be angry about their circumstances, yet is taught this is completely normal by their teachers and peers.

There is so much unlearning to be done after emancipating yourself from the compulsory government education system. When you are lied to, it is fair to get angry. Anger helps us to be motivated to confront the lie. Once again, it is the emotion that encites us to action.

If we repress the emotion and do not confront the lie, the lie is allowed to persist. Our society is so ridiculously off base because it is entirely built on lies. Foundational agreements that 95% of the American population believes in are complete and utter fallacies. That is why war, inflation, corruption, and general degeneracy are allowed to persist in the way they are.

People will put up with something they know is a lie, or is morally incorrect because they do not want to be adults. The government, the institution that really parented them growing up, will provide the safety and stability of a parent. Bill Cooper talked about this idea in the book, Behold A Pale White Horse.

We see this today in the way that people pay taxes, allow themselves to be manipulated by media, and choose to comply when they know the horrible things government is doing. The majority of the population is unwilling to do anything different and reject the lie until they are the point where Mel Gibson was in the Patriot when his son died.

The more the state lashes out, the more recruits will be brought over to the side of freedom. If you are an individual that this resonates with, and you have been channeling your anger to resist the people attempting to abuse you and your family, you are likely an individual of strong moral character.

Anger Is a Tool Just like Fire, But Watch Out You Might Get Burned

Anger is a cure to apathy. It shocks people out of going through the motions and just accepting things around them. The frog boiling in a pot is a great analogy because generally people have to slowly change things in order to gain control. If things change too quickly, people will get angry and resist.

Imagine if the Covid lockdowns were attempted before 9/11 and the Patriot act. The Patriot act, TSA, mass surveillance, and the war on terror all conditioned the American public to be apathetic to totalitarianism. These events and their responses were planned in advance, were carefully calculated, and fairly well executed on.

Even propagating conspiracy theories about them can be a form of demoralization and will increase apathy. These individuals want us to feel small and that resistance is futile. They want us to turn the anger that should be directed towards them upon ourselves and become self loathing, pathetic pod dwellers.

The cure to this is a deep moral outrage that takes precedence over our value for safety and security. This general only happens when the path of compliance appears to yield a worse outcome than death. “For it is better to die free instead of living on your knees.”

While anger can be a useful tool for resistance, it is also a tool of manipulation. Information is incredibly tightly controlled and it is incredibly easy to manipulate masses of people to lose their collective shit over things that are not the core issues. January 6th was this for right wing America, and George Floyd was this for left wing America.

Donald Trump instituted lock down policies, promoted horrible vaccine policies, printed more money than anyone ever before, begged the Fed to lower interest rates to negative, attempted to kill Jullian Assange, and fed the deep state just as much as anyone before him. For people to be manipulated to get angry enough to go to Washington DC to protest is absolutely incredible when you look at the context of what’s happening in our society.

Working class individuals cannot afford food and housing. Inflation is completely out of control, and people believe that Donald Trump is the solution and that is where they are going to direct their anger? No they are just pawns who have completely surrendered their critical thinking to the television.

George Floyd, a troubled man who died in police custody, while under the influence of dangerous drugs, was hoisted up as a civil rights martyr by corporate America. The tv told the left that they needed to be outraged, and that going and destroying small businesses during lockdowns for larger corporations to be able to come in and gentrify the areas, while buying the properties at a fraction of the cost with near zero interest rates, was the moral thing to do.

It’s not organic to have non impressive communists raise millions of dollar to embezzle. When you see a political sign like BLM in a white rich yuppies front yard, you know that it has been ordained by the swamp.

Having control over your emotions and not allowing non creative idiots at corporate news agencies, and their CIA handlers manipulate you is no easy task. They have money, influence, and an incredible amount of resources. This is where sticking to your principles is vital for trying to navigate how to properly respond in times of chaos.

“These are my beliefs and values, and I am not willing to compromise just because the TV, person with credentials, or individual with a badge tells me what I know to be true isn’t.” I’m scared so now I’m going to let daddy government take care of me, is not a great way to ensure a better future for future generations.

Neither is getting super wound up because someone on TV told you something. George Floyd protesters did not accomplish anything productive. January 6th protesters got totally take advantage of by the Feds and were hoodwinked. Managing anger is an art and it takes discipline to master. For those who do not take it seriously, it can be incredibly dangerous.

If you’ve read to this point, you probably understand that anger is unavoidable and healthy if handled like an adult. Repressed anger, which many of us are taught, is a good way to self sabotage. If you want good relationships with people around you, repressed anger is incredibly destructive. It generally manifests in the form of shame which is the individual turning the anger inward.

Turning the anger outwards is the proper way to release it. This does not mean taking your pain out on other people, but looks like either taking proactive steps to remove yourself from the dangerous situation, or if unavoidable, seeking effective ways to stand up for yourself.

People often think about releasing anger as something cathartic like hitting a punching bag or yelling into a pillow. We are not in some beta therapist office right now so please discard those silly ideas of how handling anger is. Cathartic release like going from a run, working out, or hitting a punching bag can feel nice and even be productive at times. Channeling anger means dedicating yourself to something productive that will try to change things.

Getting raped by taxes, then going and hitting a punching bag or yelling into a pillow doesn’t really do anything productive. But if that’s what it takes from keeping you from doing something unhelpful, that’s great. Engaging in the P2P bitcoin economy and really seeking for ways to make taxation impossible is a great way to channel anger.

Anger does not mean go out and pick fights. If someone says something stupid to you at a bar, the proper response isn’t always to go punch him, or even to engage. It may just mean leaving the situation. But if that person decides to come over to you and try to harm you, it is completely appropriate to defend yourself and respond with anger.

Direct conflict carries a high probability of sustaining damage, and that is why when looking at removing the threat, it is vital to think clearly about effective tactics to neutralize, or minimize the attacker. Violence is the wheelhouse of the state. January 6th gave the Feds justification to ramp up the security state and martial law our country is in.

More violence will only give them more legitimacy in the eyes of the NPC class and solidify their power. No, we need to meme them, ridicule them, and point to how their legitimacy is completely non existent. Building voluntary systems of mutual cooperation without coercive power structures is the way to go. Using Bitcoin non compliantly is significantly more powerful than voting for Trump or protesting in the streets in any context.

Uncontrolled anger leads to mind control and self sabotage. Being calculated, careful, patient, and low time preference is the path forward. If you’re not angry right now, why do you think that is? If you are angry, how are channeling it and what are ways you can channel it more productively instead of being manipulated or taking it out on other people?

Waiting for someone to come to save you is retarded. Nobody is coming to save you, but you have the ability to stop what is happening. Do not give into hopeless and nihilism. Get angry and become ungovernable.

https://ugmf.bitcoiner.guide/writings/the-lake-satoshi-report/Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://ugmf.bitcoiner.guide/writings/the-lake-satoshi-report/A firsthand account of Lake Satoshi in Michigan — a Bitcoin gathering where trust, community, and the social layer proved more valuable than any transaction.

Author:

soul exporter

An unexpected start

 When Jon promoted Lake Satoshi on the Meshtadel group and the Ungovernable Misfits podcast, it sounded intriguing. My wife, eager to visit the USA, was surprisingly on board when I jokingly suggested we turn Lake Satoshi into a family trip. That’s how our journey began—a blend of Bitcoin, exploration, and adventure across the American Midwest.

When Max and Jon organized a friendly “Closest Guess Contest” on how many miles Bubba and his wife would drive with their truck that week, I threw in a dad-joke funny and probably irrelevant number as I like to do: 2420 (‘to four twenty’).

Even with my questionable guess, I was the closest one that was able to attend, securing one free entry (thanks, Bubba!).Winning a ticket to Lake Satoshi felt like a sign.The correct answer was by the way a mind blowing 8500miles in one week 🤯

From there, the planning kicked into high gear. Flights, side activities, and road trip logistics were all on the table. Jon recommended we visit Rev Hodl’s farm, adding another layer of Bitcoin Pleb excitement to our itinerary.

The Road trip

After some deliberation, we decided on a route that would take us from Chicago to Rev’s farm, then to Lake Satoshi(1) , and finally to Niagara Falls. We’d fly into Chicago, visit the city for two days, spend another two at Rev’s farm, two more at Lake Satoshi, and then cap off the trip with two nights in Niagara before flying home from Buffalo. It was an ideal prep for Lake Satoshi—a mix of Bitcoin, nature, and classic American road tripping. This itinerary is something I’d recommend to any European Bitcoiner, especially those who appreciate the principles of permaculture. Just realize that Niagara Falls offers a very different vibe from Lake Satoshi: it is fiat vs Bitcoin 😁!

Arriving at Lake Satoshi

With our road trip well underway, we focused on Lake Satoshi. I hadn’t bought tickets in advance, being too enthralled by the journey to worry about the details. On Jon’s recommendation, we arranged for an RV to be delivered to the venue for some added comfort while traveling with the family. That was our first priority.

After a few delays—thanks to the classic “Papa, I need to pee urgently” just after passing the last gas station—we arrived just in time, or maybe a bit late, to meet the RV folks. The only indication that we were at the right place was an orange fluorescent arrow. A bit further on, we found a large hangar with cars, the registration building, and a scattering of big trucks and heavy-duty vehicles. Yes, we had arrived—at a quarry.

The first person we met was PF, who, with his bearded, friendly demeanor, seemed like Santa Claus in summer disguise. I initially thought he was just another visitor, but he quickly explained that admission was a symbolic $21, payable in cash or Sats. Before I could get my bearings, I received a call from the RV rental family. PF instantly reassured me, saying, “Don’t worry, man. Get settled first. We’ll take care of the admission later. “

Settling In

The RV arrived slowly, the drivers unsure if they were at the right place, guided only by that same fluorescent arrow. After a quick introduction, we were surrounded by friendly faces, helping hands guiding us to our spot next to the lake, complete with electricity and water hookups. To reach this idyllic location, we drove along a dusty road that wound between the lake and the forest, eventually passing a sign that read “Bitcoin Beach North. ” It was a different world within the same terrain—spacious, peaceful, and perfectly suited for the event.

Our RV spot was ideal, offering comfort and convenience, but there were plenty of other great spots for tents among the trees, a beach with kayaks and SUPs for the kids (and the young-at-heart adults), a playground, a half-court for basketball, and a pavilion with tables, benches, and a gas grill. It was the perfect setup for a family-friendly Bitcoin gathering.

The Lake Satoshi Experience

From the moment we arrived, we were welcomed by a whirlwind of introductions. Unsure whether to use my real name or my nickname, I opted for both, creating a unique form of self-imposed anonymity—thanks to my unusual pronunciation, I’m sure not many fully caught either! 😊With all the kindness and friendliness, I briefly wondered if I had stumbled upon some sort of cult. We decided to take a breather and do some grocery shopping, during which I bought three tickets via Oshi, just to be safe. When we returned and I mentioned the tickets to PF, he nearly insisted on refunding the entry fee for the kids. I had read something in the Telegram channel about kids under a certain age getting in for free, but at $21 per person—food, drinks, and RV amenities included—it was still a fantastic deal. Even so, all the proceeds from the event are donated to a good cause! Pay it forward! 💕

The whole event felt spacious and uncrowded, a perfect venue for meeting up with fellow Meshtadelians. Despite the challenge of matching nicknames to real-life faces, especially after a few beers, the sense of camaraderie was palpable. It felt less like meeting strangers and more like reconnecting with friends I simply hadn’t met yet.

A Unique Gathering

Lake Satoshi was a beautifully unstructured event, built on well-organized preparation. Yes, there was a speaker schedule (which I mostly missed), food and drinks for every meal, and plenty of facilities. But the overall vibe was one of freedom and flexibility, an atmosphere where anything seemed possible. In a way, Lake Satoshi embodies the most positive aspects of anarchy—no top-down rules, just friendly requests and advice. Everyone seemed motivated to do the right thing, driven by a natural peer pressure to maintain the event’s laid-back yet respectful atmosphere.

Reflections on Lake Satoshi

Was Lake Satoshi perfect? Surely not, there are always some minor issues,. . . like enthusiastic conversations growing loud enough to disrupt the speaker sessions. But these were quickly resolved, with folks being asked to chat outside the presentation area and one mom taking the kids to the beach for a playgroup.

What struck me most was the community spirit. Unlike other Bitcoin events where developers and influencers dominate, Lake Satoshi was a gathering of builders—mechanics, farmers, and other hands-on workers who are creating the future they want to see. It was a place where ideas and projects were born out of a genuine desire to build a better world, not just in the digital realm but in tangible, everyday life.

And then it hit me: Lake Satoshi wasn’t just a Bitcoin event. It was a gathering of social engineers—not the kind trying to manipulate systems, but those building social bonds and communities grounded in freedom. Freedom not in the sense of privacy or anonymity, but in the ability to transact openly with trusted peers.

In truth I feel jealous, for it has become clear to me… the first real-life, physical manifestation of the Meshtadel spirit is being built in Michigan. And for that one and a half day, we were lucky enough to be a part of it.

The Power of Community in Action

Lake Satoshi was a microcosm of a world where community, trust, and social bonds took precedence over commerce and profit (& influencers). The interactions I witnessed and participated in during my time there left a lasting impression—showing that, in a culture where technology often dominates (Bitcoin is and will always be code 😊), human connection remains at the core of what truly matters.

One of the most striking aspects of Lake Satoshi was the way people naturally took care of one another. It wasn’t just about Bitcoin or technology; it was about creating a community where everyone felt included and supported. This was evident in the way as I mentioned before Otis’ wife, without hesitation, took charge of a whole bunch of kids, leading them to the lakeside for a playgroup. It wasn’t planned or organized—she simply saw a need and filled it, allowing the speakers & audience less distraction while other parents could relax and engage with the event, knowing their children were in good hands.

This sense of communal care extended beyond just the children. Vendors at the event, instead of guarding their stands closely, would often abandon them, leaving their goods out, sometimes with a QR code for payment. They trusted that their fellow attendees would pay fairly, even in their absence. It wasn’t just about making a sale; it was about fostering an environment of mutual respect and trust. I found this particularly inspiring.

My Experiment in Value

I was there with some clothing I had designed—an experiment, really. I wasn’t there to focus on the sales but rather to see how people would respond if I left the value of my goods up to them. I highjacked a table from Jon and soon followed the example of other vendors by leaving a simple note: people could find me or my son somewhere at the event and pay whatever they deemed the clothing was worth.

For me, interacting with the people present was far more important than haggling over prices. This experiment forces buyers to be more mindful of their purchases, to consider the value not just in monetary terms but in terms of what the item meant to them personally.

The trade I am most proud of came out of this experiment. I had been eyeing a board game that I first saw at Rev’s farm (Mission Bitcoin), thinking it would be a great addition to our family collection. When I mentioned this to SeB, the seller surprised me by suggesting a trade—a hoodie from my collection in exchange for the game. It was a perfect reflection of the atmosphere at Lake Satoshi, where value was seen not just in Bitcoin but in the connections we were building and the shared experiences we were creating.

Trust, Freedom, and the Social Layer of Bitcoin

Thus Lake Satoshi provided a powerful reminder of the importance of the social layer in Bitcoin. In a system where money no longer requires trust—thanks to Bitcoin’s decentralized nature—we can bring that trust back into our social relationships and interactions. This creates a space where we can build bridges between like-minded individuals, fostering networks of trust that provide a sense of belonging.

In a world where technology often seems to distance us from one another, Lake Satoshi was a reminder that it’s possible to create spaces where trust, community, and human connection are at the forefront. It’s in these spaces that the true potential of Bitcoin—and any layer or even broader technology on top of that base layer—can be realized.

At Lake Satoshi, we as a whole, challenged traditional economic models and explored what it means to build a community in the digital age. The social bonds we formed were far more valuable than any transaction could be.It became a practical example that removing trust from money allows us to reintroduce that trust into our social relationships.

This shift is about more than just financial transactions; it’s about building bridges between like-minded individuals, creating social networks that foster a sense of belonging and trust. This stands in stark contrast to the mindset that fuels the reliance on privacy coins—a mindset rooted in fear rather than hopefulness.

At Lake Satoshi, the concept of trust was not tied to the anonymity of transactions, but to the openness of the community.

For once you are able to trade with your neighbors, I would dare to challenge any chain analysis company to try to root out who owns which coin and did which trade. It isn’t possible by just tracing transactions, one would need a deep understanding the human connections even IF they would be aware of each transaction (and not each transaction happens on-chain).

Reflecting on the state attack on Samurai, which was a big blow on the privacy potential of Bitcoin, I believe the answer doesn’t lie in seeking more privacy through alternative cryptocurrencies. Any currency other than Bitcoin, in my view, operates at the wrong level. The real solution lies in rethinking the problem from a social perspective, rather than merely a technical one. However I do understand if someone wants to use any tool to hide from the state (to name one example), I do not recommend to use any tool as a replacement. On a personal level, I remind myself: any weapon you use incorrectly, puts you in more danger than your adversary 😊 (read: I would probably fuck up using for example Monero and just put a big target on myself)

Reclaiming Trust and Community

Historically money originally emerged as an abstraction of barter, allowing us to trade with those whose services or products we didn’t immediately need. Yet, over time, we’ve drifted too far from the social element of trade. The internet, in particular, has spoiled us with the convenience of global shopping—enabling us to buy products from halfway around the world without ever considering the needed interactions and conversions that underpin those transactions. We’ve become accustomed to a system where multiple layers of conversion—between currencies, cultures (and means of transport), and languages—happen invisibly in the background. This abstraction, while convenient, has distanced us from the social aspects of trade.

Bitcoin, however, with its unique characteristic of absolute scarcity and its globally auditable supply and at same time global availability, removes the need for a big part of these conversions. It offers a universal measure of value that transcends borders and simplifies transactions. But for Bitcoin to fully realize its potential, we need to reconnect with the social relationships that make trade meaningful.

This is where the concept of a “Meshtadel” comes into play. As I said, at Lake Satoshi, I witnessed a Meshtadel taking a physical form, and I hope to see replicated around the world— thus the beginnings of forming a global loose network of physical Meshtadels. Not just gatherings or events, but thriving communities where social bonds are as important as the technology that underpins them. In these spaces, Bitcoin isn’t just a currency; it’s a tool for building trust, fostering collaboration, and creating a sense of belonging.

Imagine a world where Meshtadels form a global mesh network of communities, each interconnected yet self-sufficient, bound together by shared values and a common vision. These communities would represent the true potential of Bitcoin—not just as a decentralized currency, but as a catalyst for social change. By focusing on the social layer, we can reclaim the trust that has been lost in our increasingly digital and impersonal world, and build a future where technology serves to enhance, rather than replace, our human connections.

In the end, it’s not about hiding behind ‘privacy coins’ or seeking refuge in alternative currencies. It’s about building the social relationships that can make those tools unnecessary. Lake Satoshi in Michigan is just the beginning—a prototype for what could become a global network of Meshtadels, where trust, community, and social bonds are the foundation of a new, more connected world….

Fireside Reflections: Proof of Concept

These thoughts did not come out of the blue when seeing Lake Satoshi. As you could read in the start of this writing, our trip took us to Rev Hodl’s farm.

As I sat in the evening with Rev Hodl by the fire, alongside my son, the conversations we had were more than just idle chats—they were a prelude to these realizations that would crystallize at Lake Satoshi. Watching Rev and his family work on their farm, I saw a living embodiment of what it means to integrate and nurture every part of an ecosystem, from the land to the animals, and even the people who enter his life. Rev and his family aren’t rulers of their domain, bending it to their will with heavy machinery. Instead, they are gentle stewards, guiding the land with subtle interventions that allow new paths to flourish.

This approach goes beyond the physical land; it extends to the animals they raise, the pets they keep, and even the wild creatures that share the same space. Rev’s philosophy of care doesn’t stop at the edge of his property—it includes the neighbors, the guests at their B&B, and even the Bitcoin miners on the farm, which serve a dual purpose in the ecosystem. The family has cultivated a web of interdependencies, much like a mycelium network, where each small connection strengthens the whole, benefiting the land, its caretakers, and the broader community among other things as one of the driving forces behind what I start to call in my head “the Michigan Meshtadel”.

These fireside talks with Rev Hodl served as a lens through which I could see the social fabric of Lake Satoshi in a new light. Our discussions naturally drifted to the social aspects of Bitcoin and the potential, as well as the limitations, of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network (LN). In the past, I conceptualized the idea of the Rings of Fire, which I entrusted to the ‘Connect the World’ team (they took the concept to a whole new level). However, one of the limitations I’ve come to realize is that the LN will never fully replace the legacy financial system due to issues like pathfinding, which LN critics rightly point out.

Yet, the bigger insight I gained, both at Rev’s farm and later at Lake Satoshi, is this critical importance of the social aspect of trade—something that often gets overlooked in our digital age. Instead of trying to create a generic network of payment channels that can handle all transactions by hopping through various nodes, what if we focused on building networks that reflect our social connections? What if the channels we open on the LN aren’t just random connections, but representations of the trust and relationships we’ve built?

This might seem like a side story, but it’s a crucial one. At Lake Satoshi, I witnessed the Michigan network taking shape before my eyes. And imagined (and discussed about this idea) how these interactions could be even more private by only (or at least mostly) involving the parties present and thus not leaving any big onchain traces.

Although I’m a distant participant, my interactions with the people there have been meaningful enough to establish a few key connections that anchor me to their growing momentum. Even if it’s just once a year, these connections pull me into the community, reinforcing the bonds that have been formed. So I already ponder and wonder if I should also make some relevant LN channels to make a distant connection to some of the spokes of the Michigan network surrounding Lake Satoshi. 😊

If my dreams could materialize into reality, I would love to create a local version of Lake Satoshi—a Meshtadel in my own community. However, I doubt that I would ever be able to even think of a way to replicate the intricate, well-oiled machine that’s being built in Michigan. What they’ve achieved is more than just an event; it’s a thriving social network that mirrors the best aspects of Bitcoin: decentralized, resilient, and rooted in mutual trust.

As I reflect on these experiences, it becomes clear that the future of Bitcoin is not just about technology, but about the social structures we build around it. The Michigan Meshtadel is just the beginning, a prototype for what could be a global network of interconnected communities. And while I may not be able to replicate it exactly, the lessons I’ve learned from Rev Hodl and Lake Satoshi will undoubtedly influence how I approach building my own social networks, both online and off.

In the end, the real power of Bitcoin lies not in its code, but in the communities that form around it, and in Michigan I saw it is possible.

You’ll be drowning in narratives of anti-authoritarian fervour, spiced up with “V for Vendetta” quotes. My goal? To cut through the overdone bromides and capture the essence of the Gunpowder Plot’s kinship with the Bitcoin rebellion, and more importantly show where we diverge.

What truly aligns? Where does it veer off? And crucially, which learnings from that non-explosive epoch still have value to us today? Let’s fish out the gems of wisdom from the murky waters of history.

The Remnant & The Recusant

It’s blindingly obvious that Bitcoiners spot a kindred spirit in the plight of the Gunpowder Plot’s masterminds. Both hate their unrepresentative governments. Back then, Catholics were also grudgingly tolerated, as long as they parroted the Anglican narrative publicly in their mundane existence. They were the undercurrent in a sea of indifference and NPC narrative.

Now and then, this tension would burst into outright defiance, though more often, it was a hidden warfare. A regular Catholic might be fined for non-attendance of Anglican service, but the better known dissenters faced public, grotesque retribution. Tagged as dangerous outsiders, they were the feared ‘other’.

And so it is today: Bitcoin advocates trudge through a world that barely acknowledges their ideology, save for the ones who make waves – they get the modern-day equivalent of the stake. It’s not a fiery stake, but it’s metaphorically scorching: life sentences without parole, forced exile, kangaroo courts for the most vilified among us. Debanking, silent bans from public forums, a gradual strangulation of rights and liberties.

Make no mistake – Bitcoin Remnant are the present-day Catholic Recusant.

Trust not in Authority

With King James’ rise to the Throne, came the illusion of a monarch who might entertain pluralistic forms of belief, offered Catholics a fleeting mirage of hope.

Initially, James’ indecisive stance on the Catholic predicament was a calculated act to cement his reign without outright spurning Catholic subjects. Yet, the hope was short-lived, and the suffocating conditions that Catholics had borne under Elizabeth I didn’t just return; they deteriorated. It is this rug-pull that likely nudged the Gunpowder schemers toward drastic, desperate action.

Rulers are not, and cannot be, anchors of trust. They are whimsical, power-hungry chameleons, shifting shapes to snatch control by any means necessary. The honeyed promises made at the campaign rallies are nothing but smoke that dissipates once the throne is secured.

Machiavelli captured the thought perfectly: “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”

This is a lesson that Bitcoiners should be mindful of when their chosen idol starts serenading Bitcoin – Don’t trust; verify.

The Wavering & The Weak

The cautionary tale of Francis Tresham is one Bitcoiners need to be aware of. A crucial but flawed part in the Gunpowder Plot, Tresham’s story warns us of allies whose support wanes when peril mounts, and who prize personal incentives over principle and conviction.

Tresham’s dual loyalty — voicing support while covertly hedging bets — serves as a warning of the risks posed by fair-weather friends within any movement. The Bitcoin community, resilient yet not invulnerable, must remain alert to the Tresham-like figures who falter when their public support becomes a liability.

His suspected betrayal through the ‘Monteagle letter’ illustrates the ultimate danger: not the enemy at the gates, but weak men within the walls. Similarly, Bitcoin’s landscape is dotted with enthusiasts quick to extol its virtues in fair weather but equally quick to retreat when storms brew.

In rallying behind Bitcoin, remember Tresham’s lesson: trust is a treasure in times of trial, not just triumph. True allegiance is forced in the crucible of adversity, distinguishing the steadfast from the superficial. Let this historical lesson inform the future; ally with those whose commitment is immutable. (Despite his own waning conviction, Tresham’s fate was sealed by the very conspiracy he sought to escape, dying imprisoned before trial.)

Bitcoiners are Different

The Bitcoin cause may chart a course that bears early resemblance to the Gunpowder Plot in many ways, yet it diverges in more crucial aspects. These differences are not mere footnotes, but are the key to certain victory in this new age mutiny.

United in Disruption, Different in ApproachThe similar cause of Bitcoiner and 16th Century Catholic is the quest to disrupt a prevailing order that suffocates our beliefs. But it is here that the paths diverge.

Bitcoin’s crusade is waged not with barrels of gunpowder but with the rules of mathematics; not in darkened cellars, but in the expanse of the network. The Plot sought to destroy what they hated; Bitcoin aims to preserve what is loved. One sought to change the head of power; the other, to render the concept of centralised power obsolete and inert.

Greater Planning, Broader ScopeThe Gunpowder Plot, for all its secrecy and intrigue, lacked the comprehensive vision and global scope inherent to Bitcoin’s design. Bitcoin was meticulously crafted with the anticipation of pushback, built to withstand and operate outside the purview of the traditional systems it challenges. It’s a long game, rooted in mathematics and community, rather than a short fuse burning towards an uncertain aftermath.

Hope of Success

Where the Gunpowder conspirators pinned their hopes on chaos breeding opportunity, Bitcoiners invest in the certainty of algorithms and the open ledger. It is not hope but assurance in the principles of cryptography that fuels the Bitcoin rebellion. The blockchain doesn’t merely dream of a world where financial sovereignty is possible—it constructs it.

In essence, while the Gunpowder Plot was a desperate leap in the dark, Bitcoin is a calculated stride towards the light. It’s an evolution of dissent, learning from the past that change doesn’t have to be explosive to be effective—it needs to be relentless and resilient

Non-ViolenceAt the heart of Bitcoin’s ethos is an unwavering commitment to non-violence as a principle of ethics. The blockchain was forged not as a powerful weapon of destruction, but as an impenetrable shield of value. Where the Gunpowder Plot’s desperation led to a failed explosion, Bitcoin’s design sublimates desperation into creation. It’s a peaceful protest; a bloodless financial revolution.

From Shadows to LimelightMoreover, the Gunpowder Plot was intended to shock by exploding out of darkness and secrecy. Bitcoin may have started in the shadows but is a bright and overt beacon of truth. Its success doesn’t depend on staying hidden and avoiding discovery, but on widespread adoption and recognition. Bitcoin doesn’t lurk beneath Parliament—it replaces it, asking for nothing, just waiting for it’s chance to displace the current inferior financial ecosystem.

Conclusion

In considering the Bitcoin movement and the Gunpowder Plot, one sees a broad theme of defiance, resilience, and the undying human spirit that seeks freedom.

While the former is a somber reminder of the perils of violent rebellion, the latter is an demonstrates the true power of peaceful evolution. It’s a pivot from the gunpowder of yesteryear to the gigabytes of today—a testament to humanity’s relentless pursuit of liberation, this time not from tyranny of a crown, but from the confines of centralised monetary control.

And with all that said, go eat some candy floss, but never forget to say – “Down with the King!”

Government, Media & their propaganda

The relationship between media and government has always been a crucial aspect of the political landscape. The way information is presented and disseminated can have a profound influence on public perception and opinion. Media serves as a vital communication channel between the government and society. Newspapers, television, radio, and online platforms have the ability to rapidly and widely disseminate information, giving them the potential to shape how the public is informed.

One of the key ways in which media shapes government narratives is through framing. This refers to the way information is presented to promote a particular interpretation. For example, the choice of words, images, and the tone of a message can all influence the perception of a story.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incidents (1964): During the Vietnam War, American media reported on two incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin, where American warships were purportedly attacked by North Vietnamese ships. This served as justification for the American escalation in Vietnam. However, it later emerged that the second incident, and possibly even the first, had been greatly exaggerated or even entirely fabricated. These events highlight the influence that media has on public opinion and policy.

The Iraq War and Weapons of Mass Destruction (2003): In the lead-up to the Iraq War, various governments, including the American, British, and Australian, claimed that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. This information was widely disseminated by the media and served as a major justification for the invasion of Iraq. It later emerged that these claims were not based on factual information, leading to significant controversy and criticism of both the governments and the media.

In addition to objective journalism, propaganda can also be a powerful tool for spreading a particular narrative. This can range from subtle manipulation to outright misinformation. Government agencies may employ propaganda to justify their policies, enhance their image, or promote social cohesion.

At times, the government may attempt to control the media to maintain a specific narrative. This can occur through censorship, where critical or dissenting viewpoints are suppressed. This can have serious implications for freedom of speech and information.

Censorship Control and censorship of media pose a serious threat to democratic principles and the free exchange of information. When the government attempts to control the media, it often has profound consequences for society as a whole.

Censorship can manifest in various ways. It can take the form of direct intervention, where critical or controversial messages are banned or removed. This can occur through legal measures, such as imposing restrictions on what can be published or designating certain topics as taboo.

Another form of control is self-censorship, where media outlets decide not to publish certain information or take a particular stance out of fear of repercussions. This can stem from pressure to conform to government expectations or from fear of legal consequences.

The consequences of control and censorship are far-reaching. Firstly, they undermine freedom of expression, a fundamental right essential for a well-functioning democracy. When critical voices are suppressed, the ability to hold the government accountable is hindered, potentially leading to a lack of transparency and trust.

In modern society, there is growing concern about the spread of misinformation and manipulation. These tactics can have profound effects on how the public perceives events and policies, undermine trust in institutions, and even jeopardize the integrity of democratic processes. This article sheds light on the role of misinformation and manipulation by government agencies and examines their impact on our society.

Misinformation and Information Control

Misinformation involves the intentional spread of incorrect information with the aim of influencing the perception of a particular event, person, or policy. Manipulation is a broader term that refers to tactics aimed at steering public opinion, often by using psychological and rhetorical techniques.

One of the most direct ways governments spread misinformation is by controlling the available information. This can occur through censorship, where specific information is withheld or restricted, leaving only the official narrative.

A glaring example of such censorship can be found in authoritarian regimes that suppress critical voices and dissenting opinions, creating a one-sided view of reality. At least, this is what we think, but it also happens in Western countries.

Psychological Tactics

Government agencies can also employ psychological tactics to manipulate public opinion. This can range from instilling fear to playing on emotions to garner support for specific policies. For instance, emphasizing threats to national security can evoke a sense of urgency and agreement with certain policy measures.

The Danger of Repetition

An extremely effective strategy for spreading misinformation is repetition. By emphasizing a specific narrative repeatedly, it can be etched into people’s minds, even if it lacks a solid foundation in facts. This can lead to deeply ingrained beliefs and misconceptions.

The Role of Education and Awareness

Teaching media literacy and critical thinking in schools is vital to provide citizens with the tools they need to recognize and resist misinformation. Additionally, awareness of these tactics is essential to promote a healthy information environment.

Historical Examples

Historical events often provide a fascinating insight into the evolution of official narratives. What was initially presented as ‘truth’ can later be subject to revision based on new information, revelations, and a better understanding of the context. It is of great importance to study these events and draw lessons from them for maintaining a critical attitude towards contemporary information.

Watergate Scandal (1972-1974): One of the most iconic examples of a revised official narrative is the Watergate scandal. Initially, the Nixon administration sought to downplay the involvement of the White House in the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. However, during an investigation by journalists, led by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post, increasingly more evidence emerged showing the government’s involvement. This eventually led to the resignations of high officials and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The Watergate scandal underscores the importance of a free press and understanding the facts, even if they contradict the official narrative.

The Pentagon Papers (1971): Another notable example is the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg, a former analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense, leaked these classified documents to The New York Times. These documents revealed a pattern of deception by the U.S. government regarding the Vietnam War. It showed that the government deliberately withheld information and obscured the true extent of U.S. involvement in the conflict. This revelation shocked the American public and altered public opinion about the war.

The 9/11 Attacks (2001): The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon led to a reexamination of the official narrative in the subsequent years. Various theories and questions have arisen about the circumstances and causes of these tragic events. Many critics have contested the official version of events and called for further investigations. While the “official” inquiry concluded that the attacks were the work of Al-Qaeda, this remains a subject of discussion. The attack had far-reaching consequences beyond just the victims who perished that day. This event justified a war in the Middle East, and oh, what about all the “security measures” implemented, all of which are violations of your privacy.

The Role of Alternative Media

Where the government holds a dominant position in determining the information provided to the public, the rise of alternative media and independent sources has become crucial for a balanced flow of information. These non-traditional sources often provide a counterbalance to official narratives and play a significant role in highlighting different perspectives and providing a broader context for events. Often driven by individuals, communities, or organizations challenging traditional power structures, they have the capacity to offer a fresh and critical perspective on events that may not align with the official narrative.

What makes alternative media particularly special is their ability to amplify the voices of those who might otherwise be overlooked. They provide a platform for communities, activists, and experts who often do not find space in mainstream media.

Alternative media thrive in an atmosphere of innovation and creativity. Free from the constraints of traditional structures, they can experiment with different formats, storytelling styles, and approaches. This leads to engaging and dynamic content that often delves deeper into complex issues than mainstream reporting allows.

The independence of alternative media is a valuable asset in a time when corporate interests often take precedence in mainstream media. This enables them to offer an authentic approach, driven by a sincere quest for truth and sharing relevant information with the public.

The Stigmatization of Alternative Media

Unfortunately, alternative media are sometimes unfairly labeled as sources of misinformation. It is important to recognize that these platforms, like their mainstream counterparts, vary in quality and reliability.

Alternative media add a valuable dimension to the information landscape. They offer a different perspective and challenge the status quo. Instead of seeing them as a threat, we should acknowledge them as a complement to the broader information culture. They enhance our capacity for critical thinking and bring a refreshing diversity of voices to the societal discourse

Psychology of Power and Control

The way power is exercised and control is maintained significantly influences how a specific narrative is shaped and reinforced. Let’s explore this further, using examples to understand the nuances of this dynamic.

Control of Information Flow

The government has the ability to control information flow. By deciding what information is released and what is withheld, it can mold public perception. An example of this is how some authoritarian regimes restrict press freedom, allowing only the official narrative to reach the public.

Creating Consensus

Psychologically, consensus is a powerful tool to reinforce a narrative. When the government succeeds in creating a sense of unity, the narrative is strengthened and appears as the only valid perspective. The post-9/11 period in the United States is a striking example where the idea of a “war on terror” was widely accepted, reinforcing the government’s policy and narrative.

Framing and Framing Effects

The way information is presented – known as framing – can have a significant impact on how the public perceives and interprets it. By framing an issue in a specific way, the government can influence perception. For example, framing economic policies as ‘stimulus measures’ or ‘austerity measures’ directly affects how they are received and understood by the public.

Use of Emotions and Fear

Appealing to emotions, especially fear, can be a powerful means to reinforce a narrative. Crisis situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, provide an excellent opportunity for the government to create a sense of urgency and justify specific policies. For example, a government may emphasize the fear of health risks to justify certain measures.

Deploying Symbolism and Rituals

Symbolism and rituals play a significant role in shaping a shared identity and reinforcing a narrative. Think of national celebrations, speeches, and ceremonies. They serve to create a sense of unity and loyalty towards the government’s agenda

Whistleblowers and Critical Voices

In the shadow of “official” narratives, whistleblowers and critical voices play a crucial role in revealing information that deviates from what is presented by the government. However, their brave attempts to bring the truth to light are often overshadowed by repercussions and negative treatment.

Dangers for Whistleblowers: Whistleblowers often find themselves in an extremely vulnerable position. Disclosing information that diverges from the official narrative carries significant risks. They may face legal prosecution, social exclusion, professional penalties, and even threats to their safety and life. Edward Snowden, who exposed the massive surveillance programs of the U.S. government, is a poignant example. He was forced into exile and charged under the Espionage Act.

Character Assassination and Stigmatization: Critical voices and whistleblowers are often subjected to an organized campaign to undermine their credibility. They may be subjected to character assassination, with personal attacks and smear campaigns used to cast doubt on their integrity. Chelsea Manning, who leaked sensitive information about U.S. military operations, faced sharp criticism and was even imprisoned

Professional Consequences: Whistleblowers within government agencies and organizations risk harming their careers and reputations. They may be fired, demoted, or even isolated by their colleagues and superiors. This creates a culture of fear and discourages others from taking similar steps.

Legal Pressure and Threats: Whistleblowers may face heavy legal pressure from the government or the organizations they expose. Legal proceedings can be financially devastating and bring years of uncertainty. This is the case with Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, who is being prosecuted in the United States for publishing classified documents.

Psychological Burden: Disclosing information that deviates from the official narrative can exact a heavy psychological toll on whistleblowers and critical voices. They may experience stress, anxiety, and even post-traumatic stress disorder due to the pressure and isolation they endure.

Author:

Kaboomracks alex

While the world is on the precipice, Bitcoin is getting ready for a facemelting bull run and there is going to be a capacity shortage. Right now there are entities buying it all up, and they are having to compete with the data center industry which is also expanding at a very rapid rate. I’m a Bitcoin miner salesman, and my goal is to convince you that buying miners and having them plugged in is a responsible financial decision versus just buying Bitcoin.

TLDR:

• Mining is going to be horrible for retail after next halving
• Miner supply crunch likely won’t be as severe as last cycle
• Capacity crunch will be very severe
• Market fomo will be insane and will be great to capitalize on if you are positioned correctly
• The most efficient machine will carry the highest premium, especially if you can sell it plugged in (Due to capacity crunch).
• Miner stock in the US, even if it’s used, will carry a premium.
• If you are willing to sell equipment when the market takes off, you will shorten ROI time tremendously
• Selling at the top lowers the risk of failures due to manufacturers making bad hardware and lowers the risk of buying unknown quality machines

So right now is completely apocalyptic in regards to miner pricing. There is a huge discrepancy between new and used miner pricing, as the market is heavily leaning towards new generation equipment. I’m going to be talking predominantly about Bitmain machines because the other manufacturers are not coming close to competing in efficiency or price right now to the point where it’s very difficult to justify looking at anyone else.

Up until last week when Bitcoin took a dive, network difficulty was rising pretty sharply. There may be slight adjustment downwards as many miners mining at higher rates and on older equipment are really feeling the crunch.

But prior to this week, there was a 10% difficulty adjustment upwards. In previous halvings, there was often a significant downwards adjustment as unprofitable miners turned off, but this halving the economics are significantly different. Hash rate, despite profitability being abysmal for most people, is continuing to trend upwards at breakneck pace. Bigger money is coming in, and more infrastructure is getting deployed. At the same time, the data center industry is exploding with this AI boom.

I would like to think big money is coming into the mining space because people with a lot of money are realizing that the fiat system is completely screwed. Are they looking at mining as the ability to acquire Bitcoin at a significant discount and one of the best vehicles to accumulate? Speculating on motives is pretty difficult because everyone has different motives and perspectives, and I struggle with confirmation bias. But regardless of what the motive is, it’s happening. Retail miners have stopped buying, but massive institutions are buying up all the mining capacity in the United States. This is happening outside of the United States as well, but my perspective is largely on the US market because that is where I focus.

What I’m about to explain is a speculative strategy that I think can make a lot of money really fast. I will detail pretty thoroughly what I think some of the risks are, and ultimately for most people, just buying Bitcoin is a significantly better strategy. I live in a world where I speculate on mining hardware for a living so this is just where my brain is at and this post might be interesting even if you are not wanting to or should not enter the market. Mining is one of the tougher industries to operate in because there is a significant learning curve with a ton of variables and risks a lot of people don’t even know exist when they enter. That’s just a nice way to say that liking Bitcoin is not necessarily a qualification for being an effective operator in mining.

The Trade

• Buy new generation mining hardware and put it in hosting or a site you operate
• Hopefully mine profitably until the market turns around
• Wait for people to start feeling the fomo and come into the market (Don’t fomo into retail hosting in the bull market please for the love of God)
• Exit your position selling your machines after they explode in valuation in place with the capacity as it will carry a higher premium than if it’s just sitting in a warehouse unplugged

The general landscape of mining is looking pretty bleak for the small/medium scale miner, and I think it’s important to understand that if things trend the way they are, it’s going to be significantly worse 4 years from now. I believe pretty strongly that retail individuals will generally have a really hard time post next halving, unless this trend of miners becoming larger scale changes unexpectedly.

Retail miners with higher costs on machine acquisition, power costs, and fleet management will get demolished. The market is changing. A good example is how Swan and Tether quietly deployed $100 million worth of miners from seemingly out of nowhere. There will be other institutions doing this and the scale at which mining is going to happen will be mind blowing. Hash Price is plummeting and difficulty is rising.

The average individual  should avoid entering this market because there are so many risks to navigate, and you can get destroyed financially by what you do not know. Arrogance in believing you know more than you do is deadly in this industry and the best skill to have is admitting where you do not know something. A lot of these risks can be mitigated right now by taking the strategy of taking advantage of inevitable crunches on hardware and capacity that are soon coming to the industry, instead of finding yourself in a hosting contract as the market corrects after a blow off top, holding unprofitable and quickly devaluing equipment.

This cycle the manufacturers are better positioned to produce significantly more equipment, and the market is also positioned to consume significantly more equipment. There will be more institutions like Swan and Tether, and Tether isn’t even done deploying. Right now, new equipment has a very inflated price, compared to most miners expectations of a sub 2 year ROI on hardware. On paper, miners should be getting destroyed right now, but difficulty is continuing to increase at a ridiculous rate. This is likely because individuals that are well capitalized understand what I’m describing right now and are trying to get as much hash online before the miner bull market begins.

The second people start to get bullish, all the capacity available will get bought up. There are already people extremely bullish buying it all. Mining capacity is super illiquid because it’s real. You need real skilled people to build real infrastructure. A lot of this is in rural places where there are not a lot of qualified people. The infrastructure needs to come from all over the world, and there are a ton of moving pieces to get it all in place. Building things is really difficult when you live in a world where Atlas Shrugged looks like a prophecy. Historically, the mining bull market has been pretty short and the ability to build infrastructure will lag significantly behind the market demand for it.

Machine prices will definitely increase in value, and could triple compared to what they are today. There were $10,000 and $15,000 S19 J Pros last cycle, and in today’s devalued dollar prices, it’s not unreasonable to think that S21 prices could double or triple from where they are today. A good portion of the market will be attempting to buy these machines, but will run into issues with finding where to plug them. If you have machines hosted in place, you will likely be able to sell them for a significant premium.

I predict retail hosting almost across the board will sell out completely very quickly. FOMO will be completely out of control, and while individuals expose themselves to a ton of risk they don’t understand, and probably shouldn’t be buying miners, they will be. People who have been in the fiat world will be told by the TV that Bitcoin is cool. Having a boomer like Trump talking about it at a Bitcoin conference is pretty indicative of that.

Hosts that want to expand, will be faced with a shortage of skilled laborers, shortages of infrastructure, long lead times for everything, and the bull market if it performs like prior cycles, will be a short window. It’s possible there is a super cycle, but people who bet on that last cycle did not do very well. Individuals who take this trade have the ability to multiply their investment in a pretty short time period if they position themselves correctly.

Risks and Variables

I’m feeling a sense of massive fomo right now because I believe the window to be able to capitalize on this trade is closing. I don’t think we have enough hosting capacity right now to fully take advantage of this market, nor do I think anyone else does. Big players have the opportunity to buy capacity in one swoop. One large institution like Swan has the ability to buy all the capacity at once in the US if they really wanted to, and whether or not it is them, someone will likely do it.

• Shortlist of risks:
• Operator failures
• Bad operating conditions
• Bitcoin doesn’t rally like many of us are expecting, or in the timeline we are expecting
• Lemmon machines which break at high rates
• Regulatory risks
• Geopolitical chaos
• Erratic Power Markets

Let me blast through these real quick because this is already long winded.

If you are deploying miners into hosting, you are still taking on all the risks that you would be if you deployed yourself. Just because it’s someone else managing your machines that is hopefully more experienced and knowledgeable than you, doesn’t mean you aren’t assuming the risk or it won’t be a headache. You can try to mitigate this in multiple ways. You could learn the intricacies of this industry and red flags to look for, and just do general good due diligence. The problem with this is that there is not much time to figure this out and if you don’t already have a good foundation, it’s going to be really difficult. You can ask individuals who are more experienced and listen to them while hoping what they are telling you is accurate or helpful. Or you can just buy Bitcoin and avoid the risks all together.

Cheaper is not always better because often you can end up paying a lot more on the back end when you try to skimp on the front end. Being very skeptical of sales people, even me, and asking a lot of questions and looking for inconsistencies in answers is good. It is really important to be confident someone is being honest with you because you are taking on a massive risk by buying miners.

If the operator is not running the machines in good conditions, they have the potential to break which could create a big financial hole for you. Expect machine failures and expect repair costs.  Finding experienced and trustworthy operators to handle your equipment is not easy, and the thought that buying miners to put into hosting being a passive activity to generate money is not generally the case.

There are a lot of complaints about Bitmain quality, but these machines (minus the S17 series) tend to be pretty resilient if operated in the correct conditions. Running machines in hot and horrible environments like Texas only become attractive if the costs are low enough to justify the headache of broken equipment. One of the benefits of buying new equipment is having the ability to warranty it when it breaks, versus having to fix it out of pocket.

The biggest potential problem with this whole thesis is that Bitcoin stays relatively flat, difficulty continues to go up through the roof, and mining economics as we have historically thought about changes dramatically. This would be problematic for the whole industry in the short term, and I may be out of a job if this happens. It’s a serious concern that everyone should deeply consider and run the numbers before jumping into the market because a sales guy is super bullish. Mitigation for this is making a bet that you can afford to lose. Mining is one of the quickest ways to lose money (I can attest from personal experience), but this can be mitigated by successfully timing the market, which in mining is not rocket science if the cycles play out similarly to how they have in the past.

On paper, it seems like all our bags are about to get pumped super hard, but we live in a world where nothing makes sense, and therefore it is always important to check your emotions and try to think rationally about the potential downsides. It’s important to be prepared for the possibility that you are stuck mining with the machines for a while and won’t be able to sell for a premium. I’m gambling that this is not the case by continuing to work in this industry and dedicate most of my waking hours to this which to me is a big bet. It does not do me any good to screw customers over and make a quick buck and I try to give my customers the best information I have because I want to create a lasting relationship and continue to sell then equipment in the future.

The newest and most efficient machines coming to market are a big unknown. We generally do not know the quality of machines until they have been operated for at least 12 months. Getting through 4 seasons and extended time hashing gives us a good understanding of what the quality of the machines is. There is a possibility that you could get a lemmon, meaning the model you buy has high failure rates.. Having the option to sell the machine hosted in place for a premium, mitigates some of this risk. So far, the 21 series has done pretty well at running stably in the summer and we are getting towards the end of the summer. Underclocking the machines in the hot months or having the option to curtail could assist in general stability and longevity (less watts equals less heat and strain). We are getting to a time in the year where the hot months are soon behind us, and deploying machines into hotter environments is less risky, especially if your target sales timeline is summer next year.

Deploying in cold snowy environments carries its own risk, especially if there is intermittent downtime which creates more wear and tear on your machines. Understanding the parameters in regards to curtailment, or just general downtime is good to know. Understanding the operating conditions, whether it is a grid data center environment, container deployment, or off grid deployment is important for understanding potential wear and tear on miners. Heat is kind of unavoidable in the summer, even if you deploy in environments less terrible than Texas.

There is also the very real possibility that the regulatory landscape for miners changes in the US. Many US pools will likely be forced to KYC customers, and there may be other disruptions that could happen. While narratives on Twitter present a picture that Bitcoin miners are saving energy grids and are the most wonderful people in the world, the reality is that many individuals have been bad actors causing damage to communities around them, power companies which they ran up huge bills and never paid, using large amounts of water, etc. There are people who really don’t like us, and potential motivation to come after us as a result. Not only that, as mining continues to scale up, there will likely be the possibility that larger firms pressure politicians to pass regulations that benefit them and hurt smaller competitors. It happens in every industry and we have seen a general consolidation of everything for decades, so it’s a massive risk for miners. I think a lot of this could be mitigated by shortening your time horizon. It will take time for these to play out, but I think it’s still something to pay attention to.

One massive risk that’s really important to understand is that the power markets are on the verge of complete chaos. Power producers are locked in at rates that they likely will not be able to maintain if and when their costs shoot through the roof. The Middle East is super chaotic right now which makes me think this is a real possibility in the short term to look out for.

The Bull Case for New top dollar hardware

New equipment is expensive, and it is this case because it’s the only stuff on the market most people can run profitably. With the proximity to what has historically been mining bull runs, the highest hashing equipment will carry the highest premium and have the wildest price swings upwards. In the bull, individuals’ mentalities completely change. People care about capacity and maximizing hashrate, much more than they care about price or efficiency. Caring about efficiency is a bear market activity, but whatever has the biggest number hashrate will be the machines with the most demand.

Buying machines with a year warranty mitigate the risks of the machines breaking and having to eat repair costs yourself. J Pros for example, selling near or below $500 are not worth spending the money to repair because of how cheap they are. Buying a replacement machine makes a lot more sense than spending a third of the value to repair a hash board or replace a power supply. You can mine new equipment profitably, and likely sell.

Recap/Final Thoughts

• Mining is changing and maturing
• People will fomo into the market
• There is going to be capacity constraints meaning people pay more for machines already plugged in
• Next halving is going to be brutal
• You can make a lot of money fast timing the market like this
• There is a lot of risk, and a lot of people won’t and shouldn’t attempt this

This market is risky and it’s easy to get scammed, so I would encourage people to do a lot of research on who they are working with and stick with people who have good reputations. At the end of the day, it is much easier and safer to just buy Bitcoin. Double check you know who are you talking with, as there will be people impersonating individuals on telegram, twitter, etc. Scams are getting more sophisticated.

Thank you for reading, Kaboomracks Alex

Why It Is Vital To Admit How Bad Things Are

Jimmy was 12 when he broke his arm on the playground. When he went home, his mom told him it wasn’t that bad and did not take him to the hospital or doctor to get it set properly and heal. As a result, he suffered with pain as his bones healed improperly. Later he had to go to a medical professional for the bone to be broken intentionally so that it could be reset and healed. Until that happened, he suffered.

In order for us as individuals to heal, and for our culture and society to heal, we have to admit how bad things are. If we don’t have the context of what is helpful, and what is harmful, we will continue to get sicker and sicker. Having context of what is healthy is what allows us to strive for something more. The challenge is that many people give up and believe that a free society is unachievable, that resistance is futile.

Many people believe that books like Brave New World and 1984 predict a scary totalitarian future and are cautionary themes of what is yet to come. What many people fail to see in these books are in many ways actual depictions of what is happening today. We live in a world where there is no real privacy. Even if you try to use software that can increase your privacy, the hardware itself likely is compromised. The level of sophistication needed to achieve a real sense of privacy is just not attainable to most people. Heads of state often have their hardware compromised by other nation states.

The lack of privacy is much more sinister than many people care to admit. It is used to collect information to shape people’s perspectives on the world, but ultimately is a demoralization tool. Most of us allow social media and individuals on the internet to shape our view of the world. Prior to the internet, people relied on newspapers, books, and the television. All of these mediums can be and are controlled. The internet is very different because it can give people personalized views on the world depending on what their values and interests are.

Big tech can mine data in order to personalize individuals’ views on the world and that is why your experience and view on things can be so radically different than your neighbor. In 2020, during the lockdowns, families and communities were torn apart and divided as a result of this. Parts of the population believed that Covid 19 was the most dangerous illness ever to hit humanity, and considered their neighbors and family members toxic bioweapons that would kill them. Others believed that it was all a scam and that PCR nose swabs were implanting microchips inside your nose.

Determining the truth was incredibly difficult. It generally is difficult if not impossible to verify what is true because all we can rely on the majority of times is both what we are seeing in the real world, but also what we are told by others or see online. We are rapidly moving towards a world where it is safe to assume that everything we see on the internet is completely fabricated.

THE SIMPSON PREDICTED IT ??? pic.twitter.com/4eU7A7Hpi2

— Vincent Flibustier 👽 (@vinceflibustier) July 19, 2024

People at their core are ungovernable because they are self interested. The ruling class’ ambitions generally are counter to that of the individual, but for them to accomplish their goals, they need to pacify the population. This is why democracy is such a wonderful way to co opt people, because it gives them the illusion that they have a choice, or power to make changes when they really don’t. The political process is a way to corrupt the individual, and get them to engage in incredibly unproductive activities.

It is very important for the ruling class’ ability to control the population that individuals know they are being surveilled. In tightly controlled countries like North Korea, or the Soviet Republics, surveillance was done by people. Examples were made and relationships were completely broken down as no one could trust each other. Someone’s spouse might be a informer, and therefore you could not discuss or share any subversive ideas without taking on enormous risk to yourself. Children were taught in schools to inform on their parents in order to subvert the family.

Today there are some of those themes in our communities, but ultimately the internet connected device is the informer, having the possibility to constantly listen to us. Most of us carry them everywhere we go and the threat of someone listening has a major influence over people in what they say and do. Just knowing in the back of your head that your FBI agent is watching casts a dark shadow over society. Eliminating privacy is one of the biggest attacks on the individual and is all done under the belief that the individual is a criminal that needs to be controlled. KYC and AML laws start from the premise that people are guilty, have zero rights to self determination, and therefore are able to be abused.

Mass surveillance is primarily a conditioning tool, more so than just a collection of data to control tool. When people know they are being watched, they behave differently. It stifles creativity and creates and attitude of compliance and conformity. If you knew that a law would not or could not be enforced, you would likely not follow it. But if you believed someone was watching you and could arbitrarily enforce it, most people would follow it, even if they disagreed with it.

What needs to be understood is the sinister nature which is the ruling classes’ need to break down individuals, families, and community structures that promote the individual. We need to understand that there are people intentionally trying to hurt us in order to control us. I could go on for a while discussing the nature of this, but the point of this article is not to black pill the reader.

There is damage being done to us every day. The Covid 19 lockdowns are something that almost all individuals around the world experienced to some degree, and yet there is very little discussion of how to recover from it. In many ways, this was a turning point where surveillance, government power to abuse the individual, and propaganda accelerated. At the same time, it was a catalyst for many individuals to realize the importance of personal responsibility and how deranged the people who are supposed to be experts are.

Unfortunately things are much worse than what I listed above, but now I want to talk about why any of this important.

Knowing How Good They Could Be

I want to present to you the reality in which you wake up in the morning with a sense of purpose and meaning. You are surrounded by friends who care deeply about you and want to see you successful. Instead of feeling a sense of instability, you are secure in who you are because your financial circumstances are stable, but also because you know that if anything happens, people will take care of you. Instead of being black pilled, walking around hypervigilant because the people around you are threats, you have a positive outlook on the world and the future. You believe that you can have kids, and their future will be better than yours.

One of the challenges which makes healing from the societal trauma that we are subjected to is that it is a community based activity, requiring trust in other people. Trauma is being weaponized in an attempt to separate us from each other. We cannot heal on our own. No matter how much you read, or try to work on yourself, unless you can be vulnerable with another person in a community setting, there will not be much meaningful progress.

We are social creatures and secrets eat at us and destroy us. Unless you can share who you are with the people around you fully, without self censoring or hiding parts of yourself, you cannot truly be free. This does not necessarily mean broadcasting every bit about yourself to everyone around you, but it does mean having at least some individuals in your life that you can share the deepest parts about yourself with. The reality is that unless you truly show yourself to another person, you will never experience true love.

We are conditioned to wear disguises in order to get recognition from the people around us, and doing this long enough will cause us to forget who we truly are. If people applaud our disguises, while it may feel gratifying in the moment, damage is being done because at our core we know that they are not applauding who we truly are. Thoughts like, “If they only knew who I truly am, they would find me disgusting,” may go through our heads. Living with that type of shame will ultimately create dysfunction in our lives and relationships.

We need community to heal because people are mirrors. Some people are better mirrors than others. Someone who has a good sense of who they are, and has good self awareness can be an excellent mirror. Most of us carry deep burdens of shame of the things that we have done or were done to us. We see these as disqualifiers of real authentic relationships. So when we refuse to allow people in and hide things, people will mirror back a distorted image of who we are. It is not until you find someone who is safe, and share with them everything, that real healing can begin. We need others to do this for us, because we cannot ourselves see an accurate image of ourselves on our own.

The things that we are embarrassed by, in the right setting with the right person, can be qualifiers of real relationships. Our pain is the thing that can allow us to have empathy and relate to each other. The shame can be a bridge to real authentic connection instead of a disqualifier, but vulnerability is risky. We hide things from others because often times they are our deepest wounds that in telling another person, could be used to inflict more damage. If we tell someone something painful, and then they break our trust by telling others or ridiculing us, we can be a lot of worse off then where we started. This is the fear that plays through our heads preventing us from achieving meaningful connection with each other.

That is why it is vital to be able to identify who is safe. If we have experienced abuse, and I would argue we all have living in an extremely sick society, our ideas on safe individuals can be and will be completely warped, mostly because we were never taught the meaning of this. Building trust with others takes time, and trial and error.

Here are a series of strategies I suggest for identifying safe people:

• -Look for people who are comfortable with themselves
• -Look for people who have gone through healing themselves
• -Look for people who have healthy relationships
• -Look for people who are secure with who they are
• -Look for individuals are not concerned with conformity

This is a topic I will look to expand on in the future, and likely could be a best selling book if I put my mind to it. The world needs safe individuals because the world desperately needs healing. One of the reasons I choose to write for Ungovernable Misfits is because I have grown to trust Jon and Max. I believe that their intentions are to truly be helpful and to empower the individual. I have tested them  by sharing bits and pieces about myself, and have not been betrayed.

They have also reciprocated by sharing things with me about themselves that allow me to trust them. Vulnerability and connection is a two way street that requires both parties to cooperate. The problem with many professional clinical settings is that there is an inherent power dynamic which makes trust difficult. The layman will always be the best equipped because when we interact with peers instead of an authority figure, there are not power dynamics. That is not to say that professional clinicians should be avoided but the human spirit is healed when it is seen and known. Therapists are only an imitation of the healing nature of a real relationship with another human being, and as a result are limited. They can be a helpful starting point for teaching you how to relate with another person, but cannot be the end all be all.

I believe that there is a future in which individuals can share truthfully with each other, and strive to make a healthy society. Even as the world around us becomes crazier and more detached from reality, we can form communities of individuals built on trust and cooperation with each other.

Drop Your Burden

Yes the world is fucked up, and it is important to know to some extent how fucked up it is. This is incredibly important context because unless you can identify what is wrong, there is no way to identify what is healthy and good. Normalizing the unhelpful themes in our cultures will only perpetuate them, but identifying them, grieving them, and striving for healthy alternatives is the path forward.

When the foundation on a house is crumbling, the answer is not to build a shiny facade. It is to fix the foundation, and then build back on top of it. If you have lived your whole life with dysfunction as a result of shame and pain, doing something like this can and will feel earth shattering. Many people do not have the courage to go through the process of healing until things get so difficult that change is the only option and the dysfunction becomes unignorable.

I believe we are that place as a society right now as the fiat monetary system is breaking. Individuals who have tried to believe that what we are experiencing is normal and good are being faced with the reality that the people they put their trust in are not the good guys. They are coming to realize that the institutions and causes they supported did not have their best interests in mind, and that there is a coordinated effort to make them sick.

I believe the answer is not to build guillotines and perpetuate the anger, but is to empower the individual so that the people who have attempted to abuse and control us are not given the power to repeat what has happened again. Yes we have to defend ourselves at times, but this is not a kinetic battle. It is a deeply spiritual one. The decisions we make have massive impacts, and the commitment to heal will have positive repercussions through the whole universe.

We don’t need to run around black pilling people. People will find out how bad things are one way or another without our help. We can name things for context, but the context is only necessarily for explaining what is possible. Having real connections with other people, and seeking to build each other up and inspire each other is how we make any meaningful progress.

This does not require the cooperation of the rest of society. We don’t need everyone to be safe and go through the process of healing in order to make meaningful progress for ourselves and families.The people who are willing to will be examples for others. The most effective sales pitch is to actually live out what you are trying to sell to others and being the change you want to be in the world.

If you want to find people who are trustworthy, first you have to be someone that is trustworthy. Instead of lashing out when you feel hurt, sit with the pain. Identify and name it, and observe it. Why are you feeling hurt and scared? Now how can you deal with in a productive manner instead of separating yourself from the people around you. Share what you are experiencing with someone you trust. If you believe that someone actually cares about you, explain how something may have been hurtful, instead of trying to hurt them back. Resentment and revenge are not productive activities, and will ultimately hurt you more than you could hope to hurt others.

Any pain that is assigned meaning and purpose is not just endurable, but could bring you a new sense of purpose and meaning. Depression that seems to have no meaning will be consuming and destructive to the human spirit. This is why the victim mentality is so dangerous. When you can see that your pain can actually be a bridge instead of a barrier, it will completely change your life for the better.

The revolution is not ideological. It is not about converting people to be a certain way, talk a certain way, or even think a certain way. It is about lifting each other up and connecting with each other. When people have self confidence and value themselves, they will also value each other, likely will come to the conclusions that many of us believe about freedom. The belief in the necessity of the ruling class to dictate what is allowed, and coerce you if you break arbitrary rules is a belief stemming from low self esteem. The belief that individuals have agency, are not dumb, and are responsible for themselves is one of empowerment.

I hope you experience the freedom that results from deep meaningful connection with others. To allow someone to love all you, not just the parts you curate out of self defense. Until you reveal all of yourself, you will not be able to truly experience love. The freedom that will be experienced as a result of this is earth shattering. It has the ability to heal even the most jaded and demoralized spirit. It has the power to change the world.

The US government, Silicon Valley and Wall Street bankers – who have economically and sometimes militarily waged war against much of the world – are using Bitcoin for this and are buying up media influence to manufacture consent. As a consequence of the purchase of Bitcoin media, most bitcoiners, instead of being up in arms about it and putting momentum behind any potential workaround, are spending time shilling Tether and explaining away their overt partnership with the US National Security State, shills for dollarized debt posing as anti-state and anti-bank.

UH’s series The Chain, by myself and @markgoodw_in, has been exploring these issues and more, new installment (and the spiciest thus far) drops tomorrow.”

-Whitney Webb

I believe that it is important to question ourselves and our motives frequently. When we make decisions there are consequences. People who believe what they are doing is morally correct, oftentimes are the ones causing the most damage to others. Horrible crimes against humanity are perpetrated by individuals who believe what they are doing is just, moral, and in the name of a cause greater than themselves.

What’s even scarier is that we all have the capacity to deceive ourselves. If you are reading this, you likely are astonished when you look around at your peers who believe things that appear to you as being transparently based on lies. We all have the capacity of being completely delusional, just like the people we believe are delusional.

“Let us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves.”Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

The scale of death and destruction that is caused on a daily basis in the name of championing a higher moral cause is staggering. Almost every war that is fought, is not at the behest of the people fighting the war. It is done because they have been duped to fight for their ruler. There are good guys and bad guys in this world, and lots of pro war spin does not change that truth. Most of the time, war turns the people fighting it into bad guys.

Over the last few months, there has been discussion and criticism of Mark Goodwin and Whitney Webb’s work at the publication Unlimited Hangout. They have presented the world view that much of the Bitcoin adjacent industry is being infiltrated and or controlled by unsavory characters who appear to be very opposed to the concepts of freedom, privacy, and censorship resistance.

Instead, this well funded group is seeking to continue to loot, destroy market competition, and pillage regardless of the consequences. Slavery is still slavery even if your masters say more things that you agree with than the other guy. What many seem to mistake their work for saying is that this attempt at using Bitcoin as a vehicle to give individuals the opportunity of experiencing freedom is a lost or wasted cause. I don’t believe they are saying this at all. On multiple interviews, Mark Goodwin has gone as far to state that he is still, “Bullish on Bitcoin,” then going on to explain why.

I’ll be honest, I have not chosen to prioritize going through their work and fact checking everything they have stated, or read their cited sources, I do believe their work confirms a lot of fears that I have. We live in a world where our realities are largely constructed for us. We are subjected to such heavy levels of manipulation, being honest with yourself creates a level of cognitive dissonance that can feel unbearable at times.

Finding some sort of compass is important for being able to understand and navigate the world around you. You have to know what your values are and how different things play into or against them. I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe we will ever be able to figure out who all the players are, and definitely not their intentions.

You have likely experienced something very similar to me over the last few years, of waking up out of a stupor in which you realize that all the institutions you were taught to believe in were corrupted to their core. Bitcoin may have been refreshing because it truly seemed like an alternative to that world you were seeing differently for the first time. You have spent years arguing with nocoiners and shitcoiners about their silly concepts of how the world works. Now it feels that the world is growing increasingly chaotic, afraid, uncertain, and doubtful.

We have to learn how to confront the reality that the wild west world of digital currencies is changing. The people many of us have sought haven from by using encryption and Bitcoin are now targeting us at an alarming rate, trying to define the ways individuals are allowed to use it. The battle for freedom and privacy have been ongoing throughout recorded human history.

When the printing press was invented, the Catholic church attempted to suppress the distribution of information. When cypherpunks attempted to prevent the Orwellian future we find ourselves in, the state attempted to prevent it by classifying code as munitions. Now the state is attempting to attack groups like the Samourai wallet developers and other open source developers in an attempt to regain control.

If you get the chance, watch the documentary Cypherpunks Write Code if you haven’t yet.

It is very reasonable to also believe that there may be individuals attempting to create products centered around surveillance and coercion as a competing alternative, and just purchasing Bitcoin on a KYC exchange, to withdraw onto your Foundation device may not be enough to prevent things from getting really treacherous and scary.

Inaction does not fix this. Complacency does not fix this. Apathy does not fix this. Trusting heroes or authority figures does not fix this. Deferring responsibility does not fix this. Denying reality because it’s inconvenient does not fix this.

I believe Whitney and Mark’s work is important. At worst, it’s an important reality check, and at best it is really exposing that there are shady forces working in and around us. I did not get excited about Bitcoin because I thought it was a vehicle to bail out the US federal government. It might have that unintended consequence, but the future will be determined by the actions or inactions of people.

The important thing to understand about Bitcoin is that there are inherent properties it has. How people interact with it is entirely up to it’s users and how we choose to interact with it is a reflection of humanity. Government and corporations can only do so much as we tolerate.

Prove Uncle Ted Wrong

Good ol Uncle Ted had lost faith in humanity’s ability to engage with technology. He believed that in order for humanity to flourish, technology had to be destroyed, essentially making him an aspiring Amish person. His manifesto “Industrial Society and Its Future”  explained his thoughts in detail and is definitely worth a read.

He believed that in order for humanity to be free, technology needed to be eliminated and that much of our mental health issues plaguing our culture resulted from the over reliance on technology. One thing that is clear is that we are evolving incredibly quickly, and the pace that the technology we are using is changing is creating all sorts of consequences that humanity has never dealt with before, according to the way we understand history.

Uncle Ted would have hated Bitcoin and likely wouldn’t have seen the value in it. While I find a lot of what he thought to be valuable, mostly because it’s so different than all the other nonsense we are bombarded with, I don’t think he was correct in his views of technology. I have much higher faith in humanity and believe that individuals will be able to learn how to live with it, and even have the capacity to leverage technology in order to experience freedom.

If that wasn’t the case, maybe living in a cabin the woods would be the best path forward.

Trump Won, He likes Bitcoin

I predict that Trump will not be ushering in the libertarian future that many are expecting. He has become the first super power politician to show any support of Bitcoin, and this may be dangerous. The powers at be have found that they can’t ignore Bitcoin and are now trying to figure out what to do about it. It is obvious they want to convince the population to continue to respect their authority and continue to submit. I see the coming Trump presidency not as a a populist uprising or making any meaningful progress, but instead as a desperate attempt to try and regain the consent of the governed.

Over the past few years, things have gotten rough. Wealth has been siphoned away from the middle class. Young people are finding it hard to live stable lives. These people also have the context of knowing what it is like to live in an environment where there is opportunity and they are pissed off as it is almost impossible to draw a conclusion other than that they are getting screwed by the ruling class.

We all have a question to ask ourselves, “What is our cost to sell out.” It is important to ask that question and many people think they won’t because they haven’t been faced with the opportunity. People sell out because it makes sense to. We all want comfort and security. Many of us became interested in Bitcoin for the first place because of economic incentives.

There is a real daunting issue though which is that if people do nothing, the future will likely be pretty dark. We have the ability to do something about it and ensure that future generations inherit something better than what we’ve been dealing with.

As the price goes up, it will become easier to get lost in it all. You will be tempted to submit and become governable. None of us are above it. That is why it is vital to stay grounded and reflect on our motives, what we are doing, and if we are living true to our values.

WTF is Containment and Why Does it Matter

The purpose of containment in the Bitcoin mining space is to separate the hot and cold air and avoid heat recirculation into the servers. Bitcoin computer servers put out excessive heat with temps in excess of 140 F/60C at 350+ cubic feet per minute of air (CFM) of air per worker. Tracking down and repairing hotspots in a build can be as fun as trying to find a water leak in a roof deck. If you have half assed or no containment in place this can be troubling. Employing best practices can save time in initial deployment and hours of battling hot spots or cold start shenanigans in the future during weather events.

Several container/pod manufacturers over the years have significantly improved their builds to deal with this issue. Upstream Data has incorporated high-pressure inlet booster fans for the Texas pods (Hash Hut). A walk through of their newer Hash Hut can be seen here with the Canadian Hipster Steve Barbour doing a walk through.

Best practices in the field ~Aaron Hall SunDog Mining.

• Use good quality material to separate the hot and cold aisle. Common materials utilized at scale are C&C cutouts or foam/polycarbonate materials.
• Push the unit through the cutout of the heat aisle; it generally works better than placing it up against it.
• Also don’t skimp on the tape. You’ll buy once and cry once. Heat rated tape only

Trouble Shooting Tips

• Oftentimes you may be chasing down a heat leak when in fact you have an inflow problem. This could be caused by dirty filters/screen or just not enough inflow ~ Jeff Hotz
• It is not uncommon to underestimate the inflow requirements. This can be a trial and error process unless you’re a large pubco with engineers onhand to calculate air flow requirements. Ideally, you want as much air coming in that is going out.
• Invest in or borrow from a fren a FLIR camera. Use it to detect where the hot and cold air is recirculating. This can save you hours chasing hot spots in your build. Below is a photo shared by Jeff Hotz or shall I say Dot’s Giga Mining Container.

Understand the Basics

Resource management is a key aspect of most strategy games. Whether it’s gathering materials, managing your economy, or allocating units, efficient resource management can make or break your game. Prioritize essential resources and ensure you’re always producing and gathering what you need to sustain your operations.

• Know Your Units and Structures

Different units and structures have unique strengths and weaknesses. Learn what each unit and building does, and use them to your advantage. Mix and match different units to create balanced armies, and place your structures strategically to maximize their effectiveness.

Distributed Hash has been experimenting with shroud technology in conjunction with Cryptocloaks  to reduce hot air recirculation and increase efficiency. Their preliminary documentation can be seen here. They have been working with large scale operations to increase efficiencies.

 At Home Mining Ingenuity

At home miners rely heavily on shrouds and ductwork to reuse the heat in the winter or move the heat outside in the warmer months. Significant innovation has come from at home miners over the last couple years. Balancing a 70 decibel screaming cyber hornet in your basement or the garage can be troubling for a married man. Inasmuch, there have been significant breakthroughs from what Max & Jon of the Bit Buy Bit Podcast have dubbed Pleb Miners.

With the invention of Zack Bombsta Njord Cloudline Board Antminer X19 users can install inline fans coupled with Zack Bombsta Njord Cloudline board to control inline fans. Travis Bickel has a clean example of incorporating good containment with inline fans and the use of Zack’s Njord Board. In this example Travis has removed his stock fans and incorporated AC infinity fans utilizing the Njord Board to control the air flow. Note the shrouds connections for the heat capture in this example. With the use of inline fans and insulated ducting Travis is able to mine sats while maintaining a healthy relationship with his wife. The decibel reduction is significant when the low-cost factory fans are removed and replaced with a quieter fan designed more so for cannabis production.

 Half-Ass Containment

You can have mediocre success with half-ass containment like I currently employ in the barn. It works better than nothing and it is suitable in many applications. If I didn’t spend so much time typing articles for BBB Podcast and Ungovernable Misfits website for Jon to read I could get off my ass and finish my containment by walling this off with C&C metal. Originally, I just had a couple few servers in my loft on a rack in front of a 4,000 CFM fan. As I began to add more servers, the CFM increased and so did the British Thermal Units (BTU) coming out of my brrr machines. During the hotter part of the day the barn was getting in the high 90s. The heat coming from the rear of the servers was blowing back. Here are examples of what I call Half-Ass Containment. Keep in mind this will help better than nothing. Could it be better if the above recommendations are employed absolutely, you bet.

 Summary

This was not meant to be a scientific read and melt faces with technical documentation. The goal was to bring attention to the importance of capturing and preventing recirculation of heat into your mining servers. The more servers you add to the space the more BTU’s you’re going to get pouring out on the other end. This heat needs to be directed somewhere properly, otherwise it’s going to get sucked back up into your mining servers. You can mitigate heat recirculation with proper containment protocols in place by creating a hot aisle with many different products including C&C barriers, shrouds, ducting, and heat resistant duct tape. Remember, half ass-containment > no containment.

Keep Building, Keep HashingBarnMinerTwitter @btctwatterpantsTelegram @barnimner

Erosion of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the cornerstone of personal liberty. It is the ability to question, analyze, and evaluate information and ideas, rather than accepting them at face value. When individuals comply without questioning, they may inadvertently undermine their critical thinking skills, as they become accustomed to accepting authority without scrutiny.

Just like a muscle that grows weak without exercise, critical thinking skills can wither away when not regularly practiced. When individuals rely solely on others to provide answers and solutions, they may lose their ability to think independently and critically. It’s like a ship without a rudder, drifting aimlessly without direction or purpose.

Culture of Passivity: When Obedience Trumps Advocacy

Imagine a society where individuals passively comply with societal norms or expectations, without questioning or challenging them. In such a culture of passivity, personal liberties may be easily disregarded, and injustices can persist unchallenged. Compliance without questioning can lead to a dangerous mindset of blind obedience, where individuals may be hesitant to stand up for their rights or advocate for themselves and others.

When individuals passively comply without questioning, they may relinquish their agency and allow others to make decisions on their behalf. It’s like being a passenger on a train, simply going along for the ride without actively engaging in the direction or destination. This can be detrimental to personal liberty, as it can perpetuate a sense of helplessness and resignation, rather than empowerment and self-determination.

Stifling Personal Expression: The High Price of Conformity

Personal liberty encompasses the freedom to express one’s opinions, beliefs, and values. Compliance without questioning can hinder personal expression, as individuals may feel constrained to conform to established norms or expectations, rather than expressing their authentic selves.

It’s like a bird with clipped wings, unable to soar to its fullest potential. When individuals comply without questioning, they may conform to societal expectations, sacrificing their unique perspectives and ideas. This can limit creativity, diversity, and innovation, and prevent the emergence of new ideas and solutions.

Groupthink: The Danger of Conformity in Decision-Making

Groupthink is a phenomenon where individuals conform to social pressures and go along with the majority, even if it goes against their better judgment. Compliance without questioning can contribute to groupthink, where critical thinking and independent decision-making are sacrificed for the sake of conformity.

It’s like a flock of sheep blindly following the shepherd, without questioning or challenging the direction. When individuals comply without questioning, they may prioritize conformity over critical analysis, leading to poor decision-making and detrimental outcomes. This can be particularly dangerous in situations where important decisions are being made, such as in the workplace or in matters of public policy.

The Role of Questioning Authority

Personal liberty includes the right to question authority, challenge established norms, and seek out alternative perspectives. Compliance without questioning can undermine these fundamental rights and limit individual agency.

It’s like a locked door that can only be opened with a key. When individuals question authority and challenge the status quo, they unlock doors to new possibilities, empower themselves, and contribute to social progress. By actively questioning authority, individuals can hold those in power accountable, expose injustices, and demand transparency and fairness in decision-making processes.

Questioning authority is not about being rebellious or disrespectful, but rather about exercising critical thinking and promoting a culture of accountability. It is through questioning that new ideas and perspectives can emerge, leading to positive change and social advancement. By complacently complying without questioning, individuals may inadvertently perpetuate systems of oppression and inequalities, hindering personal liberty and societal progress.

Safeguarding Against Authoritarianism

In today’s world, the rise of authoritarianism poses a significant threat to personal liberty. Authoritarian regimes thrive on blind compliance, where individuals are expected to follow orders without question, and dissent is harshly suppressed. Compliance without questioning can create a fertile ground for authoritarianism to flourish, as it erodes critical thinking, stifles dissent, and allows those in power to act with impunity.

It’s like a dark cloud that looms over personal liberty, casting a shadow of fear and oppression. When individuals comply without questioning, they may unknowingly contribute to the erosion of democratic values, human rights, and freedoms. It is imperative to remember that personal liberty is not an entitlement, but a hard-fought right that must be safeguarded vigilantly. By questioning authority, challenging oppressive systems, and demanding transparency and accountability, individuals can help prevent the rise of authoritarianism and protect personal liberty for themselves and future generations.

In the End

Complying without questioning can be a disservice to personal liberty. It can erode critical thinking, perpetuate a culture of passivity, stifle personal expression, contribute to groupthink, and undermine fundamental rights. It can also create a fertile ground for authoritarianism to thrive. It is essential to cultivate a culture of critical thinking, informed dissent, and accountability, and to actively question authority to safeguard personal liberty and promote social progress. So, let us embrace the power of questioning, and unleash the full potential of personal liberty for a brighter and more just future.

Author:

AgentP

I am new to Bitcoin (class of 2021). I have some unorthodox viewpoints; I am either new and naive or I am new enough to avoid the blindspots which have captured everyone else. I have been running hosted miners since the market bottom in 2022. While mining has been profitable and I continue to run my hosted machines for as long as they remain profitable, in the long term I think mining needs to become unprofitable. For reasons I hope to expound in a future article, I think that mining may need to transform out of the

“business” mindset during the next 10-20 years if it is going to avoid state capture. So in summer 2023 I began exploring solar tech as a way to keep old machines running. I don’t care much for “green energy” and climate alarmism. For me, solar tech is about easily decentralized power sovereignty. I spent this winter getting hands on knowledge with an S9, S17, and S19 for space heating, and planning and building out my first solar mining system. From December to February I ran initial tests on the 100 Acres Ranch direct DC Hashbox, and put up the final installation in April 2024. Unfortunately it is still not running at full power, but I hope to finish the remaining pieces in the next month or so.

Upfront I’d like to make it clear that this build is unfinished, and is too underpowered to truly demonstrate direct DC potential. Hopefully I can expand soon and push the limits. I will describe some things here which may sound critical of the 100 Acres Design. I bought every part of this system myself, no one has paid me anything to review this, so I can write freely. I think direct DC has huge potential in general for solar mining. The 100 Acres Hashbox is a good system. It is built well, it does what it says, and can work really well IF you design and build the system around it carefully. You cannot just slap any type or number of solar panels on the box and expect it to magically give you amazing efficiency because its “direct DC bro!” You have to do it right, and generally that means a large number of low voltage panels. This also means you need space for a lot of panels. There are many ways to do this build wrong (I’ve discovered most of them!).

I understand Bitcoiners don’t care much for credentials, but I have a degree in computer engineering which I think has enabled me to understand some of the intricacies with solar mining, and I’ll try to share what I’ve learned so far here. This writeup will hopefully serve as a useful primer for miners interested in direct DC mining, and as a helpful guide for anyone considering building a 100 Acres Hashbox system specifically. If you are interested in consulting me for more tailored design advice I am on Twitter/X @keegreil or Telegram @AgentP137.

“For your safety”

I would be remiss if I started an Ungovernable Misfits article without the requisite appeal to safety. Seriously, high current DC power is no joke. There are reasons no one builds large solar installations this way. The risk profile and failure modes are entirely different than a high voltage low current system. In the latter, you are more concerned with good insulation, and short circuits causing tripped circuit breakers. In this low voltage regime, connection failure typically results in melted or vaporized copper starting fires. You can have a bad connection overheat and vaporize without ever tripping a breaker. In a typical mining server, the low voltage high current of 200+ amps travels through two connection points and about one to three inches of solid copper bar. In this build, we are pushing 300-400 amps potentially thirty feet or more through at least 8 connections. Each one presents a possibility of failure, especially after repeated thermal cycling. It can be done, and it can be done safely. But it requires a LOT of copper and good solid high quality connection points. I have found that periodically inspecting with a thermal camera is useful as well. In the following picture, the “hot” wires were in fact only barely above room temperature. So it’s good to “calibrate” what you see in the picture by getting hands on a few things. But this method should make any dangerously hot connections easy to spot.

So, if you take this on, do it carefully, don’t skimp on copper, and check and re-check connections often. But you probably shouldn’t bother building it at all. You know, “for your safety.”

A note on compliance

Another consideration is that a fully off-grid system like this can make compliance with your local power regulations much more difficult. You likely won’t have to pull any permits, or report power usage for mining to anyone. There will be no second commercial meter, no building inspectors, and no compliance department to help you through the process. You are pulling power out of the sky and turning it into hash without any oversight or procedural governance. This can be an uncomfortable position to be in for anyone who understands the importance of compliance. Perhaps more concerning for some readers is that solar technology is generally assumed to be a highly compliant form of power. Solar is “green”, “clean”, and “good for the earth”. Installing solar panels on your property may cause your neighbors to assume that you are a more compliant and “green-conscious” person than you actually are.

Cost breakdown and ROI

The creator of the Hashbox touts efficiency and ROI as the primary advantages of his technology. Having built one, I have major caveats to both. First the numbers. These prices are what I paid, you may or may not be able to find the same prices, but in most cases you should be able to do better than me.

Solar Panels: $2,487.10 (this was not enough panels!)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/335075375898?var=544301079740

This total price is probably about right. On one hand, I overpaid A LOT per panel ($0.69/W), and others can likely do much better. On the other hand, you will need more panels than my 3600W to do well.

Pleb-Tip: PayPal Credit offered me 0% APR for 2 years for opening a new credit line, which I used to finance the panels. This was the only debt I used to build the system. Ironically, this is better financing than the Pubcos can get! Sometimes there are advantages to being small.

I had originally found 3kw of used commercial panels for $820. If you search around the used panel market you can generally find them for $0.25/w, or even less in rare cases. Unfortunately most panels, especially larger cheaper commercial ones, tend to be 30v-48v. I discovered the hard way that the Hashbox requires unusually low voltage panels to make use of all the available power. See the section “PWM vs. MPPT” for a primer on why. Essentially, all the available power above 14V is wasted. I actually hooked up the box to my 48v panels in January. It ran, but with abysmal performance. That’s how I discovered that 12V panels are a better fit. 12v panels are typically marketed for small retail systems like campers and RVs, and difficult to find in large quantities on the used market.

I also did not buy enough, even of the 12v variety, to really get the maximum efficiency in the miner. The reasons for this are complex, see the section on “Understanding direct DC efficiency” for a detailed theory. 6kw is a more reasonable amount of panels to run a single miner and maximum “efficiency”.

Batteries: $2,000.00

https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-12v-400ah/

The stock system requires 400AH of 12v LifePo4 batteries to operate. These are all generally the same price. Occasionally you can find deals, and you can save some money ordering individual cells from China and building your own batteries, but this adds time and complexity. My first set of batteries cost $930.68 from Walmart. They were sold as “marine grade”. I learned that hard way that does NOT mean waterproof. After a month water ingress killed both BMSs. I went with higher quality batteries from Signature Solar because they have excellent tech support, a 5 (or 10!) year warranty and were only marginally more expensive. I also doubled the capacity to 800AH to reduce strain on the batteries and add system redundancy. If one fails, I can continue to hash on the other while dealing with warranty replacement.

Trackers: $722.38

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124431577755

Trackers are an interesting design option. They are a movable frame with actuators on two axes, so they can automatically turn the panels to face the sun as it moves position in the sky throughout the day. They are more expensive than a static rack, but not by much.They do add system complexity, but even if they fail they can still work as a static rack as long as the failure isn’t due to catastrophic wind. They offer two advantages. First, they increase total energy production around 30-40%. Second, and most importantly for mining, they smooth out the power curve and allow the miner to run at a more consistent rate throughout the day. Static panels produce very little power in the morning and evening, and too much power around noon. With an isolated system like an off-grid mine, you have to simply charge batteries in the morning if you have too little power in the morning, then overclock the miner like crazy in the middle of the day and keep charging batteries with the excess, then draw that power back out of the batteries to keep running in the evening (with consequent efficiency losses). My hope with trackers is that I could use a smaller total amount of panels, reduce round trip energy losses to/from the batteries, and run the miner at a more consistent hashrate. I also wanted to test them out and collect data so that I can share with anyone else interested in building a solar system like this.

Trackers do best when your location gets a lot of direct sun, and not too much wind. In Oklahoma or Wyoming you are likely better off getting a windmill, as high winds can destroy the tracker. In Seattle, you are better off buying more bi-facial panels which will continue to produce power in cloudy weather. My system is in a location that is fairly middle of the road, somewhere between Arizona and Seattle.

 As you can see in the title picture, I opted to build “rockjacks” to mount the trackers onto. This is DEFINITELY not recommended or supported by the manufacturer. The directions specify a poured concrete pad. I wanted the system to be mobile, as there are some trees at my location which will be coming down soon and open up better location options. The rockjack frames are staked quite firmly. Time will tell whether they are staked down firmly enough.

The 100 Acres Hashbox: $2000

I understand the price has dropped to $1800 recently as more orders have enabled better relationships with parts suppliers. The box consists primarily of a large metal utility box, a monstrous supercapacitor, four 100A charge controllers (to take in the power from the panels), a relay to power on/off the miner, a large copper power bus, and a Raspberry Pi which is running the 100 Acres Ranch proprietary algorithm to control miner hashrate according to the system’s available power and voltage. He also includes a couple exhaust shroud options for ducting the heat in case you are reusing that (you should!). It also includes two sets of 4/0 AWG wires for the batteries with high quality hydraulically crimped end connectors.

Other Extraneous Items: >$500

The stock Hashbox requires low voltage and extremely high current, which means big thick cables and a LOT of copper. Copper is expensive, and efficiency losses are high if you have long wire runs. It’s best to keep the box as close to the panels as possible. My trackers are 30 feet apart, so 15 foot cable runs from each side. I estimate I’m losing 8% of the power just in the wires, but that 8% would have been lost anyways because it’s in the excess voltage range that the PWMs can’t make use of. Planning and doing just the solar cabling is probably the hardest part of this build. You have to think about how you want to connect to the panels, where to combine the wires and parallel the power, what gauge wire to use, etc.

I spent at least $100 in bolts to attach the trackers to my custom rockjacks. I had to buy large wire crimp tools and connectors, and deck screws for the rockjack frames. You will need some kind of stand for the Hashbox to sit on, as its air intake is on the bottom. Also do not forget a container for batteries, unless you are smarter than me and get waterproof ones.

Lastly, you may desire fuses at a minimum. Standard solar installations use nice “combiner boxes” which parallel the different strings and include circuit breakers and lightning arrestors. Since this system is isolated from the grid, I went with cheaper individual panel fuses, a 30A fuse on each panel. Give this article a read:https://www.windynation.com/blogs/articles/how-to-properly-fuse-a-solar-pv-system. In short, when connecting panels in parallel like this (to get maximum current and low voltage), there are fire risks if one panel develops an internal short circuit. This could happen due to manufacturing defects or an unlucky hail stone. If one panel shorts, ALL the other panels wired in parallel will dump ALL of their current through the shorted panel. On this build this potentially means 200-300A from your other panels and another 400A from your batteries (which are wired on the same bus) all trying to go through one pair of 10 AWG wires to the dead panel. If I do get a short on a panel, the fuse should isolate the dead panel and protect the rest of the system.

Total Cost and ROI discussion: $7,709.48

I have not included the cost of the miner because in this particular case I think it is the wrong way to look at ROI. Normally in Bitcoin mining, ROI calculations are concerned with miner cost and power cost. Assuming a fixed power cost, how quickly will a given machine pay itself off. With a solar system, what you are really building is a power plant. There are no ongoing costs, unless you have to rent the land or pay maintainers. All the cost is upfront capital. So a better way to think of it is in comparing it to the alternative, for example paying for hosting. You can typically buy hosted power for $0.08/kWh. Instead, hypothetically, how much would you pay a hosting contract that was all upfront cost? How much would you pay upfront for free power for 20 years, if that power was intermittent and only lasted 4hrs/day?

In this model, you are paying to build the power plant. Most of the system components should last 20 years, at least in theory. Because it produces free power, you run older cheaper miners and swap them out every few years.

100 Acres Ranch often describes this system as the “fastest ROI”. I believe this is from a quick back of the envelope calculation of $5/day revenue, and $2000 cost for the box ~400 days. Obviously, there is a LOT more cost to one of these installations than just the hashbox, unless you happen to already own a large low voltage solar installation (which NO ONE on earth does, because NO ONE builds large 12V systems).

At the time of writing my system has only 4 of 12 panels actually hooked up, the others are waiting on a repaired PWM controller and my finished shunt power monitoring modification. So I cannot truly say how much revenue I will generate, and I don’t have enough data yet to even provide a good guess. But as a VERY tentative teaser, I can say that I’m producing roughly 3kWh per day, so at full capacity I should make 9kWh/day. With MPPT modifications I may be able to increase that to 10-12kWh/day. If the Bitcoin network pays my miner $0.08/kWh (roughly current breakeven) then my revenue might be around $1/day, and my ROI on the entire system is more like 21 years, not including brief increased revenue during bull markets. Since I already have the hashbox and batteries I can increase production by simply adding more panels, which helps to dilute the sunk costs of hashbox and batteries. With that my system cost could easily surpass $10k, but my revenue should be closer to $3/day with the increased panel production and increased miner efficiency, and ROI closer to 9 years, not accounting for bull runs. With a newer gen miner like a kPro or XP I may be able to push that revenue up further, but I’d then have to consider the cost of the miner as well.

In conclusion, to build one of these systems and do well you have to go big. You cannot buy 3.5kw of panels for a 3.5kw miner and expect good results. Here’s what you need to do to build the stock system and do well if ROI is your primary goal (it shouldn’t be):

– Access to SUPER cheap, low voltage panels. I overpaid.– Access to enough space for 7kW of panels. This is a LOT of space.– Think in Amps, not Watts.– Understand these terms: Voc, Vmp, Isc, Imp. Isc is the key one for the stock build(Short Circuit Current). These are standard solar panel specs listed on every solar panel. Production in perfect sun will be pretty close to this number. Use Imp (Max Power Current) for a slight underestimate in perfect sun.– Understand voltage drop along wires, especially with high currents, and how to calculate it.– Price your panels in $/Amp (Isc) instead of $/W (Read “PWM vs MPPT” to understand why). I paid $11.50/A. Others have done much better.– Aim for at least 300A of rated power output which is enough to run a miner with a small overclock and top off a battery at the same time. More is better. The box can handle up to 400A, so maxing out the box might produce enough for two lower power miners like the kPro, doubling your revenue.– My total cost so far of around $8k is too low. A higher cost of $10-12k would allow for twice as many panels, and likely 4x the revenue due to increased efficiency at higher power levels. This is VERY counterintuitive, see the section “Understanding Direct DC Efficiency” for more.

Additions and Modifications

What I’ve described so far is essentially the stock build. I’ve made and am making certain additions and modifications to the stock box to better suit my purposes. I haven’t included their cost since they are highly customized and mostly related to remote monitoring and data collection.

First, I added another Raspberry Pi and special USB data cable from Victron. On this I am running the open source version of Victron’s solar monitoring software, Venus GX. This lets me remotely monitor system voltage and current through the miner, and control the relay which powers on the miner. I can also get historical and forecasted solar irradiance data for my system’s location.

 My tracker controllers and motors are powered from the same system batteries. I also tested using a Bitaxe to provide a gentle 15W of steady heat to keep the batteries warm throughout the day and night. I need to build a better enclosure, but this did work just fine. It also added a nice level of redundancy, in that if the Bitaxe was still hashing, then the local internet must still be working.

I am in the process of adding a few more things:

– DC shunts to measure amperage production from the two trackers. I’d like to run experiments with locking one and letting the other track, to get real world comparison data on using a tracker vs. fixed rack in various weather conditions.– MPPT controllers: See the later section on why. I’d like to add 2-3 MPPT charge controllers to replace the PWM variety that come in the stock box. These are more expensive, but can pull more usable power from the same panels. Again, I’m mostly interested in collecting real world data and to trial whether they are usable for powering miners. Hopefully I’ll add enough to power half the panels, and leave the other panels using the stock PWMs, and then gather comparison data.– Voltage or current monitors on the stock PWMs. These are VERY cheap, $50 charge controllers that are primarily used to limit the voltage coming in from the panels to something safe for the miner and batteries. I’ve had several glitch out and turn off. There is no way to know one is dead except physically going to the box and testing voltage on each solar terminal. Since my system is remote, I’d like a way to know quickly if/when one dies so I don’t lose out on that production.

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) vs. Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT)First, math.

Power (Watts) = I (Current or Amps) x Volts

Everything hinges on understanding this.

See this guide for a more in-depth overview of these two different methods of driving solar panels:

https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/Technical-Information-Which-solar-cha rge-controller-PWM-or-MPPT.pdf

In brief, solar panels are kinda strange. Photons smash into the panel and free up electrons which can then flow through wires and do work for you. Panels will produce a relatively constant number of electrons, i.e. a constant current almost no matter what voltage they are at up to a point. So you can pull 10A off a panel at 1 volt and produce 10 Watts, or you can pull the same 10A of the same panel in the same sunshine at 48 volts and produce 480 watts. In a chart, this relationship looks like this:

There is a special point on the curve where the maximum power is produced, called appropriately the “Maximum Power Point (MPP).” The ideal way to pull power from a solar panel is to drive it precisely at that MPP, i.e. to vary how much current is pulled off the panel such that the panel voltage remains at the MPP. This creates our first problem, those watts are now probably at a weird voltage that is too high to safely charge batteries or run a hashboard. So we have to do DC to DC buck conversion, which takes high volts and low amps and turns it into low volts and high amps. So now you can take the 10A and 48V from our example and produce 34A at 14V (480W/14V), minus efficiency losses of 1-15%. This maximizes the number of Watts produced, but the second problem is that the circuitry involved in doing that voltage conversion is really expensive. Quality MPPTs that can handle 100A are around $600, over 10x the cost of the PWM controllers used in the 100 Acres Box. Four of those would more than double the cost of the Hashbox.

This cost is the main reason why 100 Acres opted for PWM controllers. A PWM controller is essentially just a voltage limiter circuit. It limits the solar panel to a voltage safe for charging batteries. It pulls whatever amps it can off the panel at that voltage. They are cheap because they are simple, they don’t do any voltage conversion. Another advantage is that raw current production is relatively unaffected by panel temperature, so production is more consistent throughout the year (except for clouds). See the second chart above to understand this relationship. The downside is they will produce fewer total Watts than an MPPT. My low voltage panel’s MPP is around 18V. Chopping this down to 14 means I’m only losing maybe 20% of the Watts that an MPPT controller could produce. If however you try to use 48V panels (like I did at first), the PWM will chop that 48V MPP down to 14V, essentially leaving 70% of the rated power on the table.

This is unfortunate because the solar industry in the US at least seems to have commoditized around large, 500W 48V panels. Huge solar farms, subsidized by the fiat system and further manipulated by the insurance industry, regularly throw away perfectly productive 48V panels. This was my first set of panels, cast offs from a large commercial farm. They were extremely cheap, but the stock 100 Acres system cannot make use of those panels efficiently. You have to deal with voltage conversion to take advantage of those.

My understanding is 100 Acres Ranch is working on future versions and upgrades that will work on higher voltage systems. The holy grail would be a 100A buck converter that can adjust output voltage to follow commands from the miner control board. In the meantime, you can try to source low voltage panels, or you can try something new (see “Future Ideas and Experiments”).

Understanding Direct DC miner Efficiency

Everything you think you know about miner efficiency is wrong. The standard model of miner efficiency assumes that there’s a sweet spot for efficiency somewhere a little below stock hashrate. For most machines you can underclock a bit and keep them profitable a little longer, or during bear market bottoms. Overclocking a bit reduces efficiency, but can generate more revenue per machine, so may make sense in certain business environments like maximizing the use of limited rackspace. This perspective is only true of standard mining off of AC power using the stock power supply. Direct DC is entirely different. To understand why, we have to break down the mining machine into its components and understand how the PSU and Hashboard efficiency curves interact. After that, the promise of Direct DC mining will make sense.

AC to DC Power Supply Efficiency

Below are charts of several Bitmain PSU’s AC to DC conversion efficiency at various power levels. The general shape of this curve holds for almost all voltage conversion methods. There is a sweet spot that is actually somewhat below the designed operating current. Reducing hashrate actually raises PSU efficiency, to a point. Conversely, increasing hashrate reduces PSU efficiency, and is likely the primary reason that miners assume that overclocking reduces J/TH efficiency.

DC Hashboard efficiency

The hashboards themselves are an entirely different story. From my own tests on a 96TH S19 jPro, I’ve observed that:

– Hashrate is essentially linear with frequency (unless voltage or temperature are too low and the trons can’t get through the logic gates fast enough, causing unhealthy chips )

– Amperage is linear with frequency too, except for variations from temperature.

– Most importantly: The Y intercept of Amps vs. Freq isn’t 0. There is overhead current required from just having a board powered on. “Powering Off” a hashboard in Luxor OS firmware, which I did my testing on, does not remove this overhead current. Even putting the miner in “curtail” mode with fans off still drew about 160W.

A note on temperature

The following chart is a test run I did with constant (very low hashrate), slowly drawing down battery voltage. Blue line is volts, red line is amps. The key things:

Most of the test, fans were held constant at 50%In the blue circle I set fans to “automatic”, which favored 10-20%In the red circle fans were 100%.

This is a pretty counterintuitive result, but aligns with data gathered by Braiins on S19 chip temperature (https://braiins.com/blog/impact-of-temperature-on-efficiency-of-antminer-s19-models). At manual 50% fans the chips were nice and cool, around 34C. When the auto mode reduced fans and allowed the chips to warm up, amperage draw increased even though voltage was relatively constant. Hashrate was constant too, so I was actually losing a LOT of efficiency by allowing them to warm up.

What this also means is that given the same voltage, you will be able to push more amps through the chips (and can do more hashes if the frequency is increased accordingly) if you allow the chips to warm up first.

I believe the reason this occurs has something to do with the fact that semiconductors have a negative temperature coefficient. “In semiconductors, the energy gap between the conduction band and valence band decreases with an increase in temperature. The valence electrons in the semiconductor material gain energy to break the covalent bond and jump to the conduction band at high temperatures. This creates more charge carriers in the semiconductor at high temperatures. The higher concentration of charge carriers decreases the resistivity of the semiconductor. As the resistivity of the semiconductor decreases with an increase in temperature, it becomes more conductive. A semiconductor exhibits excellent conductivity at high temperatures.

How I currently understand miner efficiency in the DC regime

Now understand the PSU and the hashboards together. While the hashboards are more efficient at higher hashrates because they dilute the overhead of just powering the board on, this seems to be more than offset by efficiency losses in the PSUs themselves. This is why everyone assumes that overclocking reduces efficiency.

Next, eliminate the PSU. This is how miner mining energy efficiency works on a direct DC system. It is not simply that you gain 10% by eliminating AC to DC conversion, or 20% by eliminating both the inverter and PSU as in a standard solar off-grid system. If you have the amperage available (because you used a LOT of good low voltage panels), and if you allow the chips to get warm enough to easily flow the current, you can run the hashboards at far higher frequencies than normal without pushing the stock PSU deep into the far right portion of its power curve and offsetting all your hashboard efficiency gains. The catch is, you MUST have the raw amps to do it. You cannot build an underpowered direct DC system and expect to do well simply because you’re underclocking it. In fact with direct DC the more you underclock, the worse your efficiency gets.

This means that there is a minimum viable size to get a stock Hashbox running well, and that likely means 300 -400 amps worth of panels, or about 5-10 kW rated power (depending on panel voltage), not 3.5kW. A single hashboard version would likely perform very well, and would make the total system size and cost much more accessible. I understand a single hashboard version is under development by 100 Acres Ranch and look forward to them releasing it.

In my tests, I’ve been able to achieve about 10% better efficiency than a stock jPro. My system does not yet have enough power installed to overclock and really test the limits of Direct DC or the theory that I presented above. The best I’ve observed so far was 25.6 j/TH with the 100 Acres autotuning, at 12.67V and 75TH, or around 13% better than stock efficiency. Not earth shattering, and is basically accounted for by eliminating the 10% loss in the PSU and a bit of tuning/undervolting. Given that the 100 Acres box does not do any voltage conversion whatsoever, the important efficiency metric here is actually Amps/TH, not j/TH anyways.

Further, I think it’s an open question whether j/TH or amps/TH are even useful metrics when trying to maximize a particular intermittent power system. Really what you want to maximize in an isolated mining system like this is hashes per day, or hashes per hour of available sunshine. Sometimes lower efficiency might make sense if you need to burn off excess energy, and storing it in batteries would incur efficiency losses itself. Perhaps a better metric for solar mining would be total shares submitted per day, or total hashes per day. Then normalize that for total daily irradiance. Systems designed for Arizona vs. Michigan almost certainly require different optimizations to squeeze every available hash out of the power available.

To push on this, even 17 j/TH efficiency measured directly at the shunt before it enters the hashboards is mostly a party trick, especially if the whole system is only making barely 200TH out of 19kW installed capacity (to use a hypothetical example). How much energy is lost in the wires due to the low voltage and high current runs? How much energy is never generated because the PWMs are driving the solar panels at a suboptimal voltage? How much energy is lost when charging and discharging batteries? While j/TH efficiency and power rate are the primary determinants of grid based mining profitability, they are at best secondary tools when optimizing a solar miner.

The limitations of batteries

The batteries are by far the most annoying part of this entire system. They are necessary to smooth out power fluctuations from the panels when clouds or other shadows cut-off the wireless photonic power transmission system from the nuclear fusion reactor in the sky. They buffer the power and allow the miner to stay turned on and hashing instead of constantly rebooting.

Unfortunately, batteries are expensive, can be finicky. Most importantly in this particular system, the batteries are wired directly to the main system bus with no voltage conversion. Normal LifePo4 voltage at rest is 13.1-13.2V. If you are producing more power than you are burning through the miner, the PWMs will push the voltage up towards 14V and charge the batteries at the same time. Once they are charged it holds voltage there until production decreases.

If you would like to burn precisely your production and not excessively charge the battery, then you must throttle the miner to maintain 13.2V. That voltage may or may not be appropriate from an efficiency standpoint for the amount of power you would like burn off.

Perhaps the most difficult scenario though is with a very underpowered system. When the sun comes up and pushes voltage high enough to trigger the relay and turn on your miner, it will immediately start burning more power than is being produced. The difference comes from the battery. All batteries sag in voltage when power is drawn out. The amount of voltage sag depends on the size of the power draw relative to the size (in AH-amp hours) of the battery bank. On my 800AH system voltage can sage as much as 1V if I’m pulling 150-200A from the batteries. This means that the hashboards must now run at 12.2V instead of 13.2V or 14.2V. Underclocking will reduce the power draw on the batteries, helping them to last longer. But, this also increases system voltage, decreasing my j/TH and Amps/TH efficiency. Even a large battery bank is unlikely to last more than a few hours.

One solution is to simply charge the batteries fully with the miner off, then run them down at a high hashrate to maintain good efficiency through the miner. However, running batteries hard like this actually creates efficiency losses in the batteries themselves during the energy round trip, further hurting total system efficiency.

The only real solutions in this underpowered case are to physically disconnect 1-2 hashboards or increase the number of panels. When doing direct DC with batteries and without real voltage control, the best mode of operation is to run the boards really hard as long as you have the power to keep voltage high.

Future ideas and experiments

This first foray into solar mining has been extremely enlightening and rewarding, if not exactly profitable yet. What I would really love to see however is exploration of smaller sized systems with a grid tie in.

Using MPPTs to drive the panels, while expensive, would open up panel sourcing options and reduce the total number needed, further reducing the total size. Making use of the stock PSU for grid tie-in could eliminate the need for batteries, reducing system cost and complexity and allowing finer control of system operating voltage.

I have successfully run the 96TH jPro underclocked to 40TH using an APW3 to provide 250W of grid power with the rest provided by the direct DC solar. Measured at the wall, I was netting 6 J/TH, at least while the sun was shining. Crucially, to do this I didn’t need an expensive inverter, nor did I need batteries. I was able to rely on the grid tie to buffer clouds and occasional power dips, while using the solar to provide the bulk of the power for hashing. An untested extension of this idea would be to get rid of the Loki modification and allow the stock PSU to control system voltage according to control board firmware commands (rather than the battery/PWMs). This would make underclocking far more efficient.

In the slightly more distant future, a collection of Bitaxes could throttle their power use far more quickly than a stock Bitmain hashboard, further simplifying system design and eliminating the capacitor and possibly even the MPPT controller. Stock Bitmain hashboards cannot throttle power up and down quickly without potentially damaging themselves. This is due to their circuit design of long chains of series connected chips on separate voltage domains.

Conclusion and other aspects worth considering

It’s true, this system is expensive. When totalling the system costs, it can be difficult to get ROI below 10 years just in fiat terms. The picture is FAR worse in Bitcoin terms. But there are other advantages to this method of mining which are difficult to quantify but should not be overlooked. They can be summed up as: power sovereignty.

From a business perspective, my solar system can continue to earn sats regardless of inflating power prices, local regulations, network fees, or global hashrate. With this I don’t think about paying my next power bill, my rate tariff, or whether I’m still running efficiently enough to be profitable. This means that I can take advantage of times of extremely low hashprice to continue to stack sats. In fact lower hashprice is better because that generally means other miners have to give up. I can slap in their castoff machines to upgrade my box. I have a MUCH longer time horizon, and zero month to month concerns. From a business perspective, it’s a completely different strategy than the monthly $/MWh standard game.

Additionally, it means I enjoy more freedom than any other miner. If I think spam is damaging to the network, I can point to Ocean. If all the pools are suspect I can mine solo if I want to. Most concerningly, the state may choose to subsidize “compliant” pools and miners and push hashprice so low that only the biggest most compliant miners can survive. The uncomfortable reality is that profit dependent miners, who mine “as a business”, can be paid to tax or destroy the network. They are mercenaries, not patriots, and they will work for the highest bidder. I will have the freedom to choose not to comply, to remain ungovernable, and to defend what I find valuable because I have prepared ahead and secured my own sovereign power source. Will you?

Afterword:

Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it and learned something that will help you in your endeavors to secure the greatest money the world has ever known. If you’d like to tip me or contribute to my further experiments here is an address:

On chain: Bc1q9z6k8y843ckhj66k3msqczc4fvwz9jqa2sqyey

Lightning: keegreil@strike.me

Appendices

Acronyms:

BMS – Battery Management System PWM – Pulse Width ModulationMPPT – Maximum Power Point Tracking AH – Amp HoursAC – Alternating CurrentDC – Direct Current

How I calculate voltage drop:

Calculating voltage drop is a very important part of sizing your cables and designing your system layout. I use the calculator here, but there are many. The entry “Voltage (max)” is the voltage applied to the wire at the panel end. As a rule of thumb, enter your panel’s maximum power point voltage (Vmp) minus 2V. This accounts for about 10% drop in Vmp if the panel is really hot from baking in the sun. To be more precise, typical Voc temperature coefficients are around -0.25% / degree C. Panels in the sun can get 40 degrees C over ambient, especially with no wind.

 Thus Voc, and Vmp can drop 10% or more in the heat. For an 18V panel, this means a 1.8V drop in Vmp, or 16V. If the panel is driven anywhere near or above Vmp, its current output will drop off quickly.

https://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/photovoltaics/temperature-coefficient.html

Back in our Voltage Drop calculator, for “Current” enter your panel’s Short Circuit Current (Isc), which will be a slight overestimate. After calculating, check that the final voltage at the PWM controller is greater than 14.8V. If it isn’t, then on a hot day you potentially could get poor performance and be unable to raise system voltage enough to charge batteries quickly or run the miner at its most efficient settings.

In actuality, voltage at the box will be anywhere between 12 and 14.8V, depending on battery charge state and how hard the miner is running. Thus the solar panels will experience a voltage of: Box Voltage + Voltage Drop. If the panel voltage is near or above its Maximum Power Point (Vmp), you will get a significant drop in current production. In that case, system voltage would drop until the panel was able to start producing current again and balance out based on how much current the miner and batteries were drawing. Basically, our nice low voltage panel doesn’t have enough voltage leftover to actually shove the huge mass of trons all the way down the wire to the hashbox. Voltage drop is power loss (Vdrop x Current = Watts lost), so keeping it low is the goal.

If you don’t have enough voltage at the box, you can either select slightly higher voltage panels, shorten your cable run somehow, buy fatter wires, or add extra runs of thinner wires in parallel (akin to the power cables on an S9).

Local solar data estimation

When planning my system I found the NREL PV Watts calculator to be extremely helpful. It is simple to use, but just detailed enough that you can generate quite accurate estimates for total energy production at your precise location with various system parameters. More specifically, you can create hypothetical systems with or without trackers, bi-facial panels, or with various wire losses accounted for.

Crucially however, this calculator assumes that you are building a standard DC to AC system with MPPT controllers and inverters. Thus there are a couple modifications you should make if you want more accurate results.

First, under “Advanced Parameters: DC to AC Size Ratio” enter 1, instead of the default value of 1.2. Solar inverters are expensive, and fixed systems only briefly produce full power in the middle of the day. Consequently, inverters are typically undersized compared to the total power rating of the panels. This is called “inverter clipping”. “For a system with a high DC to AC size ratio, for times when the array’s DC power output exceeds the inverter’s rated DC input power, the inverter limits the array’s power output by increasing the DC operating voltage, which moves the array’s operating point down its current-voltage (I-V) curve. PVWatts® models this effect by limiting the inverter\’s power output to its rated AC size.” (NREL). Since we don’t have an inverter on this system, we can pretend that our “inverter” is huge and turns every possible Watt into useful power. You can also set “Inverter Efficiency” here to 99.5% (highest option) since we don’t have an inverter.

Second, when entering “DC System Size”, you cannot simply put the nameplate wattage rating of your panels with the stock 100 Acres box unless you modify it heavily to use MPPT charge controllers. To estimate how much power (watts) your system will produce through the PWMs, multiply your panel’s Imp (Maximum Power Current) by 14V, which is the voltage the PWMs will typically hold the panels at. For example, my 300W rated panel’s Imp is 16A. 16A x 14V = 224W. I have 12 panels, so 224 x 12 = 2,688W or 2.688kW. In the PVWatts calculator I would enter 2.688 for “DC System Size”.

https://ugmf.bitcoiner.guide/writings/the-people-arent-as-retarded-as-they-seem/Sun, 05 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://ugmf.bitcoiner.guide/writings/the-people-arent-as-retarded-as-they-seem/Individuals today need to understand that they find themselves in a war. Many either refuse to acknowledge it, or have been

One of the most effective tools used by individuals that want to control others is to break down their morale. There is an entire industrial complex created in order to do this. The clergy, the intellectuals and the media band together to shape societies minds and create an iron clad narrative. It is much easier to see when looking from the outside in, than to initially identify it in your own life. Not all clergy are bad, nor teachers or journalists. Though all of those 3 types of individuals are highly incentivized to represent themes that fit into the ruling class’ agendas.

It is incredibly important to deeply understand where your view on the world is coming from. Most people are impaired by getting their information from sources that are incentivized to control. These sources lie, manipulate and cheat. They get exposed for it over and over, and yet the communication channels remain heavily controlled. Twitter, Facebook, and just about any platform that allows you to interact with other people will be manipulated and controlled in order to limit your ability to view the world. During the lockdowns of 2020-2021, censorship on social media was incredibly effective at controlling the narrative. Yet 20-30% of the population in the US did not get vaccinated, and the lockdowns ultimately were ended because the narrative eventually fell apart.

For many, the lockdowns was the first experience people had with waking up to the idea that all the world governments were controlled by people above the politicians, that citizens had no self determination in the political process, and the extent certain individuals would go to lie in order to retain control. One of the unfortunate aspects of human nature is that many people refuse to act or change until they themselves are impacted negatively about something. Many people lack the courage to stand up to tyrants unless the tyrants are directly going after them.

The censorship of information surrounding the lockdowns was incredibly effective because it isolated individuals resisting their policies, and limited their reach. Many individuals never got the chance to hear any criticisms of the lockdowns because the dissenting voices were banned, harassed, fired, and ridiculed. Despite having a limited reach, the dissenters had an asymmetric advantage over the people seeking to silence them, because often they had truth on their side. The people attempting to shut down society were not remotely close to the truth.

Many thought that compliance was the easier road to take, but fortunately a small minority of people had the courage to resist and prevent the roll out of digital IDs, severe travel restrictions, government digital currencies, and social credit scores, at least for the time being. Compliance would not have been the easier road to take because it would have meant a permanent departure from any semblance of sanity to a world completely rooted in totalitarian control. In the same way today, as the same people are still in control of the world, compliance with their evil decrees is not the easier way out.

It is important to celebrate major victories when we have them. The fact that we have Bitcoin, are not still locked down for the time being, and the world has not ended due to global war are major victories. The larger war is still being fought and it is vital not to rest on our laurels despite the current lower level of intensity.

It is easy to get discouraged and to lose faith in the people around you. The reality is that most of them still need to see and hear consistent differing opinions in order to be changed. A good portion of the population has decided to not have a will for themselves and will shift depending on what appears to be the most opportune to follow. It can be easy to dismiss them as weak, or cowardly which many of them are. The reality is that people all place different values in different things, and many people choose perceived safety and survival above all else. It’s part of the default settings in the human brain that the controllers know how to effectively take advantage of.

This default setting does not mean that things are hopeless, or that those people are retarded. All throughout human history, intolerant minorities have determined the outcomes of history. We find ourselves in a position of incredible privilege for living during a time where things have the ability to dramatically change, meaning we can have an outsized impact on human history. My hope is that you will be invigorated by this, and be filled with a sense of urgency to follow a higher calling.

Causing individuals to lose faith in humanity is one of the most effective ways to get them to stop resisting effectively. The reality is that humanity was never lost. There’s always been a battle between individuals trying to control, and individuals seeking freedom. The individuals seeking control are the ones incentivized to start conflict, and the individuals seeking freedom tend to be passive until they can’t be anymore.

If humanity were lost, the true proper response would be hedonism and nihilism because nothing ever mattered anyways. While it is tempting to lose faith in humanity, there is no time or room for self pity. The reality is that inside all of us, there is a deep desire to be free. That is why the controllers work so hard to break that desire with public education, dopamine raising social media products, soul crushing news media, lifeless movies, and other forms of media.

What we are dealing with here is what Alex Jones famously refers to as an “Information War.” Individuals cannot respond effectively to the world around them unless they are adequately informed on what’s happening. Circulating helpful information, finding ways to improve morale, shifting perceptions of who is actually winning is important. If our perception of the people around us is that they are retarded, it will likely come true and we will only feed into that reality. If we are optimistic and open minded, we will find ourselves meeting like minded people who will encourage us in these trying times.

Roger Ver is a great example of this. He claims that Bitcoin is hijacked because it did not change the way he had hoped it would, after his Cabal of businesses sought to institute changes to the protocol. Now him and the individuals he was close to, such as Jeffrey Tucker, think that Bitcoin is hopeless and only about NGU.

The reality is that Bitcoin has grown much bigger than the small echo chamber it was before 2017. Individuals around the world are experiencing immense freedom that is not possible without it. Yes there is a large segment of Bitcoin users that do not value freedom, separation of money and state, but that is not necessarily the overarching reality of what is happening here. What we are seeing is that different people are having entirely different experiences because of the decisions they are making on how to view the world.

The reality has always been that if Bitcoin were to do something meaningful of a global scale outside of being magic internet money for hobbyists and ideologues like us, it would grow and change in ways we might not appreciate or agree with. But we as individuals have the ability to choose how to use the technology without it being a direct reflection on the technology itself.

When a population chooses not to listen to the authorities, there is little they can do. Defeating lockdown and vaccine mandate policies was a major victory. Now it’s time to turn our attention to slaying the larger beast instead of just seeking to influence the beast’s policies. This is a very important distinction in tactics. Civil disobedience is starting from a place of believing that the government is legitimate, but they may be participating in illegitimate behavior that needs to be corrected through defiance. Being ungovernable is starting from the assumption that idiot pedophiles in Washington or elsewhere do not have a legitimate claim to tell you how to live.

Market incentives are an incredibly important concept to understand. If things are profitable, people will do it. People do not successfully mine Bitcoin because it makes sense ideologically. No, they mine Bitcoin because they are selfish and it is profitable. Relying on ideology as a security feature for a monetary system would be retarded, and fortunately Satoshi was not retarded in the way he built the economics of Bitcoin.

All over the world, in the largest companies, there are individuals dodging taxes, avoiding sanctions, defrauding customs, and laundering money. There is only an illusion of government control over the economy. The reality is that there are clear incentives not to cooperate with the pillagers who believe they have the moral authority to steal from you. The only thing the pillagers have on their side is the perception of cooperation, authority, and general compliance. In the same way a bank cannot stay solvent if the customers believe it to be insolvent, a government cannot maintain control if the people lose faith in its ability to maintain order. The market incentives for compliance are crumbling.

There are 700,000 full time law enforcers (Statista 2022) living in the US which has 334 million people (supposedly if you have faith the government can accurately count). That is .2% of the population set to enforce rules on the entire population. The only way they can be successful is if the people comply. Even the slightest bit of disregard for their authority renders them pretty useless to stop anything. This is why perception is everything.

All around us, people are coming to the same or similar conclusions about the world that we are. They are finding there way to a place of frustration, disillusionment, and action. We have the ability to take advantage of the market demand for freedom. We can either become frustrated and decry the woes of the world, or we can build products and services that cater to uplifting the human spirit, and rehabilitating people’s sense of self worth.

The controllers want you to fall into despair. They seek to break you down and to demoralize you. The reality though is that we have the ability to do the same to them. We can undermine their perceived authority by telling the truth about what they are doing, but also by providing legitimate alternatives. There will be a tax strike because people cannot afford to pay them anymore, and no longer feel obligated to because they can clearly see how illegitimate the US government is.

Supposedly 60% of eligible people voted in the 2020 election (LOL). A good portion of the 40% that did not vote, did not vote because they did not believe in the election. These are likely made up numbers anyways just like all the rest of the government numbers. Never in my life have I encountered so many people organically that realize that voting is not a solution.

The white pill, after realizing the horrors and evils in the world, is the idea that the default state of man is free. Slavery is unnatural. People were born free and are meant to be free. It’s okay to be bearish for the average person who does not have the courage to do anything about their situation. But to become bearish on yourself when you have a working brain and the ability to take action to respond to a changing world is silly.

To give up on humanity, declaring the people retarded is ultimately to give up on yourself. It can feel isolating at times, and you will become discouraged in the future. We are in a war, and in wars, momentum or perceived momentum will switch back and forth. If you remove demoralizing influences, and allow yourself to see the good in the world, your whole perspective will change.

https://ugmf.bitcoiner.guide/writings/community-spirit-and-collaboration-the-heart-of-open-source/Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://ugmf.bitcoiner.guide/writings/community-spirit-and-collaboration-the-heart-of-open-source/Technology plays an increasingly prominent role in our daily lives, the question of digital freedom is be

The Foundation of Open-Source

Open-source software, in contrast to its closed counterparts, grants users the freedom to view, modify, and distribute its source code. This means that the internal workings of the software are transparent and not controlled by a single entity. This bestows numerous advantages upon individuals and communities striving for digital freedom.

The openness of the source code allows users to gain a deep understanding of how the software operates. Unlike closed-source software, where the inner workings remain hidden and controlled by a single entity, open-source empowers users to explore, adapt, and improve the software to suit their specific needs and preferences.

This transparency also fosters a culture of trust. Users can inspect the code to ensure that there are no hidden functionalities or vulnerabilities that could compromise their freedom or security. This level of assurance is invaluable in an era where digital privacy and security are of paramount concern.

Open-source software operates on a decentralized model of development. It is not beholden to the whims and interests of a single entity, but rather belongs to the collective community. This decentralization ensures that the software remains resilient and adaptable, free from the constraints of a single controlling force.

Can we say that open-source software serves as the cornerstone of digital freedom? Providing a platform where individuals and communities can assert their autonomy and shape their digital experiences. Its transparency, adaptability, and community-driven ethos are instrumental in creating a digital landscape that champions freedom, privacy, and self-determination

Transparency and Reliability: Safeguarding Digital Integrity

In the realm of open-source software, transparency stands as a cornerstone principle, offering users a level of insight and control unparalleled in closed-source alternatives. This transparency is not merely a convenience; it is a safeguard, a guarantee of trust in an age where digital security and privacy concerns loom large.

Open-source’s transparency allows users to scrutinize the very essence of the software—the source code. This empowers them to ensure that there are no concealed motives, hidden functionalities, or exploitable weaknesses that could potentially compromise their digital freedom or security. In essence, it places control squarely in the hands of the user, fostering a sense of agency and ownership over the tools they employ.

This heightened level of transparency fosters an environment where trust can thrive. Users can rest assured knowing that the software operates with their best interests in mind, free from the potential hidden agendas that can lurk within closed-source solutions. This sense of assurance is indispensable in an era where the safeguarding of digital assets and personal privacy has become an imperative.

Moreover, this transparency also serves as a safeguard against the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats. With open-source, vulnerabilities and weaknesses are exposed and addressed collectively by a global community of developers and security experts. This collaborative effort leads to swifter identification and rectification of potential risks, bolstering the reliability and resilience of the software.

In a digital age characterized by constant innovation and emerging threats, the transparency and reliability inherent to open-source software are not mere conveniences—they are essential pillars in the defense of our digital integrity and autonomy. They empower users, engender trust, and provide a level of assurance that is indispensable in our increasingly interconnected and digitized world.

Collaboration vs. Competition

collaboration is the driving force behind innovation and progress. Unlike in traditional industries where companies vie for the highest profits and the largest market share, open-source projects operate on a fundamentally different ethos. Here, the primary focus is on the shared objective of advancing technology for the betterment of society as a whole.

This paradigm shift from competition to collaboration fundamentally alters the dynamics of development. Rather than guarding their intellectual property and guarding their ideas, contributors in the open-source community come together to collectively refine and enhance existing solutions, or to create entirely new ones. This atmosphere of shared purpose fosters an environment where individuals, whether they were once considered competitors or not, become valued colleagues.

Geographical, cultural, and organizational barriers become less relevant in the face of a common goal. Developers from different corners of the world, representing diverse backgrounds and perspectives, converge to contribute their unique expertise. This melting pot of talents results in software that is not only technically robust, but also culturally and socially enriched.

this collaborative culture generates a sense of mutual growth and support. Instead of a zero-sum game where one entity’s gain is another’s loss, the open-source ethos recognizes that progress in one area benefits the entire community. Through shared knowledge, constructive feedback, and collective problem-solving, individuals in the open-source community lift each other up, propelling the entire ecosystem towards higher levels of achievement.

In essence, the culture of collaboration within open-source projects signifies a profound shift in how we approach technological development. It emphasizes that the greatest strides are made not in isolation, but through the combined efforts of diverse minds united by a common purpose. This ethos ultimately leads to the creation of solutions that have the potential to transform not only technology, but the world at large.

The Commerce of Data

Many software makers incorporate sophisticated mechanisms to collect, analyze, and leverage this data for various purposes, including financial gains. This practice has given rise to a thriving market where user-generated content is bought and sold.

Every click, search, and interaction within a software application generates a trail of information. This data provides valuable insights into user behavior, preferences, and trends. Software makers, cognizant of its worth, often embed tracking technologies to capture this wealth of information. They then employ advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms to derive patterns and extract valuable insights.

This data is a goldmine for companies seeking to refine their products, tailor their marketing strategies, and enhance user experiences. By understanding user preferences and behaviors, software makers can refine their offerings to better meet customer needs. This not only leads to more engaging and user-friendly products but also potentially increases profitability.

The collection and utilization of data raise significant ethical and privacy concerns. Users often provide this data under the assumption that it will be used to improve their experience with a particular software, not to be monetized. This practice, when done without proper transparency or user consent, can erode trust and raise questions about the responsible use of personal information.

The commercialization of user-generated data introduces a complex web of legal and regulatory considerations. It is imperative for software makers to navigate this landscape with integrity, ensuring that data is handled in compliance with privacy laws and industry standards.

Gandolph: So do all that live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time given to us. There are other forces at work in this world besides evil. Bilbo was meant to find the ring which means you were also meant to have it, and that is an encouraging thought.

How many of us have been bestowed burdens that make us question, “Why continue forward?” One of the greatest burdens is having the awareness to see how broken our society and culture is. Ignorance is truly bliss and awareness means understanding the people controlling most aspects of your life are pedophiles and war criminals. Our society is sick, and it is the responsibility of every conscious person to address that issue, unless they believe in leaving future generations worse off. The problem is that genuinely seeking to improve the world means actively stepping into conflict with the ruling class, which can be incredibly dangerous.

Most of us want to avoid conflict because conflict brings risk. In previous articles, I talked about who the demoralizers are, and how to counteract them. In this article, I want to talk about the reason why individuals should seek to counteract them. Asking why is incredibly important because we need a compelling reason to enter into potential risk. For many, it was risky resisting vaccine mandates. Taking a strong stance against the destruction of our society through lockdowns was not a popular opinion. People lost their jobs, friends, were disowned by family, and even arrested for doing so. Jullian Assange may die for resisting these people.

The battle for Middle Earth was not a battle that Frodo chose to enter into. It was one that he was called to enter because he did not have much of a choice. In the same way, conscious people are grappling with a monetary system that is crumbling and governments growing increasingly more totalitarian. Coercive government structures are always illegitimate, but in peaceful times, they can be rationalized as acceptable by many. People put up with government because they think it keeps them safe, but the reality we have today is that government is undeniably a liability that cannot be ignored.

LOTR is such a good story because it felt like the odds were stacked against the people resisting Sauran. The entire balance of the world was in the hands of two hobbits, the smallest and least significant race in Middle Earth. When you look at the leviathan ruling over us today, it can feel like resistance is futile. They want you to believe that resistance is futile, which is why they are publicly torturing Jullian Assange in front of the whole world. It is why they allow us to be aware of mass surveillance, war crimes, blatant corruption, congressional insider trading, etc.

You may wish that none of this was happening and the ability to clearly see it was not given to you. The problem is that once you see it, you cannot unsee it, and to attempt to go back to ignorance would be soul crushing. Good and courageous people are called to action when they see danger and choose to face it rather than to hide. We can not choose what what is happening around us, but we can choose how to respond to it.

This war for the human mind and spirit is unavoidable at this point. There are enclaves you will likely be able to retreat to, deep in the jungles, deserts, and mountains. Even there you may not be safe from what is coming. There you will have to live with the understanding of what the people you left behind are experiencing.

The reason to make a stand against evil is because like Gandolph told Frodo, “There are other forces at work in this world besides evil.” We live in a battle of perspective and narrative, and the forces that seek to control you and enslave you want you to feel that resistance is futile. What they are doing is unnatural because the default human state is freedom. The battle ahead will be discouraging, but is winnable. The reason to continue forward is because the alternative requires us to completely kill our minds and spirits in order to survive. Either way, life ends in death and our lives are not the most valuable thing they can take from us. No, the most valuable thing we carry with us is our dignity.

The question of why is the most important question.

You have heard by now about the significant growth in demand for electricity in general, ‘electrify everything’ this, ‘electric vehicle’ that, and on and on it goes. And to be clear, all of this is fine. Or is it? In particular, have you heard about cryptocurrency mining, artificial intelligence, and other types of data centers consuming all of the electricity? I think it’s rather interesting since at the end of the day, those who consume electricity consume it in some form or another.. Whether grandma is watching Wheel of Fortune (literally watched this with my Mom-Mom growing up) to a supercomputer trying replicate the function of a human brain, they are all consuming electrons generated at a moment’s notice for that service to be available. In this article, I attempt to broaden the spectrum of understanding of these types of electricity consumers.

And just to say simply, is this such a big problem? To consume a large amount of electricity? Let’s take a look.

According to a Platts article (see references below), “the volume of electricity needed for artificial intelligence remains unclear, but appears the technology will lead to a significant net increase of US power consumption”. Unclear you say? Thus a lot of the projections are speculations, even artificial intelligence does not report ALL of the electricity consumption data to a certain government agency or Amazon down to the tenth of a kWh. Wait a minute… Check out this growth for data centers

For “planned” data centers in the US electricity markets the article projected the amount of expected MW is 30,694 and the IOU (Investor Owned Utility) can supply the capacity of 20,619 MW of that. Well, I guess they can’t meet the demand? Let’s keep looking. As an example, Dominion Energy in Virginia currently serves the largest market of collective data centers and its electricity demand inside of its distribution network increased by 500% from 2013-2022. There are plenty of big-name data centers that are posted up there in Virginia. The data center growth is to the tune of 81 data centers, that had a combined capacity of 3,500 MW. Hey, that’s just ONE investor owned utility in the US out of ~3000. US data center growth is projected to grow from 19 GW nationally to 35. This article has some REALLY interesting data that is broken down by independent system operator (ISO) in the US and shows the amount of MW that are associated with the data center growth. It’s quite interesting (see references). Grid operators will need to keep an eye on this growth because, you know, it’s kind of important. Generators need to talk to ISO’s and even distribution and transmission folks need to go to lunch (literally) more often and support each other. Grid operators are already recognizing the shift from bass load to renewables is a problem and that it’s almost unsustainable. Can the demand for electricity surpass the growth of electricity generation in the US? AYYY YEOOOO! Now, let’s talk about that in more detail…

So now your thinking, “wow that SEEMS like a lot of electricity! well how much electricity is it?” Keep in mind, when I’m talking about data center growth, this DOES NOT include all the other stuff, that counts as additional growth added to the grid. When looking up how much electricity a supercomputer consumes for example, or how much total amount of electricity does a cryptocurrency mining operation consume, there are some interesting data here to check out. A reference article stated that ~40-50kW per stacked rack is typical electricity consumption, however now there are stacked racked mounted that are consuming 200+kW where we sit today. This is just one rack. The largest supercomputer in the world named th ‘Frontier” lives in its ‘data center’ home in Tennessee at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Frontier “takes a substantial amount of energy to support such feats. About 40 MW of power is fed into Oak Ridge’s building that holds its multiple data centers. We have moved beyond the scale of a single suburban power substation, We’re now at the scale of sort of two of those,” according to Oak Ridge’s director of science. The Frontier itself consumes 29 MW of power running it at full bore.

Now that is a super-duper computer!

As you know there was an Energy Information Agency form 862 miners were expected to fill out in order to provide transparency on a number of different things, one of those being energy consumption. As you read earlier, the article states that it is extremely difficult and ‘unclear ’ to understand accurately the information on the consumption of electricity for the Ai industry, maybe they should follow suit as the miners were supposed to? By the way, form 862 is no longer required and it’s been killed. Oak Ridge is one building that is very large and has a lot of electricity. So my logic is, they all are large consumers of electricity and one is needed to run more redundantly than the others. Fun fact, a lot of these data centers have water to cool the super computers also. There are different ways to use the water but the water-cooled infrastructure is decently good. As stated in the article “It’s such a huge benefit not to have to run those chillers because that’s essentially sort of reverse air conditioning, which costs a lot of money to power”. Back in 2012 Oak Ridge was looked at as a large energy consumer by labeling it equal with the electricity consumption of a small town. The consumption has grown significantly and there must be an upgrade given how efficient the operation has gotten over the years.

In a world where we desire equality, should all those capable of consuming electricity do so? Some more than others, but everyone from grandma to Frontier is consuming electricity and I say that is ok honestly. WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL. Is it too much to ask for folks to continue to look at building these types of industries in a way that also does not boil the oceans? I think this can be achieved. We have a bigger problem with waste in this world than in the way we can generate, transmit and deliver electricity, ain’t that right G? (shout out Mr G the Recycling Man).

Finally, let’s discuss how demand response strategies differ between data centers housing supercomputers and those used for Bitcoin mining. Simply put, they ain’t shutting that big brain off for any type of demand response or ancillary service they could provide back to grid operators. Data centers want the very high load factor and although the bitcoin miners want that load factor too, they will respond to demand and even sometimes frequency regulations if sophisticated enough. With multiple relays and systems set in place to monitor demand from multiple different electricity companies. For data centers, it’s more about redundancy than it is helping the supplier folks.

I’ll leave y’all with this. When looking up what type of supercomputers are the top ten in efficiency, I found this little nugget: “Notably, the waste heat from the system is used to heat nearby homes. The naturally cool climate of the region also contributes to the system’s efficiency as it requires less energy for cooling.” So, data center infrastructure is heating homes? Interesting. This was describing the #7 most efficient supercomputer. The #1 most energy efficient fake brain supercomputer… drum roll please, New York City’s Flatiron Institute the Henri system has a power efficiency ratio of 65.396 Gflops per watt.

Again, the primary issue here is communication, not with the aim of making the entire process ‘open source.’ Rather, it is essential that the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity proceed in a manner that makes sense. If this is achieved, consumers can hum along just fine.

Ooh, I forgot to mention noise. Data centers also have noise associated with them, however they tend to spend money to mitigate the noise inside of the buildings or real estate that they operate in. Think about that…

And another thing, there are literally folks out there trying to create powerful brains in the form of these computers. You heard that one big brain supercomputer can consume up to 40MW. So does that mean that the energy the human brain consumes is over 40MW of electricity in comparison? One super computer, 40MW, bitcoin mine 1MW-700+MW facility with multiple computers, and the human brain which cannot be calculated as far as energy consumption… You’ll have to decide which one is best but just know what is more important than the other for some folks out there, and those folks are indeed human.

A Week of the ePIC UMC V-5 Whatsminer Control Board

I received an ePIC UMC V-5 Whatsminer Control Board from Altair to provide feedback and report my findings. Being a larger fan of MicroBT than Bitmain I was excited to see an aftermarket product finally available for Whatsminer. The source code is NOT available for review. It is my understanding  ePIC is working toward a source viewable product in the future. This would be a milestone for Bitcoin Mining since most pools and hardware manufacturers are “black boxes”. I find it ironic that Bitcoin, the FOSS software that has created the best money on the planet has so many closed source tools for mining. Some companies that used to be FOSS are no longer FOSS. Not the topic for today. Nonetheless, hats off to ePIC Blockchain Technologies for the accomplishment of bringing hardware and complimenting software product to market no others have to date.

TLDR

• Finally, we have the “When Whatsminer” question answered. It wasn’t
• Out of the box UMC V-5 did not reach factory sticker TH. (See below why)
• Only servers with chip type 1950, 1960, and 1968 are supported. Check compatibility guide before ordering. The team is actively expanding to include more models.
• ePIC has developed a Dashboard tool that is available for fleet management. It is not necessary for single workers and is not discussed in this write-up. Everything needed can be accessed and adjusted in the web GUI.
• Required a beta version of the firmware to be installed to achieve similar & superior efficiency over manual adjustments utilizing the Whatsminer Tool with factory firmware.
• No presets available currently
• Perpetual Tune & Voltage Optimizer/Chip Tune  did not yield worthy results.
• Manual Performance Settings of MHz & Voltage yielded super efficiency over factory Whatsminer tool adjustments temporarily.
• ePIC team is actively working on improving the firmware.& committed to making this product a successful tool.
• I think future updates will allow users to have better success and additional tools.
• Hardware is fully supportable with Upstream Pyasic

Installing and setup is simple and well documented in their user guide. The control board arrives with the most updated firmware available for download. One thing to note in the guide the team will edit soon is the notation on page 30 of the User Guide stating,  “Chiptune is not available in Whatsminers”. This feature is now available as a tool in the latest Firmware.

My goal was to ascertain the default efficiency and see if I was able to reproduce the personal best efficiency with the Whatsminer Tool. I am not interested in overclocking, personally.

My experience was less than stellar but I do not want to persuade the reader to forgo purchasing this aftermarket part and installing the firmware if you like to tinker. I personally am not. I am a plug-in go brr guy. I do not have any hardware integrated into my home and I do not currently re-use heat other than to keep my relative humidity under 90% in the barn from evening to sunrise.

To test the  UMC V-5  I used a compatible M31S+ VE21 82T rated at 42 J/TH by Micro BT. This is similar to what I have seen on this server over the last three years at stock settings. Best results using factory firmware and Whatsminer Tool have been 33J/TH (21.4% improvement). Out of the box I was not able to achieve the sticker hashrate of 82TH/S. This was concerning at first. After discussion with the ePIC team, it was reported the default hashrate for this model was set at a target of 75TH/S based on the wide variation in boards and chip numbers in this model. Note, out of the box the default may not match your sticker TH. I noticed in the ePIC telegram group this was a common question. Over the last week of use I had issues with the tuning algorithms. The team provided an unreleased firmware version that seemed to be more responsive. My experience with the MicroBT Whatsminer Tool has generally been tuning manually using wattage and frequency settings after witnessing the results using the preset Low, Medium, and High-Power modes. Note, currently the ePIC board does not have a wattage setting. I was told by the ePIC team that this may be in future releases.

There are a number of adjustments available for tuning. I am not going to get into each one in effort to keep this read short. The main tabs are Performance and Perpetual Tune (Algos). The Performance Setting tab will in the future include presets similar to other aftermarket firmware. It is recommended by Epic for users to use ChipTune over Voltage optimizer for the best results.

Perpetual Tune and Voltage Optimizer/Chip Tune did not yield much success with achieving stable results. Ideally, the goal for a stable tune is reported by the team to take approximately 30 minutes. I first attempted to underclock using ChipTune at 50TH/S. This was a speed I knew achieved good results with the Whatsminer Tool at a wattage setting of 1,650 watts. The lowest allowable preset in the GUI was 60TH/S.  The ePIC team assisted me an adjusting the API to allow for a ChipTune setting of 50TH/S then, provided an updated firmware version. However, I took several hours to complete the process as seen in the following consumption table.

I am not an electronics expert, but this constant “tuning” concerns me. I have had a couple JPro servers shit the bed using during autotune that were not repairable, one voiding the warranty. Tinker at your own risk anon.

Below are the results of the process trying to mirror my success using factory Whatsminer Tool. The Whatsminer Tool at a – 30% frequency I will see 33J/TH. Notably, this attempt was subpar. Attempts were not as successful as my experience with factory tools. I was able to achieve similar results after support from the ePIC team and making manual adjustments of MHz and Voltage.

From what I understand, the ePIC algo is supposed to tune the server to where chip optimization reaches 95%+/-. Note the third table  with chip performance.

After several attempts using the Voltage Optimizer and Chiptune  algos I was not able to hit my intended efficiency target of 33J/TH. During the week I was in contact with ePIC and they were responsive. It was suggested I manual change via the Performance Tab>Tune the MHz setting to 580 and Voltage to 12.2. Finally, success.

While away from the site I checked Lincoin Mining Platform displaying API data and noted a record 29.41 J/TH. Was this power measured at the wall? No, but the API data provided by the PSU, displayed in the Lincoin Asic Management tool, is always spot on.

I had powered down to do some heat mitigation work in the barnmine and was not able to get back to this efficiency upon reboot. I will continue to try manual adjustments.

The goal of this write up was to see if this product out of the box was worth purchasing and could I achieve similar efficiency or better. My conclusion was yeah, kind of but it took some work. Should you buy this product? That is up to you anon. I would recommend this product if you like to tinker and are looking for future updates by the ePIC team. I personally would like to see wattage adjustments, presets, and Perpetual Tune being more responsive.

Don’t purchase this product with the expectation it is an out of the box upgrade. The product is new and actively being improved. After reaching out to ePIC team I received immediate responses to my questions. Some tools are still in development, and this is fine.

I had several conversations with the ePIC team throughout the week. They appear motivated to make a great product. If you want to support the development team and enjoy manual tuning, I recommend you purchase the product and providing user feedback, both positive and negative. I think they have a good thing going.

It came to my attention toward the end of this writeup that ePIC is supported with Upstream Pyasic, by Brett Rowan of Upstream data. If you are using Pysasic  to manage your fleet, it should be functional but is still missing model selection.

Hope this helps others who are curious about the newest aftermarket hardware and software available Whatsminer.

Keep Hashing #PlebMiner

Barn

So who is this article for?

Anyone who’s becoming disillusioned with the country that they’re in and wants to live somewhere else. Anyone who feels like they can’t save a dime living in a “civilized” or “western” country. The general message here is that, by leaving the US, UK, Germany etc., you gain something. That is, you gain a life that is potentially A LOT cheaper to fund. This can be a game changer for a lot of people. Is it your mission in life to travel? Why work for five years to go spend 2 weeks in Japan? What if you spent those five years travelling instead? This is a concept I borrowed from the AMAZING book “Vagabonding” that talks about how one shouldn’t say they want to travel if they spend all their life just working 9-to-5. It’s not intellectually honest. You’re essentially a wage slave at that point and your dreams have become disassociated from your reality. And yes, I can hear the retorts now, “but muh family!!!” and sure, that’s a factor. But does your family really want you to be miserable your entire existence so you can MAYBE do some traveling when you retire at 65?

To vagabond or to expat, that is the question.

An expatriate is one who leaves their country to work abroad. Usually it’s not permanent. It differs from being an immigrant because expatriates (expats for short) usually hold short-term visas that are sponsored by their employee. Being expatriotic is like being a typical expat, except with a certain degree of scorn for the country of your origin. Of course you don’t need to become an expat. You could just stay in rural America and focus on your earthship, self-sufficient, Citadel. A la Mandibles. However if choosing to go abroad, it will come down to leveraging disparities in the global cost of living and desparities of income.

The Sovereign Individual, a book ahead of it’s time, predicted this outcome. A world where people could be paid in Bali for work done in Sweden, transcending geographical and fiscal contraints in exchange for autonomy and the ability to SAVE MONEY. But if you decide to go abroad, what are your options?

1. Digital nomad. Work remotely and become a perpetual traveler.

Teaching English as an additional language (ESL, EAL etc.) There are many platforms that will pay you to teach their children English. A simple web search will spit out tons of sites. Usually you’ll need some kind of CELTA or TESL.Dev work and coding. Level up. Learn a skill. Coding or otherwise.Customer service or sales. You don’t need to be in the same country to work for a company who needs someone to hold their customers hand.Resources:https://www.plebwork.comhttps://www.bitcointalent.cohttps://www.bitcoinerjobs.comhttps://www.bitcoinerfreelance.com2. Employee at a foreign company abroad

Working at VW (fill in any western company name) but in China or Thailand3. International school teacher

One area that is booming is international schools. It only takes nine months to get a certification from a state in the US–EVEN if you AREN’T in the country!! Check out Moreland University.

Resources

Table 1: Examples of countries relative purchasing power using the US as base 100. RankCountry/RegionCost indexMonthly incomePurchasing power index1Switzerland131.47,958 USD94.66Ireland110.66,644 USD93.99Australia107.05,070 USD74.115United States100.06,398 USD100.016United Kingdom98.54,103 USD65.118Sweden93.95,292 USD88.121Japan84.93,537 USD65.122France83.23,774 USD70.924Germany82.34,503 USD85.629Singapore72.15,600 USD121.331Portugal67.92,163 USD49.832United Arab Emirates67.24,097 USD95.339Chile58.31,280 USD34.340China57.61,071 USD29.144Brazil49.8678 USD21.345Ecuador49.7525 USD16.548El Salvador48.2393 USD12.749Honduras47.5229 USD7.563Colombia38.2542 USD22.267Philippines36.5329 USD14.175Thailand34.7603 USD27.277Indonesia33.1382 USD18.079Vietnam32.4334 USD16.1 Source: https://www.worlddata.info/cost-of-living.php

My story

Debt

I probably worked 20 jobs before I went overseas to Indonesia for my first international teaching gig. Suddenly instead of only being able to eat out once or twice a month I was fairly comfortable. I could eat out every meal because although by US standards I was earning a modest wage, it was 8x more than what the poorest wage earners were getting. And this meant that my money went far. Meals were cheap and I ate out almost every meal. I tried to save up, but after being a poor college student, I wanted to be comfortable. Plus, getting married and having, not one, but two kids kept my savings in the red. By the time I was in my early thirties I was in debt and using credit cards. I felt pretty damn hopeless. And the fiat system is built on keeping you in debt. My credit rating actually went down because I had the audacity to pay my debt off too quickly.

Saving

Saving money in fiat is almost impossible. In most cases people live paycheck to paycheck, or worse, they live outside of their means. But even the rare person saving 5-10% of their salary will be exposed to monetary inflation as countries actively and maliciously debase their currencies.

Bitcoin is the perfect savings technology. It’s a money that truly allows you to be in control. Plus your savings will increase in value rather than decreasing. Saving in bitcoins is like having a literal superpower. Just working 9-to-5, you can save enough money to retire by the time your 45 or 50. Even better if you can earn bitcoins instead of buying them!

But it’s not enough to just earn more and save in bitcoins, you have to find a way to CUT costs, and this is where choosing where to live is key.

Enter China

China (the part I’m in at least) is EXTREMELY cheap to live in and I earn as much as I would in the states. Plus international school teachers rarely pay their own taxes. We get annual flights home for the family, free health insurance and housing. And if you live on campus like I do, you can even opt out of car payments, gas, garage bills, car insurance etc.

Financial independence comes way sooner when you manage your expenses and live on less. In other words, if you need $50,000 a year to maintain your lifestyle, you’re going to have to retire way later than if you need $25,000 a year. Maths, amirite? Bitcoin plays a HUGE part of my calculus. Before it, I was all into having a balanced portfolio. I was constanting fixated on how to invest my money to get a return or yield. Meanwhile Bitcoin waltzed in as this pristine savings vehicle. All I had to do no was stack. Saving 50-75% of my salary a month and I could see my way to being financially set up for life.

ConclusionRetool your life. Optimizing for freedom, choice, and financial self-determination.

This article is 100% AI free.

Live the dream

Most people have a dream where their life is very different from what it is now. There are so many things we would like to do, but time and/or money are often the biggest hurdles. You are tied to your job and so it is partly the problem but also partly the solution. The question is, should we live to work or work to live?

Practising your hobby and being able to sustain yourself with it, who wouldn’t want that? And if you were to continue doing it even if you were not paid for it? However, the vast majority of us have not yet found a way to realise this dream. But what stops them?

In our modern world, it is tempting to put convenience before quality. You just go to the shop, pick up new clothes because you feel like a new outfit. Your fridge is full of products that are far from fresh and a small compartment with fruit and vegetables that have travelled more kilometres than you drive in a whole year in your car.

Fresh, quality products, whether they are food or other items needed in a self-sufficient lifestyle are closer than you think. It is a matter of starting to form this lifestyle and, little by little, becoming self-sufficient. This includes, for example, buying or swapping quality food or other products in your neighbourhood, the community and local small farms and craft shops.

Discover local produce

Modern transport systems keep the supermarket stocked with a huge range of products, from long-life to fresh. It is easy to forget what is still seasonal and what is available locally at a farm shop.

The convenience of the supermarket serves mankind. A packet of muesli, a shelf full of variations, flavours and colours. Is this what we as consumers really want? This abundance of choices, but also the price we pay for them. Who actually asked for this? We the consumer or did the supermarket take the lead and do we now allow ourselves to be (mis)led by numerous offers, cheap and undefinable food?

It now seems so normal that food travels halfway around the world and is then stored and distributed in supermarkets before we finally buy and eat it. But with the same ease, you can buy fresh local seasonal, organic produce from your local farmer or baker.

Comfortable living

Our homes come in many shapes and sizes, but what exactly is the definition of “comfort”? We have been ” eco-shaping ” our homes for years, with or without coercion from governments and ” sustainable ” companies. As long as your aim is to create an environment that suits you, there is nothing wrong with that. And if you also have a low energy bill as a result, that’s a good thing. But how far do we ‘have’ to go in this, and how far does our shelter ‘have’ to comply with rules?

In a self-sufficient life, it is important to know that you discover what comfort means to you. A comfort in which you are controlled by the rules a house must satisfy? Or do you make it your own place, where you can be independent from utilities such as gas, water and electricity?

There are plenty of ways to save energy and convert it into heat, or to store it. This is also possible without subsidies or other forms of support. The power lies in making your own shelter where you can eventually be self-sufficient. Of course it is not bad to have a gas connection and other utilities. But it is also important to ensure comfort if these services are lost or if you simply have to pay too much for them. And it shouldn’t become an obligation; you should be able to choose what you do or don’t do.

The pleasure principle

The final requirement for a good quality of life is enjoyment. We are all different and we find happiness, peace, harmony (or whatever you want to call it) in our own way. We are easily put in a box (whether we want to be or not, whether we are aware of it or not) and we may lose sight of the essence of enjoyment in life. You can only discover your joy by trying these things.

It is also important to remember that you don’t have to wait until you find your ideal home to start living a more self-sufficient lifestyle. You can start right now! The experiences you gain and the fun you have can be the catalyst you need to realise your dream of a more self-sufficient life.

Author:

BassLoad

Recently an initiative by the US government to obtain “identified” commercial/industrial “cryptocurrency miners” was instituted by the Energy Information Agency (EIA). Interestingly, only the ‘identified’ ones are ‘required’ to provide detailed information back to the government or else be fined ~$10,000/day. While we can unpack this a little bit, let’s first discuss who the EIA is, what they do, why the survey is a weird request, and their authority to request such a survey.

The EIA was started in 1977 as a statistical agency for the Department of Energy. According to the DOE: It provides policy-independent data, forecasts, and analyzes to promote sound policy making, efficient markets, and public understanding regarding energy, and its interaction with the economy and the environment. Now here is the EIA definition of themself from their website: The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is the statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy. EIA collects, analyzes, and disseminates independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment. EIA is the nation’s premier source of energy information, and, by law, its data, analyses, and forecasts are independent of approval by any other officer or employee of the U.S. government. Note the differences between the definitions; remember the DOE birthed the EIA.

Interestingly, the EIA was the first government within the DOE to have an internet presence. On July 1, 1995, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) became the first agency within the U.S. Department of Energy to venture onto the Internet. They are supposed to have unbiased data ranging from natural gas storage, drilling productivity reports, and beyond. The EIA claims it’s an “independent” entity, if you wanted to challenge their data or ask from where they collect data, that data can be disclosed as part of a public inquiry. However, going down this avenue is extremely tiresome and could leave a false hope to find accurate data. I will say that the EIA does have the exposure to collect data that energy traders trade around and take large financial positions based on said data. The question remains, can you challenge their data in the name of accurate transparency in US energy markets? My response is yes, but again, just like dealing with any governmental body, be prepared that it could go nowhere while you’re sprinting in your hamster wheel.

A look at ‘Form EIA-862”

The EIA is asking cryptocurrency miners things like, ‘who is your electricity supplier’ (they have 5 rows of input) and note how they define an ‘electricity supplier’: ‘Please report the company name of the facility’s electric service provider. The electric service provider is the company that provides electricity services to the facility and to other end-users that are in its service territory. It may or may not supply the energy component of the service to the facility.’ They are asking, what kind of mining equipment the miners have, they want to see electricity invoices, and more. If you identify as a ‘cryptocurrency miner’ ask yourself: does anyone else do this as an industrial consumer of electricity? Why do I need to show electricity invoices to the federal government and risk getting fined for not doing so? Why should I have to disclose this information if my mining facility is in a deregulated electricity supplied marketplace? Isn’t the whole idea of deregulation, the ability to do PRIVATE negotiations for electricity supply between customer and energy entities without being required to disclose the strategy you negotiate?

Full disclosure, the EIA data is quite good with providing articulated data in multiple different types of energy types in my humble opinion however we are all humans, and we all make mistakes. Could the ask to comply with the form be an overreach or a form of singling out a business type? My challenge to the EIA, if miners must do this, why not require every industrial consumer do the same?

The conclusion is that this survey is an unnecessary waste of time. Most electric utilities have smart meter data and can read consumption accurately. Are the utilities identifying their rate payers or customers appropriately? When the utility was (and still is in some places) the monopoly, they didn’t need to, because any consumer of power or natural gas was getting electricity or natural gas delivered and supplied by one entity and one entity only. I would much rather see a more collaborative approach with the EIA providing real, accurate data, because that’s what it’s all about, right?

Final Thought: The EIA has a unit of measurement in Form EIA-812 entitled ‘burden hours’ (top right corner). Yes, you read this correctly. They are measuring the ‘burden’ of you punching that information into a keyboard, in hours. Really?

Peace Bass

Within the Bitcoin space, ‘creeping KYC’ is a disease that is slowly spreading. If you purchase through one of these regulated entities, you essentially tag your bitcoin addresses to your personal identity. This makes it trivial for chain surveillance firms, the companies they work with, or worse, governments, to potentially… Track your spending habits

• Prevent you from using other regulated services
• Confiscate your bitcoin
• Come after you for tax liabilities
• Generally know more about you than they should

We get it, auto DCA from a Bitcoin only company makes ‘stacking sats’ super simple and easy. We aren’t saying these companies are bad actors, far from it. We merely want you to think about what you have to give up or risk for this simplicity. Read on and come to your own conclusion…

What information will I have to provide?

To buy bitcoin from a KYC exchange, users will need to provide personal information. How much you need to supply varies from one to the next, some may require a simple name for small amounts (you could easily supply an alias) and others may require them all. Most will ask for any combination of the following…

• Name
• Address
• Phone number
• Drivers license
• Government ID
• A selfie holding a piece of paper with the name of the exchange and the date
• A video call with the exchange

Why is providing this information a risk?

Data leaks

KYC information ties your personal identity to any bitcoin you purchase. The exchange knows…

• How much you bought
• When you bought it
• Your banking information
• Where you withdraw to

A central party holding millions of people’s sensitive and personal information creates a huge honey pot at risk of being stolen due to incompetent security practices at some of these companies. How would you feel if your name, address, photo and exactly how much Bitcoin you own was stolen from an exchange and being sold to the highest bidder on a darknet market? This sounds like scaremongering but data leaks happen all too often!

Censorship

Most of these exchanges work, in some shape or form, directly with chain surveillance firms (and some, directly with government agencies!) to remain compliant in their chosen jurisdiction. The completely transparent nature of the Bitcoin blockchain means that anyone with the correct toolset (such as a chain surveillance firm) can follow your activity. If you withdraw to, or deposit from an entity that the exchange does not like, they can freeze or even close your account. Not exactly fitting with the censorship resistant properties that Bitcoin is renowned for!

6102 type order

Executive Order 6102 is an executive order signed on April 5, 1933, by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.”

If the government in your country were to exercise a similar order against Bitcoin, anyone who bought bitcoin via a KYC source would be an easy target for confiscation. The excuse that you ‘lost it in a boating accident’ isn’t going to get you far when under duress from a three letter agency. Tax agencies worldwide put the onus on the individual to prove innocence, it isn’t for them to prove that you haven’t paid tax.

Not to mention the fact that they will know the addresses you withdrew to and could watch those for any movements (The blockchain is completely transparent don’t forget).

Coinjoin can obfuscate the final address of your coins if you practice good postmix spending habits, but this does not change the fact that they know exactly how much you bought and when you bought it.

Do I have any other options?

Thankfully there are some options out there to purchase Bitcoin via no KYC sources. These are all P2P (peer to peer) exchanges where you are trading directly with another individual and not a centralised third party. Unfortunately some sell other coins as well as bitcoin so we urge you to take care.

• Hodl Hodl
• Bisq
• LocalCryptos
• Local Coin Swap

You can find more at KYC, not me! and here

Bitcoin ATMs

ATM’s are another great option, but use with caution as some still require varying levels of identification depending on the amount being purchased. A lot will just require a phone number so ensure you use one that is not tagged to your personal identity. Check out Coin ATM Radar for a great overview of what is available in your local area.

Doesn’t buying no-KYC bitcoin come with a hefty premium?

It is absolutelty true that you will see some offers to purchase bitcoin on P2P exchanges for some very high premiums over the spot price. However if you are patient enough you can pick some up at spot or just marginally (1-4%) above. Both Bisq and Hodl Hodl allow you to create a ‘Buy offer’ which is essentially, you telling the market that you want to buy ‘X’ amount of bitcoin at ‘X%’ relative to the spot price. All you need to do then is wait for a seller to accept your offer and complete the trade.

We personally take this approach and have never waited for more than a day for someone to accept the offer of around 2-4% premium, which we are all too happy to pay for the vast increase in privacy gained.

A thought experiment regarding the no-KYC ‘premium’

If you ever sell KYC bitcoin, depending on your jurisdiction, you will likely pay around 20% of your gain in Capital Gains Tax (or equivalent VAT/GST obligations). If you buy a 1 BTC at $10,000 and sell at $20,000, you are liable to pay around $2000 in taxes.

If you bought that same 1 BTC with a 4% premium over the $10,000 spot price you would have paid $10,400 for the same amount of sats and the only person who knows you own them is your trade counterparty.

How else can I get some no-KYC bitcoin?

There are a number of ways, each with varying levels of difficulty and complexity…

• Earn it
• Sell unwanted goods for it
• Buy it from a friend or at a local meetup
• Provide value to others and have a donations page
• Pay for dinner when out with friends and ask them to reimburse you via bitcoin (perhaps for a slight discount?)
• Mine it (check out this great piece on garage mining)

What is ‘shotgun’ KYC?

This is where an exchange offers account signup without KYC and subsequently requests it from users when they try to withdraw funds. You can avoid this by steering clear of centralised exchanges with a single point of failure and sticking with P2P options listed above.

Can I un-KYC myself?

Once you have purchased Bitcoin from a KYC source you can never undo that. Not even with advanced techniques like Coinjoin that create forward looking privacy. You have three main options…

Go back out the way you came and start fresh

Sell your KYC bought coins back at the exchange you bought them from. Depending on your jurisdiction, this will likely create a taxable event that you will need to contend with but you will then have a paper trail to prove you no longer own those coins. This process provides you with a ‘clean start’ from which you can begin obtaining bitcoin via a non-KYC source, safe in the knowledge that you are no longer at vulnerable to the risks outlined above (apart from the data leaks as the regulated entities are required by law to hold these records for a while).

Keep two stacks

Cease purchasing bitcoin via KYC sources immediately and completely segregate and label those funds. Start obtaining bitcoin via a non-KYC source, ensuring you maintain complete segregation. This option still leaves you vulnerable to some of the risks outlined above but may be more paletable for those with smaller KYC amounts or those not wanting to sell and deal with taxable events.

You should also consider coinjoining your KYC stack. This will not erase your KYC history but it would give forward looking privacy for future transactions. Whirlpool is by far the easiest and most effective coinjoin implementation, learn more here.

Move jurisdictions

This is more on the extreme end of the spectrum, but moving jurisdictions could be an option to free you from future obligations. Of course this is not a 100% guarantee as certain jurisdictions may have information sharing agreements (the EU for example).

KYC is dangerous, ineffective and puts people at risk.

Avoid the creep.

no-KYC only.

Bitcoiner Guide – Bitcoin Q&A

This article is written by Bitcoin Q&A and was first published on bitcoiner.guide.The guide brings you the necessary know how on everything related to bitcoin, security and privac

Demoralized People Demoralizing Others

One of my biggest passions in life is helping individuals heal, regain self confidence, and finding tools to assist in that process. In the western world, our society is traumatized. Individuals have been broken down following the Covid lockdowns, 2008 financial crisis, 9/11, and now all the current wars. Media is one of the biggest tools used to traumatize individuals, breaking down their sense of self worth in order to get individuals to fall into line for whatever the ambitions are of corporations and the governments that serve them. A person who has no self worth will allow individuals to abuse them, and believe that it is not only right, but moral. That individual will then go on to demoralize others. It’s a domino effect, and what breaks the cycle is context. The natural state of individuals is free, and despite the demoralizers best efforts, they will never be able to extinguish that. Giving individuals other options and context allows for them to enter into restorative healing. The cypherpunk movement is still alive and well, and is in my opinion, one of the most effective ways to invite individuals into real meaningful healing.

I was recently listening to Dave Smith discuss libertarianism on Peter McCormack’s podcast, and was surprised to hear Peter admit that he was wrong about Covid lockdowns and vaccines. Peter had voiced some support for totalitarian lockdown policies, and this was the first time I had ever heard him somewhat walk it back. He may have admitted he was wrong before, but hearing this for the first time made me respect the guy a bit more, but also think about his role in media, and influence on individuals interacting with Bitcoin. One thing that is clear to me is that Peter is a demoralized individual who has not experienced the process of throwing off the shackles of self loathing and shame that is bestowed upon us by the systems carefully constructed to bring legitimacy to the systems that wage wars, tax us, surveil us, and locked down the world from 2020-2022. Nor is Peter truly incentivized to ever go through the real process of healing because his audience and income is primarily full of other demoralized people that do not have the context to respect or appreciate a truly liberated individual who places value on their own life but also the life of others. In the podcast, Peter definitely showed that he had been going through some personal shifts, but this comes at a time where the media is going through an inorganic shift towards a more “freedom” oriented view point.

I truly hope that Peter will have a shift and be able to do some deep internal healing, as I hope that for all individuals, but I remain skeptical as we should have deep distrust of anyone working in media. Peter has a large audience and helps to shape people’s world views. Individuals will follow his example for both good and bad based on the information presented to them. In the same way, Peter will follow the information that is presented to him, and giving him the benefit of the doubt, will try to make the best decisions he can based on that information. The harsh reality is that when people are given incorrect information, they make bad decisions. People died from taking the vaccine. People were incredibly damaged from the lockdowns. Our economies are wrecked as a result of money printing. Individuals, like myself, who once respected Peter as a voice of reason, promoting and educating on Bitcoin, experienced deep discouragement hearing him promote draconian lockdowns and coercive vaccine policies, which were antithetical to what the cypherpunk/cryptoanarchist movement is all about.

It is incredibly important for individuals to understand the power of media in order to be able to filter out unhelpful voices who act as demoralization agents to break down their sense of self worth and distort their views of reality. Media shapes the way we see the world. It is a constantly changing landscape and includes social media platforms (controlled by intelligence agencies), Hollywood (controlled by intelligence agencies), and news media including podcasts, YouTube videos, cable news, newspapers, websites, etc (controlled by intelligence agencies). Alternative media is on the rise, but it oftentimes is no less demoralizing than Pfizer sponsored media platforms. Everything is about incentives. Being milk toast and parroting the themes the demoralizers are presenting gets you sponsors, gets you access to the majority of the population which is demoralized and will be offended/threatened by remoralized individuals. Independent content creators are ruled by terms and conditions, having to choose either to make money, or fall into irrelevance due to deplatforming. Alternative sites exist as banishment for the content creator who has rocked the boat. Even if they are good intentioned and intellectually honest, they are incredibly limited by a shadowy hand that will instantly demonetize, ding in the algorithms, and at some point even ban. The media as we know it is not your friend, and many people working in it actually despise you as much as they despise themselves.

When someone says something over and over again, and it’s parroted by news platforms everywhere, it’s time to ask some questions. Another thing that helps is not being too emotionally attached to an outcome or narrative. You can be wrong and admitting when you are promptly and learning from being wrong is a useful exercise for evaluating information going forward. Right now we are watching what I consider to be an incredibly inorganic shift towards right wing populism across alternative media. Over the last few years, Rogan has turned into a conservative, as well as other political commentators like Russel Brand and Tim Pool. Even normal influencers like Andrew Callaghan from Channel 5 News, are now covering right wing issues, after mostly focusing on left wing news coverage. Individuals like Vivek Ramaswamy,  Javier Milei, RFK Jr. and Donald Trump might be saying things that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, but so did Obama. Trump’s failures to do anything but bring legitimacy to the swamp and bolster it his first term should be a clear indication that he is not on the side of human liberty. Instead he brings legitimacy to the demoralizers.

Identifying who hates you, and minimizing their impact on your life is one of the first steps in the healing process. It is good to be aware, but bad to be consumed. It is safe to assume that all journalists hate you, hate themselves, and have faith in nothing. That is why it is so refreshing to hear different voices that sound more reasonable and empathetic towards your existence. The bar has been set so low that when an individual speaks something remotely resembling the truth, it is so overwhelmingly refreshing, people forget to stop and think for a moment. Individuals like Alex Jones may cover things happening, but they also consistently funnel people back into the problem. Listeners are left feeling the only solution is a politician fixing things through an act of God, adding to the feeling there is nothing in their power to create any meaningful change. One of the most discouraging things a person can experience is dedicating their life to a cause for a series of years, only to find out that effort was either wasted or could have been better used elsewhere. Recovering from that can be incredibly difficult, and so I’m wary of any pundit who claims that there can be any meaningful change in the political system.

On the topic of people who hate you, it is vital to be aware of the subliminal messaging that is communicated in the content we consume. If your goal is to be a good spouse, or a good parent, it is a good idea to almost entirely eliminate Hollywood’s influence on your life. They seem hell bent on only portraying dysfunctional relationships, and failing parents. We need good wholesome examples in our lives in order to strive to be better individuals, and Hollywood will not offer us that. Instead, looking for individuals who prioritize time with their spouses and children to interact with is healing. I have a friend who believes his full time job is being a dad, who tells me how much he loves his kids everytime I’m with him is one of the most encouraging things I have experienced. Spending time with top notch individuals like him is a good antidote to the poison coming out of Hollywood. This includes advertisers, who are the individuals funding the people that hate you. This is why engaging in value for value communities and working to build that ecosystem out is an incredibly productive activity to do.

There’s not a ton of prescribed action in this write up discussing how to counter the demoralizers, and I plan to follow this up more in later write ups. We ultimately become the content we consume, and the individuals we surround ourselves with. As we transition in life, we find ourselves attracted to different types of people. Stepping out of being demoralized opens up a different appetite for human connection. You will desire meaningful conversations, and will strive to engage in more productive activities. Freedom is the default state of humanity. You were born free and anything else is unnatural. As you become free, you will attract people to follow you, but also find people of the like mind, and zero voting is required.

Author:

Bassloader

Over the course of my career folks have asked me, ‘How do I know how to speak to my electric or natural gas utility?’, or ‘I’ve tried and tried to speak to my electric utility about an issue and I can’t get anywhere, how can I get the electric utility to understand?’ Have you experienced the communication breakdown and or just a failure to communicate properly to any one of the utilities, energy providers and others? Well here’s a hard truth. It’s one of the most complicated things out there to accomplish and this article will not solve the problem. Sorry to disappoint right out of the gate. However I will attempt to give you first some definitions of the entities involved, who they are, what they do, and what is important to them. Then I will provide some ‘tips’ to understand when speaking to utilities and to help you become more of an effective communicator to these types of companies in the energy world. First, here is a flow chart of how it works, then definitions, then tips. Here we go:

This chart shows the flow of electricity from a power generation facility to a home and everywhere in between. It’s important to understand this flow as I will be discussing the entities that are responsible for generating, transmitting and distributing electricity to consumers. Keep in mind, for example, in some areas of the US providing electricity to consumers is done by one single entity where they own and operate all of these responsibilities. In some areas of the US, the generation, transmission and distribution can be done by multiple parties as I will explain. Now onto the definitions:

Electricity utility: A corporation, person, agency, authority, or other legal entity or instrumentality aligned with distribution facilities for delivery of electric energy for use primarily by the public. Included are investor-owned electric utilities, municipal and State utilities, Federal electric utilities, and rural electric cooperatives. A few entities that are tariff based and corporately aligned with companies that own distribution facilities are also included.

Comment: I generally agree here. Essentially an electric utility can own a generation asset that generates electricity OR NOT. Some make their own distribution network to step down the voltage.

source:https://www.eia.gov/tools/glossary/index.php?id=Electric%20utility

IPP- independent power producer- A corporation, person, agency, authority, or other legal entity or instrumentality that owns or operates facilities for the generation of electricity for use primarily by the public, and that is not an electric utility.

Vertically integrated utility - The combination within a firm or business enterprise of one or more stages of production or distribution. In the electric industry, it refers to the historical arrangement whereby a utility owns its own generating plants, transmission system, and distribution lines to provide all aspects of electric service.

Co-op - An electric utility legally established to be owned by and operated for the benefit of those using its service. The utility company will generate, transmit, and/or distribute supplies of electric energy to a specified area not being serviced by another utility. Such ventures are generally exempt from Federal income tax laws. Most electric cooperatives have been initially financed by the Rural Utilities Service (prior Rural Electrification Administration), U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Municipality - A village town, city, county, or other political subdivision of a State. Services as a vertically integrated utility where all of the energy flow is owned and operated by one entity.

PUC’s - Public utility commissions (PUCs) regulate electric, gas, telecommunications, water and wastewater utilities. In most states a single agency will regulate these sectors; however, in some states these functions may be split between more than one agency.

REP’s – An energy provider is a business or entity that sells power, such as electricity and natural gas, to consumers. Retail energy providers may buy energy at wholesale from producers, or they may operate their own power plants such as nuclear generators, or wind and solar farms.

QSE’s – Qualified scheduling entities (QSEs) submit bids and offers on behalf of resource entities (REs) or load serving entities (LSEs) such as retail electric providers (REPs). QSEs are able to submit offers to sell and/or bids to buy energy in the Day-Ahead Market and the Real-Time Market.

LSE’s – any entity, including a load aggregator or power marketer, that serves end-users within a control area and has been granted the authority or has an obligation pursuant to state or local law, regulation, or franchise to sell electric energy to end-users located within the control area.

Curtailment service providers- are businesses that sponsor demand response programs and that recruit and contract with end users, selling the aggregated demand response to utilities, RTOs and ISOs. A Curtailment Service Provider is sometimes called an Aggregator and is not necessarily a load‐serving entity.

Regional Transmission Organization – A regional transmission organization (RTO) in the United States is an electric power transmission system operator (TSO) that coordinates, controls, and monitors a multi-state electric grid.

Regulated electricity supply market – Utilities in traditionally regulated regions operate as a monopoly in their territories, which means that customers only have the option to buy power from them. To keep electricity rates reasonable for customers, state regulators oversee how these electric utilities set electricity prices.

Deregulated electricity supply market - This trend is called deregulation or restructuring. Utilities in deregulated markets are prohibited from generation and transmission ownership and are only responsible for distribution, operations, maintenance from the point of grid interconnection to the meter, and billing ratepayer

Now that you have the definitions there is something else you will need to understand. Although all of these entities are playing their own specific role in the electricity landscape, they all speak their own unique language. Some speak in kilowatts, some speak in kilowatt hours, some speak in megawatt hours and some just speak in a language that is surrounded by safety and reliability. But don’t fret readers. Here are some very general tips on how to have an effective conversation:

Don’t sound technical in the beginning, you’ll run into a wall

Most of these entities are indeed technical in conversation however when you first engage with them, I usually tell folks to sound dumb in the beginning. The reason for this is because you need to do more listening first and then comprehend how they are responding to your questions. If you come firing questions at them in the beginning with highly technical adjectives and nuanced descriptions along with abbreviations, you will lose most folks and won’t really get anywhere. Be a person to them and talk to them in a very basic way. Just because you’re talking about electricity does not mean that you need assume that everyone is as technical as you. Just know that everything will go slow when speaking to folks in the energy industry, and therefore just speak simple and direct in the beginning. Develop the relationship first, it will go a long way then to try to validate that you’re the ‘grand master’ of electricity.

Nothing will go fast, get over it

Most entities don’t really move fast like some city folk. Especially in the vertically integrated utility world, it’s important to know that you’re operating on their timeline in the beginning. For any questions that you need answered, just layer in another couple of days and sometimes weeks until you actually get the answer you need (not to mention it may not be the correct answer to begin with haha). Whether it is a utility project upgrade, a rate classification question, or just a new electric service request, nothing, ever, goes according to your timeline. The only thing, as an example, that moves electric distribution utilities quickly is when there is a maintenance or service issue. An electric utility’s primary goal is to deliver electricity to consumers in a reliable way. If you want to discuss rates with them, take a number and get in line.

Proper communication is key

When you speak, you want to speak in a way that you want the other person (or sometimes computer) to understand either the question or the statement that you are trying to make. You might say, well no crap Bass…now what? Well you may need to think again. Talking with any of these folks is really difficult for one because they are dealing with one of the most complicated industries to manage (electricity in this example). One could assume then ALL of the representatives that are affiliated with the entities are above.

Smile when your on the phone with them because it will be funny

Have an open mind when you talk to any of the entities mentioned above. They are humans that are doing a job. Smile! Don’t forget your on a recorded line for quality and training purposes.. You may as well have some fun while talking with these folks or else you could bang your head into the wall (speaking from experience).

Regarding billing, as for a sample invoice

When referring to pricing for your electric utility, I would highly recommend asking if they have a rate calculator OR a sample invoice to see what all the line item coefficients that would be available to you. Even if you’re talking to a retail electric provider, I would ask them for a sample invoice also to get further clarity. This industry there are a lot of line items to consider, take a GOOD look. Get someone else involved and dont be shy to ask.

Who cares about what?

Electric Utilities- they care mostly about delivering electricity to the consumers inside of their distribution network safely and reliably. They will focus on providing ongoing maintenance to the distribution network. If you are in a monopolized electricity utility where the generation, transmission and distribution all are provided by the same entity then you have almost 0 way to negotiate on the price of that electricity and that is just the fact. In fact the PUC and the electricity utility have rate base filings in the court system to approve rates for the consumers. You are a rate payer to the utility.

Electric Utility that is a co-operative- They care in the same way the electric utility companies care however they are not under significant federal guidelines. They have electricity and natural gas tariffs for you to see what the pricing looks like, however if you develop a relationship with them, they may be able to negotiate prices with you. This is a unicorn situation but it can be done. Some may own the generation and transmission, some may not. You are a rate payer to the electric co-op.

PUCs- Public Utility Commission. They are supposed to care about the consumers, hence why they were created in the first place. The PUC’s are supposed to stand in the middle between the utility and the consumer. They also do care about the utilities, and sometimes are more weighted on the utility side at times.

REP’s/QSE’s- Retail Electricity Provider, Qualified Scheduling Entity. in a deregulated electricity supply market, most of these entities exist inside of those walls. They 100% care about negotiation, especially in markets like ERCOT and PJM as an example. Knowing HOW to negotiate will take years however it can be done if you dedicate yourself and if electricity is important to your operation. Here you are considered as a customer simply because you are a customer of the REP for supply and because of electric choice, the customer has the choice which REP they want to deal with. REP and QSE also do a level of KYC to understand their credit exposure to the electricity consumer and also to ERCOT. Since they have the ability to negotiate in an open and free market, let freedom ring then.

If you have trouble just ask someone who has energy experience

If you’re having trouble or you’re scared to talk to these people, there are people that can give you some guidelines. Every utility bills differently, speaks differently, and almost everyone is unique from Washington state to Maine to Florida to Texas. Reading tariffs are really hard, but people do them. There are good folks out there that are positioned in a way to help you navigate the wild west of electricity. There is no reason for anyone to fall victim to improper charges or rates. Think about this, every utility has their rates published especially if the rate was determined by a rate case filing in the court system. It’s technically open source! However reading one will cause you to fall asleep and or stare at the thing for hours.

Conclusion

I could write about 10 papers on each individual electricity entity, what they do, what’s important to them, how they operate, why they operate the way they do, and so much more. This will be the first step and hopefully this article can bring some information to you that is meaningful and can get you on the right path. Remember, there are humans that can help with this also.

*ALL views and opinions are my own. All compiled data can simply be looked up by a simple search engine.

From Proposal to Phenomenon

#PlebMinerMonth initially started as a proposal to feature Pleb Miners at a mining conference. But what began as a small idea soon snowballed into something far more impactful. Max and Jon merely set the wheels in motion, but the real magic happened when the #PlebMinerMonth crew took charge. As the month progressed, more and more Plebs joined in, adding their voices and energy to the movement. What we’ve ended up with is a self-sustaining force, running on its own momentum.

Kicking Off with a Bang

We launched #PlebMinerMonth with Jon’s “What is a Pleb Miner” Bitesize Bitcoin video, followed by a podcast featuring Max and @Diverter_NoKYC. This was a fitting beginning, as many Pleb Miners were inspired to dive into the world of mining because of Diverter’s “Mining for the Streets” article. Just as that article sparked a mining revolution, we hope that #PlebMinerMonth will ignite the same passion in the next generation of miners. The excitement and engagement throughout this month show us that the Pleb Miner movement is here to stay.

A Month Full of Learning, Sharing, and Giving Back

Throughout the month, we featured a wealth of articles and updates from some amazing people in the Bitcoin mining space. @Smidnico, @Marketsbylili, @Schnitzel, @bitcoinbassload, and @SovrnBitcoiner all shared valuable insights into the world of Pleb Mining, from energy market updates to technical guides. @YooperHODL provided a helpful BlackBox build guide, while @BingBong_BTC and @ZuccThis offered Bitesize Bitcoin segments. We also aired a series of inspiring interviews, with more yet to be released.

The generosity within the Pleb Miner community has been nothing short of remarkable. We gave away ASIC miners donated by @Kaboomracks, @pwmarcinko, @btctwatterpants, @406Bitcoin, @DCentralTech, @mrcdbrown3, and Jon himself. The willingness of the Plebs to #HashTheTorch and contribute to the success of the movement has been incredibly moving. We also had the pleasure of awarding UngovernableMisfits.com gear, including Pleb Miner Skull t-shirts and hoodies, alongside gear donated by @onthebrinkie and @NoderunnersShop.

A Huge Thank You to Our Sponsors and Donors

None of this would have been possible without the support of our incredible sponsors. Braiins played a major role, donating limited edition clothing, Bitcoin mining handbooks, and a generous sum of sats to cover shipping for all the giveaways. @ZuccThis also donated 3D printed fan shrouds from ASICFanShrouds.com, and we were fortunate enough to give away @SeedSigner build kits, @FOUNDATIONdvcs Passports, and even a @RoninDojoNode Bakuto. The amount of equipment and prizes we were able to distribute was far more than we expected, thanks to the remarkable generosity of the Bitcoin Pleb movement.

A Heartfelt Thanks

A massive thank you goes out to everyone who contributed to this unforgettable month. Max, Mr. Crown, Jon, and Sarah want to extend their gratitude to everyone listed above, as well as @TheGianMendoza, @artdesignbySF, @HodlRev, @bitcoinbabybee, @BonHodl, @stillBTC, @urningushem, @x218935, and, of course, to all the Plebs who listened, interacted with us on Fountain and Twitter, and read the articles. Your engagement and enthusiasm have inspired us in ways you may not even realize.

The success of #PlebMinerMonth proves that when a community comes together with a shared passion, the sky’s the limit. This is only the beginning—LFG!

OP RETURN

Author:

 - Diverter
**
×

Scan me with a bitcoin

 lightning wallet

Gents,

A little background and info on the Ocean Mining/ Samourai situation.

OP RETURN is a transaction output in bitcoin that is provably unspendable and allows for storing data bytes. This data is prunable, meaning once a node has downloaded the bitcoin blockchain it can discard unnecessary info, such as these OP RETURN codes and not have to store them forever. Prior to 2014 transactions containing OP RETURN were not related by all nodes, even though they were “valid” transactions. In 2014 Bitcoin Core v0.9.0 was released and included a default setting to relay OP RETURN codes up to 40 bytes in length. Then, in 2016 Bitcoin Core v0.11.1 increased this OP RETURN relay default to 80 bytes length. It has remained at 80 bytes for going on 8 years now.

Luke Dashjr, a Core dev, use to run a mining pool called Eligius. He always considered anything like OP RETURN “spam” and “abuse” of the chain. So in his old pool he began filtering out all “spam”, and notably also began enabling literal blacklists to prevent transactions from gambling operations like SatoshiDice being mined into a block. See article here. He is notorious for this stance, including comments that BIP47 (PayNyms) notification transactions are spam due to their usage of OP RETURN and should not be implemented at all.

Now, with the backing of Jack Dorsey, Luke has essentially reopened his Eligius mining pool, but under the name Ocean Mining. The name changed, but his supposed “spam” filtering did not. Luke maintains his own custom fork of Bitcoin Core called Knots. Rather than using Bitcoin Core to create block templates for his mining pool, he is using his custom fork. In this fork, he changed the rules set in Bitcoin Core, so instead of relaying transactions with an OP RETURN of 80 bytes or less, Knots only includes OP RETURN transactions of 42 bytes or less. The difference in code between Bitcoin Core, which nearly everyone runs, and his custom Knots fork is very clear.

Bitcoin Core OP RETURN relay code is at https://github.com/Flavien/bitcoin/blob/a9306587a42eac7fb889b9c8d03140980fdf1398/src/script/standard.h#L28 while Luke’s custom Knots fork is at https://github.com/bitcoinknots/bitcoin/blob/aed49ce8989334c364a219a6eb016a3897d4e3d7/src/script/standard.h#L39

Samourai Whirlpool uses the ZeroLink protocol, and an initial “setup” transaction called a Tx0 (Tee Ex Zero, or Transaction Zero). In this transaction there is contained an OP RETURN output which facilitates spoofing protection amongst other functions, and it contains 46 bytes. So when Luke’s Ocean Mining Pool builds a block template to mine, it will exclude all Whirlpool Tx0’s because the 46 bytes exceeds Luke’s custom 42 bytes setting. Put another way, Ocean Mining is considering Whirlpool Tx0’s in the same boat with Ordinals or Inscriptions–Luke says they are all “spam” and that miners literally have a DUTY to filter out “spam”.

Additionally, Samourai has implemented BIP47 Reusable Payment Codes, also known as PayNyms. In PayNyms, when you want to “connect” to another PayNym user so you can derive addresses that only the two of you know (a huge privacy boost) you have to send a “notification transaction”. This initial notification transaction contains an OP RETURN output as well, but this output must contain the full 80 bytes allowed by Bitcoin Core. So again, by using Knots instead of Core, Ocean Mining would not consider a PayNym notification transaction as valid, it would consider it “spam” and not include it in their block template.

There are plenty of opinions to be had on this subject, but the facts remain that Bitcoin Core consensus rules allow a transaction with an OP RETURN up to 80 bytes to be completely valid. Luke’s custom fork called Knots changes those consensus rules to only allow 42 bytes. Ocean Mining is using Knots to build blocks, so as of December 6, 2023 any block mined by Ocean Mining will exclude/filter out all Samourai Whirlpool Tx0’s and PayNym notification transactions

Hardwoods and Hard Money:A Vision for Forestry on The Bitcoin Standard

“A society grows great when old men plant treeswhose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

— Ancient Greek Proverb

Bitcoiners and land owners are pioneers, problem solvers, and thus natural allies. They are both subject to the stresses of a hostile and swiftly changing environment. Each is deeply concerned with the creeping limitations set on their individual freedom and autonomy, undermining their efforts and threatening their way of life. They are each the other’s equal across the digital and physical realm.

From my dual vantage point, I find myself fascinated and bemused with how one could possibly perceive the other as inferior or irrelevant, and not as they obviously are: two columns of the same arch, supporting as the connected whole, a bridge to lasting sovereignty. An expert in either field who cannot appreciate the relevance of the other, reveals a limited set of beliefs.

As there are no solutions to broken money from even the best example of a cattle ranch or forestry operation that still uses paper notes in trade, nor will there be resilient physical supply chains emerging from a developer’s studio that is supplied by a supermarket chain. I believe that to be detached from either “satoshi’s” or soil makes genuine autonomy a Sisyphean task.

I take heart in the early signs of cooperation between the early few, who acknowledge their inalterable mutual dependancy on one another, but a wide gap remains and it needs to close quickly. Their purpose and ambitions must be as one, as they cannot hope to thrive without one other.

In financial theory, the solution to uncertainty is said to be “long volatility”. For those unfamiliar with this term, it is – simplified – the buying of broad forms of insurance that generally benefit from a very wide range of unknown outcomes.

I see this governing concept of “positive exposure to future uncertainty” represented equally well in the Bitcoin and Homesteading/Ranching movements.. Both are “long volatility” professions, and owners of either are by default, masters of risk management in their own spheres.

In times of rapid change, in money and nature, it will always be the most adaptable that survive. Today, it has never been truer.

Here’s where I see the comparisons and overlaps in more detail, and how I plan to adopt the core tenets of Bitcoin on my own forest or further afield:

Decentralisation

Bitcoin holds most highly, the principle of decentralisation and it is embedded in the basic design. Operating as a decentralised ledger of independent nodes, means that no single entity has control over the entire network. Each node has the choice of what transactions it validates and which it doesn’t. This removes trust and adverse consequences of trusting, which eliminates single points of failure in the network as a whole.

Similarly, permaculture and silviculture represent a move away from the outsourced, trust based systems of agriculture and arboriculture, insourcing more of its dependent functions and input requirements at the lower expense of efficiency and short term growth.

On the land, this strategy focusses primarily and most obviously in a broader diversity of life. Once implemented, it requires lighter ongoing maintenance . Wildlife supports itself relatively autonomously, and is more balanced. Therefore is more adaptable to general pressure and change than industrial scale forest or farm management practices which assume greater certainty of the future, and are thus inherently “short volatility” and fragile.

A reduced requirement for specialised machinery in day to day operations means that expensive assets such as timber handling equipment built around a single function done efficiently at scale, can be rotated into smaller, versatile tools with broader uses and lower outputs.

Neighbouring estates (or nodes) stand ready to collaborate for any remaining specialised tasks, as Bitcoin does, in second layers of functionality built on top of the base, limiting the need to specialise at estate-level, for a tolerable and beneficial tradeoffs in trust and absolute ownership.

Use of log splitters, mobile sawmills, plant, and machinery could be negotiated for between smaller communities. For a small amount of joint-venture, this both allows individual holdings to go further down the value chain from their core products, adding value and variety and reduced cost in what they can do themselves or offer to the market, and by sharing their inventory, mitigate the outlay of their exclusive use. The same can be equally said of specialised skills and knowledge.

This fortified land network concept has been been coined “Meshtadels” and is already taking place, though still in its nascency.

The principle of diversification can be expanded further still. Land use can often be broadened further from its previously assumed single use. Silvicultural operations may still produce timber, and derivative materials, but also can produce food, water and even provide amenity incomes from such things as activities, events and hosting tourists, generating yet another flexible revenue stream, without relying solely on one.

In any system where single points of failure are removed, central governments and similar monopolies are denied their ability to coerce by means of structural dependency, and must fall back to tactics of direct enforcement. Being expensive, ineffective at scale and vastly more unpopular, this is not likely to last long if at all, and the likely outcome is reduced government influence and the greater freedom will inevitably follow.

Self Sovereignty

Building on these benefits of decentralisation, Bitcoin users enjoy absolute control over their funds, with neither the requirement for, or the permission of, intermediaries like banks and institutions. This is the essence of sovereignty.

Bitcoin doesn’t need permission to exist and cannot be pushed over with physical force. Landowners could do well to adopt this general approach. Resilient systems are harder to attack and to the degree that land is defensible and independent – it is sovereign.

It’s unlikely that land owners will achieve in the physical world, the level of sovereignty that Bitcoin achieves in cyberspace. In that abstract environment, the mathematical laws of cryptography rule, but the physical world remains inherently subject to the laws of violence.

Presently, ignorant public views prevail and clumsy, heavy handed laws persist both communities. While this currently restricts many of the possibilities and uses, regardless of any present trends, land owners and bitcoiners both stand to benefit from the broad changes that diminished central authority will inevitably lead to. And crucially, each cannot do so well in its own sphere that it makes the other redundant.

For as long as Bitcoiners exist in the physical world, they are subject to the laws of nature, even if their money is not. It is from this simple deduction, that Bitcoiners will never be able to completely abdicate their responsibilities of sovereignty to their money alone, and must attend seriously to where they live and how they sustain their mortal life.

You can’t live in a Bitcoin, and you can’t eat sats. Act accordingly. Exist within a productive citadel, supporting a Layer 2 Meshtadel – it will consolidate and compliment your sovereign digital wealth by keeping you safe through any future volatility, in a way your Bitcoin alone cannot.

Low time preference

Such system transformations do not often happen overnight, and where they do, we can never predict when with accuracy, and so it is only people who can appreciate the potential for substantial long term rewards that are drawn to Bitcoin or sustainable land management practices. In both cases, our time and near-term consumption are deferred into a growing and durable long-term value, and short-term risks are borne along the way, and counted as part of the process.

In my forest, having laboriously cleared the land of overstood conifers, I intend to restock in native hardwoods of better quality and value, otherwise made unattractive by their slower rates of growth and lower short term incomes. Despite the aforementioned benefits, planting in such a manner in today’s market actually reduces the near term value of the land, giving you a discouraging heuristic of wider investor sentiment and time horizons.

Under an ambitious end goal that supports your personal values, the ups and downs in the short run are acceptable. Pain becomes easy to bear. Bitcoiners care no more about short price fluctuations, or technical challenges, than the falling of tree across the road, or a tractor breakdown matters to me. It is nothing under the broader upward progress of the forest. Some days we catch fish, some days we mend the nets. For myself, the incentives offered by hard money flow naturally into the wish to establish hardwoods, or invest in deep, rich soil by equivalently motivated permaculturalists.

While an old man might not expect to sit in the shade of an oak they plant, as someone slightly younger, I do hope to see with my own eyes the early maturity of my forest, but not for a very long time, and that’s okay. Bitcoiners and naturalists both know that good things take time.

Then it is no coincidence that both communities feel deeply about passing down generational wealth and know-how, as a moral obligation to their children and grandchildren. On this point alone – they surely have much to discuss.

Striving for these long term goals mean we realise the importance of health, gain a greater appreciation of life, and an acceptance of death. If immortality is the concept of low time preference taken to its furthest limit, then it logically follows that those striving for results falling far outside of our natural lifespan, are definitionally on a Godly path.

Few may understand that this is hardly cheap altruism. Our real reward is to live forever in the fruits our noble deeds, and through our heirs and beneficiaries who start their life’s journey step closer to God than we did.

Proof of Work

Both Bitcoin and ranching/homesteading are rooted in the ethos and reality of hard work. The rules of the Bitcoin network make low energy attacks expensive and futile. Land is arguably harder to defend, but when the value of the output is inseparably connected to the work required to produce it, fewer people are interested in attempting to steal. This concept is what makes both hard to attack.

I often scoff at the notion that my land is captured – what thief would do what I must as the owner? Best of luck! Like Ellis Wyatt in Atlas Shrugged I say – “Take it – it’s yours”, just as Bitcoiners invite anyone to spend their energy fighting against the ‘Proof of Work’ design. It’s always easier to spend that energy obeying its rules than fighting them. So no-one does.

Relentless and Radical Innovation

In both permaculture and Bitcoin, being unafraid of positive change is another shared value. These communities exhibit a general openness to innovation that makes possible what wasn’t before, because they have no privileged position to protect, in how things are currently done.

This is not only a general principle, but a rare example of where the impact of Bitcoin can directly benefit land owners. I think of two small examples: waste methane produced on farming operations being used to generate power that directly serves Bitcoin miners, and in forestry, the use of waste wood in a pyrolysis system to do the same. The latter producing the additional side product of biochar as a marketable product, or better still, for use on the land to accelerate high quality soil structures. So you see, you can be a Bitcoiner and a land owner in the same task!

In other areas, technological innovations stand to benefit independent land ownership. Responsible use of AI to produce better analysis for decisions, or in emergencies to provide medical advice, or even just limit the costs of the administrative aspects of land ownership. In Bitcoin, mainly to ship projects faster and more efficiently.

Satellite internet systems stand to disinter-mediate many of the advantages of city life. Once remote places have the same scale and speed of communications, and yet another reason to take to rural life.

Lastly, NOSTR, a new decentralised communications protocol is now doing to information what Bitcoin has done in money: make it un-censorable. For landowners, decentralised public squares will become available, and most exciting: marketplaces with no middleman between you and your customer.

Limited Supply

Yet another example of a shared concept that landowners and bitcoiners can both intuitively understand is that of having limited supply. As with decentralisation and sovereignty, Bitcoin has captured the aspect of fixed supply totally in mathematics, where land is scarce but to a lesser extent.

At the time of writing, 19,527,443 of a total 21,000,000 have already been mined. And while it is true in general that most land has already fallen into the custody of someone, I’d rather consider the relative value of productive land to that of all other land, as being in an earlier stage of realising it’s true value, and in a similar position to Bitcoin in this respect. As both become more appreciated for their fundamental properties, its logically follows that fewer units of supply will become available over time.

Both appear to me as showing the same reward profile, that is to say producing lower ongoing yields than their fiat alternatives, but a vastly higher potential for increased capital appreciation and utility over time. Where land falls short in the absolute supply, it makes up for in producing stable income and produce. The combination of both under one owner creates a sovereign.

The third and final aspect of limited supply is of course our time on earth as human beings. Understanding that our time is valuable and scarce, it is no surprise to me that neither community cares much for procrastination or waste under the limited supply of life, land and hard money.

Community

I see healthy levels of voluntary cooperation, under an umbrella of mutually beneficial competitiveness in both my roles as a Bitcoiner, and land owner. Charity/voluntary work is active, and is focussed on more specific and manageable problems, with clear objectives, having a closer relevance and benefit to the donor in both spaces. Bitcoiners are well know to fund community projects, and provide funding and support for work that is to the general good of all on the network. I see much of the the same in local real-world communities.

Ranchers and homesteaders often rely more on community networks, sharing knowledge about sustainable practices, livestock care, and crop cultivation. Innovations are broadly adopted. Mistakes are collectively learned from. What is good for your neighbour is good for you – so it is amongst Bitcoiners and their projects. The networks grow in strength and value through good faith participation with fewer incentives to extort or show bad faith.

As a result, both also enjoy the increased value of personal integrity and reputation. While these 2 communities still show limited aspects of the same bad behaviour made normalised and institutionalised in the wider world, the effects of social shame and boycott are amplified in both of these tight-knit and connected spaces. There is simply less room for grift and stupidity. The requirement for prisons and courtroom processes, albeit still required, are often reduced or mitigated.

Personal Growth and Meaning

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

“You don’t change Bitcoin - Bitcoin changes you” AnonThere are personal and spiritual benefits to managing your own ecosystem, as there are from owning your own money. If you think starting a modest vegetable patch is satisfying, or a walk in a National Park, imagine what doing that at scale in a way that pays for itself must feel like. A diverse land strategy requires more varied job tasks and breadth of function than has become typical – this makes for a more enjoyable and interesting working day.

The physical benefits of outdoor life cannot be understated. Closed environments are inherently unhealthy, sitting in a crouched position for large parts of the day are very unhealthy, shortened hamstrings, weakened spines and feet, all while breathing recirculated air. It’s funny that Bitcoiners, who could be considered unhealthy laptop dwelling nerds (and some are!) and outdoorsmen would have an unknown connection over unprocessed food or the magic of sunlight as it relates to health and happiness.

So returning to meaning and purpose – happier, healthier, purposeful people make better decisions and are better people overall. I hope and pray if more widely adopted, we would see a reverse of the skyrocketing suicide rates and other ‘life sicknesses’ of the globalist economy and the spiritually anaemic existence it offers.

Lastly, and possibly too briefly, in matters of education, children living in a productive environment clearly benefit from that which goes on around them. Typically, education is more flexible and relevant. Like a higher order form of survival skills. Passing on more than money, but a durable means to exist in peace and happiness. This is something I know that Bitcoiners with families are interested in deeply, especially as the schools systems offer less and less. Perhaps being a landowner would assist such families in their broader aims?

Concluding thoughts

History may well come to judge the Baby Boomer generation as morally corrupt (collectively), but ultimately that point of view, compelling as it is, is self defeating and perilous to become lost in, like a Dark Wood of Error.

Just as my forestry contractor focussed solely on the immediate urgency and problems of the conifer forest, we as a society are hyper-focussed on the problems of a late stage debt backed system, often at the expense of appreciating the opportunity it presents for the long term future.

You can’t measure the value of a broadleaf woodland using the criteria of a softwood monocrop, anymore than you can value the potential of a Bitcoin economy from the limited perspective of a fiat worldview. What starts off as a narrow attempt to draw strained parallels between apparently unique and distinct scenarios, zooms out into a coherent and unifying governing principle for ALL scenarios.

Mathematics is the language of Bitcoin >Bitcoin is the language of Economics >Economics is the language of Resource Allocation >Resource Allocation is the language of Land Ownership.

They are neither separate from one another, nor exclusively able to offer true sovereignty to the individual who seeks it from one or the other.

In a derelict forest, or a misallocated economy, all matters dissolve into a simple principle of risk management. Focus must switch away from the desperation of the immediate scene, and who’s fault it is, and focus instead on a strategy of responsibly managing the risk you hold and can’t pass off. Any c**t can be right. It takes a sovereign man to turn the situation to his advantage and produce a better result.

Be critical of collective decisions, and hold the group collectively responsible. But hold no one individual responsible. A reader of a certain age taking personal and direct insult from my real-life observations about collective behaviour is surely immune to irony. However, as a generation, you screwed up and though you may never see the result of it, your kids certainly already are – and they may not be up to the task.

We may live in the late stages of a dying system, poorly and arrogantly defined from the beginning, destined to fail, with risk and wealth hanging at once invitingly and precipitously over our heads. I choose to see though the immediate problem, acknowledging that the end of one cycle is no less the start of another, and recognise the vast opportunity of what follows with direct intervention and a serving attitude.

Landowners and Bitcoiners stand to gain in whatever volatility lies ahead. My belief is that only those with an understanding and connection to both spheres can achieve true sovereignty in our lifetimes. Monetary security is nothing without physical safety, to ignore either is to be dependant, and to be dependent is folly. Hardwoods and hard money for the win.

I hope my own small article will help ‘close the canopy’ between these otherwise separate fields of interest, and not be any the weaker for spanning the gap.

May you never look at a forest (or your parents) the same again!

Very best,

Ben GunnStay humble and stack sats/saps “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.““The Road Not Taken” - by Robert Frost

Who are the Pilgrims?

The Pilgrims were from a small village in England called Scrooby. They practiced an Idiosyncratic form of Calvinist Christianity. Their version of Christianity often attacked the centralized nature of the Church of England. They frequently petitioned Queen Elizabeth for reform within the Church. When King James took the throne, he was far less tolerant of having the church question by the group, who wanted separation of the state from church. The grouped never numbered more than 1,000. In writing this article, I’m often reminded of the Bitcoin community, we too are a very small band. I hope we could have an impact on this world like the pilgrims did. I hope that we can be as resolved and faithful to our cause as this group of separatists.

The heat that the King James regime put on groups like the separatists was more than they cared to bear. Religious dissidents of all sorts faced oppression and retribution from state mandated doctrines set by King James. The separatists fled to Leiden, Holland. Holland having recently been emancipated from Spanish rule and boasted an environment of tolerance.

While in the Netherlands, the group printed religious writings and smuggled them back into England, remaining a pain in the crown. UNGOVERNABLE. The separatists lived well amongst the Dutch. They enjoyed tolerance and the freedom to worship as they chose. But the Pilgrims (not what they called themselves) didn’t want their children to become Dutch and stray from their way of life. As a side, I think it’s interesting that an Englishman, a Dutchman, and an American, have all gotten together to team up on projects like Ungovernable Misfits, BitBuyBit, and Pleb Miner Monthly, just food for thought. The group made a deal with the Crown that they would travel to America to practice feely. 104 embarked on the journey.

The Journey

The separatists had arranged a patent on establishing a settlement in the Virginia Province in the new world. This is not the state of Virginia in its dimensions today, the province at that time stretched from the 34th Parallel in Southern North Carolina to the 45th Parallel near the current day New York/Quebec border.

The journey took 66 days, twice as long as the time planned. The passengers of the Mayflower endured terrible conditions. 4-foot-high ceilings where only children could stand. Buckets of vomit and human waste sloshed in the areas below deck. Illness, fever, and dysentery plagued the passengers.

The company planned on settling in the Hudson River Valley, at the mouth of the Hudson River, the site of current day Manhattan. The separatists felt comfortable, settling there because the Dutch were the main inhabitants of the area and they lived amongst the Dutch for years. Back then the Dutch inhabitants of Manhattan were called the “FurRunners”.

The voyage was beset with Atlantic storms. A large beam on the ship broke, sending thousands of gallons into the steerage area and threatened to sink the craft. The storms were so terrible the passengers were forced to stay below deck for much of the journey. The captain nearly made the decision to turn the ship around and return to England. The awful storms blew the voyagers off course, north, by 250 miles. They made sight of land November 9, 1620.

Settling Plymouth

Once in the harbor of Cape Cod, The Pilgrims first happened upon an area in the North Easter tip of Cape Cod. It took the crew of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims weeks just to repair the small craft they used for exploration of this kind. While looking for a place to land in the turbulent seas, the small craft was thrust to shore by a wave and safely landed on the only spot one could land amongst the rock-strewn beachhead. As the scouting party explored the coastline there, they discover, a shipwreck, few signs of life, but miraculously a cash of corn and seed they desperately needed. They promised amongst themselves they would repay the rightful owners of the stores, but it’s unlikely they ever did. The region was considered less than habitable by the locals who went inland during the winter months, but stored food there for their return in spring.

The next day the settlers sailed down the to the southeast portion of Cape Cod to an area now called First Encounter Beach. That night they were happened upon by a group of Indians and a short, bloodless conflict ensued. Perhaps the Indians were testing the strength of the settlers, now the settlers had proof there were people who inhabited in this area. The following day the travel to the western edge of the Cape Cod harbor to an area marked on their maps called Plymouth. After a month of searching for an area to settle, on December 12, 1620, the Pilgrims decided upon that area to settle.

As they waded ashore, they found human remains strewn across the beach. The remains of the previous inhabitants, the Pawtuxet. In 1616, a plague wiped out the local population, Historians have always assumed it was smallpox, but it has been recently theorized that it was perhaps an outbreak of viral hepatitis. 95% of the population is said to have been taken. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about the Pilgrims that they sought “a land so barbarous and so abandoned by the world that they might yet be permitted to live there, in their manner and pray to God in freedom” This along with many other of their experiences indicated to them that it was the Lord’s work not their own choices that guided their path. They somehow stumbled upon the ideal location for their purposes, and they ardently believed for HIS. Rather than viewing the natives as victims of divine wrath, the separatists may have seen themselves as the beneficiaries of special protection. Though they were terribly cold and hungry they did not despair. They were deposited by winds, waves, and errant navigation 250 miles from their original destination and they still concluded that a higher power had brought them precisely to the right place.

When they finally disembark as a group, fever was rampant, they were already nearly starving, there was no opportunity to plant, scurvy and vitamin D deficiencies abound. They as miserable as could be, yet they set about their mission and began building shelter to survive the winter. They managed, though 47 out of the original 102 died that winter.

The Mayflower Compact

The Mayflower compact were the governing documents for the separatists. The Compact was a basic covenantal idea of freedom. You agree to do something, I agree to do something, a way to achieve unity. The compact was a rather unique for the time and place. Democracy and equal rights for all are a new phenomenon in an age where rights are allocated according to social status. Not only rights, but responsibilities are written down in a social contract which considers the many different groups living in the colony. Puritans wanted to have everything written down, because they wanted to know what was expected of them, including the system of government. They needed defined: how elections were to take place, who would have the right to vote, the conditions of the voting rights of the individuals, how the laws were going to be formed, and what’s expected in terms of people’s relationship to their laws and government. That’s what made the compact such a critical thing. It was a constitution, a primitive one, but nevertheless, unique in the new world. We in the Meshtadel had had extensive conversations on governance. One of them took about 2 hours and we were no closer to consensus than we were when we first began. Imagine this, this Pilgrims just spent a few months in the steerage of a ship, rough seas, filthy stinking conditions, they’re blown hundreds of miles off course, they land in an area they know little about, are left with no choice but to settle there as it’s too dangerous to sail down to the Hudson River Valley. They relegate themselves to settling where they’ve landed and they stop to take the time to make a covenant amongst themselves and with God to govern themselves and hold themselves accountable to their agreement before they disembark to their new enclave. That shows intense character and resolve. I wonder if under the same conditions we would be able to achieve the same or even close to it.

An excerpt from the Mayflower Compact “Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith, and the honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another; covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic”

Do You Have Bread and Beer?

Spring of 1621 must have come as a miraculous gift to the Pilgrims. As described before, the Pilgrims now numbered only 47. March 16, 1621 the village was visited by an unusual site. A tall, lean Indian happened upon the village. His message to the weary Pilgrims, “Welcome Englishmen! Welcome Englishmen! Do you have bread and beer?” The visitor’s name was Samoset. He claimed to have learned English from cod fisherman whom he had encounters with. He wasn’t there purely of his own volition, this meeting was no happenstance. Samoset served Massasoit, the chief or sachem of the local tribe of Wampanoag, who was nearby. Samoset spent the day with the Pilgrims, eating their food, “biscuit and butter and cheese and pudding and a piece of mallard, all of which he liked well” and spoke with the Pilgrims into the night. Samoset explained that the location the pilgrims occupied had been an important village of the Pawtuxet. He explained that “all inhabitants died of an extraordinary plague and there is neither man woman nor child remaining as indeed we have found none so as there is none to hinder our possession or to lay claim unto it.” The next morning the pilgrims sent Samoset on his way with a knife, a bracelet, and a ring to encourage him to move along. He assured them that he would return within a few days.

Tisquantum

As Samoset promised a few days later he returned with another Indian that he described in glowing terms. The second visitor’s name was Tisquantum or as the English pronounced it “Squanto”. Squanto described himself as the sole survivor of the Patuxent band. His story is one of the most fascinating in the Thanksgiving tale. Squanto was kidnapped at 12 and brought to London by a marauding sea captain in 1605. Somehow gaining his freedom, he returned in 1614 only to be kidnapped again. He sailed for 2 months when his captors docked in Malaga Spain. There the slavers sold Indians for $3,000 each, but Spanish monks took the rest for a much lower price. The Catholic Church had taken a stance on enslaving inhabitants of the new world.

The Monks healed them and preached the word of God to them. The Monks helped him return to England where he stayed with a merchant’s family for a few years and finally managed to return to the area just 6 months before the pilgrims landed. When Squanto did return to the Pawtuxet band he found his people wiped out by plague. For the next fewmonths he lived alone until he earned the trust of Massasoit.

All during this meeting the chief of the Wampanoag, Massasoit was nearby during the in case things went awry, but he wanted friendship and an alliance with the pilgrims and their weapons to fend off the Narragansett people. Initially Massasoit intended the relationship to be one of convenience. The pilgrims had technology that he wanted. To the pilgrims, the Wampanoag were a welcome ally. After establishing relations, they made a formal treaty that lasted for more than 15 years.

Squanto stayed with the community he showed them how to catch eels and alewives.

Squanto showed them how to plant corn in mounds, 5 kernels/ 3 fish. It’s likely he learned this practice in Europe as there’s little to no historical evidence that shows the Indians planted corn in this manner, but the areas in Europe were Squanto stayed did. Perhaps they found the only Indian on the continent that knew this method of planting. Beyond the fish fertilizer method, he also taught them of the method of companion planting or intercropping called the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash. The corn grows tall, the legumes fix nitrogen into the soil and the squash grows low to the ground and is shaded by the beans and corn and limits weed growth. Three sisters planting is an often-discussed method of intercropping in the Meshtadel. Meshtadelian, Moizen, calls it Milpas. William Bradford said of Squanto that “he was a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation”.

The Meal

There’s little doubt that without the intervention of Massasoit and the gift that was Squanto’s knowledge; the Pilgrims were unlikely to survive beyond that first summer and fall. Although upon their arrival in the new world they intended to fish were they to land at the mouth of the Hudson River as intended, though they didn’t know how to fish. Neither were they farmers. Perhaps it’s possible in their extreme faith they succumb to hubris, thinking that God would provide for all, but HE did, and they were humbled and thankful. The Pilgrims didn’t call that meal thanksgiving, normally thanksgiving to them would be a time of fasting and prayer, not feasting. Sometime, late October 1621 the Wampanoag people under the leadership of their sachem Massasoit and the pilgrims under the leadership of William Bradford celebrated a feast in honor of their friendship and cooperation. The locals brought 90 warriors and five deer. For 3 days the English and Wampanoag feasted. As well as the venison provided by Massasoit; cod, shellfish, eel, vegetables, nuts, fruits, and of course, corn were consumed. As well as, yes you guessed it, wild turkey.

Puritan – Austrian Economists (Not a real term, just tongue-in-cheek)Something about the Pilgrims that has always fascinated me, as I think it would fascinate anyone who believes in free market economics it the fact that the Pilgrims initially tried a more communal approach to the distributions of the fruits of their labor. The failures of Communism are nothing new to those who study Austrian Economics, it doesn’t work. After a time, William Bradford realized the fallacy of collectivism or as what economists call “The Tragedy of the Commons.” In 1623 William Bradford wrote in Of Plymouth Plantation “At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

Happily, Ever After?

That’s it that’s the story of the Pilgrims and their first thanksgiving. And they all lived happily ever after, right? Well of course not. Human history is never so tidy. We are vastly complex creatures as individuals; throw us all together into a society and you exponentially increase the level of complexity of human interaction, thrust vastly different civilizations together and that exponential increase in complexity would make the last 400 something difficulty adjustments look like kindergarten math by comparison.

The Puritan separatists are the good guys? How about William Bradford? He helped lead his people to the new world or as they described at the time, “the Dawn Land”. He guided them in establishing a functional community and kept peace with the local population for many years. The Wampanoag sachem Massasoit, he must be the good guy in this tale as the peace between the separatists and the Wampanoag lasted as long as he did, the treaty not breaking until he passed in 1661 at the age of 80. Ah, yes, clearly Tisquantum must be our protagonist, he was the peacemaker between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims, he helped the separatists to grow corn and thrive after that first winter, he built a solid friendship with the Pilgrims, surely, he’s the hero of the story. Perhaps it’s Samoset, after all he just wanted beer and bread, but turns out he was a sachem in his own right and more than just a visitor who eats all of your food and has to be bribed to leave.

History is often presented to us through story, rather than discussion and I could go on and on describing the flaws of each one of our characters. Squanto for instance was a savior to the pilgrims but treacherous according to Massasoit. Basic storytelling, the kind that can be wrapped up in the max amount time that is the average human attention span can never tell the whole story. Yes, let’s button up and package this tale to consumed and scant be thought of again. Historical figures and events are either romanticized or vilified. There are often no heroes, no villains, protagonists, or antagonists, just people, flawed at times, good in others, who attempt to make it through their short time on this earth the best way they know how. The truth is, all the above-mentioned historical figures are people, same as you or I.

The events of and the subsequent celebration of the first thanksgiving were proclaimed by George Washington.Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789

In 1827 Sarah Josepeha Hale launched a campaign to make Thanksgiving an official holiday and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln did such in hopes of healing the wounds of the nation with his Proclamation of Thanksgiving.

Again, why did I tell the story of Thanksgiving? Well, I am a huge proponent of stopping, pausing, giving thanks to a higher power, humbling yourself, and being thankful for the gifts we receive every day. Additionally, many Bitcoiners celebrate the Gunpowder treason and the 5th of November as some form of informal holiday. I was very glad to see Ben Gunn’s historically accurate depiction of the Gunpowder Treason event. If you haven’t, please read the article here. I’ve never understood why Bitcoin Plebs see this as an event or a person (Guy Faux) that they can associate with. Do Plebs really identify with a Catholic plot to blow up English parliament? I sure don’t. But I do often dream of creating a new compact with members of the Meshtadel. One in which we humble ourselves to a higher power but maintain our individual liberties and private property rights. Does the parallel match up perfectly? Hell no! That’s laughable. If any of us were to read Calvinists Puritan writings, I’m sure we’d disagree completely with many of their interpretations of Christianity. We would though, be cohesively against the Church of and King of England, at just about any time. The point I’m trying to make here about Thanksgiving is that it’s universal and worth celebrating. To close, what am I thankful for? My relationship with the Lord. Sarah, of course, and our three wonderful children. I’m thankful for The Pleb Miner Mafia. I am thankful for the Meshtadel. And I’m thankful to Max and Mr. Crown, for letting me play in their sandbox.

Resource allocation was unnaturally skewed, so neither invested in a deep-rooted structure, being unnecessary and costly. Instead, they optimised around their numerical advantage, forming a temporary robustness, yet still engaging in subtle individual competition for a spot in the ever-rising canopy. In both wealth and woodland, it was a case of “sink or swim” for both populations.

Outliers, such as the solitary oaks standing as boundary markers amidst conifer blocks, or Baby Boomers who deployed a steadier strategy in life, found themselves quickly overshadowed and starved of sunlight or success. They withered, engulfed by the surrounding growth, exemplifying the brutal reality of inflationary natural & economic systems—pockets of limited deflation smothered by overarching capital growth.

Both the trees and the Boomers were locked in a relentless race skyward. Success, narrowly defined, was access to light or financial prosperity. Yet, this upward surge came with a hidden cost: an accumulating instability under their own weight, a liability grown too large to ignore by the time I entered the world, and entered the forest.

In these peculiar circumstances, the conifers and Boomers had adapted the only way they knew how, inflating in sync with their peers or facing isolation and decline. But beneath the single layer of prosperity, resources dwindled, and diversity suffered.

The understorey, whether of younger trees or upcoming generations, found itself in darkness, struggling for a share of what little was left. There were scarce few animals or insects. Bird populations drop. Bee populations collapse. Almost everything else is sacrificed to the unnatural, over-optimised plantation crop.Even slight laggards are strangled and die in place, almost as a warning to the others never to delay. No other roots systems stand ready to hold the soil in place. It becomes a barren and even slightly acidic substrate to anything but a large Douglas or Grand Fir. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.The more time you spend around either problem, the more the parallels between environmental and economic fragility become apparent. The dominance of a single species or generation, left unchecked, has led to a presently precarious situation.Past a certain undefined height, softwood monocrop trends towards fragility, which is to say they start to become negatively exposed to normal environmental pressures such as wind and rain. Over time, smaller and smaller pressures represent larger and larger risks to the system.Even if a small pocket of conifers are removed, the fragility of the remaining body of trees is equivalently weaker, conforming to an inverse power law. When these small open spaces emerge in a plantation or a debt based financial system, in a light storm, like the breaking phalanx structure of a Spartan infantry unit – they all at once lose their shared strength and calamitously fail on top of each other.Why? With the right combination of wet soil and high winds, neither cooperative system can support their own weight. Vast amounts of otherwise recoverable capital is lost. The cost and risk of clearing a site of already-windblown trees, vs that of an active harvesting operation while they stand in place, are simply colossal and cannot be understated. Just as a disorderly sale of distressed assets is far more damaging overall, than a managed and gradual disposal over time. Prices in nature and markets are both set at the margin.

How Things Stand and How They Fall

Whilst trees have no free will, human beings have the gift of sentience, and had this generation the wisdom and foresight to see the results of their collective behaviour in time to intervene and adopt a more sustainable and varied pattern of behaviour and wealth, we’d probably not be at the point we are today.Realise, that this is no mere metaphor. The corruption of money has led directly to the poor decisions made in my forest throughout its chain of custody, and the mess it has since developed into, as it has in our broader societal affairs. Paper money led literally to paper trees.Most other things have adapted around this fundamental distortion of money. It has diminished the landscapes of the countryside, just as it changed the fabric of our society. We see this everywhere.Both situations have culminated into an unnatural and dangerous present condition, with a shared destiny. So as debt-based currency invariably returns to it’s intrinsic value of zero – so must conifer plantations return to their original state, in one of only two ways: a clear fell harvesting operation by mortal men of steady hand, and if denied or ignored: a crescendo collapse brought about by Mother Nature.Forestry work is neither, regrettably, a simple matter of conducting an optimistic survey of the standing trees, and multiplying that unprocessed wet tonnage, by the roadside price of stacked sawlogs and concluding that you’re a multi-millionaire.Nor then Mr and Mrs Boomer, is it either, a matter of taking the inflated prices of your houses and paper assets, then multiplying it by the total volumes of both, and deciding that you can all simultaneously retire at 55 with a ‘golden pension’. Selling it into a non-existent rising market and passing the remaining burden of your healthcare and welfare rights on to your already depressed children and dysfunctional grandchildren, is a complete departure from reason.

When vast supply overwhelms minimal effective demand – prices will fall like 10 tonne firs in a light breeze (if you know of anyone who believes otherwise – I have an eight figure woodland to sell them).The apparently ‘priceless’ vertical tonnage of my own conifer stocks and the accumulated interconnected wealth of Baby Boomers are both increasingly fragile and erroneously valued. Every Baby Boomer will soon require liquidity from their stocks, bonds, and million-pound holiday homes, just to live, and are all going to hit the market in a very condensed timeframe, with predictable results.I too started off from borderline-criminal levels of ignorance in land management as the incoming custodian of my land, so it seems to be for the average investor and wider society going into the final phase of debt-based money.Until you grasp what is really going on, and realise your unavoidable personal exposure to it: day-to-day both systems look deceptively healthy. Something to preserve or even defend. But it is simply not so.“You can ignore reality – but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality”, in either structure.

Exile or Death?

“When life gives you Dougs – become a Doug dealer” – Ben Gunn, circa 2020

Reader, you might have concluded by now, as I once had to, that softwood timber, like Baby Boomer wealth, is a grievously inferior store of natural value than is widely accepted. But that also, on further reflection, it might not be completely worthless, depending on your mindset and response.

The woodland was certainly not the store of value I imagined I’d bought, anymore than tacky suburban mansions, government bonds, failing services, high taxes, and stubborn inflation are what we’d hoped to inherit. Less still, what we intend to pass on to our own children. But if left to collapse on its own, the liability will overwhelm us anyway and avoidably ruin our lives, regardless of who is ultimately at fault or to blame.

The instinct of all younger generations, which I openly share, might be to feel betrayed, even cheated by our supposed betters. That sentiment is as morally valid as it is practically irrelevant.

For better or ill – this flawed inheritance is what are being offered to us, and the offer is final and non-negotiable. Abandon all hopes of divine justice, or even passing sympathy – no-one is coming to help you, anymore than anyone ran towards my troubles and got me out of them after I met that fateful day with my smirking forestry contractor.

For those who seek to inherit, “two roads diverge in a wood”. On the one hand, there is a tempting amount of homogenous capital in our society. On the other, it is of dubious end-value and is fraught with risk and fragility. The responsibility of ownership, if abdicated, will consequentially result in systemic failure. If handled carefully, the opportunity surely presents itself to create a modest surplus to carry forward and into our own dreams for the future.

Even with total consensus and broad societal support, an organised dismantling of these forests and markets, results not in a perfect interim outcome, but a tolerable one.

The problem was in the planting of so many trees in the same place, at the same time, and letting them grow for too long, at the expense of everything else around them, on faulty assumptions. Debt and inflated assets cannot be unwound over short periods of time anymore than a tree can shrink back into the ground the way it came out in the last year of its life. All else is consequential and derivative of this first error.

The present choice left to the direct and indirect heirs of the Baby Boomer Estate is clear. If you decide cut and run, perhaps to other countries with better prospects, to live in exile, you must also leave behind the opportunity that remains, but more importantly the moral right to claim ownership of the land. To the victor comes the spoils, but first you need the victory.

We already know my personal decision was to stay and fight. But my own decision was not primarily one of principle or moral obligation. Had the conditions been any less favourable, or the fight judged at the time to be any less winnable – I may well have returned my land to the same sales listings I found it on and passed the predicament to another owner, at a large, but survivable loss.

Instead, I chose voluntarily to commit myself to the problem. I was pushed beyond my previous limits, went on to face enormous physical and financial risks, operational and legal setbacks, and huge levels of further investment.

As Elon Musk observed of running startups, most of the time you can expect to be “staring into the abyss and chewing glass”, as it was for me in long and lonely spells along my path out of Hell.

I can say in honest reflection that my decision was worth it spiritually, and to a far lesser extent, financially. A lawyer told me when I was the legal owner of the deed, but I feel strongly now that I only developed a sense of real ownership in the process of rescuing the woodland from it’s alternative fate.

We may have expected societal rights to whatever the Boomers leave behind, but until we are prepared to engage with the danger and overcome it – we will not have truly earned our bright futures. I bought my land with paper and ink, but I earned the moral right to define its future with sweat, diesel, adrenaline, a few good men, and no small amount of good fortune.

I stop far short of recommending to anyone what they must do in the face of their own particular challenges. I’m no more or less motivated to engage in the looming economic battle ahead, for experiencing a personal victory of my own. I stand here now as one amongst you, in the shadow of our larger war to come, in two minds.

For some, the loss of what is left behind is far more than the cost of staying. For others it will be trivially cheap and sensible to exit, and start again elsewhere. Ultimately it’s not what you walk away from – it’s what you leave with, and that will be a different calculation for each of us.

Take note that if you do decide, in the course of your own life, to pick up the sword and join the fray, you will likely do it to a symphony of screeching resentment and invalid criticism, from vastly limited perspectives and sometimes pure malice or spite (often as not, by the very same people who you are digging out of a problem of their own making, and yet could never hope to fully understand). You’ll be labelled a squirrel killer. A selfish profiteer. Seen as nuisance. A villain. A pleb.

We the living, are to be judged by the fruits of what we leave behind, not what we started with, nor by the passive observers and what they might say about us along the way. Be single minded in what you have control or influence over. Be indifferent and stoic in all other matters. They are not your concern. Make a conscious decision either way and commit to it, absolutely, and come what may.

The time for us do each decide our path through the fiat “Dark Forest of Error” is fast approaching, and though time is short, it’s not so short that we can’t at least contemplate what could be possible if you do decide to take the path less travelled, wherever that might take you. And if having survived, once the forest cleared and the skies bright, consider what we are to do in the wake our triumph.

A freshly felled commercial woodland is a sight to behold. A once dark and impenetrable mass disguised the true terrain of the land, and what was once starving the sere ground of sunshine is removed and what is left is a clean and fresh canvas on which to create your own masterpiece. Choose to look through the intermediate Hell and see beyond, into Paradise…

introduction

To the joyfully uninitiated, a forest is simply a forest.

Self maintaining, effortless, graceful. A silent army of timber sentries, standing guard over Mother Nature’s Kingdom. Lovely to view from a window, but lovelier still to explore on a long walk. After a restorative trek through the woods, you sling your muddy boots in the car and drive home for a cup of tea and a Sunday roast. This is what smart people do. Not me.

I reminisce occasionally about the time before my Hero’s Journey began, before my descent into Hell and back out again. And while it may be true for the majority of people, for the majority of the time, that “ignorance is bliss” very few people are stupid enough to buy a forest when they know nothing about them.

As a Blind Wanderer, that’s exactly what I did in the year of our Lord, 2018.

the blind wanderer

Prior to becoming a land owner, in a then-simpler but less rewarding existence, I was innocently pursuing a favourite pastime of mine: procrastinating aimlessly on the UK property websites, and enjoying Bitcoin’s spectacular rises and falls on the ticker tape. Fate, taking note of my idleness, dealt a spectacular card that transformed my life.

I stumbled upon an attractive sales listing for a suspiciously cheap woodland within comfortable driving distance of my family home. Owning a forest would be an interesting experience. And for what it is – that looks bloody cheap. Cheaper than the houses, dare I say affordable!

Without much consideration, I dialled the number and bought it. No warnings were sought or offered, by agent, seller or lawyers, from point of enquiry to completion.

The lessons I’ve since learned of woodland management and forestry, after that initial moment of heedless folly, are almost uncountable. Some of the more interesting, I’m about to share.

Moreover, as a Bitcoiner, I feel doubly duty-bound to impart my own first-hand observations, drawn from the apparently separate perspectives of both areas, that surely a scarce few would have the dubious ability to share.

I write for 4 audiences: General interest, Bitcoiners, Landowners; and especially land-owning Bitcoiners. Poor souls. I feel your pain! You have my highest respect. But some advice to the first 3:

– If you’re a Bitcoiner who doesn’t yet own land – go and meet someone who does. They provide your means to live.

– If you’re a Landowner who doesn’t yet have any Bitcoin – go and meet someone who does. They can help protect your way of life.

– If you’re neither – respectfully reconsider, but of the 2, Bitcoin is easier!

In Dante’s 14th century masterwork: The Divine Comedy, the author-protagonist starts off on his transformative journey to God, from a “Dark Forest of Error”.

I too found myself in a Dark Forest of Error, though the beasts I encountered in there were less literal than the dark forest, I nevertheless faced my own manifestations of malice, incontinence and violence between the tall trees, at the start of my own adventure.

In his epic poem, Dante escapes the Dark Forest, first by way of Hell, next into Purgatory, and only then beyond, into Paradise. I’ll leave it for you the reader, to conclude where I am in my own Comedy.

The parallels and real-world overlaps of forestry and Bitcoin are staggering. Enjoy.

Antecedents of Expensive Growth

The history of my woodland is the history of the United Kingdom.

At the start of the 20th century, it was a profitable granite and slate quarry, providing a livelihood to the area and value to the country as it developed economically over the course of the Second Industrial Revolution.

A quarryman was killed on-site during this time, and his mortal remains were brought through the local town, unceremoniously, on horse-drawn cart. His waiting son recognised the familiar hobnail boots protruding from the sheet that covered his father. A different time, and a memory I kept keenly in mind during my own operations over a century later. Responsibility for life is a heavy burden and a privilege (one I carried personally more than once on the more critical days of the work).

At the commencement of the Great War, the land has been planted in native hardwoods that had established well around the then-abandoned quarry. Strong oaks, planted by even stronger men, with dirty hands and clean money.

There, the vigorous forest stood in peace and harmony, at least for a while…

Decades later, as World War II raged abroad and overhead, the priorities of the nation overtook those of the woodlands, and sometime after falling into the ownership of the Liverpool Timber Company, the site was “clear felled” (cut down to stumps) to support the urgent war effort. What had been originally planted for the beams of new houses or for warmth in a nearby hearth, was requisitioned for barrels and planks. So it goes.

So it seems that as young men were being industrially destroyed in global conflict – so went the timber in the forest. What had existed for centuries, took mere weeks to destroy. When this horrendous era of history and economics concluded, the survivors came home and had babies. Lots and lots of babies.

Out of the level destruction of total war, the timber I work with today was planted as saplings in the bare earth between town and village, as their inhabitants were delivering a fresh wave of post-war children into this ‘brave new world’. Both were established at a time of cautious optimism, in the barren; fertile soils of each system, blissfully unaware of the unintended consequences of either experiment.

Samson posing near early 20th century mining equipment

The Bretton Woodlands Era

Regardless of the result for either side, the entire Western world had bankrupted itself to settle once and all, an entirely avoidable calamity. The scalded Corporal of the Kaiser’s vanquished army, Adolf Hitler and all his odious conspirators, were finally and utterly defeated.

All it took was the destruction of our global system of hard money, and the forfeited futures of a lost generation of men and boys.

As the UK and the wider world departed from monetary sobriety with its first reluctant sip of fractional reserve currency, decisions in my forest were being made with an apparent inherited drunkenness of the new Bretton Woods System. It was decided that the site was to be replanted experimentally in non-native conifer crops from North America.

In the face of overwhelming anticipated demand for industrial materials, quality was sacrificed for quantity, as it was shortly prior in the monetary system. The fundamentally inelastic supply curve of timber was stretched as far as anyone had dared go before.

Amongst post-war stumps of felled oak and beech and ash, planted in orderly rows and in rectangular blocks, the saplings of this new design of woodland promised to meet the needs of the next generation of citizens that grew alongside them.

Soft Money, Soft People & Softwood

As with all truly terrible ideas, the basic logic of fast rotating conifer crops had theoretical merit. And like all terrible ideas, particularly in matters of economics, planners failed to consider the long-term consequences or the effects on all groups, not just the short-term benefits for a specific group. The promised “free lunch” of faster timber supply was seemingly too much to resist at the time. So it goes.

The preferences of the average consumer had already begun to shrink to shorter time horizons. Over the early decades of this radical new planting strategy, global markets gradually opened up, offering cheaper and quicker substitutes to regional supplies. As a result, the domestic production economy started to hollow out and fall into secular stagnation.

The UK exported its inflation over to the developing world, and in exchange, imported their bountiful goods and raw materials. The early second-order effects came home to roost in the form of labour reform, political unrest and stagflation throughout the 1970’s and 80’s.

As the woodland conifers and the Baby Boomers approached maturity, the world quietly abandoned the Gold Standard of money entirely. Somewhere in the blur of disco and colour televisions, a flawed initial strategy had been irreversibly committed to, without formal discussion or informed consent. Forest and economy took the path of least resistance, and the path of no return.

On my own forest, 2 non-native crops had been planted together: Grand Fir and Douglas Fir. Although close cousins, aesthetically similar and both being fast growers, the Douglas was a proven and viable construction material, but the Grand Fir was planted to supply 2 post-war industries: matchsticks and paper pulp, having no tensile strength or durability for construction, and being an inferior firewood. All trees were equal – but under the bark, some were more equal than others.

Despite being a supposedly quicker route to market for the “savvy” modern landowner, by the time these trees reached an acceptable size for harvesting, the industries they were planted to supply had vanished from the economy of the modern United Kingdom. Matchsticks were replaced over the 1970’s with disposable lighters from factories in The Far East, and the paper mills went in the same direction. There was simply no market for Grand Fir to be absorbed into. So it goes.

grand fir windblown tree: so brittle it snapped around the ledge it fell on.

The “Dougies” would still sell, but the “Grandies” were worthless. Being inseparable from one another as a harvesting operation, ongoing maintenance operations were abandoned, the problem deferred, and the harvest left in place. The forest crept into disrepair and dereliction.

Running parallel to this minor tragedy, the Baby Boomers had been enjoying better luck. Surfing the economic wave of Globalism, they built their future with cheaper goods and by accumulating paper wealth, passing inflated; leveraged property deeds between each other in an intoxicating virtuous cycle of tight housing supply and monetary inflation. A service economy replaced the productive industries that had fled abroad, and life went on as houses and stocks replaced currency as the way to store value.

What was good for contemporary society, was bad for the forest. Around the access ways and major roads, new houses sprung up to meet rising demand. Extensions were built and populations consolidated. All helped along by innovations in technology, commuter friendly work; efficient cars; and other goods – from foreign factories. The nanny State grew greedily like a thirsty weed in a failing vegetable patch.

The connection between productive land and its requirement was being eroded alongside the meaning of money. The Public came to view the countryside less as the productive base for their society, and more as a nice place to visit and admire as a break from their increasingly sedentary, office based professions.

Mushy, grey rules formed around the once-clear law on forestry and agriculture, like the strangling ivy around a once immovable oak. The consultancy industry flourished. Sawmen became chainsaw instructors. The rest were absorbed into the burgeoning welfare state, or into other less meaningful work. Larger and larger machinery adapted to the narrower and narrower requirements and displaced the versatility and expense of skilled men.

By the turn of the millennium, now flush in comfort and wealth, the Baby Boomers developed a late-onset concern for the environment. After a productive lifetime of supplying landfills with disposable plastic in a sugar rush of consumerism—the Boomers started to worry ‘generally’ about the planet. But never at the expense of their own wants and needs.

An already dominant State took its chance to expand further still, rushing into the welcoming void of societal complacency, state dependency, and the existential dread of people who were getting older and knew it.

For this oblivious generation, any added costs along the way were bearable, and were simply pushed into the future, or taken out of their financial surpluses, but mostly onto the shoulders of everyone behind them in economics and demographics. The ladder was being pulled up behind them in the name of safety and the environment.

A little more time went on, and by then, my forest was reaching an advanced state of decline. Just in time for a Blind Wanderer, from 50 miles away, to innocuously click the link to an advertisement.

I bought eagerly and naively from a struggling local council who were using the woods infrequently for outdoor activities, and frankly more in need of the money than the land and it’s problems (all of this only after the local community, now approaching early retirement, were offered the land at deeply discounted rates, who chose wisely but selfishly to pass on the opportunity, and go on holiday instead).

The Call to Adventure

Everyone remembers their first day at work. But usually, they’re aware it’s their first day, and they understand their job – I didn’t!

Shortly after closing on the land deal, I’d thought it was about time that I jump in the car and visit my new luxury asset, and never one to be inefficient in the midst of catastrophe, I had also booked a meeting with a local forestry contractor to discuss the undoubted and limitless potential of my new purchase.

He walked up to me with a grin like a Cheshire Cat. The face of a man who is about to enjoy telling you that the zip on your fly is down just as you’ve walked out of church and shook the Vicar’s hand. He explained to me in one sentence what I’ve just taken all too long to describe:

“You’re f$£ked here mate, all this over-stood timber and no you’ve got no road access”.I certainly had no idea what I was being told. I had bought a beautiful woodland that I intended to do nothing with but walk in, and enjoy. What do I need roads for when I can park in the village and walk? A bit steep in places yes, and yes, now that he mentioned it the trees were awfully bloody tall, and there were a lot of them. But that’s what a forest is, right? RIGHT?

No Ben, no. You sweet summer child. On returning home, like any bad investor, I hastily performed some retrospective due diligence, and the weight of the problem fell across my chest like a 70 year old windblown conifer.

Apparently, I had purchased a serious liability. Worse still, where property rights had somewhat degraded over the decades, owner liability had remained loyally attached to the deed, and to me. So it goes.

However there were embers of hope in the fresh ashes of my personal finances. A relatively new industry has sprung up to accommodate these growing concerns for the environment: biomass woodchip.

a section of the conifers that was already collapsing

Above: Builder’s Merchant treated softwood below: a sample of douglas fir from my plantation

The softwood is a forgiving material to put through modern wood-chipping machinery, and high water content acted as a moderator for the combustion process of these new style boilers. That put a solid floor in the prices of ANY forms of timber, even branches, and has been a timely option for disposing of my Grand Fir ever since.

Better still, owing to the lack of care over the years – the Douglas Fir had grown amongst dying trees that on a better managed forest would have been “thinned” and removed to create space for the others. That caused reduced rates of growth and thus greater density which inadvertently created a rare timber stock of above average quality and marketable value.

The specifics of how I tamed the problem is perhaps a matter for later writing, but the situation was brought to a respectable and not-unsatisfactory interim conclusion. The full account of this will remain in my journals for another time, as the war rages on.

Remember reader, I promised you a Comedy – not a Tragedy, but not before we pass through Hell.

Authors:

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lightning wallet

There is a new Bitcoin War on the horizon: the Bitcoin Transaction War, similar to the Blocksize War but this time about which transactions are going to be included by miners in blocks. While this might seem strange at first glance, let me explain why I think this will happen and what we can do about it.

Miners fulfill a very important role in the Bitcoin network: They create blocks that include transactions created by users using the Bitcoin network. A block is generated roughly every 10 minutes and can include around 2,500 transactions. One often forgotten aspect is that the miner and only the miner chooses which transactions to include into a block. The game theory of Bitcoin says that it makes sense for a miner to include transactions with the highest fees in their block in order to receive the biggest reward for mining of the block.

There is, however, nothing that prevents a miner from not including a specific transaction that the miner might not like, even if it’s one with very high fees. Companies like Chainalysis or TRM Labs already today rank every address in the Bitcoin network with a risk score determining if the address, or more specifically the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) might have been used for illegal activities. The company zkSNACKs, which runs one of the biggest coinjoin coordinators, already announced that they will blocklist specific addresses/UTXOs from using their conjoin coordinator. While a zkSNACKs blocklisted address could still do a normal on-chain transaction, it’s not far fetched that some miners will start to blocklist addresses which then could possibly block an address from transacting altogether or make it very hard. In fact, there was a mining pool started in March 2021 that censored specific addresses from being added to blocks. Luckily, they stopped this practice just a couple of weeks later in June 2021, but the precedent is there.

Now, of course, this doesn’t mean that an address could be blocked completely from transacting on the Bitcoin network. If there are many censoring miners, the inclusion of a censored address could take quite a long time to be included, possibly making Bitcoin for these blocked addresses almost unusable. Additionally if non-censoring miners are including all addresses, censoring miners could orphan entire blocks that contain a blacklisted address. If enough censoring miners work together to reject non-compliant blocks then these larger, censoring miners will preferentially mine on each other’s chains disregarding blocks they do not agree with.

As some mining companies are adding massive amounts of hash power, this could become a problem.

Sanctions & Bitcoin Miners

We need to understand that today big parts of Bitcoin mining are unregulated, while every other part of global trading needs to comply with sanctions. For example the United States has very strict sanctions against Iran which every company in the country has to comply with. Companies not complying will face high penalties or even prison sentences.

Today, the US accounts for around 35% of all Bitcoin hash rate (and rapidly growing). It would be possible for the government to require US based mining companies to comply with specific sanctions and block transactions from a specific country. US crypto exchanges already have to comply with sanctions against Russia. These sanctions prevent Russian-originated Bitcoin addresses from using these exchanges. Just recently the United States sanctioned Bitriver, a Russian crypto miner, in an attempt to prevent Russia from mining their excess energy, which they now have because of other sanctions.

It’s just a matter of time until governments realize how mining really works, and that they technically have leverage via the Bitcoin miners and will require miners to comply with sanctions.

Long story short: While it’s awesome to see that Bitcoin mining is massively growing, helping to stabilize the electrical grid and encouraging building of more renewable energy, we should be careful to not end up with a centralized mining infrastructure of a few big companies. Governments will force the miners to comply like the exchanges are complying with sanctions. The fewer mining entities exist, the easier it is for governments to control high percentages of mining and that could cause a great amount of damage and pain to the Bitcoin network. Just imagine a future where NATO decides that all its member states need to force the miners in their countries to sanction specific Bitcoin addresses.

Not your miner, not your block

Bitcoin wouldn’t be Bitcoin if it wouldn’t have a solution to this problem.

Like we already use: “Not your keys, not your coins” to explain to people to store their Bitcoin by themselves not at an exchange

• “Not your node, not your validation” to encourage people to run their own Bitcoin node to ensure the Bitcoin network validates transactions correctly.

So we also should start saying:

“Not your miner, not your block”

to explain to people that if they want to ensure a fair inclusion of transactions in blocks, they should mine themselves, at home.

Only with home mining can we ensure that the Bitcoin network is fair and works for the people.

Side note 1: I’m focusing specifically on miners and not pools. Bitcoin mining pools are a form of centralization which incentives miners to join pools as they create a more stable income for miners. Due to this effect it’s difficult to truly decentralize hashrate. Though If a pool would start to misbehave and start sanctioning transactions, it would be easy for miners to point their hashrate to another pool, therefore creating a game theory where it doesn’t make sense for governments to force pools to comply. Also with Stratum V1 (the protocol miners use to connect to pools) it’s the pool that chooses the transactions included in a block. There is a new version 2 of Stratum that includes “Job Selection” which allows a miner instead of the pool to define which transactions they want to include. There is growing support for Stratum V2 within pools.

Side note 2: There are mining companies (like Compass Mining) that allow you to mine in someone else’s data center, unfortunately there have been numerous delays in getting miners up and running, plus the US sanctions against Russia forced Compass Mining to shut down their Russian data center and they are liquidating all miners. Therefore I do not suggest using such a service, as it’s like with anything else in Bitcoin: If it’s not your location and electricity it’s not your hash.

Therefore I believe that we should all start to mine at home, luckily there are already companies like FutureBit and Coinmine that provide plug and play home miners which do not require any knowledge of how to build a mining rig.

Plus we could actually save money while doing it.

Home mining take one:a no-brainer electrical heat replacement

Bitcoin miners convert the energy they consume 100% into heat. The same is true for electric water heaters, electric space heaters, electric water kettles and anything else that uses electric resistance heating. Therefore it would make sense to replace these heaters with a Bitcoin miner. The miner will use the same amount of energy, produce the same amount of heat, but also generate Bitcoin at the same time. Such a heater would therefore save you money as you would have spent the energy anyway.

We could go even so far and describe an electric resistance heater as a dumb miner.

Of course a Bitcoin miner has a higher upfront cost than a space heater, the higher cost will be covered over time with the value of the mined bitcoin, but not everybody has the capability to buy a $1000+ space heater.

Also you can’t fill your miner with water to get it to boiling, but these problems will all be solved in the future, like the company Block is building an open Bitcoin mining chip which will allow companies to buy just the chip and build miners in any shapes and use cases. This could allow a water heating company to produce a water heater where the electric coils are replaced by ASIC chips. Such a water heater would use the exact same energy as a normal water heater, but also produce Bitcoin along the way.

Today such a water heater does not exist yet, so I’m working on a slightly more complex system with immersion cooled miners that heat a regular water heater. Such a system is definitely not something for every home, but it allows to prove the point of the equal amount of energy use. I will publish data as soon as I have them. Others have made attempts to incorporate miners into their home heating systems with immersion technology, for example @StateFall, @WiseMining and @techengineer21 however, commercially available off-the-shelf solutions remain a unicorn.

Home mining take two:excessive solar energy usage

Anybody that ever planned a solar panel system for their home knows the struggle of sizing: If it’s too small you will still buy a lot of energy from the grid. If it’s too big you end up with excessive energy that you will have to inject to the grid for a bad deal (some places pay less than the regular kWh price, some give you credits that you maybe never use and in some places you won’t even get anything at all). It’s logical that the grid operators don’t really want your electricity, as a home solar system owner generates too much energy when the sun is shining, the solar panels of the grid itself also generates more energy, so buying energy from home owners doesn’t make sense for the grid operators.

A home mining setup connected to the solar panels could solve this problem: Technically a bitcoin miner can ramp up and down their energy usage within seconds and even can use partial amounts of its total energy usage. Therefore the miner could monitor how much energy is produced by the solar panels, if there is too much energy produced, instead of giving it back to the grid, the miner could convert the excess energy into valuable Bitcoin which will be worth more than what the grid would pay for the energy.

I’ve been playing with setting up such a system, the problem is that all miners from Antminer and Whatsminer are built to use a constant amount of energy. While Antminers with Braiins software can scale down their energy usage up and down, the process itself takes a couple of seconds and involves a short restart of the miner which stops the miner from using power for a short time, not something you want if there is excessive energy existing. Over time the mining software will become better, or some hardware manufacturer will build a miner that can scale up and down fully uninterrupted. The miner could even include the required power measuring hardware so that it could just easily be connected to any solar panel system. There are companies like TrulySolar.com already existing that lease your roof and install solar panels with a Bitcoin miner, currently this is a completely separate system from your normal electrical home usage, but we definitely see innovation.

TL;DR: Bitcoin Home Miners: Start your ASICs!

While Bitcoin is becoming more and more adopted by governments and most probably is here to stay for good, this doesn’t mean that governments will start to use the Bitcoin miners to enforce their agendas, starting the Bitcoin Transaction War:

• Precedence has already been set for censoring transactions.
• Incentives exist for miners to become as large as possible.
• The larger the miner, the easier of a target they become for regulations.
• Incentives exist for large miners to comply with these regulations as a way to create regulatory moats around their businesses.
• Decentralizing hashrate is difficult but it starts with good protocol solutions like Stratum v2 and getting as much hashrate into the hands of the many as possible.
• There is no shortage of creative ways to incorporate a miner into one’s home.
• Upcoming availability of individual miner chips will open up possibilities to include miners in any type of devices.

The future is bright, let’s keep it that way, one home miner at a time.

Additional resources:

To learn more about the risks posed to the censorship resistant tenants of Bitcoin through large scale miners, check out these other resources:

• Article of Bob Burnett
• Podcast by Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost talking about Mara Pool and Mining Censorship
• Podcast by Will Foxley and Steve Barbour talking about The Folly of the Mega-Mines

Thanks

Thanks  to the author @Schnitzel

@BikesandBitcoin, @jyn_urso, @techengineer21, @econoalchemist for helping writing this article.

Whatsminer is a beast, it eats kilowatt hours for breakfast. An M30S++ 100-110T is rated at 31 W/TH when compared to its competitor, the Antminer S19J Pro being rated at 29.5 W/TH. The reported efficiency is +/-5% less than the Antminer. And, that has a significant impact on the power bill. However, bear in mind that you will see pleb miners opting for the Antminer. Further, with aftermarket firmware such as Braiins OS+ or VNISH you can tweak the settings to overclock or underclock any of the Antminer rigs. I prefer Whatsminer regardless of the efficiency gain of the Antminer running stock.

In a low hashprice environment at home, miners look for as much efficiency as possible.The more efficient, the more innovative the miner is. We have seen these guys innovate ways to reuse waste heat back into their HVAC, even how to heat the water in their home, and some have even heated their pools and dried laundry with the excess heat. This essentially allows the miner to double spend on the utility bill. But, unfortunately hashprice has drastically plummeted since the spring of 2021.

Hashprice as defined by Luxor

Hashprice, a term coined by Luxor, refers to the expected value of 1 TH/s of hashing power per day. The metric quantifies how much a miner can expect to earn from a specific quantity of hashrate. You can denominate Hashprice in any currency or asset, but we display the metric in terms of USD or BTC (sats). For example

– $0.20 per terahash/second per day ($0.20/TH/s/day)

– 475 satoshis per terahash/second per day (475 sats/TH/s/day)

Hashprice is a function of three inputs: network difficulty, Bitcoin’s price, and transaction fees. Bitcoin’s hashprice will change with every new block added to the blockchain. Luxor’s Bitcoin Hashprice Index uses a 144 lagging SMA to account for transaction fees.

Hashprice is positively correlated with changes to Bitcoin’s price and transaction fee volume and negatively correlated with changes to Bitcoin’s mining difficulty.

Since we don’t all geek out over technical analysis or predictions, we won’t be going over them in this article. That is not the purpose of this piece and I don’t care to read tea leaves. The Hashprice Index over the last year is provided by Luxor in the following chart. And we can see by the visual representation of the downward sloping trajectory that the hashprice is clearly tanking. While it seems in the lower right space to be climbing somewhat steadily in the early weeks of 2023, we have twelve more months ahead to be able to clearly analyze the data instead of making predictive analysis. We can only hope for an upward trend; but don’t be surprised if it dips and pops back up again. One thing is for certain, we are still early and we are in for a bumpy ride.

There have been minimal efficiency options for Whatsminer owners other than factory Low Power setting. I have been a fan of Low Power Mode since this summer. When Low Power Mode is enabled, a user is able to hash more efficiently by reducing power consumption and reducing the Watts/Terahash. Low power mode can be +10% more efficient than normal mode. Whatsminer updated firmware to allow for more customized settings. They released a firmware and Whatsminer Tool update in October 2022 that allows for more control and better efficiency.

The most recent Firmware Update allows for frequency and power limit settings. Make sure to update the firmware and the tool for full functionality. It is available on their website for download.  See the photograph below for more detail:

The video tutorial can be viewed here.

*The classic power modes are illustrated here from the tool user guide  .Link

The October update allows the ability to adjust frequency and power consumption. The up-frequency option is only available for water cooled rigs. For the plebs with air cooled rigs, the frequency can be lowered or power limited in an effort to increase efficiency thereby decreasing the W/TH (J/TH for our non U.S. pleb miners). I have yet to tinker too much with it but, I can tell you I have been able to reduce the W/TH further than the classic Low Power Mode.

In addition to Frequency Adjustment there is also a Power Limit Setting.

I have been running a few M30S++ with a -30% frequency and seeing about 27 W/TH. I have also adjusted one with a power limit of 1,930 watts with less efficient results. Below are three M30S++ 110T models in both frequency adjusted and power limit adjusted scenarios. It appears the frequency adjustment is working more efficiently than the power limit set to a similar wattage.

Both the Frequency and Power adjustment can be executed in bulk by selecting the IP addresses in the tool you want to change. For those thinking, “what is the reading on the wall?” I feel you. I can not compare second by second; but spot checking the WM tool data with my Iotawatt I observe +/- 10-20 watts between the two data points. The WM tool data is pretty damn close to what I am seeing off the circuits.

I wanted to write this quick post because I keep running across folks that say I wish I could adjust my Whatsminer wattage. Well you can bro. The efficiency gains are worth the time to tinker with. I also want to note that this release came out before Antiminer Christmas present. Imagine that? Hope this helps someone save some fiat on the power bill while hashrate, difficulty, and electricity pumps. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to any of the pleb miners on Twatter or join Steve Barbour’s Home Miining Wizards telegram channel. With constant upgrades and tweaks, Whatsminer is a beast. There is just no other way to put it.

Happy HashingBarnminer @btctwatterpants

Author:

MR CROWN

We are lucky that life in the 21st century is easier than it has ever been, right? But convenience also has its price, and many people now want to go back to basics. But what are the basic needs for self-sufficient living? Food and shelter is the most obvious answer, but we are also looking for a good quality of life, and for that we need comfortable shelter, quality food and a good amount of enjoyment.

Live the dream

Most people have a dream where their life is very different from what it is now. There are so many things we would like to do, but time and/or money are often the biggest hurdles. You are tied to your job and so it is partly the problem but also partly the solution. The question is, should we live to work or work to live?

Practising your hobby and being able to sustain yourself with it, who wouldn’t want that? And if you were to continue doing it even if you were not paid for it? However, the vast majority of us have not yet found a way to realise this dream. But what stops them?

In our modern world, it is tempting to put convenience before quality. You just go to the shop, pick up new clothes because you feel like a new outfit. Your fridge is full of products that are far from fresh and a small compartment with fruit and vegetables that have travelled more kilometres than you drive in a whole year in your car.

Fresh, quality products, whether they are food or other items needed in a self-sufficient lifestyle are closer than you think. It is a matter of starting to form this lifestyle and, little by little, becoming self-sufficient. This includes, for example, buying or swapping quality food or other products in your neighbourhood, the community and local small farms and craft shops.

Discover local produce

Modern transport systems keep the supermarket stocked with a huge range of products, from long-life to fresh. It is easy to forget what is still seasonal and what is available locally at a farm shop.

The convenience of the supermarket serves mankind. A packet of muesli, a shelf full of variations, flavours and colours. Is this what we as consumers really want? This abundance of choices, but also the price we pay for them. Who actually asked for this? We the consumer or did the supermarket take the lead and do we now allow ourselves to be (mis)led by numerous offers, cheap and undefinable food?

It now seems so normal that food travels halfway around the world and is then stored and distributed in supermarkets before we finally buy and eat it. But with the same ease, you can buy fresh local seasonal, organic produce from your local farmer or baker.

Comfortable living

Our homes come in many shapes and sizes, but what exactly is the definition of “comfort”? We have been ” eco-shaping ” our homes for years, with or without coercion from governments and ” sustainable ” companies. As long as your aim is to create an environment that suits you, there is nothing wrong with that. And if you also have a low energy bill as a result, that’s a good thing. But how far do we ‘have’ to go in this, and how far does our shelter ‘have’ to comply with rules?

In a self-sufficient life, it is important to know that you discover what comfort means to you. A comfort in which you are controlled by the rules a house must satisfy? Or do you make it your own place, where you can be independent from utilities such as gas, water and electricity?

There are plenty of ways to save energy and convert it into heat, or to store it. This is also possible without subsidies or other forms of support. The power lies in making your own shelter where you can eventually be self-sufficient. Of course it is not bad to have a gas connection and other utilities. But it is also important to ensure comfort if these services are lost or if you simply have to pay too much for them. And it shouldn’t become an obligation; you should be able to choose what you do or don’t do.

The pleasure principle

The final requirement for a good quality of life is enjoyment. We are all different and we find happiness, peace, harmony (or whatever you want to call it) in our own way. We are easily put in a box (whether we want to be or not, whether we are aware of it or not) and we may lose sight of the essence of enjoyment in life. You can only discover your joy by trying these things.

It is also important to remember that you don’t have to wait until you find your ideal home to start living a more self-sufficient lifestyle. You can start right now! The experiences you gain and the fun you have can be the catalyst you need to realise your dream of a more self-sufficient life.

Author:

Max

Humans have access to boundless information, we can express opinions, share knowledge and communicate globally. We used to get information from a handful of sources, news papers for global and national , local news was discussed at the church, pub or in the local paper. Behaviour was learned from parents and peers.

The world has changed, Fake news, endless political scandals, Cambridge analytica, Edward Snowdens surveillance revelations and the Panama papers are warning shots. Social and alternative media are taking a growing share of our attention but In uncertain times where do we look for truth?

Who can we trust?

Information is controlled by corporations, banks and governmentsMoney is controlled by corporations, banks and governmentsFreedom is controlled by corporations, banks and governments

Take a deep breath, that’s it, Breeeeaaaaattthhhh, Now think!Be honest with yourself and assign a number between one and ten to the questions below.

How much do you trust Corporations?How much do you trust Politicians?How much do you trust Banks?How much do you trust Bureaucrats?How much do you trust Governments?

Who should we trust to own, monitor, store, sensor, and control us?The answer is ourselves. It’s time consuming, it means questioning and fact checking. It also means working together to build tools and networks to ensure we can all communicate and trade freely, safely and with ought censorship or control.

What are we without Privacy?What are we without Ownership?What are we without Freedom?

Claim your self sovereignty, Hunt for truth, fight fiercely when morals are attacked. Without freedom of speech or original thought you will devolve into a pet at best, or maybe caged in a foie gras production line, your eyes fixed on a small steam of sunlight through a patch in the tin roof. The cold tube force feeds but you don’t want to consume any more, you know now this system was not for your benefit but for your owners. Freedom is a distant memory, you can barely remember why you traded something so precious. You pray for another chance, you would do anything to go back, fact check, think and control your destiny.

Few People truly fight for freedom of speech and those that do are often demonised. Their words are twisted and taken out of context and fed to the public.  Jordan Peterson, Dave Chappelle and  Russell Brand are among the last people brave enough to stand up for what they believe. People want to ban words, there is outrage from millions of individuals who are offended because today the subject discussed did not fit within there narrow view of the world. The people standing against them are trying to remind us that when someone says “you can’t say that”, they are wrong, you just did!

Own It

Own your words, thoughts and actions. Say whatever the fuck you want but be prepared for the consequences.If you don’t believe in free speech for people who you hate, fear and disagree with, then you don’t believe in free speech.

It is important we distinguish the difference between correct and political correctness.It is important we distinguish the difference between illegal and immoral.It is important we distinguish the difference between legality and morality.

Think before you allow the creation of more rules, regulation and red tape, after standing complicit or participating in their creation you might regret it. They will be sold as the best way to save you, the planet and the children. It will be so easy to just go with the flow, not to question anything relinquish control and allow rules and laws that harm many to serve few. Your masters will promise you strong steel shields for your protection, this is an illusion. In reality they will become cages of which you will die behind wishing for a second chance to fight. What if I told you I know of a tool that could break us free, I believe used correctly it can steer humanity towards a bright future with verifiable, programable trust recorded on an immutable record of truth. The tool Im talking about is generally perceived to be dangerous, delusional , dull or a combination of the three. I believe the reality is quite the opposite but almost nobody agrees so its likely I’m just crazy.

Have you guessed what it is yet?

Obviously, this is Bitcoin. After all, what do politicians, banks, bureaucrats and governments have in common? The control over money, in a fiat system that is corrupt and doomed to fail.

Don’t take my word for it.Do your own research.In case I’m not wrong, it might be worth checking considering the alternative.

Just a thought,

Max