Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!
We've got our monthly meeting scheduled for this upcoming Sunday, June 22nd, at 1pm at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg.
Some news items...
US Department of Labor no longer discouraging holding bitcoin in retirement plans: Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement, “We’re rolling back this overreach and making it clear that investment decisions should be made by fiduciaries, not DC bureaucrats.” I'd take that a step further and say decisions should be made by sovereign individuals, however it's good to see that the DOL is taking their thumb off the scale in this regard. A few short years ago, among most fiduciary or financial advisor circles, it was disallowed or considered a faux pas to even bring up the subject of bitcoin to clients, let alone recommend an allocation to it. Now, the tide is shifting, and the opposite is becoming true...it is becoming a faux pas to not have a portion of clients' portfolios in bitcoin. Self custody is always preferred, however, financial advisors aren't going to recommend things that aren't in their wheelhouse (or, being cynical, don't make them money). If a car salesmen knows that a specific Chevy model is the best fit for you, and he happens to work for a Ford dealership, a Ford is going to be what he recommends. People being able to purchase ETF shares in their legacy retirement accounts, and being encouraged to do so by financial professionals, is a step in bitcoin's path from 0.2% of global assets (where it sits now) to 2% (parity with gold) and beyond.
TFTC launches "Opportunity Cost" browser extension: This new browser extension from Mary Bent, host of Tales From the Crypt and Rabbit Hole Recap podcasts, senses when the fiat price of an item is displayed in your browser, and displays the value in sats along side. This is reminiscent of a site that came out a few years ago that shows the bitcoin value of certain items over the years (warning, potentially NSFW).
Bitcoin Core removes -datacarrier option from their node software: As the "spam wars" continue, the Bitcoin Core team is taking another step towards removing user options for how they relay transactions. See the newsletter from May 21st regarding the op-return debate...this is another facet of this mess. If you run a node and aren't a fan of these changes that Core is implementing, you can exercise your freedom of choice by either running an older version of Bitcoin Core, or by running a non-Core implementation such as Bitcoin Knots. Not your keys...not your coins. Not your node...not your rules.
Solo miner mines a block: a solo miner found a block two weeks ago and was paid 309 million sats by the network. Usually when a story pops up that a solo miner found a block, which currently happens every few months, the presumption is that it was someone who's running a single machine at their house. In this case, however, it was someone who had rented a large amount of hashrate (mining power) to the tune of 260 petahashes/second. How much mining power is that? Well, the beefiest machines that a home miner would be running these days is in the ballpark of 200 terahashes/second. That means this person was running over 1000 machines when he found this block. How much would that cost to run? Well, if you have typical PA residential power costs, about $13k/day. The solo mining pool they used, soloCK pool, suspects that they were renting the hashrate. Although this person found a block, it's doesn't quite have the same panache as when someone running one machine at their house finds a block. Interesting nevertheless.
Don't understand what bitcoin nodes are, or why people run them? Don't understand how bitcoin mining works? Coming to a meetup and chatting with bitcoiners is a great way to learn these potentially intimidating topics. And, we have things to learn from you too! Every bitcoiner's path is unique, and every bitcoiner started out as a humble nocoiner.
Hope to see you on Sunday!
~Lonelypumpkins
Central PA Bitcoiners
@Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners
