Announcement: Dec coffee meetup, originally scheduled at Denim Mechanicsburg for Sun, Dec 28th, has been postponed. Stay tuned for announcements about 2026 events!

Greetings bitcoiners! Our next meetup is a monthly coffee event, which we're holding the fourth Sunday of every month at varying locations. This month is at Denim Coffee in downtown Mechanicsburg. With Square's new seamless integration of bitcoin payments into their terminals, Denim is now accepting bitcoin! Check out btcmap.org for other Square businesses also accepting bitcoin. Come join us on Sun, Dec 28th, at 1pm! This week, the first of the two Samourai wallet developers will be reporting to prison to begin serving his 5 year sentence. Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill are the brains and brawn behind Samourai wallet, a mobile bitcoin wallet that bitcoiners have been using for a decade. Like other self-custody wallet software, such as Sparrow, Blue Wallet, and Nunchuk, Samourai doesn't take custody of funds. A key feature of such software is that the bitcoin remains in your own custody the whole time. The developers have no involvement, nor do they have even the ability to be involved, with whatever transactions the wallet makes. A difference between Samourai and these other wallets: their developers had a penchant for writing spicy tweets. It's the persona that the developers maintained online, and the notoriety they achieved among the community, that made them targets. People who champion the promotion of bitcoin's NGU (number go up) property tend to be very well-known, even outside the bitcoin space. Champions of promoting bitcoin's other wonderful property, FGU (freedom go up), tend to not be as well-known. The Samourai devs can be thought of as the tip of the spear, so to speak, of the FGU crowd within bitcoin. Bitcoin is for anyone, of course, and there are many others who also promote FGU; Samourai were among the loudest of the bitcoiner voices who publicly advocated for privacy being a fundamental human right, and made privacy tools within bitcoin easier to use and more accessible. Calling Samourai money transmitters is like calling Hallmark money transmitters because they make cards and envelopes that people use to send cash, and every $5 that a grandparent sends to their grandkids is unlawful. Would the justice system go after Microsoft if they learned that a drug dealer had used Excel? Keonne, who actually lives in Western PA, has been on several podcasts recently. Coin Stories, TFTC, and The Bitcoin Way are a few that have interviewed him. I really want to believe that our justice system operates in good faith, and would never crucify someone based on political convenience or an incentive to bolster one's portfolio of prosecutions, even when evidence points to the accused being innocent of the crimes of which they've been charged. This sequence of events makes me think otherwise though. Don't take my word for it...please listen and decide for yourself. Keonne Rodriguez on Coin Stories:  TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast: #692: Free Samourai with Keonne Rodriguez 

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TFTC is a podcast hosted by Marty Bent about Bitcoin. Join Marty, Editor in Chief of "the best newsletter in Bitcoin", as he sits down to d...

Both Bill and Keonne plead guilty to one of the two charges, with the other being dropped as part of the deal. The details of why they thought a plea deal was in their best interest is explained in the pods. At this stage of the game, a presidential pardon is their only shot. There's a link to a petition on https://billandkeonne.org if you're interested.  The intent of putting these people in a pillory for all to see is to make an example of them. They want people to be fearful about developing software that increases privacy, using such software, or more broadly, living their life in a way which every detail of their lives isn't exposed for all to see. Something tells me that the prosecutors of this case, as well as the judge, have curtains or blinds on their windows. There's even a chance that they close the door when they're in the bathroom. Why? Because privacy is a fundamental human right. Keep stacking sats, keep stacking skills. Hope to see you on Sunday, Dec 28th, at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg! @Lonelypumpkins Bitcoin in the Burg 1. Provide value to others 2. Spend less than you earn 3. Save in a money that can't be printed by someone else for free

Greetings bitcoiners! We have a coffee meetup this coming Sunday, Nov 23rd, 1pm at Elementary Coffee in Harrisburg. This is a new location for us that we're looking forward to trying. Hope you can make it! Keep stacking sats...keep stacking skills Bitcoin in the Burg 1. Provide value to others 2. Spend less than you earn 3. Save in a money that can't be printed by someone else for free

Greetings Bitcoiners! Thanks to those who came out for our hike and wings event last weekend! It was an awesome day for it, and we hiked even further than intended, reaching the Peters Mountain Shelter. Total distance ended up being about six miles. Bravo! We've got two more events on the books for 2025, both bitcoin & coffee events. We're going to be planning on having a coffee event on the fourth Sunday of each month, and our goal is to alternate locations month by month. In two weeks, on Sun, Nov 23rd, we'll be meeting at Elementary Coffee in Harrisburg (flyer attached). Then, for December, we'll be at Denim in Mechanicsburg. Hope you can make it! Last week, the current executive administration, as confirmed by the FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency), is working on a plan to make 50 year mortgages a thing in the US. Why would they want to do this? Because home ownership is becoming increasingly out of reach for the majority of the country, and longer loan terms make for lower monthly payments. Fun fact...15 and 30 year fixed rate mortgages are not naturally existing products. As Americans, it seems like they are, since they've been around and available to us for our entire lives, however they don't really exist outside of the US. In most of the world, if you want to get a mortgage with greater than a 10 year term, ARM's (adjustable rate mortgages) are your only option. A little real estate finance 101 lesson: as opposed to a fixed rate mortgage, whose interest rate stays the same for the entire duration of the loan, the interest rate of an ARM adjusts on certain intervals to come more in line with current rates. For example, a 5/1 ARM means that the advertised rate will hold for the first 5 years of the term, and then adjust every 1 year thereafter, to a rate that's more in line with current rates. This can mean that your mortgage payment can potentially increase substantially on a given year...anyone who signed up for an ARM prior to 2020 can attest to that. ARM's are lower risk for the lender, since they periodically sync up closer to current rates, which is what banks are paying interest on. So why are long term fixed rate mortgages a thing in the US? Who's on the other side of the deal with all of these people who have them? If you guessed Uncle Sam, you're right. The US government creates the required demand for long term mortgage paper, buying them through government sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's a great deal for banks...they can sign people up for long term fixed rate mortgages, collect all the fees and closing costs incurred, then sell them to Uncle Sam. This creates (artificial) demand for 30 year paper, which allows certain Americans to finance home purchases on longer fixed rate terms than naturally exists through supply and demand forces. Why is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac willing to step in and buy this paper? It's another way of money printing, and it keeps the music playing in our game of economic musical chairs. Because of constant dollar debasement, people use real estate as a store of value. This makes home prices vastly exceed their utility value. In 1970, it took 2.4 years of median US income to purchase a median US house. Said another way, if the average US worker wanted to pay cash for a house, they'd have to save their whole income for 2.4 years to buy it. How about now? The trend is definitely intact...that figure is now 9.1 years, over 3x the 1970 levels. If it were 2x, that means that the home that could be purchased by a single income household now takes a dual income household to purchase. Even with dual incomes, we can afford less home today than we could with a single earner family in 1970. A 50 year mortgage would make for slightly lower monthly payments for a home compared to a 30 year loan. However, that it's even being brought up is symptomatic of how distorted our economy is in the US. A tale of two economies...2024 marked two new highs for Americans: more Americans than ever before vacationed internationally, and more Americans than ever before visited a food bank. Financial machinations such as the 50 year mortgage will perpetuate this bifurcation. Keep stacking sats, keep stacking skills! @Lonelypumpkins Bitcoin in the Burg 1. Provide value to others 2. Spend less than you earn 3. Save in a money that can't be printed by someone else for free

Great hiking event yesterday! Coffee hang scheduled for 2 weeks from today.