Bitcoin Forum

Following the suggestion by several members that I should start a general chat thread in the Ivory Tower, I thought I would do it. So here is the Jet Cash coffee lounge chat thread. Please use it for general discussion, and avoid bashing other members, extreme political or religious views.  Treat it as you would treat a respectable coffee lounge in a respectable part of town. Many of the members here have awesome abilities, and interesting life styles - it would be great to discuss topics related to their skills and interests.

At the moment I'm taking a break from watching the charts as I try to teach myself about short term trading. Bitcoin is moving sideways, and I'm only playing with £50 -£100 positions, and I'm not using gearing, so my profits are in pennies. At least I don't seem to be losing money, so I don't think it's a bad start.

Another task for today is to add a few pages to my new site to help people in countries like Venezuela. I started this to utilise one of my domain names that I've been ignoring. The site is Oil Drum (https://oildrum.com/), and I feel that that is a reasonable name for such a topic. I know a woman who is supporting her family in Venezuela by sending money from England. I suspect that she doesn't earn a great deal, and she send Sterling vi a bank transfer. The family then exchanges this on the black market. I bet that there is quite a drop between the amount she sends, and the money the family is able to spend. Hopefully, I can help her to find a better way to transfer funds.

I like the idea of a general chat thread, and I hope that a couple of the members who are more popular than I am will be able to start similar threads.

Nice initiative. Let's hope we can get nice discussions.


Trading is certainly not my style, I am more focused on long term investing.
Recently I read a few pages of a nice book, Fooled by Randomness.

The author mentions some interesting statistics, which I will try to somehow summarize in a few lines :
He mentions that in the last 40 years, SP500 raised about 12% a year. (Average)

If you look at charts once a year, about 90% of the years the sp500 index was green, and 10% in red.
However, the more you look, the worst it is: if you look the charts every quarter , you will have about 70% green and 30% red.
If you look the charts daily, you will see 54% green and 46% red.

Additionally, our generation is now looking the charts every hour or even every minute. This is so crazy. If you do that, probably you will see 50% -50% , even if the long term is green.

This is how you are Fooled by Randomness.

After reading that I got more relaxed about charts..

Thanks for looking in. I've got some nice Earl Grey tea here, and we really need to find a way for me to share it with you - that would be the really innovative block chain. :)

I agree about the TA charts, and the long term holding. My real interest is based on discovery to optimise my accumulation. It is also interesting to get a feel for the way the market is being manipulated. I'm starting to become aware that volume graphs, order book depth, and EMAs are useful considerations when deciding when to buy.

I've never been much of a day trader, I'm just a holder.

I'm re-watching my favorite T.V. show The Office ( Us Version)

Eating some coconut and bananas right now :), I've never been much of a tea drinker, only way I like iced tea is if its loaded with sugar.  IF i had to choose between water and no sugar tea I would choose water.

I'm presently sipping an absinthe martini. Rinse cocktail glass with 1/12 oz Swiss absinthe (I'm using Duplais Balance), drain excess into shaker, add 2 oz London dry gin (Bombay Sapphire in this case) and ice, shake and double-strain. I don't normally shake martinis, but the absinthe benefits from the extra dilution. I also don't bother with garnishes, but if I did, a lemon twist would be appropriate. Duplais Balance, being a somewhat wormwood-forward absinthe, gives the drink a crisp bitterness that is strongly reminiscent of a Vesper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesper_(cocktail)), if you're familiar with the famous (and quite excellent) James Bond cocktail.

Speaking of martinis, do these drinks (the absinthe martini and Vesper) deserve to called such? What about vodka martinis? There are a number of people who feel that only gin and vermouth can properly be called a martini, but I feel these drinks are just slight variations on the same theme, so they're in the same category as far as I'm concerned. Certainly there are a number of drinks calling themselves "martinis" that aren't even in the same ballpark, but since we're trying to keep things civilised, we shall not discuss them.

You guys are so decadent. I've got such simple tastes - a good single malt scotch, or a fine dry champagne. However, I've virtually stopped drinking alcohol, as I seem to be driving several times a day. I'm also drinking far too much coffee, and I've started to add a pinch of sodium bicarbonate to cut down on the acid.

My trading wallets are long on fiat, and contain no Bitcoin at all at the moment. I'm expecting the price to slip a bit over the next few days. I'm tempted to transfer some Bitcoin out of my savings vault, but I must resist the impulse to sell, and stay with the idea of keeping it as a long term investment.

>>>>>>>

I need to do some research into restaurant seating. I've got a bit of back ache at the moment, and I think it is the result of spending too much time in McDonalds. I don't particularly like the food, in fact I'm a bit apprehensive about it, so I drink a lot of coffee. They provide PG tips tea, and that is a globalist rip off tea, and not very good quality. The benches are not conducive to good posture, and that might be the cause of the problem. I spent this afternoon in KFC, and they use Twinings tea, and I think that is of a higher quality. They also have chairs that provide a bit of support for the lower back.

Breakfast was poached eggs on toast with Clipper organic Earl Grey tea, and that was in the Morrisons supermarket cafe. I sat in one of the club chairs in the lounge section, and I feel much more comfortable after my break from McDonalds.

What does absinthe taste of? It's a thing I always get offered but never wanted to try...

I'm being bad also, I shouldn't have posted here without trying to key in the letters with one hand while the other is hiding a piping hot cup of tea that I'm drinking ;D (it's how a program ;) ).

I'm trying to accumulate mainly bitcoin also. I also have an interest in trying to improve the blockchain somewhat if I can...

Real absinthe tastes primarily of anise/liquorice with varying degrees of bitter herbs - if you've tried other anise-flavoured spirits such as ouzo, sambuca, or pastis, you've got the basic idea. Fake absinthe tastes like cheap vodka mixed with Windex, and I'm not even exaggerating. It's worse than mixto tequila.

Real absinthe has recently been quietly legalised in many countries following the discovery in 2006 that its psychoactive properties are due to its extremely high alcohol content (typically 60-70% abv) rather than its supposedly hallucinogenic herbs (yes, drug laws really are that stupid). Given this, I don't understand why the nasty fake stuff still exists.

I'll definitely join you for a nice single malt there Jet Cash - anything from Islay would be my preference. Lagavulin 16 is an old favourite, as is a Laphroaig Quarter Cask.

I have a couple of nice whiskies at home, and I'd always toyed with the idea of somehow sharing them with the forum - decanting in to 50ml bottles and sending a sample to anyone who was interested. Not sure how much interest there would be in receiving a whisky from a random internet stranger, however.

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There are lots of different lower back supports available - from belts you can wear to cushions that attach to the back of chairs. Might be worth making a small purchase for the good of your long term health. Chronic back pain is no joke.

I think less time spent in McDonalds, and more exercise is the answer. When the weather improves, I'll spend some time clearing my garages. Here is a pic of one -
http://jazzpics.com/_data/i/upload/2016/10/06/20161006072732-64bc424b-me.jpg

I've got eight like that.

A bit of swimming at Hayling Island will help as well.

Mcdonalds have gotten a lot nicer over the years.  The ones around me have updated their interiors and look quite modern.  Free wifi, so a lot of people write and do work here.

Not everything is unhealthy there, they have some decent menu options.  Sometimes you just want something quick and don't want to spend time cooking. :o

Wow, nice collection :P
What about putting the usable things on ebay? You can get rid of the unnecessary stuff and also gain a bit more capital to trade with :) win-win :D

Whatever you think of the Quadriga exchange situation, it has kicked some interesting topics into the public domain.
One id the fact that a single person had total control and access to the funds, and hopefully safeguards against this happening again will be built into the structure of other exchanges.

The other bit of information that has surfaced should have been obvious to me, but I hadn't really though about it. This is the death industry, and this seems to be fairly well established in parts of India. If you want to escape from a large debt liability, or run off with stolen assets, then a faked death is an obvious way to do this. In the past, people had to go through complex deceptions to arrange this. Car and aircraft crashes involving fire and alternative bodies were methods that have been tried. It seems to be a much simpler operation these days. All you need to do is to stay in a suitable town or village, and pay an arrangement fee. This covers a hospital visit, a terminal illness diagnosis, a death certificate, and the disposal of a non-existent body.

He could've died though. One of the treasurers here died with what I think was a few thousand bitcoin... His family couldn't recover the funds so they were just gone from the forum.

This isn't something that will quickly be resolved there might not even be a solution or anything that becomes possible from it. Still, if you're given a terminal diagnosis one should expect you'd give at least someone else access to the funds, even if it's timelocked.

I missed the £300 bull run today. I had the trading panel open, but it was in the background, and I was watching a couple of long political videos at the time. I completely misread the market, and I had a buy order open, but it was far too low to kick in. I'm still not sure that we are out of the bear market.

Well this coffee lounge seems to have gone  bit quiet. I guess I need to switch brands, so lets move away from talking about boring stats, and talk about off grid mining. Now that summer is approaching, I really fancy parking a camper van on the beach, and running a small mining rig from a solar panel.

Ignoring the delightful company that one can find on the beaches, swimming in the sea is a great was to gain some iodine. Iodine was removed from bread as a raising agent in the 1970s, and it was replaced by bromine. Just another way that the global eugenics lot try to reduce fertility and the population. Swimming in the sea is a great way to do your bit for humanity, and supporting Bitcoin helps to cope with the depredations of the bankers.

Could you recommend a small minig rig for off grid mining? What would you mine with that small rig? (I think you don't want to mine bitcoin with a solar powered small rig?)

I'm only just starting to explore the topic. It was only this afternoon that I realised you could run an ASIC miner from leisure batteries charged by solar. I don't look on it as a business venture. I would expect it is more likely to earn enough for an ice cream rather than a Lambo. The interesting project would be to mine alts, and save them in the hope of future gains.  I'd need to understand more about mining alts before I could comment on that.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case outside of the US. And inside of the US, people get more than enough salt in their diet to meet their iodine requirement, so there's nothing to worry about.

https://media.tenor.co/images/bca1e8b9c797f239b9a37243a8f9c810/raw

Pictured: Typical American cuisine. See? Perfectly healthy. ;D

Iodine was removed from bread in the UK. I buy Himalayan pink salt because it contains traces of Iodine. most table salt is refined, and contains additives to ensure it is free flowing.

Having some nice fish and chips is a good way to get more iodine, since it is found in high concentrations in seafood. It's also pretty plentiful in dairy products, so it's fairly uncommon to see true iodine deficiency in developed nations.

I like your optimism that "summer is approaching"! If you could tell that to the ice I had to scrape off my car this morning, that'd be great. ;D

Just checking the ingredients and apparently they now add sugar to bread as well :(. Id say that makes it more of a cake/biscuit now than actual bread...


I dunno, id get the fish and hold the chips. At a point about a quarter of the way through the portion you think (this is too bland).

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Under the salt discussion, the only way you can get salt that's healthy is by going to the beach and catching it yourself although you might end up with a lot of plastic too if you're not careful...
Table salt is almost entirely sodium chloride. Sea salt is potentially a lot healthier and is said to have a much more moderate taste although I haven't added either to food I've eaten so I wouldn't know.

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I saw a video of a guy doing a "hit or miss" tiktok challenge thing (as you can tell I know what it is) in a US airport and they thought it was a bomb threat...

OMG Jet Cash you need some Marie Kondo let go of that stuff! JK--- but my friends swear by her.
I've been in my RV full time for almost 2 years and had considered setting up a rig again when considering setting up solar.
Solar systems are not cheap (ha "solar systems" :-)), miners are typically power hungry, throw off a lot of heat and do better when consistently connected.

Reading this thread made me crave a BigMac but I'm a half hour from town
so I might have to settle for a nice glass of Port :-)

Resist the temptation of a Big Mac. Cooking al fresco is so much better for you, and it's a lot healthier. It's a lot cheaper as well, especially if you are able to buy the end of day offers in the supermarkets. I'm a great one for frying using coconut oil, or avocado oil if I can find it at a reduced price. I even fry Pizzas, and people seem to think this is mad, but I really like the taste when the base is nice and crispy. I'm not really a fan of Pizza, and I tend to add items to the topping. I can't resist buying on if I see the price has been reduced to 20 oe 30 pence.

This year I'm going to convert my Convoy van, and move into it full time. I've been experimenting, and I love the freedom. I've also bought a pellet stove to use as a wood burner, and that can be used for slow cooking with cast iron pots. I'm planning a communications centre at the moment, and I was going to try a bit of mining as part of that. I doubt if it will be profitable, and there is always the chance that if you do find a block, then your net connection will fail. I think I would need to hide the hammer if that happened. I think it is even more important to control your wallets if you are adopting an off grid lifestyle. A Bitcoin node must be one of the most demanding, but I have not had any real problems during the time I have been doing this. I had to go on grid to download the blockchain during the setup, but once this had synchronised it has been relatively simple to keep it up to date. It isn't even a problem if I miss a couple of days, although I try to run core at least twice a day.

Ha! No worries Jet Cash, this little rig is lucky to get 7 mpg so no unscheduled cruzing. I'm currently around the California central coast (lots of vegetable/fruit stands:-)).

Never had fried pizza, now it's on the to do.
A mobile Pellet stove, never heard of it. No propane heater buddies out your way? Either way make sure to install a carbon monoxide alarm.
I've been full time for almost 2 years and it's comfortable because I have just about everything a house does +some.
Usually hooked up to shore power (electric) and full hookups (water/sewer) with the propane for the fridge kicking in when I'm on the road and the alternator charging the back-up battery bank for short term "off grid"
LOL to the hammer...hide it from yourself because the fan noise might get to you after awhile and depending on the miner...it will sound alarms when offline :-)
Try mining in a pool ---> lots of how tos on this forum.

This is the woodburner that I bought. I think it is called a pellet stove because of its size, and you are supposed to buy fuel pellets for it, but I haven't seen them for sale anywhere. It seems to work well with kindling and thick twigs. I liked the fact that the chimney outlet is at the rear, so you can use it for cooking.. One problem is that it requires an 80mm chimney, and most stoves use 120mm. I'm using a flexible truck exhaust pipe, as I haven't decided where to install it yet. In fact I haven't really decided on the internal layout for the van. That will depend on the primary function for its use. It could be for touring, getting rid of my old possession, an off-grid comms centre, or a base for vintage machinery shows.

https://www.savvysurf.co.uk/stoves/wood-and-multi-fuel-stoves/pipsqueak-mini-wood-burning-bell-tent-stove.html

ps. The CO tester was one of my first purchases, and I don't use propane for heating because of the exhaust risk, as well as the fuel cost.

Just poking my head through the door to see what’s going on in this thread. I’m bored so thought I’d take a look.

I’ve got a log burner (you can put coal in it too) in my living room Jetty, it really, really heats the room up in the winter. Was a life saver last year but this year the winter has been quite mild.

I would put a photo on but I’ve added pics to FB & I don’t want anybody reverse google imaging or finding out who I am etc.

We had a CO tester fitted too, it’s never gone off though.

Do they sell testers for testers? That'd be a good idea ;D

Mine has a tester built in and it still scares the crap out of when I push it  ;D

It's got a test button, and has been said, it is a bit disturbing if you push it accidentally. It's also got a low battery indicator.

CO doesn't seem to be a problem with the wood burner, but it kicks off fairly quickly if I use one of those small butane heaters. I'm thinking of fitting a smoke alarm as well, but maybe I'm too fond of frying food.

Note on frying pizza - I fry the pizza on a medium heat, and put a lid over the pan. Fry it until the base is really crispy, and the topping has melted ( if it is cheese). I bought a couple of Hairy Biker ceramic frying pans, and I love them. They really are non-stick, and you just have to wipe them out after using them. The only disadvantage is that you shouldn't use them on maximum heat, and I suspect they would crack if you put cold water in them when they were really hot.

[UPDATE ON THE VAN]

What a nightmare this prop shaft bearing replacement has turned out to be. I had several garages turn the job down because the van is too high, and another because I had sourced the replacement bearing from a distributor in Lancashire. One garage turned the job down because I had too much stuff in the back ( I'm still messing with the computer stuff ). I'm not sure why that was relevant, as the prop shaft is under the van of course. I was getting to the stage when I thought I would have to do the job myself, but I've got a mobile mechanic arriving in an hour or so, and he is happy to work in the lot next to McDonalds, so that is ideal for me. It's a fairly simple job. you just need to split the prop shaft, and fit the new bearing. The only problem for me would be removing the old bearing, as I don't have a hub puller with me.

As you add more weight to the van, you will start exceeding what could be handled by the standard lifts in most garages. I used to work in an auto repair shop---thankfully because my guys will take care of basic things for the RV in a pinch---such as not charging me the $185-- it would cost for a basic oil change at a place like Camping World. In the future you can check out truck shops---basic mechanic shops (especially corporate owned) are not going to want to take on the added risk of something "out of the ordinary".
I'm a horrible cook, I finally disconnected the smoke alarm last year: it's 9 volt and hardwired.---> living dangerously :-))
It sucks to be stuck----hope they can resolve your issue soon

The van is still driveable, but I didn't want to go too far in it. I'm about 5 minutes away from a retail park, and next door to a McDonalds, so it's not too much of a hardship. I miss going to be beach at Hayling, and a few other things though. Still, I can always stay here and chat to you guys. I'm trying to learn a bit more about technical analysis as well. I'm showing a small profit on my trading - enough to buy a couple of burgers if I wanted them. But I'm only opening £50 positions without gearing, so it isn't going to be life changing.

I can't really give you trading advice, any money I made doing that was by "luck" ---having much fun and before FinCen stuff fully went into effect.
You could just move in and out of exchanges, each one adding new cryptos---if China said they were banning, prices were dropping,  people were freaking out --->you bought :-)
I never took my eyes off of bitcoin wisdom for long and watched too many regulatory meetings.
Thanks to the forum: I didn't lose anything on MTGox, didn't pre-order a butterfly labs Monarch and only lost a little bit of Doge, Nxt and a dusting of bitcoin on Cryptsy.



this little mining calculator was one of the easiest
https://alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator

there were a few with ROI... cost of electricity   … bs ...bs :-) but alloscomp never steered me wrong.

The HODL gorillas are coming out of the jungle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i40zf_Y6G58

1 sat for the military green gas tank if it ain't leaking.

Las Vegas Strippers Accept Bitcoin via QR Tattoos.

This has been posted before, but it seems to have become more popular. This is the latest article from Bitcoin.com
https://news.bitcoin.com/las-vegas-strippers-accept-bitcoin-via-qr-tattoos/

I wonder how they get confirmations before they move to the next stage.

Bear with my following stream of consciousness - there's a rational thought in there somewhere, I promise.

I've always though it strange that we say it takes 10, 30, 60 minutes for bitcoin to confirm like it's a bad thing, or like that is particularly slow. I think it's a failing of grammar on our part. Let's compare crypto with a credit card. I eat a meal and pay by credit card. It takes a minute or two with a card machine, and then my transaction is paid, right? Nope. My transaction has reached the credit card company's servers. It will take several days before the money actually reaches the restaurant's bank account. In that time, a lot of things could happen. I could call up and dispute the charge. I could claim my card was lost or stolen. I could claim I was defrauded. I could max my card out and not have the funds to pay it. Etc. Etc. There's loads of things that could happen in those three days that would leave somebody, either the restaurant or the credit card company, out of pocket for my meal.

Now, compare that to paying with bitcoin. I eat a meal and pay with bitcoin. It takes 20 seconds for me to open my wallet and scan the QR code. My transaction is immediately broadcast. In 20-30 minutes (usually, depending on the fees, block frequency, etc, but certainly nowhere near 3 days), my bitcoin reaches the restaurant's wallet. What can I do in those 30 minutes to stop that transaction happening? Launch a 51% attack on bitcoin for the sake of 50-100 bucks? Laughable really.

An unconfirmed bitcoin transaction is both a lot more secure and a lot more rapid to "confirm" than an "unconfirmed" credit card transaction. I think we as a community don't do a great job of explaining that to people. 20-30 minutes is lightning (pardon the pun) fast compared to credit cards, and a lot more difficult to reverse once broadcast.

So to answer your question, they probably don't wait for confirmations. Once a transaction has been broadcast, and you can see it's not been broadcast with 0 fee, you are quite safe to move on, provided it's for an everyday sum of money. If you are selling cars or real estate, then sure, wait for some confirmations first.

I'm not 100% sure but the others with better knowledge on the topic will correct me if I'm wrong, but some wallets have the possibility to re-broadcast the transaction with higher fee to a different bitcoin address. (If you have accidentally sent the bitcoins to somewhere and you realize it immediately).
Or, if I'm wrong and it's only possible to raise the transaction fee if you have broadcasted it with low or zero fee and you can only change the fee and not the bitcoin address itself.

You can certainly use replace-by-fee to change the target address of a transaction, by RBF is dependent on the sender setting nSequence to less than MAX-1. The merchant can make a stipulation that they won't accept transactions which are opted in to RBF, and if someone sends one anyway, they can refuse to accept it until it has confirmed.

There's great info about RBF here: https://bitcoincore.org/en/faq/optin_rbf/. I'd also draw your attention to the paragraph "Why aren’t unconfirmed transactions safe?"

As I said, it's not impossible to double spend an unconfirmed transaction, but for small value things like groceries or a meal (or strippers), it just isn't worth the effort and would be a lot easier to scam with a credit card. Of course, if you are sending or receiving what you would deem a "non-trivial" amount of money, then wait for some confirmations first.

Well it's basically a tip, so if the odd transaction fails it doesn't really matter. It may well be safer than leaving a cash tip on a plate, and then discovering that another diner has taken it. Or, even worse, having a staff box on the counter, and the only staff the get the money is the manager. I wonder when we will see a waitress leave a card with some QR codes on them for her tip.

What is more likely is that the girl flexes her leg ( assuming that is where she placed the QR code ), and the transaction fails as a result of a bad address. It won't be long before a stripper fits a near field reader somewhere, and just takes the tip as she sits on your lap.

If your into pop music its crazy the amount of hits Max Martin has produced in the past 2 decades, its absurd.  Just shows how the music industry is dominated by a small group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UViOO67BGZs

Paying with a card you are identified, so, yes, many thing could potentially happen, but you can be held responsible for them.

It would have to be a really "quick service" to finish before the transaction is confirmed. Once more, the sin comes with its punishment: If the transaction does not "confirm", the service could also be "not confirmed"... you know ....

That would be very cool: a QR code tattoo on a stripper, perhaps they could have a lighting system that goes off to simulate "making it rain"

I've given in and bought a pack of spiral bound notebooks for £2. I'm trying to do so many different things, that I keep forgetting settings and passwords. I've got into configuring the VPS that I've had for a year or so, and I've never used it, so I'm having to teach myself VPS management. I'm shocked by the hacking attempts that are being reported - anything up to 3,000 per day. I decided that I would lock it down as much as I could before I moved on to installing the new forum software to test.

I'm also interested in the Bitcoin price as well. It seems to be crossing a variety of indications and giving mixed and contradictory messages. The fundamentals still look strong, but I'm having trouble with working out trading strategies to reduce the cost of accumulation.

Bitcoin has fundamentals?

Wash your mouse out. :)

Of course it has, you only need to look at the way the bankers are trying to take advantage of it.

I've been doing a bit of trading in Bitcoin, and I've just opened a buy position at £2,960. I've made some small profits from my trading, but I looked through my recent history. I see that I've sold at prices as low as £2,620. I'd probably have made more money by just leaving my purchases alone, instead of trying to be clever and boost my holdings through trading.

A bit off from the current discussion, but are you really 77? :o

Maybe you are Satoshi?

Yep, and the first "computer" I worked on was and IBM 421 tabulator. I worked in the group accounts department for a major oil company in London. "programming" involved using plugging short wires into a plugboard to produce the output. I taught myself basic assembler, and moved onto 1401 computers when they started to replace the 421s.

Here is a picture of a plugboard

http://jazzpics.com/_data/i/upload/2019/03/11/20190311045929-55690548-me.jpg

btw - there is no off topic in this thread. It is coffee room chat, so everything goes except for fighting.

Hi Jet Cash, may I join this lounge?


I think I will never make money from trading. Hodling, maybe, but I remember the exact time when I sold a handful of my BTC at $270 back in 2015 because I really need the money for the wedding. No ragrets though, my daughter turns two tomorrow. Couldn't be happier!

Congrats - that is really the great thing about Bitcoin. It has given some people the chance to make life changing decisions, and to improve the quality of their lives. There is no advantage in having a wallet full of Bitcoin if you aren't happy and having a great life.

Yes, 100%! Here I quote something from my reddit account:


A response to a doctor's post that says:


I still encourage my friends to at least read about Bitcoin, specially now that Indonesia *finally* treats Bitcoin as a commodity that can be bought and sold.

Ah, you're a bit of old school mixed in with new school.  I hope to be exactly that if and when I get to be your age--most of my family never caught up with the internet revolution and sort of just let that pass them by.  Not sure how anyone functions in today's world without knowing the basics of computers.  

I also use a spiral-bound notebook for keeping passwords and other stuff like that in.  Then again, I'm a fountain pen enthusiast and thus enjoy writing as much as I can.  I usually keep all the notebooks I've used over the years, and it makes for interesting reading as time goes on.  I've found that my memory often fails me, but I can always tell what I was doing or thinking if I've left a paper trail, so to speak.  A notebook may catch fire, but it's not going to crap out and become unrecoverable like my last computer recently did.  That was inconvenient.

Hey, you changed your username.  Is that recent?

Ah, gotcha.  I just haven't seen you around in a while.

BTW, not that anyone here really cares, but I had to change my password when I got my new computer so it'll show up as changed on my trust page.  For some reason I didn't write down my password for bitcointalk in any notebook and luckily I was able to change it on my phone.  I thought I was going to get locked out, which would have sucked to no end.

July 12th, 2018. ;)

No coffee lounge can be complete without some Spanish guitar music, so here are some great tracks. I like the pictures as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rSapoh85cU

let's play this BTC song > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OydMZkUnBOc while chilling at the coffee lounge and reminiscing about 20k.

You have inspired me that photo is wonderful.

You have eight of them nice.

I have two sheds. A greenhouse and an attic along with a guest bedroom all need a clean up.

It's not quite as bad as that now. The battery was dead, so I ran it in as scrap. :)

Have a cup of coffee sapta, welcome friend :-)
Buy as much coin as you wouldn't suffer a great loss if lost, put it away and spend time with your little girlie.

Marie Kondo guys!:-)

Today is South American support day in the Jet Cash Lounge, so here is some Bossa Nova ( New Wave ) music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIRHvA4oulI
and as I'm a confirmed sexist, here is - Elis Regina, Águas de Março
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRqI5R6L7ow


and of course I need to include my theme song - Diamonds and Rust by Joan Baez.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MSwBM_CbyY

Follow it up with the Judas Priest version  as well :D

I can't get close to anything with Judas in it. I've just been watching Theresa May.

Whoops I was trying to keep politics out of it. Maybe I'll ask about woolly mammoths tomorrow.

It's your conversation you can talk about whatever you want;-)----I'll keep my political views on the Politics and Society board---although just about everything has become politicized.
You are missing out...Rob Halford hits those notes like you wouldn't believe

Well I hope conversations here are for all of Bitcoin Talk, and not just driven by me.

I watched this video about the woolly mammoth, and it made me think.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E8pNqVd1U8
There are people trying to recreate a woolly mammoth by cloning some remains. Whilst this may be intellectually stimulating, should we really be doing it? Where will it live for example? Probably in a glass cage in a zoo, and that is no life for an animal that nature created to wander through wide plains. Will they create a mate for it, or will it have to go though a lonely life without friends? If it was released into the wild, then it would be dead within 5 minutes. The poachers would have its tusks for a start.

What do you think, should we create one in the interests of science?

I saw that too.
Sometimes just because we CAN (possibly) do something it doesn't mean we should.

Pleistocene Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park) seems like a logical place to let them live in the wild.

Having said that, why? What benefit is to be gained from creating one? What will it achieve? I have no doubt it would cost an enormous sum of money to both create one, and to nurture and care for it through its life. Would such money not be better spent on protecting elephants, all of which are currently classified as either "vulnerable" or "endangered"?

Here is a true story from my life.

A good few years ago I bought a derelict farm from a property development consortium. It had an agricultural tie on the land, and they couldn't get planning consent for development. It was next to a large unused field, and the place was overrun with rabbits. There was one large black one that I suspect was an escaped domestic pet. He didn't seem to be a part of any of the rabbit communities there, and I decided to write a story around him. I used the farm as a collection point for my antiques business, and the place was full of things I had acquired from house clearers. One of the items was a sporty remote control battery car toy. My idea was that this black rabbit learnt to drive the car, and he used it to tour the area looking for does with whom he could form relationships. I was going to create a website as a pseudo blog that described his adventures and activities. I even registered a domain name -  Bang Bunny  (http://BangBunny.com). This is parked at the moment, and I really ought to decide what I should do with it.

Inspired by this thread, I just created mine (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5121289.0/). I'm officially signing into the Jet Cash coffee lounge thread. Hoping it becomes big like the Wall observers btc/usd thread and maybe we get our customer made hats or symbol someday  ;D.

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Jet, I can't wait to see how that idea of yours plays out. I know dogs can be taught how to rid cars (toy) but rabbit, that'll be interesting to watch. Hope you upload videos too especially from the learning stage to when he/she perfects the car riding. Good luck.

That idea was from a few years ago. These days he would have to be transgender, and I could not describe him as black. He would also need to be collecting carrots for leporine aid for rabbits living under oppressive farming regimes. Ar least he would be using an electric vehicle.

[note]
For anyone who doesn't use the word "leporine", I added it to the unusual words in the English language (https://fittotalk.com/english-talk/index.php?topic=323.0) thread in the Fit to Talk English project.

:-) teaching us native speakers English too.

Sorry I've been erratic again. I spent some rime sorting my truck and planning my future year as a digital nomad. I'm going to have to dump Windows at last, and I decided to install Linux Mint instead. Then there is the photography on Hayling Beach, and some other similar stuff.

Oh yes, there was brexit as well.

Watching Brexit as an outsider is tough enough. It is odd to observe each side (even in my country) debate against each other while completely missing that this should be the call to citizens: to seriously figure out how to scale back government interference in our affairs.

Life certainly seems to throw it challenges at times. I gave up trying to get a garage to change the prop shaft bearing, and I did the job myself. I don't really understand why nobody wanted to do the job, it was pretty easy. Only five bolts to undo, and replace the bearing, then bolt it back together. The hardest part was removing the old inner bearing race, and I ended up smacking that off with a hammer and a cold chisel. I took the truck for a couple of short runs, and the bearing seemed to be fine, so I decided to go to the beach at Hayling Island. Just after I'd run down the motorway, and across the causeway, I managed to shred the serpentine belt on the engine. I was about 20 yards from a garage, and I decided to get them to fix it. That cost me £190, as I got them to replace the tensioner at the sane time. The van is certainly running a lot better now, and I took it to the McDonalds just outside Portsmouth to get some breakfast and to talk to you guys..

[Thursday update]

I thought that I was on a roll, but life keeps throwing its challenges. I've now got a problem with the gear change linkage. I'm thinking of changing career to become a motor mechanic in my retirement.

That's rough old man! Did you make it to the beach yet? Rooting for you.

Has the term "black" become offensive or something now?  This is the reason I hate politically correct terminology--it keeps changing with the times, and any term you use to refer to a identity-sensitive group will eventually wear out and become naughty.  I cannot stand the term "African-American" because it does not describe a person in general terms.  The black person could be Canadian or whatever, and it just drives me nuts.

Anyway.  I just bought a nice Dietz lantern that should come in handy for power outages, which I'm now trying to prepare for.  I've been thinking lately about how my town had no power for about 3 days and I was caught unprepared--and it was freezing.  There was what the town called a 'warming center' where people could go so as not to freeze to death, and I had to go there to charge my cell phone.  It was truly an awful experience, and I can't imagine what Venezuelans are going through.  At least it's not really cold there, but they've got so many problems on top of the power cut that they've got to be suffering.

I also got a nice hand-crank radio with a light on it, and it's also solar-powered.  Very cool stuff.

I made it to the beach a few times, but I'm now stuck in a supermarket car park. It looks as if a retaining pin has fallen out, so it isn't a big job if I can find a new pin.

@The Pharmacist - I believe there is more destitution and desperation in the US, The UK, Columbia, The Yemen, Gaza, and various other countries than there is in Venezuela, but they don't have so much oil. This means the US doesn't have to destroy their power supplies, and try to block aid from other countries, and steal their gold and assets.

I don't know about that, but I'm pretty ignorant about world affairs.  The US isn't a destitute country in general, nor is the UK for that matter.  In any case, I did see news reports about Venezuelans running out of money, food, and everything else.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter to the average citizen of Venezuela how much oil they have right now.  It's got to be absolute chaos there.  I'd love to hear from someone who lives there and is a member of bitcointalk.  Anyone know if they're well-represented here?

During that blackout that I went through in 2011, I remember very vividly being cold and extremely bored.  I'd come to rely so much on technology for entertainment that when the electricity went kaput, it really sucked.  Plus it was winter, so there wasn't a lot to do outside.  I ended up making an olive oil lamp and going through a gigantic jug of pennies and separating out the 95% copper ones from the modern junk zinc pennies.  Talk about eye strain.

Edit:  Jet Cash, why are you stuck in a supermarket parking lot?

The roll pin fell out of my gear change linkage, so I couldn't change gear. I've ordered and paid for a part (£2.56 + VAT ), it's come into stock, and I need to get a friend to collect it.  I think the garage that fitted a new clutch for me, put the old pin back in instead of fitting a new one. They were really bad, and I paid £700 for the fitting of a new clutch ( dual mass ).

I'm accumulation a collection of spares for the time I become a full time digital nomad, but I hadn't thought of including roll pins.

It's really difficult to find out what is going on in Venezuela, as there ia so much misinformation. Conoco is going to try to seize some Venezuelan tankers I believe, and Maduro is going to try to run them past Chinese and Russian naval bases in the Caribbean, and Washington doesn't have many bases down there. That may be the next flash point.

[VAN UPDATE]

I'm starting to enjoy the challenge of "offgrid" vehicle repair and maintenance. The pin wasn't a roll pin, but is a bolt with a 10mm head with a smooth shank and a crew thread on the other end. The thread has a finer pitch than usual, so I'm glad that I purchased the correct part. The "grub screw" turned out to be the broken thread from the old pin, and it was easy to remove. The hardest part was fitting the new gaiter without removing the propshaft, and I still have to lock the top rubber flange to the gear lever bracket. I need to remove a plate, and I need to use a heavy duty Torx screwdriver to get it off. The screws will need a heavy duty driver to remove, but I have sprayed them with penetrating oil, and I'll hunt for my Torx set in a few days time. The gaiter is more or less in place,and it isn't fouling the propshaft or the gearbox outlet rail at the moment.

The gear lever has a pivot pin which is retained by a couple of plastic blocks, and one of those is missing. I wonder if that is why to linkage pin broke. You don't seem to be able to buy replacements, and I can't get confirmation that they are included in a stub lever replacement kit, so I'm going to have a go at making one. It isn't load bearing, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Bitcoin is the preppers friend, but so is knowledge and its exchange within communities. This is why sites such as Bitcoin Talk are important, and are becoming more so as we move through some interesting economic changes

That is not looking "fun" Jet Cash ;-(
How are you? Beach yet?

Yesterday wassn't the best of days. My second favourite McDonalds has introduced 90 minute parking restrictions, and the community centre has closed its kitchen for a refit. Windows messed me up big time with another stupid upgrade that I didn't want.

Right now I'm in another McDonalds, and I've installed the new SSD I bought last Boxing Day. I booted a Linux Mint ISO from a memory stick, and Ican't believe how easy it was to install. I'm posting this using the new setup. The screen is much clearer, and it looks as if it has revived my battery, so goodby Windows 10. I'll buy a case for the old drive, and move my nodes and blockchains onto the new system.

Now all I have to do is to remember all my passwords. I've set up Audacity, so I'll try to get some audio files onto Fit to Talk. Brexit and Bitcoin have been a bit distracting though.

I don't know what your housing market is like where you are but California has been out of control for some time. It is becoming more common for people who are making what most would consider to be a decent living to commute into city areas and stay in modified vans during the work week.
As more "dwellers" post themselves in parking lots, businesses change policy accordingly.
There are places with short time limits, who will tow and others who went the opposite way and allow days at a time.
I was paying 275-400 a week for a space in the Santa Cruz area...the first year was rougher than I wanted it to be.
I tried the Walmart parking lot thing once (that was enough) and stayed in my companies lot too many time for comfort...also when I found out that many homeless people liked to hang out in our parking lot for the free wi-fi

I've got rid of all my houses and the farm, and now I just have the garages. I need to empty those, and free myself from them as well.

I'm having a bit of a change in attitude. I've decided that it isn't worth trying to fight the deep state. One should just exploit it, and try to avoid the poisons and life threatening stuff it produces. I've just bought a 10" monitor from Amazon for example. It looks very good value, and it is just what I need to start using some of the stuff I got in the computer scrap clearance I did recently.

The switch from Windows to Linux Mint seems to be going well. I didn't make a current copy of the Bitcoin blockchain, and my backup is a bit out of date. I'm going to put the old Windows HDD into an external case, and I'll copy the chain from that over the weekend. I put a 2Tb SSD into the notebook, so there is ample room to run a node. There is a spare memory slot, and I should have bought some extra memory to double the ram, but that will have to wait until later. I still haven't worked out a method to run the ASIC miner, but that isn't a priority as it probably wouldn't have found any Bitcoin for me.

I'll probably put Kali on the old computer I revived. It is a small  desktop, and it fits into a laptop bag, so I can use that with the 10" monitor in McD and elsewhere. It will be interesting to explore their Wifi and do some penetration testing. I'm also keep to use something like WireShark as a packet sniffer. I'd like to know what sites are doing with my surfing and data transfers.

[SATURDAY]

Both items arrived, and I'm really pleased with them. I set up the external HDD, and everything is accessible. I can't run Core here, so I'll have to set up my node tomorrow, Probably at McD, as that has the most comfortable WiFi setup. I made a few video clips, so maybe I' do an unboxing and node move video.

The 10" screen works well when attached to the notebook. I'll try it with the mini-desktop tomorrow s well, and then I can decide if I wnt to load Kali on the machine.

It is unfortunate that mining discussions aren't as "live" as they were years ago. Most of time back then my questions could be answered without asking...and then I would ask stupid questions and still get polite and helpful answers almost immediately.

(Pardon the pun :-)) but you are increasing your own level of difficulty by mining on the go with equipment that may not be functional.
Though no one could have discouraged me from mining lucky me (another mining pun;-)) I was saved a ton of money and wasted time by having this forum and youtube as a resource.

 Running a full node from a stationary computer with constant power and decent internet pretty much took care of itself: Armory-->port 3333 (will correct if someone updates, it has been awhile and it's late here)

Armory is still one of the wallets I use, however; changes to core and updated versions can make for tense moments for us laypeople after not trying to send for a year.

Of course  having bitcoin to hold is awesome for those who can manage to do that but I also really wanted to know how it worked....spending, sending: you know "using it" as money.

This buggy was parked outside the cafe on Hayling Island. It is based on a 1970s VW beetle chassis, and the body is a fibre glass kit that popular last century.

http://www.mobileimg.com/mypictures/_data/i/upload/2019/04/13/20190413050928-55fb7999-me.jpg

ok so this is a pretty late reply to this post but a story like that does have possibilities.

not sure if youre aware of this but some remote control battery powered 1/10 scale cars have stupid amounts of power and very sophisticated adjustable suspension systems and adjustable clutches for differentials and motor coupling . they can reach over 70 MPH easily and some have 4wd. ive seen them do mud racing, hill climbs and flat out "1/4 mile" racing (actual 1/10 of a real 1/4 mile ~130 feet, and hit 70+ mph though the traps, thats what my r/c car did, and i saw cars that made mine look lame).

iow your rabbit now has a vehicle that allows access to many locations that can have interesting backstories to them. plots abound in such a situation.

I think the concept needs to be updated to include the new world of crypto. Maybe it should be a doe that runs a warren of ill repute for local bucks, and accepts Kitcoins. The Kitcoins could then be used to run a food bank, and to help orphaned rabbit kittens.

I would probably have got myself into trouble by featuring a black rabbit, especially if it wasn't transgender.

I'm posting this via the old desktop PC that I recovered. I'm using a 10" screen, and it's really challenging.
I'm also using Firefox, and the usual text adjustment doesn't seem to be available. I need to look into that. The good news is that I can actually read the text, so there can't be much wrong with my eyes.

OK - I've found the text size adjustment, so that makes life a bit easier. I don't really need a larger screen, as I just want to use this PC for penetration testing. There isn't any WiFi at the moment, so I need to buy a receiver with a suitable chipset.

Some chipsets can pick up signals from 300m away now, it's very interesting...
If you crack btwifi don't keep it to yourself :).

I started using Google pay and made myself look like a twat at morrisons as the contact less didn't work and the cashier looked quite old (don't think she knew what I was doing).

I quite like Morrison's at the moment. They seem to be trying to pull themselves up in the rankings by improving quality. I'm getting some stunning deals from the clearout shelves as well - 6 Burford Brown eggs ( normally £2.50 ) for 15 pence for example. They seem to be seriously challenged by technology though. As I have mentioned before, they have blocked their own splash page as having unsuitable content. They also block my sites because they picked up that I'm interested in Bitcoin, but they haven't blocked Bitcoin Talk. They've blocked coinbase pro, and bit blocks as well. However you can access them all if you use the Tor window in the Brave browser. They also promised to award an extra 100 points if you use their cafe ordering kiosk, that worked for about a week, but now it fails to give you the extras points. Those are only worth about 10 pence, so I haven't bothered to push the issue, sometimes I stay in the cafe for 6 or 7 hours, and I only buy one cup of tea.

I stripped the tablet, and everything thing is so integrated that it didn't seem worth trying to recover anything. A couple of the boards were fractured, and it isn't designed to be disassembled easily. There wasn't an SD or a SIM card in the machine.

Amazon sells a nice WiFi adapter for about £45. It has a range of up to about a kilometre, and it allows for full control of the chipset. I'll buy one and let you guys know how I get on with it, but first I need to sort out a few more things in the van.

If you send me a link to that I'm up for testing it. I could do with one myself and all amazon seems to say for me is "long range" without giving an actual distance...

I don't know about morrisons food prices. I went in for a load of bread and they seemed to charge anywhere from 49p to £1.50 for the same loaf of brown bread (you can guess which one I picked up).

Hi Jet Cash, hi everyone!

So I cashed out a little today and treat myself with a pair of nice riding shoes. It's very light and comfy (might be the best pair I've ever bought in a while, all of this possible because of Bitcoin!).

https://i.imgur.com/XefpCr6.jpg?2

*buying riding shoes while the bike build isn't even 100%*

https://i.imgur.com/EFLhqA1.jpg?1

Still need a few fixes on the frame and definitely going to make a new seat. Plus currently working on the DIY wiring since the original wiring diagram is too hard to understand or even look at. Already bought some wires, new flasher relay, and some new leds for the turn signals, might ended up with a new rectifier also. Maybe I'll finish it this month, hopefully, so that I can start banging the shoes on June when the rain season is over.

Last but not least, start 'em young!

https://i.imgur.com/jCjFrju.jpg?1

Hey there! I was amazed with this last one. It must have been an awesome experience to see your child reading something related to what you are passionate about.

What kind of story is in the bitcoin book?

It's a children book. Like A-Z about cryptocurrency so there's only funny images and a few words on each page. Got it for free from the writer back in Christmas last year. Check it out: https://www.amazon.com/B-Bitcoin-Graeme-Moore/dp/1999411102

This guys trading desk is insane, and he seems to spend all day watching all those screens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmrrWnZimEQ

Great job on having that book and giving it to your kid. Is it like A for ADA? I don't know. Just guessing.

---

Watched it but not yet finished. He said that he's been trading for 20+ years. Maybe an additional screen every year? lol.

ADA as for some tokens or something? Hell nah, A is for Altcoin. That generalize them all ;D

Altcoin, bitcoin, consensus...

$24 is expensive, id rather buy foundations of discrete math or programming for kids.
Dancemat typing is quite fun and free too if it's still going. I started on that when I was 5 it'll teach them how to type fast without looking (very helpful unless you're using a touchscreen).

It's the first time I heard of Dancemat. Is it this one? https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/articles/z3c6tfr

I remember practicing that requires you to download a program and it's color violet. I think Typing Master? Not sure

I don't think so, I just went on it. I see they've changed everything...

I didn't have to download anything now. Try tor it disabling noscript with an exit node in the UK...

You know, because of this conversation, I happen to stumble upon Typesy. I just researched what's the best typing tutorial/program that could make my WPM faster than it is now.

What's your wpm. Mine is 53 but I'm tired and haven't typed in ages. I used to have 70 but I'm not sure what's happened to that...

This is the dashboard of Typesy and my current speed is 40 wpm (this is with the training part). I'm currently at home keys and there are a lot of lessons to cover before evaluating the real WPM. With the test that they gave to determine my speed, it's around 50 WPM also. Target 110 WPM, we'll see if it's achievable. Lol
https://i.imgur.com/n8vuQR8.png

Thanks to you guys for supporting the coffee lounge, there are some interesting topics here. I was going to reply to JackG's bread post, but I would just be banging on about Iodine and Soya. The typing topic looks to be a bit more interesting. I can't really contribute to it though, as I am a self-taught, two fingers guy.

110 words is huge to do in a second. I probably can't think that fast though. Do they teach you do to that .

Typsey is also a paid service so I'm out already...

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@jetty I made a loaf https://i.imgur.com/N3SLaIkh.jpg

That children's book is really COOL!
I am just slightly faster than hunt and peck for typing---sometimes it's painful on the old lady hands:-)
In my 20's I spent DAYs reciting speeches while  training Dragon Naturally Speaking....lol

It never got as good as today's speech to text

This is my current standing after our conversation here.
https://i.imgur.com/Ps14lUb.jpg

I think what they are teaching right now is that you have to be consistent and the right ergonomic positions to do the correct thing and be consistent at it. There are a lot of fun games on it.

The price is not that high considering it's a lifetime payment thing, not continuous.

Sorry I've been a bit erratic recently. I've been giving a bit of priority to my mobile comms site - well clearing the van and preparing for it anyway.

I realise that I haven't done anything on the tunes site or my blog, and i need to put time into Fit to Talk as well. Hopefully I can do that later this week.

====>

Had a bad night last night. I'm touring Somerset, and I spent the night in a truckstop. I had a guy park nearby with a refrigeration unit that was going all night. I moved eventually, but I feel really tired this morning.

I had considered getting an camper van with a slider on the side...during my 3rd month someone parked next to me with one of those and were in and out ALL day and night...lol

I love my little rig!

Well I missed yesterdays spike in the Bitcoin price, I've got a few Satoshi in a CoinBase trading account, and I would have sold those if I had spotted the jump in time. I probably ought to leave a couple of positions open to take advantage of these jumps in the future. Maybe I'll move a bit more fiat into the account.

I've been a bit distracted by the problems with the read brakes on the van, and I'll fix them myself. Maybe I should take some photos, or make a YouTube video.

[update]

Well I tried to move a few hundred pounds into my account, and it looks asif I can no longer use Faster Payments. I have to initiate a standard bank transfer for a minimum of £1,000 and wit 3 days. Well that is a non starter, so I'll need to find another exchange that accepts Sterling.

This video introduces the golden ratio, and relates it to a variety of music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mozmHgg9Sk

This one is my favourite, and it is a simple creation for the keyboard. There are some nice visuals included as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJeGOw8TzQ

Here is an older creation for the piano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbEarwdusc

I transferred £500 into non-pro coinbase. It was a bit disappointing that they hold deposits for three days.

Pro sent me to deposit into a bank in estonia, I tried contacting their support but got nowhere so if you find somewhere else then let me know. Localbitcoins with cash deposits isn't bad though if you have a few banks near you, or you can deposit to coinbase by card.

That bread looks good - it's making me hungry.

I'm going to use the coinbase change to back away from (not ) trading, and tryt to revert to a more normal life. I was walking through the woods a couple of days ago, and on looking at a couple of branches, I though that they looked like an ascending triangle. It wasn't a problem, because there weren't any bears about, but it did make me think about the distortions in my current life. I might take a break, and underseal the van or something.

Do you know if it is easy to transfer funds between coinbase accounts? I might use that as a payment option for domain name sales.

OK - I had a look at coinbase, and it looks as if the only way would be for the seller to withdraw to one of my addresses. That might be even better.

I really need to investigate hardware wallets. My instinct is to rely on running a full node, and using sensible security precautions on the computer. I feel slightly uncomfortable about using a 3rd party product, especially with a Bluetooth connection. I'm sure this a self-imposed limitation, as so many people seem to be using these wallets, and they have obviously checked the security they offer.

I think it would really help you a lot because you only have to connect it when you are transacting. I recently obtained a Ledger Nano X and it works wonderfully, to me at least. I can make and manage my own transactions right on my smartphone. It makes a lot easier when you are on the go most of the time. When I think about worrying with bluetooth, you only turn it on when you are transacting, realistically, it wouldn't be open most of the time. That's just my opinion though.

I'm not that technical when it comes to the securities but no problems so far.

https://shop.ledger.com/pages/ledger-nano-x/

i really suggest a hardware wallet for any significant amount of coin. partly because of its ability to be recreated based with its seed words if lost/stolen/broken, and partly because of its "plausible deniability" feature of having multiple independent wallets on the same device.

that being said, ive run the core wallet on my always on windows desktop pc since 2011. desktop been rebuilt a couple times but the 2011 wallet has always gone onto it and is there now. i use it to receive mining payouts and occasionally send transactions to an exchange. so good computer security and common sense on its uses is the main thing if youre going to keep using a software wallet. i mention it because it seems someone always comes along and says using windows is practically a guaranteed way to get hacked. well *nix is better security wise but windows, when properly configured and updated is pretty good too.

not that i recommend running windows and a software wallet, hardware wallet is the way to go IMO. but it can be done.

i have trezor one, trezor t, and ledger nano s. i like the trezors best.

I'm not sure how much I like the hardware wallet. I bought 3 trezors so perhaps a multisig of the three would make me much happier from address collisions.

I have the trezor original, it's open source... You can get the chip printed by any company yourself and they use arm cortex v3 (I think) arm processors (the best processor company for security and privacy imo).

I currently have 25% of my cryptocurrency on an exchange so feel free to ignore anything that comes from me security wise...

---

My trezor is also good because I can store eth, ltc and btc on there and those are the main trading pairs I use.

The ledger blue looked interesting to me though and if you can multisig with a few hardware devices then it is obviously safer...

My issue with trezor (it might be the same with ledger though) is that the device doesn't seem to derive ethereum a addresses, you just have to assume your computer has it right which is a bit worrying...

(I can use my trezor from my phone and I want to see if 8 can plug both into a portable charger and get them to connect, rather than having to keep using my USBc to micro USB connector).

I've just watched this video, and I really want to do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viSJsOUCGu4

What a tremendous idea for a camping holiday

Drop into typeracer some time. It takes real sentences from various media (be it games, books, movies)

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From what I've heard, Trezor is king when it comes to the hardware wallets. :)

Might take a look at that one. I managed to fix my issues with a trezor, there's a button on the mew thing that says "show address on device" which I hadn't noticed.

It doesn't have many coins but since you can only use a limited number with ledger at once then it's quite good (although apparently ledger has a 100 application limit on the new version)...

There are only a few that are really of significance outside of BTC and XMR.

Most coins are there for whatever reason. First-mover bias and FOMO, I guess.

I've not used XMR, the coins I consider useful are probably BTC, LTC, ETH and maybe XRP (for its international use). Dash and Decred aren't bad but just seem to keep sinking. Everything else is pretty much useless.

Read into Monero, it's a very interesting coin.

There were also some that were focused on "pooling" computing power and cloud-drive space.

Most others are rehashes or stupid ideas (IOTA) that are completely unnecessary.

I think Basic Attention Token ( BAT ) is a useful coin. It is community based, and rewards content producers, and those who are prepared to be paid to view selected advertising. It also supports the Brave browser with all its privacy and security features.

Just as I start longing on bitmex, the bitcoin price shoots down and liquidates me. The ltc price (which I was expecting to have a negative correlation with bitcoin and an equal correlation with the dollar) has also been liquidated... I expected btc to go up so my ltc would be safe but it seems I was wrong... I'll tell everyone when I use bitmex again so you'll know what direction the price will be going in (the opposite one to the position I have ;D)...

I made a thread on a bear waves in the economics board, this is either a minor correction or a bear wave. Whatever it is, we have certainly had a summer from the prices at $4k.

---

I'm going to check out monero, is there a whitepaper?

@jackg https://masteringmonero.com/

I'm not doing any margin trading. I've got two wallet  classes- long term HODL wallets, and trading wallets. I only add to the HODL wallets. The trading wallets are used to speculate on the price of Bitcoin, and I buy when I think the price is going up, and sell when I think it has topped. If I'm holding Bitcoin when the price has dropped, then I don't sell at a loss, but move the coins into a HODL wallet, because I know the price will recover in the future.

I've been wrong far more times than I have been right. The latest case was when I took a 45% profit, and I should have waited to take a 145% profit. I've been sitting here with Sterling in my trading account, as Bitcoin went on its recent parabolic rise. It's just as well I'm taking a super cautious approach, and only dealing in actuals. I'm showing a reasonable profit at the moment, but it's a lot less than most of the guys I read about.

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I've just looked at Coinbase - the 1 hour candles. There was a £2,000 liquidation wick a while ago. We are certainly living in wild and interesting times. It's probably great for accumulation if you are cautious.

I've made 5 trades over the last month or so, all of which were profitable. The net result is that my Bitcoin holding in this trading account is about 42% less than if I had just kept the initial Bitcoins purchased.

There must be some sort of moral there. :)

I think that's the ultimate decision that you have or maybe only me? The decision between these two

• Keep my Bitcoins safe in a hard wallet and just never touch it (unless you have to)
• Instead of keeping my Bitcoins in a hard wallet, trade it and get profits from time to time then store in a hard wallet.

In both cases, could be profitable IF Bitcoin changes prices and on the second case, if you are trading it well. I don't really know the right decision between the two I guess it depends on the person. Maybe a risk taker or not?

Isolate into a cold wallet and a trading wallet.

I would consider it either going with the flow or trying to steer yourself, rather than risk-taking or not.

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There are clear trends in certain scenarios which can provide a profit or mitigate losses. Perhaps not always due to the current nature of crypto, but the ev is high enough to induce pragmatic trades.

I use Bitcoin core wallets for long term saving, and so far I haven't spent any coins from any of the addresses there. I put some "play" fiat money into a Coinbase pro account, and that is what hasn't made as much profit as my HODL accounts. I shouldn't complain really, as it has made a profit, and if I hadn't moved the money to Coinbase, it would be sitting in a zero interest bank account. Whenever I ended up with a Bitcoin balance with Coinbase, and I decided that selling it would make a notional loss, I just withdrew it into a core wallet. So for my efforts, I've made a bit of fiat profit, and I've added a few Satoshi to my long term stash. I'm still a long way from a Lambo though, even a second hand one.

I go a bit differently with my trading strategy than most:

I have some funds in cold storage and hardware (proabably about 33%).
I have another 60% in now risk investments (mining, and altcoin holdings).
And the final 7% is set aside for riskier trades (often with leverage).

Some of the golden rules I've discovered.

1. Don't keep your savings in an exchange account.
2. Don't speculate with more than you can afford to lose.
3. Don't beat yourself up if the price goes up after you have sold. Nobody ever went bust by taking profits.
4. You haven't made a profit or a loss until you sell, or close the position.
5, Don't follow the herd, and do your own research.
6. Don't use a dodgy exchange that won't let you withdraw your money.

7. The best move when you're gambling is not to play.^*

8. The bitcoin price can move in different directions on different exchanges (this happens pretty regularly especially when. We're quite volatile).
9. Check your profits in btc and fiat. If one is higher than when you started, you're still in profit. If you're down £30 but up 0.01BTC then it's still a profit (or I tell myself that at least) .

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My gambling strategy seems to yeild 25% profit on blackjack somehow (repeatedly)... I don't put much into it but its quite nice when I put a small amount on it.

Don't want to be a buzzkill but you've been charmed by Lady Variance.

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Unless you're a counter, even basic strategy only drops HE to ~0.5% (with good rules)

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Certain combinations of rules are +ev for play, but you have to know the game quite well.

Uston's APC system is actually not too difficult after learning it for a bit.

I'm too lazy to walk into a casino and also don't want to be seen doing it - I used to work with kids so it just looks weird as I see them and their parents around the area.

For now I'm using online bitcoin based games and it's great because you can resize the chips well and work out when youre most likely to make something on it (I've read this can't be done at brick and mortar ones).

I'm not aware of anything online that is good for counters. The best I've played at still only gives a pittance of a return.

What are you playing on?

Back in the early 60s, MIT and IBM ran a simulation using about 2 million Blackjack hands, and they worked out an optimal place. Rhis was basically a set of rules where you bet on the probability of the dealer busting. I got thrown out of Charlie Chester's casino in Piccadilly for using this method. Shortly afterwards, they changed the rules of casino Blackjack, and it was no longer possible to take advantage of this edge. It gave you about 1.5%, and slightly more if you counted cards.

With regards to Bitcoin, I think I'm going to watch the one hour EMA 12 and 26, and just trade the crosses, and I'll forget about emotion. It's just crossed bearish, but I'm already in fiat, so I can't take advantage of it.

It's fiddling with bet sizes instead of card counting...

There aren't many sites that will offer thst and I bet they'll switch out the deck every now and then...

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Try a low ish weekly ema too like the 15 or something. A lot of the TA guys think well go down to 21 so the 20 ema should be crossed... But they do have "moving" in the name.

I've gone off 1 hour ema. I've still got a buy at £7.885, and I might just leave that there to try to catch a liquidation wick. I'll probably move another couple of hundred into my account, as I expect a bit of volatility over the next few days.

I'm still pleased that I've been playing at trading. It has taught me a lot about the Bitcoin market, and its potential. I'm watching Krown at the moment, and he is having another bad hair day. I wish he would clean up his language, but he does seem to understand TA.

[sunday]
I'm also learning that no trading can be a good trade when you aren't sure of the direction that the price will take.

I managed to lose £1000 yesterday while trading on bitmex.

The first £500 went because I managed to cancel a trade that had gone through  (somehow) and the second went because it kept saying the queue was full and then executed all of the trades regardless, I was at £100 profit and then it couldn't close the order and shot up so I'm now speculating their server is buggy and slow because they want you to make a loss and them to make a gain...

My trading account will be limited to £20 on there until I can work out why it's so buggy (if it's something I'm doing). Stop losses finally work though on there.


I normally don't go lower than the daily. I think the 4 hour can sometimes be useful for some TA but most people use it in conjunction with the daily ema to try to work stuff out...

Good morning to all you lucky Jet Setters. It's the weekend, and time to reflect on Bitcoin and it's potential activity when the Monday traders  start playing on the exchanges. I thought that I would give you some relaxing Jazz music as a background to help you to work through the stats and reports.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io85zAxiA0E

I'm going to spend some time on the Hayling Island beach, so let me know how you get on, and what you think of my current buy order which is under £8,000 ( $10,000 ).

I think 8000 is a bit risky. The last fall was from 10200 to 9020.

I'd say we look like we could be forming a bear flag and if that's the case, my target would be around 8260 (the second pole doesn't go down as far as the first in this market)...

I've just sold with a hope to buy back at 8300.

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Nice jazz music, is this your new background noise? I do quite like the jazz genre (it's a bit like classical but more upbeat and thus with more texture/timbre).

I'm going to leave the buy order, just in case there is a flash crash. If it looks as if the price will never get there, then I can always cancel the order, and I haven't lost anything. I've decided that I need to clear at least one garage worth of scrap and rubbish, and I'll put the proceeds into my Coinbase Sterling wallet, and I can play with that. I'm still expecting a massive rise in the Bitcoin price later this year.

I want to do an analysis of the English economy as well. I'm seeing an increase in people living in cars, and some of the cars are only two or three years old. That must be really uncomfortable, and not something I would choose to do. A large converted van is fun, but a standard hatchback car must be really uncomfortable,

All of my possessions won't fit in a car...
I mean it'd probably take two lorries to hold everything I have at least but...

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I'm thinking of trying to experiment with selling casascius coins at auction in the UK. I feel like the greater fools theory might work there and they are quite rare...

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I think my blackjack strategy works by determining the likelihood of the dealer going bust along with a small amount of martingale (it gives you the first card of the dealer, if its a 5 or 6 they're quite likely to go bust after being tempted to hit on 15... But its a bit more advanced than that so I can't explain it so well...

This is the guy who did the initial research into the system that I used. He wrote the book " Beat the Dealer"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_O._Thorp

Keep it simple:
More low numbers = bet higher.
More high numbers = bet lower.
Never take insurance.
Never hit 12+ on dealer 3-6.
Always hit/double otherwise until hard 17.
Soft to 18 for dealer 2-8. Soft to 19 for dealer 9 to A.

You should know when to double down. :)

A lot of places don't let you double if you have more than 11.

Also, if you get 11 or 10 then double. And yes insurance is just throwing money at the dealer...

If you have two aces you might as well split also...

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@jetty who has the confidence to do this thing in person . You're a lot more likely to get caught too...

Yup. If you want to be more exact, double on 11 unless dealer has an Ace and you're not playing a <=2 deck table. Double on 10 for dealer 9 and below.

And here's another stipend when it comes to insurance:

Let 10-value cards be -9 and everything else 4. When the running total reaches a true count of 4 (i.e. total > 4 * cardsLeft / cardsTotal) you place insurance.

Always split Aces, never split Faces (unless you're counting).

Live counting is where the money is, though. The point to make is to make your bets fall in line with your character or current mood. If they are suspicious (i.e. stagnant bet size then sudden increases) then you will get caught.

I 4xed before in about an hour... It wasn't bad for the £300 I put in, I might keep doing this but I need to find a way to do it on a large online casino (so I don't feel as bad as the bitcoin casinos don't have much of a bankroll I don't think)...

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Card counting strategies look quite good especially for me who accidentally forgets to focus on the size of chips I use... I managed to lose £200 a few days ago because I daydreamed while running with my strategy so just kept hitting deal and hit until I repeatedly went bust...

I don't think card counting works with online casinos. The only people I know who have made money from playing in online casinos ( apart from affiliates ) are the pro poker players who start tables to draw in new players. They play with the casino's money, and get a %age of their winnings.

No it doesn't but there are a few other strategies you can use like actmyname said above which can be used to determine how likely they are to go bust...

There's also the thing of brick and mortar casinos or live online casinos shuffling a couple of decks together to get ahead of the counters....

It does work. But not as efficiently.

Most online places will have 8-deck games with a penetration of 4 decks. This means that to beat the variance you have to be quite lucky.

The highest true count I've ever gone up to (for only a few rounds) is somewhere around 8 before I got shuffled away. This was over the course of scores of hours, over multiple tables.

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Gamble for fun and adhere to basic strategy. Count if you want to... but it will detract from your enjoyment and if there's a marginal gain, it's not worth it.

(I believe it's somewhere like $5/hr with a 10K bankroll in online play)

I'm in the supermarket cafe drinking coffee, and waiting for the delivery of some more tools I bought from Amazon - A 150mm hole saw, and some stainless steel nuts and bots with nylon washers. I'm fitting a solar extractor fan to the van a bit later. I'm listening to some jazz piano music from the 60s whilst I work our what I plan to do with Bitcoin over the next week or so. I thought I would share these uplifting tracks by Junior Mance.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zEK76RHR4g

Junior Mance had his first professional gig in Chicago at the age of 10, and had an interesting career following that - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_Mance

Well here we are on Monday, and I seem to have misread the Bitcoin price movement once again. I have an open buy order at £8,995, and I thought we would have a pump and dump over the weekend. The pump was pretty weak, and the dump doesn't seem to be happening. I think we are due for another run up in the price soon, but the world political situation seems to be in chaos. It's even worse for me as I am in the UK, and the media puts their globalist spins on all the news. They portray the resignation of the treasonous remainer MPs as a disaster, but in reality Boris would have sacked them as he "drained the swamp". I wish he would do the same with the senior civil servants who are leeching the wealth and economy of the country.

So is Bitcoin going to be a safe haven, and thus increase in value, or will people take the misguided view that the US dollar is the true safe haven for wealth. I see that £4 million in gold has been seized as part of a drug payment, and they say Bitcoin is the currency of the drug dealers and money launderers. :) https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9549512/gold-bars-seized-heathrow-south-american-cartel/

I do think that it will pump again in some time regarding the past price, maybe this year it could go above the ATH?

We can never really be sure to what "event" or cause would trigger the pump but having the ideal thing maybe is that more adoption by the public? Yes let's say there are a lot of people who launder money, criminals that use Bitcoin, and then what? Are they the cause of the pump? If so it's always going to be the ultimate currency whether you are using it for good or bad reasons, it's still being used. More users, more people, would get it.

Aaaaand, it burns out. The cycle continues, dumps and pumps. There are a lot of questions in my mind, how long would it be a "safe haven". Could it be regulated? Would we want that?

At the moment institutions seem to be buying Bitcoin through direct deals away from the exchanges. One miner sells to an ATM operator for example. These transactions are not reflected in the price movements for Bitcoin. I wonder what will happen if a government or bank starts a major mining operation, because they aren't  able to buy coins without using the exchanges.

I thought this was an interesting fun video about crypto and cash in Australia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6D2EfnbiBI

I like how it used the memoji as an intro and during the time she talks. It's just an awesome way to use face technology.

As a gist to what I watched, it's like they are forcing the citizens to use middlemen (banks) which translates to fees, etc. I don't know what to feel.

Surely this idea justeans people will be buying cars in parts rather than the full car or doing something different but like that...

Today, I'll buy the bonnet of the car, tomorrow tgw wheels and the frame and then the furnishings. Each $9999.99.

Also this probably means that you can g wet a great discount on something being sold for $11000 😂.

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It is a nice win for crypto. Maybe they should make drugs seem more expensive too. A lot of common illegal drugs can be bought for half a daily food budget in this country... I think a weed joint costs about £5 here (not that I've ever actually taken it but I seem to be one of the few who haven't).

I see the Bitcoin price is  creeping up for the weekend pump and dump. I've got a sell order open at £8,996, and it's only £100 off. I'm hoping it will trigger, and the price will dump tomorrow, so that I can buy back in ready for the price increase next week. I'm not too good at forecasting though, so the price will either go to £8,995 and I'll miss the sale, or go exponential, and rush up to £12,000. That way I'll miss the big gain. Still, it's only a small trading account, my main holding wallet won't have any withdrawals for at least two years.

06/08 update:

Well the contract completed, and the price promptly went up, so I lost out on the potential gain. I think that we are on the edge of another substantial rise, so I bought back in again at £9,542. I'm down in Bitcoin terms with regards to just having held the coins and done nothing, but I've made a profit in real fiat terms, but again, not as much as if I had done nothing, but just HODLed.

Hi Cash...how´s that Brexit going? Still the devilish Etonians to be blamed for the 40% drop in the pound this year or may be is the world telling you that you may actually be mistaken?

I think it is good news. Most countries are trying to drop the value of their currencies to improve their trading positions. Trump is trying to drop the US dollar, and China is pushing down the value of the Renminbi to compensate for the Washington sanctions. It's mad that the Euro is staying strong - it has no future, especially as the current pillars - France and Germany, are on the skids.

They're stalling the judgement on the Robin Tillbrook case, and it looks as if it does have some merit. The application is based on the presumption that we actually left the EU last March. It will be interesting to see if Boris gives it a quiet push, as  a favourable ruling would get him off the hook over Brexit, and he could blame everything on the treasonous remainer - Theresa May.

I'm not sure how likely they are to get anything through parliament. Hopefully the EU won't offer another extension as it's killing businesses more in the termoil, than it would if we left without a deal (under WTO rules and the other treaties we have)...

A lot of financial institutions seem to be struggling too internationally. I asaw yesterday, a bank in denmark were offering negative interest rates on mortgages (-0.5%) I'm guessing this is because it's better to lend to people and get them stuck in debt or to have it so people think they're getting a good deal and add other charges to them... In the UK the banks seem to be happy to lend with a bit more risk too (and seeming to try to give people money at lowish interest rates - 1.5% or less - while offering no interest on accounts or a maximum of 0.5% - I'm starting to wonder if any of the interests will go negative at some point...)

Chase bank in Canada has just written off all credit card debts, and they are withdrawing from the credit card market. I wonder if any other major banks will do this. Somehow they need to lose the toxic debt in Deutschbank derivatives, and also the bad debts in the EU central reserve. They didn't pay anything for it in the first place, so I guess they can afford to just write it off. Maybe they need to steal a few more national assets and pensions first though.

So the devaluation of the pound is a good effect because it makes UK economy more competitive. It is like saying that if people are not willing to pay for my oranges, I just have to drop the price and that is good because I will sell more oranges. It is an argument I´ve read many times, in my own country, every time it looked bad they had to devalue, and every time it meant that our standard of living was once again lower than before.

So...I assume you plan a summer escape to Dorset if any, because in you leave the island you´ll be set back around 15% more compared to last year. Welcome to good news.

But I guess that if came to rationality there would have never been a Brexit anyway or, at least, it would have been an orderly retreat as opposed to a chicken farm. Rather than the news in the USA you may want to check about the numbers against Brexit. Boris can just try to force a crash for a closer view to those.


As likely as they were before the referendum and as likely as they were during May´s. Actually a bit less because they lost one seat to Liberals. Boris is just doing a finger point exercise because he knows it well.

Let´s be honest for once, leaving the EU was neither a bad not a good idea, as long as there was something to replace it with. It was surely going to be damaging short term, but now looks that it is going to be damaging short, middle and long term because the Brexit idea has not ever been even half baked and now the UK economy has to be sacrificed to the pride of the mediocre.


Rates have been negative for quite a while. Obviously Europe is also trying to play tricks to give some warmth to the Eurozone. There needs to be an economic downturn and a strong one, the indexes are sky high and there isn´t sufficient fundamental background for it.

There was the other issue that if you buy something in the UK it's rarely converted for the rate. If you pay 50 cents for something in Europe or the US, you'll likely pay 50 pence here (a but more than it is there) because people can't be bothered adjusting rates and it seems the same psychologically...

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I've had some sad cakes that still taste nice without much work so I don't think brexit will be all bad. It can't really be denied too that Europe was a way for the richer countries to subsidise the countries that were bigger (how the rebate was decided) while oceans or any other assets a country had weren't taken into consideration...

The real disaster for the UK was letting the City of London take overt control in the 1970s, and sneaking us into the EU to strip the country for the new Anglophone empire ( formally the British Empire ). Keeping a currency low is a rime honoured way to expand an economy. China did it by buying US bonds and other asset such as mining companies. The devaluation of the Rouble helped Russia to build its economy, and the Euro was created to avoid the revaluation of the Deutschemark. Our biggest problem after Brexit is that we will still be under the control of the City of London, and they will do everything they can to continue to damage the UK. The good news is their treasonous agents are becoming obvious. For example, John Bercow is an ex-Hambros banker, and was given the freedom of the City of London. His country of allegiance is the City of London, and not Great Britain.

You must be joking!

None of the people involved in the government do anything particularly beneficial for anyone other than themselves.

The bus travel in london is probably the cheapest anywhere in the UK (because it's subsidised by the government)... I've seen busses so full they've rolled back down a hill in order to get a running start before they go up it from the stop (and that company is certainly making tremendous profits).

I am beginning to think that the government ought to be split up (along with the country). We can probably split England into 6 pieces, it'd probably make things better if everything was handled locally as it should be. Currently, MPs spend most of their times in london - they're not going to work out what the problems are that they have to answer to and push towards parliament if the problems are 200 miles away.

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I'm testing out bybit, it seems quite a nice platform compared to bitmex it's just a shame I can't trade well :-).

I saw some news on the incorporation of bitcoin in the samsung phones recently - I'm guessing they've given up on their foldable screens that were too difficult to maintain in non-lab conditions...

Today's topic is "amor fati" this is Latin for the ancient stoic concept of loving your fate. and adapted by Nietzsche as an acceptance of the trials and tribulations that life throws at you. You should accept that any adversity is sent by fate to strengthen you, and you should embrace it willingly. An extension to this is the facing up to your fears, and confronting them for brief period. Many of us have a fear of poverty for example, but by living a life of poverty for a week or so, we can learn that it isn't as life threatening as we may have thought. Of course this is written as an Englishman living in England, and for me, poverty would be a life choice option in my opinion.

God I wish there was a manual with step-by-step instructions for reaching this kind of zen dimension - although I'd rather endeavor liberty and not depending of materialism than poverty... The fear of losing everything I've worked for - i.e. not the possession of money an sich - and therefore the urge to work and gain more, is a stress factor of giant proportion in my daily life.

edit: for a coffee lounge, this is a very profound and serious conversation topic indeed...

I'm not sure on the type of pverty you're thinking of.

If you have enough money to keep going (or getting a fixed income) then I guess material poverty might not be a bad thing as you are still able to survive. All you really need for survival is food and water, the latter is free if you can find a good source (the first is harder to come by free but it's still possible).

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An experiment was done a while ago where they gave a homeless guy £100,000. He had no neeed for the money and thus didn't really care where it went so he just started giving it out to other people and spending it (as far as I can remember)... What your fate is is based a lot on you, if you have some sort of shelter, some sort of food source and water then you're pretty much sorted...

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It's better than what I'd have turned the topic to, I was trying to leverage trade on 100x and decided that I could put a small amount in and then keep incrementing it if it went the other way. It started off as a good idea but I managed to keep alternating between hitting the buy and sell button so I was just absorbing the losses rather than adjusting the position to make for a greater profit...

Actually food is easier to find than potable water if you are not in the towns. You can obtain it in the towns, but that is a different skill.

There are degrees of poverty, and I guess mine is an assumed role. I've got a credit card with several thousand pounds available, and no debt on it. A debit account, savings and Bitcoin also add to my reserves. What I realised was that you don't own things, but things own you if you seek the trappings of wealth. For example, I have 8 garages full of stuff that I need to sell, and I keep putting off starting this as a project. Maybe I should post some items here - does anyone want a collection of stationary engines - you can have the lot for a Bitcoin. :)

I decided to focus on good health and a better lifestyle, and that is why I became a digital nomad. I can park on the beach, and swim naked in the sea when I wake up. Alternatively, I can park in the woods, and watch a couple of fox cubs at play under the watchful eye of their mother. I can harvest stinging nettles ( the healthiest vegetable in England ), and I even eat the raw young shoots. I sit in McD or KFC and watch fat parents feed their fat kids, and then use their crutch to help them to the disabled parking bay. Sometimes I see them throw away a half full bottle of Coke, and I may pick that up and use it as a lavatory cleaner. Coke is one of the most effective lavatory and coin cleaners, so goodness knows what it does to people's insides.

Ah, in my home town water is easier to come by as our town is built atop of a load of natural springs/water ways and I'm a couple of miles away from Buxton (the town has springs, the water might not use that water but there are certainly a lot of springs)...
You can drink water from reservoirs normally too (they don't filter it from there to tap normally).


Monetary poverty and material poverty are different things. Material poverty is much easier to live with and one you can have a choice over. I see no use for a credit card anymore, they used to offer cashback but now all there is is a promise you'll have to pay interest if money doesn't come out of another account in time...

I usually get £20-£30 cashback at Christmas time, and I don't have a charge for making US dollar payments. I tend to use it a lot, even fo a single cup of coffee, and it lets me monitor my spending. I make sure that the balance is cleared by the due date, as they charge around 14% if it isn't. In fact, if it isn't cleared by the due date, they just take it out of my debit account, so there are never any arrears. The reason I decided to start using a credit card was the result of finding I had a bad credit rating. This was the result of paying cash for everything, and never needing any credit.

I guess I'm really a bit of a fake, as I had to pay several hundred for a new clutch, and much the same to rebuild the rear braking system, so it is handy to have a few thou for those immediate emergencies.

I had a friend who said that true wealth is having time to spend on yourself. He was quite rich financially, but drank too much, looked ill, and had to multi-task a lot of the time. I lost touch, but I suspect that he is no longer with us.

I don't see why you'd want/need a good credit score. A lot of the time it's normally only bad if you pay in cash for everything and don't pay by card (even though its nicer to pay with cash)...

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It's probably the acidity of coke that's good for that, much like the acidity in your stomach (only about half a pH weaker than stomach acid) so probably quite a bit...

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There are a lot of cases where too much money seems to be a curse. If you've ever looked at case studies of anyone winning the lottery that'll tell you an extreme version of it. Other things are like how wealthy people buy cigarettes and drugs which also do a lot of damage to your mouth and throat (especially if smoked/snorted)... Even alcohol can cause a lot of issues if you can't work out your limits.

There are a lot of reasons why you would want good credit scores in the bank. One main reason why I want to improve my credit score is that it could allow me to have a better chance of approving the high amount of loans in banks. Why would I want a loan? Probably to start a business that could get me off the ground and to the success I want. I'm not yet there apparently but that's my long-time goal, and with the help of a good credit score, it would make it easier.

Some less critical thing that could maybe act as your goal to increase or improve credit limit are rewards given by the credit card company that you have. It's nice to have little incentives along the way.

It seems to affect quite a lot of services that you might want to use - car insurance for example. A bad credit score can also bar you from some premium services such as Amazon and mobile phone offers. It may also be essential if you want to rent a car in an emergency.

Ahhh, I've always seen it as "if we give someone a number then they'll work to make it better and take more loans" maybe that isn't the case at all...

You are severely miss-informed about Transport for London finances, and that´s a shame because it is all publicly available information.

I'm picking up an old rotavator on Saturday. I'm getting interested in converting old appliances into alternative tools, so I might try to convert it into a lawn mower. At the moment I'm experimenting with using some bits from an old microwave, and using them to weld copper wire. So far, I'm not sure that it is better than soldering, but it might be useful if I wanted to weld an earth onto a stainless steel plate, or something like that.

On a lighter note - I've just added the Bitcoin rap battle to my Bitcoin tunes (http://bitcointunes.com/) site.

The opinionated junior manager that I don't like at McDonald's is off work with chicken pox. He has all his vaccinations to weaken his immune system, so of course he is vulnerable to all these new strains of the old infections. It goes to show that you are much better off if you work with nature, rather than trying to fight it.

I dunno some vaccines like the MMR worked to help control strains of the disease, like cow pox did a while ago.

Chicken pox is a fairly normal disease to catch too (especially if he hasn't had it before) it's not like McDonald's isn't going to see its fair share of kids with the illness (although it might go some way to stating the hygiene of the restaurant)...

(the fud from the MMR was brought up by a guy selling a rival vaccine that just did measles and his scientific research was about as good as any TV show - 6-10 "random" (specially selected) people to prove something.

I've been in Somerset for a sew days, and it has changed my Internet availability. I really must put together my digital nomad site to give some tips and reviews. There are lots of free apples available, and they are proper English apples - not the French pap that the EU forced on us. I cooked some "sops in wine" apples yesterday. These are old English pink cider apples, and they are great. It's such a shame that these are only available through private orchards now, but that means they are usually free to locals.

The Wifi in the picnic area cafe is rubbish. I was there for 2 hours, and only managed to do about 10 minutes work. One of the McDonald's has a 90 minute parking restriction, and a £100 fine if you stay longer. The other one is on the edge of the city, and the parking spaces are too small for my van. I'm in a Morrison's cafe, and the Wifi blocks the port to synchronise my node. I'm 5 days behind, so I decided to tether to my mobile. Windows is still being really slow, and I'm going to have to switch back to the Linux SSD.

I'm here because they have Amazon lockers, and I need to buy some tools to work on my van before the winter sets in.  The solar extractor is brilliant, but it was really hard to get a 120mm hole cutter at a sensible price. I ended up buying one from China with free shipping. Now I need to install my wood burner before the winter arrives.

I've decided to restore the vintage power weeder, and I might take it to some vintage meets with some of my other old equipment next year.

Ah, I've been watching youtube videos recently from a guy that had a film about one of his teams (called the "holy rollers") and it's quite interesting. I have a long break next summer so I ought to practice counting over the year and try to test my skill at some point. He seems to think you should be able to make 2%/hour with a risk of ruin at 2%.

I thought I'd come back to this quite to say I found a blackjack simulator online and it doesn't look like you can beat an 8 deck shoe with 4 card penetration as the simulator says the house edge falls to around 0.28 (from about 0.7%) but isn't completely nullified (but I'm not sure on the accuracy of that simulator but it did have a lot of detailed analysis (and it was just playing with a bet spread of 1-20 so 1-100 or something might yeild better - but it did have ~440k hands played so the randomness was probably accounted for).

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The guy I mentioned was from blackjack apprenticeship.com, they do have a free course and he seemed certain you don't have to pay for the course unless you want a consultation and a few extra things thrown in... There's a lot of resources on card counting.

That simulator is probably accurate if you're forced to play a minimum bet (with a maximum bet cap) to stay at the table. However, in many online casinos, you can simply hop in and out, and at some of the places that I've played at, I can just do a "seat reset" by quickly 'standing up' and 'sitting down'. This saves my seat for the ~2 or 3 rounds of idle time.

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Buy Million Dollar Blackjack by Ken Uston.

If the house edge is at 2% on average and there's 100 hands/hr, then you will be able to hold a RoR @ 2% with somewhere around 200 units.

Yeah a lot of the ones i've seen like you to watch when the table is full with the added function that you can bet on the player you think is most likely to win so that probably works well as long as you can get in quickly (for card counting, the house edge from the simulato will factor in the time you're sat at the table and the true count never turns positive or it is only positive for one or two hands and you're sat there for the rest of the round with the odds against you)...
 

Never bet behind.

No I meant it works well for trying to count if they allow you to watch the tables.

I want a new camera = https://www.fujifilm.com/products/digital_cameras/gfx/fujifilm_gfx100/

Come on Bitcoin - get to the moon, so that I can buy one.