I'm starting to see new mining operations rated in MegaWatts, and I'm not sure of the reason. There is a lot of FUD being pushed about the energy consumption by miners, and I wonder if this rating is intended to reduce the creation of new mining operations. I can understand that MegaWatts are significant when calculating the running costs of mining operations,but is it an important consideration for the Bitcoin economy? Surely the MegaHash rating is more significant. I'm aware of the importance of the efficiency of mining rigs, and the recycling of the energy used in running mining equipment, but this doesn't seem to be a consideration in these reports.

Why is he sending you 3.5 Bitcoin? Did you sell something, or is it just a variant of the Nigerian scam?

It looks as if you are the only one who thinks he was telling us that his cat has fleas.

I worked for Shell international in the 1960s, and they developed a product to do this. The greatest problem they found in turn deserts into arable land is the shifting surface, as this prevents plants from laying down roots. They developed a sticky fertiliser that they could spray over the land. Once you have trees and bushes with roots, then they help to retain the ground water. They had to give up though, as the locals pulled up all the plants and burnt them to warm themselves in the cold nights.

If you want to increase exposure, maybe you could put a link in your sig.

Don't be too discouraged, and I'd be happy to work with you if you do want to try something. My primary interest was to get members from non-English speaking countries to contribute to the English boards, and this is why I paid for a domain and hosting to allow me to help with the post translations. I'd be really interested in doing something to help Islamic members discuss the use of Bitcoin in their countries. There is so much misinformation flying around at the moment, that it would be great to get some opinions from the people who are affected by the bellicose bullies.

I thought it was becoming accepted that Satoshi was/is a team on individuals from the banking/defence world. At best Craig Wright will just be a red herring that they have thrown into the turbulent crypto pool.

Thanks for mentioning that. I offered to help non-English speakers to post in English as well through The Fit to Talk English project, and many members were able to gain merits through creating interesting threads. I've made a few posts there recently, and I would be prepared to revive the site if there is any interest.

For me. the most interesting recent change in Bitcoin is the large new mining farms that are starting up in America, and are being funded by corporates. If any new member wants to research that and start a thread, then I be pleased to consider that for merit awards. I rarely have fewer than 200 sMerit available, so I can guarantee rewards for non-plagiarised threads and posts. If you are not a native English speaker, then send me a PM, and I'll help you to build a good opening post.

Of course, the use of Bitcoin in countries like  Iran and Venezuela would be interesting as well, especially if you are a native of those countries.

I've got a couple of pages worth of IPs logged. All are from the UK, and most state that the city is unspecified. Where the city is specified, it is incorrect, and can be anywhere in England. Only one is correct, and that looks as if it was the result of my tethering through my mobile. I can't see any benefit to me or the forum from recording more than the last couple of IPs.

I'm using public WiFi rather than Tor.

I think the corporate investment in large mining farms in the US is more significant. It's something that I predicted, and I believe that it is the start of a new phase in Bitcoin, as major investors and bankers look at ways to acquire Bitcoin,and manage their own transactions.

I think it was created by the central banks to experiment with a potential replacement for the dying fiat currencies. The long confirmation times, and the 21 million cap ensure that it can never become the dominant world payment system.

I'm down to about 500 names at the moment, and I've been neglecting them. I got the hump with Sedo because they wouldn't pay out in Sterling, but I might revisit them. Name Silo used to pay out in Bitcoin,but they've stopped doing that now, and that is a bit sad for me.

Not this again.

Lets inject botox into it, and have big lips in signatures, or should we have tattoos all over the posting area.

The only "facelift" that it needs is the cropping of quotes.

It would be a waste of bandwidth. If you want the prices for trading, then you can get better info by opening an exchange window. If you aren't trading, then the hourly price changes don't matter.

It is quite difficult to find meritable posts, especially if you don't have time to visit all the boards. If one finds a member who hasbeen a consistent and productive member of the forum, then it is easier to award merits as a block in a single post. It can make it difficult for newer members to understand that the merits have been awarded to the poster, rather than the specific post.

As has been stated many times, itis better to focus on the benefits derived from being an active member of the forum, and not to chase merits just to gain rank.

Any future world war will be done between drones, or engineered climate change. The difficulty for the US is that it has neglected it's home infrastructure and security. When you think of a war against China, remember all the Chinese takeaway restaurants across America - how many of those contain sleepers. Also the elite rulers have been encouraging the cross fertilisation of radical Islamic terrorists, and I doubt if the US knows how many are resident in the American mainland. They will take the conflict into the American interior, and the people will suffer. The banking elite have already made provisions ro save themselves. It will be interesting to see if some of their private islands come under attack if there is a major conflict.

I have never sold my sig space - the domain name mentioned in my sig is owned by me.

Has anybody mentioned that the current fiat system is a centralised virtual digital system already? Renaming it, and calling it a blockchain based currency won't really make any difference. What will make a difference would be the return of currency generation to the state, but I can't see the banking elite allowing that.

I'm still punting between restaurants, and using their WiFi, so bandwidth and power are factored into the price of my coffee. Running a node doesn't seem to make much difference to my surfing and web maintenance either. If it helps the network, then I'm happy to do it, even though its effect might be negligible. If a WiFi provider leaves the ports open, then I assume that he has no objection to my running a node.

I really started this thread to encourage others to run their own nodes. It improves your security and convenience in my opinion, and we need to support the Bitcoin structure as we enter a challenging decade for crypto and banking.

I've been running a couple of full nodes for a few years now, and I just use them to maintain wallets. It tend to fire them up daily, and then shut them down when the chain has sync'd. Would it help to preserve Bitcoin integrity if I left one of them running all the time I am online?