Yeah. Not a particularly novel idea. Oh well.

During the months of lockdown, a sharp division emerged between people who work with information—images, words, numbers—and people who work with objects—shelving groceries, delivering packages, nursing the sick. The former can shelter in place and communicate through screens, but the latter have to venture out into the physical world, putting themselves at risk of infection...
...As technology makes it possible to escape more of the burdens and dangers of physical existence, this class and professional divide could deepen into an existential one, with a virtual elite being served by an embodied working class....

I’m still a bitcoin purist and this place is mostly for shitcoins now.

Don't call me a party poop, you fucks.. but here goes:

I am not clear regarding how much of his investment portfolio he decided to put into bitcoin, and at his age, I am not even sure if he can confidentally assert that he has a 5-year investment horizon.  So I would have a hard time recommending even my common asserted range of 1% to 10%, because with such a likely short investment horizon, he should not be considered as really investing, but instead gambling on the shorter term, and of course, he could end up being correct... but I don't really agree with gambling, especially for 83 year olds... so just given the fact that his investment time horizon is likely only 2 years, I  would recommend 1% to 3% for the average 83 year old, and maybe only a higher portion if he really could afford to lose the whole amount invested because he is otherwise way more wealthy than he can even expect to spend, then if that is the case, then maybe he could go above the 3% range - and surely, he would be in a better position to understand his situation than me, but I am just responding to the general idea of an 83 year old and based on that picture he does not necessarily look like he has any kind of genetic gift or perhaps luck that would allow him to have an investment timeline that is greater than a couple of years, at best.      

In Bitcoin’s case, it’s Bitcoin that’s observing us. As I’ve argued before, starting at around block 300,000, I started noticing that Bitcoin was becoming self-aware.

You can use your BTC stash as collateral for a 5% interest rate personal loan - borrow $10,000 with $40,000 of BTC
Celsius.network

I've earned interest with them for a year now, a good business.

Did you know Anne Boleyn, the Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 was a Bitcoin advocate.

Ok.  Let's play with $2million.  I was not referring to any movie, and sure of course, if you are  talking about 1974 as compared to today, then you have to 3x the referred to amount in order to get somewhere close to 2020 dollars.

I do believe, however, a person can live decently well off of $2million, which would provide a passive income of $6,666 per month.  That is assuming a 4% withdrawal rate that would largely allow the withdrawal of appreciation while maintaining the principle.

We have had this conversation before, and of course, you are not going to have any kind of baller lifestyle on $6,666 per month, but it should be enough to get by pretty decently as a kind of passive income, and surely, $2million is better than $1million because it is double the amount of $3,333... even $1million is doable in some parts of the USA and of course certain parts of the world will even allow for better living on that amount of passive income per month.   We can agree to disagree if you believe that entry level of fuck you status is absolute more than $1million, because I know all kinds of poor fucks who live off way less than $3,333, and some of them live off less than $1k per month and are able to get by, so $3,333 is going to be much better for them, than $1k, especially passive income.

Of course, many of us consider that we want to have a cushion and all those kinds of considerations that involve volatility and making sure that we are planning based on worse case scenarios, but if we can assume either $1million or $2million in principle that is steady, then a lot of people are going to be bat shit excited by that level of principle to be able to generate their 4% per month of a withdrawal rate that would produce $3,333 per month for $1million and $6,666 for $2million.

I have been there.

O.k.  Let me see if I can attempt to 'splain my assertion to you.

There are a lot of people who don't have shit in regards to investments or savings (even if we account for home ownership, too), and surely having any kind of investment portfolio is going to be a whole hell of a lot more than many people, even in the US of A, where we have way more access to credit and financial services than so many people on the planet. However, many of us still have a lot of difficulties building some kind of investment portfolio.

So, in that regard, even just having a mediocre investment portfolio of $1 million or $2million is going to put these kinds of people way in front of the vast majority of other people, whether we are talking about silicon valley or other places in the country.    And, for sure, the cost of living for any particular area is going to hamper the extent to which the accumulated amount of wealth meets either "fuck you" status or "filthy rich" status.  

There are places in the world in which $1million or $2 million, and maybe even some places in the USA (so long as a guy/gal has fairly humble needs) would allow a kind of entry level "fuck you" status, even if there might be some questions regarding future value of such dollar denominated amounts, but there still might be ways in which a BTC portfolio might have decent chances of being able to outperform the value of the dollar in terms of maintaining its value in dollar denominated terms.

<part deleted>

Hello, I have been reading every single answer to this interesting post. This is because I have also been framed by Bitmain with those S17+ antminers. I have some background in electronics and analyzing those intermittent failures that these miners have just got me a little confused, specially during a time that I checked control boards and data cables by disconnecting back and forth. At times the miner was full throttle mining just to drop after few hours. That in electronics is called a "cold soldering". Although there are not visible cold solderings I discovered that the soldering material that is being used on this S17 have 2 problems.

First, high amount of lead and low proportion of tin, and of course zero silver in the soldering material. This can be observed under the microscope used to soldering circuit boards. All of the solderings showed a greyish mate color and no shinning finish.
 
Second, below normal temperature of the soldering material, also leaves traces, specially on the hashing board chips. Also analyzed under the microscope there are traces that look like an sponge along with tiny cracks surrounding the chip's area at the surface of the hashing board.

So, this takes me into the conclusion that somebody at Bitmain's is trying to cut ends and by doing this they have compromised 50% of the S17, T17 series. The use of soldering with high percentage of plumb just tells me that they are throwing the cheapest crap they have to solder the components on those miners. Also they are trying to reduce electricity costs by not heating well enough the soldering material melted at the trays and this is specially true because the soldering material with higher proportion-ratio of lead instead of tin and silver takes colder temperatures to melt.

So taking all this into consideration I really recommend to all of those that are willing to throw the money into shipping costs, customs fees and no mining income, just don't do it because Bitmain still uses the same bad quality materials to fix it.

Since that soldering material is all over the hashing and controller boards is just a matter of time chips keep coming off the boards, the only and costly solution is to desoldering them all and soldering back with a good quality soldering flux, other than that those miners will keep failing over and over.

Basically most of the S17 series are doomed.