I have a soft spot for Galveston too.  More the town than anything.  It might be the most terrible beach you can visit on the whole gulf, but it still has some charm

Houston gets a bad rep... and it is a big overstuffed, flat, hot city like Dallas... but you are right about the trees!

It has been in the teens the last two nights.  Big deal down here.  I have opened my cabinets and dripped my faucets.  But I think we are past it now.

Indeed your thoughts about Texas are seeming true.  Their performance during the pandemic shows that in real time.  Texas took the pandemic seriously, but did not push to limit freedoms as badly as other places.  Still possibly too much for a period, but I personally can give a pass because we did not know what we were dealing with at first.  As we began to see what it was the restrictions began to fade in my state and that is a good thing.  I think in retrospect Florida (like Sweden)  was the clear winner as to policy and making the best choices.  But I think there was clearly some risk in that approach.  But I am quite proud of Texas.  It has weathered this better than many other places, as can be seen by the massive exodus of Californians to our state (boy if they start voting in the Gavin Newsom type nonsense it's gonna make other Texans pretty pissed lol).  i think the bitcoin stuff is just icing on the cake.

As to the beauty of Texas.  That's a mixed bag.  Almost all of Texas cities are built in fairly boring places.  And I live in the least beautiful of them all.  But Texas DOES have wonderfully beautiful areas (and a LOT of flat boring desolate areas). East Texas looks like the Southeast with pines and other wooded areas.  The southwest (El Paso to Rio Grande) is stark and desolate but super beautiful with areas that almost seem like they belong in Colorado (Alpine) .  The "hill country" where Austin is has some charm, as well as San Antonio which has it's famous river.  And parts of the Gulf coast (North Padre in particular) are gorgeous.  The panhandle (Midland to Amarillo) is a wasteland, and I would not suggest it for the nature, but Palo Duro canyon out there is like TX's own mini-Grand Canyon.  It's amazing.

So by sheer SIZE Texas has LOTS of beauty.  The problem is the distances you need to travel to see them!

I think the highway interchange you mentioned is what we call the "High Five".  It could really be SIX as there is a cool bike trail that runs under all of it.  WHY do we have that?  Because the only place I have been to that has traffic like the loop in Dallas did/does is Los Angeles.  That huge interchange is amazingly busy.  I don't know how much time Bob spends in Big D, but I imagine he can attest.  I have been here 30 years, and used to drive over that interchange BEFORE it was upgraded/enlarged.  It was some of the very worst traffic in the US... every day.  I have never noticed any swaying up there though.  Maybe I will now? Lol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Five_Interchange

I get your point... But do we really think Banks, which may end up holding large amount of Bitcoin are going to park it in single sig addresses?  That would be incredibly foolish.  But as I said, your point of them wanting to have total control... yeah... I get that part.

I am poking the bear with that.  But I do also mean it...  As I said C is better for science (and cooking which IS science really) for sure.  0=freezing 100=boiling.

But 0-100 in F represents a (less exact) useful range of general temperatures for the outside environment with better granularity in between at the unit. 0=cold as hell and 100=Texas.  with 60-80 being a nice 20 point comfort zone.  But you only get about half the whole number granularity with the "science numbers".

If we can only have one scale its Celsius all day long, obviously... but the good old fahrenheit still has a place, I think.

I heard a rumor about a particular blow-hard loading up with the intent to pump Monero.  I do not think this rumor is true.  And I also think I found the BS it was based on.  It could be extremely good for XMR price in the short term as this particular clown has a lot of mojo (that he does not deserve at ALL as he is an idiot).  So it's win/win really...  If he was doing this it would fall into the "there is no bad publicity" category, but we also don't want his stink on it.

But I think you are right... this is just a micro alt season.

But we are standing on the threshold of a huge Bitcoin awareness explosion.  It is turning into big news all over the world.  Idiots (like this asshole) will get tied up in NFTs, and a few of those will actually make money, I guess... but that is all part of what we will see.  Most of us went through our "alt period" in our Bitcoin journey, and a few of us degenerates have not let go of THIS particular alt for various reasons.  I know some of us like all kinds of alts... but I am more of a Maxi.  I think Bitcoin is really just about the only thing that matters.  With "just about" being super key there...

The good news is, just like some of us saw Monero and said "Oh, Wow... that actually does something unique and needed", and a lot of folks are going to come to that same conclusion eventually.  Monero is inevitable, really.



xmrig -o 127.0.0.1:18081 -u 49XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX --coin monero --daemon -t 30  <- aiming 15Kh at the network.  One day a block will pop.

---

Wow... a 54% increase month over month, and XMR has moved into third place in use (at coincards.com) after BTC and ETH with Ethereum having only about 20% more TRANSACTIONAL traffic than Monero in February.

This seems fairly significant to me.  This is a measure of non darknet real world use, with Monero being used in quite a bit!  There are several chains that are having HUGE amounts of traffic as they cram all sorts of ridiculous data (NFTs, game data, etc) on their blockchains.  But these chains (other than ETH) are not being used as a form of money.

I think Bitcoin was wisely designed to do exactly one thing very well.  Smart Contract/Web3/Panopticon chains are force centralizing for foolish, in my opinion, use of their blockchains, but Monero, like Bitcoin has chosen to do exactly ONE THING and do it well.  I have thought since 2014 that Monero will be able to co-exist with Bitcoin as we go forward.  I know some folks think it could topple Bitcoin.  That I think is ignoring that Bitcoin does it's one thing better than Monero. (And vise/versa)

I do find it mind boggling that DOGE is being used more than lightning lol.  I really think the next crop of Bitcoiners will be lightning native, particularly in emerging countries. But I betcha Monero keeps a certain market share.



[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

A sitting senator bought a whole corn!  (Ovbiously)  What do you mean that is not much!  Now the other senators will start to want one... and then they will start reading about it... and then some (like that one) will begin to see...

And then...

The move in politicians with some of the trailblazers getting into this is awesome to watch.  It's not that the politicians ultimately matter to Bitcoin... but having a growing number of them on our side?  That is good news.

I have not always been much of a Cruz fan, and I swear it's not JUST the Bitcoin stuff that  has won me over.  But he is on the leading edge of politicians to be able to see why Bitcoin is not just WoW money that uses more electricity than Christmas Trrees or whatever...

In fact I am getting prouder of my state in general as being on the leading edge of this in the US (not discounting good old WY and AZ)

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/winter-storm-descends-on-texas-bitcoin-miners-shut-off-to-protect-ercot.html

https://financialpost.com/fp-finance/cryptocurrency/texas-governor-abbott-turns-to-bitcoin-miners-to-bolster-the-grid-and-his-re-election

So, we are in the middle of another North Texas Ice storm. (Hope everything is good at the farm Bob... you're getting a decent stress test for your plumbing! )  And the people here have been experiencing PTSD from last year's "icepocalypse" as we called it.  I have kept this old part of my ~100 year old house as a good luck totem.



When it happened last year there was SO MUCH structural damage ALL OVER Texas that I am sure some plumbers are STILL WORKING a year later from damage that happened during that storm.  Our structures are not really built for the combination of 12f/-12c weather and power outages that basically cause the whole damn state to freeze at once.  We are built, rather for 9 month summers that go to >100f/40c (I am translating from the sensible fahrenheit to the non weather sensible celcius for you Europeans and lovely brave Canadians (HONK), although I agree the US are cavemen as far as the metric system goes F is just better for weather, while C is great for science or cooking.. anyway never mind that).

The grid failures were actually caused by a greed explosion during the cold snap last year, but the whole state has been trembling over the last couple weeks preparing for THIS storm.  And the news has been very fear based over the last week until the last couple days where both local and national media has switched over to the "bitcoin miners are saving the grid" narrative.

It is a sight to be seen.  On top of that we have several gubernatorial candidates (including the incumbent) making Bitcoin a plank in their campaigns. Including a couple challengers saying one of the first things they will do is make Bitcoin legal tender.

Still the most mind boggling thing is the amount of "normie" media talking about Bitcoin saving the grid this time... AND the clarity and extent to which they are GETTING IT.  The articles are not as stupid as Bitcoin articles usually are.

Unfortunately I cannot see this lasting forever...  The powers that be in government and the media will not take well to this amazingly sensible narrative and will shift back to their "boiling oceans"/"more than Norway" bullshit pretty soon, I am sure.

But Cruz, and several other TX politicians are GETTING IT.  They see why Bitcoin is important.  Even some of the nuanced stuff like how it will help the energy sector.  With TX being the energy capital of the USA it makes perfect sense that we will also become one of the mining meccas.  We have such expansive space for large solar/wind farms that can be justified by a base demand of Bitcoin mining.  This is going to be explosive growth here.

As a synergistic corollary the amount of Bitcoin Illuminati that have descended on Austin (for some reason??? but it has been a Bitcoin locus since ~ 2011) is also helping push this as the government also realizes that Texas is becoming one of the states that is attracting the industry in multiple ways.

Mind boggling for me to be watching this happen, frankly.

Well... you know...

I am not putting the clown suit away just yet.

Anyone out there hear the rumors that might be driving this little rally?

If they are true it will piss me off a little, but will undeniably be good news for Monero... I guess. Lol.

I really do not want to say anything till i verify this some more... I suppose I will go take a gander at reddit.

@Jack leaving Twitter has had several impacts.  Mostly bad. Though I am not really a @Jack fanboy.  Just cautiously curious as to his eventual effect on Bitcoin...  Here is another one of those downstream things, though:

The $100 trillion dollar question.  (Hat tip to good old PlanB)

That is the least satisfying answer ever... but reality often is.   I accept this possibility.

This is interesting looking buying.  I am looking at volume across SEVERAL exchanges.  Usually when we see this it is primarily at one exchange with much less volume (proportionally) than the others... But THIS action is happening pretty much at all the exchanges.  Either a lot of people are buying organically at once (this implies news) Or a really really rich mfer bought up the order books to a certain point at all the exchanges.

The latter seems odd.  People planning to make big purchases are not going to go to all the trouble of loading up at several exchanges and then hit the MARKET BUY button.

So I am assuming there is some news we have not seen yet?  Guatemala?  Ecuador (have seen some there, but not really enough to do this?), Something else?  Or just a whale that DGAF?

Also this thing looks like it's prepping for another leg...  c'mon corn!

I take back all the nice things I have said about you!

Just kidding... but yes, this would be a nasty bull trap.  And there is currently more chance of that than the breakout we are hoping for... but let's see.

NICE!  El_Dude!  I think you need to warm up the truck!


OK... I wanted to find the link but I cannot.  But I read this tweet from a dude that has bought a house with bitcoin from someone and the way he is paying for it is something like this:

Pay the equivalent for $200 in BTC Every X hours for Y days until ~ $480k  This method conquers the variance for the seller, and allows the buyer to take a risk that his final payment might actually be less BTC than if he did it all right now (or, of course more).

The reason this really struck me, is I think we are really only scratching the surface of the sorts of absolutely GAME CHANGING financial opportunities BTC is going to give us.

Paying a mortgage by the hour!

We are still early.  But honestly?  I am starting to see the end of saying that...  Soon we will still be *fairly* early.  I used to shrug my shoulders about "hyperbitcoinization". 

Not anymore.

Everyone knows I am the poster boy for the "it's different this time" bull this time around... and will gladly wear the clown suit for my upcoming 4 year reign if it comes to that.

But.. Oof if this does not look a little head and shouldery here...  Let's hope this is not our future?  Effing clown suit.



BUT!  If I were to zoom out a little more it also looks a little "cup and handley" on a longer timeframe!! Maybe that one happens?

Here here!  And I will open a channel for you as well.  I would gladly do a max liquidity incoming channel if you want it... I think 0.16BTC?

Sadly I had a bad situation with my c-lightning node.  I run two, an LND and a c-lightning.  The latter has an issue where it becomes unreachable after some sort of log file leak.  All it takes is a quick reboot to fix it, anbd it is good for weeks after that, but I got sidetracked by life ans several channels force closed.  Meh.  So I am either going to just move the rest of the channels to mt LND node, or at least put those back up... Anyway I have a little pile of sats sitting in the holding tank because of it!

(In fact if anyone here force closed with "jeed" let me know, I will gladly open it back up... I am not sure what dropped lol)

I don't know if we are ever going to be rid of this. I just don't.

I think you are exactly right. We have not seen the current fundamental circumstances in play any time in the last 12 years.

It's not even just bullish news.  We are standing on the cliffs edge.  And we are about to go over with no chance of return, and I personally think (as I have said 100s of times) that it is going to be an astonishing transformation, and since Bitcoin *IS* value then the reflection of the coming growth is seen directly on the price.

One way of looking at it..,  Up until now the 4 year halving cycle has been the most important driver for the price.  It has been the direct driving variable change that has had a profound effect on what the coin is worth.  And because it is 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 it is a logarithmic progression.  The halving is exactly the same each time by percent, but NOT by value.  We lost the creation of 25 BTC per block the first time around, and then 12.5, and then 6.25, and the next one will only reduce the subsidy by 3.125 BTC.

So we have seen 93.75% of the magnitude in dollars already be released for the Bitcoin network.  Thus the vast majority of value is out there.  And the halvings as we go forward will be each a logarithmic order smaller than the one before.

At the same time as that inescapable perfect mathematical situation continues humming along we are seeing the demand for the asset standing on the brink of explosive growth. 

So, what I think is about to happen is the forces of the demand for Bitcoin are soon going to weigh MUCH MORE than the forces of supply, and the changes to it.  Demand will happen on a logarithmic curve as well, but I would think one with a different function and shape as the issuance curve.  I think demand = adoption, and adoption curves are famously "S shaped" with a somewhat long slow beginning (You are here! This was us) then a explosive rise in the middle (the majority come onboard), and then a long slow ending (as the last stragglers come online).

I believe when that middle section really gets underway that is going to VASTLY outweight the 4 year supply cycle shocks that have driven the price since inception.  Both because demand will be the stronger force, and as I said above the Supply has already taken ~90% of it's shot! 

The question is where are we on that S shaped curve.  I think we are well into the very front of it, but only at the beginning.  Maybe 10-20% into the explosive middle section.  We will soon see more countries come on board, more businesses, more investment tools (our favorite ETF topic) and just more organic demand from regular users like us.

So no more 4 year cycle.  At least not as the primary driver anymore.  It will take a backseat to demand eventually.  And I think it's going to happen SOON.  As in: I am betting it will happen during THIS cycle.  Or at least begin to.  Of course I could be wrong, and we could have one more boom/bust supply shock thing... but that just does not seen to make any sense to me.

And finally, there *IS* still significant risk of a devastating blow to Bitcoin's price because of geopolitical forces.  If the US Federal Reserve can pull the right strings in our government to try to kill bitcoin we could see a massive drop in value.  This is really the only scenario I see that would cause our fabled 80+% drop.  But it is absolutely a non-zero possibility.  So there is that.  But even then, that will only delay the inevitable and give the enemies of the USA a nice head start.  In some ways it will validate bitcoin my the tacit admission that it is the foe of the Fed that it indeed is.  So even the bad news would be good.

But this is why I did not sell when it got frothy up there this time.  One of the reasons at least.  I decided I would rather not miss the next rise than risk taking any profits.  And frankly I just don't need it yet.  And I think the psychological torture of 2017-2020 prepared me to handle the even bigger $ losses that I can expect this time even IF this is as low as we go...

Anyway.  I think you are right!