I was just browsing around the economics section, and again full of de-dollarization, the dollar is dying, bla bla, I was curious what are the people who hate the dollar that much using instead.

A quick look in the service section had a bit strange feeling since, well.. you all know how this looks, 22 campaigns here paying a fixed sum in $ and only 2 in BTC:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.3480


Looking at coingecko all the stablecoins are $ and a tiny bit of gold and euros



So if obviously everyone is still even around here pricing everything in USD, at least in private, do you know the price of one BTC in any other currency than the USD and your own?
And when I say you know, I mean by heart, not making the exchange math in your mind, one BTC is 70k , 1 Euro is 1.1 USD so then, or something like this!

Just one tiny experiment, wonder if the outcome is any different than what I imagine!

There have been a series of articles that have gone unnoticed by the bitcoin community, of course the titles are a bit to clickbaitish for my liking but still:

US money supply falling at fastest rate since 1930s

U.S. money supply is falling at its fastest rate since the 1930s, a red flag for the economy and financial markets.
Money supply has now been shrinking year-on-year since December, an unprecedented development in modern times that should make investors sit up and take notice - growth, asset prices and inflation could all weaken.

The problem with that title is that the record downturn pales in comparison with the previous growth, but still, the M2 supply went down from a record high of 21.7 trillion to 20.7 trillions, it's not much when you compared to the 3 trillion growth in just 4 months in 2020 but seems like the interest rates are finally kicking in and this will reduce further increase policies. The same thing stands for the EU where the M2 has also decreased in the same period by 0.3 trillion.

One thing is that Quantitative Tightening works, and the interest rates seem to have also worked, so what's in for the future, and more importantly, how will this affect Bitcoin?

There are some alarmist opinions, like

U.S. Money Supply Is Shrinking the Most Since the Great Depression. Is an Economic and Stock Market Meltdown on the Way?

while others take a more neutral tone:

US money supply falls at unprecedented rate, possibly cooling inflation

So, after a period of inflation is the US going straight to a period of deflation?
How would that affect Bitcoin since it never experienced deflation in its lifetime as it was born after the 2009-2009 events?

We all say Bitcoin is the best hedge against inflation, but saying this while keeping the ATH in $ is a bit misleading, isn't it, since the $ is also losing purchasing power, so how about we take a look at BTC ATH from a different angle, just to pass some time before it hits 100k  

So, just like my other topics that are more regional related:
Community research: To drink or to buy coins?
Days you need to work your ass at minimum wage for a BTC, by country


how about we express the local ATH by comparing it to food specific prices, that would be far more interesting and and also down to earth approach!
Feel free to do this with any food/groceries/drinks stuff you know the price for back in 2021 in November!

We take the extreme ATH of 69 000.
So , an example of it:

Coca cola - USA prices



It was $1.95  back in November, it's 2.68 right now at Walmart so (69000/1.95)*2.68 so in Cola the ATH is 94,830!

Europe, upper quality pork meat:



It was 12.49E in November 2021 , right now 14.99 so (56000/12.49)*14.99 , the ATH is 67,208 (euros)!

Eggs, now this one is funny, I have to prices saved
- the 20 pack is down from 22cents to 20 cents (same brand)
- the 10 pack is up from 20 cents to 24 cents (same brand again)
So here we're going to stick with the ATH at the same level

Adding a bit of flavor to the ones that have increased the most, chips and other snacks:


Pringles Original, the receipt says 1.38, now the same shop is 1.99
So again the math (56000/1.38)*1.99, so that would be 80,753 (again euros)!

I'm really curious at the contributions from other countries, those hit more by inflation!
Hint, you can easily get those prices if your local superstore chains has leaflets, just search for them with the 2021 term, you for sure will hit an archive in the searches!

[Important!]

Rewatching the Simpsons yesterday night , this time on a full 4k tv and not on the tablet I just realized that the way they depicted Satoshi, (well his statue) was probably one of the best I've seen to date, personal tastes but I still think it beats by a long way all the Guy Fawkes style art I've seen to date.

So, how about we create a small fan index of those, just a bit like Wikipedia mentions!

What I'm impressed with in it is the small details, like the snow being BTC coins, I know it might be dark for some but still to me looks impressive!

So here it goes:

The Simpsons , Season 35, Episode 5  - "Treehouse of Horror XXXIV", aired November 5, 2023




Important!
Only images from movies and TV shows, no youtube clips, no fanart!

[76% of gross domestic product]

Note!!! that this is from data published by the CCP, so probably 386% might be more accurate

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-17/china-s-debt-to-gdp-ratio-rises-to-fresh-record-of-286-1
Archived is paywalled:
https://archive.ph/bYIYM

The macro leverage ratio — or total debt as a percentage of gross domestic product — inched up to 286.1% in the fourth quarter.

What does it mean?
It means simply that right now China's total debt is higher then the USA in debt/gdp ratio!
https://www.ft.com/content/630f828c-ce4b-4f41-a867-9593bfaf0528

How bad is it?
Exclusive: China orders indebted local governments to halt some infrastructure projects-sources

Pretty bad since the CCP is asking local government to stop infrastructure project, might not sound that important, but this is China and the CCP, infrastructure projects as big as they can be are a show of power and wealth, the megalomania things they built are not just for practical purpose but for their politics, as every dictator would want buildings bigger, shinier and bigger again than everyone to show the world his might! Usually with citizens starving to death looking at them!

The new directive gives a more detailed list of infrastructure projects for the governments to avoid, two sources said.  Beijing is concerned about potential default due to the local governments' large debts and weaker growth prospects, the sources said. China's local government debt hit 76% of gross domestic product in 2022, the latest data available, up from 62% in 2019 and dwarfing central government debt at 21%.

Now, one can start to understand why China is scared of a property crash,  the real estate constitutes 30% of China's GDP, if that would take a 20% hit it would balloon the debt to 305-310% to gdp bankrupting local governments, and this is the reason why prices are fixed in China, see my other topic about how they try deal with that:
China real estate crisis: Buy a house and get a gold bar!


PS!

I'm pretty sure that some even after readying the title are already typing something about the US debt so keep the shitty low effort propaganda whataboutism out of this:

Stick to the topic and leave the frustration of having a green card rejected somewhere else! 
I know it's a pain for some who wake up ten times at night to check if the de-dollarisation is happening to read stuff like this, but again, this is reality!

[heavier]

Browsing around and looking what's going on with the mempool and what tx are getting though at what price, I ran into this:

https://mempool.space/tx/ce6555fcf6c912f7981dd21e31ce2d960d72950565508bbd6554fd85f674d566
Block 825171 had about 20 of them
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions?s=time(desc)&q=output_total_usd(0),block_id(825171)
Have something to immortalize yourself?

If you're interested in that, we have some other option for you, like archiving nintendo games into the blockchain:
Expect the Orginals game to get even bigger - actual games

Still not? Here is something heavier for your stomach if you're into that kind of stuff:
Mysterious Bitcoiner spends $64K to inscribe 9MB of data on Bitcoin

But if you think this is something new, here are some pretty interesting things:
https://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html
and yeah, you got the date right it's from 2014. We had stuff like this back then:
https://mempool.space/tx/1e444e0f7b127fa8b61104c0694d9bb809847909d00644e1777c782faf047a84

Moral of the story? Find it yourself!  

[Viabtc]

With Viabtc reducing slots, one free gateway to get cheaper transactions confirmed is nearly shut so in case fees go up again and you have one for those tx where you can't RBF or CPFP cause it's a tx between custodial wallets one might have to resort to paid accelerators.
Since I've been really lucky and during my 3 minutes check no block was mined to influence heavily the fees I tried to make a quick compare for two small one input one output, transactions so here you go, this is what one can expect for now!

But please note those are fees for next block being at ~40sat/b and the tx at 30sat/b! Tomorrow those might be irrelevant but at least you know the basic pricing.

TX A IS:  Size   ‎346 B/ Virtual size   ‎176.5 vB
TX B IS : Size   ‎294 B/ Virtual size   ‎135 vB
Fixed, thanks hosseinimr93 ! Too much copy paste for the day!


Viabtc

TX A:
Transaction Size (Current TX Size + Previous Unconfirmed TX Size) 177 Bytes = (177 + 0) Bytes
Total fee
0.0025488 BTC ≈ 111.92

Transaction Size (Current TX Size + Previous Unconfirmed TX Size) 135 Bytes = (135 + 0) Bytes
Total fee
0.002052 BTC ≈ 90.07

ANTPOOL

TX A:
Transaction volume:177 vBytes = (177 + 0) vBytes
Payment method:USDT
Acceleration price:22.15 USDT
Payment network:Tron (TRC20)

TX B:
Transaction volume:135 vBytes = (135 + 0) vBytes
Payment method:USDT
Amount to be paid:16.89 USDT
Payment network:Tron (TRC20)

F2pool:

TX A:
Transaction Volume (Current + Previous Unconfirmed)
177 vbytes = (177 + 0) vbytes
0.00141600  BTC ≈  62.36 USDT

TX B:
Transaction Volume (Current + Previous Unconfirmed)
135 vbytes = (135 + 0) vbytes
0.00108000  BTC ≈  47.54 USDT

Binance: (requires a verified KYC account on the exchange)

TX A:
Transaction Size (Current TX Size + Previous Unconfirmed TX Size) 177 vBytes = (177+0) vBytes
Total Cost  0.00141599 BTC  (62.29)

TX B:
Transaction Size (Current TX Size + Previous Unconfirmed TX Size) 135 vBytes =(135+0) vBytes
Total Cost  0.00108 BTC (47.51)

Mempool (not operational yet AFAIK)

TX A:
Estimated acceleration cost   51,032 sats $22.45
Maximum acceleration cost   62,000 sats $27.27

TX B:
Estimated acceleration cost   50,669 sats $22.29
Maximum acceleration cost   59,000 sats$ 25.95


What I observed doing those tests:
- Viabtc offers free slots but has the highest paid acceleration fee
- Antpool offers tron payments, which is a bit understandable, if you can't accelerate your BTC tx, how ar you going to pay with BTC?
- Binance is the most annoying one, not only they don't show the charge in $ but also do this

discount, lol, what's this the fireworks isle after 4th of July to offer discounts? Really cheap marketing tactic!
- Antpool is the uncontested winner until mempool will be able to start their service for everyone

[0.000019]

Now that 2023 has ended in high spirits and Bitcoin is going up and up and up you have to think what bullet you have dodged with fiat currency!

You think the deprecation of the US is bad, just look at what others have experienced and you might start to thank god for at least saving in $ if not BTC other than:
- russian ruble, losing 31% purchasing power
- turkish lira losing 44%
- lebanese pound losing close to 700%!!!!

But when it comes to toilet paper few managed to rival Zimbabwe and Venezuela, till a new contender entered the scene , Iran!

Most of you know about the discussions on how hard it's to buy something in Satoshi price, for example a cup of coffee would cost here 7086.649 so, how hard would be to deal with that? But even that it's child play when dealing with something that is worth:
0.000019 of a dollar!

Think it's bad? No, it gets worse because that's the price for a toman, the rial is 1/10 of that so at a black market rate of 1:505600 against the usd a rial is worth shit..of wait, something close to it at 0.0000019 of a dollar or 0.00019 of a cent!

Which brings us to our smallest denomination, the satoshi:
One Bitcoin equal $45660 and at a rate of 1:505600 that makes one Bitcoin worth 23,085,696,000 that's billions rials.
So your considered by some worthless satoshi is 230 rials!
Want to be a billionaire? Just buy 0.04 BTC!

The morals of the story:
- no matter how much value you think the dollar is losing, there is something doing that 1 million times worse
- no matter how worthless you think a Satoshi is, it will still top a fiat currency that goes down the drain

But most importantly, if you think one can't deal with Satoshi, there are proof millions are dealing daily with smaller denomination, so with Bitcoin going higher and higher, soon rather than thinking of mBTC we might have to think of mili satoshi!

I've seen that lately people are actually more concerned about fees that looking at the price, so, I was saying to myself, why not a mempool observer thread?
Rather than starting 13 angry topics out of 30 in every single section of the forum, how about we have our fun in one!
I mean:

In case you're just looking for the next block fee, you don't have to go though all the topic!
Courtesy of Bitmover:

Maybe we can get one of the AI here with all their tricks and coding skillzzz to make a fee buddy!  
So, till then let's start:



And if you think x-mas is coming and there will be a lul the incoming transactions, I have some bad news for you:
The difficulty adjustment is coming in 24 hours and the current pace is 5.4%, that means 95 extra blocks have been mined compared to normal, a thing that might change to less blocks mined next period, meaning less capacity, which you guess it, means higher fees!

Sometimes life gives you a few examples of sweet irony, completely mindfuck or mind-blowing events that just made you worry of what's next!

So, here we are, fees over 200sat/vb , meaning at least 12$ for the smallest tx, if you have like 5 inputs and not one you can simply just leave it to the next year and it's all supposedly created by ordinals or how some (including me) call them: jpg monkeys.

Now, being spammed by the those monkeys, the obvious solution is....to use a meme coin! Yeah, you heard me right, a shitcoin meme coin! And guess what? Most are doing it!

Self explanatory graphs!
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-doge.html#3m



Despite doge making 1,336,216 in the last 24 hours compared to 665,734 for BTC, the median fee is  $0.0094 compared to $24.97.

Why? Dunno..
Something about the capacity of the blockchain or something but it is what it is, I mean it's impossible for BTC to get the same capacity as Doge, imagine spending 150$ for a 6tb ssd for your node or needing a 10mbps internet connection, this is just impossible, we have been told numerous times that 1mb is the maximum that can be sent over 10 minutes around the world, it doesn't matter that I'm downloading's something over bittorrent with 60MB/s right now, it's just a fluke!
/rant over

I just hope Santa isn't buying presents with Bitcoin, fees will bankrupt him!
/ second rant over

LE as I am reading the replies
Maybe thrilling was more appropriate than entertaining so feel free to use that!

As it seems I'm the only one betting on horse racing around here we need a bit of intro for this

So, two races out of 4 done by 12:18 GMT time and both horses I was backing, favorites,  Hunters Yarn and  Kourosh dropped their jockeys at the last hurdle, the first did it while being in the lead by 10 lengths, the second when battling for the first place, lost a bit on them and probably more to come as I'm 1 out of 5 bets right now but I didn't feel any remorse or regret or anything like this, moreover I feel really good because I saw some really entertaining races with a change in the last moment.
On the other hand, whenever I trade even if it's just small, really small positions and I lose a few $ I feel bad, I always tell to myself why I even bother to do it.

So hear me out:

With gambling, you chose on who to bet when to bet , once you do you you wait for the outcome at a fixed time!
With trading you chose your pair coins, you have to wait for the price to reach what you think it's an entry point and then set limits , watch the damn numbers even for days, even if you cash out in profit there can always be a regret you haven't kept the position opened.

Three is little that can influence a sport event outside of what you know, with coins it just takes a stupid hack or some gov going bananas on crypto out of nowhere while you sleep and you have your house full of trading alarms like you're in a police raid.

TA analysis is just Timeform, there is no difference between them , they show something that happened in the past with a coin and the form of a horse , in both cases you're looking at past performance and trying to figure the outcome.

I can't find numbers on the screen entertaining, if somebody tells me numbers and lines are more entertaining that this, I think there is something wrong with you!  

So prove me wrong (if you think I am), what am I missing?

Moody’s Cuts China Credit Outlook to Negative on Rising Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-05/moody-s-cuts-china-credit-outlook-to-negative-on-rising-debt?embedded-checkout=true

Statement from Moody:
https://ratings.moodys.com/ratings-news/412128

In light of China's government's consistently stated policy objective, over the medium term, Moody's expects its property sector to remain smaller in proportion to the entire economy than it was before the property correction that started in 2021. As a result, RLGs face a structural loss of land sales revenue, which accounted for 37% of their revenue (excluding transfers from the central government) in 2022. Regions that relied most heavily on land sales are unable to materially offset the loss in revenue from other sources and will face financial strain for the foreseeable future, in Moody's view. Loss of land sales revenue reduces the ability of RLGs to support LGFVs and other local SOEs, including some entities highly reliant on RLG funding. Moody's expects further evidence of crystallization of contingent liabilities to materialize, which means that financial support to RLGs and SOEs will be provided by the government and wider public sector.

Instances of LGFV and local SOE financing stress have increased in the past year, and in Moody's view, market financing will remain challenging for entities from provinces such as Yunnan and Guizhou, where domestic bond market spreads remain very wide. More generally, if RLG support is durably impaired, debt sustainability will be at risk for LGFVs and local SOEs with particularly high leverage and/or low revenue coverage of interest payments.

Moody's estimates that around one third of the amount of SOE debt outstanding – equal to about 40% of GDP – has interest coverage below 1, which generally indicates weak debt sustainability.

These developments include the central government's approval for RLG bond issuances of over RMB1.3 trillion between 1 October and 7 November 2023 for repayment of upcoming LGFV bond maturities for the weakest provinces; the central government's announcement of a planned RMB1.0 trillion special treasury bond issuance to fund RLG post disaster construction; and a RMB1.6 trillion increase in central government transfers to RLGs in 2022 compared to 2021, which partly but only temporarily offset the RMB2.0 trillion of lost land sales revenue.

TLDR
The real estate is so much in debt and local government rely so much on sales of land for those that is a vicious circle in which money has to be put in to keep a thing that just redistributes money around with a lot of inefficiency.

So the government has to bail out local governments and real estate constructors so they don't go bankrupt and end up bankrupting the govemermnt itself, that's why the public debt of China is somewhere between 250% and 300% depending on what statistics China itself publishes, but the money that kept funding this debt is not in danger as the real estate market cools so suddenly a ton of it becomes impossible to pay back.

Speaking of the BTC implications, this should make in theory a few chinese go from real estate investment to either gold or bitcoin but...there is a problem with the second one! ;)So don't get your hopes up on anything significant moving into BTC, unfortunately.

[delusional]

For sure you have seen doomsday topics about impeding energy crises, one after the other (of course censored discussions as usual for propganda bullshit) all that crap about new world order, the mighty Iranian power, how the US is doomed, how bla bla bla...

Now since our basij is censoring all actual info in his delusional topics like:
Energy Crisis 2.0 in the New World Order era
Is energy prices about to shoot up?

Let's stop a bit talking about fairy tales in which Iran is  superpower or something like that and talk about FACTS!
You know, that shit that brings propaganda to a halt usually!

And a FACT is THIS:

Despite all that madness in the middle east, despite OPEC trying to cut 2 milllion barrels of oil of production the price goes down. And why is that?

Let's  go step by step and debunk all that propaganda:
First the oil consumption!

This is actual the funny stuff, you know, when you take a bad situation for somebody and then you ignore completely the implications of that.
So propaganda will tell you everything about Europe freezing, not affording fuel, 1860% of the business closing, industry production going down by 900%, mathematically impossible stuff like that but at the same time, they completely ignore that if that would happen, then there would be no demand for oil, right?

And that is indeed happening, but in China, as China manufacturing has contracted this year in 9 months out of 11, and all the oil they've bought is  sitting there with no use in sight and a further 4% is predicted for 2024
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-oil-demand-growth-poised-slow-around-4-h1-2024-analysts-2023-11-23/

The other drawback is that countries hit by high inflation will of course not consume that much, you can't have a country that deals with 50-70% annual inflation increase its oil consumption, so the rest of the world can't really take anything that China is not buying at all.

Oil production
Another painful chapter for OPEC and other countries

US has hit a new oil production record:
https://www.axios.com/2023/12/05/us-oil-production-record

Canada is doing the same:
Canada steps up pace of oil production growth, seen rising 8% in two years

And so do other countries, from Norway to Angola, which brings us to the main problem OPEC, which is that some countries are tired of it.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/canada-steps-up-pace-oil-production-growth-seen-rising-8-two-years-2023-08-23/

In short, African producers are not interested in what's happening in the middle east, seeing this as chance to replace their unreliable costumers with Europeans ones they are not having a thought of reducing oil production when they could earn a ton more selling how much they can. Even Brazil, complete defiant has said that they plan on observing OPEC, but they will never do a production cut, as they plan to ramp production in 5 years by 1.7 million barrels.
Lula says Brazil never to be full member of OPEC+, only observer

The war issue

What Iranian propaganda tells us is that when the war starts they will...do that and that

1) Iran doesn't have the balls to cut the Hormuz straight!
- Israel just martyred two Iranian generals, have you heard any reaction from Iran? Of course not because they know if they try to do something stupid it's operation praying Mantis again, in which in 2 hours Iran lost half of its naval fleet!

2) No other country in interested in going to war for this, just look at everyone watching from the side as they don't really care about others since, they might hate the US but they hate each other way more than that

World war 3 , new world order and other bs

When some delusional folks where drawing maps how they would cut all the Suez channel traffic they forgot a few things

1) The most hit in this is China who depends on exports to North America and Europe on that route, you see China saying , please close the canal, we don't need exports as we will be happy to see our already shrinking manufacture go boom completely?
And also, this is China, remember how China has solved the Uyghur problem?
2) The other regional power there is India, with Modi being one of the first presidents to call Hamas a terrorist's organization and with his radical views on Muslims, how do you think this will enfold if you cut one of their way of comerce?
3) Egypt, do you honestly see Egypt closing the channel and not doing anything about it because of Palestinians?
Egypt is the one country that has poured sewage, yeah, that's shit in Hamas tunnels, drowning hundreds like that, its the country that depends on the money from the canal, it's the country that whose leaders hate Hamas because of their affiliation with the Muslim brotherhood, do you them taking that approach? Of course no!

So, to draw a conclusion:
- countries that would be affected by the this fairytale scenario : all of NATO, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Vietnam, China, India and Egypt
- countries that dream of it: Iran...
Who would win?  
4 billions against 100 million, 60 trillion economies versus a 300 billion one!

But you know who the real loser is in this situation? And this is the real sad part and a classic story of pure betrayal!
The ones that were promised backing to gain independence and when shit hit th fan they were thrown to the dogs, while Iranian and other middle east countries boast about their support for Palestine, nobody is doing a thing, not a single one, all they do is chant support while not doing one thing! And I'm not going to even think of considering 10 trucks of food doing something, that's less that our hyperstore gets on a regular day, rather than help I would call that sadism.

Friendly reminder that is is not a censored topic, as it's always a pleasure to discuss FACTS!  

With everyone concerned about fees and stuck transactions no wonder a lot of fake accelerators are spamming the net with their fake offers.
One of them:
janjdn

https://whois.domaintools.com/btcaccelerator.info
15 days old
Created on 2023-11-18

15 days old domain, yahoo pages design, lack of any information, lack of proof they own a mining pool and further more a stupid fee that makes absolutely no sense and no sane miner would even promote such a thing:



It makes no sense for a miner to charge you $47 to include your tx in 5 hours and $25 in 6 hours because he doesn't know what the fees will be like in the future, and that's why the every single legit service that offers paid acceleration services is calculating with a large margin what they take for the next block!
If fees skyrocket in 12 hours why would a miner let your acceleration worth $17 when maybe the minimum tx will carry $30?

But the stupidity doesn't end here, the "calculator" is giving some quotes that are truly laughable, since obviously they don't check the size of what you submit:

They claim to accelerate in the next 5 hours this tx for 47.70 USD,
https://mempool.space/tx/8bd46c9b71b6646bf2f6397a9c3377970539885c6c01af6c49fd07787aa1014d
A ‎57.11 kvB!!! 1735 outputs!!! 7.76 sat/vB current fee for 47.70!
This at a time when a tx 20% smaller paid $1600 to barely make it in the next block.

Stay away from this scam!

Following the BurningManGarage thread, and some others events I started having questions on what people see as safe or as dangerous at first glance, so I have one question for both hobby miners and just board lurkers, rate the following setup while also keep in mind that just because things are ugly it doesn't mean bad, and further disclaimer, no, not my work! I just grabbed a picture from a project online, if you're curious google lenses will reveal the source in a second, but I avoid naming it because it might lead to a biased opinion.

So , from 1 being it's already a miracle it hasn't killed someone to 10 being as secure as ASML EUV factory or something like that, rate it!

Full unresized image here
 
Definitely interested also in the opinions of complete newbies on this.

[high]

Yes, another fee topic, deal with it! 

I know, nobody likes to pay fees, nobody! Me neither!
And if there is an exception for sure it doesn't want to pay high fees, so it's pretty understandable that everyone is unhappy about it!
But at the same time, why are you angry at the same situation everyone was believing in it and predicting it?

Every single time a newbie asked what would happen when there would be no mining reward he got the same response over 10 pages, miners will live on from fees, and the security of the blockchain will be generated from fees! And here we are, although the fees are not quite high enough yet!

The last block:
https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000002745f5dc332c3f8373773c05f3507c51bbfb4e402359b
generated :

Total fees   ‎3.257 BTC$119,069
Subsidy + fees   ‎9.507 BTC $347,557

so in order for the fees to replace the reward, you would need twice as much already, even despite this:

Fee span   280 - 8,206 sat/vB
Median fee   ~299 sat/vB $15.31

To make it as short as possible, for the network to have the same security as now without a block reward we would need each block to have twice as big fees in the future, that's how things work!
So, are you angry with high fees? Yes, we all are, but, wasn't this the design?

Before anyone comes up with some myths about this, let's clear some things

1) More efficient gear isn't making the network more secure alone, what's making the network secure is the amount of $ to invest to generate that hashrate, so if you think more efficient gear will mean the network will be just as secure but cheaper, it's delusional.
Right now the network is guarded by 400Exahash, which alone doesn't mean a thing, you must translate those into 4 million $2000 a piece machines to understand the security right now, as it takes 8 billion to launch a 51% attack. This also doesn't mean that because the hashrate in 2013 was one million lower you could attack it at that time with just 8000$ 

2) Cheaper energy or solar or renewable or anything else, again won't solve a thing, even if we run our gear on 0.1 cents per kWh if the reward per day is just $1000 you will only be able to afford 1Gkwh, so anyone willing to spend more than $1000 on energy will have the upper hand!

So, as a conclusion or encouragement or whatever, don't be angry at the fees, they help secure the network, and this is how it was designed to be in the first place, otherwise, we would end up like Bitcoin Gold or Ethereum classic, shitcoins getting 51% attacked 3 times in a row.

And of course, for now, we could actually start using LN rather than complaining, but that would be a solution that involves doing something!

[showed median net worth climbed 37 percent from 2019 to 2022]

The gross domestic product (GDP) of the US expanded at an annualized rate of 4.9 per cent in the third quarter, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis' (BEA) first estimate showed on Thursday, October 6. The US economy grew at the fastest pace in nearly two years, buoyed by a strong consumer in spite of higher interest rates, ongoing inflation pressures, and a variety of other domestic and global headwinds.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected the GDP to accelerate at 4.7 per cent, which also is adjusted for inflation.]The US GDP reading followed the 2.1 per cent growth recorded in the second quarter and surpassed Wall Street expectations of 4.2 per cent. [/url]Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected the GDP to accelerate at 4.7 per cent, which also is adjusted for inflation.

Before you even mention it, read the highlighted part, it's inflation-adjusted!

Probably a hard-to-swallow pill for doomsday lovers but the reality is that:

The acceleration was made possible in part by slowing inflation, which lifted purchasing power even as wage growth weakened, and a job market that has shown renewed vigor over the past three months.“There’s been an enormous increase in wealth since Covid,” said Yelena Shulyatyeva, senior economist for the bank BNP Paribas, referring to recent Fed data that showed median net worth climbed 37 percent from 2019 to 2022. “People still take not just one vacation, not just two, but three and four.”

Median wealth is up, expenditure is up, manufacturing is up, and of course, this is reflected in the GDP growth!
To fully understand the enormous growth behind those tiny 4.9%, let's just see this as an example, let's consider this 4.9% would be anual, so it would represent 4.9% out of 26.949 trillion is 1.32 trillion.

So this tiny 4.9% growth of the US GDP is equal to the entire annual GDP of

• Nigeria 380 billions
• Philipines 445 billions
• Iran 366 billions
• and still has room for 1/3 of Pakistan.
  

Or in BTC terms, it's nearly twice the market cap of BTC , so if only half of this 4.9% growth would go to BTC it would double the price or even more (considering lost coins and holders).

But overall:
Economic growth and enthusiasm mean one thing, people have more money to spend, people look at alternatives to invest and they have the means to do so, if you were in a recession nobody would have money to put in investments as everyone would be trying to save as much as possible so despite the US haters going screaming and banging their heads against the wall at the sigh of good news this is indeed good for BTC price!
People getting poorer won't do any good, you can't invest poverty!

With prices already climbing and people anxious for WS to invest even more once the gates are opened, with more money on the table for this, what could be better?  [/list]

[a decrease of 80.7% and 86.5%, respectively, compared with the same month in 2022 and 2021]

The cluster* of the real estate market seems to be for now a never-ending story that when finally finished will be ten times worse than any real estate crash in history and will grab a lot of both coulpable and innocent all the way.

Country Graden is one foot in the graveyard as per their own release they can't make a payment and their sales are collapsing:
https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2023/1010/2023101000054.pdf

Given China’s property sector has undergone profound adjustments, since the beginning of 2023, the Group’s sales have been under remarkable pressure. Based on the Group’s unaudited operating figures, the Group recorded contracted sales of approximately RMB154.98 billion during the period from January to September 2023, representing a decrease of 43.9% and 65.4%, respectively, compared with the same period in 2022 and
2021. For the month of September 2023, the Group’s contracted sales were approximately RMB6.17 billion, representing a decrease for the sixth consecutive month in 2023 and a decrease of 80.7% and 86.5%, respectively, compared with the same month in 2022 and 2021.

If you have 1/5 of the sales you had during a covid lockdown, then it's safe to assume you're done for, which leads us to probably the same fate as the main actor here Evergrande so expect the same episode to happen again and again

Evergrande, after losing US$66.3 billion in 2022, filing for bankruptcy in the US, seeing its reopened tarde in HK collapse, his workers arrested and so on, is not triggering a bank run!
Of course, the bank run is illegal in China and you're not allowed to tell people there is no money in the bank:

Police in Cangzhou have arrested “many people” suspected of spreading rumors that the bank was suffering a cash crunch because of its exposure to Evergrande, Yicai, a state-owned media outlet, reported on Wednesday, citing an officer deployed at the bank.

“[We urge] financial consumers to make rational judgments and to avoid losing interest on your deposits due to rumors,” according to a photo of the statement posted by the media outlet.

So listen up plebs, are you going to lose your $12 APY in LUNA tokens just because of a rumor  !!!
Ups, my bad, the situation is so damn similar, and the reaction of the "officials" too that I ended up mistaking the two things but that can be forgiven, I assume, as :

You have a bank that used people's money to finance a bankrupt company whose assets are crashing down!
You have a company that used your coins to prop a shitcoin that crashed down having zero value right now!

So before you think of 12% APY a year, of making money with the newly launched copy trading, don't forget, your balance on that exchange is just numbers, as in every bank, just how it was with FTX,seriously, read this topic by o_e_l_e_o  !!!
Proof of reserves? Insurance fund? Best I can do is a random number generator!

Having money in some bank that invests in real estate doesn't mean you own real estate, having coins in an exchange that owns bitcoin doesn't mean you have bitcoins, you only have an IOU that has no value once that exchange is gone!

So, fog god's sake, stop thinking about 5% extra and think more of the 100% you might lose!

[Germany has just surpassed Japan as the world's 3rd economy!]

Mandatory break to allow all haters to scream and bang their heads against the wall  
....
.....

IMG update for October:
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/MAE
Germany has just surpassed Japan as the world's 3rd economy!

Pretty weird, right? Despite what was, freezing, 90% of the businesses going bankrupt, the state having to bail 180% of the companies, 1500% unemployment, and all that stuff Russian and Iranian propaganda were trying to spin!

And since we're at world economy level talks, let's see the updated maps for the ...new world order  
Of course, this is Bitcoin talk so we do it in BTC

GDP of G7 - 1,728,448,450 BTC
EU and US plus rest of G7: 2,029,033,529 BTC
BRICS  949,871,681 BTC
Extended BRICS 1,102,944,459 BTC

Now if we do a per capita thing...

just for reference
G7 is at 2.22 BTC, Russia at 0.48BTC,  Iran at 0.15 BTC and India at 0.097 BTC

Obviously, this is good news for everyone so I'm not going to try to censor or silence anyone expressing his joy how others are doing in their moderated topics full of hate, so, cheers!

Remitano exchange allegedly hacked for $2.7M; $1.4M frozen by Tether

Crypto exchange Remitano experienced large withdrawals under suspicious circumstances on Sept. 14, with some blockchain analysts concluding that it may have been hacked. A total of $2.7 million worth of crypto has been withdrawn through the suspicious transactions. Tether has frozen one address the attacker allegedly used, potentially saving $1.4 million worth of customers’ crypto.
Tether subsequently froze the address to prevent the attacker from cashing out USDT, which prevented $1.4 million of the drained crypto from being moved any further. Remitano has not yet issued a statement regarding the incident.

Now this is a strange one, completely different from the recent ones like coinex and stake at least on how the situation evolves.
There is absolutely no news from Remitano for the allegedly hack, but the suspicious moving funds have been frozen, I've checked their Twitter and there is no news no update about this, it might be one event in a thousand when the exchange is not hacked and totally legit funds are frozen.