In this thread I want to talk about the purchase of everyday items, and improvements to one's lifestyle. I believe in Bitcoin, gold and silver for the preservation of wealth, and I'm also acquiring scrap copper to sell when an economic recovery eventually arrives. Id like to discuss the advantages or otherwise of purchasing new cars, houses or other lifestyle items.

Cars are an interesting topic, and I believe that it is netter to own an older car that one can service oneself in an emergency. I'm also buying some tools to convert a van into a mobile home, as I believe one will have a better lifestyle if one is outside the expanding conurbations. I'm not too keen on electric power for cars either. An older diesel that is capable of being powered by vegetable oil is a good backup in case there is an oil crisis.

I'm starting to switch to solar power for the electrical equipment in the van. Photovoltaic cells are improving all the time, and the costs are dropping, but I think it important to achieve some offgrid capabilities as soon as possible. I've also purchased a wood burner for cooking and heating.

I'm interested in purchasing a small woodland, but I'm not sure if prices will increase or fall over the next couple of years. My feeling is that the best option is to purchase Bitcoin now. My instinct is that it will increase in value far more than freehold woodland. As a UK resident, I have more of a problem than most when considering fiat savings. It is almost certain that we will leave the EU, and this will result in a massive boost for the UK economy. This will result in an increase in the value of Sterling, but this is only really relevant if one is investing abroad.

So what do you guys think is the best plan for the next couple of years?

I was discussing the awarding of merits with another member recently, and he made me aware that we have both started to award merits as an alternative to posting a reply in a thread. If you agree with a poster, but don't have much to add to the point he has made, do you think it is good practice to award merits without quoting and posting an agreement? It will certainly keep the thread cleaner and easier to read, but it may be difficult for those seeking to build a post count to restrain themselves.

The western world says that the world is warming, and we will all be drowned or cooked in a few years. China says we are about to enter a period of global cooling, and we should prepare for that. China has been forecasting climate change for thousands of years, so we should at least consider their opinion.

The fundamentals of Bitcoin are really strong in the opinion of many people, but others seem to think that it has fallen out of favour, and new regulations will cause a continuance of a drop in its value. I think they may both be right, with a short term drop in price, followed by a new bull run.

The climate change natzis are trying to force through legislation to reduce carbon emissions, but many research scientists seem to be of the opinion that we are in a period of carbon famine, and this is causing desertification.

Statins have been the most profitable of all the manufactured pharmaceuticals, but the side effects seem to far outweigh the very limited benefit to health. All of the raw research data is held by Oxford University, and they are refuse to allow it to be released for public evaluation.

Don't even start me on fractional reserve banking, non-government creation of fiat currencies, derivatives and all the other banking schemes.

What we really need is the release of factual and well researched objective reports, that are not promoting commercial interests, but there isn't much chance of that is there?

I've tended to close my node once it has synchronised, and over the last few months, I seem to have had problems in finding and keeping peers. Over the last couple of days, I decided to continue to leave my node online, and this seems to have resulted in far more stable connections to my maximum of eight peers. The overhead is pretty low, and is recorded as being between 5 and 20 Kb/s. Most of it is around 5Kb/s over public WiFi. I appreciate that leaving my node online is beneficial for Bitcoin, but does it improve my relationship with other nodes?

My instinct is that my peers have got more important things to worry about, so maybe the apparent improvement is just coincidental.

I've not been keeping up with the latest changes to the trust system, but I'm having difficulty in understanding the justification for including a member without a positive trust entry in the DT1 rankings.

Washington seems to have deployed hundreds of thousands of military personnel around the world, and they require Billions of dollars of equipment, much of it having no function other than destruction. America seems to be falling apart as a result of the lack of spending to preserve the infrastructure and the economy. So what do the taxpayers get for sacrificing their dollars and their children?

As many of you know, I maintain a full node over public WiFi. This means that I have several restrictions imposed on me. I can only allow outbound connections, and there is a maximum of eight permitted. However, very frequently I see that  I have only been able to make 2 or 3 connections, or none at all for some periods, and traffic is sporadic. Often there are quiet spots of many minutes between communication bursts. This is common to a variety of locations, so I suspect it is not due to limitations imposed by the service provider. Speed varies between 50Kb/s and 2,000Kb/s, and node ping rimes are usually lower than 100ms, although at the moment they seem to be in the range 100ms-500ms. I'm using Core version 0.18.0 under Windows 10.

I had to switch back to Windows for a couple of reasons, but I will probably return to Linux ( Ubuntu or Mint ) next month. I feel that the fact that I only run my node a couple of times a day, and that I am on a limited connection, may mean that some peers are blocking me, and that is limiting my ability to find eight good nodes for synchronisation. Is there anything I can do to improve my support for the Bitcoin system, and thus find some more peers who are prepared to  be my "friends".

They seem to be making a few changes at the moment, and that could start to increase interest. I don't know much about the service, does anybody here use it?

I don't believe that he ever intended that there would be a strike. The consequences such as higher oil prices, and a rising death toll meant that it was a bad political play. I think he understood this from the beginning, and he used it to test his so-called advisers and aids, and to help discover who was leaking information. He has also used it to help maintain his image as a kind and compassionate man.

My attitude is - no way!!

I don't use Facebook, and I don't like their lack of privacy and security. They seem to be talking about pegging the coin to a bunch of fiat currencies, and that is another big disincentive for me. I suspect we will start to see some government or banking based cryptos, and I'll probably end up using a couple of those alongside Bitcoin.

It's no wonder I'm rubbish at predicting the price of Bitcoin. I thought the price of heavy oil (diesel) was going to go up because of the tankers that I believe the US attacked, and are trying to blame on Iran, and the next day the price dropped by 5 pence per litre.

Since I became a DT1 I have received a few PMs from members asking me to advantage or disadvantage other members or themselves. This isn't something that I'm prepared to do, and I make my own decisions about merit and trust. Good heavens, I even gave Quickseller a couple of merits recently. I still feel that the trust system should be about trading, and my inclusion of members in my trust list is based on that.

I've only traded with one person, and that was a couple of purchases of Bitcoin. The transactions were extremely smooth and efficient, and I've left suitable trust entries. The deals were arranged via PMs, and unfortunately that does not allow for a reference entry, and the removal of the risked amount entry diminishes the value of the report in my opinion. I have made  some other positive entries, and these are based on my interactions with those members over the four year period of my membership here. Although I haven't entered into any trades with these members, my instincts are that they would enter into a trade with me in an honest and efficient manner. I have no evidence to support this though. I have no untrusted entries, as I have never been scammed here. There are many members that I wouldn't trust, and who appear to have been involved in various possible frauds, but I haven't researched any of these, and therefore I do not feel that I should create a public report. At a personal level, I wouldn't enter into a trade with them, and I wouldn't support their ventures, so I am unlikely to obtain any evidence of fraud.

I don't want to enter into the political infighting that seems to be on the increase, and if I feel uncomfortable with a member, then I can always add him to my ignore list. I would be grateful if people would not try to draw me into their personal battles, and I am unlikely to read lists of threads that support such conflicts. My approach may not be fully compatible with the new trust/reputation rankings, but unfortunately it is the only way I can handle the new system, which I confess that I don't understand fully.

I was chatting to someone yesterday, and this interesting idea popped into my head. Firstly one needs an efficient way to store energy for use on demand, and batteries are inefficient. One method that is under evaluation is the creation of hydrogen. You can use solar energy to create hydrogen from water, and store the hydrogen to recreate an energy form later - perhaps during the hours of darkness. You need to use more energy to convert the hydrogen into a stable form, and then it seems it can be kept in salt caves. The creation of the hydrogen could be a proof of work, and used to store energy credits on a blockchain. These credits could be traded, and energy consumers could acquire them, and use them to gain energy for transport or manufacture.

I  suspect that this is a bit futuristic, but energy as a currency would seem to be a useful addition to gold and Bitcoin.

Washington has put pressure on Google to stop Huawei from using Android and Google play services. Is this another example of Washington trying to control the Internet, and actually having the opposite result? I'm becoming increasingly annoyed by the constant attempts by Google to install unwanted apps on my phone, and my blocking attempts seem to create a list of warnings every time I turn on the phone. Open source operating systems for mobiles seem to have had mixed success, but maybe this ban will give the embryonic industry a much needed boost. I'd be interested in buying a new Huawei phone if it helped me to escape from the control of Google and Washington.

The connectors I bought on line 4 days ago still haven't been delivered.The bits I'm now buying from Amazon are arriving in 24 hours or less. I've read that Jeff Bazos is building a moon lander that he is calling " Blue Moon". I bet he will be able to deliver to the moon before the "new" Royal Mail can deliver to Hampshire.

I wonder why he wants to deliver to the moon - I expect he has heard that Bitcoin is going to the moon this year, and he wants to start accepting it.

I'm in England, and I'm not an accountant or a tax expert, so this post is purely personal speculation.

There is some serious speculation about the price of Bitcoin in a year's time, and some say it will be over £250,000. This may or may not be true, but is does seem probable that it will be substantially higher. This has led me to consider the possible taxation of any gains. Buying coins as an investment, and holding them in the expectation of future profits, would seem to create a trading or capital gain liability. However, there are other way of acquiring Bitcoin.

I have accepted Bitcoin in exchange for domain names, and it is these transactions that I want to consider. If I purchase a domain name for $10, and I sell it for $210, then I have made a profit of $200 less the cost of acquisition. I understand that the tax liability occurs at the time of disposal, and the profit is calculated by converting the dollars into Sterling at that time. If I hold the dollars and convert them at a later date, then that doesn't seem to create a further profit or loss. Now it starts to get interesting if I accept Bitcoin for the sale. One can argue that Bitcoin is effectively a currency, and thus the same rules should apply. Let take an example - if I purchase a name for £100, and I sell it for 1 Bitcoin, then I have made a profit of £4,000 ( assuming the current value of Bitcoin is £4,100) less acquisition costs. If I keep the Bitcoin for a year, and the price rises to £104,000, then I believe that the "extra" £100,000 is not liable to tax. I'd be interested to hear any other views on this.

If you are a HODLer, and you increase your Bitcoin wallet by selling non-crypto assets, then it would seem wise to keep accounting records of your transactions to help in any future negotiations with the tax authorities.

I started to get interest in this concept when I noticed some strange coins in my change. I've been keeping them, but I haven't tried to sell them yet. It seems that some of them are selling for insane sums, sometimes in four figures. I get the feeling that as we move into a reduced cash and crypto economy, some people will start to collect the rare and unusual coins. Are any of you guys selling any of the coins you find in your everyday change?

I must admit that I've been buying Somerset brie instead of the French stuff. But I couldn't resist this deal - A piece of brie that should have cost £3.11 was marked down to 16 pence. I'm sure that Merkel and co don't realise the damage they are doing to their slave countries.

Well somebody has implemented a couple of suggestions I made a few years ago. One was to put domain name registrations on the blockchain, and the other was to link domain names to crypto addresses. The new service is called "Unstoppable domains", and you can read about the service by typing the name followed by .com into your address bar.

I've just reserved JetCash.zil for $10, and there is a $5 renewal fee. I was going to pre-order Kuffy, but they wanted to put that to auction, so I thought I would just have the fixed price " Jet Cash" name. Once the domain is live, then I can receive payments into any active crypto wallet that I associate with the name. The service will sort out which crypto-currency has been sent.

I don't know if this is a reputable service, or if it will ever be implemented, but it looked to me as if it is genuine. You will need to make your own assessment, but I thought it was worth a $10 punt just to see how the service works.

Will Nigel Farage create the third revolution in the UK to overthrow the ruling classes. King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta as a result of a revolt by the population. Oliver Cromwell started a civil war to overthrow corruption and repression in the ruling classes. If one believes that everything in life is cyclic in character, then the third cycle must be ready to peak.