Whoah, be careful there, please don't let the richness go to one's head.

While I will say that investing in bitcoin was a wise idea and whatnot I like to remember that there were several flunks before bitcoin and several dodged trains that could have resulted in any of us cashing out our stash early so luck and chance did play a part in building the stash....

Well, I believe luck and chance did play a part in building MY stash. If I hadn't quit that weird job next to the coin shop when bitcoin was $600 a coin I might have traded far more of it for gold. If I had converted all the coin to cash when I got it life would now suck. If I wasn't able to borrow cash to cover some expenses I might have sold more at $2k.

That 5k and 1btc to my idiot brother? If I hadn't found out what he truly values I might have sunk several hundred K into that abortion of a divorce. As is I was really lucky to learn that lesson for such a small amount.

So yes luck and circumstance did play a part in my getting to where I am along with brains and effort.

Not that I believe people deserve claim to my or anyone's coins simply due to their need, but it wasn't quite a case of me being a mastermind either...

No shit. I loaned my moron brother $5k to save his house years ago, cashing in a bitcoin at around 3k to do so. He not only never paid me back but got a divorce that's so expensive he's asking everyone for money. Screw em.

Never loan money to family. Either give it with no strings attached or don't.

Those were so hard to build! God I remember them.

Of course the Astron Omega was a hell of a rocket as well....

Yeah, we're poor again. God it sucks.

Nice. I used to do Estes rockets, loved the Scrambler (3 C engines) then I got into Aerotech bigger rockets with the F and G engines. Still have one in my closet along with a few motors, wonder if I can still get them.

I could get back into that as a hobby, although since I'm a pilot I now have to follow all FARs.

Interesting. I was updating Quicken and tried a few future values for bitcoin to check my net worth. Apparently you can not have a security worth more than 99 million dollars a share without Quicken blowing up.

They had better fix this bug. Soon.

Now that the 50k cherry has been broken we can expect it to peep above again, then again, then we will all be bitching about how it just won't break the mark to 60k.

Of course it will grow. And people will turn off their miners and complain about how they will never make ROI. However consider this: If you had bought an S9, and run it non-stop through the past couple of years through bitcoin crashes and peaks you still would probably have beaten the ROI numbers at 50k a coin.

I have not done the calculations for a Neptune or even a Titan (previous generation technologies) but I'm guessing even those may show a positive ROI over the years. An L3 is pretty recent technology so it might be worth it.

Time for some astronaut images here.

This is where having a hybrid of any kind totally rocks: You can turn them on and they will run the 12 volt line off the battery till the battery is low, then turn on the engine for a short time to do a quick recharge. I've run a fridge and other key elements (chargers) for days off a Prius+1000 watt inverter, the thing is like the ultimate gas generator with a 10 gallon tank.

Firewood is always my favorite. You can cut up the trees and split the logs yourself, with a solid splitting maul and a 16 pound sledgehammer any log will eventually break.

Pellets are also a pretty good choice, damn little pellet stoves put out a *lot* of heat and you can store a pallet or two for the ass end of ever. They do require a small amount of power so either have a good UPS, a properly sized powerwall or a small generator outside. In a pinch you could get a 500 watt inverter and run them off your car battery, charging with the engine. If you have a hybrid or an EV you are totally set for days.

Always make sure your house has a fireplace. Friend in Texas is -3 temps and no power. A miserable heat pump won't do squat in that case.

*SNORT* Yeah, I remember that. And when people were bitching about how miners would never make ROI at $800 a coin.

Ah well. The interesting question is if you had kept say a Neptune mining 24*7 through all the difficulty changes and price changes till today if it would have been profitable over the time period.

I like it, but to be honest if you have any bitcoin, even a stack of sats you are a serious winner. The desire and intention to opt out of bullshit fiat is a serious win.

I think it's time to sell stocks.

Fired up a browser on a computer I haven't used for a few months and checked bitstamp's price on bitcoinwisdom.io. Computer chirped and screamed at me and I realized I had set a high alert on it.

$20,000. Remember when we all wondered if Bitcoin would ever break 20k? Ah those carefree days of like a few months ago.....

Novation J-Cat 300 baud one here, titty cups, ran it on the Atari 800 if I recall. I still have it somewhere....

"Mine more doge"? Regardless of the number of miners there is still 10k DOGE being created every minute, correct?

It looks like 60% of all DOGE ever minted (>124 billion) are controlled by a dozen addresses with one address (active) controlling 24%. If that isn't an artificial pump and dump playground I don't know what is.

As they say: Have fun being poor.

Hm. Populism is probably not a major issue to holders of wealth since the people who fall for it are easily led into more productive avenues such as hating (insert appropriate rage topic) instead of the wealthy. They will do this while electing plutocrat "populists" to power (see Perot, R.; Trump, etc) and support them while they vote 2t tax cuts for the "wealthy" right in the middle of it.

There is a hook of "we'll get you something from "those" people, but those who believe they can get "something for nothing" are without a doubt the easiest marks for traditional confidence games. As a citation, see GSE, recent Doge/silver pumps, and Wall Street "Bets"....

While there are exceptions (see revolution, French) it seems that what is substituted into a populist movement is a sanction for someone to hate. It's been this way since William Jennings Bryan and the ole Cross of Gold.

So unless you totally blow your populism movement I don't think it's a problem. Such movements just fall apart under the weight of the scams perpetrated upon their members (cash 4 gold, beet juice, ethereum, etc)

Edit: Cleaned this up a bit. It's a complicated topic but I have noticed that populist movements get hijacked pretty quickly to serve other ends (see Christ, J., American Revolution, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, etc)

Talk to people here who went to some of these "beautiful countries" (Panama? Thailand?) where they barely escaped with their lives.

Things can be... complex... out there.