Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[death_wish]

Blockstream Satellite coverage:
https://help.blockstream.com/hc/en-us/articles/900004174286-How-do-I-find-out-if-my-area-receives-Blockstream-Satellite-coverage-

Unfortunately, it's a bit tricky digging the info out of their site so I'm not sure what the bandwidth looks like. They say 25x what it was for v1 but that was only pushing 6MB/hour. I'm sure it wasn't saturated (unlike Bitcoin) but it seems likely that grabbing the full blockchain would take a while. Vapourminer might be better off visiting his local library. It definitely sounds like it isn't as completely useless as v1 but it's not clear by how much.

It’s not fast.  Best estimates I can find for IBD from Genesis to tip run about a month (see below).  The point is to make it feasible.

my internet sucks majorly bad and it would take months, many months, to dl from genesis. my inet is so bad and the full blockchain stored locally so important i have it backed up so many ways (raidz2, raid5, portables drives, internal drives i rotate etc, all stored in many places) it borders on ridiculous.

Saturating one’s downstream bandwidth (thus probably being unable to do anything else) for “many months” sounds totally infeasible for real-world use.  Note that in addition to the question of time to sync, the satellite takes the load off of an Internet connection that may be metered/expensive, and that may be needed for other things!  It doesn’t sound like “visiting the local library” to mooch hundreds of gigabytes of their bandwidth is much of an option here, either.

In the past, I’ve run on hardware that takes weeks or a month to validate/index/reindex (CPU and IOPs bottlenecks).  So...

Your estimates of bandwidth are not very useful.  The v2 satellite system uses special encoding to compress the blockchain transmission.  This is reversible, so you wind up with the same data that you would get from the Internet.  Here is a highly informative post from Greg Maxwell (nullc) about the encoding, dated 2020-05-04; I don’t know if anything has changed since then:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/gdlk46/were_excited_to_announce_blockstream_satellite_20/fpif0ni/
^^^ The thread contains further interesting discussion, including some brief comparison of Blockstream Satellite to Starlink.

A quick non-Google web search found this blog post from 2021-10-03, also published in Bitcoin Magazine:

[...long description/instructions for setup, with photos and screenshots...]

Conclusion

After I get the blockchain synchronized, I plan on setting this up so that my other Bitcoin nodes will continue receiving blockchain data from my satellite node over my local network during an internet outage. But because I'm strictly downloading from satellite signal, this will take roughly a month or longer to get a full sync. That is why I think this is a good stopping point for this guide and I will follow up with shorter guides on useful things you can do with a satellite-connected receiving node.

Also published at: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/guides/how-to-run-a-bitcoin-node-from-satellite

The same author also has such things as “Bitcoin Home Mining Network Privacy”.  I have not reviewed.  It may be interesting to reach out to him for updates on how his satellite setup has worked out, in real-world usage.

Another guide I found (warning: on a retarded webhost that blocks Tor):
https://www.alexanderjsingleton.com/goldeneye-running-bitcoin-from-space-with-blockstream/

My searching/browsing just now turned up some other interesting stuff, about using Bitcoin totally off-grid:  Blockstream Satellite for receiving the blockchain as bulk data—mesh networks for anything that needs two-way communication.  Will not link, because I am getting way out of my depth.  I know some people who do mesh networks; perhaps I should take this as an opportunity to learn.

vapourminer:  I do know of some things about LoRaWAN, alternative sat systems for other purposes (not useful for receiving the Bitcoin blockchain), and other things that it seems you would probably find very useful.  Not an expert—could give pointers and DYOR leads.  Feel free to ping me if curious.

The file option is actually interesting to me. The ability to broadcast data over a wide area for effectively a low one-off fee could have interesting use cases, [...]

I observe that it is a way to broadcast a message to a completely untraceable recipient.  To send the message, your Internet connection could still be traced if Tor is broken, or whatever; but there are various specialized scenarios where message recipient anonymity is the top priority.  Compare dead-drops, or old-fashioned alt.anonymous.messages.

uh, you guys do know im lazy af, right?

ill get right on that after a nap. priority one.

hahahahahaha   jk

realistically i have always been interested in it. if i ever do give it a shot i will post it here for sure.

I do NOT want to ask any potentially private/revealing details about your circumstances.  But I have a feeling that someday, you may find this very handy.  Even as a backup for your multiple backups of the precious, precious blockchain.

Happy to help.

[goldkingcoiner]

Sorry if I am not understanding this, but the "teleports" still rely on the traditional ground internet to get the block data which they proceed to send to the satellites which proceed to send it everywhere on earth? Why can't we just use Elon Musks satellites to access the internet and basically do the same thing once the costs justify the means?

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[death_wish]

Sorry if I am not understanding this, but the "teleports" still rely on the traditional ground internet to get the block data which they proceed to send to the satellites which proceed to send it everywhere on earth? Why can't we just use Elon Musks satellites to access the internet and basically do the same thing once the costs justify the means?

The purpose here is to transmit the blockchain to people who lack sufficient Internet access.  (Or who want to receive the entire blockchain with total anonymity.)  As long as we don’t all suddenly start depending on Blockstream for this, Blockstream Satellite only increases the availability of Bitcoin.  It is strictly an improvement:  An addition to ground-based Internet, which is not all controlled by any one party, as well as off-grid communications such as mesh networks, etc., etc.

Incurring a centralized dependency on Elon Musk for anything is a bad idea.  Musk essentially boosted/launched the current wave of “Bitcoin uses too much energy” nonsense in 2021.  Musk wants to dox all Twitter users.  I do not trust the man.

I do not want his Internet.  I shall petition the CEO of Internet to ban this loser.

Twitter official onion: https://twitter3e4tixl4xyajtrzo62zg5vztmjuricljdp2c5kshju4avyoid.onion/elonmusk/status/1517215736606957573
Clearnet: https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1517215736606957573

[philipma1957]

OT...relevant mostly for those from 51 yo and older.

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2022/06/22/bjsports-2021-105360

interesting study and a simple test.
basically, if an individual aged 51 and older can stand more than 10s on one leg, the probability of that person dying within 10 years is 5%, but if he/she can't, then the probability rises to about 30% (highly statistically significant, apparently).

easy enough to check

not sure what would happen if upon a bad test someone would start exercising and/or lose weight, etc.
basically, it is not clear if it is a fixable situation or not.

65 years old

60 second left leg
25 seconds right leg

I will practice and see if I can do 2 minutes on each

[Biodom]

OT...relevant mostly for those from 51 yo and older.

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2022/06/22/bjsports-2021-105360

interesting study and a simple test.
basically, if an individual aged 51 and older can stand more than 10s on one leg, the probability of that person dying within 10 years is 5%, but if he/she can't, then the probability rises to about 30% (highly statistically significant, apparently).

easy enough to check

not sure what would happen if upon a bad test someone would start exercising and/or lose weight, etc.
basically, it is not clear if it is a fixable situation or not.

65 years old

60 second left leg
25 seconds right leg

I will practice and see if I can do 2 minutes on each

excellent prognosis (based on the article data), Phil..knock on wood!

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[death_wish]

I propose a new WO poll:

What should be done with the peculiarly vicious breed of nocoiners who get their jollies off seeing Bitcoin low—not from any wish to buy low, but from Schadenfreude and a happy confirmation bias towards evidence that Bitcoin is a scam?

What of the ones who take the opportunity to ooze faux concern, while merrily mixing up BTC with garbage?  “I told you that BTC and Yield Farming and Bored Ape NFTs and all that stuff was a scam.  Wise men saw this coming.  It was predicted.  It was known that this would all go away.  Please take this as an opportunity to turn your life around.  Forget all those scams.  Do something productive.”

I don’t see anything wrong with happiness at the price being low—if you want to buy, because you expect for Bitcoin to flourish in the long term.  (I admit such a thing myself right now.  Not for the first time—by far not; my approach, previously with better planning to have purchase funds, was always “buy when there is blood in the streets”.)

I don’t condemn people who simply admit that they don’t understand the thing, and back off.

I don’t have adequate words to describe the wrongness of someone who is just desperate to see Bitcoin fail, to say “I told you so”—to see BTC finally go to zero as it somehow mysteriously failed to do in 2018, in 2015, in 2013...

Polls are never binding on me.  I don’t believe in polls.  I say “poll” for the lulz.

Worst:  Someone happy that you lost your BTC in liquidation, because that means an opportunity to help you escape from the Bitcoin scam on which you’ve been wasting your life.  A message for your own good, delivered as to a cult member—or to a drug addict who needs to quit self-destructive behaviour:  You don’t see it now; but later, you will realize how lucky this is!  Now, you will be able to see some sense.  The rat-poison-squared is purged from your mind and soul.  Now that you are not invested, you can now stop believing in that nonsense, stop being brainwashed, stop fooling yourself.  Give up on it.  This is the first day of the rest of your life not being tied down to the Bitcoin scam. 🌷

This post involves some rhetorical hyperbole.  But not much.  In substance, not much.

[Richy_T]

My searching/browsing just now turned up some other interesting stuff, about using Bitcoin totally off-grid:  Blockstream Satellite for receiving the blockchain as bulk data—mesh networks for anything that needs two-way communication.  Will not link, because I am getting way out of my depth.  I know some people who do mesh networks; perhaps I should take this as an opportunity to learn.

Now, mesh networks are definitely worthwhile. I was kinda hoping that Bitcoin would drive their development. The internet is far too vulnerable if the feds should decide to get nasty. There are some improvements that could be made to the networking layer (and, indeed, I believe that the networking, along with the wallet, should not be part of "core" Bitcoin) that could get around some of the basic blocking actions but it really needs its own physical layer option too.

[death_wish]

Now, mesh networks are definitely worthwhile. I was kinda hoping that Bitcoin would drive their development. The internet is far too vulnerable if the feds should decide to get nasty.

I have no illusions about Bitcoin’s ability to resist a full-scale, no-compromise absolute ban.  (Those few of us who would successfully evade the ban would be economically marginal, and therefore unimportant.)  I do think that popularizing ways to increase robustness against censorship deters such scenarios from ever happening, by raising the cost of enforcement.  It is, in effect, a perfectly legal way to load in advance a “poison pill” for potential adverse legislation.

By a very rough analogy, compare how American 2A activists buy more guns and ammo every time restrictions on guns are increased.  By another analogy, compare also how PGP was created deliberately to monkey-wrench then-Senator Joe Biden’s proposed ban of unrestricted strong cryptography.  Accomplished facts and high costs of enforcement are some of the most powerful arguments in the world!

I believe that in the abstract, it is the same reason why decentralized Bitcoin survived its infancy, even though USG, et al. shut down previous centralized attempts at independent monetary systems.  If the cost of a ban is too high, then they attempt subterfuge to corrupt it (why did CIA Gavin endorse Faketoshi!? let’s not mention Mike Hearn), and/or try to figure out a way to co-opt it for Wall Street financiers.

There are some improvements that could be made to the networking layer (and, indeed, I believe that the networking, along with the wallet, should not be part of "core" Bitcoin) that could get around some of the basic blocking actions but it really needs its own physical layer option too.

See below link for happiness.  (Why do I respect Core?  They do good work.  Not only on one ticket...  This reminds me, apropos how this discussion began:  Generally, since Bitcoin has no “dev tax” or other self-funding mechanism, I suggest that all who read this should feel free to find ways to help support Core development.)

...although the worst problems were fixed by Segwit and some other softfork cleanups, it is still ongoing to some degree.  IMO, one of Satoshi’s worst decisions was to write the wallet and P2P network node as one monolithic unit, with no security separation.  That’s a design flaw in the reference implementation.  Core has been trying for years to separate these functions...

The libbitcoinkernel Project (bitcoin/bitcoin#24303) is at the top of my own wishlist.  I salute Carl Dong for his elegant, practical, safe and clean approach.  It is progressing beautifully; it will probably take a long time to ship.  When it’s done, it will open a whole new world of Bitcoin possibilities—this is a Core cleanup, but it is useful far beyond Core; as a developer, I am eager to use this for other projects.  It is one of those things that mere speculators neither know, nor understand, nor care about—no really, this is the kind of effort and talent that makes your Bitcoin valuable!

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[JayJuanGee]

I propose a new WO poll:

What should be done with the peculiarly vicious breed of nocoiners who get their jollies off seeing Bitcoin low—not from any wish to buy low, but from Schadenfreude and a happy confirmation bias towards evidence that Bitcoin is a scam?

What of the ones who take the opportunity to ooze faux concern, while merrily mixing up BTC with garbage?  “I told you that BTC and Yield Farming and Bored Ape NFTs and all that stuff was a scam.  Wise men saw this coming.  It was predicted.  It was known that this would all go away.  Please take this as an opportunity to turn your life around.  Forget all those scams.  Do something productive.”

I don’t see anything wrong with happiness at the price being low—if you want to buy, because you expect for Bitcoin to flourish in the long term.  (I admit such a thing myself right now.  Not for the first time—by far not; my approach, previously with better planning to have purchase funds, was always “buy when there is blood in the streets”.)

I don’t condemn people who simply admit that they don’t understand the thing, and back off.

I don’t have adequate words to describe the wrongness of someone who is just desperate to see Bitcoin fail, to say “I told you so”—to see BTC finally go to zero as it somehow mysteriously failed to do in 2018, in 2015, in 2013...

Polls are never binding on me.  I don’t believe in polls.  I say “poll” for the lulz.

Worst:  Someone happy that you lost your BTC in liquidation, because that means an opportunity to help you escape from the Bitcoin scam on which you’ve been wasting your life.  A message for your own good, delivered as to a cult member—or to a drug addict who needs to quit self-destructive behaviour:  You don’t see it now; but later, you will realize how lucky this is!  Now, you will be able to see some sense.  The rat-poison-squared is purged from your mind and soul.  Now that you are not invested, you can now stop believing in that nonsense, stop being brainwashed, stop fooling yourself.  Give up on it.  This is the first day of the rest of your life not being tied down to the Bitcoin scam. 🌷

This post involves some rhetorical hyperbole.  But not much.  In substance, not much.

Usually guys with any kind of serious poll proposal will tend to be a wee bit more concrete in the formulation of the poll, and surely some poll questions are better than others.

I already mentioned that I doubt that guys (and gal) in this thread have a whole hell of a lot of sympathy for no coiners and/or low coiners, but confirming the answer to that question does not even seem that important.

I think that we have seen quite a few sad cases come through this thread over the years, but overall bitcoin has been a bullish asset and seems to continue to be a bullish asset, so surely guys might judge anyone who manages to lose money on an overall bullish asset - even though we know that some of the corrections and bearish trends can be quite brutal - and really set some guys (and gal) into depression - and perhaps for reasons in which they are trying to become rich (or prevent their lil selfies from becoming poor) at a faster pace than king daddy seems willing to facilitate.

Several of us had been recommending that the entry-level goals for BTC accumulation could have been reasonably set at something like 0.21BTC, and with these low low prices (aka bargain prices) we might be able to temporarily ramp up that entry-level BTC accumulation back up to 1 BTC.. at least for a wee bit of time- unless Torque's theory of the going to $30k and subsequent UPPity from there ends up playing out - which might thereafter again cause entry-levels of 1 BTC to be less achievable.

Sometimes I consider my own approach to be fairly constant with only a few small tweaks here and there along the way, but even in the past 24 hours I made some further tweaks - which probably puts me at about 7 somewhat beyond expectations tweaks since about mid-May.. Sometimes I am not even more than 50% comfortable to share very many specifics in regards to how to characterize the tweaks while in the midst of them (except maybe a wee bit of directionality - that I had done regarding the prior 6 tweaks) - yet sometimes I will also wait to make certain disclosures until maybe several months afterwards to state the extent to which some tweaks were a good idea or not.. or how much I ended up benefiting from that (as a trade off to the costs, if any)...

I do also know a stubborn fuck in real life who has been negatively affected by using a leverage product.. and I have made several interactions, and likely more BTC ends up getting lost (by that person) than we are really able to discuss because people want to be private about those kinds of things, and I am not even trying to emphasize too much of the "I told you so" angle.. even though there is some unstated judgement can be read in regards to our interactions...

In the end, I am not even sure about a fair poll question, except maybe something like:

Has your BTC stash increased, decreased or stayed the same from our drop from $35k (around May 6th / May 7th) to present?  That would be ONLY 3 possible answers, no? 

Do we get anywhere with a poll like that?  I do believe it is better than asking whether we like low coiners/no coiners.

Another possible good question would be by the time we get back to $35k (whenever that is) do you expect to have more BTC, less BTC or the same amount of BTC that you had at about the time of our May 6th/May 7th price drop below $35k?

A problem with this second question is that it involves the potential for a distance between what ends up happening and what the member believes is going to happen.

There might not even be any particular correct answer for either of the questions, except that if someone is in accumulation stage, maintenance stage or liquidation stage then the answer should be somewhat reflective of what stage s/he is in.. .. I mean that whether increase, the same or decrease has happened should be close to matching whether the member is in accumulation, maintenance or liquidation status.   Otherwise something may well have gone wrong, no? Am I not correct?

[savetherainforest]

Spectators be like: Yo fools, is the price going to go down, up, sideways, f^ckways, rightwasy, wrongways??    
But.. some expecting pump, some dump, some capitalization on the second dip at 14K.            


No one knows sh!t. Actually.. Not rly, because Banks are on 'suicide watch' right now, so we will see if they shoot themselves in the foot and try to dump.    

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[JayJuanGee]

Spectators be like: Yo fools, is the price going to go down, up, sideways, f^ckways, rightwasy, wrongways??    
But.. some expecting pump, some dump, some capitalization on the second dip at 14K.            


No one knows sh!t. Actually.. Not rly, because Banks are on 'suicide watch' right now, so we will see if they shoot themselves in the foot and try to dump.    

Odds are 50/50 then?

[savetherainforest]

Spectators be like: Yo fools, is the price going to go down, up, sideways, f^ckways, rightwasy, wrongways??    
But.. some expecting pump, some dump, some capitalization on the second dip at 14K.            


No one knows sh!t. Actually.. Not rly, because Banks are on 'suicide watch' right now, so we will see if they shoot themselves in the foot and try to dump.    

Odds are 50/50 then?

Nope.. it is 100% certain going for another dip. Then we get to receive capitalization.      





Here...      ..listen to a swang till zen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMuKc-7fvoQ

(because you are probably low in Cow Hoof 9 Vitamin!)

[JayJuanGee]

Spectators be like: Yo fools, is the price going to go down, up, sideways, f^ckways, rightwasy, wrongways??    
But.. some expecting pump, some dump, some capitalization on the second dip at 14K.            


No one knows sh!t. Actually.. Not rly, because Banks are on 'suicide watch' right now, so we will see if they shoot themselves in the foot and try to dump.    

Odds are 50/50 then?

Nope.. it is 100% certain going for another dip. Then we get to receive capitalization.      





Here...      ..listen to a swang till zen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMuKc-7fvoQ

(because you are probably low in Cow Hoof 9 Vitamin!)

How much dee dippening going to be smartie panties?

Is it going below $17,593?

When it going to be happening?  

We get up first before dee dippening come or we go straight to dippening?

Once we get dee dippening, we going to get stuck there or we going to spring back?    If we spring back will the spring back be to these here price levels or some other price levels?


What does grandma think about how smartie you have gotten in recent times?





Inquiring minds wanna know.

[goldkingcoiner]

Spectators be like: Yo fools, is the price going to go down, up, sideways, f^ckways, rightwasy, wrongways??    
But.. some expecting pump, some dump, some capitalization on the second dip at 14K.            


No one knows sh!t. Actually.. Not rly, because Banks are on 'suicide watch' right now, so we will see if they shoot themselves in the foot and try to dump.    

Odds are 50/50 then?

Nope.. it is 100% certain going for another dip. Then we get to receive capitalization.      

[savetherainforest]

Spectators be like: Yo fools, is the price going to go down, up, sideways, f^ckways, rightwasy, wrongways??    
But.. some expecting pump, some dump, some capitalization on the second dip at 14K.            


No one knows sh!t. Actually.. Not rly, because Banks are on 'suicide watch' right now, so we will see if they shoot themselves in the foot and try to dump.    

Odds are 50/50 then?

Nope.. it is 100% certain going for another dip. Then we get to receive capitalization.      

^
Just put a sharp dip like a nail in that chart.