Disoriented Bitcoin User

[bill gator]

Good morning, or whatever pertains to you at the time of reading this.

I have followed Bitcoin for years, almost since the very beginning and recently I have become detached from it; I do not like this.

My question to the community is this -
"What do you suggest someone who was informed about Bitcoin, but has lived under a rock for 6-months learns or reads about Bitcoin to catch up?"

I'm looking for something good to read, watch, contemplate or consider and it doesn't necessarily need to be a recent development if it's something relatively unknown.

Although this is more for a personal enrichment, I do think it would be helpful for newcomers as well as those of us that are "rusty".

[LeGaulois]

I know the answer may sound silly or too simple, but why not simply use google news with "Bitcoin" and select a time range, for example from July 2020 to December 2020.

You will surely find a lot of content to read. Boring news you read just the title and the interesting ones to read. By using the forum also, by looking at the threads and see which ones come up most often, you may notice a few trends.

Don't worry, the north is always at the same place, it hasn't moved since.

[mk4]

Some of the notable "events" that I remember on the top of my head, but you might've probably heard of already, that I'll list anyway just so if you've missed any of them:

• July 16: Twitter hackers who targeted Elon Musk and others received $121,000 in bitcoin, analysis shows
• August 11: MicroStrategy becomes first listed company to buy bitcoin as part of its capital allocation strategy
• October 8: Square Invests $50 Million in Bitcoin
• October 15: Taproot Has Been Merged Into Bitcoin Core: Here’s What That Means
• October 21: PayPal allows Bitcoin and crypto spending
• December 12: Pornhub Might Have To Push Bitcoin Adoption

Also, Specter Wallet has been getting a lot of attention on Twitter since the past few months:

• https://specter.solutions/
• https://github.com/cryptoadvance/specter-desktop

[CODE200]

Use of comparison would always be a good start in order to share a concept to another person. If they have zero knowledge about it, using terminologies would be useless since they won't understand a thing. They could be literate and such but application of those things won't be as easy as it may sound. Once they catch up with the 'shallowest' idea of it, you may start with its function, usage, advantages and disadvantages before going to the deeper idea of it. I have no basis with this but I guess it would work to many people, as this is how I learned about this technology but the only difference is that I was the one who seeked for answers to my questions. Interest will play a huge role by the way.

"What do you suggest someone who was informed about Bitcoin, but has lived under a rock for 6-months learns or reads about Bitcoin to catch up?"

Another things is asking what do they know about it since in this case they were already informed probably about the concept of Bitcoin. If they will already have something in their mind, it could also be something good to start with.

[bill gator]

I know the answer may sound silly or too simple . . .

It's actually a solid answer, because it's sort of a "teach a man to fish" situation. Sometimes the simpler things evade me.
I don't know why I hadn't thought to do this.

• August 11: MicroStrategy becomes first listed company to buy bitcoin as part of its capital allocation strategy
• October 8: Square Invests $50 Million in Bitcoin
• October 15: Taproot Has Been Merged Into Bitcoin Core: Here’s What That Means
• October 21: PayPal allows Bitcoin and crypto spending
• December 12: Pornhub Might Have To Push Bitcoin Adoption

I hadn't heard of any of those events. I'll probably stumble across them when I start doing as LeGaulois has suggested, though.
This gives me a few freebies, and I appreciate that.

Have any of us said it's over here and gone to leave the forum for good?

Many of us have.

[cabron]

Apart from googling all you wanna know, there is youtube that you can search on. Maybe subscribing to article/news sites will work for you like cointelegraph and coindesk that usually posts what is going on.

If you have heard of them before then you didn't missed them.
There isn't much anyway besides the news about grayscale and microstrategy keeps buying. Updates about regulations like SEC.

[vaultman]

All that happened during this time was investing money in bitcoin from large companies and investors. This is important information to know, as these investments have an impact on the increase in Bitcoin adoption among the population, which leads to an increase in its price. In my opinion, the most important news was the announcement of PayPal about the launch of a new service that allows users to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency, which caused a sharp rise in prices not only for bitcoin, but also for other cryptocurrencies.

[AakZaki]

Some of the notable "events" that I remember on the top of my head, but you might've probably heard of already, that I'll list anyway just so if you've missed any of them:

• July 16: Twitter hackers who targeted Elon Musk and others received $121,000 in bitcoin, analysis shows
• August 11: MicroStrategy becomes first listed company to buy bitcoin as part of its capital allocation strategy
• October 8: Square Invests $50 Million in Bitcoin
• October 15: Taproot Has Been Merged Into Bitcoin Core: Here’s What That Means
• October 21: PayPal allows Bitcoin and crypto spending
• December 12: Pornhub Might Have To Push Bitcoin Adoption

Also, Specter Wallet has been getting a lot of attention on Twitter since the past few months:

• https://specter.solutions/
• https://github.com/cryptoadvance/specter-desktop

Many good events that contain about bitcoin. Another example is Paypal which offers crypto payments which will start in 2021.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/paypal-to-offer-crypto-payments-starting-in-2021

This news is able to make bitcoin prices rise and become positive news. Because Paypal is a large payment service provider company that is known by people around the world.

[webtricks]

I have followed Bitcoin for years, almost since the very beginning and recently I have become detached from it; I do not like this.

My question to the community is this -
"What do you suggest someone who was informed about Bitcoin, but has lived under a rock for 6-months learns or reads about Bitcoin to catch up?"

I'm looking for something good to read, watch, contemplate or consider and it doesn't necessarily need to be a recent development if it's something relatively unknown.

Although this is more for a personal enrichment, I do think it would be helpful for newcomers as well as those of us that are "rusty".

Well, there are three things related to Bitcoin which change frequently:

1. Price and Market - This is the most cheerful of three if you are back after 6 months. You left bitcoin at $10-12K range and it's up by almost 2.5x. Market looks much more mature this time and bitcoin is finally coming out as the mainstream investment for traders.

2. News and Economics - @mk4 already listed notable events happened in past 6 months. If I say in brief, corporate and big institutions have become more interested in bitcoin.

3. Source Code - If you are interested in Bitcoin's source code and updates then there's a PR Review Club - https://bitcoincore.reviews/. You can join meeting @5PM GMT every Wednesday. It's the best way to remain closest to source code developments. Last meeting (Christmas special) was about testing the Release Candidates for recent version.

[NotATether]

I agree with LeGaulois that news is probably the best way to catch up with a short summary of what happened since you last came.

Googling "bitcoin news" will give you the most beef on what's going on right now, but you probably already know these events since they're happening right now, so that's probably not useful for you. Coindesk has an archive of all it's articles with a bitcoin tag on them: https://www.coindesk.com/tag/markets-bitcoin

Bitcoin.com also has a bigger archive even though lots of people here hate this site: https://news.bitcoin.com/tag/btc/

3. Source Code - If you are interested in Bitcoin's source code and updates then there's a PR Review Club - https://bitcoincore.reviews/. You can join meeting @5PM GMT every Wednesday. It's the best way to remain closest to source code developments. Last meeting (Christmas special) was about testing the Release Candidates for recent version.

Taproot's pretty much the only big new addition in Core, it's otherwise largely the same as it was at the beginning of the year.

[verita1]

Good news has happened for Bitcoin and for the community as mk4 has pointed out and that fills us with satisfaction. Because we are patient that something good is about to begin. I think it is a new stage for Bitcoin.

I understand that sometimes we tend to disconnect from things when they are monotonous without major changes as happened to you at some point with Bitcoin.

Please do not miss this moment because big changes are seen in the crypto space and Bitcoin is its main protagonist speaking in figurative terms.

[Maus0728]

3. Source Code - If you are interested in Bitcoin's source code and updates then there's a PR Review Club - https://bitcoincore.reviews/. You can join meeting @5PM GMT every Wednesday. It's the best way to remain closest to source code developments. Last meeting (Christmas special) was about testing the Release Candidates for recent version.

Thank you for dropping the link.. I never thought that there is an existing community of Bitcoin Core developers who are actively conducting a weekly meeting just to discuss the ongoing developments. It is actually inspiring to read some of the blogs written by John Newbery and Jimmy Song, it's feels like you are being persuaded to dive into a more technical stuff of cryptography and everything related to bitcoin..

LOL.. Reading materials from Jameson Lopp and Andreas Antonopolous are just, no doubt, tip of the iceberg.

[freedomno1]

Good morning, or whatever pertains to you at the time of reading this.

I have followed Bitcoin for years, almost since the very beginning and recently I have become detached from it; I do not like this.

My question to the community is this -
"What do you suggest someone who was informed about Bitcoin, but has lived under a rock for 6-months learns or reads about Bitcoin to catch up?"

I'm looking for something good to read, watch, contemplate or consider and it doesn't necessarily need to be a recent development if it's something relatively unknown.

Although this is more for a personal enrichment, I do think it would be helpful for newcomers as well as those of us that are "rusty".

Not alone mate I came back to the forum on occasion for periods of time since regardless of how much of a trash bin for posts it's become somewhere buried within it is what you need
Especially since its all raw data, now if it was compressed into nuggets would be better that said what interests others might not interest you so it still is a timesink.

Reading this thread
Taproot and Specter require further research

The reason actually for my visit today is I got interested in Georgism and wanted to see what the oldies discussed on bitcointalk as it goes back to crypto libertarian ideals
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=130023.0

An oldie but a goodie society is inflationary is it broken to tax at income or smarter to tax on land by it's nature and by merit of being Bitcoin holders are we essentially the landowners and as other people develop Bitcoin for us benefit simply from the work of others.

Then apply it to taxation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li_MGFRNqOE&t

Mainly since I remember skimming rumours of people wanting crypto transactions over 3000 dollars to be traced to each person and who it is sent to and thought well that's dumb Fiat doesn't get that strict of an oversight.


(I'll add a footnote)
Paypal finally adopted Bitcoin ....... .... .. as a one way street sort of such a piss off tease
https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/cryptocurrency-on-paypal-faq-faq4398?app=searchAutoComplete#:~:text=What%20did%20PayPal%20announce%20around%20Crypto%3F&text=PayPal%20also%20announced%20that%20it,more%20than%2026%20million%20merchants.

You own the Cryptocurrency you buy on PayPal but will not be provided with a private key. In case you are wondering, a private key is a person's secret code to access and manage their Cryptocurrency. If lost, stolen, or even forgotten they can never get to their Cryptocurrency again -- pretty risky in its own right. If you can log in to your PayPal account, you will have access to Cryptocurrency balance you hold.

Happy Own the Keys day 12 years of Bitcoin XD

[davis196]

I don't think that anything important happened inside the Bitcoin community during the last 6 months(except the BTC halving,which happened before June,so I'm not counting it as an important event anymore).
Most of the news were about come big companies and institutional investors adopting BTC.
We,the true Bitcoiners haven't changed our views about BTC,but the financial world is beginning to change it's perception in regards of Bitcoin.
I can't help you about finding interesting info sources,since most of the crypto news websites are just spreading bullish or FUD propaganda anyway.
Maybe try to find something on Reddit.There are a few very active crypto related subreddits there.

[aoluain]

Welcome back!

I suggest you watch, listen and read everything Michael Saylor of Microstrategy Investments has
said in the last 6 months.

He has a very clear understanding of where Bitcoin is at now and gives a very clear, concise and
easy to understand description about what is happening now and what he expects going forward.

He talks about everything from how it works, the history to investment strategies.

https://twitter.com/michael_saylor?s=09

Just put Michael Saylor into YOUTUBE and all the interviews come up.

There are other Bulls which are well worth listening to and following, PlanB & Raoul Pal too,
there are others but these are my 3 suggestions.