Another node joins the network. 24 hours later and we are up and running! That was way faster than my previous RasPi. I'll do a comparison between the nodes in terms of cost, features, usability, etc.

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

Relocated my home miner to its new home in the laundry room for the summer months, it was getting a little spicy in the living room!

New node with 16gb RAM and 2TB SSD running Start9OS and BTC Knots! Let's see how long it takes to sync the entire blockchain.

I started my search for sounds money with gold and silver, and still have both. They both used to be money, but I'm learning that they are more of a collectible market today. Liquidity and the buy/sell spread are both issues, a couple years ago there was a high demand, I could sell thousands of dollars of metals over spot price within an hour. Today the demand is much lower and metals aren't even selling at spot price. Not to mention that shipping takes 2-3 business days and $10. Compare that to Bitcoin: little to no spread from buying to selling, 24/7 access to highly liquid markets, instant peer to peer transfers for pennies. Bitcoin is the better monetary asset.

And this is why I play monopoly with my kiddos. Gotta teach them that paper money isn't real, the only real thing is what you can buy with that money.

During the bear market crash of 2022 I leveraged myself with a 4% interest loan to buy bitcoin. Since then the price of bitcoin has gone up almost 500% and I've been making the minimum payments to service the debt. As we move into Q4 of the post halving year I want to pay off the loan. Currently running the numbers, will update when complete.

Too good not to share. What other signs are there?

The ignorance of the critics convinced me more than the praise of the advocates ever could. If this is the level of understanding the 'normies' have then we are indeed early.

If I had sold my house a year ago I could have pocketed around $50k and bought 1 bitcoin with the proceeds, that 1 bitcoin would have doubled to be worth over $100k now. Instead I'm dealing with a less than stellar property manager and paying for a new hot water heater. Lesson learned!

I'm doing my part!

Paying someone with bitcoin is giving them the gift of future price appreciation. We should want to pay our friends, family, and community in a currency that goes up in value!