I've never liked PayPal since they tried to scam me and keep the proceeds of a domain name sale. It was PayPal and not the buyer that tried to take the money. Fortunately it had removed the money before they got to it. They were also inventing excuses to freeze accounts and put the money straight into their profit account. They lost a court case in the US, and were ordered to pay something like $500 million in compensation to users ( I may have remembered the amount incorrectly). They managed to suppress the reports of this, and I have tried many times to find them without any luck. I wish I had taken a copy., as I can't even remember the jurisdiction. It was as a result of this that they moved the company out of America, and into a less litigious environment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df0_Q_CV4GM

The UK government is continuing its crack down on crypto. One guy had an account with £1.5 million in it frozen. I believe it was in a Coinbase wallet. Obviously this is going to increase during the next 12 months, and it emphasises the fact that you should keep your crypto in a secure wallet, and where you are the only person that knows the private key and the seed.

I think that buy low and HODL is the best option.

With all that money involved, he ought to have done a deal with the council rather than going to court. If he had offered to split the proceeds with the council, I bet they would have taken him up on the offer. He should have done that right at the beginning. I expect the drive has been recycled into a Chinese rocket by now.

I wonder how they count the number of nodes. I run a node for about 30 minutes every day. It's main function is to service my wallets, and it seems to work well. Do they sample the network, and count the number of nodes online at that point, or do they run a monitoring system, and register every node that comes on line during that period. Also, I use up to 6 different Internet providers, and some don't provide consistent IP addresses. Will that affect the count?

The narrative wants us to switch out of Bitcoin, and that leads me to believe that now is a good time to buy Bitcoin.  With many countries considering additing Bitcoin to their reserves, the future has never been rosier in my opinion. I still want to buy more bitcoin before the next hockey stick appears in the price graph.

Happy Christmas to all you cats out there, and a prosperous Bitcoin year for all of us.

I've been collecting Satoshi since my early days as a member of Bitcoin Talk ( my first coins were obtained in 2016 ). I had a lot of attempts to purchase Bitcoin, but due to the high incidence of fraud in online and exchange transactions, I didn't acquire as many as I would have liked. I picked up a bit from selling domain names through Name Silo, and I exchanged a bit for Sterling with trusted members in this forum. Due to my caution in acquiring Bitcoin, I still haven't been able to spend any coins. The closest I got was sales whilst I was scalping on a major exchange. I don't think that counts though, as of course my wallet was owned by the exchange, and I didn't have the private key. I've got my small holdings littered over a number of hard drives in wallets created by running nodes. I really need to consolidate those, as I don't know how much I actually control.

In the early days, I experimented with a faucet. This was useful as a learning tool, but probably not a brilliant use of my time. Recently I've got interested in the dice gambling game on Free Bitcoin. I have had some minor success without having to invest anything, but again it is not very rewarding when one considers the time involved. I guess I use it as a background intellectual exercise, rather in the same way that some people do crosswords. I got interested in that, because I own the domain name "Free Bitcoin Bets". My long term interest in domain names, was probably the stimulus that attracted me to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only virtual medium of exchange that has a hard value, and very few people seem to understand the basis for this.

I do have some regrets though. I invested £3,600 in UK premium bonds, and so far I have only won £150 after over 2 years of investment. That just represent a loss of interest, as, of course, I still have the principle. Had I invested this in Bitcoin, I would have seen the value increase from £3,600 to almost £20,000 at current prices. I suspect that we are going to enter a period of high price volatility, so maybe I should have another go at price scalping.

Running the Bitcoin core software on an old Linux PC ( I'm using Bodhi at the moment ) is pretty simple, you just need to make sure that you have a large enough disk ( I would suggest 2TB ). You don't need to run core all the time. Once every 3 or 4 days is fine, and then just to sync the blockchain. Of course if you are sending or receiving coins, then you need to run it. The software seems to be pretty robust, and usually recovers if you have an unexpected shut down. Of course, you shouldn't rely on this, and close core and wait for the "don't turn off message" to clear before shutting down the computer.

I can see Blackrock and other investment houses going for this. I'm sure they will be happy to fork out the tax on the £billions they hold in Bitcoin. They will probably speculate through and overseas exchange they own, and incur massive losses. That way they can get massive credits to reduce their profits on other assets like carbon credits.

Maybe Tesla realises that the environmentally damaging EV market is dying, and they want to move assets out of the company while they can. I see another 4 french people were burnt to death in a Tesla because they couldn't get out of the car.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-crash-france-fire-4-deaths-investigation/

Here is an update on leaving the network traffic screen running in a supermarket cafe. A couple of days ago I was in the Sainsbury's cafe, and I left the screen running on the Notebook while I did some stuff on the Netbook. I ignored it for over an hour, and when I looked at it, I noticed that there had been no traffic for about 20 minutes, so it looks as if O2 ( their WiFi  supplier) monitors activity, and block what it considers toi be excessive use. I really don't like O2, as they block some of my domains. Kat1.com for example. Now, you tell me why that page could be considered not to be family friendly. The stupid part is that I can tether my 'phone, and display the page for all to see if I want to. Gambling sites like my Free Bitcoin Bets are not restricted, and I would have thought it better to stop kids looking at gambling sites.

Yesterday I decided to replace Bodhi on the Netbook as I was having problems with the Bluetooth. It's an old HP netbook with limited resources, so I need a light version of Linux. I installed a few flavours of Linux, and they all had problems, so I decided to revert to Bodhi. I'd overwritten the iso files, so I tried to re-download the latest version. O2 kept killing the download, so I wasted a lot of time as I thought it was a source forge problem. Last night I did a bit of dog sitting for a friend while he went toi a rehearsal for his rock band. Bodhi installed without any problems over his WiFi, and I managed to tune up the installation. The only difficulty was his dog, as he wanted to sit on my lap whilst I was working. He is a rottweiler/staffie cross, so he is a bit big for a lap dog.

I guess the message here is that, if you are a vanlifer, you need to think about ways to manage intensive Internet activity. 10 minutes or so of node synchronisation seems to be OK, but good luck if you want to download the whole blockchain. Next time I want to experiment with OS installs, I'll probably go to a public library.

Well the UK exempts some gold coins from VAT, capital gains and inheritance tax ( Sovereigns and Britannias). This is handy for the elite weathy banksers. As they are stocking up on Bitcoin, there is a chance that the gov will include Bitcoin in the list at some stage. By this time it will  probably be difficult to buy more than a couple of Satoshi for the man on the Clapham omnibus.

If you enjoy your work, then stick with it. I'm retired, and I've never worked so hard.

Your danger is that you cash in your Bitcoin, and put the money into a depreciating asset, or worse still, a high interest account with a bank that needs a bail-in. Alternatively, you separate from your partner, and she claims half of your savings.

So Bitcoin was created by a team of developers. So it was probably a politician or globalist who led the team. Maybe it was Biden, or Larry Fink or Klaus Schwab. Perhaps it was lost in the annals of history for a while, and it was really Nostradamus, or Pythagoras.

Solar flares aren't a conspiracy.

Can it remain geostationary over night? If so does it rely on batteries?
What about high wind speeds, will they drain the batteries if there is limited solar exposure?
How strong is the cover, can it resist the debris falling from the skies these days?
What about maintenance?
Can it be shot down when the inevitable conflict kicks off?
Will it disrupt air traffic?
Will it contribute to global warming? No doubt the wokeratii, who want to restrict the internet, will claim that it does.

I still   believe that Bitcoin was created as an experiment by the banking elite. It was used to gain knowledge and experience from the creative members of the cyber world. It has been a massive success. The limits imposed in its creation ensure that it will never be a thread to the emerging global CBDCs, but will be an alternative to gold and silver rather than a major daily currency. Its adoption by the banking and investment elite seems to bear this out. I believe the greatest threat to Bitcoin is the accumulation of available coins in large banking portfolios. However, this could be an advantage if the they use it as a store of wealth, and seek tax advantages rather like gold coins.
We can keep it as a public asset for less wealthy people by running nodes and solo mining. Payment for low value items via the Lightning network will also keep it as a valuable asset for " the people".

Today's update ( Saturday ).
I'm in the Sainsbury's cafe this morning. I arrived at opening time ( 8am ) to ensure that I got one of the optimum tables. I love these as there are 4 of them, and they are like mini-cubicles with two bench seats and two 13 amp mains sockets, and two USB sockets. There is room on the table for both computers and breakfast.

I started my node, which was 3 days behind, and it is sync'ing at 4k/bps on the notebook. The notebook is fairly low spec by modern standards. It is a Huawei Matebook with a Core 15 processor, and limited memory. I upgraded the hard drive to a 2Tb ssd, and this made quite a difference to sync'ing speed. Another useful feature is that the power source is via an USB-C connection, and this means I can recharge it in the van through the "cigar lighter" socket whilst I am driving.

I'm a bit miffed at the moment, as there is a guy on one of the premium tables that has been here for a couple of hours, and he hasn't bought anything. I always buy a coffee at least to pay the "rent". £2.30 for an Americano ( if you bring your own mug ) is pretty cheap. Especially as I am re-charging two computers, my'phone, headphones, and the battery for my angle grinder. The staff and some of the customers are quite friendly, so I get some good social interaction. I also get some interest in Bitcoin if I leave the network traffic screen in core running.

Sorry to be late in updating this thread, but I've got quite a lot to sort out, and I don't really have any Bitcoin news.
I put a rip saw blade on my angle grinder ( basttery powered), and it makes a brilliant chop saw. I need to be careful, as it quite a lethal device.
The node in my laptop is running well after I installed a 2Tb  SSD. It's brand new, so the wallet is empty. I've got some coins on the drive in an old laptop that has died, so I need to extract the hard drive, and add those coins into the new wallet. I have tried this, so I need to do a bit of research. Maybe that is worth a new thread.

I agree that I need some solar panels. The Maxus I bought was previously owned by a canoeist, so the roof bars are at the extremities of the roof. I'll probably need to add a third bar in the middle. I bought to van for about £2,000 less than the market price, as it has a bunch of minor problems. The central locking doesn't work, and the driver's window doesn't open for example.

I'm running the node intermittently by using supermarket cafe WiFi. That seems to be really effective, but I'll need to change things if I start spending Bitcoin. I'm using Bodhi Linux, and that seems to be secure and trouble free.

The mining project is probably a good few months into the future. I'm not sure where I would create a comms centre. At the moment I've got a large spare wheel mounted inside the van, and I need to find a carrier to mount it under the van. I don't understand why this wasn't a standard fitment, but the Maxus was created to be a reliable but cheap working van.

I suspect that the only way to make money from a small mining rig is to post YouTube videos about it.