Nostr notes by Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners

Nostr event nevent1qqszfw4cchfy9w4xz3ty82cxy9uggtz03ja5upjv6t7txkmamwq9ccszyrnnu7rzynrfsssslg0uzu2drzsk8qzk2puqkc7d889qjqfuctkuchxtmhc

2026-03-20T10:59:18Z

Was lovely seeing you all at yesterday’s event 🙏

Notes for tonight’s event 💪 ...

2026-03-19T19:55:39Z

Notes for tonight’s event 💪

https://rockpaperbitcoin.fm/pa-bitplebs/005

Our March BitPlebs event will be held Thursday the 19th at our ...

2026-03-01T13:04:57Z

Our March BitPlebs event will be held Thursday the 19th at our usual place and time. Looking forward to seeing all you beautiful people in meat-space again!

https://www.meetup.com/central-pa-bitcoiners/events/312536760/

The link dump for this evening’s BitPlebs event is up ...

2026-02-19T14:08:04Z

The link dump for this evening’s BitPlebs event is up

https://rockpaperbitcoin.fm/pa-bitplebs

BitPlebs #4 is this Thursday evening! Looking forward to seeing ...

2026-02-16T11:25:33Z

BitPlebs #4 is this Thursday evening! Looking forward to seeing you glorious folks IRL once again 💪

Our February BitPlebs event will be held on Thursday the 19th at ...

2026-02-01T12:43:33Z

Our February BitPlebs event will be held on Thursday the 19th at our usual spot and time. Looking forward to seeing all our regular attendees and some new faces!

https://www.meetup.com/central-pa-bitcoiners/events/312136658/

Thanks everyone who attended our third BitPlebs event! Looking ...

2026-01-16T00:09:00Z

Thanks everyone who attended our third BitPlebs event! Looking forward to seeing everyone again next month 🫡

Links for tonight’s event: ...

2026-01-15T20:07:07Z

Links for tonight’s event:

https://rockpaperbitcoin.fm/pa-bitplebs/003

Nostr event nevent1qqs06amj20e0ax698znzdgpt7wy2vus2v073z3eqj8v24mss3eezavgzyrnnu7rzynrfsssslg0uzu2drzsk8qzk2puqkc7d889qjqfuctkucmhcnkt

2026-01-14T22:12:35Z

See you all tomorrow evening 💪

FYI: we have deleted our Telegram group, as the attack surface ...

2026-01-02T14:25:32Z

FYI: we have deleted our Telegram group, as the attack surface was too large of a risk for new bitcoiners

Our next BitPlebs event will be on January the 15th at 5pm at the ...

2026-01-02T14:08:29Z

Our next BitPlebs event will be on January the 15th at 5pm at the Residence Inn

https://www.meetup.com/central-pa-bitcoiners/events/312096622/

Trying out something new: the 3rd Thursday of the month, we’re ...

2025-11-20T20:03:47Z

Trying out something new: the 3rd Thursday of the month, we’re hosting what we’re calling BitPlebs. Essentially a less technical BitDevs (because BusinessCat (npub1z9h…858n) is semi retarded and that’s the best he can do). Discussion on local and general bitcoin news. Bring your questions and stump the Cat!

https://rockpaperbitcoin.fm/pa-bitplebs

Great meetup yesterday! Thanks to all those who came out. FYI, no ...

2025-10-27T10:49:51Z

Great meetup yesterday! Thanks to all those who came out.

FYI, no 4th Sunday Coffee meetups scheduled for Nov/Dec.

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We've got our monthly coffee ...

2025-10-22T21:35:19Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We've got our monthly coffee meetup slated for 1pm this Sunday, Oct 26th, at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg. Hope to see you there!

Inflation is much more present in the common lexicon than it was before the supply of US dollars increased sharply following the 2020 lockdowns. Everyone, particularly in the past five years, has been feeling the increasing cost of things they want and things they need. The average price of a new car in the US just eclipsed $50k for the first time, and the price of beef has been particularly crazy this year.

Inflation as reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has been in the ballpark of 3% for the past few years. If you think that prices of things you buy feel like they're increasing a lot faster than 3%, you're not alone. The CPI (Consumer Price Index) is based on a certain basket of goods, and that basket changes from year to year. For example, if ribeye steaks are an included input, and people begin buying ground beef instead of ribeyes due to increasing prices, the basket might then replace ribeyes with ground beef. In this case, the cost of items in the basket might not have changed, but the quality of what you're getting certainly has.

Although Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's right-hand man, may not have been a fan of bitcoin, he had a great quote: "show me the incentive, and I'll show you the result". There is a pretty large incentive for the powers that be to have CPI come in low. For one, social security payouts are linked to CPI: smaller CPI means smaller liabilities, and greater solvency for any CPI-linked pension system.

The Chapwood Index is an alternative to government calculated inflation statistics such as the CPI. The goal is to calculate an inflation rate that is more consistent with how prices are changing on what Americans are actually spending on in the 50 largest cities. Any guess as to how those numbers compare to CPI? You guessed it...depending on the city, values over the past few years have been in the ballpark of 10-15%. Do you think that incomes also been increasing at that rate?

Hope to see you at the meetup on Sunday!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…k6ym)
Central PA Bitcoiners

Next event: 4th Sunday coffee meetup, Sun Oct 26th, 1pm at Denim ...

2025-09-30T10:57:07Z

Next event: 4th Sunday coffee meetup, Sun Oct 26th, 1pm at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg

Wonderful meetup at Denim Coffee today! Thanks to all those who ...

2025-09-28T21:12:57Z

Wonderful meetup at Denim Coffee today!

Thanks to all those who came out

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We had a great educational ...

2025-09-24T16:27:01Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We had a great educational meetup two Saturdays ago. I love seeing new faces at meetups, especially educational events! Curiosity and thirst for knowledge are wonderful virtues, and in my experience, largely determine one's trajectory down the bitcoin rabbit hole. Keep learning, and keep stacking skills!

Our next meetup is a coffee meetup this coming Sunday, September 28th, at 1pm. The venue is Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg...come find us in the back room. Parking is plentiful; there is ample parking behind the café, and street parking out front is also available.

No op-ed this week. Instead, I'll share a blog article from a few years ago that was influential for me. Influential for my password/passphrase habits, anyway.

Trezor published this blog on passphrase strength in 2019 (AKA "the before time"), and was one of my introductions to diceware passphrases. Six years ago, Trezor was a bit more respected amongst bitcoiners than they are now. There weren't many viable options for bitcoin only hardware devices then (Mk1 Coldcard anyone?) and Trezor was the device that many used for their bitcoin cold storage. Many of the bitcoin only devices we use and love today run software that are descendant from Trezor's source code. Great content. https://blog.trezor.io/is-your-passphrase-strong-enough-d687f44c63af

Enjoy the rest of your week, and hope to see you at the meetup on Sunday!

Keep stacking sats, and keep stacking skills.

~ Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…k6ym)
Central PA Bitcoiners

Great educational meetup today! Love to see both new and familiar ...

2025-09-13T20:22:17Z

Great educational meetup today! Love to see both new and familiar faces

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We've got an educational ...

2025-09-10T21:42:11Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We've got an educational meetup lined up for this Saturday! Our educational meetups feature a presentation, and the topic for Saturday's meetup is "Stacking Sats or Stacking Shares?". If you're new to bitcoin or new to our meetup group, this is a great function for you to attend.

2025 has been a year that has seen bitcoin come further into the spotlight of legacy financial media and the mainstream consciousness in general. Turn on a legacy financial news show, or pull up Yahoo Finance, and most days there will be a headline about bitcoin. New financialized products have become available: spot ETF's, bitcoin treasury company stock, as well as bond/money market products offered by bitcoin treasury companies.

What's the difference between MSTR, IBIT, and self-custody bitcoin? Although each has an exchange rate that correlates with BTCUSD, there are important differences.

Topics...

What's the purpose of bitcoin ETF's?
What's the value proposition of bitcoin treasury companies?
Individuals' freedom of choice vs an organization's restricted options
Stacking sats & stacking skills
Ideas for leveling up your skills and setup

We'll begin at 1pm on Saturday, Sept 13th, at the Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg. Beginners welcome! Hope to see you there! Reminder: in addition to our quarterly educational meetups, we have monthly coffee meetups at 1pm on the fourth Sunday of every month at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg. The next coffee meetup is on Sunday, Sept 28th.

-------------------------------

There's one important technical news story to talk about from the past week week. News recently broke of a supply chain attack that can potentially affect wallets that use a certain node package manager (NPM) for javascript libraries.

Here's the breakdown: when developers build wallets, they usually don't build them from scratch. One popular building block developers have is to use existing code libraries. As an analogy, if you're trying to build a ten story building, using one of these NPM libraries is like starting with the foundation and first couple of floors established already, which makes work a lot faster and easier. This week we learned the downside: if there's an issue in one of these code libraries, it can potentially affect all of the downstream software that builds upon it. Which wallets build upon this NPM? A lot.

What can this malicious code do? When you're building a transaction, it can replace the recipient's address with the attacker's address. Not only are they replacing the address, they are using addresses that resemble portions of the intended recipient's address. This means that if you're trying to send to an address that ends in xyz, the attacker can insert one of their own addresses that also ends in xyz. They know that many people only check the first few and last few characters of an address, rather than parts of the middle, or the whole thing.

This is where hardware wallets really shine. When using a hardware wallet that has a screen, addresses can be verified before transactions are signed, guarding against this attack. By verifying the address before signing, an attacker's address can be detected and the attack thwarted. When entrusting your hodl, it can't be stressed enough how valuable hardware devices are to protecting against such attacks.

Mitigation Strategies:

For hardware wallets: Verify the full address on the device's screen before signing; compare it to the intended recipient. Avoid signing if there's any discrepancy.

Switch to non-NPM software like Sparrow Wallet for compatible hardware (e.g., Trezor, Ledger, BitBox, Jade, Keystone).

For hardware devices without screens (e.g., BitKey, Tapsigner): Avoid on-chain transactions until updates are released.

General advice: Check full addresses (not just first/last characters), especially for large transactions. There is no undo in Bitcoin—take time to verify.

Unless you're willing to take the risk, refrain from sending hot wallet on-chain transactions until situation becomes more clear

Stay informed as the situation evolves.

Use open-source, air-gapped, bitcoin-only, screen-equipped hardware wallets for best security, and always verify addresses.

Slow down and never panic! Ask for help from trusted contacts if you need help or advice.

-------------------------

Hope to see you this Saturday!

~lonelypumpkins
Central PA Bitcoiners

Next educational meetup: Stacking Sats or Stacking Shares? 1pm on ...

2025-08-25T19:10:31Z

Next educational meetup: Stacking Sats or Stacking Shares?

1pm on Sat, Sept 13th, at Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg, PA

https://www.meetup.com/central-pa-bitcoiners/events/310700668

Great coffee meeetup today! A few first timers, love seeing new ...

2025-08-24T19:30:19Z

Great coffee meeetup today! A few first timers, love seeing new faces

Coffee meetup tomorrow, 1pm at Denim in Mechanicsburg...hope to ...

2025-08-23T12:52:54Z

Coffee meetup tomorrow, 1pm at Denim in Mechanicsburg...hope to see y'all there

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! On August 15th, 1971, 54 years ...

2025-08-20T11:28:16Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

On August 15th, 1971, 54 years ago last Friday, the US "temporarily" went off the gold standard. This event would go down in history and be known as "Nixon Shock". Although in 1934 Franklin Roosevelt untethered gold from US dollars for Americans, and made gold holding illegal for us to hold until 1975, gold still backed dollars held by foreign nations up until 1971. Countries that had loaned the US money could be paid out in gold or USD, and USD itself was redeemable for gold in this respect. The dollar wasn't fully backed by gold from 1934-71, but there was still a connection. 1971 cut that last tie that the dollar had to a hard asset, making creation of new dollars restricted not by US gold holdings, but by the desire of a few powerful people's desire to click copy and paste. Since 1971, the dollar has lost about 90% of its value against the things we all need and want, especially food and shelter.

If you've never checked out wtfhappenedin1971.com, it's a great collection of charts that show a variety of prosperity metrics over time, and what's happened to them since we fully decoupled from gold. Hint...it's been great for the top 1%, also known as the counterfeit class, and not so great for the rest of us. Fortunately, although many of us don't control in which asset we're paid for our work, we do have control over which asset we use to save for our future.

Although it's never a dull week in bitcoin news stories, two headlines grabbed my attention last week. These headlines are relevant to bitcoin's function as freedom money, a property abbreviated as "FGU" (freedom go up). These headlines were the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) publishing a bulletin suggesting marking bitcoin addresses with "AML compliance scores", and Google announcing that all wallet apps in the Google Play store have to be licensed as money transmitters. The Google announcement was walked back a few hours later.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) functions as the central bank of central banks and is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. The released a paper last week entitled "An approach to anti-money laundering compliance for cryptoassets". In it, a key takeaway was "An AML (anti-money laundering) compliance score based on the likelihood that a particular cryptoasset unit or balance is linked with illicit activity may be referenced at points of contact with the banking system ("off-ramps"), preventing inflows of the proceeds of illicit activity".

Societies learned a long time ago that for a money to work, it's got to be fungible, meaning every unit is interchangeable with every other unit. Ten $1 bills are worth as much as any other ten, or any single $10 bill. Imagine a scenario in which you go to pay for something, and pay using three $20 bills. If dollars weren't fungible, the person/company you're paying might say "well, the first $20 bill is good, but the second one has cocaine on it, and the third one is associated with a robbery from two years ago, so I'll need two more "good" $20 bills, please".

Attacking the fungibility of a money is attacking its usefulness and viability at its core. All of the counterfeit class, BIS members included, have had a say over how people can use their money, and are desperate to hold onto power. It would be a dream come true for them to be able to say that this pile of bitcoin is "good" bitcoin (ie bitcoin owned by them, ETF's, MSTR, KYC exchanges) and this other pile of bitcoin is "bad" bitcoin. "Bad" bitcoin could be defined however they want to define it: mined bitcoin, bitcoin from non-KYC exchanges, or even coins that have been dormant in an address for 10 years and don't pass their murky chain analysis could become unspendable, if your counterparty subscribes to their nonsense.

The second story regarding Google is also relevant to bitcoin's FGU property, even though it got walked back the same day. The initial announcement was that all wallet apps in the Google Play store, even if self-custody, would be required to have money transmitter licenses in their respective jurisdictions. The Play store is where the majority of Android users download and update their mobile apps, and this policy would effectively ban the wallet apps Android users have used and loved for years. All that would remain would be exchange apps like Coinbase and Strike; basically banking apps that are able to send bitcoin on your behalf if you ask them to, and if they feel like it. This was walked back shortly after, with Google clarifying that this policy doesn't apply to self-custody wallets. So basically, we ended up where we were a week ago, only that the overton window has been opened a bit wider.

Apple had banned bitcoin wallets in their app store years ago, and eventually relented. Android phones have the ability to run apps from different sources outside of the Play store, and can even install apps from APK files downloaded from a web browser. However, the lion's share of Android users depend on the Play store for both new installs and updates. What would happen if this policy weren't walked back? If you have wallet apps installed on your Android phone, they'd still be there and functional after the ban, but updates wouldn't be available, nor would new installs. Developers may continue to update their software and/or make them available through other channels, however this would raise the barrier substantially when considering the majority of wallet users. Presumably, if this were actually executed by Google, Apple would eventually follow suit and reinstate their ban. Would this kill bitcoin? Absolutely not. Would it make it less usable? Yes. Although desktop apps would be unaffected by this, sending or receiving bitcoin from a mobile phone would change a lot.

What would happen if your mobile wallet(s) stopped working? Do you have backups stored safely somewhere, so that you'd be able to import the seed phrase into a desktop wallet? A silver lining to the Google story is that it prompts us to take inventory of potential weak spots of our setups.

These two stories relay how, even though there is positive progress being made regarding bitcoin's NGU property (number go up; bitcoin's performance against other assets), there are shots being fired across the bow of bitcoin's property as freedom money. When the suits and counterfeit class cheer on bitcoin, they might be cheering for a different future than you are. They're cheering on ETF's, stocks, and other assets that exist under the control of the legacy financial system. They think that bitcoiners' ability to pay "undesirable" people, or buy "undesirable" goods can be curtailed, and at the same time their bags can be pumped. What they don't realize is how much of bitcoin's value derives from how bitcoiners value it, and a massive part of that is being able to use it in sovereign way.

Not only can your enemy use bitcoin...your enemy being able to use bitcoin makes it better and stronger for you. Keep learning, and particularly keep learning about the great tools that exist to use bitcoin in a sovereign way.

Hope to see you at one of our upcoming meetups! Monthly coffee meetup is at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg at 1pm on Sunday, 8/24. Bitcoin Mining @ The Park is being hosted by Business Cat at 3pm on Saturday 8/30 at Friendship Park in Mechanicsburg. And next month, we've got an education meetup scheduled for Saturday, 9/13 at the Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg, and the topic is "Stacking Sats or Stacking Shares?".

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…0dx0)
Central PA Bitcoiners

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We've got two meetup events ...

2025-08-13T17:30:26Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We've got two meetup events on the docket for August. The first is our monthly coffee meetup, which we have every month on the fourth Sunday. That's at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg at 1pm on Sunday, 8/24. The second is taking place Friendship Park in Mechanicsburg at 3pm on Saturday, 8/30. Hosted by Business Cat, the 8/30 event is entitled "Bitcoin Mining @ The Park" and features a live demo of solar powered bitcoin mining. And as a head-up, we've got an education meetup scheduled for Saturday, 9/13 at the Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg...stay tuned for the topic.

The hiking event went really well last month! We did the whole 4.2 mile loop as intended, and were gifted with great weather and a fantastic lookout spot. Thanks to those who came, and especially those who brought their families! We'll definitely get another hike on the books. Pine Grove Furnace was a great hike. Due it how remote it was though, grabbing lunch together afterwards wasn't doable. Next time we'll see if we can find a hiking location where we can finish off the event with a lunch.

Harvard's endowment investment disclosure made some news in the bitcoin space this week. Per their recently submitted SEC filing, they recently acquired $116 million of IBIT, BlackRock's bitcoin ETF. Like BlackRock themselves, Harvard has done quite the about face on their philosophy regarding bitcoin. In many ways, finally accepting that stacking bitcoin is in one's best interest is a humility test. All bitcoiners started as skeptics, and admitting to oneself that perhaps they may have been wrong is one of the first steps down the rabbit hole. Harvard's actions and recommendations carry a lot of weight in the old-school, slow moving world of money management. It stands to reason that there are many CFO's who will now feel much more at ease taking a bitcoin allocation now that Harvard has endorsed it.

Also recently in the news, the current executive administration has signed an executive order that directs the Department of Labor and SEC to permit bitcoin access in 401(k) plans. Historically, even though bitcoin ETF's have existed for almost two years, and other derivative products like GBTC have existed for over a decade, such products have not been allowed in 401(k) plans. This executive order represents one of the first steps for bitcoin derivative products such as spot ETFs being able to be held in 401(k)'s. Notably, this is also a step potentially for some other assets to be allowed in 401(k) plans, namely shitcoins. Scam promoters' mouths undoubtedly water at the thought of tapping just a tiny piece of the $9T currently held in 401(k) plans. Such charlatans are always in search of new exit liquidity, and this would certainly be a great source of it for them.

Although this step has been taken, I wouldn't expect to see a bitcoin ETF available in your 401(k) anytime soon. There are several different entities that would have to take action on this this option to be available. Consider that the ETF's have been available since January of last year, and Vanguard still blocks their customers from buying them, regardless of if their account is tax-advantaged or not. Although increasing people's access to ETF shares is good for NGU (number go up), it doesn't teach anyone anything about actually using bitcoin. Acquiring sats and receiving them to your own wallet is what generates that a-ha moment, enticing one to delve further down the rabbit hole. This allows you to realize another benefit of bitcoin: FGU (freedom go up).

Keep stacking sats, and keep stacking skills! Let your education drive your allocation.

Hope to see you at one of our upcoming meetups!

~Lonelypumpkins
Central PA Bitcoiners

UPCOMING EVENTS: • Bitcoin & Coffee Meetup ☕️ ...

2025-08-09T21:01:39Z

UPCOMING EVENTS:

• Bitcoin & Coffee Meetup ☕️
Date/time: Sun, Aug 24th, 1pm (every month, 4th Sunday)
Location: Denim Coffee, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania

• Mining Bitcoin with Sunlight ☀️
Date/time: Sat, Aug 30th, 3pm
Location: Friendship Park, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania

• Educational Meetup ✏️
Date/time: Sat, Sept 13th, 1pm
Location: Simpson Library, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania

Great hike everyone! Great turnout today too...it's an event ...

2025-07-20T15:58:40Z

Great hike everyone! Great turnout today too...it's an event we've been wanting to do for a while, and it was definitely a success 🙌

This is the latest revision of our intro to bitcoin pamphlet. ...

2025-07-18T13:40:30Z

This is the latest revision of our intro to bitcoin pamphlet. Happy to share the pdf if you DM us 🫡
ZEUS (nprofile…qp0l) River (nprofile…lne3)

https://i.nostr.build/b6xz7WR2kIutd5oH.jpg

2025-07-14T17:38:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…mgnm
_________________________

https://i.nostr.build/2TRLGYE2AnYEG8ky.jpg

2025-07-14T17:37:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…mgnm
_________________________

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! In past months, it had made news ...

2025-07-14T17:36:56Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

In past months, it had made news that bitcoin's market cap exceeded the value of all silver ever mined. In the past day, it also eclipsed Amazon's market cap.

BTC Sessions is a well-known educator and podcaster and has been making educational videos for almost 10 years. IMHO, he's been going a little far with his video's clickbaity titles and some of his ads recently, however, he is still a great source of education and signal, and his channel is a great and accessible find for newcoiners. He released a 20 minute video last week that details some top scams relevant today to bitcoiners, and it's a great watch/listen. As a caveat, I don't know what ads are being served to everyone by YouTube. The comment sections of his videos are also a mess. If you want to avoid YT, there's an MP3 file attached for your listening enjoyment.

My favorite quote: "If you're already holding bitcoin, you've won! You don't need to chase yield. Remember, if you can't clearly see where the yield comes from, YOU are the yield. Just stack sats, hold securely, and let time do the work for you." His scam #4 is a gem as well.

Also attached is a flyer for our hike taking place this coming Sunday (July 20th) at Pine Grove Furnace. We're excited for our inaugural hiking event...hope you can make it!

In addition to the hiking event, there's also a pizza event at 6pm this Thursday (July 17th) in Mechanicsburg at DaVinci Pizza, hosted by Business Cat.

Our motto:
1. Provide value to others
2. Spend less than you earn
3. Save part of the difference in a money no one else can create for free

When making decisions around your stacking goals and setup, always let your education drive your allocation. Hope everyone is having a great summer!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…6jdr)
Central PA Bitcoiners
Join our group chat in Telegram!
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Hike next Sunday, July 20th! Come enjoy a beautiful summer hike ...

2025-07-10T13:37:03Z

Hike next Sunday, July 20th!

Come enjoy a beautiful summer hike at Pine Grove Furnace with us...beginners welcome!

quoting
nevent1q…6vlp

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We're pleased to announce ...

2025-07-01T00:26:43Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We're pleased to announce that we have two meetups slated for July, both happening in the middle of the month. The first is a pizza meetup at 6pm on Thursday July 17th, hosted by Business Cat, at DaVinci Italian Eatery in Mechanicsbug. The second is a new and much anticipated format for us, a hiking event. That'll be at 7:30am on Sunday July 20th at the Pole Steeple Trailhead, which is located in Pine Grove Furnace state park. See attached flyer. Note: there's no fourth Sunday coffee meetup for July.

It was great seeing all those who came out to last coffee meetup. One topic that we broached: What's the current recommended wallet for a newcoiner who's looking to make lightning payments? Today we're going to talk about two such wallets, Muun and Aqua.

Both of these wallets are available on both Android and iOS, and can make both on-chain and lightning bitcoin transactions. Unfamiliar with lightning? It's a second layer on top of bitcoin that's become the customary way to make day to day payments. To make an analogy to legacy banking, on-chain bitcoin is to a wire transfer as lightning is to a tap to pay credit card payment. Small, day to day payments are increasingly best served by lightning, whereas larger, infrequent transactions such as buying a house/car, or moving one's cold storage sats, are best served by on-chain. On-chain offers maximum security, reliability, and redundancy, whereas lightning makes some tradeoffs that allow for faster and cheaper payments.

Both Muun and Aqua are very user friendly, and can have you (or the person you're helping) making lightning payments very quickly without the need connect to a personal lightning node. In order to provide this smooth process, both of these wallets do make some tradeoffs against what seasoned bitcoiners expect from a sovereign setup, which we'll delve into.

Muun:

When you open Muun and use a new wallet for the first time, you can begin sending and receiving payments immediately, without the need to deal with any kind of backup process right away. When you eventually choose to back it up (highly recommended) you can either give them an email and password for recovery, or generate a PDF recovery kit that also includes a security code. This backup/recovery process is unique to Muun. On the plus side, it's very easy and fast; on the downside, it can only be recovered via their app or using their tools on github.

Sending is simple in Muun...there's only one send button for both on-chain and lightning payments. You can scan or paste in either a bitcoin address or lightning invoice, and it'll figure out which one it is automatically. For receiving, you can toggle between lightning and on-chain bitcoin.

Muun actually uses on-chain bitcoin transactions under the hood when you're sending a lightning transaction. This is abstracted away from users and can introduce drawbacks to the experience, namely when on-chain fees happen to be high. When that's the case, the fee to send a lightning payment can get quite high. Historically, on-chain fees tend to be on the low end for the majority of time and have occasional spikes. There's always the risk that you'll go to make a lightning payment in Muun and the fee will be very high, though. Since low fee transactions is one of lightning's benefits and selling points, this is a sore spot for Muun users.

Pros:
off and running right away with sending/receiving
email backup available
one balance and one send button for both lighting and on-chain

Cons:
doesn't use 12 or 24 work backups like almost every other wallet
high fees are a possibility

Aqua:

When you open Aqua for the first time, you'll have the experience that bitcoiners have come to expect, which is to either make a new wallet, or import an existing one. If you create a new wallet, it will generate a 12 word seed phrase, which you can backup by writing down and keeping in a safe place. By following the current standard for wallet initialization and backup, BIP-39 seed phrases, this is a big pro for Aqua in my book. These seed word backups make for a wonderfully robust and sovereign setup.

Both Muun and Aqua can send and receive lightning payments. Whereas Muun uses on-chain bitcoin transactions under the hood, Aqua uses liquid bitcoin transactions. What is liquid bitcoin? Although that's a topic for another day, for now let's just say it's a way to make some tradeoffs in order to get faster and cheaper transactions. Because Aqua made this design choice, you don't run the risk of your lightning payment being costly to make due to a high-fee environment on the bitcoin network.

Unlike Muun, Aqua treats on-chain bitcoin and L2 (layer 2) bitcoin separately. Aqua can hold a balance of either, and allows you to convert between the two. When sending or receiving, you're given four options: on-chain bitcoin, lightning bitcoin, liquid bitcoin, and tether USD on liquid. Although this offers more choices than Muun, it does take away from approachability and simplicity. Incorporation of tether functionality is a touchy subject. Aqua's promotion among bitcoiners argues that lots of people, especially outside the US, use fiatcoins, AKA stablecoins, to hold value in USD instead of their local (more inflationary) currency. Aqua argues that since such people are going to be using a wallet that handles fiatcoins anyway, it's better for them to be doing it in a more bitcoin-centric wallet. Americans don't have much use for fiatcoins, IMHO.

Pros:
off and running right away with sending/receiving
uses seed phrase backups that bitcoiners know and trust
fees are low and consistent

Cons:
four choices of assets when doing a send or receive
integrates tether, which is a faux pas in the eyes of many bitcoiners
treats L1 and L2 bitcoin as separate assets

In closing, Aqua and Muun are both great choices if someone's looking to get up and running with lightning payments. Like most technologies that abstract certain functionality away from users to make for a smoother experience, they do make certain tradeoffs.

~ Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…3cef)
Central PA Bitcoiners

https://i.nostr.build/HtqiV6vnXZW5zYfL.jpg

2025-06-30T18:47:10Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We've got two meetup events ...

2025-05-21T15:11:13Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We've got two meetup events upcoming in the next week. On Thursday, May 22nd at 6pm, BusinessCat (nprofile…9gvz) is hosting a pizza day celebration meetup at DaVinci Italian Eatery on 6617 Carlisle Pike in Mechanicsburg. Then, on Sunday, the 25th at 1pm, we've got our monthly coffee meetup at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg.

We're also working on plans for a hiking event in the near future... stay tuned for that.

Op-return debate heats up: Reminiscent of the infamous block-size wars of 2016-17, the op-return debate has been increasingly gaining traction. What is op-return? Basically a way to store data on the Bitcoin blockchain that's not financial transactions. This is a deep and nuanced discussion, but basically one side wants to be less restrictive over what kind of data nodes pass around, and the other wants to optimize for financial data only by attempting to filter out non-financial data. An educated, feisty user base that fights for what they want is what keeps Bitcoin running the way it does, and the difficulty in getting changes through are one of its most valuable attributes. In 2017, a majority of the most powerful and prevalent companies in Bitcoin wanted to make changes to the protocol that the community didn't want, and the users won. Contrast this with if there were a desire to change a key property of the internet, and Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Verizon, and Samsung were all in agreement over the change, yet most internet users wanted to keep the status quo. Then when it came time to execute this change, it turned out all of those massive companies were powerless to effect the change they wanted. Bitcoin changes the world by not changing.
https://bitbo.io/news/op-return-bitcoin-debate/

If you're interested in learning more about the five constituents of Bitcoin governance (developers, miners, exchanges, wallet software, and node runners) I suggest reading The Blocksize War by Jonathan Bier.

JP Morgan acquiesces to offering bitcoin ETF to clients: JP Morgan, or rather, Jamie Dimon, its long-standing CEO, has been one of the most harsh and consistent critics of Bitcoin for years. He's called Bitcoin a "pet rock" on several occasions, and has said that he'd fire JP Morgan employees who use or trade it. Dimon has said that he considers its use case to be sex trafficking and money laundering. It's hard to argue with his credentials in making such a statement; as Jeffrey Epstein's personal banker, Dimon is indeed an expert on those topics. Considering that he's made billions of dollars from sitting in one of the highest positions in the fiat castle, it's unsurprising why he's taken such a hostile stance toward a technology and asset that undermines and disrupts the system that's made him rich.
https://bitbo.io/news/jpmorgan-bitcoin-etf-access/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-ceo-jamie-dimon-said-193043218.html

He likely understands it more than he leads on. Despite his years of bitcoin bashing, all of his competitors are offering bitcoin investing products to their clients, and his thirst for market share has exceeded his desire to remain consistent in his public opinions.

Coinbase data breach exposes user data: Brian Armstrong, the CEO of shitcoin casino Coinbase (which also happens to sell bitcoin), announced a recent data breach. Apparently, overseas support agents that they employ were bribed by hackers to reveal account data, and the bribes worked. The hackers offered to keep that sensitive info a secret if Coinbase paid them a $20 million ransom. Instead, Coinbase offered a reward of $20 million for helping to catch the hackers. The information that was obtained wasn't bitcoin itself, or shitcoins themself, rather it was user data such as home addresses and account balances. This might not seem like that sensitive of information, however, physical attacks targeting bitcoiners and crypto investors are on the rise, and this leaked information is just what attackers would want. The lesson to be learned from this: be judicious with who you give your personal information out to, especially for bitcoin related services. Also, if you're using Coinbase, stop. Dropping the ball with protecting user data aside, they don't cater to people looking to stack bitcoin. Rather, their business model is flashing yoyocoin and dentacoin at you and getting you to trade in and out of this junk, which generates their trading fees. There are several bitcoin-only exchanges, including CashApp, Strike, River, Swan to name a few. Bitcoin can also be obtained without handing over your data to a big company, via working for it or trading dollars for it with someone you know.
https://bitbo.io/news/coinbase-data-leak-risk/

Hope to see you at one of the upcoming meetups!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…lce4)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…np0t)

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We've got our monthly coffee ...

2025-04-23T21:39:29Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We've got our monthly coffee meetup on deck for this coming Sunday, April 27th, at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg. Hope to see you there! Come find us in the back room at 1pm.

A very insightful and accessible video was put out recently by Joe Bryan, called "What's the Problem?". He lays out the consequences of fiat money systems via a kind of storytelling, which makes it much more engaging than you'd expect from an explanation of economic incentives and effects. Worth a listen and a share! It will give you a new appreciation for a money that no one else can create for free.
https://youtu.be/YtFOxNbmD38?si=DML8aA3o5iqLMhEF

We're looking to get a bitcoiner hiking event on the books in the coming months...stay tuned.

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…94tk)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…np0t)

Meetup with @nprofile…5dyh talking about Blockchain Navigation ...

2025-04-17T21:14:43Z

Meetup with BusinessCat (nprofile…5dyh) talking about Blockchain Navigation will start within the next hour!

We hope to see you there!

#Bitcoin #Meetup

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We had a great "Bitcoin vs ...

2025-04-03T17:36:48Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We had a great "Bitcoin vs Crypto" educational session last Saturday. Thanks to all that were able to participate.

During the session, a three step principle for the big picture of one's financial life was brought up and discussed:

1. Provide value to others
2. Spend less than you earn
3. Save part of the difference in a money that no one else can create for free

There are many, myself included, who wish we understood this when we were finished with school and started making financial decisions for ourselves. Like dieting, the difficulty usually lies in the execution, not the understanding. As they say, simple, but not easy. This distillation of ideas represents great principles to build upon.

"As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble"
— Harrington Emerson

We have two events lined up for April. On Thursday the 17th at 6pm, we have a learning session, "Blockchain Navigation", hosted by BusinessCat (nprofile…5dyh), which is taking place at Jojo's Pizza in Mechanicsburg. The second is our monthly bitcoin & coffee meetup on Sunday the 27th at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg.

Lastly, I'd like to make a shout-out to bassload (nprofile…6lsz), one of our Central PA Bitcoiners. He gave a talk at PUBKEY (nprofile…glpg) in NYC last month on energy, and is also the featured speaker at the upcoming Philly Jawn meetup on Monday the 7th. Great to see one of our own out there representing!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…94tk)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…qadl)

The good work being done in Pennsylvania! #nevent1q…jzv6

2025-04-01T17:28:15Z

The good work being done in Pennsylvania!

quoting
nevent1q…jzv6
Hey Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…qadl), there's a music festival coming up in a few weeks in Lancaster 👀

https://www.launchmusicconference.com/lancaster/

ainsleycostello (nprofile…9wcx) and kathryn (nprofile…q5q4) will be performing and there's going to be a booth in the expo area where myself and PhantomPowerMusic (nprofile…uwhd) will be shilling Nostr, Bitcoin, and value for value.

There will also be a #V4V live stream for those that cannot attend in person!

GM Central PA Bitcoiners! Join us for our quarterly educational ...

2025-03-28T18:46:32Z

GM Central PA Bitcoiners!

Join us for our quarterly educational meetup tomorrow! It's at the Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg at 1pm, on Saturday March 29th.

The topic is "bitcoin vs crypto". As we approach this phase of bitcoin's cycle, the noise can get louder and louder, with new projects and voices vying for both your attention and your value. Arm yourself with knowledge and resources that'll help you parse the signal from the noise.

Beginners are welcome and encouraged to attend!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…94tk)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…qadl)

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! The United States made the ...

2025-03-17T19:00:13Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

The United States made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, purchasing a third of the area of the current US (828,000 square miles) from France, for $15m. Whether or not it was France's to sell in the first place is up for debate, but nevertheless, the trade with the US happened, and it paved the way for expansion west.

It was perilous for settlers willing to head west via such routes as the Oregon and California Trails, but there were incentives for doing so. The Homestead Acts gave away 250,000 square miles of land, which is about 10% of the area of the US. They were more generous at the beginning: 640 acres of farmland was available to every couple who applied initially. Over time, this amount decreased to 320 acres, then 160, then went away. Thereafter, if you wanted land, you'd have to pay for it.

Making the journey in the early years was a treacherous endeavor, and had a high mortality rate for early settlers. In the beginning, settlers were comprised of the most rugged of mountain men, who set up primitive infrastructure. As time passed, the paths became more passable, and the journey became less formidable. Better infrastructure was put in place, and new settlers enjoyed increasingly better amenities.

Contrast this with early bitcoiners. One could be paid 50 new bitcoin per block in the early years, known as the first mining epoch. The infrastructure was much less built out: you'd have to either learn how to mine yourself, or sign up with a sketchy foreign exchange to trade fiat for bitcoin. Either way, the easy to use and secure self-custody tools we enjoy today, hardware wallets, didn't exist yet, so you were on your own securing those coins. If you order a mining rig today, there's a very high chance that you're going to receive it, and when promised. In the early days, if you wanted to order a mining rig, the one you order might arrive 6 months late, after which time the network difficulty has doubled, or it might never arrive at all. After four years, that mining reward dropped from 50 new bitcoin per block, down to 25, 12.5, 6.25, and now sits at 3.125.

Eventually, the West approached parity with the East in terms of civil engineering, city life, the arts, and lifestyle. As Bitcoin's ecosystem gets more built out, it becomes less treacherous of a journey and less treacherous of a destination to become a bitcoiner. We're in a place now where amazing tools exist for those hungry enough to learn to use them, at the same time that bitcoin's market cap only makes up less than 0.2% of global assets.

In the 19th century, we had "go west, young man". In the 21st century, it's "stay humble, stack sats".

Hope to see you at one of our March meetups! We have a coffee meetup at 1pm on Sunday the 23rd at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg, and an educational meetup at 1pm on Saturday the 29th at Simpson Library, with the topic "Bitcoin vs Crypto".

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…94tk)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…qadl)

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! Our monthly coffee meetup is ...

2025-02-23T01:34:41Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

Our monthly coffee meetup is tomorrow at 1pm at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg. We'll be commandeering the back room, as usual. Hope to see you there! If you can't make it, we meet there on the fourth Sunday of every month.

Also, our next educational meetup is taking place at 1pm on Sat, March 28th, at the Simpson Library. Educational meetups feature a presentation and theme, and next month's is Bitcoin vs. Crypto. We like to say "let your education drive your allocation"...this educational meetup is a great opportunity to stack some skills, even if you're already stacking sats.

Hope everyone's having a great weekend! Keep stacking those sats, and keep stacking those skills.

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…lce4)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…np0t)

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We just posted the meetup ...

2025-02-14T19:29:30Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We just posted the meetup announcement for our next quarterly educational meetup, entitled "Bitcoin vs. Crypto". It'll be at the Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg, at 1pm on Saturday, March 29th.

If you're new to bitcoin or new to our meetup group, this is a great first function for you to attend. We're at the point of the market cycle when many shiny things start coming out of the woodwork, competing for our time and our value. What principles can we use to distinguish things that are worth dedicating our time learning about and worth dedicating our value in, vs things that are effectively 1920's-era pump and dump schemes dressed up in a cheap tuxedo?
Topics...

Why distinguish between bitcoin and crypto?

What distinguishes bitcoin education and crypto education?

How new bitcoin come into existence vs how new crypto tokens come into existence

Stacking sats & stacking skills

Ideas for leveling up your skills and setup

We hope to see you there!

Reminder...in addition to our quarterly educational meetups, we have monthly coffee meetups the fourth Sunday of every month, 1pm, at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg.

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…94tk)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…34zc)

#Bitcoin #Meetup

CURRENT UPCOMING EVENTS: • Coffee Meetup - February 23rd ...

2025-02-14T19:24:55Z

CURRENT UPCOMING EVENTS:

• Coffee Meetup - February 23rd 13:00-15:00
@ Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania

• Educational Meetup - March 29th 13:00-15:00
@ Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania

Our next meetup will be on February 23rd from 1:00pm to 3:00pm at ...

2025-01-29T23:43:10Z

Our next meetup will be on February 23rd from 1:00pm to 3:00pm at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

We hope to see you there!

#Bitcoin #Meetup

Meetup today! We hope to see you there! ☕ #nevent1q…j6nv ...

2025-01-26T12:50:45Z

Meetup today! We hope to see you there! ☕

quoting
nevent1q…j6nv

The next Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…34zc) Meetup is scheduled for this upcoming Sunday (2025-01-26) at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania from 13:00 to 15:00

#Bitcoin #Coffeechain

The next @nprofile…34zc Meetup is scheduled for this upcoming ...

2025-01-25T02:08:36Z

The next Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…34zc) Meetup is scheduled for this upcoming Sunday (2025-01-26) at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania from 13:00 to 15:00

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! Last night we learned that Ross ...

2025-01-23T00:54:19Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

Last night we learned that Ross Ulbricht, creator of the original Silk Road marketplace, is receiving a full pardon.
https://bitbo.io/news/trump-pardons-ross-ulbricht/
This is a case that was closely watched by many bitcoiners and libertarians. The Silk Road was an online marketplace that was only accessible by using the tor browser, also known as a dark net market. This site served as an eBay for illicit items, mostly drugs. Like eBay, it used a user reputation system as well as an escrow system, minimizing the risk of purchasers getting scammed. Also, bitcoin served as the method of payment and escrow. Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and (if it had existed then) Venmo aren't options in such places on the internet.

Bitcoin has come a long way since its days keeping the Silk Road machine running over a decade ago. Many nocoiners still bring up its historic association with dark net markets as a negative, as something that should make people reluctant to acquire or interact with bitcoin.
https://bitbo.io/news/jamie-dimon-no-bitcoin-value/

Silk Road, as seemingly negative an association as it might be, was instrumental in bitcoin finding a use case early on in its history.

The best money shouldn't pass judgement on what it's being used for, whether that's making a purchase on the Silk Road, donating to protesting Canadian truckers, paying a female employee in much of the Arab world, or buying a Bible in North Korea. Local laws prohibit those transactions, and third party payment companies won't facilitate them for you. Is your money really yours if you have to ask someone else's permission on who you can pay with it, or what you can spend it on?

Fast forward 12 years from the Silk Road days, and both federal and state governments are making moves to add bitcoin onto their treasury balance sheets. California, Massachusetts, and Wyoming are the most recent announcements.
https://bitbo.io/news/california-massachusetts-wyoming-bitcoin-reserve/
As more and more entities recognize and admit that their cash reserves are consistently getting hammered by inflation, they'll want to adopt a similar strategy.
https://treasuries.bitbo.io/

Looking forward to our next meetup, which is at 1pm on this Sunday, Jan 26th, at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg. Hope to see you there!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…m5vw)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…34zc)

Like wise! 🫂

2025-01-14T20:00:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…nmut
_________________________

Like wise! 🫂

@nprofile…qjlh did a great job talking energy at ...

2025-01-10T01:04:21Z

bassload (nprofile…qjlh) did a great job talking energy at PUBKEY (nprofile…4zqy) tonight!

The Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…flyg) showed up!
BusinessCat (nprofile…uef7)
Phundamentals (nprofile…pt3x)
Shadrach (nprofile…yfra)
Pickle Dan (nprofile…xfg7)

quoting
nevent1q…066z

WOW GUYS 🧡🍻🙏

note1ktv…tnns

Check out @nprofile…qjlh at @nprofile…4zqy on Zap.Stream! ...

2025-01-09T23:56:18Z

Check out bassload (nprofile…qjlh) at PUBKEY (nprofile…4zqy) on Zap.Stream!

quoting
nevent1q…2y7p
Come check out PUBKEY (npub1key…lt3h) stream on zap.stream! https://zap.stream/naddr1qqjrsdf4x4nxxvrr94snwve5956rxdps95unxdmy94jk2ven8qcxgveh8yunqqg3waehxw309ahx7um5wgh8w6twv5hsz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjme0qyvhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnndehhyapwwdhkx6tpdshszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz7qghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxummnw3ezucnpdejz7qg3waehxw309ahx7um5wghxcctwvshsz8nhwden5te0dehhxarj94c82c3wwajkcmr0wfjx2u3wdejhgtcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvuhsz9thwden5te0dehhxarj9ehhsarj9ejx2a30qgsv73dxhgfk8tt76gf6q788zrfyz9dwwgwfk3aar6l5gk82a76v9fgrqsqqqan89mq7q6

Support our guys @nprofile…qjlh and @nprofile…pt3x! ...

2025-01-04T16:23:59Z

Support our guys bassload (nprofile…qjlh) and Phundamentals (nprofile…pt3x)!

quoting
nevent1q…szqc
An electrifying new series starts next week. 📣

Bass Load Energy: Decoding Energy Markets
Thursday, January 9 at 6 PM

We're bringing the funk to energy markets. Come for a riveting conversation and walk away with some energy insights — featuring
bassload (npub16am…43ym) with Phundamentals (npub12em…y99g) and alexthorn (npub1fn2…edt9).

This is a FREE, public event. Anything could happen! 🧡🍻🙏

https://meetu.ps/e/NM00R/ZQzdW/i

(Apologizes for Delayed Post) Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! ...

2025-01-04T16:20:25Z

(Apologizes for Delayed Post)

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

Happy Genesis Block Day!
https://bitcoin.holiday/2009-01-03-bitcoins-birthday

Sixteen years ago today, Satoshi mined the first bitcoin block, known as the genesis block.
https://mempool.space/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
When a miner finds a block, there's a small text field in which they can put whatever message in it they want. Modern mining pools usually use the name of their pool. Satoshi chose the following for block #0:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

There are two reasons for this. By including that day's headline from a major newspaper (London's The Times), Satoshi timestamped the block that he cast. This proved that he/she/they hadn't been mining on their own, keeping the mined blocks a secret, and preventing others from competing to mine for those new bitcoin. The crux of this reason is that it shows that it was launched fairly and on the date that he broadcast it to the network. The second reason is more symbolic: the 2008 financial crisis, and the government bailout interventions that followed, represented a breach of trust and alienated many, including Satoshi:

"The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.”

The white paper laid out the framework for bitcoin: a new digital asset and decentralized payment network that doesn't rely on having to trust entities that have repeatedly proven themselves untrustworthy.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Several years ago, bitcoin educator and podcaster Trace Mayer first proposed and promoted Proof of Keys Day, corresponding with the anniversary of the genesis block.
https://www.proofofkeys.com/
The idea is that whoever has bitcoin on exchanges should withdraw them on January 3rd every year, and in doing so, force exchanges who might be running a fractional reserve to be exposed.

IMHO, Proof of Keys Day is a great idea, and every bitcoiner should know the difference of what it means to hold their own wealth vs some exchange's IOU for bitcoin. However, bitcoiners who know this important distinction very likely don't keep sats on an exchange in the first place. If you do happen to have bitcoin on an exchange and want to celebrate Proof of Keys Day by making the exchange prove that they have the bitcoin they say they do, and you are comfortable and familiar with your self-custody setup, by all means please celebrate and withdraw! I do wonder about how many people realistically (1) have a bitcoin balance on an exchange, (2) are comfortable with self-custody and have software or hardware wallet, and (3) have Proof of Keys Day on their radar. Cheers nonetheless!

Remember, friends...treat bitcoin exchanges like you treat public bathrooms. Walk in, do your business, wash your hands, and walk right back out.

Our next monthly coffee meetup is at 1pm at Denim Coffee on Sunday, Jan 26th (1pm every fourth Sunday).

Happy Genesis Block Day and Happy Proof of Keys Day!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…94tk)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…flyg)

Apparently, our guy @nprofile…xfg7 is the top zapper of the ...

2024-12-22T02:24:50Z

Apparently, our guy Pickle Dan (nprofile…xfg7) is the top zapper of the day.

quoting
nevent1q…h864

📖 Daily Top 10 Zappers:
1. Pickle Dan (npub16e3…y9v6) 100,170 sats
2. luisschwab (npub1d2x…eu8n) 63,021 sats
3. ROCKSTAR (npub1j8y…vrvg) 49,250 sats
4. npub1jalt2rsvr9nhd7e84yp8pmzytxmcptp8u20tp5wnx4dcr8xf8resze0yfp (npub1jal…0yfp) 47,000 sats
5. ODELL (npub1qny…95gx) 41,783 sats
6. npub16pcgz3fct9znjcv37sn7zdrtk4xgjsgla7rm6dz82y9syashr7mq7nafu7 (npub16pc…afu7) 30,105 sats
7. MAV21 (npub1a95…gpn5) 25,456 sats
8. Ape Mithrandir (npub16ds…h6vy) 23,331 sats
9. John Ecash (npub12yr…jn7n) 21,000 sats
10. Armyguy6902 (npub10mx…lhpj) 20,000 sats

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! Happy Hodl Day! What's Hodl ...

2024-12-18T20:24:34Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

Happy Hodl Day!

What's Hodl Day, you might ask? It's the anniversary of when the meme "hodl" was born. Eleven years ago today, on the bitcointalk.org forum (Source Link Below), user GameKyuubi, frustrated by his failed trading attempts, went on a drunken and profanity-laden rant. He lamented that he kept making bad trades, and regretted that he didn't just hold his bitcoin position rather than trying to outsmart the market. The title of his post was "I AM HODLING". Little did he know that his typo would go down in history as a favorite term of bitcoiners.

There are some misconceptions about what hodl means. One has been propagated by corporate news, who created the backronym "hodl = hold on for dear life". Not one of the more dastardly pieces of misinformation they've tried to disseminate about bitcoin, however hodl's creation stems from the aforementioned post on the bitcointalk forum, not an acronym.

The other big misconception is that hodl means to never spend one's bitcoin. A crucial function of a money is spending it at a later date, hopefully on something that improves your life or the lives of those you care about. One can still be a hodler and spend some of their bitcoin...the process of hodling does make one more choosy about what they spend their money on, however.

Hodl can also be used as a noun, ie "I keep my spending sats in Blue Wallet and my hodl on a Passport hardware device". An analogy to fiat would be making the distinction between dollars in a checking account and dollars in a 401k. Your hodl is the stack that is in its forever home, so to speak.

When you expect your money to consistently go down in value, you want to spend it quickly to realize its maximum value. The dollar bill in your pocket will never be worth more than it is right now...its value will only go down. When you expect your money to consistently go up in value, you want to spend it more conservatively...you want to hodl it.

Happy Hodl Day!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…m5vw)
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners (nprofile…3w8n)

Origin Story: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0

New episode of @nprofile…mxur released early?! Shout-out to our ...

2024-12-17T00:27:51Z

New episode of RockPaperBitcoin (nprofile…mxur) released early?!

Shout-out to our guys Phundamentals (nprofile…pt3x) and BusinessCat (nprofile…uef7). Thank you, gentlemen!

https://fountain.fm/episode/rIzFWhqbqucfo3MS8svG

Thank you, @nprofile…n6q3, for spreading the word!

2024-12-14T15:41:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…nxwz
_________________________

Thank you, Derek Ross (nprofile…n6q3), for spreading the word!

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! Our next meetup is taking place ...

2024-12-14T02:13:44Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

Our next meetup is taking place at 1pm on Saturday, Dec 28th, at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg. Although our coffee meetups typically take place on the fourth Sunday of each month, end of year commitments necessitated we chose Saturday the 28th for this month. BusinessCat (nprofile…uef7) has graciously agreed to host on the 28th in my absence...I'll catch you at the Jan 26th meetup.
https://www.meetup.com/central-pa-bitcoiners/events/304817221/?eventOrigin=group_upcoming_events

2025 is looking bright for Central PA Bitcoiners! We're in the process of putting together coffee meetups on the fourth Sunday of each month, and then have our quarterly educational meetup in February or March.

Some news items:
Big milestones...BTCUSD finally broke $100k this month. Although its all-time high (ATH) had been breached in nominal terms in March, as written about in the October 31st newsletter, we were still a long way from attaining new highs when considering inflation-adjusted USD terms, gold terms, real estate terms, or in terms of the stock market (S&P 500). The exchange rate at 100k BTCUSD not only added another zero in our base-10 focused psychology around price levels, it surpassed its ATH when priced in assets harder than the dollar as well. Also, 100k BTCUSD corresponds to a market cap of $2T, another round number that garners attention. A word about unit bias: people can have a bias if things are framed a certain way. There are lots of people who think "well, I would like to invest in bitcoin, but I don't have $100k, so no dice...oh well", or "$100k is so expensive! Normal people aren't going to be able to get any." Anyone can buy $5 of bitcoin, which would net them about 5,000 sats. Making sats the standard is what some propose. Like there are 1,000 meters in one kilometer, there are 100 million sats in one whole bitcoin. $100k BTCUSD means you can get 1,000 sats for your dollar. I like to think of it in terms of global assets. There are $900T of global assets, and BTC now at $2T makes up 0.22% of that. Is it a stretch to think that it'll eventually be 0.5%, or 1%, or 2%? What sounds more expensive to you...gold's market cap, 2% of the world's assets, or $900k BTCUSD? They're all the same thing, however the framing of the last one makes it sound least realistic to most people's ears.

Putin declares "no one can ban Bitcoin." This is a big change of stance from what his words and actions said in the past. Bitcoin is strongest when there are many different participants, with different incentives, and that don't/won't coordinate with each other. The US has become a hub for development and mining activity in the past years, and other countries, especially ones that the US isn't on good terms with, bringing development and mining hash power to the table makes for the best network conditions possible. I'll paraphrase Jeff Booth, great thinker in the space and author of "The Price of Tomorrow". He was asked "what's the worst thing about bitcoin?", and his response was "the worst thing about bitcoin is that you have to be ok with the idea not only that your enemy can use it...your enemy being able to use it makes it stronger and better for yourself".
https://bitbo.io/news/putin-bitcoin-unstoppable

Microsoft shareholders reject bitcoin treasury proposal. Microsoft, the fourth largest company in the US by market cap, has $79B of cash on its books. A proposal was on the table to convert 5% of that into bitcoin. Michael Saylor gave a presentation at their board meeting making a great case for why keeping all of their treasury in dollars is doing their shareholders an injustice, as inflation eats away at it constantly. Even at 2% inflation, that's a $1.6B loss every year. Nevertheless, this proposal was rejected by the shareholders, as was expected by most apparently. More proof of how early we are, friends.
https://bitbo.io/news/microsoft-bitcoin-proposal-rejected/

ETHBTC drops to lowest level since March 2021. I view talking about altcoins, AKA shitcoins, as a frustrating waste of time generally. However, this article reminded me of something important about them: over the long run, they all trend to zero in bitcoin terms. Yo-yo coin and XYZcoin might draw attention for their short lived pumps here and there, but chart them against bitcoin on a timescale of months/years, and they're all headed the same direction...zero. Many people get drawn in to the hype, and have to touch the stove themselves to learn that they shouldn't. Take this bitcoiner's word for it...avoid the noise. Stay humble & stack sats.
https://bitbo.io/news/bitcoin-surges-to-97700/

That's all for now, folks. Remember, December coffee meetup is 1pm on Saturday the 28th at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg. Happy holidays!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…94tk)
Central PA Bitcoiners

Join us for Bitcoin and Coffee! Our next meetup will be at ...

2024-11-23T15:53:00Z

Join us for Bitcoin and Coffee!

Our next meetup will be at tomorrow 1:00pm EST (November 24) at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania!

We hope to see you there!

New Episode of @nprofile…mxur is available from our guys ...

2024-11-21T12:50:12Z

New Episode of RockPaperBitcoin (nprofile…mxur) is available from our guys BusinessCat (nprofile…uef7) and Phundamentals (nprofile…pt3x)! Check it out!
https://fountain.fm/episode/fabyXe7PKjP9xsamkFjR

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! Next meetup is at 1pm this ...

2024-11-07T20:34:18Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

Next meetup is at 1pm this Saturday, Nov 9th, at the Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg. This educational meetup will be geared towards what steps one can take to improve their financial sovereignty. Beginners welcome!

Topics:
What does it mean to increase one's sovereignty?
What is the staircase of sovereignty?
What does it mean to get off zero?
The importance and significance of getting off zero
Approachable steps that incrementally increase sovereignty
What is a seed phrase? What makes them so powerful?
Ideas for leveling up your skills and setup
Thoughts on how to approach holiday conversations with family when you feel that itch to orange pill

Hope to see you there!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…xnrn)
Central PA Bitcoiners

New episode of @nprofile…mxur is out from our guys ...

2024-11-07T14:36:06Z

New episode of RockPaperBitcoin (nprofile…mxur) is out from our guys BusinessCat (nprofile…uef7) and Phundamentals (nprofile…pt3x)!
https://fountain.fm/episode/V4kQcIUrftHSXpGa5NwG

Our next Educational Meetup is this Saturday 1PM at the Simpson ...

2024-11-04T01:31:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…kl59
_________________________

Our next Educational Meetup is this Saturday 1PM at the Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg. Feel free to stop by!

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! Two meetups lined up for ...

2024-10-31T19:29:29Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

Two meetups lined up for November: an educational meetup on Saturday, Nov 9th, and our monthly coffee meetup on Sunday, Nov 24th. See below for a sneak peak of Nov 9th meetup.

After 6 months of chop, the exchange rate of bitcoin against the US Dollar is approaching its former ATH (all-time high). The ATH has already been breached when measured against other fiat currencies, and exceeded 100k Canadian Dollars yesterday. Keep in mind the shortcomings of these fiat measurement tools, though. Fiat currencies, due to constant debasement, AKA legal counterfeiting, bleed value continuously.

Imagine if other measurement tools that we rely on constantly changed in value! For example, say your height is 60" this year, and next year it's 63". This wasn't because you actually grew, though...it'd be because the length of an inch keeps insidiously getting smaller. Imagine if a carpenter were building you a house, and that when he showed up every morning to work on it, the length of each inch on his measuring tape decreased by some inconsistent amount overnight. How do you think that your house would turn out?

Value is subjective, and the fluctuating value of a thing can only be measured against the fluctuating value of another thing. Another way to measure bitcoin's value would be against assets scarcer than fiat currencies. Some examples are stocks (the S&P 500), precious metals (gold), or residential housing (the Case-Shiller Index). When measuring bitcoin's value against these scarcer assets, we've still got a bit to go before we eclipse the ATH, set for each of these in 2021. Compared to three years ago, we're still 24% under the ATH priced in stocks, 38% under the ATH priced in gold, and 16% under the ATH priced in houses.

Keep staying humble, and keep stacking sats.

-------------------------------------

The Nov 9th educational meetup will be geared towards what steps one can take to improve their financial sovereignty. Beginners welcome!

Topics:
What does it mean to increase one's sovereignty?
What is the staircase of sovereignty?
What does it mean to get off zero?
The importance and significance of getting off zero
Approachable steps that incrementally increase sovereignty
What is a seed phrase? Why are they so powerful?
Cold vs hot storage
Ideas for leveling up your skills and setup

Hope to see you there!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…94tk)
Central PA Bitcoiners

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! Subject Title: Meetup This ...

2024-10-22T16:57:27Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!
Subject Title: Meetup This Sunday; Then They Fight You

Our monthly coffee meetup is this Sunday, Oct 27th, at Denim Coffee in downtown Mechanicsburg. Come join us at 1pm!
https://www.denimcoffeecompany.com/pages/denim-coffee-mechanicsburg-pa

This is the second time I've used "then they fight you" in the Subject Title. The first time was in April of this year, and it was referring to the arrest of the Samourai developers. There were some news items this week that evoke that same notion.

ECB economists publish a paper attacking bitcoin
https://dailyhodl.com/2024/10/22/true-declaration-of-war-bitcoin-veteran-says-gloves-are-off-after-ecb-publishes-paper-attacking-btc/

Italy proposes plan to increase capital gains on bitcoin from 26% to 42%
https://decrypt.co/286630/italy-increase-bitcoin-capital-gains-tax

Minneapolis Fed suggests banning or taxing bitcoin to sustain deficits
https://bitbo.io/news/bitcoin-ban-tax-minneapolis-fed/

The hypocrisy is off the charts with these. In the first one, the argument is made that early bitcoin adopters are getting rich and capturing wealth from later adopters, in a zero-sum scenario. Of course, this is not zero-sum, and it's how holders of any capital asset are compensated for their risk and correct choices. People who bought AAPL at $1/share 20 years ago are able to realize profit due to the buyers that value it more than that now. Likewise, today's asset buyers will profit in the future if future buyers value it more than they do now.

A wonderful juxtaposition with these news items is a recent video which compares the current Bitcoin-focused pushback to pushback against past disruptive technologies, entited "Bitcoin and the Death of Energy Misinformation" on Swan's YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/N7szgscQ0YM

There is a long history of instances where the old guard attempts to FUD the thing that's disrupting them. For example, the bicycle came to prominence in the 1890's, and disrupted several existing industries: horse and buggy, riding apparel, railway, and public transit. A newspaper article was written that claimed "the bicycle to be the most dangerous thing to life and property ever invented". The bicycle since has become the most ubiquitous means of mechanical transportation worldwide.

Lastly, I'll leave you with this gem of a video I recently came across called "Six reasons to withdraw your bitcoin from exchanges" by Arman The Parman.
https://youtu.be/srgL9iQz3JM

My favorite is reason #6: "Unless you take coins into your own custody, you will never fully appreciate how bitcoin works. If you don't appreciate it, you won't buy enough of it, and this you will regret." Reminds me of the saying "let your education drive your allocation".

Enjoy the rest of your week, friends. Hope to see you on Sunday!

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…94tk)
Central PA Bitcoiners

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners! We have two meetups scheduled ...

2024-10-11T20:46:24Z

Greetings Central PA Bitcoiners!

We have two meetups scheduled for the coming weeks...our monthly coffee meetup at Denim Coffee (1pm every fourth Sun (Oct 27th)) and our quarterly educational meetup at Simpson Library (1pm on Sat Nov 9th).

The Nov 9th educational meetup will be geared towards what steps one can take to improve their financial sovereignty. Beginners welcome!

Topics:
What does it mean to increase one's sovereignty?
What is the staircase of sovereignty?
What does it mean to get off zero?
The importance and significance of getting off zero
Approachable steps that incrementally increase sovereignty
What is a seed phrase? Why are they so powerful?
Cold vs hot storage
Ideas for leveling up your skills and setup

Whether you prefer a coffee shop hangout type meetup, an educational meetup with a presentation, or both, CPAB has a meetup for you.

Lonelypumpkins (nprofile…3xfc)

September Meetup September 29, 2024 1:00PM - 2:00PM EST ...

2024-09-22T17:10:26Z

September Meetup

September 29, 2024 1:00PM - 2:00PM EST

https://www.bitcoinerevents.com/event/september-bitcoin-hangout/

Nostr event nevent1qqsddu3243g0x052fc023xhpq0ty27xg9hzk6pke743gqktfsk4lxfgzyrnnu7rzynrfsssslg0uzu2drzsk8qzk2puqkc7d889qjqfuctkuc48lhrm

2024-08-25T22:21:43Z

Great meetup today!
Thank you to everyone who showed up!

Next meetup today in less than an hour! Hope to see folks there! ...

2024-08-25T16:13:14Z

Next meetup today in less than an hour! Hope to see folks there!

quoting
nevent1q…9ch7

August Meetup

August 25, 2024 1:00PM - 3:00PM EST

https://www.meetup.com/central-pa-bitcoiners/events/302242085/

#Bitcoin

Check out @nprofile…uef7, @nprofile…pt3x, and ...

2024-08-20T22:13:01Z

Check out BusinessCat (nprofile…uef7), Phundamentals (nprofile…pt3x), and RockPaperBitcoin (nprofile…mxur) on #Nostr!

#GrowNostr

August Meetup August 25, 2024 1:00PM - 3:00PM EST ...

2024-07-30T23:25:31Z

August Meetup

August 25, 2024 1:00PM - 3:00PM EST

https://www.meetup.com/central-pa-bitcoiners/events/302242085/

#Bitcoin #Pennsylvania https://i.nostr.build/En62K.png

2024-07-30T23:21:35Z

#Bitcoin #Pennsylvania