Episode 2: Profits vs. Prophets

Boosting another thousand sats to see what the 21000 sats sound bit is.

I've been busy lately, but I sent you a DM on X with the weekly spaces that I do with some friends on Bitcoin mining. Is there a different form of communication you'd prefer? I'm reaching out to some more experienced people I know if they'd like to talk to you about mining. We dropped below 900 exahash! Great time to get into mining!

I keep hearing people say that the sentiment is the lowest it's been in a long time. Personally I don't think the quantum and Epstein stuff is anything more than FUD. Is there anytime that you can remember when sentiment was lower than it is today? +1 to the JB mining pool! I'm down to work on it and then also throw some hashrate at it!

Episode 100 celebration! Hopefully more to come!

Welcome back from SCALE! I'm curious if you saw any Bitcoin usage while you were there. I started listening to you because of Linux and then you introduced me to Bitcoin. The reason why I'm so passionate about Bitcoin now are a lot of the same reasons I've been passionate about Linux since 2014 so it seems like it would be a great fit.

Hosted mining is big now if you want the most hashrate for your dollar. If you want a home miner, the Canaan Avalon Q is a great entry point. 90 terahash, looks just like a desktop, and it runs on 120 so no modifications necessary. I co-host a weekly space on X about mining. I can reach out to some of the people I've met there to talk to you and maybe get on the podcast. Just say the word and I'll reach out. I sent you a DM on X last year that has my username.

I saw some people mention that with Bitcoin we can have a "Star Trek future" instead of a "Star Wars future". As the biggest Star Trek fan I know of, what are some episodes, series, or movies I should watch to understand what that Star Trek post scarcity utopia, and do you think this is a good analogy for Bitcoin?

I got my second node up and running! I'll be using it to try out some of the stuff y'all talked about on the episode with Wes and Brent. In other news, did you see the politician that said he was mining Bitcoin 20 years ago and only got a fraction of a fraction of a Bitcoin? There's some real low effort grifting going on over there in Vegas.

I loved having an episode with Wes and Brent! Now I have so many more things that I want to do with my node!

It's been awhile since I've checked in with the lunch. Hope y'all are doing great and cooking up some delicious recipes! I do miss Brunch with Brent. Sad he's going through a bit of a villain arc now.

I'm just about ready to finally dive into Nix. My question for you Nix nerds is should I start with a general use PC and hypr-vibe, an appliance level media server, or the coveted Nix Bitcoin node?

I'm still running Knots, but I'm deliberately not signaling for BIP-110. I have a Bitaxe solo mining with Datum Gateway, but won't be moving a large amount of my hashrate to Ocean at least until after all this settlles down. If spam is as much of an issue as Luke and Mechanic state, why does the majority of the network not agree with them? Either fix the spam issue permanently, or let it be. A temporary soft fork is just an unnecessary way for them to feel like they got a win after they lost the fight against Core v30.

I'm willing to go to a Bitcoin meetup if it's relatively close. I'll be going to Mining Disrupt in Dallas/Fort Worth later this year.

Texas just bought 10 million dollars worth of Bitcoin. Proud to be a Texan. Just wish it was real sats instead of IBIT. Baby steps.

You want to know how a raise would get processed by the economy? Well I'd increase my DCA. Also would have a bit more for smash buys when the price drops. There's also talks of a $2000 stimmy coming in. That should cover the cost of a Canaan Avalon Q and a few months of electricity. So I guess both of them would get processed as more sats in my wallet.

I've recently heard a lot of people mention The Fourth Turning. I've already read that book. I've also heard Bitcoiners say "Fix the money, fix the world". Could you give me some book or lecture recommendations that explain this connection?

Happy new year! My goals for 2026 are to fill in the gaps of my knowledge when it comes to self custody and mining. I also plan hit hit the 1 petahash milestone between home miners and hosted.

QT is over. Bring on the money printer!

Linux and Bitcoin do go well together! I've been listening to you since 2014 and bought Bitcoin for the first time 2 years ago just to boost the shows because I wanted to support JB. I've only gotten orange pilled this year after doing the research. I wish I was there for the Plan B days. I remember awhile ago you and Alan sold Bitcoin to buy a server. I wonder how much that server costs now in fiat fun bucks given today's Bitcoin price...

Speaking of node-ing up, I was looking the mempool of my node during block 919953 which was also during the AWS outage. I was confused why a block would be taking almost 6 times as long as it should be. The best thesis I can come up with is maybe the big pools use AWS for orchestration software. Is there a better explanation that you could think of, or am I just inexperienced and don't realize these anomalies just happen sometimes? Also odd that after almost an hour, it gets mined by an unknown solo miner.

I have a goal of getting to 1 BTC. I have DCA setup and a hardware wallet, but as I look more into price targets that people set, I feel like I need to stack faster than I can normally DCA. I feel like I'm going crazy trying to find ways that I can stack faster with mining, loans, treasury companies, etc. As someone whose been in Bitcoin for a long time, do you think I'm focusing too much on an arbitrary goal and I should just stay humble and stack when I can? I'm 29 for context.

I noticed that you don't talk a lot about mining in TWIB like you did in PlanB. I'm thinking that mining would be a fun hobby to get into and learn more about Bitcoin while helping the decentralization. Right now I'm looking at the Bitaxe Gamma and might scale out from there. Right now I have an AlbyHub hosted by Alby. Is there anything you think I should know before getting into it, or any tips you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

For now I'm pretty happy learning all of the interesting technical aspects of Bitcoin and various apps to run on my node and how to integrate that with my homelab! Is there an OSI model like tool to understanding how consensus layer interacts with mempool and how layer 2s like Lightning and Liquid can transfer sats without using block space?

Live video? In my Fountain app? We're living in the future guys!

I would be interested in hearing your guide on setting up Knots on Start9. I got Knots setup on Umbrel this weekend and that was incredibly easy. I hear people I respect use Start9, but I don't see the appeal to it. Seems like it has less applications and still has the same hardware limitations.