The second half of 2024 will bring changes to the Satoshi's Plebs podcast. Let's discuss what is changing and why...
Bitcoin Weekly Close
June 23rd, 2024: $63,173
Block Height at Time of Recording
849,239
Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Website
Podcasting 2.0 Apps available at http://podcastapps.com and Value4Value information page available here: https://value4value.info
I can be reached by email at [email protected] and on Twitter at McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @[email protected]. Looking forward to hearing from you!
[00:00:00]
McIntosh:
Hey, Pleb Nation. Today is June 23rd, and this is episode 172 of Satoshi's Plebs. I'm your host, McIntosh. And and today's episode is where are we going? Alright. We're gonna jump right on into things. We're gonna do a brief overview of kind of where we're at, and, and then we'll be talking about where we're going as a continuation of the episode from 2 weeks or really as a wrap up or bookend or whatever you wanna call it. So, a few hours ago, we had our weekly closing, June 23rd 2024, $63,173.35. What that does mean, very, very briefly is that, frankly, we have been going down, since, June 6th or so.
We are still above the level of that block, if you wanna call it that, that I have discussed ad nauseam, and I will not be covering at this point. But, yes, we are still in the box. We are still in the summer doldrums. We are not going to 0. Apparently, this week, we are also not going to $100,000. It would be nice. Anyways, we are as we record, we are at block height 849 239. That's 849,239 as we start our recording. And if we look at our difficulty adjustment, the previous adjustment, which, happened a bit ago, was, just, like, point 05% down. Not a very big adjustment at all. But right now, as we sit, we're looking at 6.1% down on July the 5th. So, apparently, the miners, the Bitcoin miners are going to get a nice 4th July present one day late, when the difficulty drops. Why is this happening?
It's a good question. Glad you asked. The reason would be miners have come offline. We are experiencing summer heat in Texas. I actually think next week, not to be a weather person, but, from what I understand, it's even going to be hotter. We should probably have more shutdowns of the ERCOT based Texas miners, as part of their agreements. And when they do that, they're removing hash power for the network. And those of us who are left, like my miners, we rejoice. So there we go. Looking like we're going down a bit. The mempool itself, if you go to mempooldot space, you can see a great overview of that, by the way.
10 sets per v byte, which is well under a dollar, especially with our current prices. I think it's, like, 80¢ to send an average transaction and 956 megabytes of unprocessed transactions. So the mempool itself is certainly not emptying out. But at the moment, our transaction fees are pretty nice. So if you've got some, main net activities that you need to deal with, it'd be a great time to do that. And that's it. From there, we're gonna jump into our main segment. Oh, by the way, the Earl Gray is hot and it is nice nice tonight.
Even more than normal, maybe. Enjoying that a good bit. But, anyways, where are we going? Where are we going? So I told you 2 weeks ago, but right before I went on vacation, you know, I was going to spend some significant time on my vacation thinking about things, evaluating things, and I've done that. It's been 2 weeks. I was on vacation for a week. I actually took the last week off from work as well. So I guess, essentially, I've been on vacation for 2 weeks. We were gone. We traveled, just to be honest, a significant portion of the East Coast. I've driven more than what I would like to think about.
If you're from outside the United States, you know, maybe glance on a map, kinda get an idea. But, we drove from the southeast. We drove up to Maryland, which is up by Washington, DC. In fact, we were only about an hour away from Washington, DC to visit some friends. And then we went over to the very tip of Virginia, the southwestern tip of Virginia. Drove within not quite sight of the capital, but really, really close. Close enough that I was feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Why am I here? Not my environment, in case you didn't know. Not worried about anything. It's just I don't know.
It's weird. But we went over to Southwest Virginia, and, we rode this. We were we we took this bike thing. It's called it's, it's called the Virginia creeper. You could look it up if you're interested. Basically, you ride bikes down a old railroad trail that's been, railroad tracks that had been converted to a trail. It's a very nice ride through the mountains of Southwest Virginia, and it's basically all downhill, which is nice. It was a bit busy for my taste. Turns out roughly 300,000 people a year ride down this trail. And, essentially, during the middle of our summer holidays here in the states, you know, there's people there's people everywhere. There's people constantly going by us, but we had a great time, enjoyed the scenery, had a nice trip, all that kind of stuff. So we're back home now.
I spent the last week doing some significant work on the shed that I've told you about in the past. We're putting up the board and baton now working on that. That is a slow process, let me tell you. But it is turning out looking very good. So very pleased with that. And that's what I've done for the last 2 weeks. And, during all this, I've spent a significant amount of time thinking about things, writing down some notes, you know, putting serious thoughts in all this. So we're gonna talk about that now. Where's Macintosh going? And I hope you come along for the trip. I think in the long run, this will be better for us.
It's always good to kind of review your activities, whether it's your work or or whatever, and make sure that you're still on target, that you're on focus. Well, this is my method of doing that for this podcast. So we're going to enter a new season, so to speak. We're not gonna be talking about anything outside of Bitcoin. Macintosh is not changing that. There's no no chance that that's going to happen. In fact, if anything well, yeah, that's just not gonna happen. But I always want to try and bring a better product to the listener and to you, to my customer, so to speak.
So what are we gonna do? Well, I'm gonna remove the market update. This is something that, I've kind of wrestled with for for a long time. Recently, I don't know, 6, 12 months ago, I don't remember exactly, but somewhere along in there, I did kind of, pull back on the market update segment. We kinda stopped the trading talk at all. I've I've never advocated for trading. The one great thing that I've had been doing, and to be honest, I I've noticed that I've stopped doing, which I probably need to reemphasize, is during that section, I would be talking about how we DCA. We don't trade. We don't go out there and gamble. We don't, you know, do leverage anything like that.
But I do like to watch the market. I mean, I just do. I've lost a significant amount of money on the market. I don't know. Maybe it's a morbid curiosity, but I enjoy analyzing from a technical aspect what is going on. But this isn't a trading podcast, and I don't think that that should be our focus. I don't think it really should be a part of what we talk about. So I removed that a while ago, but I've still continued to kind of talk about things. I mean, you guys I know you're tired of hearing about this dumb box at this point between 60 and 70 1,000, dollars US dollars.
But that is actually what's going on. It's still going on, until proven otherwise. But I think we're just going to kind of skip all of that altogether. So our market segment, if you want to call it that, will simply be we will talk about the price. I may give a very, very brief overview of kind of thoughts on going up or going down. Of course, that's not trading advice. And then we'll just roll through the standard statistics that I have been doing. I like to talk about the block heights, where we actually recording in terms of the blockchain itself, the difficulty adjustment so that people get a basic idea for what's going on kind of in the mining world, and then the fees. Because the fees are important when you're dealing with the main chain. So I'll be tightening that segment up.
I'll be removing any trade talk. I I said removing the market update. I basically, I am. We may rename it something statistics. I don't know. I don't wanna that actually, I don't wanna call it that. There's another podcast that calls it that, and I do not wanna be using other people's terminology. I need to come up with something new because market update just doesn't have the right connotation, I think is the word I'm looking for. Okay? But we're we're definitely going to change that. Alright. What are we gonna be emphasizing? Because I am really looking at, what I'm emphasizing. I believe these will end up being the 3 main areas.
I'm not gonna say that I'm never gonna talk about other things because I probably will, but I do believe that it's important that we do try and maintain our focus. Right? I struggle with that. It's something that I freely admit. It's my life. And it's funny because I talked about that a couple weeks ago, in the that last episode. In fact, one of our booths tonight is I don't wanna let the cat out of the bag there, but it was along those lines. And, anyways, I'm not using that as an excuse. We do need to focus. We need to focus this podcast. So what are we gonna be emphasizing? I think one of the most important things, certainly in the near term, probably in the long term, privacy Privacy on Bitcoin specifically.
There will be other aspects to that because it's it goes outside of kind of Bitcoin itself, the operating system that you're working on and those kind of things. I live in the United States, as all know. And and because I live in the United States, I believe according to one of the amendments of the one of the bill of rights, one of the amendments to the constitution, one of the items of the bill of rights, I should say. Anyways, it's a a right to privacy. It's a right to privacy in my papers, my effects, my financial life.
Now you have to counterbalance that with what the government needs to know in terms of income because, for example, we have an income tax. However, the the overreach that has been happening for decades, here in the United States and really in many parts of the world is way, way over what they need. And Bitcoin, even though it's often spoken of that, like, you have privacy on Bitcoin, that's by default, so to speak. That's just not true. And I think it's very important that people understand that and how to deal with that. How when I'm going, you know, when I'm operating in Bitcoin, do I have the privacy that I need? So that's going to be one of and I'm not saying that this is the most important thing, by the way.
I'm not trying to I'm not trying to emphasize one area versus the other, but it's certainly important. 2nd area. As you all know, I talk quite frequently about places like Africa, South America, parts of Asia, Nepal, for example. I've discussed how I would love to go into Nepal, for example, and work with the local villages there, in order to develop hydropower, to mine Bitcoin and provide electricity for those local people. Now Nepal, specifically, actually has laws that are in effect that make any of that illegal. Apparently, a few years ago, I think it was well, it was a few years ago.
They had some scammers in there that were taking advantage of people, and the government basically reacted by restricting everything. I'm hoping at some point that those laws get changed and maybe that's something that I can explore because I actually have some contacts there, some people that I know that operate in that area. They also have Bhutan right next door who, as a government, is actually investing in Bitcoin mining quite successfully, apparently. So so that may bring them along at some point, I'm hoping. But people such as these villagers in Nepal, they have, I don't know how to put this.
Well, now, they have a a I want to I want to help people like that. I want to help people in Africa. I wanna help people in South America who they don't have access to the same levels of civilization essentially that we do here in the United States or in a fully developed country, say in Western Europe or in Australia or whatever. And, of course, as an entrepreneur, as a Bitcoin miner, I can do that by bringing mining into this equation. We've talked about this quite a bit through companies like gridless with what people like Eric are doing there in Africa. I see over the next 20 plus, 20, 40, 60, I don't know how many years this happening.
I think 60 years from now, you will look at Africa and South America. They will not look anywhere near like they do right now. I think they will be much more developed. And in large part, that will be because of not because look. Well, I'm gonna say this, not because nongovernmental agencies, what do they call those NGOs, or governments or charities or whatever have gone into these areas and helped. Now that those people aren't necessarily trying, but through Bitcoin mining, through entrepreneurship, through capitalism, really, we can bring power weak, which really equates to civilization, frankly. To put it very, very simply and starkly, we can bring civilization to those areas. We can bring power to places that have never had power, and we are starting to see that in Africa.
I really want to become involved in that. And it will be something regardless of my level of involvement that I will be talking about and talking about. And I will be talking about places like Argentina, like El Salvador. El Salvador has a chance right now to develop into a leading world class citizen. I see them 60 years certainly not being in the same place that they're at right now. So I will be talking about them. I will be talking about Argentina. In fact, we've got news about Argentina tonight, so we'll get to that in the news segment. Okay.
Enough about that. third area, the news. I do want to continue to talk about news. I do want to change how I tend to kinda just trip through the news and report it and maybe throw in a few words here and there. I'm thinking I don't know. Maybe I go a little more in-depth on at least some things. I'm not sure. We'll see. But that's going to remain a component. The news and kind of the mix that I've done, some macro, you know, kind of world level news, for example. I'll just give a very brief example. I've talked about BRICS ever since it was first announced. BRICS is the consortium of nations, that are essentially trying to replace the US dollar. I think that's very important to cover, and you don't really hear that in a lot of places.
Is it important this year? Maybe not. But over the long term, I think breaks will make a huge difference. So I'm going to retain that news segment and, in fact, may expand it. Okay. Other things. So those are kinda gonna be my 3 big emphasis. I will filter what I do through that. It doesn't mean I will not ever talk about other things. It will mean that these are kind of the 3 big areas. Where where else are we going? I'm going to try and find a cohost. Look, guys. After a 170, this is the 70 a 100 and 72nd episode. I can say one thing with a great deal of a surety.
Doing a podcast by yourself is hard. It's very hard. It can be demotivating. It's just tough. I did not want to do this, but I also think it's what's best for the podcast. It's what's best for the listeners. Okay? So if I can find the right person, and this may take a while. I'll be honest. As you know, maybe I'm not the maybe I'm a little different, but, you know, if I can find the right person, I'm certainly willing to, to do that. So you can consider this as Macintosh opening up the floodgates, so to speak. Now that I will give a bunch of applications, but, you know, and saying, I'm looking for a co host. Alright. I want to try and find one. We'll see how that works out.
I'm going to try and do more interviews. We've got, the Bitcoin conference coming up here shortly. I don't know how I can record there, but at least maybe I can get a bunch of people to say, hey. I will record with you. Here's my email. That kind of thing. I don't really have the setup to remotely record like that, and it would require several $100 of expenses to do that. And I'm I can't do that right now. I'm finding out the conference is gonna be more expensive than I thought it was, by the way. And, in fact, they've gone up on the price again. I didn't get my I didn't get my tickets in time.
Yikes. Alright. They're going up again in 5 days, by the way. Alright. So hopefully, I can at least line up a number of interviews from there. I know some of the people that I've interviewed in the past will be there. I know Eric, for example, is gonna be there. I would love to get an update from him even though I follow him on Twitter. I'm sure that there were some things that we could talk about on the podcast if I can, get with him. In kind of a podcast related thing, but not. I'm decided that I am gonna do more writing. Guys, in another life, in my technical career, I actually wrote a book years ago. It's been like 10 years now, but I wrote a a quite a large technical book that you literally could go get on Amazon right now.
I I never promote it. It's old at this point, essentially. The point is, I've certainly written a lot in the past. I enjoy writing. I really enjoy writing about Bitcoin, of course, privacy, these kind of things. And I'm going to make a concerted effort during the second half of twenty twenty four to start doing more of that. So I will probably be mentioning them in the podcast from time to time, that kind of thing. We'll see. Alright. So I do wanna do more of that in the second half. I also, want to offer or to add I also want to add a software update segment. This is not something that I've done in the past, but keeping up with updates.
For example, Bitcoin Core just came out with 27.1, which is, and there was an older version 24 I think, version 24 dot 1, something like that, is now considered like, you should update if you are running that because there's a bug in it. And 27 dot 1, for example, has it's all up to date. I believe right now I'm running 26, actually, the last version, but I need to get that updated myself. But all that to just say, I'm gonna have a software segment. We'll list, major Bitcoin software, things like Fedimint, things like, wallet software.
I'm not gonna cover a bunch of, you know, casino coin stuff. We're not gonna talk about, gosh. What is that dumb wallet? MetaMask. You will never hear me say MetaMask is now updated to whatever. You will never hear me say treasure. Trezor has released a new update to their hardware wallet because I don't promote Trezor here, okay, as we've discussed many, many times, because they support casino coins, so on and so forth. But we will be talking about Bitcoin software, and major items outside of that that are very, very important. Okay. And then to wrap things up, I wanted to let you all know I've one of the things that I really kind of thought about for the last 2 weeks, and this has been on my mind for a long time, but I I spent a significant chunk of the last 2 weeks really thinking about this.
I want to offer more the community. I like doing this podcast. I also, frankly, want to earn money in Bitcoin. Do I make money doing this podcast? Well, yes. A little bit, but I really spend more. I absolutely spend more just doing the podcast than what I get back in sats. I'm not unappreciative for what I get, mind you. I'm just that's the reality. I want to actually earn money for work that I do. Alright? Because I want to do that to build more savings for myself, for my family, and to offer services a service, at least, to the industry, to to people at large, that's useful.
So here's the down low. Okay? I think as kids say these days. Sorry. I promise I'll never say that again. I have a long career in system administration work that about 10 years ago took a turn and went into automation, and I'll explain what that means in just a minute, that I have spent the the last decade, really, perfecting. I work on a team managing servers, database servers. Okay? These are complicated machines supporting a company, the company that I work for. And we have, 100. I'm not gonna it doesn't matter exactly, but we have 100 and 100 of database servers.
And we have a very small team, like 6 engineers that manage those servers. How do we do that? We do that through automation. I specifically write code in salt let's call it salt stack and Terraform that manage the servers. I can spin up servers. I can configure them, put them online, add their data, bring them into a cluster, back up that cluster, manage users, all of that kind of stuff via automation. And that's how a very small team is able to support those 100 and 100 of servers. So here's what I'm thinking. The skill set that I have, experience in Linux administration, experience in, SaltStack, actually, Ansible before that, although not as much and not as recent, but Ansible is another configuration tool, and certainly Terraform.
All of those areas are things that I can offer for for sats. Okay? I'm going to build standard tooling to do things like, oh, you want a let's just say you want a a Bitcoin node to run on maybe Linode or AWS or what I would recommend, Hetzner, h e t z n e r. They're a German company that does virtual private servers. We'll have it set so that it spins that up, takes care of all that, and in return, you know, you're gonna pay me a amount of money for that that's reasonable. Okay? I'm not looking to get rich off of this except in the long run as Bitcoin appreciates.
This type of service, I will be honest, just to give you an idea. Typically, if you were to go to a consulting firm, it would be 100 of dollars per hour for this type of service. So this is fairly there's a fairly small pool of engineers who can really do this work well. There's a very high demand for it as companies need to automate more and more, this kind of thing. So, you know, I'm not gonna do this for minimum wage. I'll just be honest. Right? But I will be very reasonable about it if someone is paying in sats in Bitcoin. Alright. Enough about that. Just some food food for thought. I don't have a web page built or anything like that or pricing, anything.
I just this is what I've been thinking about for the last couple weeks. This is one of the things. So I'm gonna throw that out there and, just let you all know. I'll be putting it on Twitter at some point in the next couple weeks and, and going on from there. And hopefully, I can get some business to start bringing in some some Bitcoin because, frankly, I think Bitcoin is the hardest form of money available with the best return on investment. So there you go. Alright. That's it. That's it. That's what I got. That's where we're going, ladies and gentlemen.
I hope that makes sense to you. Let's jump on into our supporters. We've had a couple of boost in the last couple of weeks. In total, we had 2961 sats that were streamed our way, streamed and boosted. And we had 2 boost about the last episode. Last half focus, from our friend over in Portugal, hypersensitive asarus. He said, I totally get you. Focus isn't my middle name either. I think we have a similar creative brains. Enjoy your much deserved holidays and take your time to think things out. Although, I personally kinda like the randomness and creative chaos. You know, it's funny. I kinda do myself, of course, but at the same time, I know it's better to be structured. I do. I know. There's you can it just it is. We have to be creative. We have to that's part of our personality, and that's part of what we do. But we have to be able to focus that at the same time to get things done. Guys, I've got projects, like, all over the place. Like, I've got stuff that's half finished.
It's just the way I am, but I can't let that be. I can't let that define me. And then our friend, Kyron, over at Mare Mortals, sent a boost, roller sticks 11. Oh, by the way, hypersensitive as ours sent a 1,000 sats. Appreciate that hypersensitive as ours. And Kyron sent a a roll sticks, like I said, 1111. So, 1,111 and said, I've had a recent experience that made me realize I've also been careless with my focus. I have been way too lenient with letting non important things chip away at it. Keen to hear what you're going to focus on. Well, that's what I'm gonna focus on, Karen.
I hope that's of interest to you. Looking forward to, catching up with you up there at the conference as well, Karen, in a few weeks. Alright. And and that's it. So I appreciate that, very much. We'll jump right on into the news. There was a few items I wanted to highlight. Here's one of the things I posted. In 20 years, we'll look back on a 2% consumer price inflation target, but we look back on bloodletting. I absolutely 100% hope this is true. In case you don't understand what I'm talking about here in the United States, in in any Keynesian economics based system, they believe that you have to have inflation in order to have growth. They target 2% because somehow that's enough to appease the peasants.
Because, you know, 5% is makes everybody mad. Right? But 2%, we're okay with that even though over the course of someone's 70 year lifespan, that essentially means that the money is worthless because that 2% compounds. Okay. So set all that aside. The reason why this would be the case is simply because we have replaced, an inflatable form of money, the US dollar, with Bitcoin, which we will only ever have 21,000,000 of and, of course, we're 19 +1000000 along the way to that. So we're getting close to that 21,000,000. Right now, we the ETFs alone are buying more Bitcoin than is actually being mined.
So, we'll see how that pans out. I sure hope that's what happens. Yeah. Janet Yellen, she's a treasury secretary. I love to make fun of her. I'm sorry. She's just an easy target. Janet Yellen on reducing the 1.2 $1,000,000,000,000 US budget deficit. So the budget deficit, for those of you who don't know what that means, that is the amount that we are spending more than we bring in. So the IRS brings in, say, $3,000,000,000 excuse me. I wish it was 3,000,000,000 $3,000,000,000,000, and we spend $4,200,000,000,000 every year.
Well, for the year that we're talking about because the next year will be even more. Anyways, Janet yelling on reducing this budget deficit. It's difficult to cut cost. More than half is defense. Cuts there aren't possible. Respectfully to you, your president, the next president of the United States to whomever, that makes no sense. Okay? We have like bases in 90, I think, countries, like, somewhere right around 90 countries. I have a plan. I could cut defense to shut down most of those bases. We don't need all those bases. Well, they are there to protect us, are they?
I disagree. Anyways, there you go. There you go. There they have no plan on on cutting that deficit, much less making it even. Argentina, on the other hand, who is cutting their cost, shutting down ministries, taking a chainsaw to it as he's so famous for. They report monthly inflation of 4.2% in May. The slowest, the lowest, really, since 2022. Remember, last year late last year, December, January, somewhere around there in that time frame, so just like 6 months ago, we were discussing over 100% inflation for Argentina. Argentina is not out of the woods yet, but they are doing things to be in a better place.
The Bitcoin I did wanna mention this. The Bitcoin miners almanac started shipping on 15th. I had Rob, on the podcast here recently talking about his work there at Riot, about the Bitcoin Miners Almanac, all that kind of stuff. If you have an interest in that, it is now available. I actually went to buy a copy tonight, and my debit card for the bank account for that I could pull it out of as a business expense because it would be a business expense for me. I'd I'm I've got a problem there, so I haven't been able to buy it yet. But I'll call the bank tomorrow and get that squared away. So there you go.
Right. And that's it. That's it for the news. So not a whole lot. It's typical summer doldrums, you know. There we go. So let's wrap this up. This podcast, Satoshi's Plebs, is a value for value podcast. I don't come on here and try and sell you a treasure. I don't come on here, try and sell you a ledger. I don't come on here and try and sell you anything. Because as a journalist, essentially, that's a conflict of interest. How can I report on a data breach at Ledger if Ledger is paying me 1,000 of dollars a month to promote their crappy product, and I say that I have a ledger?
Okay? I haven't got everything off of it. And as soon as I do, I will be deleting it. I will be throwing it away. Alright? Because they have they've had terrible issues with data breaches. They have. So that's just one little example. So what I do is I come to you as a listener and I say, hey, listener. I appreciate you listening to the podcast, first of all. And the best way that you can support this podcast, by the way, is to go tell someone about the podcast. Say, hey, go take a listen to this Macintosh guy. Alright?
That's the best way. You can also, if you would like, grab a podcasting 2.0 app, something like fountain, and hook it up and hook it up to a lightning wallet. And then you can stream sats, and you can boost just like a chiron and hypersensitive as ours did. You can boost and say, hey. I love that. Hey. Got a question. Hey. That was terrible. K? And you're directly supporting me by doing that. If you want to be supported, if you want some sats, I've got a way that you can do that too. You can go on fountain specifically and clip an episode.
You can go and take 1, 2, 3 minutes out of an episode. You can clip it and post it on fountain. Tag me. I'm Mcintosh on that platform, and I will boost you 500 sats back for that. If it's an older episode, I'll boost you 300 sats. That's a way for you to make some treasure straight from me. And as you do that, you're promoting the show. How could you get a hold of me? [email protected] is one way. Email. I'm on Twitter at mcintoshFintech as I mentioned. I on Twitter, I actually list right at the top. It's pinned my nostr pub key. I'm on nostr desperately trying to, you know, make that work.
So there's a few different ways you can get a hold of me. Alright? Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful. I just got done telling you different ways you can hear from me, and I would love to hear from you. So stay humble, friends. Go out and make it a great week. I will talk to you all soon.
Hey, Pleb Nation. Today is June 23rd, and this is episode 172 of Satoshi's Plebs. I'm your host, McIntosh. And and today's episode is where are we going? Alright. We're gonna jump right on into things. We're gonna do a brief overview of kind of where we're at, and, and then we'll be talking about where we're going as a continuation of the episode from 2 weeks or really as a wrap up or bookend or whatever you wanna call it. So, a few hours ago, we had our weekly closing, June 23rd 2024, $63,173.35. What that does mean, very, very briefly is that, frankly, we have been going down, since, June 6th or so.
We are still above the level of that block, if you wanna call it that, that I have discussed ad nauseam, and I will not be covering at this point. But, yes, we are still in the box. We are still in the summer doldrums. We are not going to 0. Apparently, this week, we are also not going to $100,000. It would be nice. Anyways, we are as we record, we are at block height 849 239. That's 849,239 as we start our recording. And if we look at our difficulty adjustment, the previous adjustment, which, happened a bit ago, was, just, like, point 05% down. Not a very big adjustment at all. But right now, as we sit, we're looking at 6.1% down on July the 5th. So, apparently, the miners, the Bitcoin miners are going to get a nice 4th July present one day late, when the difficulty drops. Why is this happening?
It's a good question. Glad you asked. The reason would be miners have come offline. We are experiencing summer heat in Texas. I actually think next week, not to be a weather person, but, from what I understand, it's even going to be hotter. We should probably have more shutdowns of the ERCOT based Texas miners, as part of their agreements. And when they do that, they're removing hash power for the network. And those of us who are left, like my miners, we rejoice. So there we go. Looking like we're going down a bit. The mempool itself, if you go to mempooldot space, you can see a great overview of that, by the way.
10 sets per v byte, which is well under a dollar, especially with our current prices. I think it's, like, 80¢ to send an average transaction and 956 megabytes of unprocessed transactions. So the mempool itself is certainly not emptying out. But at the moment, our transaction fees are pretty nice. So if you've got some, main net activities that you need to deal with, it'd be a great time to do that. And that's it. From there, we're gonna jump into our main segment. Oh, by the way, the Earl Gray is hot and it is nice nice tonight.
Even more than normal, maybe. Enjoying that a good bit. But, anyways, where are we going? Where are we going? So I told you 2 weeks ago, but right before I went on vacation, you know, I was going to spend some significant time on my vacation thinking about things, evaluating things, and I've done that. It's been 2 weeks. I was on vacation for a week. I actually took the last week off from work as well. So I guess, essentially, I've been on vacation for 2 weeks. We were gone. We traveled, just to be honest, a significant portion of the East Coast. I've driven more than what I would like to think about.
If you're from outside the United States, you know, maybe glance on a map, kinda get an idea. But, we drove from the southeast. We drove up to Maryland, which is up by Washington, DC. In fact, we were only about an hour away from Washington, DC to visit some friends. And then we went over to the very tip of Virginia, the southwestern tip of Virginia. Drove within not quite sight of the capital, but really, really close. Close enough that I was feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Why am I here? Not my environment, in case you didn't know. Not worried about anything. It's just I don't know.
It's weird. But we went over to Southwest Virginia, and, we rode this. We were we we took this bike thing. It's called it's, it's called the Virginia creeper. You could look it up if you're interested. Basically, you ride bikes down a old railroad trail that's been, railroad tracks that had been converted to a trail. It's a very nice ride through the mountains of Southwest Virginia, and it's basically all downhill, which is nice. It was a bit busy for my taste. Turns out roughly 300,000 people a year ride down this trail. And, essentially, during the middle of our summer holidays here in the states, you know, there's people there's people everywhere. There's people constantly going by us, but we had a great time, enjoyed the scenery, had a nice trip, all that kind of stuff. So we're back home now.
I spent the last week doing some significant work on the shed that I've told you about in the past. We're putting up the board and baton now working on that. That is a slow process, let me tell you. But it is turning out looking very good. So very pleased with that. And that's what I've done for the last 2 weeks. And, during all this, I've spent a significant amount of time thinking about things, writing down some notes, you know, putting serious thoughts in all this. So we're gonna talk about that now. Where's Macintosh going? And I hope you come along for the trip. I think in the long run, this will be better for us.
It's always good to kind of review your activities, whether it's your work or or whatever, and make sure that you're still on target, that you're on focus. Well, this is my method of doing that for this podcast. So we're going to enter a new season, so to speak. We're not gonna be talking about anything outside of Bitcoin. Macintosh is not changing that. There's no no chance that that's going to happen. In fact, if anything well, yeah, that's just not gonna happen. But I always want to try and bring a better product to the listener and to you, to my customer, so to speak.
So what are we gonna do? Well, I'm gonna remove the market update. This is something that, I've kind of wrestled with for for a long time. Recently, I don't know, 6, 12 months ago, I don't remember exactly, but somewhere along in there, I did kind of, pull back on the market update segment. We kinda stopped the trading talk at all. I've I've never advocated for trading. The one great thing that I've had been doing, and to be honest, I I've noticed that I've stopped doing, which I probably need to reemphasize, is during that section, I would be talking about how we DCA. We don't trade. We don't go out there and gamble. We don't, you know, do leverage anything like that.
But I do like to watch the market. I mean, I just do. I've lost a significant amount of money on the market. I don't know. Maybe it's a morbid curiosity, but I enjoy analyzing from a technical aspect what is going on. But this isn't a trading podcast, and I don't think that that should be our focus. I don't think it really should be a part of what we talk about. So I removed that a while ago, but I've still continued to kind of talk about things. I mean, you guys I know you're tired of hearing about this dumb box at this point between 60 and 70 1,000, dollars US dollars.
But that is actually what's going on. It's still going on, until proven otherwise. But I think we're just going to kind of skip all of that altogether. So our market segment, if you want to call it that, will simply be we will talk about the price. I may give a very, very brief overview of kind of thoughts on going up or going down. Of course, that's not trading advice. And then we'll just roll through the standard statistics that I have been doing. I like to talk about the block heights, where we actually recording in terms of the blockchain itself, the difficulty adjustment so that people get a basic idea for what's going on kind of in the mining world, and then the fees. Because the fees are important when you're dealing with the main chain. So I'll be tightening that segment up.
I'll be removing any trade talk. I I said removing the market update. I basically, I am. We may rename it something statistics. I don't know. I don't wanna that actually, I don't wanna call it that. There's another podcast that calls it that, and I do not wanna be using other people's terminology. I need to come up with something new because market update just doesn't have the right connotation, I think is the word I'm looking for. Okay? But we're we're definitely going to change that. Alright. What are we gonna be emphasizing? Because I am really looking at, what I'm emphasizing. I believe these will end up being the 3 main areas.
I'm not gonna say that I'm never gonna talk about other things because I probably will, but I do believe that it's important that we do try and maintain our focus. Right? I struggle with that. It's something that I freely admit. It's my life. And it's funny because I talked about that a couple weeks ago, in the that last episode. In fact, one of our booths tonight is I don't wanna let the cat out of the bag there, but it was along those lines. And, anyways, I'm not using that as an excuse. We do need to focus. We need to focus this podcast. So what are we gonna be emphasizing? I think one of the most important things, certainly in the near term, probably in the long term, privacy Privacy on Bitcoin specifically.
There will be other aspects to that because it's it goes outside of kind of Bitcoin itself, the operating system that you're working on and those kind of things. I live in the United States, as all know. And and because I live in the United States, I believe according to one of the amendments of the one of the bill of rights, one of the amendments to the constitution, one of the items of the bill of rights, I should say. Anyways, it's a a right to privacy. It's a right to privacy in my papers, my effects, my financial life.
Now you have to counterbalance that with what the government needs to know in terms of income because, for example, we have an income tax. However, the the overreach that has been happening for decades, here in the United States and really in many parts of the world is way, way over what they need. And Bitcoin, even though it's often spoken of that, like, you have privacy on Bitcoin, that's by default, so to speak. That's just not true. And I think it's very important that people understand that and how to deal with that. How when I'm going, you know, when I'm operating in Bitcoin, do I have the privacy that I need? So that's going to be one of and I'm not saying that this is the most important thing, by the way.
I'm not trying to I'm not trying to emphasize one area versus the other, but it's certainly important. 2nd area. As you all know, I talk quite frequently about places like Africa, South America, parts of Asia, Nepal, for example. I've discussed how I would love to go into Nepal, for example, and work with the local villages there, in order to develop hydropower, to mine Bitcoin and provide electricity for those local people. Now Nepal, specifically, actually has laws that are in effect that make any of that illegal. Apparently, a few years ago, I think it was well, it was a few years ago.
They had some scammers in there that were taking advantage of people, and the government basically reacted by restricting everything. I'm hoping at some point that those laws get changed and maybe that's something that I can explore because I actually have some contacts there, some people that I know that operate in that area. They also have Bhutan right next door who, as a government, is actually investing in Bitcoin mining quite successfully, apparently. So so that may bring them along at some point, I'm hoping. But people such as these villagers in Nepal, they have, I don't know how to put this.
Well, now, they have a a I want to I want to help people like that. I want to help people in Africa. I wanna help people in South America who they don't have access to the same levels of civilization essentially that we do here in the United States or in a fully developed country, say in Western Europe or in Australia or whatever. And, of course, as an entrepreneur, as a Bitcoin miner, I can do that by bringing mining into this equation. We've talked about this quite a bit through companies like gridless with what people like Eric are doing there in Africa. I see over the next 20 plus, 20, 40, 60, I don't know how many years this happening.
I think 60 years from now, you will look at Africa and South America. They will not look anywhere near like they do right now. I think they will be much more developed. And in large part, that will be because of not because look. Well, I'm gonna say this, not because nongovernmental agencies, what do they call those NGOs, or governments or charities or whatever have gone into these areas and helped. Now that those people aren't necessarily trying, but through Bitcoin mining, through entrepreneurship, through capitalism, really, we can bring power weak, which really equates to civilization, frankly. To put it very, very simply and starkly, we can bring civilization to those areas. We can bring power to places that have never had power, and we are starting to see that in Africa.
I really want to become involved in that. And it will be something regardless of my level of involvement that I will be talking about and talking about. And I will be talking about places like Argentina, like El Salvador. El Salvador has a chance right now to develop into a leading world class citizen. I see them 60 years certainly not being in the same place that they're at right now. So I will be talking about them. I will be talking about Argentina. In fact, we've got news about Argentina tonight, so we'll get to that in the news segment. Okay.
Enough about that. third area, the news. I do want to continue to talk about news. I do want to change how I tend to kinda just trip through the news and report it and maybe throw in a few words here and there. I'm thinking I don't know. Maybe I go a little more in-depth on at least some things. I'm not sure. We'll see. But that's going to remain a component. The news and kind of the mix that I've done, some macro, you know, kind of world level news, for example. I'll just give a very brief example. I've talked about BRICS ever since it was first announced. BRICS is the consortium of nations, that are essentially trying to replace the US dollar. I think that's very important to cover, and you don't really hear that in a lot of places.
Is it important this year? Maybe not. But over the long term, I think breaks will make a huge difference. So I'm going to retain that news segment and, in fact, may expand it. Okay. Other things. So those are kinda gonna be my 3 big emphasis. I will filter what I do through that. It doesn't mean I will not ever talk about other things. It will mean that these are kind of the 3 big areas. Where where else are we going? I'm going to try and find a cohost. Look, guys. After a 170, this is the 70 a 100 and 72nd episode. I can say one thing with a great deal of a surety.
Doing a podcast by yourself is hard. It's very hard. It can be demotivating. It's just tough. I did not want to do this, but I also think it's what's best for the podcast. It's what's best for the listeners. Okay? So if I can find the right person, and this may take a while. I'll be honest. As you know, maybe I'm not the maybe I'm a little different, but, you know, if I can find the right person, I'm certainly willing to, to do that. So you can consider this as Macintosh opening up the floodgates, so to speak. Now that I will give a bunch of applications, but, you know, and saying, I'm looking for a co host. Alright. I want to try and find one. We'll see how that works out.
I'm going to try and do more interviews. We've got, the Bitcoin conference coming up here shortly. I don't know how I can record there, but at least maybe I can get a bunch of people to say, hey. I will record with you. Here's my email. That kind of thing. I don't really have the setup to remotely record like that, and it would require several $100 of expenses to do that. And I'm I can't do that right now. I'm finding out the conference is gonna be more expensive than I thought it was, by the way. And, in fact, they've gone up on the price again. I didn't get my I didn't get my tickets in time.
Yikes. Alright. They're going up again in 5 days, by the way. Alright. So hopefully, I can at least line up a number of interviews from there. I know some of the people that I've interviewed in the past will be there. I know Eric, for example, is gonna be there. I would love to get an update from him even though I follow him on Twitter. I'm sure that there were some things that we could talk about on the podcast if I can, get with him. In kind of a podcast related thing, but not. I'm decided that I am gonna do more writing. Guys, in another life, in my technical career, I actually wrote a book years ago. It's been like 10 years now, but I wrote a a quite a large technical book that you literally could go get on Amazon right now.
I I never promote it. It's old at this point, essentially. The point is, I've certainly written a lot in the past. I enjoy writing. I really enjoy writing about Bitcoin, of course, privacy, these kind of things. And I'm going to make a concerted effort during the second half of twenty twenty four to start doing more of that. So I will probably be mentioning them in the podcast from time to time, that kind of thing. We'll see. Alright. So I do wanna do more of that in the second half. I also, want to offer or to add I also want to add a software update segment. This is not something that I've done in the past, but keeping up with updates.
For example, Bitcoin Core just came out with 27.1, which is, and there was an older version 24 I think, version 24 dot 1, something like that, is now considered like, you should update if you are running that because there's a bug in it. And 27 dot 1, for example, has it's all up to date. I believe right now I'm running 26, actually, the last version, but I need to get that updated myself. But all that to just say, I'm gonna have a software segment. We'll list, major Bitcoin software, things like Fedimint, things like, wallet software.
I'm not gonna cover a bunch of, you know, casino coin stuff. We're not gonna talk about, gosh. What is that dumb wallet? MetaMask. You will never hear me say MetaMask is now updated to whatever. You will never hear me say treasure. Trezor has released a new update to their hardware wallet because I don't promote Trezor here, okay, as we've discussed many, many times, because they support casino coins, so on and so forth. But we will be talking about Bitcoin software, and major items outside of that that are very, very important. Okay. And then to wrap things up, I wanted to let you all know I've one of the things that I really kind of thought about for the last 2 weeks, and this has been on my mind for a long time, but I I spent a significant chunk of the last 2 weeks really thinking about this.
I want to offer more the community. I like doing this podcast. I also, frankly, want to earn money in Bitcoin. Do I make money doing this podcast? Well, yes. A little bit, but I really spend more. I absolutely spend more just doing the podcast than what I get back in sats. I'm not unappreciative for what I get, mind you. I'm just that's the reality. I want to actually earn money for work that I do. Alright? Because I want to do that to build more savings for myself, for my family, and to offer services a service, at least, to the industry, to to people at large, that's useful.
So here's the down low. Okay? I think as kids say these days. Sorry. I promise I'll never say that again. I have a long career in system administration work that about 10 years ago took a turn and went into automation, and I'll explain what that means in just a minute, that I have spent the the last decade, really, perfecting. I work on a team managing servers, database servers. Okay? These are complicated machines supporting a company, the company that I work for. And we have, 100. I'm not gonna it doesn't matter exactly, but we have 100 and 100 of database servers.
And we have a very small team, like 6 engineers that manage those servers. How do we do that? We do that through automation. I specifically write code in salt let's call it salt stack and Terraform that manage the servers. I can spin up servers. I can configure them, put them online, add their data, bring them into a cluster, back up that cluster, manage users, all of that kind of stuff via automation. And that's how a very small team is able to support those 100 and 100 of servers. So here's what I'm thinking. The skill set that I have, experience in Linux administration, experience in, SaltStack, actually, Ansible before that, although not as much and not as recent, but Ansible is another configuration tool, and certainly Terraform.
All of those areas are things that I can offer for for sats. Okay? I'm going to build standard tooling to do things like, oh, you want a let's just say you want a a Bitcoin node to run on maybe Linode or AWS or what I would recommend, Hetzner, h e t z n e r. They're a German company that does virtual private servers. We'll have it set so that it spins that up, takes care of all that, and in return, you know, you're gonna pay me a amount of money for that that's reasonable. Okay? I'm not looking to get rich off of this except in the long run as Bitcoin appreciates.
This type of service, I will be honest, just to give you an idea. Typically, if you were to go to a consulting firm, it would be 100 of dollars per hour for this type of service. So this is fairly there's a fairly small pool of engineers who can really do this work well. There's a very high demand for it as companies need to automate more and more, this kind of thing. So, you know, I'm not gonna do this for minimum wage. I'll just be honest. Right? But I will be very reasonable about it if someone is paying in sats in Bitcoin. Alright. Enough about that. Just some food food for thought. I don't have a web page built or anything like that or pricing, anything.
I just this is what I've been thinking about for the last couple weeks. This is one of the things. So I'm gonna throw that out there and, just let you all know. I'll be putting it on Twitter at some point in the next couple weeks and, and going on from there. And hopefully, I can get some business to start bringing in some some Bitcoin because, frankly, I think Bitcoin is the hardest form of money available with the best return on investment. So there you go. Alright. That's it. That's it. That's what I got. That's where we're going, ladies and gentlemen.
I hope that makes sense to you. Let's jump on into our supporters. We've had a couple of boost in the last couple of weeks. In total, we had 2961 sats that were streamed our way, streamed and boosted. And we had 2 boost about the last episode. Last half focus, from our friend over in Portugal, hypersensitive asarus. He said, I totally get you. Focus isn't my middle name either. I think we have a similar creative brains. Enjoy your much deserved holidays and take your time to think things out. Although, I personally kinda like the randomness and creative chaos. You know, it's funny. I kinda do myself, of course, but at the same time, I know it's better to be structured. I do. I know. There's you can it just it is. We have to be creative. We have to that's part of our personality, and that's part of what we do. But we have to be able to focus that at the same time to get things done. Guys, I've got projects, like, all over the place. Like, I've got stuff that's half finished.
It's just the way I am, but I can't let that be. I can't let that define me. And then our friend, Kyron, over at Mare Mortals, sent a boost, roller sticks 11. Oh, by the way, hypersensitive as ours sent a 1,000 sats. Appreciate that hypersensitive as ours. And Kyron sent a a roll sticks, like I said, 1111. So, 1,111 and said, I've had a recent experience that made me realize I've also been careless with my focus. I have been way too lenient with letting non important things chip away at it. Keen to hear what you're going to focus on. Well, that's what I'm gonna focus on, Karen.
I hope that's of interest to you. Looking forward to, catching up with you up there at the conference as well, Karen, in a few weeks. Alright. And and that's it. So I appreciate that, very much. We'll jump right on into the news. There was a few items I wanted to highlight. Here's one of the things I posted. In 20 years, we'll look back on a 2% consumer price inflation target, but we look back on bloodletting. I absolutely 100% hope this is true. In case you don't understand what I'm talking about here in the United States, in in any Keynesian economics based system, they believe that you have to have inflation in order to have growth. They target 2% because somehow that's enough to appease the peasants.
Because, you know, 5% is makes everybody mad. Right? But 2%, we're okay with that even though over the course of someone's 70 year lifespan, that essentially means that the money is worthless because that 2% compounds. Okay. So set all that aside. The reason why this would be the case is simply because we have replaced, an inflatable form of money, the US dollar, with Bitcoin, which we will only ever have 21,000,000 of and, of course, we're 19 +1000000 along the way to that. So we're getting close to that 21,000,000. Right now, we the ETFs alone are buying more Bitcoin than is actually being mined.
So, we'll see how that pans out. I sure hope that's what happens. Yeah. Janet Yellen, she's a treasury secretary. I love to make fun of her. I'm sorry. She's just an easy target. Janet Yellen on reducing the 1.2 $1,000,000,000,000 US budget deficit. So the budget deficit, for those of you who don't know what that means, that is the amount that we are spending more than we bring in. So the IRS brings in, say, $3,000,000,000 excuse me. I wish it was 3,000,000,000 $3,000,000,000,000, and we spend $4,200,000,000,000 every year.
Well, for the year that we're talking about because the next year will be even more. Anyways, Janet yelling on reducing this budget deficit. It's difficult to cut cost. More than half is defense. Cuts there aren't possible. Respectfully to you, your president, the next president of the United States to whomever, that makes no sense. Okay? We have like bases in 90, I think, countries, like, somewhere right around 90 countries. I have a plan. I could cut defense to shut down most of those bases. We don't need all those bases. Well, they are there to protect us, are they?
I disagree. Anyways, there you go. There you go. There they have no plan on on cutting that deficit, much less making it even. Argentina, on the other hand, who is cutting their cost, shutting down ministries, taking a chainsaw to it as he's so famous for. They report monthly inflation of 4.2% in May. The slowest, the lowest, really, since 2022. Remember, last year late last year, December, January, somewhere around there in that time frame, so just like 6 months ago, we were discussing over 100% inflation for Argentina. Argentina is not out of the woods yet, but they are doing things to be in a better place.
The Bitcoin I did wanna mention this. The Bitcoin miners almanac started shipping on 15th. I had Rob, on the podcast here recently talking about his work there at Riot, about the Bitcoin Miners Almanac, all that kind of stuff. If you have an interest in that, it is now available. I actually went to buy a copy tonight, and my debit card for the bank account for that I could pull it out of as a business expense because it would be a business expense for me. I'd I'm I've got a problem there, so I haven't been able to buy it yet. But I'll call the bank tomorrow and get that squared away. So there you go.
Right. And that's it. That's it for the news. So not a whole lot. It's typical summer doldrums, you know. There we go. So let's wrap this up. This podcast, Satoshi's Plebs, is a value for value podcast. I don't come on here and try and sell you a treasure. I don't come on here, try and sell you a ledger. I don't come on here and try and sell you anything. Because as a journalist, essentially, that's a conflict of interest. How can I report on a data breach at Ledger if Ledger is paying me 1,000 of dollars a month to promote their crappy product, and I say that I have a ledger?
Okay? I haven't got everything off of it. And as soon as I do, I will be deleting it. I will be throwing it away. Alright? Because they have they've had terrible issues with data breaches. They have. So that's just one little example. So what I do is I come to you as a listener and I say, hey, listener. I appreciate you listening to the podcast, first of all. And the best way that you can support this podcast, by the way, is to go tell someone about the podcast. Say, hey, go take a listen to this Macintosh guy. Alright?
That's the best way. You can also, if you would like, grab a podcasting 2.0 app, something like fountain, and hook it up and hook it up to a lightning wallet. And then you can stream sats, and you can boost just like a chiron and hypersensitive as ours did. You can boost and say, hey. I love that. Hey. Got a question. Hey. That was terrible. K? And you're directly supporting me by doing that. If you want to be supported, if you want some sats, I've got a way that you can do that too. You can go on fountain specifically and clip an episode.
You can go and take 1, 2, 3 minutes out of an episode. You can clip it and post it on fountain. Tag me. I'm Mcintosh on that platform, and I will boost you 500 sats back for that. If it's an older episode, I'll boost you 300 sats. That's a way for you to make some treasure straight from me. And as you do that, you're promoting the show. How could you get a hold of me? [email protected] is one way. Email. I'm on Twitter at mcintoshFintech as I mentioned. I on Twitter, I actually list right at the top. It's pinned my nostr pub key. I'm on nostr desperately trying to, you know, make that work.
So there's a few different ways you can get a hold of me. Alright? Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful. I just got done telling you different ways you can hear from me, and I would love to hear from you. So stay humble, friends. Go out and make it a great week. I will talk to you all soon.
