Man… I was hoping for You Can Tune a Piano but you can’t Tuna Fish…

I was visiting a coworker in downtown Santa Rosa in his inherited older home and it had a courtyard.  It really struck me as wonderful I felt like I had been there before or had seen it on tv or something.  So I think a suntrap courtyard would (could) do that same need fulfillment thing that the arboretum provides.  In his region it could totally support  a citrus tree or something private and quiet you don’t want out by the street.

Ben Fitts,

Thank you much for such an info-packed response! Also, I laughed a bit at your Ripple rant… my feelings on that are similarly skeptical, which makes its sharp rise along with ETH’s decline all the more frustrating.

My short response is that my mining is mostly with accumulation and long-term wealth-building in mind, with the minority being exchanged/sold to pay operational expenses and pay myself a very modest salary (though the past several months I have held off on selling any, and am forgoing my salary and paying the electrical bill from our other income until ETH prices recover to a less oversold level). So ultimately most of what I want to mine are cryptos with the best long-term balance between and potential for 1) mainstream adoption & real-world usability, and 2) price appreciation. To me Ethereum still seems to have good long-term prospects for the first, but between the imminent payout changes and the other mining opportunities (some of which you’ve mentioned) I am thinking less (if any) of my rigs will be mining ETH a couple months from now unless something really changes things up.

It’s all an interesting (and challenging) blend of business and currency speculation. I’m just trying hard to make sure whatever mistakes I make going forward will be relatively minor and quick to recover from 😉

“Banks are not going to use Ripple.”
It will be interesting to review this statement a year from now.

Banks, settlement companies and procurement systems are already using or are gearing up to use Ripplenet and XRP. Though it empowers banks, and rubs anarcho-Crypto believers the wrong way, it is a blockchain solution for a massive real world problem.

I think Ben Fitts is repeating what he has heard from other crypto people and not done his own research on XRP/Ripple. I get it, why would someone invest several hours researching something they fundamentally disagree with? Unfortunately, I believe he’s mistaken where XRP is concerned.

I firmly believe digital money will be weaponized at some point and used to choke off “undesirable” members of society. KYC/AML rules are all good when the undesirable group is criminals…but when if you find yourself in an undesirable group some day? Gun owners? Preppers? Non-Socialists?

In the mean time, I’m buying crypto (including XRP) to capitalize on this evolving technology.