Finally jumped on the @HashWatcher bandwagon. Really, my only regret is not doing it sooner. I should have listened to a lot of you. Wrote up what I like about it here: proofofmike.com/hashwatcher/

Bitcoin difficulty is estimated to drop ~10.83% at the next adjustment. If it holds, it’ll be one of the larger downward adjustments we’ve seen in recent years. Price is down, hashrate is dropping, and some larger mining operators are likely pausing or throttling less efficient machines as margins tighten. For us solo/home miners, that means slightly better odds in the short term. Nothing fundamental has changed. Stay the course. ⚡️

Can’t turn anywhere right now without hearing about Bitcoin dumping. Sucks? Yes, but it’s noise. Happened before? Also yes. Same conversation in 2 years? Most likely. For home solo miners, there’s a quiet upside: sustained lower prices can force bigger ops to shut off inefficient hash. Sustained hashrate drops → difficulty adjusts down → better solo odds for us. We’re lottery miners. The ticket is still ~3.125 BTC. ⚡

Been one of those days where absolutely nothing is going right. Saw this and it legit had me laughing. I needed that. 🤣

Do you run @BitcoinKnots on an ARM CPU and build from source? I could do with crowdsourcing some testers for a line-one bug fix, which will accelerate Bitcoin Knots on ARM. Can you help? If you do test it, could you please leave a comment on the pull request confirming whether it worked and, if not, what went wrong? Also, let us know what system you tested it on. Pretty please. It is just one line. github.com/bitcoinknots/bitc…

Just scheduled a mandatory meeting with all my miners for 3 PM. Yes, they’re hashing above spec. No, they haven’t found a block. At some point we need to stop celebrating effort and start talking about results. Layoffs have not been ruled out.

This should go without saying, but always buy hardware wallets direct from the manufacturer and double check you’re on their official site. Amazon, eBay, or even some authorized resellers can introduce supply chain risks. If you’re eyeing a Tangem, you’ve only got a couple days left on their $5,000 BTC giveaway.

I’ve always liked getting in early on new tech. First time in 12 years I’ve consistently pointed hash anywhere besides CKPool or my own stack, and it’s Atlas. The global anycast deployment with 9 geo-distributed backend nodes is pushing solo mining forward. Really excited to see Matt keep growing this thing, and hopefully get that first block soon, even if it isn’t one of my miners. Worth checking out. A second or two of better prevhash notify timing per block may not sound like much, but across multiple miners over a year, that can add up.

Finally got out of my own way and started looking at replacements for the homegrown Nagios, Python, and shell script Frankenstein toolkit I’ve been using and tweaking for a decade plus. Downloaded @HashWatcher and I’m impressed. I personally like a clean, minimal view, and I can set it up that way without giving up the deeper functionality underneath. Still getting my feet wet, but kudos to Gabe. Very solid first impression.

Congratulations to miner 3Qef~LfPJg for solving the 314th solo block at solo.ckpool.org! This was a big miner who's been renting 500PH for the last 5 hours. mempool.space/block/00000000…

I can still specifically remember days about a decade ago where I wanted to go full Office Space on my Antminers. That has yet to happen with my Axes, so I’d say we’re moving in the right direction. ⛏️

How did ChatGPT get this bad at so many things? Precision edits are a disaster, code gets bloated, tone control is all over the place. I can’t remember a product in recent memory that has nosedived this hard. Flip side is Claude and Grok burn through usage so fast. When I’m working, I want to work, not get 15 minutes in and have to come back hours later. At this point maybe I should just go back to a stack of O’Reilly books.

This. Even large, established pools have had blocks rejected over the years due to software, config, or integration issues. If it can happen to teams with dedicated engineers, it can happen to independent operators and people running home stacks too. Test and verify.

With the latest GitHub drama, now’s a great time to audit your repos. Make sure you didn’t accidentally commit any .env files, API keys, or other secrets.

Atlas has done a lot in a short period of time for this space. Globally distributed infrastructure, work identifying scam pools and bad actors, testing/tuning tools, etc. Let’s help get them their first block today. 🧱🍀

Recreation of actual events 🤣 Not really, but you get the idea. @Tangem

Excellent day to gift your mother or wife what she’s always wanted… a Bitcoin miner. 🤣

Just another reminder why self custody matters. “Your funds are safe” always hits different when you can’t actually move them.

Ya, we saw last time these guys know how to throw a block party. Calling it now: Parasite block over Memorial Day weekend. ⛏️🧱