Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners

Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners's avatar
Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners
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A #Bitcoin focused group located in Pennsylvania. Join us at one of our BitPlebs events on the 3rd Thursday of the month
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 Central PA Bitcoiners
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 Central PA Bitcoiners
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