Christmas Joy
Daily Ramble
Our daughter, Naia, is on her Christmas game this year. At 2 and 1/2, she runs around the house screaming “É Natal” and pointing at the Christmas tree lights. “É Natal” is Jingle Bells in Portuguese and her favorite song. She’s not stopped asking for it since last year. Ana, my wife, and I try making it our favorite song as well — it doesn’t work but we don’t let that rain on Naia’s excitement. Jingle Bells’ latest rendition was done on our bed first thing this morning, where Naia, in her jammies, did her best to stomp out the song (and wake Ana). Good times!
This is our first Christmas as a family where the infectious joy of a child is 24/7 in our home. What a blessing that is. It’s not that Christmas has lost its joy as I’ve aged, but more that I’d forgotten how amazing the lights, sounds, and smells of Christmas are in the first years. Seeing it through a child’s eyes brings it all back again. As if I needed another reason to be grateful for our little bundle of life running around downstairs!
Favorite Thing on the Interwebs Today
Bwahaha — nail on the head!
Bitcoin Price Update
Friday’s price range prediction: $18k - $22k
Today’s price range prediction: $18k - $22k
Friday and the weekend saw a continuation of the sideways price action of the previous week. As boring as that might be, after a 42% increase in price over the month of November, a bit of sideways price movement is to be expected. Today the price seems to be toying with the idea of moving higher but with lackluster momentum, I’m anticipating another day of chop as the price range tightens.
Bitcoin Ed Bite
Over the course of the week, I’m going to go deeper on explaining how Bitcoin mining works, but I plan to take an over-the-hills-and-through-the-woods approach, in honor of the Christmas season. What that means is a bit of history on cryptography.
Cryptography was first commercially developed during WWII. The Imitation Game is a great movie on how cryptography was used to win the war for the Allies. Today, most people are surprised when I tell them that cryptography was largely illegal until 1992 and used only by the Department of Defense. Until then cryptography was legally on par with bombs, flamethrowers, and other munitions! It took a software developer printing out the code to a cryptographic program for a federal judge to rule that it was protected free speech. Although it’s become the backbone of safe-surfing on the internet today, it’s been a long struggle to bring cryptographic technology to the masses. I can’t recommend this 4 part docu-series enough if you’d like to better understand the neglected corner of the internet that created Bitcoin.
Thanks for reading,
Kent
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