Solo Bitcoin mining, where an individual attempts to mine blocks without joining a pool (often building their own blocks), remains a daring pursuit in today’s industrialized bitcoin landscape, writes Che Kohler. Once feasible from a bedroom laptop, mining now pits home enthusiasts against vast corporate operations armed with tens of thousands of machines. Solo miners compete for the entire 3.125 BTC block reward plus fees, but the odds are “astronomical,” Kohler notes. Still, many persist for ideological or practical reasons: preserving Bitcoin’s decentralized roots, avoiding pool fees, or chasing the “thrill of the jackpot.” Solo mining pools such as CK Pool simplify participation while preserving full-reward payouts. Though variance and obsolescence risks are high, the approach offers unmatched autonomy. As Kohler puts it, solo mining is “a lottery that would pay you non-KYC sats,” a testament to Bitcoin’s enduring individualism amid industrial scale.
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Plaid’s landmark data-sharing agreement with JPMorgan Chase marks a turning point in the battle over who controls financial data. As reported by Chris Powell, the fintech firm will now pay for access to consumer banking information, an unprecedented move that challenges the Biden-era “open banking rule,” which sought to make such data free. The rule, authored by CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, aimed to boost competition but drew criticism for potential overreach. Economist Vance Ginn said the policy “isn’t about expanding consumer control. It’s about centralizing government control.” With the Trump administration’s CFPB now reviewing Section 1033, the Plaid deal is being touted as proof that voluntary market agreements can balance privacy, innovation, and profit. If replicated, it could reshape fintech’s relationship with traditional banks, signaling a free-market alternative to regulatory compulsion in digital finance.
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Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and political strategist, has been delivering a series of off-record lectures in San Francisco exploring what he calls the rise of the “antichrist,” a figure he links to global governance, environmentalism, and restrictions on technology, The Guardian reports. Describing himself as a “small-o orthodox Christian,” Thiel warned that “the harbinger of the end of the world could already be in our midst,” arguing that international institutions and climate fears hasten a one-world order he equates with Armageddon. The lectures, attended by sold-out audiences, blended theology, geopolitics, and Silicon Valley lore, drawing on thinkers from Carl Schmitt to J.R.R. Tolkien. Thiel suggested Greta Thunberg and AI ethicists embody “luddite” antichrist archetypes, while praising J.D. Vance and Elon Musk as allies against global stagnation. His eschatological worldview, merging tech, theology, and state power, underscores how Silicon Valley’s elite are increasingly fusing metaphysical anxieties with political ambition.
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In Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead, Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher, presents an audacious forecast: that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will emerge before 2027 and evolve into superintelligence by the decade’s end. Drawing parallels to the Manhattan Project, Aschenbrenner depicts an impending industrial mobilization, trillions of dollars poured into datacenters, GPUs, and power generation, as America races to secure computational dominance. He argues that “superintelligence is a matter of national security,” insisting that U.S. control over AGI infrastructure is vital to preserve liberty against authoritarian rivals. His thesis of “AGI Realism” rejects both “doomers” and “accelerationists,” calling instead for disciplined, state-backed development and strict security around AI labs. “There is no crack team coming to handle this,” he warns, asserting that only a few hundred people possess true awareness of what’s unfolding. The treatise frames AGI not as a tech boom, but as civilization’s defining test.
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