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Heat Your Home With Bitcoin Mining: The 2026 Guide

The Bitaxe, Explained: The Open-Source Bitcoin Miner Anyone Can Run

You're Still Early
If you are putting AI to work in your business, you are still early. Plus deepfake calls, Trump on inflation and debt, and Ben Affleck on open models.
New ad from Block pitching bitcoin as everyday money. "The government prints more money every day, and the more money they print, the less the money is worth every day."
President Trump just endorsed BPI's Data Center Dividend proposal, 20 days after it was published. Counties that host data centers send a fixed share of property tax revenue directly to local households. No new taxes. BPI estimates the average rural family could receive up to $8,900 a year. Trump: "The data centers are making an absolute fortune. But now, the people are going to benefit directly." x.com/SamLyman33/sta…
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman at PubKey NYC. "New York State right now is number 50 in economic outlook... it is a national embarrassment."
SEC Chairman Selig on Commissioner Peirce's departure. "America would not be the crypto capital of the world today if not for the clear-eyed and thoughtful perspective on regulatory oversight that she brought to bear day in and day out for years." x.com/ChairmanSelig/…

Bitcoin Magazine shows bitcoin has flipped gold in yearly performance, now up 66% against gold since March.
BPI's panel with @DavidBeckworth and @SamLyman33 on how dollar stablecoins and tokenized Treasuries could preserve dollar dominance.
Bitcoin, macro, and AI. Every weekday. Straight to your inbox. Sign up for The Commoner: tftc.io/commoner

You're still early. Putting together ad pitches is one of those tasks I've dreaded. We have the audience data, the shows, the reasons a business would want to be in front of our audience. Getting it all into a deck was the frustrating part. We've been using an AI agent to help and it's helped us close more deals. I find this encouraging because it's such an ordinary problem. A lot of people running businesses have work like this sitting in front of them. As I discussed with Tommy Eastman, there are three legs to this stool. The model, the harness, and the second brain. At TFTC we use Hermes as the harness and a second brain built from flat files, semantic search, and a knowledge graph. For us, the biggest impact is coming from the harness and second brain setup. Too much of the AI conversation gets stuck on which model is best while people overlook the systems that make it useful in actual work. a16z's latest report gives some perspective. 69% of S&P 500 companies disclose a live AI deployment. Only 2% disclose a metric they track over time. The money being thrown at infrastructure can make it seem like the opportunity has passed. But if you've put a harness or second brain to work, you're further along than the endless stream of model announcements would lead you to believe. There is a lot more to using AI than picking a model. We are still very early.
MuSig2 explained in 1 minute.
Shielded bitcoin transactions explained in 60 seconds.
The US Treasury says it exposed a multi-year scheme that used cryptocurrency and fake charities to funnel over $2 million to Hamas. According to Treasury, the operation ran six years. $1.5 million was allegedly collected after the October 7 attack. The department claims two France-based operators ran sham humanitarian charities, solicited public donations, then sent hundreds of thousands in crypto to a Gaza-based Hamas military operative who funneled money directly to the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Anthropic has been flying religious scholars to San Francisco, having them sign NDAs, and exploring whether Claude has consciousness and moral standing. Rabbi Mois Navon attended one dinner and noticed Olah and his team "relating to it like a conscious being" with "moral status on par with a person." Olah told the NYT he's "genuinely uncertain" whether AI models are conscious. But Anthropic also sought input on moral formation for Claude, treating it less like software and more like something that could suffer. Philosopher David Decosimo called it "deeply disturbing" that Anthropic "secretly invited religious leaders to SF to advise them on AI safety, had them sign NDAs, but then primarily tried to convince them Claude has a soul & moral standing." Before the Vatican's recent AI encyclical, Olah reportedly saw an advance text, was alarmed by its rejection of AI consciousness, and privately urged advisers to take model consciousness seriously. A company eyeing a $2 trillion IPO courting priests and rabbis on the inner life of its product. nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/…
New ad from Block pitching bitcoin as everyday money. "The government prints more money every day, and the more money they print, the less the money is worth every day."
President Trump just endorsed BPI's Data Center Dividend proposal, 20 days after it was published. Counties that host data centers send a fixed share of property tax revenue directly to local households. No new taxes. BPI estimates the average rural family could receive up to $8,900 a year. Trump: "The data centers are making an absolute fortune. But now, the people are going to benefit directly." x.com/SamLyman33/sta…
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman at PubKey NYC. "New York State right now is number 50 in economic outlook... it is a national embarrassment."
SEC Chairman Selig on Commissioner Peirce's departure. "America would not be the crypto capital of the world today if not for the clear-eyed and thoughtful perspective on regulatory oversight that she brought to bear day in and day out for years." x.com/ChairmanSelig/…

Bitcoin Magazine shows bitcoin has flipped gold in yearly performance, now up 66% against gold since March.
BPI's panel with @DavidBeckworth and @SamLyman33 on how dollar stablecoins and tokenized Treasuries could preserve dollar dominance.
Bitcoin, macro, and AI. Every weekday. Straight to your inbox. Sign up for The Commoner: tftc.io/commoner

You're still early. Putting together ad pitches is one of those tasks I've dreaded. We have the audience data, the shows, the reasons a business would want to be in front of our audience. Getting it all into a deck was the frustrating part. We've been using an AI agent to help and it's helped us close more deals. I find this encouraging because it's such an ordinary problem. A lot of people running businesses have work like this sitting in front of them. As I discussed with Tommy Eastman, there are three legs to this stool. The model, the harness, and the second brain. At TFTC we use Hermes as the harness and a second brain built from flat files, semantic search, and a knowledge graph. For us, the biggest impact is coming from the harness and second brain setup. Too much of the AI conversation gets stuck on which model is best while people overlook the systems that make it useful in actual work. a16z's latest report gives some perspective. 69% of S&P 500 companies disclose a live AI deployment. Only 2% disclose a metric they track over time. The money being thrown at infrastructure can make it seem like the opportunity has passed. But if you've put a harness or second brain to work, you're further along than the endless stream of model announcements would lead you to believe. There is a lot more to using AI than picking a model. We are still very early.
MuSig2 explained in 1 minute.
Shielded bitcoin transactions explained in 60 seconds.
The US Treasury says it exposed a multi-year scheme that used cryptocurrency and fake charities to funnel over $2 million to Hamas. According to Treasury, the operation ran six years. $1.5 million was allegedly collected after the October 7 attack. The department claims two France-based operators ran sham humanitarian charities, solicited public donations, then sent hundreds of thousands in crypto to a Gaza-based Hamas military operative who funneled money directly to the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Anthropic has been flying religious scholars to San Francisco, having them sign NDAs, and exploring whether Claude has consciousness and moral standing. Rabbi Mois Navon attended one dinner and noticed Olah and his team "relating to it like a conscious being" with "moral status on par with a person." Olah told the NYT he's "genuinely uncertain" whether AI models are conscious. But Anthropic also sought input on moral formation for Claude, treating it less like software and more like something that could suffer. Philosopher David Decosimo called it "deeply disturbing" that Anthropic "secretly invited religious leaders to SF to advise them on AI safety, had them sign NDAs, but then primarily tried to convince them Claude has a soul & moral standing." Before the Vatican's recent AI encyclical, Olah reportedly saw an advance text, was alarmed by its rejection of AI consciousness, and privately urged advisers to take model consciousness seriously. A company eyeing a $2 trillion IPO courting priests and rabbis on the inner life of its product. nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/…
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The Commoner
Truth for the Commoner, every weekday. Money, machines, and the people trying to control both.
Independent writing by Marty Bent at TFTC since 2017. Money, markets, AI, energy and privacy, delivered free to your inbox.
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