WEEKLY WHEATIES #2505
Bitcoin Mining, DeepSeek, Apple, Google, Life Hacks
In this newsletter:
📝 Post: Crypto Mining Demystified: Digging into Digital Gold
🗞️ In Case You Missed It: DeepSeek and AI Updates
🗞️ In Case You Missed It: Apple and Google Updates
😎 Pick of the Week: Life Hacks
📦 Featured Product: Magnetic Mat
📝 Crypto Mining Demystified: Digging into Digital Gold
I’ve written about crypto a few times over the years, but haven’t fully explained the mining piece of it just yet. For a few reasons. It’s a bit difficult to understand fully; each coin has a varying process to mine their individual coin; and for most people - mining is not feasible from a monetary or power consumption standpoint. I will try to explain what’s happening in general, along with sharing the two major types of cryptocurrency.
While there are thousands of cryptocurrency coins available today, typically, each one falls under one of two styles of ‘mining.’ This includes: Proof of Stake or Proof of Work. Proof of Stake means you (as an investor, buyer, etc) own a stake in a given coin - typically by purchasing coins and holding onto them. Proof of Work means you (as an investor, buyer, etc) own pieces of, or whole coins by ‘working for it.’ And in the case of crypto, ‘working for it’ is essentially using computational power to solve math problems. Sometimes, the term token is used in place of coin, too.
Starting with Proof of Work, these math problems, are exponentially more difficult. If you can play along with me for a bit and imagine your typical handheld calculator. As you complete problems with larger and larger numbers, at some point the calculator gives an error message. As these problems get larger and more intense, even computers would give an error message. Or at least they would take weeks, months, or years to solve. Which isn’t feasible. So how do we quickly solve these exponentially more difficult math problems? By harnessing the power of many computers connected together in what we call the Blockchain.
You’ve heard the adage that the first iPhone from 2007 had more processing power than the first spaceship. Well, it actually had more processing power than the entire global computing power available during the same time, too. And today’s flagship phones are millions of times faster than the most powerful supercomputer at the turn of the century. Moore’s Law talks about how the number of transistors doubles every two years, but this has an exponential growth in computing power. So what do we do with all of that power?
As mentioned, we use that power to solve ever-growing math problems in order to help keep data and connections secure and safe. Put simply, computers can create problems that may only be solved by very powerful computing devices. Many of these problems are created to help keep the Bitcoin network safe, along with the transactions. In order to ‘hack’ the Bitcoin network, you would have to hold a majority stake of miners or own a majority stake of coins.
Just as an example, let’s imagine one of your online accounts you may have with a username and a password. A computer could, in theory, ‘hack’ your account by trying to log in with any and all combinations of passwords available. And the more computers working on it at the same time, the quicker it could be hacked. Obviously, the system may lock your account after so many negative attempts, but let’s pretend that feature doesn’t exist or is turned off.
Rather than having a very powerful computer trying to do this, 1,000s of computers would solve this problem much faster. In essence, crypto mining is just that. It combines the processing power of many machines distributed across the globe to solve a central problem. Each computer that provides processing power to solve that particular problem receives a coin. However, this is also where it gets a bit tricky.
Individuals can choose to mine a coin, but it is very rare, as Bitcoins are dispersed based on who solves the last bit of the problem. The more computers (or nodes) you have working on the problem, the better your chances. It is - essentially - a lottery. However, the power of large numbers comes into play. If you want to help mine, you can join a pool of other miners. And once the pool ‘hits,’ the Bitcoin is distributed based on the processing power your node provided. As more and more people start mining, as the price of Bitcoin rises, and as the number of Bitcoins given changes, it is less and less appealing to mine Bitcoin.
Based on the rules set in place for an individual coin, the amount of coins and how often the coins are distributed vary. As of 2025, 3.125 Bitcoins are distributed every 10 minutes. In April of 2028, 1.5625 Bitcoins will be distributed every 10 minutes. Bitcoin will continue to half about every 4 years until all 21 million coins are mined. Once all Bitcoin is available in the market, arguably, the coin will then function similarly to a Proof of Stake coin.
Proof of Stake can be compared to real estate and land. Unless some major ecological event happens, land will not be ‘created’ anymore. By owning land, you could then choose to potentially rent it out if you wanted to keep it for the long term. For the sake of the argument, forget you (or others) could build anything on it… In the crypto world, owning a Proof of Stake coin allows the network to use your coins to verify transactions on the network and act as one piece of the accounting ledger. By ‘staking’ your coins to allow this, as people make transactions, you can receive a small amount in return as a fee.
There’s a lot more to compare the Proof of Stake vs Work coins, and there are plenty of pros and cons for each. For example, all coins can have varying properties that modify properties of: security, decentralization, simplicity, energy consumption, fees, incentives, complexity, number of coins available, and much more. So, Garrett, couldn’t anyone create their own coin with their own rules? Yes!
As an example, Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of Ethereum and Cardano cryptocurrencies, showed his wallet publically during a livestream while talking about the security properties of Cardano. One of his community members created a $Charles meme token and sent him 90% of the coin’s supply. Based on what the other 10% of the coins were selling for, his coins were ‘worth’ $84 million. He then burned the tokens. Meaning that he essentially deleted them forever. “Why would he do this?” you say. Well, for one, he’s a multi-millionaire already. But since the coins were meme coins, they really didn’t have a face value since there is no liquidity of the coins. There are not enough buyers for the number of coins he has, and he would have to slowly sell them over the years as people came on to buy. He also didn’t want to take advantage of his followers.
But that also shows how easy it is to create coins. This also shows how people can scam others by creating meme coins, pumping up the cost of those coins, and then selling while the price is high and people are buying. As the majority of the market holders sell, the price then crashes and the coin’s value is then useless. This is much harder to do for coins with larger pools, more liquidity available, and when no one has a majority of the stake. And many have come and gone doing just that, so be careful not to get involved with any coin that doesn’t have any true backing or purpose. This includes the two recent coins created by President Trump and his wife, Melania. They created them as meme coins, so please understand they are a joke and for fun, not for creating value or to use as a store of value. Do not buy them in hopes of making money.
There’s a lot more to crypto, but my knowledge is limited at some point, too. My suggestion is to not worry too much about mining. Joining a pool is fairly difficult and not really worth it for monetary reasons. However, there are ways to cheaply solo mine, but more on that later… If you want to purchase coins, I suggest using Coinbase, and potentially only buy coins that are in the Top 10 on the CoinMarketCap website.
🗞️ ICYMI: DeepSeek and AI Updates
Over the last few weeks, DeepSeek - a Chinese ChatGPT rival, has been getting Silicon Valley talking. Supposedly, they created a Model that Rivals OpenAI and is exponentially less expensive, both in training and in use. However, OpenAI has evidence that its models helped train China’s model. It appears to have used much of OpenAI’s dataset, which makes you wonder if the Open part of OpenAI really means open.
Either way, these models were bound to come to this. As with any new technology, R&D is very expensive at first, then other companies or products come in and copy what’s already there. We’ve seen this in all areas of technology - vehicles, computers, even washers and dryers. Meta is reportedly scrambling ‘war rooms’ of engineers to figure out how DeepSeek’s AI is beating everyone else at a fraction of the price, and vows to spend hundreds of billions on AI.
Copyright is also weird across borders, but it appears OpenAI used plenty of copyrighted information to train their models anyway. Otherwise, how would we tell it to write a story in the style of J.K. Rowling? They eventually admitted it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material. But what about the prompts and content produced? Per the US Copyright Office, AI prompts alone are not copyrightable, and the AI user would be considered the author and, therefore, the initial copyright owner. Read the full report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence on their website and a deep dive on DeepSeek by Ben Thompson.
🗞️ ICYMI: Apple and Google Updates
Apple reportedly tops 1 billion subscriptions, providing nearly $100B in services revenue. This includes App Store purchases, iCloud, Music, TV+, Arcade, Fitness, and more. Their services alone would have them listed as 37th in the S&P 500 by revenue, just in front of Tesla. Alternatively, to get sales moving, Apple linked up with SpaceX to Support Starlink Satellite Network on iPhones.
In 2016, Fitbit purchased smartwatch maker Pebble. Then, in 2021, Google purchased Fitbit. Google integrated some Fitbit features in their own watches since, but Pebble was seemingly hidden in a closet somewhere. Until last year. Original founder Eric Migicovsky wrote a blog post on Why We’re Bringing Pebble Back and discussed how the OS behind the Watch is now open-sourced. Expect new (or old) Pebble-style e-paper watches to hit the market soon!
😎 POTW: Life Hacks
In life, sometimes people come up with ways to hack the system and/or make life easier. This week, I wanted to share a few hacks scoured from across the web, starting with a list of 20 of the best life tips crowdsourced from real people. For something personal, check out these Doctors who share a brilliant 'scientific' method to get rid of the hiccups or see how Kat Woods explained it in a tweet. In the physical space, something that became popular in 2024 is the 75-Hard Challenge. However, it’s pretty intense, and someone created the 75-Soft Challenge instead. For something more basic for anyone, check out this YouTube video explaining how anyone CAN do pushups. Lastly, how about an alternative to Guitar Hero on your Mac - Clone Hero. Or, Toools.design, a website with highly useful design resources and tools. This one is similar to my site, keepitonthe.download, but includes topics I am not as well-versed in.
📦 Featured Product
If you’ve ever worked on any electronic component, including replacing the battery on your laptop or the heating element on your dryer, you probably had a huge pile of screws varying in length and thread type. How do you keep up with them, and especially where they go? My quick take hack for you is pretty simple (and to continue the theme from this week’s pick). Using a piece normal piece of copy paper, you can draw the shape of the ‘bracket’ or ‘plate’ removed and push the screw through the paper to know where it goes. Or, you can be a bit more bougie and purchase the iFixit FixMat - Magnetic Electronic Repair Screws and Parts Organizer. These mats are magnetic to help hold the screws while helping separate how they’re placed, along with letting you write on the mat. For a less expensive option, consider the Unamela Magnetic Mat.
