Crypto
Forays into blockchain, NFTs and POAPs live here. I write about minting POAP tokens at family events, celebrating Ethereum’s 10‑year anniversary by creating an NFT and even using monitoring services to keep my POAP feeds up and running.
- As someone that issues POAPs a lot I would love to subscribe to the RSS feeds for each of my events and see via the feed when a new token is claimed.
- It would be powerful to use automation on claims along by connecting the RSS feed for an event to IFTTT or any of the hundreds of services to take an action when an RSS feed is updated.
- There are several friends that are active in the POAP ecosystem and I can aggregate a feed of all their claims in the POAP Home app, but I would rather subscribe to an RSS feed of each of their addresses and get updates that way.
- Celebrating life’s special times with POAPs: weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and birth days, graduations, family trips, and all the other moments that make life precious.
I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a POAP to commemorate my first time ice fishing!
See list of POAPs.
POAP 7308555 at Ice Fishing on Pierson Lake.
POAP 7308201 at TeamSPS Cyberweek 2024.
Bitcoin Books and BTC Price
I saw this list of Bitcoin books with the price of BTC at time of release on Nostr, reshared from stacker.news. I turned it into proper text as a table and putting it here for reference.
| Date | BTC-USD | Book |
|---|---|---|
| 03/01/14 | $258 | Bitcoin: Beginner’s Guide |
| 06/14/14 | $604 | The Book of Satoshi |
| 07/01/14 | $640 | Mastering Bitcoin |
| 05/19/15 | $241 | Digital Gold |
| 01/01/16 | $432 | The Internet of Money |
| 03/23/18 | $4,046 | The Bitcoin Standard |
| 03/26/19 | $4,028 | Programming Bitcoin |
| 06/17/19 | $31,712 | Inventing Bitcoin |
| 07/07/19 | $11,231 | Bitcoin & Black America |
| 08/01/19 | $10,791 | The Little Bitcoin Book |
| 09/03/19 | $10,620 | Why Buy Bitcoin |
| 01/01/20 | $7,194 | The Price of Tomorrow |
| 01/06/20 | $7,725 | 21 Lessons |
| 11/23/20 | $18,690 | Thank God for Bitcoin |
| 01/18/21 | $36,934 | Layered Money |
| 01/31/21 | $34,140 | Cryptoeconomics |
| 03/14/21 | $55,805 | The Blocksize War |
| 06/21/21 | $31,712 | The 7th Property |
| 07/22/21 | $32,384 | L(earn) Bitcoin |
| 08/16/21 | $48,281 | The Bullish Case for Bitcoin |
| 12/25/21 | $50,774 | Bitcoin and the American Dream |
| 03/02/22 | $39,463 | Bitcoin is Venice |
| 03/09/22 | $38,904 | Check Your Financial Privilege |
| 06/13/22 | $28,374 | Bitcoin Evangelism |
| 03/24/23 | $27,621 | Softwar |
| 03/29/23 | $28,113 | The Bitcoin Handbook |
| 04/13/23 | $40,206 | A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin |
| 05/02/23 | $28,654 | Proof of Money |
| 08/14/23 | $28,754 | Cryptosovereignty |
| 08/14/23 | $28,754 | Fiat Ruins Everything |
| 08/20/23 | $26,450 | Broken Money |
| 12/01/23 | $37,810 | Gradually, then Suddenly |
| 12/05/23 | $43,270 | The Hidden Cost of Money |
| 01/01/24 | $42,221 | The Fiat Standard |
| 01/03/24 | $43,556 | The Genesis Book |
| 04/04/24 | $69,001 | The Conservative Case for Bitcoin |
| 06/14/24 | $66,700 | Resistance Money |
| 07/19/24 | $68,088 | National Security in the Digital.. |
| 11/10/24 | $88,637 | The Bushido of Bitcoin |
| 02/03/25 | $101,405 | The Big Print |
Tyler and I have been having fun with Collector Crypt. I decided to join their Card Club and grabbed an NFT in the market place.
Venusaur Holo
I had never heard of a Gacha before but I was intrigued when Collector Crypt sent an announcement about the Elite Pokémon Gacha Machine. I forwarded it to Tyler to investigate.
The gist is you pay a fixed amount and get a random card with a minimum value. Collector Crypt does this all on the Solana blockchain. We decided to give it a whirl and pulled a Venusaur Holo (1996) with a near-mint 8 PSA rating.
Tyler digs Collector Crypt because they have good Pokémon cards. I dig it for that and that it is a great use of NFT’s and smart contracts. The transaction for this Gacha machine is a complicated one with seventeen different steps.
We will likely “burn” the NFT and have Collector Crypt ship us the nearly 30 year old card.
Support the Web via Open RSS
I recently discovered Open RSS via an article on Lifehacker highlighting how the service can provide feeds for some services that don’t do it themselves. I clicked through and was delighted to read more about Open RSS.
Open RSS is a non-profit advocating for the use of RSS. I read their about page in detail and it strongly resonated with me. Open protocols like RSS are an enabler to the open web and a way to create connection without all of the downsides of consolidated media platforms driven by a desire for data and engagement.
Open RSS also provides capability to discover and bridge RSS feeds for different sites (this is what the article was about). I’ve already suggested connecting POAPs to RSS. 🤓
I’m a care deeply about the kind of work this organization is doing. It is super small and grass roots. I’ve already had a few emails with Mark, one of the founders. This is a great opportunity to donate to a cause that is focused on the open Web. I think I just found the next organization that Weekly Thing Supporting Memberships can support!
POAP + RSS = Awesome?
I’m a big fan of POAP, and I’m a big fan of RSS. Sadly, these two things don’t know about each other, yet! This blog post is my take on a great start for RSS and POAP. Maybe there is a chance that the amazing folks at Open RSS could bridge this gap in the meantime!
First, why should POAP add RSS? I think there are dozens of use cases, but some examples…
There are two items that RSS feeds would be useful for: Events and Collectors. There is a POAP API that would make both of these pretty simple to get, and avoid any screen scraping. An API key would be needed but I think that would be easy to get. These use cases are all read only as well.
Events
Anybody can create an event the RSS feed would be specific to that event. Events have a simple ID, and there is a Token Event API method for /event/{id}/poaps that would get exactly what is desired. The URL’s for an event are https://poap.gallery/drops/{eventid}, my 53rd Birthday POAP is at https://poap.gallery/drops/183305 is an example.
In this case, the eventid is easily found and using the API could get the data to populate the RSS feed.
Addresses
Getting an RSS feed for new tokens that people claim is centered around a wallet address. Here we are looking for an address or ENS name. An example of this is my collection at https://collectors.poap.xyz/scan/0x111accebf9d70d9c06de2d38f9392522e82ecf29. This can also be accessed via the ENS name at https://collectors.poap.xyz/scan/poap.thingelstad.eth.
The Token Scan API method /actions/scan/{address} returns the list of tokens for that address and could build the RSS feed.
I’ve been sharing my 53rd Birthday POAP with friends and family all day today. I thought it would be fun to share a few with readers of my blog.
It’s my birthday tomorrow! Noting my rings and version number the day before. 😊
I’ll be sharing my 53rd Birthday POAP. Want one? Just ask.
POAP Event Trends
It has become a tradition for me to create a POAP for my birthday. I’ve been doing it since my 50th Birthday and now have 51st, 52nd, and now my 53rd. Since POAP uses a simple sequential number for events I can easily see how many POAP events have been created for those years.
| Year (Approx) | Events |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 74,298 |
| 2023 | 71,285 |
| 2024 | 16,826 |
That is a big drop in 2024, however it is still 46 events a day. I love what POAP is doing and they are slowly getting their whole offering easier to use and more streamlined. My guess is that they are not actively pushing to create more events right now while they improve the product. I’m rooting for them to be massively successful. I think POAP could be one of the products that shows the path for blockchain adoption.
POAP 7284931 at Jamie Thingelstad's 53rd Birthday.
POAP 7281029 at Weekly Thing Christmas Blogs.
I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make a POAP — created Weekly Thing Christmas Blogs to send to the five people that got a year of micro.blog under their Christmas tree this year! 🎄🎁
Tyler and I decided to redeem the Pokemon 2014 #69 M Charizard EX card that we bought via Collector Crypt. Collector Crypt stores the graded card securely and you hold the NFT as proof of ownership. We burned the NFT and withdrew the card. It arrived today and is great!
The 2024 Year in POAP is out and I was proud to again (see 2023) have one of my POAPs highlighted — our Thingelstad Ireland 2024 was the family trip mention.
There are so many cool things happening in the POAP world and this annual roundup is a great recap. I 💛 POAP!
POAP 7276968 at Things 4 Good Scent Survey.
Nice treasure when I opened my chests from last week’s missions on Famous Fox Federation. By far my favorite NFT project still thriving.
Bitcoin crossed $100,000 USD for the first time ever on December 4, 2024!
Alby is deprecating their shared Bitcoin Lightning wallet service. I don’t want to host my own node or use their cloud hub so I transferred the satoshis I had there via lightning to my Strike wallet. Still amazes me how fast and simple Lightning is. ⚡️