We are a little bit ahead of schedule this year, but 
I actually did most of the "hooking up" last night. All I had to do this morning was switch the power and pull the wheel chocks. You probably didn't notice, but I got some new wheels on the truck recently. It cost me a pretty penny, but I think it looks much better and more importantly, it is much safer. The tread on my old tires was almost non existent!
Preliminary forecasts indicate that we could have a significant Aurora Borealis tonight thanks to a massive sunspot or geomagnetic storm or some combination of the two. It will just be a matter of the clouds staying away and it actually happening. I've been following the aurora for several years now and I know that unless you are in Alaska, Northern Canada, or Iceland she is pretty unpredictable. A good forecast could fizzle by the time it gets dark. We will see!
It is time again for another Finance Friday/Friday Finance. This is a series I started where I talk about random bits of financial stuff that I have seen, gathered, or experienced during the week. I hope as a reader you find it informational, entertaining, or both. I also hope it can generate some good discussion and edify the community.
It is Friday today, so while my mind is clearly on camping, it's only right that I should carve out some space to talk about finance.
In case you haven't heard yet, Pinmapple is closing up shop. It sounds more like a lack of time thing than a lack of funds thing. I know the Pinmapple account has been pretty generous over the years, so they should have a decent stake built up from curation rewards.
It's still pretty sad to see it go. I've used the service for quite a while now to chronicle some of my travels. It was nice to see my little pin show up on the map and be linked to my Hive blog post. There is a possibility someone might pick up the reigns, but in my experience, it's pretty rare that things are ever quite as good once they get taken over.
I can think of a few initiatives that we have lost over the past year. This bear has been draining both financially and emotionally. I hope we don't see too many more good projects leave Hive.
If you read my post yesterday, you might remember I promised some big news. Well, surprise surprise, it has to do with that Retik token I invested in that I am just waiting for the rug to be pulled out.
This past week, we finally got an announcement from the "team" that they are going to launch the token on May 21st. Then, a few short days later, they opened up their new swap platform. If you know Telegram, you can probably assume that this has put everyone into a tizzy.
With no token, no rewards, and virtually no communication these people think all of their fears have been alleviated and this thing is going to moon.
Trust me, I hope it does moon, I hope the team follows through and we all make a bunch of money off this thing, but I'm not holding my breath. It still just feels like a long con to me, I'm not sure what the end goal is now that they have already gotten the money, but something just doesn't sit right with me.
It has also been revealed that they plan on releasing the tokens in a vesting schedule. If the tokens actually do exist, the vesting could help price impact from people dumping as soon as the tokens drop... because you know people will dump. We've seen it a million times, it's just human nature.
Personally, I'd like to see some kind of staking mechanism. I'd dump some of my tokens for a gain and then try to earn some passive income on the rest of them. Collect that income regularly and move it into stables or something like that.
We will see...
This probably isn't "new" news, but I saw this article the other day talking about a family in England that was renovating their home and they found a hoard of 1000+ gold and silver coins from the 17th century.
It always blows me away just how old stuff is over there compared to here in the US. Sure, we have the indigenous peoples and they were here for plenty of years before anyone else arrived, but most of those buildings (if they had buildings) aren't still standing or used on a daily basis like they are over in the UK and Europe.
The auction price on the coins was somewhere around $76,000 which I actually find a little low. I would have guessed a couple hundred thousand dollars if not millions. Just based on the historical value alone. Nevermind the spot value of the gold and silver.
It sounds like most of the coins were auctioned off individually versus all being sold in one big lot which I guess makes sense as they would be accessible to more people.
Can you imagine though? Just tooling around with the pickaxe one day and coming across something like this? It almost sounds too good to be true doesn't it?
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
