No, it's not my birthday, I still have a bit to go before I hit the 80 mark (thankfully!). However, I do feel I have reason to celebrate. I was kicking around in the wallet section of my Hive profile the other day and I noticed that I finally hit a reputation score of 80.
I know, I know, reputation doesn't really mean much here on Hive. Unless you weren't part of that old chain, those scores were included in the fork. The use of bid bots and other questionable voting practices have inflated reputations scores to the point where they are pretty insignificant.
I prefer to look at it a different way though. I started on that other chain in January of 2018, which was just before the bid bots went the way of the dodo bird. Since I was new to the platform and I didn't have any capital to inject, I wasn't able to take advantage (abuse) the bid bots like some other folks did. I simply didn't have the funds. That isn't to say I didn't use them back then, but with my stack at the time, the results were negligible.
That means pretty much all of those 80 reputation points were earned the hard way. Through blood sweat and tears here on the Hive blockchain. If you are one of the lucky few to have a reputation that high, you know that the higher you get the harder it is to move the needle.
Yet here I am, and yeah, I am pretty dang excited about it!
I also noticed that I am slowly creeping towards that big 80K Hive Power mark, so maybe 8 is my magic number for the remainder of 2024...
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.
I'm hesitant to say this, but it's been kind of a nutter of a week hasn't it? During the month of July at work I get Fridays off. That means I am usually asleep in bed when I would normally make these posts. I'm not sure if you have noticed it, but during that time I typically write up the post on Thursday and then publish it on Friday morning.
It never fails that I write something about the markets on Thursday and by the time I make the post on Friday, they have done a complete 180. I certainly hope that happens this time. That climb towards $70K for BTC was pretty exciting. Only to see it drop down to the $62K range today. I truly hope that by the time you read this tomorrow (Friday), it is back up to that $70K range.
It would seem the stocks took the new of no new rate hikes or cuts better than the crypto markets did.
About a week ago I talked about how I was lucky enough to win one of the secondary draw for the #silvergoldstackers monster raffle. My wife and I were heading to her parents on Saturday and we took a quick look in the mailbox before we left. I was happy to see that the pieces I won had arrived.
Thanks a ton 
As much as I like the eagle round, I am really excited about this other piece. It's the first ever hand poured item in my collection. I think it's hand poured anyway. If not then it is pretty darn close and definitely not like anything else that I own. I didn't even take it out of the plastic to take a photo of it because I don't want to do anything to damage it!
My wife and I were driving down the road the other day when she noticed a sign at one of the credit unions in our town. She said, "I'm pretty sure that sign said something about crypto". I asked for more details, but I was driving to fast and she wasn't able to see the full text. I made a mental note to check it out when I got home. Of course, I forgot, and it wasn't until today that I jumped on the website for said credit union and found that they do indeed have a whole section of their page dedicated to crypto.
You'll forgive me that I redacted the name of the credit union. I'm actually not a member of this one, but I still think it is cool that they offer this service. Even if it does seem to be a bit custodial and there is a transparent amount of overwatch on their part. The fact that a local financial institution is even embracing this is kind of cool.
I saw a headline last night that the SEC has decided to withdraw their request that a handful of tokens (including XRP) be considered securities. Is it possible the crypto lobby has finally kicked into high gear and we are going to start seeing the sentiment in Washington change on digital assets? Either that or the SEC just got tired of shooting themselves in the foot one too many times.
Either way, I hope this turns out to be bullish for us!
That's all I have for this week. Check back Monday when I finish recapping our time in downtown Denver. It ended up being a pretty awesome night, but you'll have to read to find out why!
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or 
