JP Koning

What follows is an essay on how my thinking on bitcoin has changed since I began to write on the topic starting with my first post in October 2012. Since then I've written 109 posts on the Moneyness Blog that reference bitcoin, along with a few dozen articles at venues like CoinDesk, Breakermag, and elsewhere...

I was relatively open to Bitcoin for two reasons. First, I like to think in terms of moneyness, which means that everything is to some degree money-like, and so I welcome strange and alternative monies. "If you think of money as an adjective, then moneyness becomes the lens by which you view the problem. From this perspective, one might say that Bitcoin always was a money," I wrote in my very first post on bitcoin. Second, prior to 2012 I had read a fair amount of free banking literature-the study of private money-so I was already primed to be receptive to a stateless payments system, which is what Bitcoin's founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, originally meant his (or her) creation to be.

A lot of bitcoin-curious, bitcoin-critics and bitcoin-converts were attracted to the comments section of my blog, and we had some great conversations over the years. My bitcoin posts invariably attracted more traffic than my non-bitcoin ones, all of us scrambling to understand what seemed to be a newly emerging monetary organism.

To read the complete article, see:
After twelve years of writing about bitcoin, here's how my thinking has changed(https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2024/12/after-twelve-years-of-writing-about.html)

Bronze Statues Covered by 6,000 Coins Discovered

Archaeologists in Italy discovered more than two dozen beautifully preserved bronze statues from San Casciano dei Bagni, a hilltop town in the Siena province. This site has been under excavation by archaeologists who have been exploring the muddy ruins of an ancient bathhouse since 2019. "It is a very significant, exceptional finding," Jacopo Tabolli, an assistant professor from the University for Foreigners in Siena who coordinated the dig stated according to Reuters. The discovery of the statues was considered to be an exceptional find and they dated back to ancient Roman times in the thermal baths in Tuscany. The location was situated around 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Rome.

The discovery was considered to be remarkable "in the history of the ancient Mediterranean" and very significant since the Riace Bronzes, a giant pair of ancient Greek warriors were retrieved from the sea off the coast of Italy in 1972. The statues that depicted Hygieia, Apollo, and other Greco-Roman divinities adorned the sanctuary before they were immersed in thermal waters, which could be some sort of ritual, "probably around the 1st century AD." The ritual could be based on the belief that you give an offering to the water and it returns blessings and prayers to you, according to Forbes. "You give to the water because you hope that the water gives something back to you," the archaeologists said of the ritual. Most of the statues were dated to the second century BC and the first century AD.

To read the complete article, see:
Over Two Dozen 2,300 Years Old Bronze Statues Covered by 6,000 Coins Discovered, Thermal Baths Helped Preserve Them(https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/over-two-dozen-2-300-years-old-bronze-statues-covered-by-6-000-coins-discovered-thermal-baths-helped-preserve-them/ar-AA1weV5v)

Happy Holidays From Coin Rarities Online

This year we are celebrating the holidays in style with this totally over the top and very well illuminated Slug which is both stunning and timely, since we have had some very cool ones this year (though admittedly none of those were quite this colorful).

To visit their website, see:
https://www.coinraritiesonline.com/