Hey there,

Here are the highlights for this edition of The Faucet:

• The Rising Popularity of USB Miners in Bitcoin Mining: USB miners are the hottest new thing in the amateur mining community. They're cheap, easy to use, and consume small amounts of power. Despite consumers knowing their chances of winning big are slim, a user named 'ekzyis' decided to run the numbers to determine exactly how slim. Ekzyis used the USB miner with the best hashrate to perform his napkin calculations and concluded that around 70 of them would equal 1 Antminer S9. To reach just 1% of Bitcoin's hashrate, 2 billion of these bad boys would have to be run. A shockingly high number. Read more about ekzyis's calculations here

• Tether Invests in Billion Dollar Renewable Energy Initiative in El Salvador: In a push towards renewable energy solutions to support and promote sustainable Bitcoin mining, Tether, the operator of the world's most widely used stablecoin, announced its participation in the inaugural funding round of "Volcano Energy," a billion-dollar renewable energy initiative in El Salvador. This project aims to create a 241 MW renewable energy park in Metapán, integrating solar and wind energy projects to help build out energy and mining infrastructure within the volcanic region. Read more about Tether's investment here

• Mitigating Tor Network Congestion with Proof of Work: A big problem plaguing the Tor network is congestion, sometimes due to attackers. Onion routing, the underlying technology that guarantees Tor's privacy qualities, naturally leads to more messages going over the network than a clearnet connection making it ripe for abuse for those trying to disrupt the browsing of its users. Proof of work would fit into the picture by requiring users of an onion service to solve computational challenges of varying difficulty based on the loads of the services being accessed. Read more about Tor’s adoption of Proof of Work here

That's it for this edition of The Faucet. Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the world of Bitcoin!