Bitcoin Forum

Following my post on this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5420743.0):


I have come to the conclusion that a number of people find it very important to warn people about the dangers of leaving your coins on exchanges and yield platforms, considering that they are falling like flies all year and are perfectly capable of continuing to fall like this well into next year as well.

It is in every bitcoiner and crypto user's best interest to protect other users' funds so that they don't fall into a 3rd-party centralized black hole.

Unfortunately, there is no prominent thread in Important Announcements that addresses this. Actually, almost nobody goes to that board anyway so they will only look at the topic title most likely, so it will need to be to-the-point. Only then will it stand a chance in being noticed.

o_e_l_e_o's excellent thread on the subject (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5403254.0) can be linked for additional reading if desired.

The exact title and contents of the topic will need to be discussed by the community so that a consensus is reached, but I intend to have a global mod or VIP member post it on our behalf.

This will be the post title and body unless people have complaints about it: This post will be revised within 12 hours to reflect the new suggestions.

Title: Withdraw your bitcoins from online accounts now!

This feels like it's going to throw fuel in the fire if the forum agrees to do it now. It also might put more investor funds at risk by spreading fud - bad exchanges could still have enough funds to make withdrawals possible if they don't have all client funds now by making them back from fees (like bitfinex did).

Doing something like this might only benefit one party (binance - the largest exchange based on volume). It's not clear but completely logical they've done the above (used user funds to do risky things and made it back more than enough in fees and investments to make them able to think they have enough money to cover all their clients' funds and accounts.

I'd agree in education on using dexes, avoiding cexes and practicing due diligence to ensure you hold custody of your funds and keep them.

Oh for god's sake let's just stop with the FUD!

Every single time there is news that nobody likes, it's FUD!
China banning mining, is FUD, the hashrate dropping in half, the avalanche of used miners on the market, all the big farm owners' interviews while on the move, everything was FUD because some didn't like the fact that bad things do happen!
And it's not FUD, they are real, beyond uncertain easy-to-proven facts!

Terra was FUD, Celsius was FUD, FTX was FUD, let's go back to 2013 and there were people saying MtGox being insolvent is FUD!

I just read this the other day:


It's just FUD! No problem! Not a worry!

And speaking of "investors" how do we put their funds at risk when the message is to keep your funds safe, in your won wallet not guarded by some wannabe 3.0 banker and his 20 roommates?

https://i.ibb.co/VB3txsk/bitcointalkbabysitting.png

Enough with the babysitting. It's a forum not a financial advising institute.
Next time when a user will lose his private key and can not access his wallet, he will say they said not to use an exchange.

It didn't take long, some rogue journalists seemed to be able to easily create FUDs on their news pages and share them on social media. In fact, it happened many times and recently they spread FUD about FTX by making bitcoin a scapegoat.

People are easily swayed by FUD, so each step may have to be carefully thought out before an otherwise good idea is misinterpreted by someone else who takes advantage of the situation.

I think a more long worded message would be better. Some things might get lost in the needed text but telling people all the risks may make some people stop and think.
Will it get more then just "not your keys not your coins" and "Get your funds out of exchanges" is a tough call.

Exchanges are unsafe and you should not leave your coins on them because........
Here is the risk of not believing not your keys not your coins......
Non KYC exchanges are better for privacy but they can spring it on you at any time......
If an exchange looks like it's run out of an old PC in somebody's garage it probably is.....

It's a lot for new people to take in.

The other issue is the last post in Important Announcements is the electum vulnerability from 4 years ago and people are still getting following links to electum malware sites:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5229836.0 that page is still getting hits from other referrers and a bunch of 404s trying to hit the malware file....

-Dave

I don't like the idea of a permanent banner, but a post in Important Announcements isn't a bad idea, especially since the FTX contagion is likely to cause several more bankruptcies over the coming weeks/months. Because the FTX issue is likely to trigger bankruptcies soon, this is time-sensitive, and so it'd be best to post it in the next ~36 hours.

A quick draft:

Which are the best wallets for total newbies? Anyone who will actually need the advice in this post will need something very easy, so I don't want to list something too difficult. Probably I should just list one app for iPhone, one app available on Android via Google Play, and maybe one hardware wallet. (Linux/Windows/Mac wallets are too risky for newbies, I think.)

I'm not very familiar with DeFi systems. Should more be said about them?

Storing funds on an exchange will not be safe because when something happens like what happened to FTX it will be a problem. What about traders looking to make a profit by day trading?
They definitely don't withdraw all funds from the exchange where they trade with the consideration that for the next day there is no need to make a deposit again.

Please answer.
Don't scold me if I'm wrong.

As long as you can afford to lose, what's the problem?
But it is a good security idea for you and others if you want to invest in bitcoin or other crypto assets. If you care about the long-term security of your assets, then the choice is a hardware wallet or a non-custodial bitcoin wallet.

OP's idea got great response from admins, so this would be a really helpful suggestion for forum members regarding security practices in storing its assets. But I hope it's never going to be so extreme FUD to imagine.

Could we maybe get a link in the News: bar if a full banner is too much?



Surely that just means they've got the most to lose?  If there is a mass exodus from exchanges, I would have assumed the more popular exchanges would take the biggest hit.

I feel electrum wallet is just fine, it is open-source and easy to use, and newbies can either run it on their mobile device or desktop, they can also either use it as a hot wallet or for cold or offline storage. Mycellium is another good option that can be included.

BlueWallet is also good for iphone users because electrum is unavailable on ios.

Mycelium has been running ads for 1xbit (at least on Android - the iOS version has been running on an outdated codebase for ages) so I do not trust them not to sell out to the next big scammer one bit.

Electrum is fine. So is Electrum for Android & Trezor.

I have never used Bluewallet before, but I hear that people like it, so I would include it immediately considering this will be posted in ~36 hours according to Theymos.

However, considering that we are trying to get traders among other people off of exchanges, those guys use multi-coin wallets, so something like Trust Wallet with an open-source core would be the best recommendation for all platforms. Might want to add it as a second option for traders rather than HODLers.

BlueWallet is a good choice since it supports hardware wallets too. AND their site has a bunch of how to videos that are actually useful.
Not to mention lightning support too.

Would discussing the security of hardware wallets in addition be good or take the warning too far off the point?

-Dave

That draft looks good to me!

Is there anything in place (like a popup after login) to draw attention to new posts in that section, though? Because I'm not sure I would notice it myself (at least not quickly).

If it's time-sensitive (i.e. the more people that notice it quickly, the better) then maybe it's a good idea to temporarily have a stickied post on the parent board (Bitcoin Discussion) that refers to the one in "Important Announcements"?

We don't want to turn it into a wallet comparison topic, Lauda already made a sticked topic in Beginners and Help for that: [General] Bitcoin Wallets - Which, what, why? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631151.0)

I will improve on theymos' draft to make it read as follows:


Given my recent comments about Ledger privacy it might seem surprising to some of you to see me put it on the list, that is because not everyone agrees with me about Ledger and I do not want the announcement thread to become polarized or to make the forum look like it's a gigantic Trezor shill.


Let's leave it at what you wrote, because honestly I don't understand the topic at all, neither does the average crypto user probably. But we should warn them to avoid "yield" platforms that promise you a percentage APR because these platforms are inherently unstable.

I partially agree... I will fully agree if title is changed to..

"Get your funds bitcoins out of exchanges"

or

Title: Withdraw your crypto bitcoin from online accounts now!



No please.. it's so misleading.

---

You are fast!!!!

See the second post, I updated the title.

---

Meanwhile, the reverberation is beginning:

Crypto Exchange AAX Suspends Withdrawals as FTX Failure Reverberates (https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/13/crypto-exchange-aax-suspends-withdrawals-as-ftx-failure-reverberates/)

We need to get this pushed out ASAP.

Some suggestions:

Not "may", but rather "already is". Various exchanges have already frozen assets and halted withdrawals.

Do not recommend Trust wallet. It is closed source and owned by Binance. Given that FTX's apps became malware in the days after their insolvency, recommending any software owned by a centralized exchange should be avoided.

I would remove the second sentence as it makes non yield projects sound safer by omission. I would also expand to cover centralized altcoins. Perhaps this:

Also, note that many altcoins, tokens, and DeFi projects are either fundamentally centralized and therefore as risky as centralized exchanges and online wallets, or are equally vulnerable to the FTX contagion due to the way that they're designed.

Don't add any more. Too long and people don't read it.

I believe one of this is necessary though, because i don't think that board is popular, especially among newbies that the message may be most important too, newbies are more active in the beginners and help board than bitcoin discussion, and even in bitcoin discussion i don't think many of them visit the child boards of which important announcement is one of them.

If that thread is made in important announcement board, i'm sorry but i think mostly those who already know they should not hold BTC in online or centralized accounts are the people that will see it very early, and newbies and other junior members may only get to know about it if their attention is drawn there in someway.

I suggest that if the thread is made, there can be a voluntary campaign for people to include the thread link in their personal text, like many of us did with NotATether's bitcoin cleanup campaign, it will get more attention that way and we don't have to disturb Theymos for a 'popup after login' or to have it stickied.

In my opinion the message should be as simple as possible.
Recommending software is difficult, as each user has its own needs, and what is good for one person might be incompatible with other one OS (for example, there is no electrum for iphone).

On the end, what people need is knowledge/education about bitcoin and blockchain. However, most people who leave funds on exchanges are just trading and want a quick buck.

Education is an act that requires effort. It is not possible to educate people with a message, even if it is a complete and long one. A short message can spark curiosity and make many people search about private keys and solve their problem.

In fact, day by day people's trust is decreasing from cryptocurrency, especially recently, the way centralized exchanges are killing people's money, people will lose complete trust from centralized exchanges in the coming future.
However, a centralized exchange means someone else's wallet is your cryptocurrency.  Whatever you put on a centralized exchange will never be recognized as your property.  Now is the time to seize your property.  Like MTGox in 2014, Kucoin hacked in 2020, and most recently the most infamous FTX hacked in 2022 has posed a serious threat to cryptocurrency.  So there is a saying that keeping your cryptocurrency on a centralized exchange is like feeding a chicken to a fox.

https://i.imgur.com/oxRIrHG.jpg

Decentralized exchanges on the other hand mean your wallet is your property.  Decentralized exchanges have no ownership rights, just like no one else owns your wallet.  So it goes without saying that if you have the private key stored then no one can hack your cryptocurrency wallet.

https://i.imgur.com/4UjoT7B.png

I can't wear two avatars at once though.

The thread doesn't need to be stickied nor does a popup have to be made, 90% of readers (bounty hunters are excluded) go straight to the Bitcoin Discussion section. There is Important Announcements subboard, with this title waiting for them to click on.


Why don't we replace the world "online accounts" with "custodial services"? That should be less ambiguous, and is applicable to all centralized crypto platforms as opposed to just exchanges.


OK, I forgot that Trust was owned by Binance (how could I have forgot??).

I do not know any high-quality multi coin wallets, so lets add another sentence after the hardware wallets point saying: "Only deposit as much crypto as you need to trade, and withdraw it immediately afterwards.

Some users might not actually know what custodial is, and might mix it up. You could say that we're hand holding too much, but a online accounts probably covers us the most. I guess we could say something along the lines of online accounts, and wallets that don't provide you with the private key. The thing is, the more technical we get about things, the more it'll go over people's head's, especially since we're aiming at newer users, and not just experienced users.

I'm not one for words, but I'm sure taking that into consideration someone could whip something up that's not only concise, but would be clear to all parties reading it, regardless of experience level, but also English proficiency should probably be considered. A non native speaker might not be familiar with the word custodial, and it's meaning, and then we're sort of relying on them doing that research, again which they won't wouldn't.

It needs to be plain as day, and not require any additional research, ideally. Though, they should be doing their own research, we know that most users won't go into those depths. Just my thoughts, although I'll probably be accused of hand holding too much, which I guess depending on your perspective could be a fair assessment.

I would not like officially the forum to mention such wallet names which have business associated with it. You are giving them an advantage from others that are in the market. On the other hand when something will go wrong with any of them mentioned then people will have scope to say they were recommended by bitcointalk forum. We do not want to take any responsibility of anything.

That is true. From now on, there will be no more naming hardware wallets. Only specific software wallets will be named [and the list is vanishingly small - Electrum, Bluewallet, and then you have the option of using a hardware wallet, quickly trading some funds on an exchange, and then send them all back to the HW.]

Normally I wouldn't agree with that statement 100%, but considering the fact that every time something like the FTX debacle goes down it brings crypto closer and closer to being highly regulated, I've softened my stance on trying to protect people from making potentially bankrupting mistakes--at least to the extent that it can be done without also being paternalistic (which was mentioned in the other thread about putting a warning header on bitcointalk).

Unfortunately, all it takes to really get the message about keeping your funds on exchanges or yield farming sites is just a few days' worth of reading on the forum, and I'm kind of pessimistic as to how much any of us can help.  Still, I'm all for having a thread (anywhere on the forum) or a banner or something similar.  As I said before, it can't hurt and can only help.

Thanks for your comments: I incorporated several suggestions. I think that the usefulness of this announcement decays with every passing hour, so I went ahead and posted it. I'll also link to it in the news bar for a couple of weeks. The post can still be edited, of course.

Has anyone used the Unstoppable wallet? Is it a good alternative to Trust Wallet?


"Withdraw now" strikes me as a bit too alarmist, and I prefer the term "online account". "Exchange" is too narrow, while trying to be more exact with a phrase like "centralized exchanges, yield sites, and many tokens" is too confusing.

Note that even USD in exchanges is at risk, whether or not it's a stablecoin or a non-stablecoin account balance. If the exchange goes bankrupt, typically the USD will be an unsecured liability owed to you by the exchange, the same as any other asset associated with your account.


I agree that yield-farming stuff (whether DeFi or CeFi) is very risky in general, and especially right now when $2-10 billion in "money" was just removed from the crypto economy overnight. I adjusted the wording to emphasize that yield products are included. "Inherently unstable" goes a bit too far, though, IMO. For example, some decentralized exchanges and over-collateralized lending pools seem pretty robust at least in principle, and many of them will probably survive.


I don't consider it to be an issue. Those clearly are the two leading hardware wallet manufacturers, and merely mentioning them is not an endorsement.

Seeing it posted, the only (not really important) feedback I have is that FTX should either be mentioned more than once or not at all, because right now the single mention right at the end of the post reads (to the uninitiated) like "FTX contagion" is a general concept and not a specific incident. Other than that nitpick, looks good to me!

Good point, edited. Thanks.

All active members in the forum have heard or have experienced what is happening to some crypto exchange firms in the ecosystem. So because of that the overall boss has dropped a warning to everyone in the forum to keep their huge Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in their wallets/safe place. Most people have seen the news and many have not see it. And for those who have not read the news should go here. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5421039.0 this news is for everyone in the forum, therefore, everyone is expected to read it and protect your coins.

I hope the step you have taken to incorporate the suggestions can bring more attention to crypto users frequenting the forum (especially newbies) to the realities of how an exchange heading to bankruptcy can literally ruin them financially as they will never be reunited with their funds again. If anything, they might be fortunate enough to receive a tiny amount of their original holdings several years down the line after lawyers, liquidators and administrators have mostly emptied out what they recovered.

All users can also access the news if they realize that there is already a news link at the bottom of the avatar. I hope many users don't go through it.

https://i.imgur.com/j2JUC3e.png

The best thing now is to move all assets on online platform to wallet, be it from exchanges or other platforms and maybe also casinos. I'm not against them keeping it in their online accounts if they trade, but they should be aware of the risks.

It's far from perfect, but currently it's one of the best open source multi-coin wallets I know, and it's certainly better than Trust wallet.
I like that is has Tor option for better privacy, and it was audited several times so I think it's safe enough to be used as pocket money wallet.
For people that only need Bitcoin mobile wallet I would still recommend Electrum, Blue wallet or Blockstream Green wallet.

Voting is now locked considering that this thread has accomplished its purpose. I will leave the thread itself open for a little while so that wallet discussions can continue to be held here.

Well done for starting the campaign in the aftermath of the FTX debacle. It is a positive result because you achieved what you set out to do and in the process hopefully people will end up reading the warnings and will understand the possible dangers involved when using exchanges to store crypto.

The phrase "Not your keys, not your coins" is used frequently. Such a large number of people are wrecked despite so many warnings. It is possible for any centralized third party service, such as Binance, Coinbase, etc, to freeze our account. Currently, moving our stuff out of exchanges is the better solution. Cold wallets are a safe way to store digital assets. Would it mean the end of crypto if someone like Binance went bankrupt too?

Blockstream Green Wallet has a centralization problem since they hold one of your private key which mean you can't import your wallet from Blockstream Green Wallet to other wallet, this mean you will lose access to your wallet. Although they're non-custodial, better UI/UX and open source, but this problem is really critical IMO. This is the reason why I prefer to use Electrum or Blue wallet.

Yep, it's the end of shitcoins since these coins only listed on centralized exchanges. But Bitcoin wouldn't end since you can trade via P2P or using decentralized exchange e.g. Bisq.

I agree with that--I just woke up and saw that Theymos has added some text as a warning, and I'm very glad to see that.  And as far as wording goes, since I think it's primarily newbies that need the warning, and since probably a lot of those newbies don't have an extensive English vocabulary, said wording should be as simple as possible.  What's written looks just fine to me, and even better is that it's a link to the thread discussing all of this crap going on.

I'm glad you took this suggestion, Theymos.  Hopefully it'll help some members avoid scams or at the very least will lead them to a discussion where they can get information that'll help them be more informed.  Props!

I doubt it will change anything but good work, we tried our best. Truth is, people will still keep their coins in the exchanges, still when the next exchange will bite the dust we will see many people are losing their money and blaming the exchanges. True decentralization will only can be enjoyed once we will have the entire ecosystem decentralized in terms of trading. We need decentralized exchanges and more people are using them over centralized exchanges.

@theymos, have we lost the bitcoin core update link from the news section? It will be nice to see both are rotating like the ad slot.

The news feed displays the most recent article with an exception I think for the Bitcointalk Community Awards and miscellaneous contests. Besides, Bitcoin 24.0 is about to roll out soon so when that topic is posted it will get bumped into the news feed.

For a more neutral approach, I found a topic that dkbit98 maintains with a list of open source hardware wallets: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5288971.0

And here's a list of all or almost all hardware wallets ever released: https://walletscrutiny.com/?verdict=all&platform=hardware

Would these confuse the intended audience? I assume the type of people who go out of their way to browse forums in 2022, do so for long-form (or leading in this direction) content would be more interested than people on other platforms.

The walletscrutiny site, I never seen them before but it seems they are giving a lot of efforts for the information. I am a ledger user and I see they marked it as "No Secure" but I don't think it's something to be worried about. No idea which one to give advantage between Trezor and Ledger though.

Coming back to the topic, although walletscrutiny seems a good source for hardware information but still it's a third party site and we don't want to recommend a third party site officially (when Theymos does something it's official in a sense). I will prefer dkbit98's topic over directly recommending walletscrutiny.