You sure you know math? Doesn't look like it.
Who did ever say getting a vaccine would prevent a person from dying? That's NOT (and has never been) the purpose of vaccines. People are still dying from polio, and the vaccine has been developed (and in use worldwide) almost 70 years ago.
The purpose of vaccines (I'm sure you already know this, like you know math) is to BOOST the body's response to a given pathogen, not to guarantee people will be absolutely immune to it, and especially not to guarantee people are not gonna die.
Both unvaccinated and vaccinated people are gonna keep on dying. The difference is in the numbers (right up your alley, being you know so much about math). In any case, vaccination is in its very early stages, and the fact the disease has been largely stopped in its tracks is proof enough (for anybody with a brain) to fully understand the effectivity of what's been done, even with its shortcomings.

By the way: you can take this post as proof that, 2 weeks after getting the booster, I'm still alive. Trust me: I am.

Dkbit98: aren't you a bit too quick to judge?

Sorry, I forgot about the desktop vs. mobile. I'm interested in desktop wallets exclusively.

Ok, so AtomicDEX. As usual, at least on their homepage, they don't say if they're open or closed source. What are they? is it safe?

Thank you Bitmover. So Atomic wallet is a no-go.

Hardware wallets are unaffordable to me now. Any multi asset software wallet you'd recommend?

So I've been looking everywhere, and I can't, for the life of me, find any reliable information on multi asset, software wallets. I downloaded Exodus, just to find a thread recommending NOT to use it. Coinomi had an even worse reputation. E-Toro ended up being custodial.

Now, I've been reading (not a lot) about Atomic wallet, but, as usual, I can't find what I'm looking for.

My questions are:

• Is it open source?
• Is it custodial/non custodial?
• How about fees? Are they higher or lower than other wallets?
• Is it safe enough? yes, I know hardware wallets are better, but I can't afford one right now.

And, finally, the most important ones: do you recommend it? Any other multi asset wallet you would recommend over it?

Thank you all in advance. 

For the record, I have posted in the "Beginners & Help" board because I'm asking for help, and I'm a beginner, but I'm in no way sure this is the right board for it. If it's not, I apologize.

Alright, first of all, I’d like to make something very clear: this is not a “I know everything about everything” type of post. It’s just my story, in the hope it may help somebody.
Second: this is gonna be a long ass post. Sorry about that.

Up until October 14^th, 2021, I knew one thing about cryptocurrency:

IT’S A SCAM. PERIOD.

On that day, a former coworker of mine showed me a screenshot of his Bitcoin wallet. He had started on BTC a month earlier with 60 USD, and now had $ 1156. A 1900% increase in a month! That really got me thinking.

So on January 27^th, 2022, after almost three very long months racking my brain to come up with solutions to the many problems I’ve encountered along the way, I could finally start. What follows is an account of what happened along those 3 months. Hope it helps.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: THE CRYPTO SPACE IS FULL OF SCAMMERS, HACKERS, AND BASICALLY ANY KIND OF LOWLIFE YOU CAN THINK OF. LEARN TO PROTECT YOURSELF!

Now, for starters, cryptocurrencies are some very technical stuff. Learn about them. You can’t expect to be able to understand the finer points of cryptocurrency investing and/or trading if you don’t understand what a blockchain is.

So next day I started researching. There are a lot of good quality courses on Crypto trading and investing out there. In some cases (I can only vouch for Udemy.com, which I have used), you can get great courses for about $10 when they’re on sale (which happens very often), in some other cases (like Tutsnode and The Pirate Bay), you can get the same courses, and/or courses from other sources, for free. Of course, if you get those free courses you will not get the support (which may or may not be important to you), so keep that in mind.
So, since I didn’t have $10 to spare (nor a way to spare them), I went to The Pirate Bay. Got my very first cryptocurrency course, and started watching it.
Two weeks later (and because it was mentioned in the course, and in another course I was taking) I joined this forum.
Then I started asking questions here. Many of them (I’m sure) were pretty stupid (my apologies), while I was starting my third course.
By the time I felt I was somewhat ready to start, I had 5 courses in the bag. Then the really difficult stuff started: things that had to do with my circumstances and my country, so nobody could help me with.
First was the money: 10 bucks may sound like peanuts in the US, but it’s not elsewhere, especially when you’ve been unemployed for almost 2 years. Either way, I did take care of that.
Then I came up with a really hard one to crack: the law. In Argentina, the law doesn’t allow you to make transactions in USD, unless you have an account in USD (which is not easy to get), and you can’t make transactions online unless you have an international credit card (which is even harder to get than the USD account). So that effectively limits access to cryptocurrencies to a very small group of people.
I didn’t have either, so I was screwed. Twice.
Then Binance started accepting ARS, and money transfers directly from your bank account. Great!
Turned out it was just marketing bullshit, and they only accepted ARS for p2p transactions.
But that gave me a bit more knowledge, so I started looking for another exchange that would take ARS, preferably without KYC. Came across Kucoin. Signed up, and next day I couldn’t get in any longer. I still can’t.
In the meantime, I kept on asking questions here: signature campaigns, bounties, airdrops, faucets…
So on January 16th I joined Cointiply. They have a minimum withdrawal amount of $5, and pay you directly on BTC (or a few other coins) to your wallet.
In the morning of January 25th, 8 ½ days after joining, I finally had reached the $5 minimum withdrawal requirement, so I made the withdrawal. Excellent! That gave me some money, while at the same time bypassing the legal requirements in my country! In the morning of January 27th I got the deposit.
As of now, I’m working to get the second $5 batch, so I can start operating on Binance. The path has been far from smooth, but I’m moving forward, and loving every minute.

So, what’s the moral here?

1. Learn. And once you’re certain you know everything you need to know, keep learning.

2. This is important: wake up, and understand Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
What do I mean by that? The safest way to avoid getting scammed is to be realistic. I have seen sites offering 1 BTC to click on a link. Do you really think somebody is gonna give you 30 or 40  grand just to move a finger?
On the same token, I have seen “Complete Cryptocurrency” courses that last less than an hour, with others providing over 50 or 60 hours of video. Which one do you think is gonna be more “complete”?
 
3. Use the forum. Not only there’s an ungodly amount of information already written in here, but there’s also a whole bunch of very knowledgeable members that are ready and willing to help you out. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, nobody was born knowing.
Incidentally, if you’re not comfortable typing/reading in English, the forum provides boards in different languages, so you can participate. In any case, if you do wish to communicate in English, you’d be truly surprised as to the levels of “broken English” these guys are willing to deal with. Just try it.
That said, despite all their knowledge and their willingness to help, there are things nobody can help you with, especially if you live in the 3rd world. Each country has its own rules, and each person has their own circumstances to deal with. Keep that in mind, it’ll make a world of difference.

4. Solve your problems as they appear, one at a time. Things may seem insurmountable if you try to fix everything at once.

5. DO NOT EVER GET DISCOURAGED! It’s just your life we’re talking about here. Trust me: there's always a solution waiting to be found.

6. (Thanks to maydna): Be grateful. Be grateful for the help you get, and you will be helped more. Be grateful for what you have, and start using it to your benefit. Cryptocurrencies wouldn't exist if some bozos at IBM hadn't created the PC in 1981, or if some school kid didn't steal some operating system from his classmates and called it "Windows", or if some nerd mathematician hadn't set up to decipher the nazis' "Enigma" machine, some 80 years ago. 

EDIT: Thanks to the advice provided by Maus0728 and hatshepsut93, I came to realize I've provided bad advise above. Here's my truth: I've been using The Pirate Bay for well over a decade. Thanks to them I have saved probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, while I have heard from the very beginning some of their torrents may carry malware, I have NEVER had the slightest problem with them.
But the truth can be partial, and at that it can be misleading.
Here are some other truths: I run Linux. That alone means a huge difference, in terms of security, with Windows. But most importantly, I haven't used TPB since I got my BTC. I don't know why, maybe just luck.
In any case, while I still recommend you to use TPB as a great source for free stuff, DON'T USE IT in the same computer you have your wallet(s) on. Just get an extra hard drive or SSD, and run another OS from there. Above all KEEP YOUR WALLET SAFE.

When I started with computers (1989, I think), the very best antivirus software was F-Prot, and it had a HUUUUGE database of 464 viruses, and they were all viruses, nothing else. A couple of days ago I ran ClamAV on my computer, and had a database of some 650 thousand viruses. And we have malware, spyware, ransomware, adware, and whatever fu*kware one can think of. Point being the lowlives I mentioned above are getting ever more sophisticated, and my experience of years (or of yesterday) may be completely useless tomorrow. It's up to you to protect your stuff. Be paranoid. It's much better than being broke, trust me.

Not at all. I fully understand since the first day (years before, actually) vaccines don't have 100% efficacy. Nothing does, actually.
However, I also understand having the vaccines (ALL of them, not only against covid) greatly increases my chances of fighting the disease if I do get infected. True, I'm still a ticking bomb, and I will be until the moment I die. But when I do, I prefer not to die out of idiocy.

Thank you OmegaStarScream, I could sign in on Chrome.

Thank you  all for the help.

I was redirected there from binance.com. It seems to be some sort of support screen or something...


Now that I read your reply, I think you hit it right on the head. I kinda remember having the same issue not long ago, and I installed Google Chrome as a result. I'll try it out.

Thank you both!

Well, pretty much what the title says. I've been trying to login, and I get this screen:



... and nothing happens. Can't type my email address, phone number, nothing.
Is anybody else having these problems, or is it just me?
But, most importantly, how do I fix it?

I have already signed up to the site a while ago, did the KYC and everything.

Thank you all in advance.  

Me three. 
First, the nokia explanation was a gross oversimplification. Nokia didn't fall because they adopted Windows: they fell for a variety of reasons, one of which was their adoption of windows. Then, you can't really compare a company that made cellphones to a beast like Samsung, that makes pretty much everything that uses electrons to work. Samsung was bound to take the lead sooner or later.
Then, the whole comparison makes no sense. It's literally comparing apples to oranges.
For a government to ban cryptocurrencies outright would be very difficult, as they'd literally have to isolate the whole country from the rest of the world. In any case, there are many other ways to de facto ban them, or at least make their usage very difficult.
For example, in Argentina, to make any international transactions online you need an international credit card with an account in USD. That alone limits cryptocurrency use to less than 10% of the population, probably a lot less.

In any case, can governments make crypto transactions illegal? Yes, they can, and more countries are bound to do so in the future. Cryptocurrency adoption may allow for increased liquidity from tourism (and eventually from other sources), but it implies losing control over part of the country's economy, and that's playing with fire in the best of cases.
The government's job is to care about the whole country , not about a given class. It doesn't make sense (from a macroeconomic point of view) to legalize a currency outside your control. Especially not if your own currency is in bad shape.


Well, they did have a bit of "external help"...
In any case, Pablo Escobar's case was an extreme case of somebody with a huge ego, paired with a tiny brain. He was, at one point, so unbelievably wealthy he could've emigrated to any country in the world and lived off his money, but he had to go and fight both his own and the American government.
And he didn't have soldiers, he had a bunch of thugs that were blindly allegiant to him, but had no training whatsoever, and almost no equipment.

In any case, before any Colombian takes issue, it's Colombia, not Columbia.

Yeah, to a point. We have to remember most (if not all) developed countries are also in debt, and it doesn't affect them.
The problem countries like El Salvador (and Argentina, my country, among many others) have is they keep asking for loans to finance deficit, instead of financing growth.
Making BTC legal tender is a dangerous move, and the IMF is bound not to like it (no lender ever would like something like that). I hope it pays up. However, I don't see El Salvador giving the IMF the finger over this. Most likely, they will make some noise, and they will eventually come up with some sort of arrangement that works for both parties.

Fiat (centralized) money is a very important part of economic policy. By adopting BTC as legal tender, El Salvador is aiming to get money mainly from tourism, but as a consequence they're relinquishing control over their own economy (or part of it), and leaving it at the will of the market.
So it's not that "decentralization is bad", but it's inconvenient in this case. As appealing as the news can be for us, El Salvador's move was a dangerous one.

It makes sense that the IMF won't want to lend money to a country that can't control its own economy. It'd be like playing russian roulette with a lot of money.

Thank you OmegaStarScream, I'll check it out. 

Here's something weird: I just realized (took me long enough, I know) that Bitcoin has the same acronym as the Broward Transition Center, the concentration camp (I mean, the "detention center") where I was starved half to death for over 8 months in 2012, prior to my deportation from the US.
That got me thinking: what are the odds?
I'm not interested in any "the odds are, like..." replies, but in the actual mathematical probability of the exact 3 letter combination happening.
I did learn mathematical probability in High School, but it's been a long time, and I don't remember anything about it, so if you guys can provide the equation for it, even better, so I can learn something.

Thanks in advance. 

Ok, here's an update to this very informative thread: curiously enough, I'm still very much alive and kicking.
No horns, no third eye, no weird cravings, my arm didn't fall off. Nothing. I'm starting to feel embarrassed...


Yeah, a friend of mine (four actually, the whole family) had covid last year, and some time needs to pass before you get the vaccine.
The way I see it, it depends on how your body reacts to it. The day and a half after I got the first dose was a nightmare. I got over 40° C fever, everything hurt, I was sweating like a pig, etc. The second dose, I had a slight fever, for maybe 30 minutes to an hour, and now, nothing. My arm was sore for a couple of days, but, other than that, I'm good...

Faith? Faith may be ignorant, but it's basically well intended. These people, to quote a Batman movie: "they just wanna watch the place burn"...


Yep, it was infuriating to me. I feel better now.

Cnut237 and o_e_l_e_o: you're both trying to reason with people that are unable (and unwilling) to do so. As a suggestion, so you don't waste your time like that anymore, the "ignore" function works very well on this forum. 

Will do! Thank you!

HELL YEAH!!!
As of 25 minutes ago, I'm the proud owner of .00013858 BTC! My first million is on the way!


Thank you! I'll look it up.