I would start here: https://tails.boum.org/index.en.html

You can see a list of all included software here: https://tails.boum.org/doc/about/features/index.en.html

They called themselves a DEX, but as mk4 says, they just used it a flashy marketing gimmick. There was nothing decentralized about CryptoBridge.

Sure, but if it is truly decentralized then there is nothing they can do to stop users from said countries running the old version of the platform and trading with each other or anyone else using the old version.

So, a real DEX can't be hacked in the same way a centralized exchange can, because there is no central wallet, database, or servers for a hacker to attack in order to steal coins or personal data. There can, however, still be vulnerabilities in the code which can exploited.

This is the biggest.

If using a totally separate and permanently airgapped machine is not feasible, then instead of simply creating a new user on your current OS, the next step would be to use a different OS. Most people would recommend using a Linux distro of your choice booted from a live USB stick. Tails is a good privacy focused choice, and comes with Electrum pre-installed.

Why did you decide to write down your private keys, instead of writing down the seed phrase that Electrum generated for you? There are multiple benefits to using the seed phrase instead of private keys - easier to read, easier to type back in, harder to make a mistake, built in checksum, will generate private keys for all your addresses rather than just one, no risk of losing change, etc.

Looks like you are getting there. One more point of clarification:

You actually use both the parent private key and the parent public key (as well as the parent chain code) to generate a child private key. The parent public key and parent chain code are fed in to a HMAC-SHA512 function along with the address index, and the left 256 bits of the output are added modulo n (which we discussed above) to the parent private key to give the child private key.

The only time you use only the parent private key (as well as the parent chain code) and not both the parent private and public keys is when you are generating hardened child private keys.

The spreads are very variable, and fluctuate markedly depending on which fiat or altcoin you are trading for, which fiat methods you are willing to use, how much of a hurry you are in, and what offers are on the platform at the time. Usually in the region of a few percent. Since I am rarely in a hurry and very patient with my trades, if I am buying BTC I usually end up paying around 1% above market rate, but if I am selling I can get around 3-5% above market rate.

Fees are pretty reasonable. Bisq currently has a 0.2% maker fee and 0.6% taker fee, but you can cut those in half of more if you pay using BSQ token. You also pay a security deposit which you get back in full following a successful trade, and a mining fee of a couple thousand satoshi. LocalCryptos has a 0.25% maker and 0.75% taker fee.

21sats isn't actually creating an Electrum SegWit or Legacy wallet though. He is talking about going through the motions of doing that just so Electrum will generate a seed phrase for him. He then takes that seed phrase and restores a wallet with it, forcing it through as an invalid BIP39 phrase to create a nested SegWit wallet.

nc50lc's instructions are correct if OP has access to his master private key, with with caveat being that it is better to back up a seed phrase than it is a master private key.

The whole set up is still very suboptimal though. Better to just use a valid BIP39 seed.

Trezor and Ledger seed phrases and any optional passphrases follow the standard BIP39 protocol, i.e. using the word "mnemonic". This is also true of pretty much every other hierarchical deterministic wallet which exists these days. Electrum is pretty much the only one which has its own method for generating seed phrases.

If you want to read more in depth as to how seed phrases are combined with passphrases to generate your wallet, have a read of this: https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch05.asciidoc#from-mnemonic-to-seed

Statistically speaking, a zero house edge casino would not be profitable. Over infinite time, the variance trends towards zero, meaning the casino would pay out exactly what they took in.

However, for this to be true in practice, you would need all customers to be playing perfectly, have perfect money management, and have a combined bank roll equal to that of the casino. Obviously, this is not the case. The majority of people are bad at money management, especially when it comes to gambling, and so the majority of their customers will be poor at managing their bankroll and their bets. Players frequently tilt, bet overly aggressive, think they are on a winning streak, bet bigger and bigger trying to regain losses, etc., all of which works in the house's favor. Their bankroll also isn't combined. The average person who walks in with $100 isn't going to say "I'll walk away when I hit $200". The majority of people would keep going and aim for higher profits. In reality, this means a swing of several hundred dollars in their favor which the casino can take in stride, whereas a swing of only $100 in the other direction is enough to bankrupt them.

Those drinks pay for themselves. Drunk gamblers are more likely to bet big, play suboptimally, and make mistakes.

The mere fact that you have to "opt out" of them doing whatever they like with your data is bad enough as it is. They also have a clause which permits them to continue to hold and use your data subject to "regulatory retention or record keeping requirements", which is essentially carte blanche to do what they like. gentlemand also pointed out to me in another thread yesterday that even the EU's GDPR contains a similar clause to allow "financial institutions" to continue to hold your data.

You should assume that any data you give to a centralized exchange such as Coinbase will never be deleted from their servers, because in all likelihood, it won't be.

I've never used either, and have no problems exchanging bitcoin to fiat and vice versa using peer to peer trades or DEXs.

Short answer: Electrum seed phrases and BIP39 seed phrases differ in the way they handle passphrases. Since you are entering the seed phrase as a BIP39 phrase, you use the BIP39 method, which uses the word "mnemonic" rather than the word "electrum".

Longer answer: When your seed phrase is used to generate your private keys, the first step is to pass it through a key stretching function called PBKDF2. The PBKDF2 function used has two input parameters. The first input parameter is your seed phrase. The second input parameter for BIP39 seeds is the word "mnemonic" concatenated with your passphrase. You can see this in lines 810 and 811 of the Electrum code here: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/9d0bb295e6f55a2bff9f5b6770fa744c16af6e8a/electrum/keystore.py#L810.

Conversely, when using Electrum seeds, instead of using the word "mnemonic", it instead uses the word "electrum" concatenated with your passphrase. See line 164 here: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/a0b096dcb2292c2826f7beae173c529d335142f0/electrum/mnemonic.py#L164.

Even although your seed was generated by Electrum, since we are using it as an (invalid) BIP39 seed we need to follow the BIP39 method. This will hold true even if you don't use a passphrase, as the word "mnemonic" will still be used as an input for PBKDF2, just without any additional characters attached.

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I would echo DireWolfM14's warning above, though. This is a very non standard way to generate a wallet, and you could run in to serious problems down the line trying to recover it. If you want a P2WPKH-P2SH wallet in Electrum, then the best method is to generate a BIP39 phrase elsewhere and import it.

Right. In that case, in the instructions that HCP laid out in the post you linked to (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2373020.msg24316954#msg24316954), you should ignore the second step of changing the word "mnemonic" to "electrum". Since you've done that already, change it back and reload your copy of iancoleman.

Enter your Electrum seed, and then select "BIP49" under Derivation Path. The addresses should now match those that show up in your Electrum wallet.

That's exactly what happened 2 years ago. Coinbase sent the details of over 13,000 of their customers directly to the IRS, and told the customers affected to "seek legal advice" - https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/taxes-reports-and-financial-services/taxes/irs-notification.html

And a year ago, one of Coinbase's executives Christine Sandler admitted user data was being sold to third parties: https://news.yahoo.com/coinbase-former-provider-sold-user-084900709.html. This was at the same time they partnered up with the surveillance company Neutrino/Hacking Team. There's a good write up here of just how immoral these people are: https://breakermag.com/coinbases-newest-team-members-helped-authoritarians-worldwide-monitor-journalists-and-dissidents/.

The most recent news (which I actually hadn't read yet when I made that last post), is just as concerning as the above. These same people inside Coinbase who made monitoring software for dictators are now working with the US government. Given their previous atrocious history, it's not exactly a huge leap to suspect that some user data is going to change hands here.

Someone European can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought there was a "get out" clause when it came to financial transactions and dealings, which permits companies to continue to hold the details of their European customers even if they request deletion.

But it didn't, though. Coinbase handed this information to the IRS over 2 years ago. Since then, it's been obvious that they will hand over more when the IRS asks for it, if they aren't already. And yet since then, Coinbase continues to grow and now holds a staggering 1 million bitcoin in their wallets. Unfortunately, the majority of people don't care about the privacy, and are happy to keep using exchanges which sell them out for their own gain.

Can you clarify first of all how you created the Electrum wallet? Electrum will not allow you to generate a P2WPKH-P2SH wallet - you can only restore such a wallet. Further, you can not restore such a wallet from an Electrum generated seed phrase unless you force the seed through as an invalid BIP39 seed phrase. Are these the steps you took? Was the initial Electrum wallet you create legacy or segwit?

100% they will do this. Selling your users' data without their consent to private third party companies also definitely violates privacy laws. Didn't stop Coinbase doing it, and they suffered essentially no punishment for doing so. There is zero chance in my mind they won't do the same thing here, except now it will be state sanctioned and therefore totally fine. Remember that Coinbase previously handed over some 13,000 users' data to the IRS. Why wouldn't they do it again?

Remember, of course, that "Coinbase Analytics" is simply a rebrand of "Neutrino", which was simply a rebrand of "Hacking Team". These are the same people that manufactured and sold surveillance software to human rights abusing dictators and have been complicit in violence, torture, and murder. Expecting them to have a shred of decency, a shred of morals, or care even the slightest about you as a customer, is somewhere between naive and stupid. They want your data, and they want to sell it.

Coinbase isn't just anti-bitcoin. It's anti-privacy, and it's anti-freedom.

Delete Coinbase.

It is no longer just accusations - it has been proven. Bitcoinpaperwallet is a scam.

Have a read of this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5247201.msg54444963#msg54444963) and the post by user Bedla 4 posts below it. Or just read the entire thread if you have time. The TL;DR is that regardless of what entropy you enter, bitcoinpaperwallet returns an address from a list of addresses pre-generated by the scammer, and as soon as you fund the address the scammer can sweep your funds. Some users have been receiving addresses from bitcoinpaperwallet which have already been used by other unsuspecting victims.

The GitHub link that Pffrt linked to is the source code of the old website, and hasn't been updated since the site was sold. Therefore, it should theoretically still be safe to use, but it's a huge unnecessary risk to take.

You certainly wouldn't be the first person it had happened to, and Bittrex certainly wouldn't be the first exchange to do it. Plenty of verified users have their accounts frozen while facing demands for "enhanced" verification, proof of source of funds, employment information, etc.

That's actually less scummy than asking for your employment history and all the other ridiculous details that OP was asked for. I would completely avoid performing KYC at al all, but by asking you for a selfie holding the word Bittrex and the date, they are simply trying to verify that you haven't stolen or bought someone else's documents. The information OP was asked for, on the other hand, is way over the top. I've given away less information to take out a mortgage.

You have to be careful with this, as it does not necessarily give you redundancy. If you split your seed in to 3 parts (for example), and still require all 3 parts to recover from, then losing one part is akin to losing your entire seed. To still have redundancy in your back ups and not have a single point of failure, then you either need to back up each part more than once, or use something like a 3-of-5 secret share.

True, but this can be mitigated.

If you were to split your seed in to a 3-of-5 as I said above using something like Shamir's Secret Sharing, then an attacker who finds a single piece learns absolutely nothing. This technique essentially creates all-or-nothing secrets, where any number of shares less than the required number doesn't reveal anything about the secret.

An easier technique is to simply use a long and complex passphrase, which you also have backed up, but separately from your seed phrase. If an attacker finds your seed phrase, they can't access your coins without the passphrase. If an attacker finds your passphrase, they can't access your coins without your seed phrase.

It's the design that is the issue here more than the materials. The copper engraving or stamping plates all withstand Lopp's stress testing way better than the "tiles in a holder" designs. Copper actually has a lower yield strength than most aluminum alloys, meaning it will perform worse under pressure testing. However, a plate that has been engraved can be almost folded in half without any loss of information, whereas a bend of only a few degrees is enough for all the tiles to come loose.

A titanium plate would undoubtedly perform better as you say, but would likely be prohibitively expensive for such a design.

There wasn't much there to begin with. Other than the picture I posted, there were a couple more pictures from alternative angles, but they were of very low resolution (probably around 200x200 pixels), so I didn't bother to save them. There was absolutely nothing in the way of text or specifications. I guess it was uploaded by mistake.

It usually takes an age to get someone banned for spamming, but this is ridiculous.

For example, user JessicaVL was an almost identical Press Board spammer. After around 50 of her threads being trashed, and opening a thread about her (and others) in Meta, she was finally banned a month later.

CoinIdol News is much worse. I first flagged this account up back in April: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5223412.msg54324789#msg54324789. Two threads a day, every day. Every single one of them trashed. 89 out of 89 threads trashed. 0 good posts. I have 21 good reports against him in the last two weeks.

I've asked in my Report Comment for him to be banned/nuked countless times. Nothing. I've asked for the mod(s) who are marking my reports as "good" to PM me and explain why he isn't being banned. Also nothing. I thought I might jump on the Discord channel and ask Cyrus if he could take a look at some point. It's such a colossal waste of everybody's time - there are at least 3 other people (not including myself) I know of who are reporting this bot's posts, and the moderators who have to handle the reports.

What good reason is there for not banning this bot?