Creating and administering a Cloudflare account only requires email address and password. Billing is possible through credit cards, Paypal, or bank transfer from shell company accounts that will never lead back to the real admins.

If the US government were interested in WEX.nz -- like they were interested in BTC-e -- Cloudflare could help locate their servers. But Cloudflare alone has no idea who they are.

Coinbase is known for it -- even when transferred through your own wallet first. I assume Gemini or any other compliance-minded exchange will probably do the same thing, but I can't confirm. It's best to err on the side of caution.


No. Binance is a centralized exchange. If you withdraw from there, Coinbase/Gemini will recognize your outputs as coming from Binance's hot wallet and won't have any suspicions about gambling.

If you withdraw from the gambling site to your Electrum wallet, you're still holding outputs that clearly came from the gambling site. Coinbase/Gemini will immediately know where they came from after you deposit them.

The protocol stands on its own. I hope he's never identified. Otherwise Bitcoin might have its own Vitalik Buterin.


That seems like a misinterpretation. Bitcoin was intended to be a trustless medium of exchange yes, but that doesn't mean it wasn't intended to be traded for fiat. This is from Satoshi's early writings on the forum:

The crash began the day before he tweeted anything. Maybe it encouraged some more people to sell, but it looks like the wheels were already in motion. Easy come, easy go -- that's the way I see it. Price was literally in the $7,000s last month.

I agree with the attitude that it's actually a very bullish long term sign. 5 years ago, could you have imagined the US President discussing Bitcoin? And the Treasury Secretary holding White House press conferences about it? It doesn't matter what their opinions are -- Bitcoin clearly isn't going anywhere. It's only going to get bigger.

What, you don't think Satoshi would send all his coins to Bitfinex?

I don't think there's enough liquidity anywhere -- OTC or otherwise -- to handle the Satoshi coins. In a decade or two, quantum computers might lead to the theft of these coins. I just hope there's enough market liquidity by then.

Hedge funds have been in the game for years already, but I assume your talking about major investment banks and things like that. We still don't have regulated, physically settled futures markets yet. I also don't think they want to get in bed with Coinbase or BitGo for custody. Those two things still need to fall into place.

In the past, I've used services like Localbitcoins and Paxful to find P2P cash buyers -- for the listings, not the escrow service. I avoid high-volume traders looking for large fees and generally trade at 1:1. For safety, I only deal in a public place like a busy cafe or McDonalds. It's much more anonymous than selling on an exchange with KYC. You can structure these trades with escrow too, although it's generally a waste of money to do that.

With proper security practices and encryption, it's not that insecure. The biggest problem is that people don't practice security through isolation. They're downloading torrents and email attachments and visiting porn sites on the same computer they hold bitcoins.

Electrum's offline signing setup is actually super easy, and if you use QR codes to export transactions it's extremely secure. I'd recommend it to newbies over hardware wallets.

Maybe I'm just old school, but I really don't think the attack surface of hardware wallets is fully known. Plus centralized firmware, potential supply chain attacks, etc.

Yes, Gemini's terms prohibit transacting with gambling sites. This is because of US laws that prohibit businesses from transmitting money to/from gambling services on behalf of US residents. You may get away with it once or twice, but I would be careful. They may abruptly terminate your account without explanation -- not uncommon at Gemini.

The reason for sending coins through Binance is to prevent them (Gemini, Coinbase, etc.) from seeing where your coins are from. They'll have no problem with coins sent from Binance's wallet.

Exchanges have big targets on their back. The potential booty to be stolen by hackers is much larger than targeting individual users. With basic security precautions -- particularly offline signing or hardware wallet usage -- individual users can transact with a very high degree of security.

One of the arguments for Japan's licensing scheme was to make sure the exchange security setups were robust enough to protect Japanese investors. A lot of good that did, eh?

Expensive licenses make for huge barriers to market entry, but it doesn't create competent exchanges...

Tragic story, OP. I'm sorry to hear it. But you've misunderstood a crucial point: Your brother is a gambling addict. This problem has been around for ages, long before Bitcoin ever existed. What happened could have happened with dollars or Philippine pesos just as easily as bitcoins.

Are you planning on renouncing your US citizenship? The thought has definitely crossed my mind for tax reasons, but since my family is here, I'm concerned about being blocked from visiting. Renouncing citizenship (and dodging tax liability) means giving up your legal right to enter the country. You have to hope they'll issue you visas at their discretion.

Why all the emphasis on consumer transactions? Consumer payments aren't nearly the most interesting use case for Bitcoin. He said "payments" -- that applies to all P2P and B2B payments, not just retail goods/services. You can't possibly attribute every transaction in and out of exchanges as "traders" either. People need to buy bitcoins in order to even start using the network, and some portion of users will react to large price movements -- including consumers. According to Bitpay, price increases prompt increases in consumer payment volumes too, so it's not just traders.

Even at the deadest times of 2018, we were swinging between 150-250K transactions per day, so I think it's inaccurate to say "overwhelming amount." Either way, traders and exchanges are using bitcoins to transfer value, i.e. payments. Same as buyers and sellers on the darknet markets. Same as everybody else using Bitcoin everyday.

At 300-400K confirmed transactions per day, it's really not accurate to keep pushing this narrative that "no one uses bitcoin for payments." If that were true, Bitcoin's value proposition would be much weaker.

It's nice to see some recognition from the banksters re: "store of value" though. JP Morgan made this comparison in 2017, now the FED. How far we've come...

This probably isn't enough. I've read about people transferring through their own wallets with multiple hops and still getting warned by Coinbase (or having their account closed) for association with gambling sites. This probably happens on Gemini as well, it's just that Gemini often refuses to disclose their reasons for terminating accounts.

One way around this is using a competent mixer or sending coins through an exchange like Binance that doesn't regulate transactions to/from gambling sites.

It seems like Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency has ruffled a few feathers. Several Congresspeople immediately took up arms and pushed for a moratorium on the Libra project while they presumably work on hastily passing regulations on cryptocurrency. Now Trump is joining the party.

Sadly for US users and traders, this is a sign that unfavorable legislation is coming down the pipeline.

Here you go: https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/697532042553065472

I don't think he was necessarily wrong. The key is that the inflation rate is predictable and beyond the bootstrapping phase, low.

There are basically three options to secure a cryptocurrency: Inflation, fees, or demurrage. Each of them has their merits and the jury is out regarding which is best. In the coming decades, we'll find out whether Bitcoin's fixed supply model was the best choice.

Trump is tweeting about Bitcoin -- and Facebook's Libra -- and apparently isn't a fan of either one. About 1.5 hours ago, he published this series of tweets:


Link to tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1149472282584072192
Link to story from The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/11/20691188/president-donald-trump-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-facebook-libra

The whole Libra thing is beginning to feel like a Trojan horse. Congress immediately used it as a pretense for cryptocurrency regulation. Now Trump is signalling that he might support a clampdown as well.

I didn't see that coming. Not sure what to think right now!

I was worried Facebook's Libra would trigger unwanted attention and regulation of cryptocurrencies. Many Congressmen immediately expressed the need for sweeping and rigid regulations in reaction. It seems like Trump is following up on that same theme. This doesn't bode well. Everything we've seen recently from the SEC, FATF, OFAC, IRS... it smells like the crackdown is only going to continue. Trump obviously won't object to signing new legislation.