Of course it's a scam.

Here's the site in question: https://escrow-tech.com/

Exact replica of this site: https://tradenc.com/
And this one: https://kestrade.com/
And this one: https://thebitex.com/
And this one: https://ovextrade.com/
And this one: https://mybitmax.com/
And this one: https://hipbite.co/
And this one: https://unictrade.com/
And this one: https://coinbeaxy.com/
The list goes on, but I think I've made my point.

If you made an account there as you say, I hope you used a fake email and a password you don't use anywhere else. If you have reused a password you use elsewhere, I would suggest changing it immediately. Obviously don't send any coins or documents there, and stop dealing with the user in question immediately since he is a scammer.

I agree that a neutral is more appropriate than a negative here. See below:


I would call being a few days late a fairly small mistake, especially when the user in question did pay up in full and also kept in contact throughout.

Whether or not you think elmanchez is likely to scam someone in future is up to individual users. If you think he is, based on simply being a few days late here, then a red trust would be warranted, but I would argue that being a few days late is not an indicator of being likely to scam in the future.

If you think the government want to monitor crypto trades and transaction for any reason other than they want a slice of the cake and they want to make sure people are paying the ridiculous taxes they have set, you are kidding yourself. Government invasion in your privacy has less than nothing to do with protecting individuals, and everything to do with lining their own pockets.

Absolutely disagree. The whole point of bitcoin is that you can make transactions without relying on third parties. Why should I be giving out personal information freely to help governments monitor me, when I can quite happily make transactions without doing any of that? If you want your government to spy on you and keep a record of everything that you buy and sell, then you might as well stick to fiat.

If you have committed some horrendous crime, then sure, the state can invade your privacy to gather evidence. However, that's not what is happening. The state is invading everybody's privacy under the false guise of "stopping the terrorists" or some other such nonsense.

That's fine. If I have written something, I should be allowed to delete that from being viewed by all parties. No issues there.

If I have written something, and you decide you don't want to see it, then you should be allowed to delete it from your device. Again, no issues there.

However, if I have written something, you don't get to prevent that from being viewed by all parties, and you definitely don't get to delete it from my device. That's censorship, and I have no idea why anyone would use an app which lets third parties delete your data from your device without your consent.

That sounds annoying as hell, but I have a particular hatred of pop ups, notifications, dialog boxes, and anything else that opens up on my screen unprompted.

The images I have seen (such as on this page: https://brave.com/binance/) show a Binance ad and widget being displayed on the "New tab" page. Perhaps you need to update to the latest version of Brave before you see it? I have no desire to download it to find out, though.

As someone who only browses the internet via either Tor or a VPN, there's nothing (except captchas) more annoying than sites who region lock you based on your IP address.

Agreed, which is why you should stick to open source software like Firefox.

I actually think it's a good thing that there isn't a "one-click report" feature built in to the forum. It is extremely easy to mess up and fire off a bunch of inappropriate reports, so forcing people who want to use it to both have to spend some time setting it up, as well as have a basic knowledge of coding, prevents spammers and scammers flooding the report queue with nonsense.

Would a system which providers reporters with "Suggested comments" or a checkbox for the most common reasons not be fairly useful then, as it would serve to standardize a lot of reports, making it far easier for mods to CRTL + F for more serious reports? Even better would be a filtering system so you could automatically filter for all reports which were reported with same comment/checkbox.

What pop up is this? Are you saying Brave browsers is now serving its users with pop up ads?

If privacy is what you are interested in, you should realize that Chrome is the worst of the worst. Particularly if you are browsing while logged in to your Google account and have used that Google account to log in to a bunch of other stuff too. As much as I dislike the way Brave is going, if I could only choose between it and Chrome, I would choose Brave every day of the week.

Well, if this is a concern for you then set up two passphrases. Have a very small amount in the "base" addresses, and a little bit more in under the first passphrase - a small enough amount that it isn't a huge deal if you lose it, but a large enough amount to make it seem worthwhile to be using a hardware wallet. Store the main bulk of your funds under a second passphrase. That way you can given an attacker the base wallet and the first passphrase, and still have your second passphrase securing the bulk of your funds. Only if you have been careless enough to either broadcast the fact you have a second passphrase, or obviously linked all the wallets together using blockchain analytics, will an attacker even know a second passphrase exists.

Still worried an attacker might continue to push after you reveal the first passphrase? Then set up three, or four, or ten. Or store the majority of your funds on a completely unknown and hidden airgapped device or paper wallet. If an attack is targeted and well-prepared, as you say, then it makes no difference where you store your funds. If they know you own them, they can continue until you hand them over.

Some great news in some trying times! Really glad you managed to recover your coins.

Using a passphrase like this provides two benefits. If your 24 word seed back up is compromised, then as you just discovered, no one will be able to access your coins without also knowing or guessing your passphrase. You should keep your passphrase backed up separately to your seed phrase so if someone discovers one, they don't immediately have the other.

It also provides plausible deniability in the case of a physical attack against your person. You can unlock with the original PIN and show the attacker accounts which are either empty or hold a small amount of coins. The attacker has no way of knowing about additional coins which are hidden behind the secondary PIN.

I'm not familiar with any of those games, so you can correct me if I'm missing something, but all the features you have listed are entirely possible without using a blockchain. Indeed, other than a built in wallet, the vast majority of mobile games contain purchasable items, top ups, premium features, memberships, subscriptions, etc. Similarly, there are plenty of web wallets and apps, none of which use a blockchain to record your wallet balance.

Given that all these things are easily doable without a blockchain (and, in fact, more easily doable than if you chose to use a blockchain for them), then the question remains - why use a blockchain at all?

Before going any further, make sure you have your 24 word seed phrase accessible if you need it.

Have you followed Ledger's troubleshooting guide to get your devices out of the bootloader? See here: https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003117594-Troubleshoot-firmware-update

If you have managed to get your devices out of bootloader, then you should try interacting with them using Electrum instead of Ledger Live. This should work just fine on both Windows 7 and Windows 10. Again, there are instructions you can follow here: https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005161925-Set-up-and-use-Electrum. If you really want to use Ledger Live, then you could download Linux and boot to it from a live CD or USB stick, and try running Ledger Live on that instead.

If you really can't get in to them and desperately need to access your coins, then you will need to recover from your seed phrase. I would also suggest using Electrum. Be aware that once your seed phrase has been entered in to a software wallet, then it is no longer secure and you should set up a new wallet on your Ledger devices when you can.

Why does your game need a blockchain? What functionality does a blockchain provide that cannot be achieved without using a blockchain?

Most projects developed on blockchain technology are simply using blockchain as a gimmick, as advertising, as a marketing slogan, and these are the projects which fail. If you want to build a game using blockchain technology, then you should first have a very clear idea of what your game is going to do that requires it to use a blockchain.

This is generally what happens in other countries. The US is pretty unique in the ridiculous situation we are currently in where different states are having to bid against other states to buy FFP3 masks and other PPE from suppliers. All this does is line the pockets of the manufacturers and put frontline health staff at unnecessary risk.

Agreed, but there is more to consider than just masks. We need FFP3 masks, we need water resistant surgical masks, we need visors, face shields, gowns, gloves, hats, suits, shoe covers, hoods and head covers, air purifier pumps, etc. We need more hand sanitizer, more oxygen deliveries, more oxygen concentrators, more oxygen cylinders, more ventilators, more CPAP machines, more soda lime, more filters, more ventilator tubing, more drugs, more drug pumps, etc. Some of this stock could be rotated and used in general day-to-day healthcare, but not all, and all of these things (minus the mechanical machines) have an expiry date. It would still pale in comparison to the amount of money printing going on, but there is no way any government anywhere in the world would be happy to spend all this money every 3 years or so to be prepared for something which may never happen.

We've established this is a scam and OP has obviously no interest in discussing it. Can we please stop bumping this thread.

Not to mention that all medical equipment has an expiry date. No one is going to buy masks they may never use and just have to throw away two years later because they are no longer effective.

This is going to be commonplace in the coming weeks, I think. Until we have either a vaccine or significant levels of herd immunity, several hundred people gathering in a small area is always going to be a risk, and it only takes one infected person (even with no symptoms) to kick off another cluster of cases.

That article says about a company gathering all its employees together and telling them all to remove their masks. How stupid can you get? There's ending the quarantine and then there's just beening needlessly reckless.

Chrome is one of the least secure browsers when it comes to phishing. It obviously defaults to Google as a search engine, which is infamous for displaying ads at the top of search results from anyone who is happy to pay, including phishing sites and scammers, without vetting them for authenticity in the slightest. Just look at the number of topics in this board regarding phishing sites showing up at the top of Google results. If you want protection from phishing, then you are better off using Firefox with uBlock Origin installed, and DuckDuckGo, SearX, or similar as a search engine. And that's all without mentioning the fact that Chrome spys on and tracks all your online activity and sells that information to third parties.

If was trying an invalid seed phrase, the Ledger device would not accept it. With a 24 word phrase, there is only a 1 in 256 chance of swapping a word and the seed still being valid, so it is unlikely this is the case. It could be an entirely different seed altogether, though.

He reset the device during the update process, so any passphrases attached to secondary PINs will have been wiped. If the issue here is a passphrase, the only chance to recover the coins will be to remember the passphrase.

It's absolutely due to quantitative easing, and there is no "probably" about it. The Fed have already committed to buying up "unlimited" amounts of assets. They printed $2.2 trillion for the stimulus package last week, and already Trump is tweeting about printing another $2 trillion for infrastructure projects. It took the Fed 8 years to expand their balance sheet by around $3.5 trillion after the 2008 crash. We've now outdone that in a matter of days. Not to mention that they removed the requirement for banks to hold any reserves whatsoever, meaning that they can also create unlimited amounts of money out of nothing and give out unlimited amounts of loans.

There is no limit to what the markets can achieve when you can just print monopoly money endlessly to prop them up. The amusing thing is that even with all this stimulus, they still dropped more than bitcoin did.

Some of them, sure, but there will be a fair few companies which are bankrupted by this.

Advertising. Now everyone who uses Brave is going to be subjected to a big Binance banner every single time they open a new tab.

Brave browser started off as such a great idea, and has just become more and more awful as time goes on. Claiming to be anti-tracking, but allowing trackers from Facebook and Twitter to follow you all over the web. Claiming to be pro-privacy, but enforcing KYC requirements from a third party. Claiming to be anti-advertising, and then slap a Binance ad on every new tab for every user. It's clear that desire for more profit has now taken over as the driving force behind Brave.

Bitcoin is a drop in the ocean in terms of energy consumption and the release of greenhouse gases. Last year, streaming online pornography accounted for over 30 times more greenhouse gas release than the entire bitcoin network and all bitcoin mining did. With so many people currently on lockdown or quarantined within their own homes, that number is going to be several multitudes higher right now. While we get posts on here at least once a week saying that bitcoin is doomed because it isn't environmentally friendly, I've never once seen climate change campaigners try to convince people to watch less porn, even though it is by far and away worse for the environment than bitcoin is. I've never once seen climate change campaigners try to convince people to stop using cash, despite cash requiring huge amount of energy to print, circulate, move around in armored vans, destroy, replace, all the electricity use of ATMs and banks, etc.

Bitcoin is extremely efficient for what it does.

Yup. Factoring in the electricity consumption of games consoles, TVs, sound systems, and PCs, it absolutely dwarfs bitcoin. Making video gaming 1% more efficient would save more energy than the entire bitcoin network.