I would agree that this drop does seem to be mostly due to Coinbase. It makes it even more ridiculous that they were spamming this many transactions for this long.

Now that the difficulty has adjusted downwards by almost ~16%, the average time for the last 100 blocks is 9 minutes and 54 seconds, so essentially back to "normal". We will be able to tell over the next few days if the number of transactions stays fairly static exactly how many transactions Coinbase were spamming on a daily basis. Although obviously if there are any big swings in price again in the next few days, then the number of transactions is likely to increase.

Still, it's good that it looks like we've just knocked 80k unnecessary transactions a day out of the mempool. Are there any other big exchanges or services which are spamming the network like this?

What I would like (and what was discussed in iasenko's thread he linked to) would be an indicator to show if I have already reported a post. Most of my "bad" reports are from unintended duplicate reports for spam. Once you've reported enough barely coherent one or two line nonsense, it all blends in to one, and I find myself forgetting which posts I've read and reported before.

In terms of a warning for the user, I would like that too but only if it was actually backed up with some sort of temporary ban. There are several users chronic spammers I have reported dozens of times, and no further action is ever taken against them.

suchmoon's script ([HACK] One-click mod report, not for the faint of heart) essentially provides this, albeit it entirely customizable so the user can define their own buttons. Perhaps some optional forum generated ones would be a nice way to encourage people to start reporting, who otherwise may feel intimidate or unsure about the whole thing.

Tor if you need something approaching anonymity. Firefox if you don't. Install uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, and Privacy Badger.

Google Chrome is spyware. Avoid it.

Not only that, they only even offer end-to-end encryption for 1-on-1 chats (but as you say, disabled by default). All group chats are not, and cannot be, end-to-end encrypted, meaning anyone with access to Telegram's servers can read all your communications, and Telegram can hand over or sell those communications to anybody they like, if they wanted to.

Signal is great. I've been using it for years. It initially took a fair amount of convincing of friends and family to make the switch from WhatsApp, but with more and more stories hitting the headlines about the widespread privacy invasion of various companies, (not least of all Facebook who own and operate WhatsApp), that convincing has become significantly easier over time. It's the only messaging software I use.

Yeah, this is weird bug. I've tested that page on three different browsers (Firefox, Tor, DDG) on three different devices, using two different internet connections across multiple VPN servers/Tor nodes, and am completely unable to reproduce it.

Is there maybe some add on or extension, or maybe some tweaked setting, which is common across all the browsers you used which could be interfering in some way?

I would disagree with this, because the same post can be reported for multiple different reasons.

Lets say someone reports a post for spam, and it gets buried in the queue and not dealt with for a few days. In the meantime, someone else comes along and notices that the post actually contains a link to malware. Reports for these reasons are usually dealt with more quickly, but the second user would be unable to report the post, leaving other forum users potentially at risk of clicking on malware in the meantime. It could even be abused by scammers posting links to malware, then reporting their own post for some frivolous reason (such as it being in the wrong board), thereby protecting their posts from deletion at least for a short while.

Furthermore, I've even reported the same posts twice - the most common situation would be reporting it initially for spam, and then again later when I discovered it was actually plagiarism.

That's not quite accurate. They have servers in many countries all around the world. They are headquartered in Switzerland, and therefore subject to Swiss privacy laws.

ProtonMail is good, but if you want complete protection for your communications then you should really be using PGP.

You can either use Tor-over-VPN or a Tor bridge to get around this.

A good VPN is a good idea, and I use one 100% of the time I'm not using Tor, but it is not 100% protection as you are suggesting. You still have to completely trust your VPN provider to not be monitoring or deanonymizing your traffic.

Correct. There is no way to be able to load all your addresses in to the same wallet whilst maintaining the protection of a hardware wallet, so you have to set up three separate wallets, one for each derivation path.* On the instructions I linked to, on the screenshot which shows picking "legacy (p2pkh)", you simply pick the other derivation paths to create those wallets.

Essentially, yes. As a side effect of keeping your private keys off the computer, any transactions have to be signed on the device, which means you get an extra security step of manually confirming the transaction on your hardware wallet's screen prior to it being made. This can help protect you against clipboard and other malware.

---

*You can set up a wallet which will let you view all your different addresses in the same wallet. This is called a watch only wallet. You would do so by importing the addresses or the master public key from each wallet in to a new wallet, but such a wallet won't let you spend anything from those addresses - you will need the normally set up wallet (as in the instructions I linked to) to do that.

Nonsense. Do you browse any illegal sites online? If the answer is no, surely then you will have no problem posting your entire internet browsing history on your Facebook page for everyone you know to examine? You just said so yourself - you aren't doing anything illegal, so there is no need for privacy. Why do you post on this forum under an alias and not your real name? By your own logic, the fact you are trying to hide your real name can only mean you must be trying to do things which are illegal, right?

What has paying taxes got to do with anything? If you are worried about the tax man catching up with you, then simply pay all the taxes you owe. This changes nothing about why you should maintain your privacy.

I have been using peer-to-peer exchanges for years and have never had any issues. BISQ in particular has has (as far as I am aware) a grand total of two transactions which ran in to issues with scammers performing chargebacks, and they responded by removing the implicated payment methods so this is no longer possible. Compare this to centralized exchanges which have literally thousands of reports of accounts being locked, accounts being hacked, coins being frozen, coins disappearing, coins not being credited properly, unannounced KYC requirements, KYC documents being hacked, KYC documents being sold, exit scamming, shutting down, servers being hacked, etc., etc. I would argue that centralized exchanges are far more risky than peer-to-peer ones.

What would you classify as a "legit" merchant? Coinbase are probably the biggest bitcoin related company in the world. They were actively selling their customers' private information to third parties without their knowledge or consent. Binance have been hacked multiple times, both for coins and for KYC documents. Being "legit" means nothing.

Of course it is. Privacy should be a fundamental human right, and you shouldn't be willing to give it up just for the sake of convenience. I also do nothing illegal with my bitcoin, but I am still very careful and very strict with my privacy. Almost everyone in the world is strict with their privacy in some form or another, but for some reason all sense goes out the window when it comes to sending KYC documents to complete strangers online.

The argument that you don't need privacy if you aren't doing anything illegal is also known as the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument. Essentially it says if you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about if everybody and their aunt sticks their nose in to your personal and private information. Which is of course utter nonsense. If you have nothing to fear, then why not post under your real name? Why not share your real address and phone number? Why not share your email addresses and their passwords? Why not share your cloud storage accounts and their passwords? Why even have curtains on your windows? Why even wear clothes? After all, you've got nothing to hide, right?

Nonsense. It doesn't matter whether or not you have anything to hide or whether or not you are doing anything illegal. Privacy is a basic right, and you should protect it.

You might want to have a read of this topic, and my reply to it, for some more information: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5214200.0

There are three main derivation paths, and any hardware wallet is capable of generating addresses under any or all 3 simultaneously. The addresses generated are entirely separate, and so any bitcoin visible under one derivation path will not show up under a different derivation path. It is entirely normal, therefore, that the balance of your m/44' addresses will be zero despite depositing coins to your m/49' addresses.

The three different derivation paths are as follows:
m/44'/0'/0'/0/0 - P2PKH addresses, also known as "legacy" addresses, which start with a "1"
m/49'/0'/0'/0/0 - P2SH-P2WPKH addresses, also known as "nested segwit" addresses, which start with a "3"
m/84'/0'/0'/0/0 - P2WPKH addresses, also known as "native segwit" or "bech32" addresses, which start with "bc1"

Using your KeepKey with ShapeShift will always use the m/49' derivation path, and therefore always generate nested segwit addresses starting with "3", while the Chrome App will always use the m/44' derivation path, and therefore always generate legacy addresses starting with "1". This is explain in their post here: https://medium.com/shapeshift-stories/segwit-enabled-for-keepkey-746c914a37d9. As I mentioned above, these two sets of addresses are entirely separate.

If you want to use a single piece of software to interact with all your addresses (including native segwit), then you could look in to using your KeepKey with a wallet such as Electrum. There are instructions on doing so here: https://keepkey.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001453430-Electrum-Integration-with-KeepKey

---

Edit:
Typo. Fixed, thanks.

I use the wallet watcher from Blockonomics here: https://www.blockonomics.co/views/wallet-watcher.html

It is free to monitor up to 100 addresses. It supports both individual addresses and importing extended public keys to monitor all the addresses in your wallet. It will send email notifications whenever an incoming or outgoing transaction is detected. It also has a couple of other nice features like showing a graphical history of your balance over time.

There's quite a lot of crossover between this topic and my topic here: List of advertising shills. Mods please review and ban as appropriate.

I didn't get a firm answer from any mods on that thread, unfortunately, but after pushing repeatedly I did finally manage to get some of the worst offenders such as JessicaVL and her alt accounts banned. There are plenty of new accounts doing the exact same thing I have reported many times who are still being allowed to spam, however.

I disagree. As far as I am concerned, it is legalized plagiarism, and these users should be banned. Look at some of theymos' previous posts regarding plagiarism:


I don't think it matters whether you copy and paste somebody else's post and add nothing of your own, or whether you copy and paste somebody else's post and add nothing of your own, but include a link at the bottom. The mindset behind these two things is exactly the same - put in the bare minimum amount of effort in order to earn some worthless tokens/fish for merits/hit a post quota/whatever. Including a link or not doesn't change the fact the user is "here for the wrong reasons" and using the forum as a "dumping ground".

This kind of legalized plagiarism adds nothing of value to the forum and these users deserve to be banned.

I am not disagreeing with you on this part. I also think USD is turning in to a joke. Having said that, the supply isn't unlimited per se. There is a still finite amount of USD in circulation, so the supply does have a limit when we look at a snapshot. The worrying thing is looking to the future, with the Fed committing to printing however much money is required. The supply won't actually be "unlimited", as the Fed will stop somewhere, but the supply will be heavily inflated and the value of USD will be heavily diluted. What I am disagreeing with you about is that your proposed energy-based money would be anything other than completely subjective, as not only is energy not a constant value (as I explained in my last post - 1 KWh of energy is worth vastly different amounts depending on the state or form it is in), but there is no objective way to accurately measure the energy required to create a product.

Supply and demand is what gives a product or a currency value, and it is no different with bitcoin. Bitcoin's fixed cap, however, overcomes the problem of USD and all fiat and makes it a superior currency.

The bottom line is that Electrum does not have any official support pages, services, email addresses, Telegram, etc. If you have questions or problems with using it, then your best bet is to ask them publicly on this forum, and not via private message with someone you don't know, regardless of the medium they are using or how "official" their name sounds. See here for more information: https://electrum.org/#community

Telegram in particular is a terrible program. It is a complete scam fest, and your chats aren't even end-to-end encrypted, meaning Telegram can read anything you type and share that information with anybody they want. I have no idea why anybody continues to use it.

There are definitely only a few valid words left. I started the script at the start of "L" (for LeGaulois ), and let it run through all L, M, N, O, P, Q and R words for a total of 595 entries. The only valid code it found was "motor" for 20% off.

I wouldn't worry about missing this promotion, though. They have some sort of sale on every other month it seems.

Oh, for sure. They are definitely suppressing their numbers, which I explained in my post. But that doesn't change the fact their lockdown was far more swift and far more restrictive than anything we have seen in the west.

Largely because they locked things down so quickly. It's going to be months now before we are at the stage of getting back to normal because we waited too long to act. Even now there are still offices, schools, bars, restaurants, etc., still running.

The most amount of money printing we have ever seen, with the Fed committing to unlimited QE. More money, fewer goods, less spending. It can only lead to hyperinflation.

No. There will always be a high risk that it will fail, otherwise people would be double spending all the time and everyone would be waiting for multiple confirmations, instead of some services accepting zero confirmation transactions.

It's not a case of publishing it faster, but rather, the speed at which it propagates through the network. You need the first transaction to be broadcast to nodes which are used by the intended recipient/victim or the block explorer of their choice, and you need the second transaction to be broadcast to nodes used by miners, but not those nodes which have already seen the first transaction. You could theoretically work out optimum entry points through significant trial and error, but doing so would be costly, time consuming, wouldn't guarantee anything, and could change at any time as nodes come online and drop offline.

No. Once a transaction has been signed and broadcast, it can't be changed to become invalid (excluding transaction malleability if the transaction is built upon a previous unconfirmed transaction, but that doesn't apply here).

Energy is the least precise one. A kilogram of gold is worth more or less the same regardless of where it is, or if it is flat or brick shaped, or if it is stored as 10x 100g bars. Conversely, a KWh of energy stored in a hydrogen fuel cell is worth a vastly different amount to a KWh of energy stored in broccoli. They are not comparable.

You keep repeating this but it simply isn't true. If it were true, then price would follow the difficulty or the hashrate, which it doesn't. When bitcoin was $20k, the hashrate was 15 EH/s. When bitcoin fell 85% to $3k, the hashrate more than doubled to 40 EH/s. More energy was being used to generate less valuable bitcoin.