Probably failed negotiations. Ripple is centralized garbage, it all depends on the will of a few. Sure way to lose your wealth, trust the very banks and institutions that brought all the problems in the first place.

So if you want justification for your bad investment, you are not going to get it in the Bitcoin forum. You should sell that junk while you can and buy bitcoin, but not with Paypal because that's almost as fake.

"irrespective"? Why don't you get some Petros, see how far you get.. Oops, Trump prohibited you from buying them. There is your lovely centralization: It can be stopped, easily; because its centralized. Therefore its value is zero.

Bitcoin is easier to track (especially when you lack skills) so this is definitely not a reason. And remember that while say, 1% of criminals might use bitcoins, the vast majority of criminal activity still occurs in fiat.

One reason though, is the ease of movement. This is definitely an advantage to anyone, including them. You do not need to declare when you cross borders. This might ease some operations like laundering, but that doesn't make it Bitcoin's fault. They could ask you to prove the origin of your money, and with Bitcoin you can even give them a clear trail to follow, much easier than fiat.

Some people even suggest all public servants should exclusively work with Bitcoin, and by forcing them disclose their addresses, people could always follow the money they get and the money they spent.

Privacy is optional, you can actually do the opposite IF you wanted to. Its not private by default, so this makes it very ill suited for criminal activities. If anything, they would be giving authorities even more hints to track and trace.

If you ask me, i personally think criminal adoption is even slower than normal adoption, because of these issues. But, that doesn't mean they can't use it, it will probably increase as the world as a whole increase adoption. If everyone used gold coins, ransom for kidnapping would be asked in gold coins, like the Spanish did to the south American Inca ruler (and after they paid the ransom, they killed him anyway, typical).

So as much as you hate it, criminals are part of the world. No such thing as a "clean" money. The USD is probably the dirtiest money (even literally with the cocaine traces on its banknotes) simply because its the most widely accepted, not that it deserves it. Then logically followed with the most used coins like the EUR and the other fiats.

So rather than focusing in the medium, focus in the act. Its not Bitcoin, its the kidnapping (or whatever crime).

Not your keys, not your coins. Its as simple as that.

Don't buy with Paypal, because all you will get is some sort of promise that they are held by Paxos, now you have to trust two companies...

Bitcoin is about not trusting anyone. Therefore, when you buy bitcoins, they either enter your own wallet or you might as well assume you have been scammed.

Seriously stop thinking Paypal is "allowing the masses" access to bitcoin. Its actually the opposite, by doing this they are tainting Bitcoin's name. Bitcoin is not this, this is what the banks and other financial institutions do with fiat and assets all the time. You are not buying "gold", you buy some sort of paper that says you somehow own gold, but in the small letter it says you can't actually change it for gold (Just like the old US banknotes).

These two could even collude doing fractional reserve practices. This is not good.

Sorry but the crypto you "buy" in paypal remains in paypal. This is as useless as it gets... In fact, its a trap. So you think paypal is better than using your own wallet? I don't think so. And what good is a bitcoin that cannot be used, just sold again to them? This is so foggy, they can even "pretend" to acquire the coins while never doing so, or do fractional reserve practices.


Not to mention that, to even use Paypal, you need to have a valid credit card and perform a transaction with it to them which of course means fully disclosing your ID.

Did you know there are countries in this world where you just can't acquire a credit card? Its often hard to own a bank account. None of that matters with Bitcoin. This is the old system that needs to go away.

Excellent initiative, shame on them. May their potential users think twice before going for a service or wallet that will make them spend more.

There are some similar lists in the Bitcoin wikis.

There is no shortage of bitcoins. People are willing to part with some of them for the right price. This is how the free market is supposed to work, and its working just fine.

Of course Bitcoin production is limited, and minting was designed to slowdown more and more overtime, following the logarithmic curve seen in the historical gold mining activity. This ensure its value won't be less as time passes. It could even increase a bit as come coins are lost forever (actually the coins are never lost, just the keys that can move them).

Want Bitcoin? Hit some exchange and buy, or, mine while you still can. Things are working as planned, and there are no sudden changes to the rules that could dramatically alter the perceived price. In fact, the less it changes, the better.

The only agreement that would change things is adopting the Austrian school of economy teachings and stop everything they have been doing until now. Since i don't see them using actual gold as money, Bitcoin is the perfect solution for the world.

As long as they keep the Chicago school dogmas, nothing will ever change.

Opposition to this is immense, as it would necessitate the ending of the legalized ponzi scheme known as fractional reserve banking, and true money that doesn't lose its purchasing power overtime is money that people can hold for themselves, specially when its virtual and easy to hide and secure.

Thus, banks become far less useful, and that is your whole financial industry that is going to oppose this until they can no longer do it. Some will embrace it, many will close because they are redundant in the new post Chicago reality.

When the world understands and applies Austrian economics, you won't need banks, central banks, continental banks or world banks. People today think a Bank is a necessity because nobody is teaching them about that other kind of economy where rather than getting in debt to invest, you save from your own effort and then use that. If you think that should be obvious, your gov certainly doesn't.

Growth with an Austrian style economy is slower and everyone is scared to make the first step and get eaten by all the others in the global economy, but with time its steadiness shows when the next crisis hits the others but that place practicing Austrian economics remains unaffected. Like Bitcoin.

Want to end bubbles and crashes forever? Go Austrian!.

Now who is going to propose it first? Your cowardly politicians that would lose even more power? The very institutions that would become redundant?

No, this actually happens very often. From my country when things are normal (no pandemic) it was a common occurrence, a LOT of so called "mules" eat pure cocaine enclosed in latex glove fingers cut and sew. Sometimes these "fingers" break inside during the flight and kill the mule.

This smuggling method is also often used in prisons... I'm not sure if the TSA could catch it with their full body scanners, but since that's an American thing, people traveling from other countries, especially from the typical source - target destinations ie. South America to North America or Europe, often (but not always) with connection flights in a third country. Of course this is not the only way the cartels smuggle things in, but its a method they still use.

The guy was probably discovered because he would exhibit the same odd behavior drug mules often do.

Was someone still saying gold was better than bitcoin? In the physical realm, you always have these problems. Besides Bitcoin never moves, its always in the same place, it is you and your keys that move. The current legislation to restrict the flow of capital make no sense when there is no flowing going on at all. This is truly a world currency.

No, but the effect is not instantaneous. Bitcoin moves on its own regardless of the fiat space, tho in theory you are trying to assign a "value" in that very fiat that loses value every year per design. Now that the current administration is printing "a bit more than usual" its stressing their system to the point it might collapse and enter a hyper-inflation spiral. You just cannot expect to increase the amount of fiat and think everything else will be valued the same. If there are more dollars, things just cost more.

But again, the effect is not instantaneous, it can be slow to start. However, once it starts, it can be hard to stop. Maybe they have some contigency plan to burn dollars, but that would put them at risk of deflation, something they are even more scared from. due to their incomplete economic education, solely based in the Chicago school, or maybe even some keynesianism. The whole current financial system is a product of that, reserve banking, credit expansion, bubbles, crashes, all of it could be solved easily by following the Austrian school of economy teachings, which among other things, does not believe in money losing its value over time as a means of progress (debt based economy vs savings economy).

Try to see, how many cans of tuna can bitcoin buy, or cars, or whatever. Purchasing power can often explain things better. You could use it against gold if you prefer. Trump is playing with fire, lets see if he enters the history books as the one to finally destroy the USD.

I guess America needs another shakeup like the housing bubble crash that brought us Bitcoin in the first place. Sadly these things cause a lot of grieving, but there you have it, politicians and institutions have the power to destroy all your wealth overnight. Bitcoin is the only solution.

There is no reason to use legacy. I have been using bech32 nearly since it got added into Electrum. The incentive is there, you pay a tiny little bit less in transaction fees. Could this be some exchange that keep being the bulk users still with outdated systems in place? Maybe the pools as well?

Well usage is voluntary, same as LN; but personally i see no reason to keep using legacy or P2SH addresses. And yes, P2SH pays a bit more than bech32, so don't use the excuse that its "the same thing" and move everything into bech32. You will appreciate it the next time you move funds from a bech32 address, its cool and it works.

So, the author of this "article" is a long known Bitcoin basher, for no particular logical reason, except it might be a popular read to sometimes bash something popular and some "journalists" actually live from that...

The true title should be: "10 Reasons you cannot trust anything written by Motley Fool".

No, because that electricity wasn't very strong or useful for anything but hurting everything alive after a prolonged exposure. This was never about "free" electricity, more like you getting zapped was an unfortunate side effect of brute forcing global communications by artificially making lightning. You do know every tiny little lightning in the world is picked up by sensors worldwide nowdays do you? This tower was just a crude version of it.

Because its so wasteful, it also happened to electrify YOU, as in YOUR BODY. Americans are even scared of using an electric heating element attached directly in the shower head, which by the way is known in South America as Corona shower. The little tingling that produces while you take a shower would be tame in comparison if this thing was deployed. And besides, that would have harmed the advancement of electronics, it was mutually exclusive with many more important developments.

It was sensible to stop it. As many great ideas he had, not everything he made was useful. In the late 19th century, before electronics it kinda made sense, but not soon after. Oh this would have also polluted the radio spectrum too... And if you are worried about radio waves crossing your body, this would have been many orders of magnitude more invasive. I suppose people would have to stand on wood all the time or something, as touching the ground would give you a "tingle" if this was in use...

So no, leave the fantasies aside and accept the reality; this particular idea was wrong but he refused to let it go. What remains a mystery is why the thing burned, possibly sabotage, possibly the nature of the dangerous thing. Still communications thru electricity discharges was not meant to be. And i just cannot imagine how much power each tower would have required anyway.

To Tesla we have to give the credit of the invention of alternating current, for generation and motor motion. Anything that spins transfers energy much more efficiently this way, and long copper wire distances are not a problem unlike with dc that required a power generator in every block. For good or worse Tesla was obsessed (among other things) with 3, This was the perfect number for him and everything had to be perfectly divisible by 3, hence you see 3 phases but not 4, while that is technically possible to make. Also he wanted households to use 60Hz/240v, and if you sum that gives 300, perfect.

(Turns out America does this, but they added a tap midway of the transformer coil to get 120v out and be able to use the already many electric devices made for the 120~100v DC system). Weird, but ok.

Well if i was in Russia i would be looking to have tor working using obfs4. A vpn may work but can ultimately be blocked.

Why would a gov want to block exchanges? maybe to impose silly restrictions like you can only buy 8000 USD equivalent of bitcoin per month. The foolish politicians think they can force their outdated thinking to something that is simply beyond their control.

Sad news for Russians, but be smarter than your gov, i know you can do it.

We, the people of the world, are oppressed by the State, some a bit more than others, but oppressed none the less. Bitcoin is freedom, and they hate that, politicians want to dictate what you eat, what you watch, and what you do. Its in their nature, therefore you have to be ready to counter it.

Bitcoin is the end for the State meddling with the money itself (everyone's wealth). They cannot enforce this, there will be resistance. The Russians are no fools to technology, unlike their politicians. Perhaps the Ruble is on free fall, which would explain this absurd attitude, and this is the signal to get rid of it asap.

Also it is a good opportunity to petition certain sites to be friendlier to freedom enabling technologies like tor, do not treat tor users like abusers, many people use it precisely to reclaim their freedom. You can stop abuse without disabling tor access entirely.

This is reasonable, but it doesn't mean its "that" profitable. It might remain technically profitable for years to come, just not in most countries. And of course, if you already have "free" electricity, it remains profitable as along as the scale remains small, otherwise you may never see the ROI from investing in a large renewable installation unless its combined with you selling clean electricity to a factory or something.

This is nearly the last chance, and yes hashrate is rising like crazy. Some may consider it the last swan song. This action in itself is pushing more miners out of the game, and eventually themselves (the whale miners). Who remains? The smaller ones who can use free electricity or have some other business keeping the mining because the owner wants to, for example a power plant.

We know by Jan 2021 those 2000 S19s Bitmain promised to his 8000 units client will be delivered. What do you think the difficulty becomes then? And profitability? The guys working on margin will just stop, as it has been happening all these years.

This is like the peak oil theory. It not an on/off switch, it happens gradually, but it DOES happen. In fact its logarithmic, but i wont deviate.

So to remain "profitable" (while still paying the grid) your Kw/h will have to be 3¢ then 2¢, then 1¢, then 0.5¢, etc.

Yes, its possible to find gold in an asteroid, but not bitcoin. In a hundred years a lot of things may happen... How about using energy to make gold?

Hmm maybe they got a clue from reading Bitcointalk?

Or more likely there is a domino effect, after watching the likes of Square getting involved, they may have a mini "FOMO" that could be feedback looping themselves. I mean, the current administration is printing like there is no tomorrow, what could possibly go wrong?

As long as politicians/institutions have the power to abuse, they will.

Bitcoin is the best way to preserve your wealth in case the things that seem to be looming in the horizon do happen. And remember, if the USD falls, the EUR and other fiats won't remain unscarred. It'll be called "The monetary crisis of 202n" or something like that, and there will be pretty documentary like movies like "The Big Short" for the "Housing Crisis" of 2008 (which triggered Bitcoin's creation in the first place).

In other words, even some of them, will eventually learn the reason of existence for Bitcoin was precisely this.

As far as i know, there are only two valid URLs:

stratum+tcp://solo.ckpool.org:3333
stratum+tcp://rfpool.org:3334

There was a "denode" uri but seems to have gone down.

The Worker field is just the bitcoin address in case you hit the jackpot, you could optionally add the .workername if you want to distinguish the rigs by name, eg:

1PKN98VN2z5gwSGZvGKS2bj8aADZBkyhkZ.MyAsicName

Well according to https://solo.ckpool.org/ there are also IPv4/6 domains solo4.ckpool.org solo6.ckpool.org which i guess may be useful to force one over the other in case of a dual stack situation (or have both in case? but solo.ckpool.org should be enough i think).

I doubt they'll remove it, and there always will be someone doing unofficial compiles of it making it even worse. So its not like i actually expect the Electrum people to do it, but yes i wish they did put some giant red letters warning people to stop moving money with windows.

Of course you are not going to agree, or the world would already be different. People want to be robbed of their money by using the OS they like playing games with instead of learning something else. And while the user and the os have most of the fault, its always Electrum getting the short end of the stick. They mention Electrum in the headline (or thread topic), but they don't mention the foolish user doing foolish things windows users usually do. Its Electrum, and sometimes Bitcoin, the source of all evil, because with the banks this would never have happened...

See, the naive politically correct logic doesn't really apply here. Stay away from windows if you value your money, and learn using cold wallets already.

Well this is a bit better than the other concept of sea stead with a home that can't move very well on its own...

Except they are providing the small cabins for people to live in them permanently. Yes you should in theory do your eating using the ship's restaurants, it should be similar to living in a hotel or rather a building with small apartments?

The ship is 30min away from land. Not sure how well that goes for someone who needs or wants to do something not available in the ship. For certain type of lifestyle, say, a non family, single internet focused person, it could be more than adequate.

Panama does have a bit more lax laws. At least the famous Nordvpn is headquartered there for that reason; but its not like the USA hasn't bombed Panama before (last time 1989). I guess if the situation ever deteriorates they can always move the ship, assuming its engines are in working condition.

For foreigners, living in the tropics even if inside a cruise ship, might be appealing. The weather is essentially perfect all year around, sometimes it rains a bit but that's about it. It never gets cold to worry about winter or heating.

Since this ship is (now) registered to a port of Panama, for all intent and purposes, the laws of Panama apply. And I'm guessing this includes immigration law; which shouldn't be terribly problematic for people coming from wealthy countries.

Does this sound appealing to you? They do accept bitcoin, but its nor like they reject fiat. Renaming the ship "Satoshi" makes me wonder if they wanted to appeal to bitcoin holders at the last minute?

It might be even better to just buy an apartment on land, and you could choose from many other places in the Caribbean, some are even english speaking countries (or French or Dutch if you prefer). Did you know that Barbados is friendlier to Bitcoin than Panama? You can also literally purchase citizenship in Antigua & Barbuda (using Bitcoin!) for USD 200k, or invest 400k and get the citizenship plus (eventually) your money back.

I mean its not a bad idea, it might be even better if they actually moved the ship around, like an actual cruiser, around the world. Satoshi is actually just a japanese common name, but its obvious they want to attract bitcoin holders, maybe people wanting to live their gold retirement in the tropics...

---

Hmm boat cabin in the tropics, or a Tesla Model 3... Decisions, decisions...

Ya es tremendamente difícil hacer que el común de las personas comprendan Bitcoin, tras mas de una década de historia aun persiste muchísima desinformación e incluso calumnias de algo que sencillamente no entienden y temen solo por ser distinto a lo que usaron toda su vida.

Los gobiernos suelen componerse por grupos colegiados. Miren como ha sido de complicada la legislación sobre Bitcoin en el mundo, muchos han adoptado actitudes negativas, con excesiva regulación o incluso prohibición en algunos casos.

Y para que se tome una decisión como esa, hay que convencer a varios. Los políticos que suelen llegar a esos puestos, no suelen venir de una juventud ágil y vigorosa. Son el típico Trump que tiene toda una vida y fortuna realizada y no ve nada útil en lo nuevo.

No digo que no pueda ocurrir, es que en muchos lugares va tomar mucho tiempo, demandando incluso el reemplazo generacional de los integrantes de dichos gobiernos.

Paradójicamente la excepción sería en un gobierno autoritario donde, por algún motivo, se convenza a la cabeza, al monarca o dictador que de una orden ejecutiva y se cumpla sin mas. Porque no hay que hacer lobby convenciendo a medio mundo ni teniendo que ofrecer cosas a cambio...

Pero lo opuesto también es cierto, si el gobernante forma parte de la mayoría antes mencionada, se opondrá hasta que salga del poder.

En este momento mover reservas desde fiat a bitcoin sería una movida muy pero muy inteligente, el problema es que se van a tardar décadas en entenderlo, y para entonces podría ser demasiado tarde. Supongamos por ejemplo que el dólar americano se desploma, la reserva internacional de muchos países está en esa moneda y su poder de compra caería con ellas.

El oro y el bitcoin se mantendrían. Pero el oro cuesta mucho obtenerlo y custodiarlo, mientras que Bitcoin podría salvar a un país de sucumbir en la siguiente crisis mundial. De momento, no podemos hacer mas que enseñar a individuos, y dichas acciones podrían salvar tal vez no países pero si personas e incluso grupos familiares.

Lentamente saldrán testimonios así: "Vino la crisis, y todos en esta comunidad se fueron a la pobreza, pero una familia pudo sobrevivir. ¿Que hizo? Movieron a tiempo parte de sus ahorros a bitcoin". Y algún político dirá: "ah, como que ese Bitcoin no eran tema de hackers y traficantes, Deberíamos revisar nuestra actitud hacia él, hubiéramos tenido parte de nuestras reservas en bitcoin...".

Algunas cosas lamentablemente, solo se mueven con el tiempo. Como cuando un científico se atrevió a decir que la Tierra giraba alrededor del Sol y le obligaron a retractarse públicamente, a pesar de que el tiempo y los avances demostraron que era la verdad.

¿Es un respaldo por si algo pasa aquí, o es de intención maliciosa?

Para lo que dice OP como título de este hilo, realmente si se habla de listas blancas ese asunto de las direcciones "ligeramente distintas" no son un problema. En todo caso lo sería para las "listas negras".

Supongo que hoy en día se debe usar el lenguaje políticamente correcto de "listas inclusivas y exclusivas".

En las inclusivas (blancas) se define la lista de sitios a los que se tiene acceso. Obviamente si en la lista aparece bitcointalk, no aparece bitcointalksearch. En la exclusiva (negra) es el caso contrario, solo se bloquea lo que se define, por ejemplo bitcointalksearch pero no bitcointalk2.

La lista inclusiva (o blanca) se puede usar por ejemplo para que un menor de edad tenga acceso a internet limitado a las páginas aprobadas por sus padres. Cada página debe ser manualmente añadida en esta lista, sin dejar acceso a ninguna otra. Así que da lo mismo que inventen b1tcointalk o bitc0intalk, no son parte de la lista inclusiva, no accede. Y si yo se que hay ejemplos mucho mas sutiles con unicode, ahora que se permiten direcciones de dominio en unicode... Da lo mismo, si no está en la lista, no accede.

El phishing tiene éxito es en el caso de la lista exclusiva (negra) o cuando no hay filtro alguno. Ejemplo harto conocido en este foro son las carteras falsas de Bitcoin, como las que se hacen pasar por Electrum; pero existen de todo tipo y ámbitos. Ahora con las firmas y el https se ha mitigado un poco, además algunos navegadores mantienen una base de datos de sitios maliciosos pero siempre se debe estar alerta.