A block consists of two parts. An 80 byte header and an array of transactions (the array is preceded by its item count).
The header consists of:
The random input you have in mind is the fixed 4-byte nonce at the end of the block header that is an arbitrary value.

The merkle tree you said above is not part of the "block content", the block actually contains the transactions as a simple array. Transactions come one after the other.
The merkle tree is not stored anywhere either. The tree is only computed using the transaction's hashes and discarded after we compute the "merkle root hash" which is used in the block header.

These two pages should be helpful too:
https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/block_chain.html
https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/block_chain.html

A node has to first validate a transaction with the consensus rules not just policy rules. Otherwise they can end up with an invalid tx in their mempool and end up broadcasting it to others too.

Miner computes hash of the block header that is a fixed size structure that includes version, previous block header's hash, merkle root hash (computed from the transactions in the block), block time, target and a nonce.

Difficulty changes based on the time it took to mine the last 2015 blocks every 2016 blocks.

Technically they only need to broadcast the block (or the header first), the receiving node computes the hash from the header itself.

Data clustering[1] is the term used to describe the process of placing data objects into same groups or "clusters" usually for analysis. In Bitcoin world, cluster algorithms is one of the methods used by blockchain analysis services where they place transactions they think are related into a group or "cluster" trying to find a link between them hence deanonymizing the addresses/coins on the chain.

Having received your payments in an address that belongs to a centralized exchange means the transactions linked to your address share a lot of characteristics with a lot of other transactions from the same CEX wallet of other users, hence it can place it into one of those "clusters".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis

The ChainAnalysis company has a free service called https://www.walletexplorer.com/ that shows them.

Sounds like another attempted FUD

The fact is that according to Islam Bitcoin is seen as a currency which means by nature it is neither halal or haram. What you do with the currency and how you acquire it, decides which one. For example if you steal it from someone, it is haram. But if you get paid in bitcoin for an honest work it is halal. That simple.

There is also nothing wrong with trading or with interest. Some people are confusing interest with Riba (closest translation is Usury). It is basically "unjust, exploitative gains made in trade or business", although Wikipedia is not the most accurate article but you can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba

Don't take it personally and nobody is accusing you of anything. But if you hang around in the Bitcoin community as long as the rest of us, you'll realize that it is a common theme that new users come here asking for help to recover the password for a wallet they have. After spending a lot of time trying to help them we finally realize that the wallet they claimed to own was actually something they had bought on the internet. Such files are fake and do not contain a single satoshi, however they are modified to show addresses containing large amounts of bitcoins.

When you say you have a wallet file but you haven't set its password, it is a logical conclusion that there might be a chance that the file you are talking about could be one of those cases. Hence the question.

If we can get past that and be sure that this is indeed a real wallet file that you owned (not bought/found on the internet) then we can start on trying to figure out if there is any hope of recovering it by narrowing the search-space for that password.

I'm with ETF on this, the table looks more like comparing between apples and oranges right now. Some of the parts that say "no" for something like bitcoin core should say "not applicable" such as the entire hardware or payment method (to buy) section which proves it is comparing apples and oranges.

Also I quickly looked at bitcoin core column and a couple don't seem to be right. For example year should be 2008-2009 since it is the continuation of the original software released by Satoshi. Also in the "BACKUP / RESTORE" section, if you mean BIP39 or mnemonic it should be clarified before saying no, otherwise bitcoin core supports creating a backup and restoring the wallet from it.

P.S. Why did you choose Parmanode as the only alternative full node in the list? It is brand new (~6 months old) and very unpopular.

You still insist on giving opinion about a place that you can't even point to on the maps let alone having an understanding of the region or the people in it. All because you read some propaganda on the internet and believed it!

Take all the pictures you posted. All of them are either the aftermath (showing abandoned vehicles on the side of the road) or some people just running for reasons that are not shown in the videos and yet you call it "Hamas killing civilians". Why don't you post a single frame of the actual shootout? It is simple, that's because it would negate the propaganda!

Here is an example. The black arrow shows a Palestinian fighter and the red arrow shows an Israeli woman who is taking shelter beside him from the Israeli terrorists bullets that are flying in her direction. The source is clear on the top right side of the picture and you can find loads more there and all over the internet:


Of course the Israeli terrorist sympathizer have spread so many lies that it is hard to keep up. Trying to debunk every bullshit is not only exhausting but also pointless because the terrorists keep murdering children in Gaza while everyone is busy debunking their lies that is being spread by the brainwashed masses. By the time you debunk one, they've already spread two dozen more and by the time you debunk those they've drowned you in lies.
Here's another in case you haven't heard or decided to forget:

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At the end of the day "keyboard warriors" aren't changing anything, so I'll probably stop trying to debunk obvious lies as the information is already out there for anybody who bothers looking.
As I said elsewhere, bullets is the only language terrorists and their supporters understand. For example the two cruise missiles that USS Carney received last night in the middle of Red Sea was a better message than all the propaganda debunking on the internet combined... That's the only remaining way the Genocide can stop.

Tensions in West Asia went up a notch overnight.
- I counted at least a dozen attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria with US casualties (eg. 2 KIA in Deir ez-Zor). Some of the US bases that are targeted are around the energy fields in Syria that US has been stealing their resources. For example the base in Koniko (gas fields). The propaganda arm of CENTCOM has only admitted to two drone attacks and some injuries*!
- The biggest news came out in the middle of the night. The armed forces of Yemen do not mess around. They've shot at least 2 cruise missiles in the north direction although the details has not yet come out. We don't know if the target was USS Carney in Red Sea or occupiers position in occupied Palestine.

* The official statements were too mellow when it says "we are vigilantly monitoring the situation" whereas in the past they "vowed retaliation", "a harsh response", etc. not that they ever dared do anything for the other ~6000 times US bases were attacked in the first half of this year, but at least the statements were different when they admitted to being attacked.
https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/3561125/us-forces-defend-against-drones-in-iraq/

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P.S. Of course this all means oil price got solidified above $90 and it's not gonna come down any time soon. With the possibility of rising higher if the tensions keep growing like this.

There was the "normalization with Israel" that was canceled (or rather went behind curtains again) the day Saudi Aramco went up in smokes when Yemen attacked it, then the Saudi regime came to Iran on all fours with China brokering the meeting.
However, they still have relations ("behind curtains") with the apartheid Zionist regime and sell them energy even if some deals here and there may have fallen through.

I see what you mean but I respectfully disagree. Lets see two facts:

First when you say "someone from Israel" we are not talking about natives of a region in the world who have roots there. We are talking about immigrants who came from different parts of the world to occupy other people's homes by force and at gunpoint.

Secondly, they claim to have democracy and in a democracy people are both aware of and are OK with what their regime does, specially when they willingly and knowingly migrate to live under the rule of that regime. The Zionist regime is globally recognized as apartheid, not yesterday but many years ago. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the regime is also not hidden to anyone.
So when the regime commits atrocities openly and proudly, the blood of their victims is on all their hands. If they don't want that, they should go back home.

It is interesting how desperate United States is for energy that they have lifted sanctions on Iran's strategic partner and only sanctions on Energy Sector and not anything else like the basic needs of the Venezuelans that they can't have access to just because they are sanctioned!
US is not even releasing the money they stole from Venezuelan people (the money blocked in US banks) that could significantly improve the country's economy!!!

As for elections, to me it sounds like another US backed coup is on the way to try and install a US puppet in this oil rich country! I hope Maduro knows what he's doing.

In any case I'm very curious to see how this all turns out. And whether Venezuela would actually increase production or is it even capable of increasing production to replace the millions of barrels of oil per day that has already been cut by the OPEC countries and may be cut more in the future!
Statistics say no! The amount of bpd that Saudi alone has decreased is more than the ATH of Venezuela oil production...

Actually the process is much longer than that. It started in early 2000's when US decided to invade Iraq and kill over a million people while wasting about $10 trillion in West Asia. That was the start of the downfall of United States as the only hegemony of the past 30 years in the Old World Order.

Maybe you should first familiarize yourself with the regions you want to give opinion about then start speculating about what might have happened. Or maybe you are just repeating some random stuff you read on the internet!

The Palestinians didn't kill any "innocent civilians".
For starters there may be some innocent civilians in the capital of the occupied Palestine on in occupied cities like Quds, etc. But the people you see in the settlements around Gaza and West bank are armed militia strategically placed there as a proxy between Palestinians and the occupiers in the rest of the occupied land. They are handpicked men and women armed to the teeth who are categorized as extremists and regularly shoot Palestinians for fun.
These militia are part and parcel of the Israeli expansion program where they silently murder the actual innocent civilians and keep pushing forward, decreasing the size of Palestine and increasing the size of the fake "country" they built on their graves.

On October 7 the Palestinian resistance started sweeping the military bases around Gaza in the settlements and in the clash between the resistance and Israeli military and militia there was exchange of fire and it had casualties, mostly on the the Israeli side both because they have the weakest ground forces in the world and also they were caught off guard. BTW in Israel women are also part of the military.

Of course it is easy to make the mistake when you see a picture like this where an "unarmed innocent-looking" man barefoot and wearing underpants is being dragged by the neck by 2 angry armed Palestinians.


What they don't tell you is that people like this are military personnel not "innocent civilians". For example this one is the biggest terrorist there is. He is Major General Nimrod Aloni; who I believe is the commander of Israeli Defense Forces called "Depth Corps" that is designated to keep an eye on Palestinians inside Gaza and eliminate any of them that may think about joining the Resistance.

All these cases are for actual criminal acts (or accusation of it) not for something as arbitrary and laughable as "discussing Bitcoin on a forum". Not to mention that Bitcoin is not banned in China in the way you think it is; mining bitcoin, CEXes that were laundering money with 0 fee, ICOs, etc. are banned.

Besides, there is a higher chance that US arrests theymos like they did BurtW than there is China arresting the Chinese board's moderator.

This sounds more like propaganda against Bitcoin.

For starters, Israel "enemies" aka people whose home Israelis are occupying aren't purchasing their weapons. They are manufacturing it domestically and mostly inside the prison known as Gaza. For example their rockets are made out of the ancient sewage pipelines that ran from Egypt into Palestine.
Additionally majority of their weapons are spoils of war. These are stuff Palestinians have taken from their enemies aka the occupiers. For example they now own at least 4 Merkava tank they seized recently.
Almost all the guns Palestinians have are also Israeli made, either acquired by taking it from their military bases or buying it from Israeli soldiers!

Well in your story, Israel is not a "government". It is an illegitimated regime that is more of a terrorist organization than a government.

Bitcoin's benefits are for individuals not for countries (on big scale). Of course the case of El Salvador is slightly different because we are talking about a very small country with a very small economy and lots of problems. So impact of Bitcoin there can be considerable specially if the plans their president has (tourism, foreign investor, etc.) works.

The number of signatures required depends on your setup and it can be anything, even zero signatures but that gets too technical.

You have to find an actual scenario first and then design a script (smart contract) based on that scenario that predicts special cases like one of the cosigners passing away. Your script does not have to be a simple multi-sig, it can be a complex one with branches/conditionals, timelocks, etc.

For example in a company you can define a "senior authority" that has full control over spending the coins without needing anybody else. Then there are multiple "junior authorities" each with partial control that can spend the coins together. So two branches, one with a single sig and another with a 2of2 multisig for example.

First of all there is a huge difference between bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. In fact as one of the biggest bitcoin believers I have made similar statements before. 99% of cryptocurrencies are pure garbage so they have no value whatsoever which means you should be prepared to lose all your money when you buy them!
This is not some super secret that nobody knows!

Not to mention that every single country (their government or baking system) has already issued a similar warning specially after 2017 when the shitcoin market grew a lot.

It's hard to say. On paper issues like this (as I explained above) are rational. But you should try to find their motivation for issuing these statements.
We know governments seek full control and surveillance. Something as decentralized as bitcoin takes both of that away. So they seek to regain some of that control. This is why they insist on talking about bitcoin and altcoins at the same time and regulate them together whereas they should be completely separate.

For example ICOs (and all the alternatives all the way to NFTs) are banned in a lot of countries but bitcoin is accepted as a legal currency.

Well different facts are being mixed here. Bitcoin was never supposed to replace fiat. It is the alternative option and we already know altcoins are jokes.
This means this concern has no grounds.

Besides, the financial system has to change. It is not a good thing that governments keep playing with fiat supply (print money out of thin air) increase interest rates (screw up the economy by causing recession) etc. just because they are incompetent to keep the economy stable.

You can't analyze markets like this, specially from a very narrow point of view. For example if you zoom out from the charts you can see that Gold price is only recovering from a big dump last month. In other words the current gold price is not new, it is what we had in last week of September.

When analyzing bitcoin there is also a lot of things to consider. For example bitcoin's market is a lot more manipulated than gold's. So obviously you can't expect same behavior. The rise is clearly being suppressed these days despite market's readiness for rallying.

As for war time, it is not yet war time! Despite the extreme brutality of the Israeli terrorists, this is a very localized war in a very small region. So unless it expands and gets a couple of countries involved you can't call it "war time".
So the world is still being affected by the very high interest rate that is literally sweeping all the capital from other markets into the shitty bonds governments are selling because that is more profitable. Unless interest rates are dropped we may not see any major rallies in either gold or bitcoin markets.

It's official guys. Harry Potter has joined the Palestinian cause because according to people like this, Palestinian rockets are now magical. In the past 15 years 12000 Palestinian rockets had only killed 33 Israeli and the damage of each and every one of them were tiny like breaking some windows and putting a "boo boo" on the side of a building, damage up a car, etc.


But now Harry Potter has cast a magic on their rockets so one single "malfunctioning" one is enough to kill over a thousand people, destroying an entire (hospital) building, throwing body parts in a one block radius and at the same time brainwash thousands of other Palestinians, reporters, international aid workers, etc. that were physically close to the event to think that the rocket was an Israeli missile even fabricate the specific sound of the 1 ton MK-84 bomb they all heard.

I knew Harry Potter's magic was strong. I just didn't think it is this strong

I just don't know why they aren't using these "magical rockets" on Telaviv, Haifa, etc. to cause a similar devastation...

Also it's not like in the past 13 days we have been seeing hundreds of images like this coming out from Gaza:
It's all either Harry Potter magic or Palestinians bombing themselves...


/sarcasm_over

The Saudi regime is a US backed dictatorship that is forced to support Israel. However, the cost of this support is seen over the past 12 days. Not to mention the people of Arabia support Palestine, despite the dictators. This makes things very complicated.
Not to mention Yemen, the country Saudi regime invaded (9 years) and has a beef with them is ready to find an excuse to break the cease fire and bomb them back to stone ages.
In short the Saudi regime is forced to support Palestine at least with empty words, they don't actually support it.

Two days ago I would have said we are far from the possibility of an embargo, but because of how things change very quickly today we are much closer.

The tensions are rising very fast after the Israeli terrorists murdered over a thousand innocent people taking shelter in a Red Cross sanctioned hospital last night.

Even more so after Biden practically signed the death warrant of every single CENTCOM servicemember by officially saying they stand with the terrorists.
US bases in Iraq are being shelled as we speak (at least two airbases the Al-Harir and Al-Asad). Also Jordanians have stormed both US and Israeli embassies. Same in Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, etc.

The events of next 24-48 hours can determine the size of this war. For example if US decides to respond to these small attacks, the attacks on US bases would increase in number and strength. Like what happened a couple of months ago in Syria.

Its the story of prominent Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh all over again. The Israeli terrorists murdered her in cold blood and denied it for months while same people on the internet kept repeating their propaganda denying facts!!!

This is exactly why I said "bullets must rule" otherwise arguing with propaganda is pointless. The Israeli terrorists will continue the genocide until they and their supporters are stopped.

I'm sorry but this statement is beyond stupid for many reasons!

For starters the damage is clearly the result of a heavy bomb like the 1 Ton MK-84 not the very light and tiny rockets the Palestinians use that barely weighs 50 kg.

Secondly the Israeli terrorists have already taken responsibility for this attack, officially and proudly!

Thirdly all the videos, satelite images, and the international reporters on the ground and thousands of eye witnesses are the indisputable proof that the heavy bomb was dropped from an Israeli airplane.

This is not even the first time Israeli terrorists attack hospitals, schools, international humanitarian buildings, press buildings and the press reporters, ambulances, etc. They've been doing it for the past 75 years.

There are a couple of ways we can look at this.

First is the fact that the statements people make publicly does not necessarily reflect the reality or what they truly think. For example I have said many times over the past 9 years that I've known Bitcoin that many of these rich a-holes already own bitcoin and are constantly buying it. There is a high possibility that Buffet is among them.

Another way is that Buffet or his company did not invest in Bitcoin, the investment is in another business that deals with cryptocurrencies.
Let me put it this way, imagine a centralized altcoin exchange that lists a lot of shitcoins, does it matter that they are all garbage if the exchange is making a lot of money by offering a service?
That's how Buffet sees things. In other words even if he didn't like cryptocurrencies he knows there is a lot of money to be made from centralized crypto-related services.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter what these people say or do, people should just stay away from anything centralized and stick to buying as much bitcoin as they can before it is too late