If only AI or blockchains would work that way.

While I have no idea how consciousness can be stored -- no one has, humanity hasn't yet the slightest clue what consciousness even is -- I'm fairly certain it won't be on a blockchain.

Maybe one day humanity will be able to externally store memories (beyond mere audiovisual reproductions) and minds (be they human or artificial) but that technology is probably still a few generations out and won't be technology we'll be able to fathom.

I think the "problem" with "blockchain the technology", ie. outside the context of cryptocurrencies is two-fold:

1) Permissioned blockchains still seem rather pointless. For most use cases classical distributed databases (or distributed systems in general) are doing a much better job. Even in the iRobot takedown scenario the main properties that were missing are security and robustness. That you can do in a distributed manner without using "blockchain the technology", in a much more reliable and efficient way at a much lower cost.

2) Permissionless blockchains without PoW-based consensus algorithms so far are often either not really permissionless or not really secure or both. Most of the time you either have (a) committee-based validators or an other form of central coordination which mostly rids of permissionlessness -- which leads back to (1) above. Or (b) variants of Proof-of-Resource like PoS that -- as of now -- are still mostly work in progress in terms of security and robustness.

I guess there could be ways in which permissionless blockchains could support AI and vice versa but I think the overlap where they would complement one another are rather limited. I'm afraid in most cases you'll end up with either a shitty AI or a shitty cryptocurrency.

I'm afraid for LN-based Bitcoin tokens you'll have to keep an eye on RGB:
https://github.com/rgb-org/spec

As far as I know neither OMNI nor XCP (Counterparty, a similar Bitcoin-based token project) are currently LN-capable and so far I'm not aware of any announcements in this regard.

USDT is probably the most famous OMNI token, just as a reference. Also it used to be called Mastercoin, so it might well be that you have already stumbled over this project in the past, with its old name.

Bitcoin's emergence and conception has been fairly transparent and well documented (apart from satoshi's identity, obviously).

The work that preceded and laid the foundation of Bitcoin (hashcash, bit gold, etc) is no secret either and happened independently of any government agencies (often even going as far as opposing governmental interference).

As such it's highly unlikely that Bitcoin was created by any such agency.

But then again maybe that's what the chemtrails make me believe.

Boeing is kind of a bad example in that case though. Their whole Boeing 737 Max mess killed hundreds of people and was mostly caused by questionable management decisions -- ie. having pilots rely on warning lights that weren't enabled by default [1], horrendly cheap outsourcing to developers that completely lacked the expertise [2], all of which lead to software errors that could have been easily avoided.

That being said, while manual testing is also important for creating stable software, I agree with pooya87 that in this case testing could be easily done using mocks. At least I personally can't think of any edge cases where using 2 tBTC would make any difference to using 0.002 tBTC.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/business/boeing-737-max-warning-light.html
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers

To be fair even non-scammers sometimes fail at building up a good blockchain and real applications. Crypto is one of the few environments where legit operations can pivot into a scam within a heartbeat.

Also keep in mind that having a white paper does not automatically make a legit project. Sometimes it's just scammers going the extra mile to appear legitimate.

Additionally, even once you've successfully circumnavigated the cesspool of scam projects, remember that crypto is still a high risk environment. You don't have to get scammed to lose money in crypto.

Oh wow, not bad! Looking at how A1 is planning on accepting AliPay and WeChatPay as well later this month [1] it's quite interesting that they are spearheading with crypto first.

For now it appears to be only a pilot project running in some of their retail stores however, so paying your phone bill with Bitcoin is not in the possible... yet.

[1] https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000107558893/a1-shops-nehmen-kuenftig-auch-bitcoin-an (German only, sorry)

I think this article assesses the situation fairly well. Hosting data that has the potential be converted into illegal content is not the same as hosting illegal content itself. The Bitcoin blockchain is just transaction data. There's no image or media files unless you willingly extract them.

Well put. I think a lot of misconceptions regarding LN stem from mistaking the latter for the former. They seem to believe that LN smart contracts are governed by laws similar to legal laws (ie. a social construct based on trust and thus easily broken) while the laws smart contracts are governed by are more akin to the laws of physics.

The evolution of Bitcoin mining could make a nice section. From early 2010 PCs over specialized GPU mining rigs to the very first ASICs. Add a FPGA setup and ASICMiner USB sticks to break things up a bit.

Maybe a timeline including relevant milestones for a short intro on the history of money. From early barter to grain as money in early Mesopotamia (including the first ledgers [1]) to coinage to medieval banking [2] to fiat money to cryptocurrencies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_accounting
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking

I'm sorry to say, but in that case you're not using a wallet but an exchange that pretends to be a wallet. Or rather, it may be a wallet, but it's not your wallet. It's the exchange's wallet.

It's not your wallet unless you and you alone control the private keys. At which point you neither face limits nor KYC procedures.

Yep. Bitcoin Core didn't contain a HD (Hierarchical Deterministic) wallet until 2016:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/8035

Before this implementation Bitcoin Qt didn't derive its addresses from a seed but at random (hence why you had to regularly backup your wallet file).

If you want to create actual tokens rather than just paper wallets I think Counterparty [1] and Omni [2] are what you are looking for. Both run on the Bitcoin network; Omni most famously known for Tether (USDT) and Counterparty probably best known for... ahem... Rare Pepes. I'm not sure how alive either of these projects still are though.

As far as LN is concerned you probably still have to wait for the likes of RGB [3] to enter the stage.

[1] https://counterparty.io/
[2] https://www.omnilayer.org/
[3] https://github.com/rgb-org/spec

EVERY WALLET CAN SEND AND RECEIVE BTC WITHOUT LIMITS. THERE IS NO TRANSFER LIMIT WITH BITCOIN. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT.

THE EASIEST WALLET TO GET STARTED IS PROBABLY ELECTRUM. DOWNLOAD IT FROM ELECTRUM.ORG.



WHEN PURCHASING 500 BTC IN ONE DAY YOU PROBABLY NEED TO GET IN TOUCH WITH EXCHANGES DIRECTLY. IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY FOR EXAMPLE BITFINEX.COM OFFERS OVER-THE-COUNTER TRADING THAT ALLOWS FOR SUCH AMOUNTS. THEIR REPUTATION HAS BEEN RATHER MIXED LATELY SO MAYBE GET IN TOUCH WITH COINBASE.COM OR KRAKEN.COM INSTEAD. EXPECT A THOROUGH VETTING AND VERIFICATION PROCESS.

WHEN HANDLING SUMS OF THAT SIZE CONSIDER PURCHASING A HARDWARE WALLET FIRST THOUGH. EITHER BUY A LEDGER NANO FROM LEDGER.COM OR A TREZOR FROM TREZOR.IO.

What's your cold storage set up? Are you using Armory, paper wallets, something else entirely...?

It's kinda risky to move coins to cold storage without knowing how to get them out again.

I think its lacking ease of use is LN's largest detriment. Even on-chain payments still seem like rocket science to many people, despite having come a long way from just a few years back.

I'm fairly positive though that we'll get there eventually, just like wallet software improved over the years. With more and more users getting familiar with cryptocurrencies and LN ease of use improving we'll end up somewhere viable sooner or later. We still have a long way to go though.

Once we're there though -- which is probably still years from now, so the developer community will need a long breath -- liquidity, routing, etc likely won't be a problem anymore.

To extend on Ryutaro's quote regarding HD wallets: Imagine these wallets like a tree -- which is where the "hierarchical" part comes from. Each leaf is an address. Each small branch is a user account. Each big branch is a cryptocurrency. Each big branch grows from a trunk that grows out of a seed.

In more technical terms, the seed is random binary data from where in the end every private key is derived from. As a user you will commonly see this in form of a BIP-39 mnemonic seed phrase:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki

Using this seed, the tree is "grown" according to BIP-32 and BIP-44:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0044.mediawiki

With each cryptocurrency branch having their own derivation path according to a coin type as registered and documented in SLIP-44:
https://github.com/satoshilabs/slips/blob/master/slip-0044.md

Note that it is possible to generate the public keys and the corresponding addresses independently of each address' private key. This is usually referred to as a watch-only wallet and is necessary for security to allow for cold storage while still being able to automatically generate addresses.

Also note that the actual implementation may widely differ from exchange to exchange.

A newbie account promoting a previously unheard of crypto wallet without any reviews. Not suspicious at all. This is either a scam attempt or a thinly veiled attempt at intransparent social marketing. Either way not trustworthy.

To any newcomers reading this: Do not follow the link above. Do not download the wallet posted above. Just because it's on the App Store, doesn't make it safe. Many people have been scammed by malware wallets on both iOS and Android. As far as cryptocurrencies goes, Apple's and Google's screening process is simply insufficient. Only use wallets with a good track record.