electronic cash was long ago exist its all over the web just go do research its very easy.
Of course Bitcoin didn't exist in a vacuum. But name one project that came even close to be the p2p equivalent of cash prior to Bitcoin. Just one. |
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While it probably was one of Bitcoin's first "Killer Apps" and helped spread the word, Bitcoin probably would have started to gain traction even in a world where Silk Road never existed.
Keep in mind that the Bitcoin exchange rate never broke USD 280,- during Silk Road's lifetime. Also Bitcoin was starting to see acceptance by clearnet organizations (eg. Reddit and WordPress) when it first reached a 3 digits exchange rate so it was probably the move from legal grey areas to legit companies that kicked off Bitcoin's upward trajectory.
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newbie Alen_btc BANNED is plagiarizing Andreas M. Antonopoulos' "Mastering Bitcoin" book: Copy:Securing bitcoin is challenging because bitcoin is not an abstract reference to value, like a balance in a bank account. Bitcoin is very much like digital cash or gold.You can lose it, misplace it, have it
stolen or accidentally give the wrong amount to someone. In every one of those cases,
the end-user would have no recourse, just as if they dropped cash on a public sidewalk.However, bitcoin has capabilities that cash, gold and bank accounts do not. A bitcoin
wallet, containing your keys, can be backed up like any file. It can be stored in multiple
copies, even printed on paper for hard-copy backup. You can’t “backup” cash, gold or
bank accounts. Bitcoin is different enough from anything that has come before that we
need to think about bitcoin security in a novel way too.
The core principle in bitcoin is de-centralization and it has important implications for security. A centralized model, such as a traditional bank or payment network, depends
on access control and vetting to keep bad actors out of the system. By comparison, a de-centralized system like bitcoin pushes the responsibility and control to the end-users. Since security of the network is based on Proof-of-Work, not access control, the network
can be open and no encryption is required for bitcoin traffic.
The most important principle for bitcoin developers is de-centralization. Most devel‐ opers will be familiar with centralized security models and may be tempted to apply
these models to their bitcoin applications, with disastrous results.
In the longer term, bitcoin security will increasingly be implemented with hardware tamper-proof wallets. Unlike a smartphone or desktop computer, a purpose-built bit
coin hardware wallet has only one purpose and function - holding bitcoins securely.
Share your thoughts as well on this...thank you
Original:Googling any of the above sentence fragments will lead you to Google Books or similar results of "Mastering Bitcoin" |
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People loathe Facebook yet the still use it. People loathe PayPal yet they still use it. So Libra might become a success after all. Regardless of that I'm not sure who Libra's target userbase is. Crypto-enthusiasts are unlikely to be converted and normies have other micro-payment-services available that are easier to use than Libra. As it is it seems to be worst of both worlds.
Merchants, as they prefer stability over speculative risk. Having a 1 to 1 with a US dollar, means they can accept it and then convert to fiat at any time, they are not forced to immediately convert to fiat to avoid price falls like we have seen in the past few days. While Tether is a scam , Libra will not be. So it is actually viable. That's the thing though, the Libra will not have an exchange rate of 1:1 to the USD: The Libra has the potential to mitigate this problem by being pegged to a diversified basket of national currencies that could provide ordinary folks in developing nations a better alternative to local currencies and the dollar to store wealth and invest. It could be substantially immune to capital controls. So while not as volatile as Bitcoin it will still act like a foreign currency and not a native one, with an exchange rate dependent on who-knows what metrics. |
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Funnily enough I think Bitcoin will have rather a lot to thank Facebook for in the coming years. Libra is going to consume government hate for quite some time to come while BTC continues to do its thing. It's actually quite funny how Facebook's Libra is jumping in between Bitcoin and the government to catch every bullet imaginable. Libra arrived like a chucked hand grenade. Bitcoin's progress is way more subtle and harder to upend. Facebook is so universally loathed that Bitcoin looks like a wholesome and entirely neutral thing in comparison. People loathe Facebook yet the still use it. People loathe PayPal yet they still use it. So Libra might become a success after all. Regardless of that I'm not sure who Libra's target userbase is. Crypto-enthusiasts are unlikely to be converted and normies have other micro-payment-services available that are easier to use than Libra. As it is it seems to be worst of both worlds. |
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Jesus, even mentioning Bitcoin in the same thread as MLM makes me shiver. I believe we're past the comparisons of Bitcoin to pyramid schemes, thank you very much.
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Here, have a Tampermonkey script that will hide every post except for OP and merited ones: (function() {
'use strict';
const links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
for (let i = 0; i < links.length; i += 1) {
if (links[i].hasAttribute('name')) {
const reply = links[i].nextElementSibling;
const spans = reply.getElementsByTagName('span');
let isMerited = false;
for (let j = 0; j < spans.length; j += 1) {
if (spans[j].innerText === 'Merited') {
isMerited = true;
}
}
if (!isMerited) {
reply.style.display = 'none';
}
}
}
})();Install the Tampermonkey Chrome extension (or whatever the equivalent to the browser of your choice is) and have the script run for bitcointalk.org. The script will probably break at the simplest of edge cases but maybe it's a starting point  |
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't even the most basic building block of this decentralized sales agency easily broken? Simple enough. If B tries to sell the widget to a different address he is immediately fired. If A does not pay B then B just quits.
. A
. |
. v
. B
Add more.
1) The problem of trust doesn't seem to be solved. What prevents A from repeatedly not paying their employees? (ie. A does not pay B so B quits, so then C joins. A does not pay C so C quits, so then D joins...) 2) The problem of verification doesn't seem to be solved. What happens in case of a dispute between buyer and seller? (ie. B sells and delivers the widget but the customer claims the item has never arrived or is faulty) |
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I think it's fair to say that Bitcoin as it exists today is not quantum secure, period. Pieter Wuille https://twitter.com/jb55/status/11335330681976750101. The first owners of possible computers with the ability to 'frack' the privatekey will use these computers only for shalecoins. (Coins with no holder) [...] No such thing as "fracking" private keys of old unused coins in the foreseeable future, even accounting for quantum computing. Note that Pieter Wuille's quote above refers to the public key of an address being exposed while sending a transaction from it. Old addresses that have never seen any outgoing transactions have never exposed their public key and can thus not be "fracked" by quantum computers. Neither Bitcoin nor quantum computers work that way. |
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You can also ask the seller for their xpub key and use it to derive a fresh payment address for each individual sale.
I didn't know about xpub key, thanks. But after some researches, it seems that it's not a good idea to share your xpub key, so I can't really ask this from my sellers. There's 2 risks involved when sharing your xpub key: 1) Whoever has access to the xpub key can track your transactions 2) Whoever has access to the xpub key and to the private key of one of its derived addresses can derive the private keys of its other addresses as well (1) is precisely what you want to achieve, (2) should not happen as long as the seller keeps their private keys safe -- apart from very special scenarios where they explicitely export a single private key usually either all their private keys are safe or none of them are; regardless of whether they shared the xpub key. So while you shouldn't share your xpub key with random strangers on the internet, the scenario that you describe would be a typical use case for it. Alternatively, if you don't feel comfortable with asking sellers for the xpub key, you could also have them send you new addresses in batches. Having them send you e.g. 100 addresses a month would still be less cumbersome than them sending you a new address 3 times a day. Not optimal, yes, but unfortunately as far as non-custodial address generation goes you can't do much better than using the xpub key. |
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I think we both have a different understand of the term 'implementation'.
If i write python code which uses a well known libary to implement AES encryption before sending it via the internet and the server receives it and uses the same libary to decrypt it... that's my 'own' implementation (in my terms). Ah, gotcha. Fair enough. By the way.. if you follow the specification properly, your cipher text won't be vulnerable to attacks.
Except even the most competent developers make mistakes and even the most trusted implementation can have vulnerabilities (see Heartbleed for example -- not exactly a MITM attack but I think you get my point). We're all just human after all (presumably). |
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Which bank are you with, if you don't mind me asking? Would be nice to be aware of which banks tend to cause trouble with crypto.
AFAIK there's no country in the EU where trading crypto itself is illegal, so I guess their main concern is the source of income.
If you bought the coins on an exchange export your trade and transaction history and provide your bank with said file. If that's insufficient get in touch with the exchange and explain the situation. If it's a properly run exchange they'll have a bit of experience with what the banks require.
If the income is from mining / staking / running a masternode I guess provide them with screenshots of the mining pool / staking / node interface, ideally linking them to blockchain transactions that can be linked to the coins that you sold on the exchange. If all they ask is for screenshots that should be easily solved. If screenshots are insufficient I guess you'll have to report the mining / staking / masternode profits for income tax purposes (get in touch with a tax advisor, if in doubt) and tell your bank that you have filed your income tax report and are waiting for your local financial authorities to confirm. For your bank it can't get much more official than that, but obviously you might have to proof your source of income to your local financial authorities further down the road.
Note that while verifying income from mining / staking / running a masternode may be difficult for non-crypto-users it is not an illegal source of income in any EU member country (at least as far as I'm aware of) -- given that a proper income tax report has been reported (the nature of which varies wildly from EU country to EU country so you might want to get in touch a tax advisor).
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Please note that most crypto systems fail due to a flaw in the implementation rather than its formal specification. So for all intents and purposes, that: [...] own encryption implementation, or anything.. ...is pretty much as bad as that: Of course you have to use proven concepts / algorithms and not create your own crypto protocol  But i thought this was obvious. Just sayin' |
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So if I understand properly, the "correct" way of doing such transactions (in a way that it's not too hard for both parties), is really to ask the seller to send the money to one of my address, and then forward the amount to the seller.
Thanks for your help.
Not necessarily. You can also ask the seller for their xpub key and use it to derive a fresh payment address for each individual sale. This way the seller retains full control over their private keys and you can both generate and monitor payment addresses. Essentially you'd have a watch-only wallet while the seller stays in full control of their funds. |
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Regardless of whether such a change would ever make it into Bitcoin -- what are your arguments against the current block subsidy algorithm and what are your arguments for applying a continuous, trailing coin issuance rate?
I'm a bit on the fence myself so it'd be interesting to hear the opinion of someone who has spent a bit more time thinking about block subsidy rates.
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Don't use RPC in an untrusted network or build something around it (e.g. simple encryption).
Don't use RPC in an untrusted network. Period. Set up a VPN tunnel between your node and the client accessing the RPC interface, if you must. "Building something around it" may only provide you with a false sense of security rather than offering actual protection. |
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Remember that all this talk about regulation is only relevant as long as fiat gateways are required. Stay within a closed crypto-ecosystem and you don't need to bother with AML or KYC, as was intended. For the most part you're not even breaking any laws by avoiding AML / KYC this way.
Sometimes I feel like people have lost sight of the big picture.
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[...]
When bitcoin is on a bull run it does have corrections but this was one of the biggest falls in the past year which means it is no longer going up, don't get me wrong it doesn't have to go down neither, maybe it will stay here for months, that is still possible but going up seems more unlikely than going down right now and the highest possibility is staying at the same price. If we can manage to just go above 15k once again then the bull run could return back very quickly very easily.
The 2017 bull market saw comparable and a couple of harder drops than this one though, yet it kept on going for quite a while: 1) From USD 2800,- to USD 1800,- in May 2017 2) From USD 3000,- to USD 2100,- in June 2017 3) From USD 5000,- to USD 3000,- in September 2017 4) From USD 8000,- to USD 5500,- in November 2017 And that's ignoring some of the wilder fluctuations that occured as a foreplay to the 2017 bull market. Just saying. |
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I would not be surprised if sooner or later (if not already!) some sellers can give out devices that look like and behave almost like normal Ledger / Trezor / whatever, but containing a small modification allowing them find out your private key or seed. Somebody can mass produce them and sell them cheap. They'll get back the investment when they'll start stealing your money.
Non-genuine Trezor Ones have already been spotted in the wild: https://blog.trezor.io/psa-non-genuine-trezor-devices-979b64e359a7I'm not sure if any malicious intent (beside selling fake products) has been ascertained though. They might have just been 1:1 copies sold by a third party without any changes whatsoever. In general Trezor firmware integrity is ensured by the wallet web interface. IIRC Ledger has a similar mechanism in place. Hardware integrity can not be ensured this way though -- I'm not sure if it would be even possible to verify hardware integrity on the software level -- which still leaves room for threats like the Evil Maid Attack: https://wiki.trezor.io/Security:Threats#Evil_maid_attack_-_replacing_Trezor_with_a_fakeWhat IF:
- I use official ledger hardware on a compromised PC?
- Isn't Ledger's official hardware prone to clipboard copy-paste scams where you copy a BTC address and a malware detects and changes it to another address? Is such hardware safe from it?
- Hardware wallets such as the Ledger and Trezor will protect your private key from compromised PCs - They will not protect you from clipboard copy-paste malware. It's still up to you to (1) compare the address on your computer with the address as displayed on the hardware wallet and to (2) if possible, verify the address over a separate channel (ie. if you received the address via email, check on your mobile device as well or make a phone call with your counterparty) |
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Sorry for your loss OP, but please also note that cloud mining contracts -- even "legit" ones -- rarely ever make a profit. Cloud mining contracts are usually set up in a way that may look good to beginners, but in reality are way too expensive to pay off or even make money on top.
If that bad experience hasn't ruin crypto for good for you I'd recommend sticking around the forums and trying to get a better understanding of how crypto works, how to keep your coins safe and what "businesses" to avoid.
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