it depends on the version of Electrum that was used to generate this seed. for example if it is an old wallet from 1.9.8 for example even if you upgrade your wallet to 3+ your seed is still the same and back then it was 13 words.


this is true about almost all forks but it depends on the fork and its rules so it can not be true for all.
some of these forks have weird rules for example there was one saying coins has to be used in the past X blocks otherwise it was part of the premine! and nothing is stopping a fork to spend your coins on their chain after X amount of time. a fork is enabling new rules after all!

you didn't have to download ThomasV's public key manually and import it manually. instead you could easily use command line to directly receive the key from servers and import it at the same time.
just use recv-keys command:
you can add a keyserver to this command too if you want to receive from a specific server, for example when mit servers are down. use "--keyserver" after gpg.

none of your reasons make any sense! as @stompix said above, being new has nothing to do with whether or not they are going to fail. and what the hell does grain of sand and few hundred billion has to do with anything here?


this is your worst one among the three! you are using a meaningless attribute and then play around with numbers! market cap means absolutely nothing. and you know what i am going to put it like this for you: saying market cap is X so it is big and bitcoin has Y% of it is like saying the cryptocurrency market weights 238 Kilo Grams and bitcoin smells like daisies. and i am not making a joke, using weight and smell for a cryptocurrency is the same as using market capitalization for it.


not really.
there are a some ideas that seem cool and there are shitloads of pretty advertisement for a lot of them mostly to get more money in their ICO or get a nice pump for their coin. i have not seen any actual application among any of the altcoins!

it doesn't have to be one person or group behind these bullshits that we keep hearing. it is because of the fact that almost everyone has already realized that the news can affect bitcoin price a lot.
as a result many of them try spreading what suites their needs. for example if they want to sell at a profit they spread good news about how bitcoin is awesome. and those who want to buy back at the bottom or short bitcoin spread the FUD.
many of these idiots go against the market and spread their bullshit and obviously fail but those who do it with the market trend win.
sadly there are enough weak hand idiots who are affected by this!

"crypto mining"?! i am interested to know if they really mean mining of  cryptocurrencies in general or mainly bitcoin mining because the article seems to be talking about bitcoin alone and also this part: "Russians are mining in their garages. We want to do it on an industrial scale." is pretty strange. it seems like they didn't understand the fact that mining should be a decentralized thing that anybody can do in their homes not rely on some third party for it.

in any case it is good to hear other countries focusing more on mining.

the worst part of this action of them is that not only they never gave any warnings to these users but also they used to say they have no issue giving service to people from these countries. i have seen proof that people contacted them from these countries and clearly asked them if they can sign up and make a deposit and they said "it is ok". then all of a sudden without a warning they decided to change their mind and rob them.

stop wasting your time and buy $20 worth of bitcoin already! that is a much faster way of reaching your goal to "start trading" as you put it.
if you don't want to buy then sell something that you have for bitcoin. go to goods board of bitcointalk and start a topic selling something you have for bitcoin and use that to start your trading.
if you don't want to do that either, then start doing some job or offer some service to get paid in bitcoin. for example you can do translating jobs, coding if you know how, designing, photo editing, and lots more depending on your skills.

i was expecting a faster rise after the $10k resistance was broken but it seems like there is no FOMO buying this time and we only have a slow rise which is a lot better because it is much more solid than a bunch of weak hands buying bitcoin out of fear but it means the $20k ATH will take a longer time to be reached.
good news is we won't get that many "bitcoin is a bubble" FUD for some time now.

you are looking for something that doesn't exist in my opinion!

can US dollar decline lead to more bitcoin adoption? yes but it is not the reason for bitcoin's rise. bitcoin is rising nonetheless because of the adoption that it has but at the same time economical changes affects bitcoin too. bitcoin is also an investment so it is only logical to think people look to it for a place to store their money and make some profit when economy is not good.

the difference is that storing your bitcoin with them, means relying on a third party. and if i am not mistaken their vault is in a way that you do NOT control the private keys. they know how much you own and you have to go through them to get your bitcoins.

a cold storage on your own means simply storing something like this:
which for all you know can contain millions of dollar worth of bitcoin in it.

* that is an Electrum seed phrase encrypted with AES-256 CBC with no padding using "b4746d5e8a4c2ccd1f3f2c594fa0c10c" as password.
#enjoy

i don't see it like that.
what happens is that bitcoin rises as it is being adopted more and more. and during this time all or most of the money is in bitcoin market that is why altcoins usually get dumped during this time.

then because bitcoin can not rise forever and every healthy market needs to slow down it opens up some chances for altcoins to get pumped. so some money travels from bitcoin to altcoins to pump them.
but what happens next is that bitcoin keeps its price up and at least have a correction but altcoins get dumped down.

i still don't understand who in his right mind would want a "vault storage" for storing their bitcoins when you can very easily store bitcoin yourself in a much safer way!
usually when you choose a "vault" it is to store something that you can not store in the same manner. for example storing your cash in a bank account because keeping it at home is dangerous. but with bitcoin there are lots of options for cold storage which is even more secure than a vault with a third party.

first make sure you have the latest version of Electron because that is the bitcoin cash wallet not Electrum. the latest version right now is 3.1.2 https://www.electroncash.org/

it should automatically connect to BCH nodes, there were bugs in previous versions but they are fixed now. if you are not connected to a BCH node then try doing it manually from your Network setting inside Electron wallet.

let it sync, restart the wallet if necessary, and if nothing worked try restoring from your seed or using the portable version.

if these simple solutions didn't work it might be a new bug. if it is then show us the address you have imported and the transaction that your wallet gets stuck on.

if someone has privacy concerns then SPV wallets may still not be the solution for them because they will still be relaying on third parties who can know their identity including all their addresses which are connected, their IP address and how they use their coins.
because for example when you use Electrum you connect to a server (an Electrum node) and ask for your transaction history for ALL your bitcoin addresses and they can see your IP. you can change your IP of course but they still connect your addresses.
full nodes are the only solution for this.

if a big surge were to happen, it would have started already right after it hit $10,000 and price would have reached a much higher price such as $14,000+
but it seems like market is favoring a much slower rise for now. maybe because the FOMO buyers are still scared since they were burned badly in the past few weeks that they sold in the dip and lost money. but they never go anywhere so a big surge is still a possibility but it may take a higher price than this.

not 100% of it but yeah.
i do believe that a big part of the market is just speculators trying to be ahead of the market. but of course it is not all of it. there are actually people selling bitcoin (liquidating) in Asia to cover their travel costs so it is not completely nonsense.
it's just a theory of mine though, don't shoot me

check the links that were given to you so far, and remember that you don't have to choose one right away. you can for example install multiple wallets (you can do it on a virtual machine if you don't want to install them on your main OS) and try them out. see how they work, see if they are user friendly and satisfy your needs. no funds are required in this step.
then you can send a small amount to the one you finally choose, try receiving/sending with that wallet and learn.
finally when you are confident enough, send a larger amount that you want to store in that wallet to it.

it is not exactly as OP puts it but i believe that it has always been like that meaning bitcoin appreciated a little more whenever other markets were performing poorly like when Stocks market is dumping! but at the same time i always think it can also be a coincidence because bitcoin is rising overall so even when Stocks market is rising bitcoin is still rising.

and it is never a safe haven because of the high volatility of it. bitcoin is still a high risk investment. and altcoins are even worse because of their much higher level of manipulation.

i am not sure that we can technically be sure that the coins in the known burn addresses are unspendable!
but the only 100% sure that i know of which leads to making some coins really unspendable is to put it in a OP_Retrun output. because it is possible to set an amount for it and it is 0 wherever you look but it can be non zero and it will effectively "burn".

when we are talking about bitcoin then any method of storing it which involved a third party specially when you are not the only person controlling the private keys, is a terrible choice.
you should never trust any third party with your bitcoins. bitcoin is designed in a way that you do not need them. you can store your keys on your own in a very secure manner. and there are lots of options, from very cheap like a paper wallet to a more expensive option such as buying hardware wallets. and if you are holding a considerable amount of bitcoin (anything more than $1000 worth of it really) then you have to take storage seriously.