I see a lot of threads like these in Project Development -

Coinsbee.com - Buy gift cards with about 50 crypto currencies! - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5182163.0
   
Ethconomy.io - Buy Everyday Goods and Services Using Crypto at a Discount - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5193584.0

directBit.org - Buy bitcoins easily and super fast! - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5193180.0

I am curious as to what the staff team's opinion is on these threads? If they are allowed to belong in Project Development, what differentiates these threads in such a way that allows them to be posted there rather than in Currency Exchange, Goods, Service Announcements - forums that are dare I say intended for this purpose?

Of course if a staff member comes and says that they in fact should be in different sections, then from now on I'll happily start reporting threads like those mentioned.

Project Development is my favourite section on the forums because it's a good way to find topics that actually interest me, amongst the cesspool of topics created simply to provide an easy opportunity for people to farm posts for signature campaigns. I think that there should definitely be an implicit requirement that if you post there you must actually be actively developing something and perhaps seeking feedback. It shouldn't just be a way for people to get another thread announcing their finished or even near-finished product.

They don't have a concept of 'amount' like you're referring to. You're not going to find anything in the protocol which says "update the addresses balance" or anything like that. All the ledger does that is relevant here is tracking the inputs and outputs associated with an address, it never calculates the balance of an address. I'm not going to engage beyond this point. I understand what you are trying to say but that doesn't change the fact that your explanation was not technically sound and what you were suggesting is misleading.

My opinion is that the satoshi isn't worth enough for it to be used as the main unit of account for transactions at the minute, you don't need to divide prices that finely. I do like the bit (100 satoshis) as a unit of account, at the current price of ~$8000 USD/BTC that means that one bit is worth around 0.8 cents. That's a perfectly reasonable quantity to use. mBTC on the other hand is worth too much at $8 a pop to be used as a unit of account in transactions.

Paying for something that costs $0.20 USD in a shop (e.g. a cheap sweet in a 1st world country or something more substantial in a 3rd world country) could either cost you 0.025 mBTC, 25 bits or 2,500 sat. I think it's pretty easy to see there that the simplest unit to work with is the bit, it's valuable enough that most of the time the numbers you work with aren't going to get awkwardly small or annoyingly large.

But they're not accurate. The ledger, nodes, etc, have no concept of 'balance'. My knowledge is a bit rusty so anyone feel free to correct me, but when a block is added to the ledger, all of the inputs used for transactions in that block are effectively 'destroyed', and outputs are created from thin air in the same block, where the total amount of Bitcoin associated with the inputs is the same as the amount of Bitcoin associated with the outputs. But there's no real concept of balance. There is a concept of an address having a certain number of unspent outputs associated with it which can then be used as inputs for new transactions, and wallets display 'balance' as the sum of the Bitcoin associated with these unspent outputs, but the ledger does not keep track of this balance.

It's a little dusty but I found my old soldered RPi Zero + bonnet and so I quickly whipped up a menu as a kind of concept for what I plan for it to look like.

https://streamable.com/8xbkk

Planning for the following behaviour:

- When started the software will check to see if there's already an address saved. If there isn't one it will generate it and give the user its appropriate seed phrase. It will also prompt the user to enter a passphrase which will be used to encrypt the file on the device containing the wallet's private key.
- To begin with this wallet will only be designed to use one address at a time. Mainly trying to avoid having to display multiple addresses on a tiny 128x64 screen.
- There will be only four options:
1. Receive - shows the Bitcoin address currently loaded onto the cold wallet
2. Sign (called Send in the video) - planning to have this option scan for a file in the device's home directory which will contain details of an unsigned transaction, and sign it appropriately. I'll need to decide how the user creates this unsigned transaction file, which they'll then need to load onto the microSD card used by the RPi. Will require the user to type in their passphrase to sign, of course.
3. Passphrase - will allow the user to change their passphrase
4. Generate New - after entering the user's passphrase, will allow the user to generate a new address, which will overwrite the old one (obviously there will be warnings about this).

This is more of a personal project and so I'm not planning on putting a lot of features into this, it's more supposed to be a cool gadget than something I expect to use to store a lot of Bitcoin on. If you guys see any issues with those options let me know, I'm a bit rusty as I've been out of the community for quite a while.

Their handling of the situation is what I would generously class as a complete joke. Being able to get 2FA Backup codes without proving you have access to a 2FA method makes about as much sense as being able to change the password on an account without knowledge of its existing password. It's ridiculous and a failure of basic security principles, and it's pretty worrying that a "military-grade" exchange made such a basic error. If they're making basic security errors like that then they have clearly invested very little in reviewing their security practices which is completely antithetical with claiming that your security is top-notch.

Shame on them.

Lmao I was fully expecting to click this and for the OP to literally say "haha, fooled you" or something similar. Obvious fabrication as already proven but anyone who stores more than a double-digit $ amount of Bitcoin on an online wallet like blockchain.info is begging to get hacked or scammed, you are opening yourself to additional vectors of attack by using an online wallet no matter how secure blockchain.info claims to be, all to save yourself the extra effort of having to download a wallet client.

In case anyone reading this is wondering how to actually safely store a large amount of Bitcoin, cold storage on a computer disconnected from the internet is always the way to go!

I only started posting again after a hiatus 3 days ago. So 4 merits in 3 days. If you put effort into posts and aren't posting trash then I would expect a normal user to be able to achieve 25 merits definitely within 3 months of them joining the forum.

I have no problem with someone who has just joined the forum being expected to wait 3 months before joining signature campaigns - it means that they are here to contribute content rather than just to make a quick buck off signature campaigns that their associates told them about. I've seen a decent few posts recently that just copy paste articles or latch onto a keyword from the OP without addressing the actual topic, clearly made to just farm posts for a signature/bounty campaign, and there's a big problem with this being tackled on the forum in general.

My personal opinion is that there should be a minimum merit earned for all campaigns. Definitely at least 10.

Used up? Do you understand how Bitcoin works? People spending it can't make it be 'used up', that Bitcoin doesn't disappear, it's a means of exchange and simply goes to other people...

People have to spend their Bitcoin or it will lose its inherent value. I hate this HODL culture that's taken over Bitcoin in the last 5 or so years. If people hadn't been spending Bitcoin over all these years it would have lost all of its intrinsic value and the currency would have gone nowhere, and now we have a bunch of people just trying to take advantage of the technology to make as much money as possible.

To be fair there are physical 'currencies' that work on the basis of containing a small amount of gold which are in circulation today. An example is the Utah Goldback - it's a thin note which contains a gold leaf inside equivalent to 1/1000 of a troy ounce of gold. Comes in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 I believe? i.e. the largest note is the 50 Goldback note which contains 1/20 of a troy ounce in it.

There are shops in Utah which accept that - so while it's not common, saying that gold isn't a means of payment isn't true everywhere

It's not about singling out cryptotalk, any campaign that has limits as high as the cryptotalk campaign has should have extra audits associated with it.

I think that the idea of others with a minimum of received merit is a good idea. For instance saying that you need a minimum of 25 merit received to participate would work quite well. If you're going to have limits as high as they have (20/day) then you really need something like that to ensure that the posts aren't trash. Clearly it can work - I can put out 20 posts a day fairly easily due to typing speed and have them all be high quality, because I only post on things I find genuinely interesting.

Franky - I'm not saying that BTC is going to stop them from getting pepper sprayed. But use of some of the underlying technology in the protocol like multisig transactions could help them to organise resources for the protests with less risk than whatever they're doing right now. There's many parts that go into making their protests successful and if this ends up being something that goes on for years then they will definitely need international sources of funding and anonymity.

Seem like going from five to four was his attempt at getting more competitive, but unfortunately in this Nonce-guessing industry that just isn't enough nowadays. In fact, I'll beat his deal, I'll triple people's money if they get the last five digits. That's 50% more money for only 25% more digits than the original post! What a bargain!

I was in Kraków Główny about a month and a half ago - that is, Kraków central train station - and they had a Bitcoin ATM there! The brand is Bitcoin Embassy and while I didn't take a picture of it, I found a picture of it online:



So keep an eye out in any train stations you go to, I think these ones are just dotted around in popular areas around the world. Convenient ATM as a few places in Kraków do accept Bitcoin, I didn't use it myself though. Obviously I don't run that ATM but I noted it's a brand you didn't mention in the OP so hope this helps with your research.

It's not the fault of the technology that it is used for horrible things. Many privacy advocates lament the fact that Tor is used to hide illegal and depraved activities that take place online, but they understand that it is not the fault of the technology and that the technology still provides a net good for the world.

Yes, it sucks that when you give people privacy and anonymity, they use it for depravity, but that's not the fault of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, or Blockchain technology. Most likely if Bitcoin didn't come around they would have built their own alternative system by now for anonymous payments anyway. So realistically, the fact that Bitcoin is mentioned in this case is pretty irrelevant.

I'm not sure what you're really asking? That is what SHA256 is, a one-way function that maps any arbitrary data to a fixed-size bit string. Whether you call that 'mathematical' or not is up to debate on what you consider that term to mean, I consider it mathematical because I consider all algorithms/functions to be mathematical. To be honest, I consider pretty much anything descended from Computer Science theory mathematical.

There isn't an 'equation' that will map the input to the output. There is a long series of steps - an algorithm - but that doesn't seem to be what you're asking for.

I've been following the HK protests with a fair amount of interest and monitoring the situation fairly closely. With the fairly horrific crackdown and brutality that the protesters have been experiencing at the hands of the HK police, I think it's time they change up their tactics. I believe that Bitcoin could strongly benefit their cause if used correctly.

First of all, I'm sure that all money being distributed which is related to the protests right now is probably being exchanged cash-in-hand. I have pretty severe doubts that the protesters are going to be use Chinese-controlled methods of digital payment in order to spread out their money to afford gas masks and the like. Cash-in-hand payments are obviously a pretty big logistical issue and the use of cryptocurrency and tumblers would help enable them to not only distribute their resources more effectively but also keep it anonymous at the same time.

Secondly, I have no doubts at all that HK protesters could crowdfund a large quantity of money if the protest leaders simply organised an open Bitcoin wallet in which to pool resources and distribute to protesters who need it the most, especially for things such as legal and medical fees. Many in the cryptocurrency community are sympathetic to their aims - after all, freedom is a tenet that many in our community hold highly - and I'm sure many which happily chip in some bits to help support their cause.

Thirdly, I am sure that Bitcoin would be an infinitely more secure method of keeping their resources safe than whatever they are using right now. Protest leaders could band together and form multi-signature addresses for keeping resources secure, while only requiring a majority of the original leaders to sign off rather than all in order to prevent arrests from locking the resources away. This would build accountability and security into their cause.

To take their protest to the next level, they really do need to organise a safe method of funding. The HK police is ruthless in its use of weaponry and so it is important that the protesters are able to afford the protective equipment they need. I believe that Bitcoin is the only real way they can do that right now.

Feel free to let me know your opinions!

I see that you're still active on the forums, and you normally post every year on this thread to announce a sale for Bitcoin Black Friday - are you still planning to participate in Bitcoin Black Friday this year? I remember buying some caramels from you guys in 2013 and you guys throwing in some orange blossom caramels as a bonus, they were really good!

Also would be curious to hear some statistics about what % of your orders are paid for in Bitcoin nowadays.

please don't hurt me for the necropost staff, it's a product I genuinely like!

You can easily hook up an RPi Zero to a battery pack. I probably won't fuss around with creating one to be attached to the physical wallet, because you can plug it into a portable charger at any time and get the same effect.

Thanks for the suggestion on the improved library, it looks really good so I will try that instead!

Might consider joining the club at some point in the future once I'm fully back into the flow of things...I've got 424 reports with 404 good, 17 bad, 3 unhandled, so my ratios are pretty nice!

I'll probably ask about joining when I've got about 50 more good reports under my belt, and I know that I can commit to it If you've got space at the time obviously, but seeing all the spam due to people making a quick buck off campaigns is starting to bug me and I'll probably start aggressively reporting shitposts very shortly.