Canadian cryptocurrency exchange firm Arbitrade bought four gold casts of the first black South African president’s hands for a massive USD 10 million, paid in Bitcoin, at its PDAC conference recently. The firm was planning to launch a global “Golden Hands of Nelson Mandela” tour to educate young people about the anti-apartheid icon’s life.

Arbitrade has paid Duncan a Bitcoin deposit that has been converted to USD 50,000, the rest payable in quarterly instalments of over USD 2 million.

“They take possession when I have the dollar amount in the bank. At two-and-a-quarter million at a time, they take one hand at a time,” Duncan was quoted as saying.

To read this in detail: http://bitcoinnews.com/gold-castings-nelson-mandelas-hands-sell-10m-bitcoin/

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There's a difference in a service actively facilitating, aiding and abetting. I wouldn't abandon this forum, even if it arguably helps scammers get word out on their scams by being allowed to post in the Gambling>investor based games. I wouldn't abandon Bitcoin even if it used to be the currency of choice by dark markets. Or Monero, for that matter.

There is a difference. And contrary to what you might think, the ideology behind privacy isn't criminal.

This is new to me. I left Exodus (yes, the irony) actually after they dropped support for Dogecoin with what I felt was inexcusable reasons for lack of developer response (despite getting contradictory responses from actual Dogecoin devs on reddit). Basically, there just doesn't seem yet to be a solid and secure option yet for multi-crypto wallets.

As tryninja says though, you're really only at risk if your device is compromised... Would need a fellow developer to replicate that exploit though, the way the Jaxx exploit was.

Looks like they're going the way of EU and even Malaysia in seeking public input. Note that this doesn't necessarily guarantee that their existing stances will sway. The current administration has been rather cynical when it comes to revenue derived from crypto. It's partially reflected in how they're looking at new rulings for online gambling (which arose from bitcoin use in online casinos). Expect at best that they'll adopt a quasi-Western Europe approach that will tax capital gains, if not outright transactional volumes.

This was the country that introduced GST on crypto, at least there's no VAT on crypto in EU.

Confirming that Electrum has that ability for batch transactions (send to many) and it works perfectly. It's probably not the automated feature that OP is looking for though, as you still have to manually enter all the addresses and amounts, but you can upload a CSV file (click the folder icon and choose the file in the 'Pay' field.

Perhaps the Coinbase API might work for something OP is looking for? BTC, ETH, LTC payments: https://developers.coinbase.com/

Lost my Portugal bet thanks to van Dijk and ex-Liverpool Babel getting on the scoresheet. Friendly but still I guess Ronaldo spent all his reserves to overcome Egypt. No matter as I still offset the loss with a doubler and some on the England mauling of Malta. Fully expected.

Got a few interesting games for U19 tonight but I'm staying away from these as just never know if the young guns can score but plenty of doublers if you like betting over 3 goals...

Thank you, that does clear it up a little bit more! Does anyone know if the counterparty did end up claiming the perpetrator's coins? If not, what happens to the unclaimed coins when the channel closes?


I'm not questioning how the network follows and enforces protocol rules at all, but yes, there'll be plenty of users like yours truly who'll desperately want to help test/use, but not if we'll probably end up breaking rules... that's the nature of new tech I guess.

Most of the time in these cases, the less positive option is also going to be the applicable one. It's not very clear at the moment how nationalities apply to ICOs - especially when it comes to resident status. Some ICOs restrict from location, rather than nationality - although it is the latter that matters. To be sure, most have never prevented residents who accessed from locations outside geographical locations, although now with increasing KYC documentation, this circumvention could pose problems for perpetrators.

Then, you have it on the basis of tax/revenue jurisdictions. I still maintain my original nationality, which happens not to charge tax on any income earned abroad while living/working abroad, but tax applies to me in my current jurisdiction of residence (and I was very used to working with specific tax agreements in the various countries I've worked in).

To OP, if you're referring to dual nationality, bear in mind that most countries do not permit it. If I'm not mistaken, Brazil doesn't, so regardless of how you view it, you're Brazilian in Brazil, and the US might be inclined to view you as the same, but party to American regulations. Best option now is to consult a legal practitioner for clarity. We're all guessing here.

Captain Unobvious here. I think I understood the gist of the message here, but is anyone able to show a quick breakdown of which parts of that code demonstrated the detection of behaviour and resulting penalisation? I concede it just escapes me.

Also, will this or did this translate successfully on chain? Or does that not matter?

And if Xynerise is correct, that the attempt was inadvertent... is there a way to determine if such attempts (to broadcast stale state) will be deliberate or not?

This is what I feel, and somewhat refreshing to see such an old hand crediting a fair share of success to pure luck. It's a sign of maturity to acknowledge that luck is sometimes what makes or breaks.

I wouldn't say all holders are bad for the market though, just the same way all sellers can't be bad. I definitely think we owe a lot to people who use and spend, the Lazslos who bought pizza, and the bct users who spend in the goods section. No makers, no takers, right? But holders are also those who advocate long term outlooks. Which seems forgotten by the goldfish memories of mainstream traders...

Right guys. More dullness of international friendlies, but plenty of sweet betting deals as always. Missed the early games already, but I got a nice feeling about the following games:

1. Finland -2.0 @2.3. Malta are regular whipping boys, but Finland aren't exactly all attack either, but should still easily score 3 goals with no reply. There's over 2 goals @1.5 if you prefer a safer bet.
2. Portugal should make short work of Netherlands and a ML bet @2.2 isn't too bad.

Oh yawn, since when has 7000 bitcoins meant anything these days? Enough Mt Goxxing, this is the pullback that was bound to happen after the G20 attribution last week. Bears are gathering round this wintering market. The US Taxman has a mid April deadline before it starts going after all the people supposedly evading tax, so that might play a little into crypto sentiment in North America. Any hopes of Bitcoin stabilizing during the remainder of March seems to be fizzling out today, but there's still plenty of positives to take from Bitcoin's resistance at these levels.

Can't say I'm upset we didn't see 9.5k as I thought last week. Just more buying opportunities, I say.

Bloody hell, I had always had a certain amount of respect for the Monero devs but this reactive finger to Bitmain has got to be one of the most recent examples of just how much serious developers dislike corporate mining interests.

Of course, this could easily be seen as an unnecessary intervention or even intrusion into decentralised territory. What's for sure is that ASIC resistance seems to be temporary at best. Bitmain and their ilk don't stop at much.

If you haven't already done so, it's time to use your personal user account on your web browser. Use it to store bookmarks of every website you frequent (after verifying they're legit of course), so you lower your risk of visiting a "fake" site / phishing link. If this is the second time it's happened, don't wait for the third.

There's probably more secure ways but it's a simple step to start with. I use a Google account on Chrome for most web-related things now - even my 2FA - so even if I lose my device, I've just restore my account from another. Password's all memorised too, mnemonic seed style, works for me.

My simple answer: no. As far as I understand, the tool from nullius is for encoding/decoding - NOT for generating... so your output looks valid. It should be a bech32 encoded address (which if decoded should return to you the original address  - but that is not a valid bitcoin public address.

Isn't that sort of the point of OP bringing it up? If mainstream use for Bitcoin is what's desired, then the developers should see tech as a simple end-user experience. I'm as mainstream as it gets when it comes to Bitcoin users and I'm fully certain OP is many times more able than me technically - which is why I'm very thankful for the simplicity of Electrum. Ledger certainly should be, they subscribe to the French Consumer Code anyway =p

Even on basis of that count, I'm not sure I agree that hardware wallets can't be considered end-user products. Or is it really the aim that hardware wallet owners should still retain elitism?

It will be a massive problem but only for all the private blockchains and the hundreds of ICOs thinking they did themselves a favour by collecting KYC, who will certainly need to assign data controllers and data management officers to purge data off the blockchains - finding a way to satisfy three parties: GDPR enforcers, EU citizens exercising their rights to be forgotten and all their blockchain participants who require all manipulation and amendment of data be made transparent to them.

GDPR isn't just going to be a recommendation either. No transposing of it, flat out directive that needs compliant.

Like I said, I think there's nothing wrong with how anyone chooses to portray "Bitcoin" - and it is really, really interesting to see some of the social experiments that have been made about this, on how people imagine Bitcoin to be. And perhaps it is the psychological or creative imagery of Bitcoin that's the only thing important here.

I'm all for essence and significance... but tough to see how it can be emphasised on images, especially those currently in use (like this cartoonisation efforts). Symbolism maybe? Google cypherpunk and you get Matrix-influenced pictures haha.

Not sure it's off tangent, if you take the entire question at face value, all responses have been relevant. 100% does not exist. Trust in an entity is not even in the equation so yes, in that sense, you can trust the math behind Bitcoin.

Social engineering is still the most efficient way to hack any security system, that much I'd agree. But even all the instances you mentioned don't expose any engineering flaw of the technology... no code was exploited, only humans were.

Exactly! Anyone who thinks the man is there because he's concerned with our welfare's been misled. All those shutdowns had huge corporate interests behind them. There's huge money, huge political interests, to lobby for that sort of move. The government doesn't get smart and crackdown on filesharing because they were threats to privacy - you think the government will crack down and close shop on Facebook? All the court orders in the world weren't motivated by human rights, but by good old money.

Bitcoin's blockchain shouldn't scare us because "no one can enforce anything it" (also not true actually, rules are enforced).