Hello Og, nonna. Just got some news to share of my own: received my coin. Actually came last week but had to retrieve it and pay a customs/tax fee (which came up to about a third of the coin's cost grumble). Very good weight, neat workmanship, it'll make a nice gift the next person I introduce Bitcoin to.

Also just realised my account was terminated (forgot that I needed seats before it expires) - should I make a new one now or just get in touch directly with nonna? Didn't vote for the poll but would have gone for the majority decision (Bitcoin focus).

Anyway, looking forward to learning more with NF, going to be a difficult year, but exciting nevertheless.

P.S. Am not oblivious to all the unhappy discussions going on in this thread. Can't say much about it as I won't have the benefit of good context, but like my participation on this forum and other small groups, I think every interaction with a different community gives a unique learning perspective. It's natural that a lot of start ups and ventures will disappoint some, which is why my expectation is little more than to learn.

I'd consider the bitcoin.org list good enough, since it lists events it feels are relevant or reputable. Every conference is going by "blockchain" now but few are anything more than commercial events trying to gather more hype, promoting some project or other under the guise of professional networking. There's just so many events that there's probably one every day. I think in Asia and Southeast Asia alone, there's probably several going on simultaneously in the big capitals.

FT.com's event list is probably also somewhat useful for financial tech... mainstream but you get a gist of what they feel is useful blockchain-wise: https://live.ft.com/

Almost all the crypto news portals (like coindesk or coinidol) have an events page as well, but I generally see them as sponsored listings, i.e., likely to be low reputation.

You can Google for "independent" calendars but they're mainly user-submitted, also I consider to have low quality. foxico.io is one

Bitcoin's "failure" to break below $10k, after testing $9k, is now proving to be further evidence of its resilience at around 10k. I'm now counting down the days til the end of February, where I'm hoping very much that the current trend continues. Looks like sideways or even bearish for a lot of people, but for me this is the perfect stabilisation period I've been waiting for. If it can keep this for two months, then it'll have found very firm footing at $10k - which is very good news for the rest of the year. I'd be prepared for 20k to never be tested for 2018, but I wouldn't mind at all new-found floors at $15k. We'll also be coming up to a "tenth anniversary", depending on how you see Bitcoin's birthday to be: whitepaper or genesis block. Very pleased with the performance of January so far.

Ah, Fedex really made me happy two Grand Slams in a row, but yeah, I thought he could have given himself an easier time. Both were tired by the final so I thought RF would have tried to bring it to a quick end, guess the Croatian wasn't quite ready to give up so easily. I said last year he had at least 1 left in him, and am happy to have bet on him having yet another. Probably best time to retire like you say while he's on a high but so tempting to have money on him again if he joins another tourney... the way he turns back the clock would make anyone get the shivers!

My betting's been really crap for the Women's, (even last year) so I should really probably stick to men's from now on.

Sorry am not quoting everyone, already a pretty long quote string! But I was drawn to the last few discussions on AI designed for deception - I wonder if there would be any conflict with some of the Ethically-Aligned Design (EAD) treaties already drawn up by organisations like IEEE. I know there are already steps towards advocating compliance within medical fields for example, though of course none of this has resulted in regulations.

Could AI be designed to still be ethical while being good in a game like poker (or even chess?). If one threw the ethics rulebook out, could not one deploy a similar AI to online poker rooms and just defeat reliably all human opponents?

@kryptorian: AI does work a little like you mention, in that it is like a human brain. It can only learn what it is taught, but there are becoming more and more capable of self-learning (or self teaching). But no, AI cannot yet determine moral or value judgment without predefined codes of conduct, at least not in practice - but EAD AI tries to create such that form values based on learning rather than a set universal code. The challenge is to get them to process context.

I would really emphasise on "most alts". I don't keep exact track of numbers but on purely circumstantial evidence of losing interest in the Altcoin discussions threads, I'd say the vast majority of alts are vapourware. Never mind that those projects only require a freelancer to help them "launch" a digital currency piggybacking on another blockchain, the audacity to launch crowdfunding without any budget and the success they still have... but I'd be surprised if they actually have passionate adopters and people who actually use their coins/tokens for intended purpose.

P.S. That some people see Bitcoin as a turtle is another indication of just how completely skewed expectations are in crypto!

Here's a very easy strategy for newbies to cash out or exit from a coin. I don't know who to credit for it, but I first heard it being called the "free bags strategy" (erroneous but you'll understand why later) by someone who probably wouldn't appreciate being named.

1. You buy yourself an amount of Bitcoin/altcoin/token/digital asset, let's say "A", with fiat/Bitcoin (the most common pair), let's say "B".

2. When A reaches a price that makes you 100% profit (doubles in price), then you sell exactly half of A.

Result: You recoup 1B, and still have 0.5A.

In other words, you've exited and still have your initial outlay, but you have a "free" bag of A which you can either hodl or liquidate later to re-enter other coins. Obviously, you can always sell at different % to keep smaller/bigger bags.

So a week where Juventus faced down a 9-men team and sat atop the table for a day, who can say that Napoli don't look like a title-winning team now yeah? I mean sure, they needed an own goal and a penalty, but don't take away the effort to create those goals. 60% possession and 8 shots facing down pressure. Didn't realise Martens would be this many up midway through season, well on course to over 20 goals before May.

VAR... can't get over it. I don't like video action now ruining two games in two days (yes, even though it "helped" Liverpool last night, but I think those four minutes or so wasted before the penalty actually made a huge difference in taking the tempo away) but that's out of the point.

I'd agree that demand is really what affects price. You can see this just by looking at the variances across exchanges, South Korea and Japan consistently a few percentage numbers above global prices, and Zimbabwe always topping the list. I'd say this effect would diminish over time when people discover there are actually other places other than local to access supply. I can understand in Zimbabwe, for example, people would only trade with trusted local exchanges but as more people discover p2p marketplaces and access global traders outside of centralised exchanges, supply would become less and less of an issue.

But the influential factor that triggers dips (or spikes) is still very vague. Almost all the analyses happen post-dips, and even those seem to be disproven (didn't futures expiring two days ago not seem to have any effect, for example?). I tend to believe that the dominant sentiment can have a powerful effect on traders. When you've got about 50/50 of experts thinking Bitcoin can either go up or down, that'll have a zero nett effect. But when the whales, the signal traders and the media are together preparing for corrections, then the market simply self-fulfils those prophecies.

I think sometimes privacy is wrongly associated with hiding what you want to do. Of course, those are the things that jump to mind regarding online privacy but the essence is really "what I do is my business and mine only". Privacy has quite a bit to do with the very ideals that accompanied Bitcoin. It meant to free people from the state, in terms of putting them in control of their money. But along with that, not having an intermediary control and monitor your funds, which is one of the key reasons users were advised never to use an address more than once.

Just because you don't want to share information about what you do with Bitcoin or how you use it, doesn't mean you're doing something illegal or deviant. It can be argued that privacy should be your duty, to limit power being concentrated in the hands of the few. Knowledge is power, after all. The more someone or something knows about you and others, the more power they have over you.

You probably want to create a wallet for Bitcoin. This allows you to receive and spend bitcoin. There are many to choose from, so do your research before you settle on one.

For a beginner, I feel that Electrum is really one of the best to start with. It's a very light client so you don't need to download the entire blockchain and it gives you a lot of flexibility and control over how you decide to use your coins.

Whatever it is, just make sure the wallet you choose gives only you full control of your private keys, doesn't know it and doesn't store it. In short, avoid any online-based wallet where you typically access your "account" with a username and password. These wallets are controlled by a third party, not by you.


The set of words Xynerise given to you is usually called the "recovery phrase" or "recovery seed", if you somehow lost them but you still have access to your wallet, you can usually still retrieve the seed/phrase from inside the wallet. As it suggests, it lets you recover your wallet and funds if something ever happens (your device crashes, or your wallet files get corrupted, for example).

I've been wondering the same myself and wouldn't say that this forum is the best place to start - not because there aren't good developers here but because they're unlikely to work with or advise you, unless you've already got a really good idea and a working project to plug into. You sound like you're starting from scratch, so you might want to first read up on basic computer security and blockchain dev't. Not to understand the tech but to familiarise yourself with the languages and tech that the developer would need to have. That helps you narrow down your search.

Be warned that a lot of the freelance devs out there are only entry level people - they're probably good enough if you just want a simple project (think all those ERC20 tokens flying around) but if you're building from the ground up... you may have to headhunt. The very best devs in my opinion are already tied up... and I'd say the world's top ones are all with Bitcoin.

But they give you clues about what a top blockchain dev is, how they're different from the general coder/programming population. They're passionate (I hate the word, but in this context it fits entirely) and very ideological.


And this is a really good starting place to headhunt, especially if you sign up with an employer account. A pretty good way to cast your net is to attach a small test (you'd be surprised how many freelance coders fail basic aptitude tests that don't actually require programming knowledge).

But I think if you really want good blockchain devs, you go to where they live and spend a lot of time to seek them out. Here. Blockgeeks. Blockchain conferences (meet real devs there).

Quick way to confirm if you've ever received anything at all is to look up the addresses in your wallet from an explorer. If there weren't any transactions, then you already know you never received anything. Don't need to download entire blockchain to see that. You can then rule out that they were sent after the date you mentioned. From there, you can proceed to the other possibilities as above.

Well, Wozniacki was highly rated in the last Grand Slam, so I suppose this victory wasn't entirely surprising. I mean, she's top seed anyway! Anyone remember the odds on her pre-tournament to win it? Shouldn't have been too bad. Still, congratulations are in order. Age is a funny thing too, Serena won it last year at 36!

Speaking of veterans, tomorrow 36-yr old Federer should win this, anyone with lingering doubts should see how he stormed through without losing a single se. Putting good money on a straight win, and I might go for a low points bet too... except I think he'll be a bit tired by the final.

Actually, good question. At the moment, only one or two crypto-accepting bookies have good documentation on some of the unconventional rulings for sports bets. In general, most bets will be easily settled, but when there are contentious events (was the goal scored in 90th or 91st minute?), how long must the boxing match round last to be considered a full round (remember the controversy with Mayweather/Connor in August on a lot of bets made lasting 10 rounds)?

I'm guessing any blockchain-based sportsbook (I don't know Peerplay very well unfortunatel) could benefit from smart contracts that make some rules very clear, arbitrated by... some parties?

Hey Joca, good to see you get going in this new year. I made a couple of resolutions, but none of them were about gambling. Anyway, going to follow your football tips again for a period, this time with very small bets of around 0.001 BTC. Have just realised that I've lost a lot of money these couple of months, not really adjusting my bets to Bitcoin price when it comes to sportsbook.

Can't follow your second tip as my bookie only has over 3.5 odds, but a small Leipzig bet to get the ball rolling. Also, I like odds around 1.5 to 2.x, anything below 50% returns isn't attractive enough unless part of a parlay, and in my poor experience, anything above 3x is a sure way to lose money quickly. I do like very good 50x or 100x odds though, worth a dollar at least (remember Leicester's 5,000x?).

I think it's too simplistic to put this down to greed, ignorance, laziness, etc. though I too believe that it is usually a mixture of all these. As h0lybyte says, we've got to remember that understanding how Bitcoin itself works represents a steep learning curve, never mind the complexity of how mining works. I am meeting and talking to people who've only just started using Bitcoin and the world of online hyip schemes, doublers, "cloud mining" is very new to them.

Take this for context. They've just read the news of how Bitcoin made 1,000% gains in a year (if they entered in December, this would have been twice that!). So a cloud mining scheme that promises to return 100% profit in little under a year actually makes sense. A disguised hyip Bitcoin scheme that makes them 5% a month also seems to make sense. They cannot distinguish how, they can only correlate numbers.

Now if you did basic research on cloud mining, you get Google showing you some of these legitimate companies... Genesis, hashflare. Even surfing to bitcoin.com (which newbie wouldn't, right?) and you get shown an offer to participate in cloud mining for profit.

Not saying users shouldn't shoulder the blame. But we can always expect newcomers to fall for these early on. And as TETTICEO points out, we might have legitimate users curious to mine but can't access the tech or expertise needed. Cloud mining seems like a good start for them to enter the business - especially when it's recommended as an option by "reputable" sources (such as Bitcoin.com. I quote from them: "Cloud Mining. Start mining immediately with our cloud mining contracts! 100% guaranteed uptime."

Thanks, yeah I think Schneier are good reads, but probably not the type of in-depth technical education that OP seems to want to access. Speaking of good reads, no one is better or more experienced than Antonopoulos in delivering basic understanding in an easily digestible manner. His books are very easy to find online (they're just collections of his lectures and notes).

I've been looking also at a few formal institutions but it's really hard to tell which is "the best", especially when searching online doesn't seem to turn up graduates from these institutions. I'm very tempted to try the long distance degree from Cyprus/Nicosia uni (that's where Antonopoulos lectures), but it's a Computer Science degree, so might not focus heavily on security. In terms of recognition though, it might not be up there with the Top 200 unis, but its specific attention to crypto (Bitcoin, actually) makes it attractive.

Thanks for pointing that out... I confess I haven't been looking at the explanation paragraphs below the main charts for months and you're right. The graphs themselves are still helpful, I've always used the estimation with confirmation times that more or less correspond. But the "cheapest and fastest" estimation is definitely far from accurate, at least it is right now.

I've been recommending this estimator for months now so am as guilty for possibly getting other users to pay more fees than needed. Complacency...

I do note that the graphs themselves are still a useful tool but now should find something more representative.


I learn something new every day here, thanks for pointing that out!

To add in on the other answers here, since OP still wants to know how to calculate tx fees... the most important piece of information you need is the size of your transactions. Doesn't seem to be in those lines of code, but they do have pieces of info that you can use to estimate size (not very accurately but close enough):

- number of inputs you're using, a
- number of outputs you'll create, b

Then: a*180 + b*34 + 10 +/- 1

which is why a 1 input, 1 output tx, the most common one, results in a typical tx size of 225 bytes. If you're using SegWit, your txs are going to be smaller (edit: added "in weight"), so this is a safe formula to use.

Easiest for me is to use the rough formula automatically done in site suggested above (estimate fee) so that's your best point to start finding out tx size, and then you crosscheck with another estimator with an easier to see structure like bitcoinfees.earn.com to see how much you need to pay per byte, for the estimated confirmation time you're comfortable with.