Yeah, that's one of the helpful members I know of from Pakistan, and you might see others in the Meetings section. I personally know a few Pakistanis who even from 2012 (computer security students mainly) played around with Bitcoin, there were quite a few digital currency traders even from those days based especially in Islamanad, Karachi and Lahore... who of course picked up Bitcoin into their portfolio.

That said, just because Bitcoin isn't illegal there, doesn't make it legal, at least not in the context that most people think ("not against the law" or "permitted by law". In fact, the link you point to indicates Bitcoin is legal but then goes on to say that digital currencies are not recognised by the state.

Basically, we take the stance of legal until specified as illegal.

I've been trying to do the same myself, but have limited success with gathering academic material. One starting point I tried was to look into cypherpunk resources (I thought, hey, it's the birthplace of Bitcoin, right?) and there were some good presentations from a few names like Jameson Lopp. I was very surprised that MIT resources didn't seem that good, but probably their best ones are close-sourced (boo!). These are all basic, though... but I found them useful. I also recommend the Lynda series on cryptography and network security for idiots like me.

For more "cutting edge research" I'm guessing very little is open source or free to access. But try security journals... this is one good journal (IEEE) in my bookmark: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=8013

If you search hard enough (I guess you know where to look), you can find some torrents for some copies. I have access though, as am doing a long distance degree so pretty much have good access from OpenAthens.

If you're interested in a title like below, I don't mind passing on. Not embarrassed at all to say they were a tad too technical for me, so you can imagine I'm not from a programming background:
Serious Cryptography: A Practical Introduction to Modern Encryption - Jean-Philippe Aumasson (2017)

Anyone else able and willing to share resources?

Anyone who works in news will tell you that even if people regard Bitcoin for all the wrong and inaccurate things, mission accomplished when it comes to recognition, hence "even bad publicity is good publicity". Why? Because those curious enough to learn more, those stubborn enough to refuse to accept information given to them, will look into Bitcoin and discover the ideology behind it, the very socio-political ramifications of such an innovation, and will more likely than not want to at least try it.

Of course, misinformation will be rife with something so new. People took a long time to warm up to the Internet, people took even longer to accept automobiles, planes, phones - the tech we take for granted but now can't do without. But if not for all the early bad press and misconceptions about say, the Internet (as the last great divider of opinion before blockchain), it wouldn't get the recognition it needed for today's mainstream adoption.

Think I remember reading that "finney" was also proposed, but eventually satoshi was settled upon. A fitting tribute, I'd say. One reason I always preferred just using Bitcoin and satoshi as opposed to the mBTC and bit denomination is that... 1 satoshi would also mean one mbit. Confusing.

If you look at the wiki on Lightining Network, that was published even at least as early as mid-last year, it already made it possible to make micropayments in sub-satoshi values. Presumably, this would be something people might think about should Bitcoin reach the utopian 1 million dollar mark, since 1 satoshi would meet parity with 1 US cent OR Bitcoin becomes the standard currency no longer denominated (or at least no longer psychologically equated) in fiat value.

A question often asked in many ways. The problems are easy to find: just look in the Service Discussion threads and you get the general idea of what people need fixed and are unhappy over.

A recent thread has a distillation of these suggestions you're looking for: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2799867.0

It's not surprising to see that features and tools aren't really going to get you success. Rather the basic concepts of good service: customer satisfaction. And nothing does that better than good support. And with all the newcomers (though actually, even "experienced" traders seem prone), expect more non-technical users to get themselves into a hundred different issues requiring support assistance.

All right, just came back to say I tried out Blockfolio after seeing it being recommended here. My 3-year old Asus (Android) has probably been due an upgrade for a long time but this app doesn't handle quickly enough for me. I thought it'd be light but maybe light today doesn't match with an old phone. I'd liked to have been able to modify the news feed though, I get enough of the sources and would like to add a few of my own within the app.

Does anyone know a good desktop app to use? Google shows me a few, but I wonder what everyone else uses?


15 seconds is nothing, I don't need to act immediately as I'm more interested in management features rather than trading tools. But I'll look at Delta later and give that a try. And yeah, checking them daily is seriously bad for your (mental) health. I've really cut down on constant price checking (and I'm a holder!).

I'm guessing a lot of newbies do indeed buy the wrong coin, when coins misrepresent themselves. What coin do you think newcomers want to know about if they are looking at bitcoin.com or look at @bitcoin Twitter?

Then again, with the way almost every altcoin across the board has performed in the past six months, we've basically got first-time cash-rich newcomers buying random coins and still making tidy profits. I've got people whom I warned last year not to go all-in on Bitcoin and others now telling me I should have had more faith as a user.

Hard to teach lessons until they're learnt I guess.

Good old spreadsheets plus notepad for me. Some tools within exchanges are pretty decent, but since I have many accounts across several exchanges, it does get pretty difficult to stick to them. I don't do heavy trading so I guess that helps. And from mid last year, I basically stopped wasting time on scores of alts, my portfolio pretty much stands at around 15 currencies including Bitcoin. I do live to regret at least one of the casualties from my spring cleaning... Raiblocks I'm talking about. Simply deleted the entire wallet and info, and I distinctly recall having over 100. But I suppose the time freed up from all that mindless maintenance makes up for it.

Thanks for recommending blockfolio, some of you. Certainly going to check it out. I might consider adding considerably to my trading activity this year, seems like the last few years if not the final year we can take advantage of mooning coins.

I'm quite comfortable with this situation to be honest, happy to be earning at what I'd say is a premium price (in terms of bitcoin). Just a month ago I was wondering when I'd be able to accumulate.

Bearish markets can be a boon to some traders. Bargain entries for newcomers too, except they're probably wondering and second guessing, which might explain this sideways period. I'm really glad though for the stability. Been a long time coming.

Oh and I added really small buys to a couple of old alts I have. Already more than 25% so am happy! Just take it easy.

I'm a freelancer in my second serious stint so I'll contribute my experience here, if only because I do want to see better platforms for those like myself, whom I feel are part of the growing "global citizen", highly mobile by circumstance, and only available to work remotely. My first experiences as a freelancer [in content producing/writing] was in the late 90s to 2004, and more recently, since early 2016 so that's almost two years in the current environment.

Surprisingly, not much has changed in terms of facilitating yourself. Most important is payment settlement, invoicing and tax. Apart from a few years in the late 90s, where most people still wanted to pay in cheque (North America, where all the business was), I settled later on digital money: e-gold for a good many years, until it got stopped in its tracks by regulations, and then Paypal. Today, apart from existing long-term clients who still do Paypal for tax purposes, I now only accept crypto payments, chiefly in Bitcoin. In my country of citizenship, income earned from non-domestic sources are not taxable, so I have no issues yet.

Other things have changed. On the surface, work should be easier to source with all the platforms now available, but they've brought their own sets of problems:
1. Saturation of low-quality freelancers. The quality of freelancers as a whole has dropped drastically since the mid-2000s. I'm not just talking about English language here, although that is the most obvious. Visit any of these platforms, especially the ones supporting Bitcoin, and you find no shortage of willing applicants to any job posting. They're English speakers, but not native (though arguably, non-native speakers tend to be have stronger technical writing). And because they're able to charge much lower rates due to cost of living in their countries, they appear more attractive.
2. Further, because job posters themselves aren't necessarily able to distinguish average quality from high quality content, there's no reason for them to pay more when it appears cheaper writers can complete the work satisfactorily.
3. Search algorithms are still far behind in catching up with good quality too. With machine rewriting software cheaply (or freely) available, some freelancers can mass produce content - and since Google and co. can't distinguish these, they're still good enough for SEO campaigns to work. Don't believe me? Check out the freelancers who'll happily do $1 per article, up to 100s a week. This is only possible with automated rewriting tools.

What your platform can attempt to do different, at least in terms of content production (though I don't see why not for other sectors):
1. Establish a standard or benchmark minimum wage per hour, categorised by quality and complexity. This can be done by averaging verified quality products against rates charged.
2. Better ratings systems/trust systems that verify competency by proof of finished products rated by authorities (I see blockchain could help here). Currently, all the platforms have basic ratings systems that don't really help you identify good freelancers.
3. Raters should be qualified users willing to authenticate their own qualifications - whether its a professional career or a degree. These will be authorities whose ratings will count towards competency.

What you and your partner could do now is work on the latter approaches, to build something unique. And then, form partnerships with reputable jobposters to start the ball rolling - much like work as a headhunter.

Hello Joca! Guess who's back after months of inactive tennis betting. Don't ask me why or where I got the funds from, let's just say that I've really missed tennis and my football betting's not going so well. I'm on Fedex (as usual) to win Aussie Open, but I'm favouring Edmund to progress also, and if he wins I'll have a nice 30x.

But on to your tip, too late to take it, match just started and Edmund's behind a bit, I would have gone for Under, though! Can't say who the winner is, but I doubt it'll drag out long enough at the semi, both have spent quite a bit of energy to get here.

And yet one that none have successfully planned for and scaled towards.
1. You would have to do some sound research on this, along with surveys. Given the chance, most people would require immediate support. But what helps is that you have a system that keeps monitoring support levels and gives a transparent real-time overview to people. Perhaps a dashboard that shows in real time:
- current open tickets
- current support staff working
- current average waiting time
- current mean waiting time
- average resolution time

And from that info, you can show the user an estimated time to next response. This would help greatly two-fold: it makes customers more secure and patient. It reduces further unneccessary support burden from impatient and/or worried customers who might send 5 tickets. At least if you tell a user he has to wait 24 hours, then he knows not to keep asking.

2. Ticketing systems are the best, but they should be supplemented by detailed questionaire so there's no time wasted in support replying: give me your #ID, give me your address, give me the error msg. All forms must be filled out. Chat systems should be secondary, they are not very necessary - as they take more resources, you could upgrade support for higher ranked members. Ticket>Chat>Phone.

Fact of the matter is, support for Bitcoin-supported payment processors is dropping big time, which is the underlying reason for these processors eventually dropping Bitcoin. Again, you have to see the difference between a merchant accepting Bitcoin and a merchant installing a payment processor that supports Bitcoin. These are not the same things. I think merchant adoption has always been low anyway, so there isn't a drop. As others have mentioned, a lot of merchants have been keen - but they've been waiting on the sidelines for a long time because:
1. They're not prepared to wait for confirmations. As I mentioned, very soon, widespread LN will solve this.
2. They're unfamiliar with the tech and training required for staff who handle transactions.

Of course payment processors like Stripe and Bitpay solves their problem, since they never need to accept Bitcoin to access Bitcoin users. But those who don't sign up are not prepared to pay the fees for using a processor like Stripe.

No need to sensationalise what's actually a very normal, very predictable pattern of extreme volatility, followed by a period of sideways movement. Bitcoin had a terrific year (remember?) and we should be very surprised it hasn't floundered at far lower levels, since it never really found the time to search for a floor. I think it's beginning to find it though, if a few weeks can be relative to its existence of less than a decade on the open market.

It's nice drama to think of bloodbaths and sacrifice, but it doesn't really match up with something that's still more than 10 times its value a year ago. I'd like for it to be bullish soon, but I'd much prefer it to cement its bottom. $10k is a very good proposition to me.

And maybe people need reminding that Stripe is just a payment processor, not a merchant. And if you think that payment processors help merchants accept Bitcoin, no they don't. They actually help merchants resist using Bitcoin themselves, and still access customers who use Bitcoin. Bitcoin is supposed to be P2P. Not peer to payment processor to fiat to peer.

And for people who think still this means bad news, remember years ago when Paypal dropped Bitcoin? Did the world end? The more likely story is, Stripe is beginning to believe, like others, that as Bitcoin advances in tech, with LN especially, there's going to be fewer people willing to direct Bitcoin to processors and lose in exchange fees.

My thoughts exactly! I did bet quite heavily in the last Grand Slam and I was sure Fedex still had one more win in him. But after many months break from tennis, I was lured back with Nadal and Djokovic's exit. I didn't bet on Federer today, reserving instead for a juicy @2.x on Edmund to beat Cilic and progress. But after today, it will be Federer all the way, lining up straight bets for my favourite Swiss guy at the moment.

A bet on Edmund to win before his semifinal progress would have been a cool 300/1 but I am thinking a small side bet at 26/1 is still very attractive. Wish I don't bet so heavily on underdogs but oh well =)

Variances are very common across exchanges, but it does partially reflect the exchange's willingness to buy your crypto from you, and also, as mentioned above, it factors in ease and speed of withdrawal - it is typically slower on Yobit for fiat withdrawals, although they do have the benefit (currently) of not suddenly blocking your withdrawal and requesting verification. Note that they have slightly higher withdrawal fees than others but they don't have country restrictions, and all-in-all, minus fees, you still get a little more if you sell to them.

And... there is no deposit fee on yobit, so not sure what you're talking about.


The wallet you use has nothing to do with exchanges fees. You pay your own fee if you deposit from blockchain wallet, as with most other wallets where you control private keys. Online web wallets tend to charge their own network fees. All exchanges will impose withdrawal fees. Only Localbitcoins as I know charges a deposit fee.

Surprised that actually some people would recommend going all in, that's just a recipe for eventual disaster.

The only all-in strategy that applies is when you are a holder, but that doesn't mean pouring all your life savings into Bitcoin. Like for me, after selling what I earn for expenses, I accumulate as much as I can, with no intention to sell any for years at minimum. So my monthly cycle for the past year hasn't changed. Not at 10k, not at 20k... In that sense yes, all in but for holding.

Op shouldn't feel bad. You sold high and got yourself more coins. Now play the holding game and relax. More time for yourself, less worry, and you already have more coins that you had.

Sweeping a wallet essentially means spending all the coins from your former wallet into your Electrum wallet, so that involves a transaction. If you did it right, you should have seen a tx id. If you don't know where this is, just look up your Electrum address (the one you swept to) on a block explorer. The incoming spend should show up.

As jinkster said, you'll just need to wait for the transaction to confirm. When that happens, the next time you open and sync Electrum, your former wallet's balance (minus fees) should show up.

Content writing has been around for a very long time. The industries may have changed, but page rank, Google ads, all that monetisation... they're still alive and strong. There are some good "crypto" writers around, but they mainly do fixed work with some of the big media outlets, others work in small teams with less frequent income, but the overall idea is that fresh content and regular content drives traffic to the service. Traffic is still the main thing a web service requires to grow. Since conversion rates are much lower from advertising, content is still king.

But of course, this forum ecosystem has people paying, as you say, $15, or even lower - this gives you an indication of the quality. Anything below 5 cents a word (that's $5 per 100 words) is likely to be average at best. Look at all the bounty content floating around, all the generic PR material posted around and you see that even machine rewrites get accepted (Google is to blame).