Does anyone know why they asked for payments in BTC?  I mean that using a privacy coin like Monero would be appropriate, especially since the threat of bombing is considered a criminal crime more than theft. I did not understand the link with WEX, but it seems that no one took the warning seriously because they did not make profits. i'm assuming the ones making bomb threats were victims of WEX's collapse. the demands were aimed at the FSB conspirators who allegedly robbed WEX's admin of its wallets, which was possibly done at the behest of the russian state. the story is quite fascinating: https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-50420738perhaps they were hoping to be repaid from those same funds. WEX only listed XMR near the very end, after withdrawals for BTC, ETH, etc were frozen and trading activity had died. i'm guessing they had very little XMR in their coffers. plus, XMR is terribly illiquid anyway. it's easy to sell $1 million worth of BTC in russia OTC......XMR, probably not. |
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site is back up---are withdrawals working? doesn't look like an exit scam (yet).... on its face, it was an extortion attempt. i wonder how much the attackers were asking for. larger exchanges could presumably handle such a DDOS attack. maybe the attackers thought if they could take the site down long enough, the admins would simply give in to their demands. |
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Are there any cases similar to central mixers? tbh i haven't seen any. however, there are lots of cases of account closures where the customer isn't told why their account is being closed. gemini in particular doesn't usually tell people what triggers it. What is the fate of currencies if a blacklist for specific addresses is agreed upon? here's the thing about that: exchanges need bitcoin to be fungible. they may act on obvious and sloppy activity---direct deposits to/from gambling sites, darknet marketplaces, identifiable mixers/coinjoins, etc---but what about more effectively mixed outputs several hops away? i'd love to know how exchanges are dealing with this. the vast majority of mixer activity is to/from exchanges. |
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lol, someone sent them 0.00006666 BTC. that's a nice little FU to the hoaxers: So far only a negligible amount of bitcoin, about $0.48 worth, has been sent to the address, in a single transaction on Dec. 9. when btc-e went down in 2017, and when bitfinex got hacked in 2016, i lost a lot of bitcoins. did i go around making bomb threats? no, i stopped storing my coins on exchanges.  |
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the issue isn't about taint itself. it's about using mixing services, whether centralized or decentralized. from an exchange's point of view, customers who use mixers are risky from an AML/regulatory point of view.
wasabi wallet is super blatant with its coinjoins due to the high anonymity set. we need mixing solutions that not only deal with taint but also obfuscate the mixing activity itself.
Well the problem I see here is how mixing services will deal this tainted coins from their services. Will they block entry for it, or how will they even know they are tainted in the first place? Or will they just notify the authorities that they have received tainted coins and freeze those crypto so that the recovery for them would be easier? you're thinking like a regulator. that's how FINCEN expects mixers to act. fat chance! mixers will do what they've always done---swap your coin's taint for another. that's why they exist. nobody will use a mixer that employs an AML process. thus, exchanges are increasingly avoiding doing business with customers who transact with mixers, due to the potential money laundering implications. so what we need are mixing algorithms sophisticated enough to slip by exchange blockchain analysis unnoticed---the best of both worlds. that's where wasabi wallet is failing. |
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I do not think the people are too aware of Bitcoin, like for example the Turks are, who as soon as we had a few months ago the Turkish Lira nose dive, you saw hoards of Turks going into Bitcoin and the digital currency markets at large.
Where's the evidence for that? Turkish Localbitcoins volume has been tiny since forever and what spikes there are have followed everyone else's attention. This week it's been a deeply impressive $31,000. As for that survey that told us 20% of the Turkish population owns BTC, gimme a bleedin' break. the turkey hype was a load of crap. however, it seems like there is actually some substance behind the claims of growing adoption in venezuela amidst the turmoil there. they are now 4th in the world in localbitcoins volume:  localbitcoins data obviously doesn't tell the whole story, but the fact that they are doing half the volume of the USA really says something. |
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Just like Venezuela, it looks like Lebanon might be the next to start adopting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. every financial crisis or instance of civil unrest, bitcoiners get all excited that they will facilitate bitcoin adoption. i'm always skeptical of these narratives. the hong kong protests were supposed to be a similar opportunity for adoption but protestors revealed otherwise:However, the Hong Kong protester added, “there is no [internet] connection in the protest area, no matter which service provider you used,” and protesters are generally not clear on how bitcoin would be used by individuals during a time of civil unrest. It is mostly useful for receiving donations from abroad that don’t require prompt liquidity.
Plus, he said protesters who tried mesh-network devices, which basically bounce a message or transaction across a web of devices until it finds a device with internet access, found they were “not useful for a confrontational situation.” Although many protesters use Telegram because it allows chatting without revealing the users’ phone numbers, he said tools that rely on mobile data providers offer limited functionality in times of turmoil. so it seems that bitcoin usage is extremely hampered in conflict areas. the same goes for the middle east: Despite regaining some level of connectivity, he said his bitcoin wallet apps and mobile apps like Telegram are still blocked. It’s especially difficult for Iranians to access foreign servers and infrastructure because many companies ban Iranians for fear of U.S. sanctions.
“We're locked up in a prison that the U.S. and Iranian governments have built for us,” he said, adding the Blockstream bitcoin satellite and mesh network technologies aren’t useful when you’re in a massive internet desert. “In situations where we don't have physical connection none of these fucking technologies help us,” he said. |
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micgoossens, you should change the thread title IMO. last time you put "game" in the title, moderators moved it to the games and rounds board---and it subsequently died. i hate the moderators on this forum.....
+1 on the "earned merits" bit. too many bought/sold accounts around here.
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it looks to me like a poorly constructed martingale entry system. the risk/reward on each trade seems incredibly low.
look at these entries on the 24th---doubling down every 0.075-0.1% drop and then liquidating after 1%! and when it does actually profit, it closes the positions only 0.2-0.7% in profit!
the bot needs to be re-coded to let its winners run. as it stands, it's basically designed to lose money. whoever coded it is not an experienced trader.
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Imagine if every Bitcoin halving, prices would remain the same or lower than they were before. This would turn out to be completely unsustainable for miners, resulting in decreased security of the Bitcoin blockchain. the blockchain is probably more secure than it needs to be, regarding hash rate. miners are in an arms race to accumulate bitcoins right now. in the future, hash rate will probably be more closely correlated to (block rewards x price). an eventual plateauing and orderly decline in hash rate is fine to an extent. we just don't want to see hash rate plunge. As it's said, "Patience is a virtue". We as "hodlers" of Bitcoin should be patient in order to see better results in the future. But, what if Bitcoin never reaches a new ATH?
life will go on. the price was never guaranteed to keep rising forever..... |
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What would be the difference on using bitcoin coinjoin after withdrawal and withdrawing by using Monero coins from Binance? Monero can be more dangerous, I reckon.
in this case, we're talking about binance singapore (binance.sg). they don't support monero or any privacy coins, so that might be your answer right there. they don't want either activity (bitcoin mixing or privacy coins) on their platform. CZ is implying that this wouldn't have happened on binance.com. |
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For me, the way we could still make it possible is to establish a local exchange wherein, if we convert our money to crypto, these local exchange could already have the portion intended for the tax of each transactions.
you mean they should implement a tax on buying BTC, at the time of purchase? i reckon a thriving market for OTC brokers and p2p trading would develop to avoid those taxes. there would need to be rules that allow capital losses to offset tax liability. otherwise people who buy (and pay tax) before a market decline are getting doubly screwed. |
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So far, many people believe that Bitcoin is truly decentralized as "no one" controls it. But the harsh reality is that every single cryptocurrency and Blockchain network depends on the Internet to survive. It's no secret that in today's world, big companies like Google, Facebook, and even Amazon control the Internet. On the other hand, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have a final say over what people can view or host using the Internet. This means that Internet is centralized, greatly defeating the purpose of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies of eliminating the middleman.
For Bitcoin to be truly decentralized, the Internet needs to be decentralized first. in the internet's current form, yes, the centralized infrastructure and limited number of government-controlled ISPs is problematic. hopefully p2p mesh networking will mitigate this issue, but it'll realistically take years to build out the kind of networks that could support bitcoin. consumer mesh routers have only been out for a few years. |
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Bullish on fees
Bearish on use for btc
Less use - lower value
Price still pure speculation
why does it bother you so much if people use BTC as a store of value or speculative asset more so than a currency? history seems to disagree with you anyway. during strong bull markets, BTC price and transaction fees rise in tandem. when demand is high, people don't seem to mind paying high fees for the privilege of owning BTC. |
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For sure we will see more companies following the path but it's a waste of time and resources. (it's not only about Wasabi/Coinjoin btw, but it's also the whole problem with tainted coin) the issue isn't about taint itself. it's about using mixing services, whether centralized or decentralized. from an exchange's point of view, customers who use mixers are risky from an AML/regulatory point of view. wasabi wallet is super blatant with its coinjoins due to the high anonymity set. we need mixing solutions that not only deal with taint but also obfuscate the mixing activity itself. |
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the contrarian in me is thrilled to see these bearish opinions. it seems like lots of people are beginning to doubt the halving narrative. this is a good thing: bull markets are built on skepticism and pessimism. i'd be a lot more worried right now if everyone was bullish and hopeful. let the bears keep shorting bitcoin 5 months from the halving. see what happens.  However, what would be your argument for her prediction that investors', assuming she is talking about the institutional investors, preference towards bitcoin derivatived instead of bitcoin? Her argument is that no pump will occur because all money will be in cryptoderivatives. we don't need institutional investors for price to rise, especially considering how illiquid the market is. bitcoin's extremely limited supply and retail investor demand alone can spark another parabolic bubble IMO. also, physically backed and delivered derivatives have BTC underlying them, so if institutions are bullish on BTC, strong demand in these derivatives markets (like bakkt) will drive spot prices upwards. |
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@figmentofmyass. It is not a hard fork. It is a new blockchain where you need to make a one time swap migration from ETH1 to ETH2.
Is the swap as taxable event?
ah, i wasn't aware of this. i thought it was just a straightforward fork of the blockchain. from what i'm reading here, it doesn't seem like a taxable event. there will essentially be two interoperable blockchains with a 1:1 peg, sort of like a sidechain. there is no "airdrop" occurring. with a one-way bridge, you need to effectively burn your 1.0 coins to receive 2.0 coins. and with a two-way bridge, it's just like locking coins up in LN or sidechains. |
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The IEO hype was kinda similar, it just turned out to be a flop much sooner, where ICO's had around 1.5 years to thrive. The only good thing about that is the fact that fewer people fell victim to their own greed and shitty nature of the projects.
that's easy enough to explain: the IEO phenomenon emerged during a bear market and hasn't coincided with a bubble. bitcoin investors have always been obsessed with securities investment. in 2012 and 2013, we had things like bitcoin savings & trust, havelock investments, asicminer stocks. NXT then brought forth the ICO model and ethereum popularized it. then came the 2017 ICO bubble and IEOs after that. so IEOs might have their day yet. otherwise i wonder what the next fundraising model will be. something is gonna get hyped the same way during the next bubble. crypto investors are simply too greedy for me to assume otherwise. |
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As I've added the following alert, I guess it's fine to add Yobit back again to the comparison. What do you guys say? re the warning, excellent idea. a lot of people see these list/comparison threads and probably assume they are "whitelisted". it's important to remind everyone to do their own research before trusting an exchange with their money. i'm fine with yobit being on there. a lot of people around here still use yobit, and i've personally never experienced any negative issues as a customer. (i also wouldn't risk depositing too much money there either!) |
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