Don't use pen, because you most likely have cheap pen, and these don't last long on paper. Ink fades, especially if exposed to moisture or light. Pencil is more resistant due to it being graphite-based, and you can get much better quality from a $5 pencil than an expensive pen.

I just checked my notebooks from the early days of elementary school. Teacher's text written with pen ink is very readable, but a few parts have started sort of fading. My text, which was written with pencil, is like I wrote it yesterday. That must have been good quality paper, though. (less than 20 years ago)

Is there a specific reason you've written the hexadecimal private key in that order? Is it just as you'd written it down on paper?

Gavin's faucet was working until January 2013, and it was consisted by a captcha-protected form with an address input. It also linked to bitcoin.org, so if the OP did indeed use the faucet, they most likely used the very first Bitcoin client.

That being said, it's very weird that they've written 80 hexadecimal characters. @signer, do you remember using a program that backed you up the private keys?

I like thinking of DCA as being less prone to fluctuations. If you're buying small chunks of bitcoin every week, then you will definitely buy when it's considered low (as it did in late 2022). You will likely alleviate the potential loss.

There is no perfect strategy. Just think what is more suitable for your life. Is it buying $200 worth of bitcoin every week? Is it every month? Is it every once you get paid? You might think you can time the market, which in that case would be more preferable to have big capital and spend it for one purchase.

Very difficult. Usually, stabilization comes with tough regulations, but bitcoin is very hard to regulate. It's also used by very little percentage of people as currency, so it's even less likely.

This is just nonsense. There is no "backing" in bitcoin either. Electricity can also be used to extract gold from the ground, does that qualify as backing for gold?

Unfortunately, that's the truth. It's also that damn law about bad money driving out good. People won't utilize as currency, unless it becomes the "bad money".

I think you have misunderstood my complain.

I'm not complaining merely because I don't like the fact that you discriminate against certain coins (without providing anything beyond regular mixing). Rather, my complaint arises from the fact that your software initially presented itself as the ultimate solution to Bitcoin's fungibility issues, assuring continuous privacy preservation. But, this assurance was contradicted by the release of the blacklisting update, which not only indicated a departure from your initial promise but also disclosed your financial support for a chain analysis company. This development stands in stark contrast to the Wasabi I used in the past.

If there are no further questions, may I be excused, Your Honor?

Would you trust them if their source code was auditable? Based on my experience, code security auditing relies on a certain level of trust. It is good practice when you don't trust the technical expertise of the company, not when you don't trust their intentions.

Premium mixing. That's it. If you want to make a regular mixing, then use a software that will pick coins at random (i.e., will treat coins equally). But this particular service sells a product, and that is mixing with investors' money. Why would you want to do that and how you can verify you've received the product is something you should ask in their ANN thread. I'm not affiliated in any way other than advertising.

I'm pretty sure that doesn't apply on every single corner of the world.

Even if the dice is very biased, throwing it 99 times, as xx879 says, will suffice. In this post, I demonstrate that even if there is a 50% chance of getting a 6 (and 10% for each 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), it will still produce 216 bits of entropy. As a disclaimer, I had just applied Shannon's equation, and I'm by no means an expert in that branch of math.

All physical dice are biased to an extent. I think casino dice are known for approaching perfection.

Being strict in terms is nowhere close to that. They can't scrutinize your data, because they don't possess it in the first place:

Point me to the part where I said they scrutinize your data and then use it against you.

You forgot quoting the important part:

Jambler is an investment-based mixer, where users can choose to provide liquidity and take a commission from mixing. It's very reasonable that they analyze the blockchain to prevent an investor from clearing their money and gaining profit at the same time.

As an update to my little friend Kruw, who's really interested in the integrity of the services we advertise here, I've changed my mind about Mixtum after a conversation I've had with my campaign manager, and after a thorough research of mine. It's very likely that they're having strict terms to avoid sanctioning as they are considered money transmitting service.

As for your insistence that Mixtum is a blockchain analysis company: that doesn't even pass the laugh test. Someone who does blockchain analysis doesn't mean that's their product.

It's like the cookie file in Bitcoin Core which verifies that the user has the rights to execute commands in the lightning node.

But, can't someone with physical access monitor the computer and compromise the password?

This is another type of scenarios I'm afraid of. What if their systems get hacked? Even if they are trustworthy in intentions, I must as well trust that they're very capable in securing their systems, something that I can't just do; that's why I'm searching for a way to eliminate them as intermediaries in the first place, but as it turns out it isn't possible.

I think yes. It's just another communication protocol, but with the difference that there's value exchanged via cryptographic means. There are actually lots of Bitcoin protocols, such as the Bitcoin blockchain full nodes, the light client servers (SPVs), the lightning node, the block explorers etc. But the main layer is one protocol, just like TCP/IP, yes.

Ι don't understand how that's true. Was bitcoin more usable in 2021, valuated at $60k? Or, was it about the same usable in December 2017? Nah. The usability of the protocol improves overtime, but not accordingly to the amount of value that is inside the system.

You cannot import a seed manually with sethdseed in a descriptor wallet. It has to be a legacy wallet, otherwise you'll encounter the error:

Here's a quick Python program for you:

It takes as input a 256-bit private key, and converts it to WIF. You can create a new file, paste it there and run it with python3 file.py. Note that you must have base58 installed. To do it, run pip install base58 from the terminal.

It doesn't convert the mnemonics into a seed. It converts the seed into mnemonic. As you demonstrate in the slides, the computer firstly generates 128 + 4 bits, and converts these to mnemonic phrase.

The seed isn't used to create encryption keys, it is used to derive extended keys, which can be used to derive Bitcoin private keys.

Great work cygan. You should make a thread wherein you list every single of these animated slides.

Compact block filters is the private way to go for the average user. It neither takes much time to synchronize. But, I have a question: do we have any data suggesting that the full node can de-anonymize the user the more the blocks they request? Or perhaps there is lack of privacy protection when the user's transaction is included in a block with very few transactions? I presume that for the former, if you request more blocks, the full node could analyze transactions that share blockchain connection.

Okay, so you don't have anything to say about Wasabi. How unusual. 

I'm not going to stick with the definition. Either way, there's a difference between using an algorithm to check coins versus funding the development of entities, officially recognized as doing chain analysis, with vast amount of data from governments, exchanges and other such firms, and with access to input such as IP addresses, KYC data etc.

It's pretty clear from the beginning though that you only see things as black or white. No in-between. Instead of acting the judge in the Bitcoin court, derailing the thread, would you like to talk with us about the part where you're recommending a practice that literally supports the development of effective chain analysis, from developers who're doxxing their competitors and outright lying about their product?

I can also do that. I'm not a chain analysis company.

Merely "viewing coins in the blockchain" isn't blockchain analysis. It would require much more than a proprietary algorithm to be considered a chain analysis company, such as access to personal data from exchanges. They neither inspect and visually represent blockchain data. Just as the default coordinator from Wasabi is neither a chain analysis company if it was rejecting coins from a particular list of UTXOs some company gave to it.

For the multiple time, it isn't funding chain analysis.

The point isn't if the end user can tell the difference. The point is if there's a difference. And there's a difference between funding a chain analysis, versus not funding it. There just is. The result isn't the same.