Yes.
Your funds are not stored in the wallet. Your private keys to the addresses are what makes them spendable for you. As long as you're able to control your private keys (or your seeds), you are able to control the funds. As for the interruption of outgoing transactions, if it crashes before it gets broadcasted, then you will have to create another transaction again; it'll be like as if the transaction has never been made. If you have already pressed broadcast and it was done successfully, your transaction will show up as per normal.

Nope. Transaction labels, payment request, address labels, etc are all stored within the wallet file locally, they cannot be restored using the seeds only. It is important to note that while you'll be able to restore your addresses with the seeds alone, you need to have a backup of the wallet file if you are using Lightning Network and have an open channel.

It is not. Your full node should have the code that enforces the specific parameters pertaining to Bitcoin's rules. You can verify that you are infact enforcing the 21 million rule by checking the rewards halving, difficulty re targeting and block rewards within the code.

It is easy to change the parameters, whether anyone wants to follow your fork is an entirely different issue.
They don't. Seems absurd that you think Bitcoin is within a control of any single entity and is still surviving at this point.

If you were to modify your Bitcoin Core with a different block interval, different block rewards or halving, you'll effectively change the total possible coins generated. This would only apply for those that is running the client with the same modification as you. So no, anyone can change the limit but it won't be followed. It is already happening with the altcoins that are forked from Bitcoin. The consensus that you've mentioned effectively means that those who runs that modification consider theirs as 'Bitcoin'.

As with the limit of 21 million, it'll probably not be called Bitcoin because there really isn't any real reason for it to be changed. The original Bitcoin should still have 21 million as its limit.

Keyword is consensus.

When Bitcoin transactions are made, they are not sent to another central authority but to a Bitcoin node[1]. Due to this, each node will see a transaction at a different timing. As such node A may see it first while Node B can take a few seconds (say 5s) for it to be finally relayed to it(TX A). In this short 5s, since node B hasn't seen the transaction yet, it allows the attacker to spend another transaction and this time its a different transaction (TX B) that spends the same inputs but the outputs have different spending requirements (or to be sent to different address). The problem now is that since, 50% of the network has seen TX A but not TX B and vice versa. Essentially, they cannot agree on the same transaction that is relayed first. To both, TX A is first seen by half and TX B is seen by the other half and both think that they saw it first. Since you would very much rather not trust what another node says, there is a fairly significant deviation from the unix time for most of the nodes and thus the time received by each node cannot be taken as is. Nodes are independent entities that do not trust each other.

What mining essentially does is to ensure consensus by making everyone follow the same set of Blockchain with the same set of transactions. The disagreements are now solved by this common Blockchain that is recognized by all of the nodes as valid. By enforcing the rule that the Blockchain with the longest PoW is valid, you essentially makes it such that for someone to alter the Blockchain, they have to expend resources to make an alternative chain with a different transaction at that point to make nodes accept it as valid[2]. Since it is more expensive for an attacker to reverse a transaction than to just mine with the honest miners, the game theory makes it such that people are disincentivized to attack.


So for example, TX A is included in the Blockchain at Block 10 and the current Block height is 20. The attacker will create another blockchain with a block that includes TX B in Block 10 and attempt to mine 11 blocks after that. As a result, the attacker has to expend additional resources just to outpace the network by at least one block. Such attacks won't usually go unnoticed and would probably cause a price crash which makes this attack much more unprofitable.


[1] Full node being defined as a client that validates transactions and blocks and enforcing protocol rules in the process, usually running Bitcoin Core or similar implementations.

[2] See 51% attack.

Do you consider people who buy Bitcoins as a speculative investment with the intent to hold it for as long as possible, Bitcoin users? They don't use Bitcoin but only hold it.

If you don't consider that, then the adoption is not significant still. As you can probably see, the fees makes normal transaction expensive and LN is not getting adopted by most of the merchants.

It is not a fee per se but it is a restriction of the transaction fees.

1sat/byte wasn't the minimum fee in the past, free transactions were possible. As long as your transaction cannot meet the criteria of a free transaction, there must be a minimum fee for the transactions to be relayed by the nodes with default parameters. Since it's defined in the default settings, changing it by the owner would also result in some transactions being accepted (if decreased) or some transactions being rejected (if increased). This is specific to individual nodes but the 1sat/vbyte is assumed to be adopted by most of the nodes on the network and thus it is the minimum fee for a good propagation.

Doesn't most credit cards give you the option to settle your payments online? Cashless society is a thing nowadays.
If you see Bitcoin as a speculative currency that can spike in value at any time, it would never go mainstream. No one would use a volatile currency. Trading is *NOT* easy, you're most likely going to lose money unless you have experience and is able to commit a lot of time to it.
Fast? As in 10 minutes or more if your fees are low 'fast'?

---

Every single point that you've mentioned so far is exactly why governments don't want people to adopt Bitcoin. It would be way easier to evade taxes as well as to launder money. If you think that any nations are willingly adopting Bitcoin, you're completely wrong. It's far from being accepted as a legal tender.

Other than that, there are far more technological limitations that inhibits the growth of Bitcoin. How many users can realistically use Bitcoin, if they only make a single transaction a week? As much as I support Bitcoin, there are obviously shortcomings that has to be addressed (or not) which would make it less desirable for governments or normal users to adopt it.

Signing the same message results in the same signature, provided that the r value is deterministic. Even if it's not, it is fine as long as the r value is not reused. I don't think signing the same message would expose you to any risk.

I assume you got the information from the research papers?

It was pretty outdated and that is probably not the case anymore. You no longer have to send the whole block over to the peers with compact block, you're at most sending the primary data concerning the block and only send the transactions that are requested by your peers. While there will still be some delay, you can't measure the mean delay and take it as it is. Some nodes are bound to be more well connected than others and skew the results.

Bitcoin is popular, the rate at which (unconfirmed) transactions are being made is much more than the actual capacity of the network in terms of the transactions that can be confirmed. Transaction volume is currently a technical limitations, by the concept of weight units and making it more popular will not help. So if you want to tackle the people trying to bash Bitcoin by drawing comparisons from carbon footprint per transactions, the argument would be to solve the transaction capacity problem instead. I'm sure the profitability of mining would increase with more fees or adoption?

Proving that Bitcoin's utility outweighs its cost is far more important than saying its environmental damage is unsubstantial.

Probably won't help much, if at all. There isn't any proprietary secure elements being produced by any hardware wallet manufacturers. Designing one and manufacturing them would probably make the cost of one skyrocket, not to mention that smashing that many components into a single chip isn't common at all.

Communication between secure element and the MCU should be encrypted and if anything were to be extracted. AFAIK, some MCUs actually wipe their memory on bootup, even if the user doesn't do a clean shutdown. Would be better to just use a SE that allows for transactions to be signed within that, so keys are never sent out of it.

Go read the whitepaper. The references are in it, together with the links. It'll be good to see the early Satoshi emails as well, they can give you some insights into his thought process.

The purpose of Bitcoin is to provide an environment that eliminates any third party interference. It does not mean that you cannot exchange it for another store of value that involves a third party; there is simply no way to stop that.
It will. There are however technical concerns and political oppositions within the Bitcoin community. Some altcoins like Ethereum has block intervals that are a couple of seconds. In its current state, it is not always desirable or convenient for day to day transactions. Which is where Lightning network attempts to solve, albeit with limited effects.

You can see the block size debate and take the position for yourself.
I agree.

If you want to stop mining, then you have to eliminate Bitcoin's PoW first by changing it into something like a PoS. Mining will never stop in Bitcoin's case. The primary aim of Bitcoin is not to make everyone rich by artificially cutting the supply or otherwise manipulating it. It is designed to be a currency with a pre-determined coin cap.

Yes, Bitcoin's utility would be better if it could be confirmed quicker. Completely possible and feasible, the question is if everyone would agree on it. If not, then it'll become another altcoin.

Perhaps. It could've had a domino effect for all you know.

The energy that is wasted cannot possibly be sufficient to be able to outweigh the amount of electricity used by Bitcoin mining. You can also store excess energy in batteries or converting it back into GPE through a pump in the case of dams. Not too sure about the efficiency of long distance electricity transmission nowadays but it could've resulted in less fossil fuels burned elsewhere as well.

It is certainly not a natural disaster, nature doesn't consume electricity.
Its estimated to consume 0.5%. Environmental pollution, no matter how small is still considered pollution. All of the examples that you've listed are also culprits of carbon footprint but so is Bitcoin mining. Mining and processing silicon and the production of ASICs may not always be carbon neutral. There are bound to be people who both practice what they preach and advocate for their cause as well, can you really fault them?

If the benefit that arises from using Bitcoin with a higher transaction volume and adoption grows, then I would think there'll be less noise. Most of the commotion is almost always generated by the media.

Hal Finney Satoshi wasn't the first to invent a PoW algorithm, Hal Finney did.

BitGold and B-Money were apparently referenced in the whitepaper as well. If you were to look into both of them, you can find some similarities to how Bitcoin actually function.

Very well thought out and I didn't have much to counter as well.

You're comparing Bitcoin to its substitutes instead of the various other human activities which could produce significant carbon footprint. Heck, I can think of tons of activities that directly contribute to an increased carbon footprint; transportation, chemical industries, etc. Does that mean that we can just stop producing metals, refining fossil fuels, completely eliminate them from our lives? Probably not.

In comparison, when you're talking about Bitcoin, the adoption currently is far lower than most of it's substitutes. At 7tps, there are tons of other payment methods that easily outpaces this by a factor of thousands without a strain on their network. Can people stop using Bitcoin? Probably, there are other payment methods because really, do the majority of the people absolutely care about decentralization, transparency? I can see an argument for this if your transaction volume rivals them but if the benefits are still fairly limited, then probably not.

---

What about the e-waste that is constantly generated from Bitcoin mining? The competition makes it such that old ASICs are always phased out once the profit margin diminishes and as ASICs can never be reprogrammed into something else, they usually end up being useless afterwards. Of course, they're always turned on 24/7 with the chips pushed to their limits and the failure rates can be higher than most electronics. Surely both the production and disposal of these ASICs are fairly detrimental to the environment? You can't recycle silicon, or that's what I know.

I'm a strong proponent that Bitcoin's electrical usage, while fairly significant doesn't pose as a serious problem. I can't see how e-waste wouldn't be an issue, as we're talking about environmental impact after all.

Yeah, you'll have to certify it somehow. Not a problem though.
Unless the PGP key has been compromised, which is quite unlikely, you can trust that this was signed by ThomasV. The fingerprint that I've imported matches yours, 6694 D8DE 7BE8 EE56 31BE  D950 2BD5 824B 7F94 70E6. If you trust that the public key is accurate, then you've downloaded the legit version.

I'll probably just skip the exchange.

Converting your Bitcoins to altcoins is usually done through an intermediary, usually an exchange which has to collect data for KYC/AML purposes. Even if you use Monero, you'll still have to convert it to Bitcoin at some point which would be through an exchange.

Instead, I'll use a P2P method (slightly more risky but way more privacy) and skip the whole exchange part. Just use a mixer or CoinJoin to break/obfuscate the link and you'll be better.

No. Taproot is a new format and this entails that users have to move their funds to a new address, if they want to take advantage of it. The transactions are smaller when it's a multisig (n-of-m) but in terms of size, it won't benefit others that significantly. The assumption is that by optimizing them, the size per transaction goes down and thus other transaction types can pay less fees and fit into a block. Since you have to first transfer it into another TR address, I doubt it'll help much.

Also, Multisig transactions shouldn't form a significant portion of the network.