I didn't see anyone mention it yet, but he recently put Bitcoin on blast on Twitter.


So yeah, the meme is officially dead. He's shilling alts full time now.

I don't deny that authorities can probably spin facts if they're motivated enough (even if mixers aren't inherently illegal), but at least in Bestmixer's case:


It looks like this case also advertised itself as a way to launder money, which made it blatantly illegal on top of everything else. I don't think other mixers should be too concerned just because a random one got taken down.

Sorry for taking part of a necro, but I just felt like I had to address this.


The bolded part is what made his operation illegal. Mixers otherwise don't need to be warned of anything. I'm not sure why some people seem to have a vendetta against mixers when they exist to help them preserve their anonymity. At the end of the day, mixers are just tools and are only as good as their users.

True, but if you're sharing sensitive information with an http website in the first place (which shows their neglect to cybersecurity), then a VPN probably won't help you much. The real problem lies on failing to hide users' identity, which could easily be a life or death situation depending on where they're located. There's an easy workaround from OP's link, thankfully, and I might as well post it here to save other people the trouble:


One more notable workaround to ensure that everything is working well on all your devices is running the VPN directly on your router, but that obviously won't work when you're out and about.

Even then, I wouldn't be surprised if the wealth disparity in Bitcoin is a lot more lopsided than traditional assets. The early adoption advantage is ridiculous, considering how much Bitcoin has grown and that it was only born about a decade ago.

That being said, the comparison is quite moot. Bitcoin is only more lopsided because of the tremendous early adoption advantage and the fact that the rich (regardless of currency) are the same people who have the most capability to create more wealth -- Bitcoin was never really meant to redistribute wealth after all. You can create wealth with it, but if that's your purpose then it's basically just another asset with a few niches.

As for what I think, I think it can be problematic that a couple of whales can exercise a great deal of control over the market, but at the same time, nothing can really be done within the confines of a free market philosophy.

I would argue that knowing your home along with your identity and traveling habits (which could still be determined even if you don't bring your phone all the time) could be quite dangerous. I would suggest you check out The Great Hack on Netflix; it demonstrates how seemingly irrelevant data could be weaponized. One more thing to consider is that while the data exists, it could be mishandled and/or stolen.


Anonymity would defeat the purpose of contact tracing, and while fair, I don't think it's a good idea for everyone to have the ability to track everyone else.

The US Government doesn't control it, so no. That's basically the only difference between a theoretical digital dollar and existing alternatives -- they're not going to accept anything less than full control.

The forum doesn't moderate scams:


There are plenty of exposed scammers out there that are still able to post freely. The community does a good job of dealing with this through the Trust/Flag system though, so it's important that everyone utilize that at least to some degree. Instead of asking mods to nuke him, which is probably unlikely, it might be more helpful to support DarkDay's flag instead.

But yeah, all this really teaches us is to not trust strangers on the internet.

We could try having them delisted off search engines. Google doesn't list it, Yahoo shows it at the top(!), and both Duckduckgo and Bing list it second. Either way, a lot of the results seem scammy to me; this should be a built in feature for any wallet after all so there shouldn't be any demand for external services. Anyway, we may as well report them:

Here's how to report to Microsoft (Microsoft account needed)

For Duckduckgo, you simply send an email:


I also tried reporting it to Yahoo, but I can't seem get it to work. Maybe others can try it instead, but it also seems like you'd need a Yahoo account.

The biggest factor, in my opinion, is user experience. This is also one point where Bitcoin's decentralization works against it; there's no given jump-off point. Newbies have to pick among a massive number of exchanges/wallets, a lot of which are out there trying to steal their money. While the choice is incredibly trivial if you put time into it, there will be lots of people who would rather not bother, and thus dipping their toes will always be a daunting prospect to them.

People would rather pay for convenience, as evidenced by piracy dropping thanks to Netflix and Spotify. Bitcoin is easy to use at the end of the day, but it's still easier for the average joe to simply use fiat, swipe their cards, and/or let Paypal handle everything for their purchases, so it makes sense for them to gravitate towards that direction. Wallets are always improving though, so this is probably just a matter of time.

Anyway, it's not like strides haven't been made in the world's acceptance. Talking heads never really call Bitcoin a bubble anymore, which is crazy because that's all you really hear from critics two years ago. Who knows where we'll be in another two years.

I don't think you'll find any in-depth tutorials about these that are specific to crypto. What most crypto "analysts" do is take stock market principles and simply apply them to the crypto market. If this is the side you're interested in, I suggest you start learning stocks first.

Not that I believe that technical analysis works with Bitcoin, but to each his own. If you've been watching the market since 2018, you probably have a good feel of how things move now, so it might be a good idea to set aside a "trading fund" of sorts for practice.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/russias-central-bank-seeks-to-ban-crypto-issuance-and-circulation

One thing of note is that it's not finalized yet.


I wouldn't be surprised. They're already moving to outlaw payments, and Putin himself doesn't seem to be a big fan, outside maybe CryptoRuble (whatever happened to that? lol) and its potential to evade sanctions.

I would still be a bit wary of this, because I don't think there's a single person out there who would open up a live chat channel to everyone to help with troubleshooting pro bono. What I could see happening is he'll tell you to run scans (because really, what else can you do?), and if that doesn't work, he'll suggest his remote desktop service again.

I mean, it's fine if he's just going to charge you a small fee, but he could potentially advise you to download malicious software, etc. and you'll only be worse off for information you could probably get freely from the internet anyway. It's also much more advisable to follow instructions that could be reviewed and verified by other readers (tech forums, etc.) than PMs where you're at the mercy of the other party.

Again, to clarify, I'm not discrediting him. I just want to warn people of what could happen if he turns out to be untrustworthy. There's also the fact that there's so much information out there about virus removal that you likely won't need specifically-tailored advice.

This is from the site you have listed. His advice is generally sound, but the highlighted part is a red flag to me. You're basically giving a random guy access to your PC, so he can remove another guy who already has access to your PC. I'm not saying he's not trustworthy, but I strongly advise against getting any service of the sort.

Anyway, viruses like these are usually tame enough that Windows Defender and/or Malwarebytes should be able to purge them. If that doesn't work for some reason (which I believe would be highly unlikely unless your system has already been completely compromised), formatting your drive would be about a million times safer than installing a remote desktop service and letting other people handle it.

Also, you can follow these simple steps to avoid around 99% of random viruses floating around the internet:

1. Don't pirate software; it's trivial to bundle malicious software with these.
2. Don't install random software such as new altcoin wallets with no reputation etc.
3. Install script blocker add-ons on your browser such as NoScript or ScriptSafe. These can be further complemented by HTTPS Everywhere and uBlockOrigin.

Fun fact: the 13th most frequently lands on Fridays. If you think about it, it's statistically more likely for this to happen on a Friday the 13th than any day on the 13th, so there's really nothing unlucky about it lmfao.

But yeah, those prices don't really indicate any clear trends. We also have to consider the fact that our current situation is incredibly irregular considering the coronavirus scare and markets crashing all over.

IMO people were spooked because everything's crashing and burning, which created a self-fulfilling prophecy in the crypto market; the overall global situation isn't really dire enough that you'd have to hole up in your home with just cold hard cash and necessities.

What's interesting is that you'd think that the opposite would happen, due to people hyping up Bitcoin's reputation as a hedge against the traditional financial system, but so much for that I suppose.


Crazy how this aged and it hasn't even been 24 hours yet. Hodl strong everyone.

Oh definitely, in the same way that a USB drive with coins in it wouldn't necessarily be easy to break into. I was just saying that if a random thief with the capability to steal your coins gets into your home, he's more likely to take your hardware wallet than a random USB drive (if not both lmao).


No arguments here; if a precaution can make storing your coins safer, you should definitely avail of it. I'll edit my post and credit you. I was just pointing out that an attacker getting his hands on it wouldn't necessarily mean he'd be able to steal what's in it.

Probably because of this:


Increased spending on compliance will also trickle down to consumers, so it's not all good. It's great for casual users though, since it does look like this will help stop scam exchanges from setting up camp.

If your only intention is to keep your private keys offline, I would argue that it could be just as safe, since it does exactly the same thing.


Strong wallet passwords could also help, so it's not entirely vulnerable in the hands of a potential attacker. I mean, we've all heard about people getting locked out of their Electrum wallets, so you can possibly make this work in your favor. Hardware wallets are definitely better in this area though.

One advantage it has though, is the attacker won't necessarily know the flash drive is holding coins (you could just be using it as an OS installer after all, like majority of the populace) unlike hardware wallets, so they could be less prone to thievery.

This sucks, but you at least have access to the identity of the person, and can take them to a small claims court or something. That tells you that this isn't really a problem inherent with Bitcoin, but rather with its pseudonymity. If you sent some coins to someone you actually know by mistake, you might also be able to take them to court provided you can prove that they own the address.


They should, but I'm not sure if this is possible with interbank transfers. Can't really keep it instant if real people have to monitor it.