It could be an attack angle in the future, but I don't see it happening. No one ever talks about the issue, and governments seem far more occupied with taxation rules and regulating exchanges. Decentralization, on the other hand, is a hot topic, so I'm fairly sure permissioned blockchains won't make it very far.

The article made it sound like a big deal, but it's really just some guy making a mountain out of a molehill, saying illicit cryptomining is going to take over entire networks. Viruses that can do that have been in the wild for decades now. No one should be taking what he wrote seriously.

My personal view is that it's possible, but why bother? People in crypto are few, so debilitating regulations wouldn't be met with much resistance. Run of the mill FUD like saying crypto might be banned in the future from a person with a position powerful enough is all they really need to make prices tumble. They do collect data without a doubt, but not for FUD.

This is perfectly possible in the future though, when crypto becomes large enough. At the moment, it's nowhere near as important as the presidency of a world superpower.

Yeah, I don't see the point in creating an altcoin that can only be used specifically on your platform along with a few others. Customers are always going to be looking at the simplest solution, which will hopefully be Bitcoin in the future. Less conversions is always better.



Well they're already middlemen, so they have to act as escrows which I realize isn't the most elegant solution. I have to confess that when I said that statement I was thinking more about small personal businesses, and from the perspective of the business owner. There could be problems regarding trust either way, yeah.

Well yeah. IPOs are basically just ICOs after all, except it uses crypto to sidestep regulations raise funds more efficiently. It doesn't even try to hide the fact that they're pretty much one and the same -- only the middle word was changed after all.

It's like how age old anti-scam precautions also apply to crypto scams like Bitconnect. They're basically the same things except on different mediums. But yeah, interesting read either way.

Well, banks charge credit card fees to vendors, so if you're a vendor, it might make a little more sense for you to accept a different medium of payment, such as Bitcoin. Assuming, of course, that it's widely used and that the volatility won't get in the way. You'll probably only save a few dollars per transaction, but that piles up rather quickly. That's a more than valid use case in my opinion. There's also the fact that you won't have to deal with chargeback fraud, which is another pro.


Well smart contracts are very interesting, but I don't think they're being used to their full potential. There's still a lot of places technology like that can go, but I guess no one has found a real use for it yet. Other than that, off the top of my head, anonymity -- I'm fairly sure they're going to be regulated to hell and back once they start becoming widely used though.

It would depend on the specific app. If it's an app that claims to mine Bitcoin though, it's fake at best and malicious at worst. You don't really need Bitcoin apps other than exchange or wallet apps, maybe. I would suggest you stay away from everything else because it's so easy to get compromised these days. There's malware in the Play Store every now and then too, so the less you install on your phone, the safer you likely are.

That's a massive amount of money. You have to let the guy know before you take any further steps. The transfer of the coins should be trivial (assuming blockchain.info doesn't require any additional authentication) and could be coordinated with him later.

Edit:

You only really have to press Send below the "BE YOUR OWN BANK" text on the dashboard. The rest could be figured out easily once the guy is able to create an address/wallet of his own.

Oh, my bad. I had no idea what estate sales were. That kind of complicates things, assuming the guy has no idea what crypto is, and doesn't have access to the said account. But yeah, in this case, you need to tell us exactly which site it is for us to be able to provide clear instructions.

But uh, either way, you're going to need his cooperation if you were to transfer coins to him. If you stumbled upon an online wallet that he has no access to, he will need to:

1) Create his own wallet
2) You will need to transfer the coins to his wallet

The steps you have to take would depend on what site you've found exactly, so please share it here.

So if I understood you correctly, a site, presumably blockchain.info was bookmarked, and it's still logged in?

You don't really need to get a hold of him. He would still be able to access it in his own on other computers, so just log it off and you shouldn't encounter any problems.

That being said, who sells a laptop without reformatting it? You should reformat it on your own, honestly, because you don't know if the original owner left anything malicious. There could be viruses he doesn't know about, etc.

Oh, I've read this before. It's an extremely pointless article. The author basically argues that illicit cryptomining will take over the world, so cryptocurrencies should be made illegal before things get that bad. Well, illicit cryptomining is really just another form of cyber attack, so why focus solely on it? While we're at it, why don't we take things a step further and make the internet illegal so no one gets their data and/or processing power stolen?

But yeah, that's just about how stupid his logic is. You don't burn your house down just to get rid of a few vermin. I don't even think the author is stupid. He probably just really needed to write something controversial about crypto and this is the most original thing he came up with.

I would also like to note that the author forgot a dead simple way to stop most illicit crypto mining attacks: the NoScript browser extension (or ScriptSafe for Chrome), which everyone who wants to be safe on the internet should be using anyway.

Most of them are caught through address/wallet connections. Addresses that have been used together in a single transaction are flagged as belonging to the same wallet by services such as walletexplorer.com, while some blockchain explorers like blocktrail.com are able to crawl bitcointalk for mentions of specific addresses. Proof gained this way is usually irrefutable.

Other than that, it's just circumstantial stuff like post patterns, etc. but those are a lot harder to prove. People with multiple accounts also tend to not post very well.

As for whether you can report them or not, yes. There's an entire thread dedicated to that here. Make sure you have proof before accusing someone though.

I disagree. Their statements basically imply that Bitcoin will continue to exist in the long run without any heavy handed regulations on the horizon. They have also explicitly acknowledged it, which could increase the mainstream's confidence in its use. I wouldn't mind regulations either, for as long as they're fair and won't impair growth and development significantly.

Also, I'm pretty sure it will take a hell of a lot of growth for them to be spurred into sudden action. They've basically confirmed that crypto is still way too small in the big picture to pose a real economic threat after all.

Yeah, good luck with that. Literally anyone can create literally any number of wallets and addresses, and lots of people have the good sense to treat their addresses as disposable anyway.

But uh, I guess it could be useful because it flags addresses that have been used for crime, and transactions could probably be traced from there. Still, I doubt that criminals whose addresses have landed on their list are going to be stupid enough to be pinned this way.

For people who don't know what OP is talking about, refer to this article:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/bitcoin-s-death-cross-looms-as-strategist-eyes-2-800-level

I'm personally not concerned. Past performance is not indicative of future results, as they say, and this is even more applicable to Bitcoin compared to other traditional assets, where technical analyses are usually applied.


Honestly, good luck with that prediction lol. Bitcoin has bounced back since, too.

Well he's already acknowledged that Bitcoin cannot be legally recognized by China in the future despite his positive outlook, so there are probably laws in place to make sure of that. He likely won't be able to change that fact.

I concede that this is somewhat encouraging, but you have to remember that this is politics. Everyone flip-flops to cling onto power. China's government especially doesn't like opposition, so he can't go off script for one second. I personally don't think he can make a difference.

I would also like to note that this is a prime example of why platforms banning cryptocurrency ads is a good idea. They mostly don't do any good for anyone but scammers. It sucks that there are (very few, I'd guess) legit companies that will be hit by this, but I'm sure these changes alone will cut down scam victims and hit scammers where it hurts.

Sorry for your loss OP. That was a very expensive lesson.

How often do you see ads that are related directly to Bitcoin? Most ads sell investments and investment advice that have very little to do with Bitcoin itself. Heck, some advertise fake phishing wallets. I don't see the move as harmful to Bitcoin at all, other than people dumping because they're making a mountain out of a mole hill. This only hurts ICOs, both legitimate and illegitimate, along with swindlers and scammers.

I don't think Bitcoin needs any advertising, and the more it can distance itself from these scammy ICOs and services, the better.

Well they're only really beneficial if you're good at trading yourself. You tell the bot what to do after all. But yeah, I guess it would be hard to trust bots if you haven't seen the code; there are lots of things that could theoretically go wrong, from API bugs to timeouts, etc. and all of those have to be accounted for.


Bot vendors do not sell automatic returns. They sell a way for you to automate your trades. If you can consistently profit by day trading taking advantage of arbitrage and stuff, and are able to quantify your personal trading rules into variables, it's likely that you'll generate a profit.

If your idea is somewhat like a product, then you can file a patent. This way, you'll receive everything they earned from it and they're barred from using it in the future.

If it's just like a general game plan, you're much better off simply investing in the resources for execution yourself. That's really your only option since you don't seem like you want to trust anyone. You can't sell an idea if you don't give details after all.

How is he unprofessional though? He may be able to lie about consulting crypto experts about selling the coins, but there's no way he can lie about being in constant communication with the courts. That, added to the fact that he was able to sell the coins in the first place (which is his only job in this instance, mind you) makes him look fairly professional to me.

I understand that people are upset because he might be the sole reason for the recent bear market, but there's no evidence that backs that claim up. It's much more likely that a wild rally met an equally wild correction and that it's been hard to maintain a bull run since.