You might think people are recommending ChipMixer because they are getting paid for the signature campaigns but from my perspective, you should be using them as they're around for a long time and wouldn't run away with your money. I'm not quite sure how much of anonymity you'd get after using their service but that's something I'll leave someone else to answer. Converting to Monero and back to BTC isn't really mixing your coins the right way.
every method has drawbacks. chipmixer has superior liquidity and excellent tumbling procedure but you must trust them 1. not to keep logs and 2. to custody your funds while using it. in fact, the longer you hold their generated private keys (trusting them not to steal them), the better the privacy guarantees:You are free to sweep it yourself, ask us to send it to your address or keep it on chip for a while. Only the last option keeps your funds vunerable to our dishonesty, but it also extends your privacy. If you sweep funds from chip in first 12h after your input, you receive same privacy as you would get from standard mixer. If you trust us (as you already did when you sent coins into mixer) and spend chip when you need it, then you achive maximum privacy you can get. theymos made a guide about mixing earlier this year and swapping to monero was his #2 choice. it's probably the most expensive option if using instant exchangers. one drawback of wasabi wallet is that it's blatantly obvious you are using a coinjoin because it enforces a 100-anonymity set. another is the ~0.1BTC minimum. it's definitely cheaper than swapping to monero though. |
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Will you wait for further positive events or invest when the market is bearish?
buy when there is blood in the streets. i'm still waiting a bit longer before putting my USD back into the market. mid-$5000s or $6k still seem likely enough to justify staying on the sidelines. (most of my capital is already in BTC anyway) but i do believe that time is running out for this downtrend. by january, we'll be in a new tax year and only 4 months away from the next halving. and we'll be coming off a long term correction in oversold territory. that's a dangerous time to be bearish on bitcoin! |
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I challenge the Bitcointalk community to make 2020's Proof of Keys the most impactful one yet. But it will take you reposting the writeup and raising awareness. Protect your fellow cryptocurrency friends from HitBTC's fraud. it's a nice idea, but i don't think proof of keys has ever had much of an impact. in fact, i recall a scandal around this year's event where hitbtc froze accounts the day before: https://bitcoinist.com/hitbtc-trace-mayer-john-mcafee-keys/but after a couple days, everyone forgot about it and things went back to normal. i've been warning people away from hitbtc for a while, but experience has taught me that most people won't learn until an exchange fails or exit scams with their money. until that happens, people just don't understand the gravity of the risks they are taking by storing funds on exchanges. |
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You don't need to dig very far to see that Poloniex is obviously being used to prop up TRX.
Don't you need a decent exchange to do that? Give it a few more months and it'll be less than nowhere. poloniex isn't that dead. remember, they are one of the only 10 "real volume" exchanges, according to bitwise. https://twitter.com/BitwiseInvest/status/1109114665240616962among those 10 exchanges, they have the second biggest BTC/USDT market after binance. and their BTC/USDC market is actually marginally bigger than binance. it's a shell of its former self in terms of total market share, but it's still one of the top exchanges. even after dumping USA traders they are still doing as much volume as bitstamp. |
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it seems like a good service. do you know what kind of fee they are charging (or maybe adding on top of their prices silently)? i've checked a couple of their prices and it seems like it is higher by about 1.8% to 1.9% compared to prices on Binance for the same coins. that sounds about right. i've seen it fluctuate between 1-2% over binance. i guess that's the price we pay for the privilege of not needing accounts, and not worrying about elliptic, cyphertrace, et al. you also don't need to pay the typical exchange withdrawal fee (eg 0.0005 BTC at binance) which claws back a bit of the profits taken by instant exchangers like flyp.me. |
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What's the best way to get bitcoins to monero and then back to bitcoins? is Exodus safe? https://flyp.me/en/i've used them before, no complaints. instant and no account registration. i would avoid swapping to monero and directly back to bitcoin. to make it harder to trace, you should layer in a few monero transactions before exchanging for bitcoin again. that way, not even flyp.me will recognize your inputs. i know that exodus use(d) shapeshift for their built-in exchange, and that shapeshift started requiring KYC. i'm not sure how that affected things. |
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The CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, has announced that the platform will be funding a small team to develop a decentralized standard for social media.
In a tweet made by Twitter’s CEO earlier today, Dorsey said that Twitter plans to fund a “small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers.” The end goal is to create a new decentralized standard which presumably will be for all social media. Twitter will be putting its weight behind the project and will, if successful, adopt this standard, someday.
decentralized social media platforms never caught on. too clunky, no network effect. i suppose if a huge platform like twitter implemented a decentralized protocol, it might actually have a chance of catching on. i assume that would mean no censorship, shadow banning, or other centralized means of control. i'm skeptical twitter would actually do that. wouldn't it destroy their paid advertising model? how are they gonna make money? they are a public company after all. |
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It's not miners who are driving fees up. They have strong incentive to fill blocks as much as possible. Due to limited block space, fees will always rise as transaction volume increases. Well, that's one way to put it but the reality is the pools do decide which TX goes through and which doesn't, Just look at how many Transaction Accelerators exist already today. They are essentially acting as "Banks" if you are willing to pay "Top dollar" your transaction gets through within minutes. It isn't far-fetching that these pools can decide not to accept transactions below X amount of fees once the mining reward goes down... There is nothing stopping miners to extort fees if they want... like any business would, miners are maximizing their revenue and profit. that's why they are miners at all---to make money. we shouldn't blame them for that. bitcoin was intentionally designed to leverage this greed to prevent censorship and interference by 3rd parties. we pay miners to mine our transactions.in turn, users compete with one another to get their transactions confirmed. when more and more people are racing to get confirmed in the next block, they start bidding higher and higher fees. can you blame the miners for taking them?  if they really wanted to extort higher fees, they would implement fee minimums and soft limits on block size. instead, they consistently mine full blocks, including 1 sat/byte transactions. |
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after that experience, i started using bitrefill for amazon.com gift cards. they are unfortunately the most expensive option by far. they charge an extra 2% on everything.
I've noticed this too after using them. As far as I know they are the one and only gift card provider that sticks a premium on top though I guess almost all others use Bitpay's exchange rate. It kind of negates the point. If you have a decent exchange you may as well use that as it'll almost certainly be cheaper than 2%. they do offer a 2% discount for using LN. that doesn't offer much consolation though. i can't be bothered with LN at this point. steep learning curve, alpha or early beta wallets with risk of losing funds.....or otherwise you need to use a custodial wallet. no thanks. i've used cardcash a dozen or so times. i had a couple bad experiences where they sent an e-card with a $0 balance (were probably fraudulent). they covered them under their 45-day guarantee but it took some back-and-forth with support. bitpay refunds can be a hassle. i'm now kinda paranoid about buying secondhand digital cards. i mostly use cardcash for physical gas cards (chevron, mobil, etc) now. those never give me problems. there's a 2% discount for using bitcoin, which is nice. |
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that's my interpretation too. people are trying to say that the government being anti-cash means they are pro digital payments = pro bitcoin. i don't buy that for a second. they are penalizing merchants who don't accept debit/credit card payments. i don't see them doing that with bitcoin.  |
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I am now starting to believe that the cryptocurrency industry is now being trampled by many scam artists out to get as much money as they can from innocent people.
You've only just started thinking that way? I admire your stoicism. It has and probably always will be a paradise for the immoral and predatory. the greed i've seen in the crypto markets......it's unparalleled. every newcomer i've ever seen is trying get rich quick, putting their money into riskier and riskier investments. cloud mining, shitcoins, ICOs, HYIP, whatever. there is a never ending stream of fish for the taking. that attracts a certain element, to be sure. not to mention that irreversible and pseudonymous payments = a dream come true for internet scammers. they can find victims across the globe and once the money is in their hands, it's not tied to their identity and it's easy to liquidate. |
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Capital is invested into 3rd level coins...
So 'Wall St' has piled into all of those dead ICOs and forks? What a fascinating approach to, erm, investment. Luckily I have Bitcoin God, Bitcoin Pay, Bitcoin File and probably Bitcoin Bitcoin to fall back on since the real one is being ignored. Best news I've had all week. my sense is that he's doubling down on his bitcoin losses and is making a hail mary play with lower cap altcoins. it's a classic crypto investor move. i'll laugh so hard if dmwardjr is right and altcoin season begins next month. Polo7 might just get bailed out by the market. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5140701.msg53309855#msg53309855 |
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Basically here is the issue I see happening.
Too many people are bearish and everyone is expecting at least $6K and maybe even $5K. Everywhere I look whether its some trollbox, this forum, reddit, twitter, discord, everybody is pretty much short. And when the sentiment is one-sided its usually never a good thing. very true. that's the main reason i'm scared to sell anything down here---and especially to short. the chart looks like shit and it definitely feels like sub-$6500 is imminent. but i've been through these conditions a million times, so i know a short squeeze (like early august or late october) is very possible from these levels. |
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let's get some perspective on that. bitcoin broke the 2013 ATH in may 2017 and that's when searches for "bitcoin" also reached a new ATH. search trends lag behind price so it's possible the same thing will happen next time around. Obviously we're a long way to $1000, but if we get a great combination of recession, stock bear market, and a big bust on the halvening i'll believe it when i see it. stocks are at the ATH, an imminent recession is becoming less likely, and the bitcoin market is 2 for 2 in terms of halvening pumps. |
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I also like his idea that companies who are operating in Italy are penalized if they do not accept credit or debit card as mode of payments for their customers. i'm not a fan. it adds additional costs for merchants, which disproportionately hurts small business owners. it's a typical example of how government regulation increases costs. we can see they are trying to phase out cash entirely with their incrementally lower limits. because the changes are subtle and occur over years, consumers are like the boiling frog. they won't put up a fight. most won't even realize that fully electronic payments are bad for their privacy. |
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ETH is overhyped. There was to be a whole industry based on its tokens and it all fell apart. that was never the promise of ethereum. the ICO bubble was just typical human greed playing out. it's silly to blame the underlying technology for peoples' greed. most of the garbage companies from the dot-com era didn't survive either. tokenization is actually pretty cool, and theoretically it's a real game changer for secondary securities markets, in terms of both accessibility and liquidity. ethereum in general offers really interesting functionality, much of which probably isn't fully understood yet. my main problem with ethereum is that it's bloatware. it wasn't designed for scalability. but the market might keep building on it (and valuing it) if node decentralization isn't seen as a principal concern. |
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For individuals who mostly go through private OTCs, buying USDT with CNY costs approximately 1.5~2%, converting USDT to USD on the other side usually takes 0.5%~1%, total cost around 2~4%, which is not subject to taxes under current law, comparing to underground transfers which are usually 5~8%, this is considered a pretty good deal. These individuals find OTCs from personal connections, nothing public or advertised.
For corporates who usually go through Huobi OTC directly, it costs around 0.5% to buy USDT, and 0.2% to convert back to USD offshore (or in Hong Kong), but is often subject to business taxes, HK 16.5%, Singapore 24%, Taiwan 22%, US 27.5%.
There isn’t much to say about Huobi OTCs, it’s quite straightforward, the private OTCs are more interesting. For Chinese corporations or individuals seeking USD in Hong Kong, these private OTC desks has a partner who are both incorporated in Beijing and Hong Kong, they simply transfer CNY to this partner in China, and partner transfers USD to client account, with a 2% fee, they often compare this to USDT solution considering the rate of USD and USDT of that day, for well established OTCs, former has a higher chance to be cheaper, for smaller ones, latter is usually cheaper. Decision of which route to go is made by clients. A lot of these transfers are still being made in the old way, however if the fund source is considered illegal under Chinese laws, then they usually go to the crypto way.
i'm beginning to see why the tether market is booming in china. the crypto markets have provided USDT with enough liquidity to attract chinese interest as a capital flight mechanism. and apparently also as a means for tax evasion and money laundering too in the case of these private OTC brokers. all of this must be attracting the ire of the chinese government. i hope bitfinex and tether are well insulated from their reach. |
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I've seen a lot of post about P2P transaction (fiat-to-bitcoin) in this forum, these people wants to buy a huge amount of Bitcoin without using exchanges. i've seen examples of the opposite too: I'm selling 2131 Bitcoins, I'm in Hong Kongyou can't take stuff like that too seriously. with OTC trading, we have no idea what's really happening---like how much volume is changing hands, if any. when the OTC market has excess supply and demand, it's reflected in spot market prices. so i focus on the spot market. |
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 in other words, we're looking at a contracting range. it might just stay sideways and build out a triangle. for now, all eyes are on $7087 and $7772 (bitstamp) for a breakout. the measured move target for an upside break is the $8500 area. a downside break is less predictable. the $6k area would be my first guess. |
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wow, i've been seeing their name in bitcoin's hash rate distribution for years, since 2014. there was always something fishy; even their name sounded like a scam. but having a respectable share of the hash rate gave them an air of legitimacy. people have apparently been warning about them for years, i just never noticed. https://99bitcoins.com/anatomy-bitcoin-scam-bitclub-network-analyzed/it sounds like a ponzi scheme built on top of an MLM/referral scheme. rising bitcoin prices probably allowed them to sustain the scheme for so many years even though they were continuously looting investor funds. |
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