If you have multiple dust outputs on the same address, then yes, this is fine and you lose nothing by consolidating all these outputs in to one larger output.

If however you have multiple dust outputs across multiple addresses, then by consolidating them all together in a single transaction you link all these addresses under common ownership, and therefore you link all the transactions which created those dust outputs together as well. You may have reasons that you do not want to link those transactions together as all belonging to the same person.

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I don't really understand the "50 Google searches a day" thing. There are better search engines out there than Google, but if you are desperate for Google results, then you can either use Startpage or SearX configured to return only Google results. Both of these options are free and unlimited.

Pick a reputable decentralized, peer-to-peer exchange from the list here: https://kycnot.me/. I suggest Bisq or RoboSats for ultimate privacy and security (although more technical), or AgoraDesk for a less technical option.
Either accept an existing offer or create your own offer, using whatever fiat method you want (cash in person, cash via mail, bank transfer, etc.)
Initiate the trade using the platform's in built escrow for the safety of both parties.

I mean, I wouldn't be storing large amounts of money in some centralized shitcoin completely under the control of a third party in the first place. But if I was, I would just sell it. I wouldn't feel the need to announce to my millions of Twitter followers "Hey, this is a shitcoin, let's start a bankrun!". CZ clearly had no problem doing that, and that's fine for him, but to then turn round a few months later when someone else calls his centralized shitcoin a shitcoin and call it "very petty fud" is completely hypocritical. Not that I expected any less.

Unbelievable, isn't it? The writing was on the wall for months before the collapse of the likes of Voyager, Celsius, BlockFi, FTX, and more, and yet millions of people lost everything despite constant warnings from the community all over this forum, Reddit, Twitter, etc. And even now, after Binance are being squeezed from every direction, after their "proof of reserves" was shown to be nothing but smoke and mirrors, after their centralized stablecoin has been shut down, after all the news coming out, we still have people saying "Binance is too big to fail" and "CZ is too smart". What will it take for people to wake up and just withdraw their coins to their own wallet?

Coin control means specifically picking the inputs you want to use (or not use) for each transaction, rather than letting your wallet decide for you. This means deliberately taking care to avoid linking specific UTXOs in the same transaction to protect your privacy.
Pay to many on the other hand is exactly what it means - an option that allows you to specify multiple outputs in a transaction rather than just one. You can manipulate this feature as I described above to redirect any change to somewhere else.

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In terms of the browser, looking in to it a bit more it is obviously not being designed to replace Tor or compete directly with Tor. Rather it has been designed to compete with other non-Tor browsers. Obviously Tor is the gold standard for privacy, but for all those people who will never use Tor due to speed, breaking various websites, or other issues, then this Mullvad browser looks like a good option rather than using some spyware like Google Chrome.

I think I'll probably stick to my multiple very hardened Firefox set ups and forks, but having more privacy focused browsers such as DDG and Mullvad on the market is never a bad thing.

You can transfer the fiat using any of the usual electronic methods or via cash.

How do they know you have any coins? If you've done things properly, then you've traded exclusively peer to peer, you've not signed up to any centralized exchange or other centralized service, and you've not handed your KYC over to any third parties.

No, it isn't. Verifying against signatures is obviously something that everyone should do, and it does protect against many types of attack. However, it does nothing to protect you against either the developer sneaking in code which is not on GitHub in order to scam all their users at once, or from someone having stolen the developer's key and using it to sign a malicious version. The only way to be absolutely sure of the software you are running is to examine the code yourself and then build it from scratch yourself. This is obviously outside the skill set of 99% of users, but calling it unnecessary is wrong.

You are dependent on the developer releasing the hash that they themselves have generated from the source code they have. You then calculate the hash from the code you have downloaded and check that it matches the hash provided by the developer. If the developer has not provided a hash, then you have nothing to check against so you cannot use this method.

Because by skipping this step you are trusting that the pre-compiled software you are downloading matches the code you are looking at on GitHub. There is no guarantee this is true.

Not necessarily. They can be easily used by any who wants the additional security that they bring.

It is entirely appropriate to use different set ups for different reason. I use simple single sig set ups for funds that I need to be easily accessible, and I use more complex multi-sig set ups for long term cold storage.

It's entirely up to you and your individual risk profile. Not keeping everything in the same wallet is a good start.

Having a seed phrase with multiple different passphrases is one option, as you say. This can provide some plausible deniability as you can split your coins across the multiple passphrases (making sure that there is also no blockchain link between these wallets). You need to have the seed phrase and each passphrase all backed up separately. You could also have one or more multi-sig wallets, but each multi-sig also requires multiple separate back ups and some people can struggle to find multiple separate safe locations for these back ups.

As un_rank says, they are two entirely different things.

Here is where they are defined in the code:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/5a8bd4505687a7ec76d731b1a8249ee04d641990/src/kernel/mempool_options.h#L19-L20

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/5a8bd4505687a7ec76d731b1a8249ee04d641990/src/kernel/mempool_options.h#L23-L24

So was I, until several years ago when they transitioned to demanding KYC from all their users as Solosanz has provided links for above. At that point I immediately stopped using them and transitioned to better options. Now I use mostly Bisq, but a handful of other platforms too.

Depends on your wallet. If you are using Electrum, for example, then you can use the "pay to many" option and put Mullvad's deposit address with a ! symbol instead of an amount. This will send everything left over from your transaction to Mullvad instead of to a change address. Obviously be careful using this so you don't accidentally send a whole bitcoin to Mullvad or something silly like that (unless of course you want to buy a 500 year subscription ).

I had no idea they were launching a browser, so thanks for this! I'll definitely check it out. Based only on what you've quoted though, I'd be wary of using it immediately - a "hide in the crowd" approach only works when there is a crowd to hide in. It will initially have a very small user base until more people learn about it and start using it, so better to stick to Tor or Firefox for now.

A multi-sig wallet will generally be safer than a single sig seed phrase plus passphrase combination due to the absence of a single point of failure.

To recover a seed phrase plus passphrase wallet, I have to input that seed phrase and the passphrase in to a single device, be it a phone, computer, hardware wallet, whatever. That device therefore becomes a single point of failure, and if that device is compromised, then I lose everything. With a multi-sig wallet with a threshold number of signers of 2 or more, then I can recover each signing wallet to a different device, and pass partially signed transactions between these devices to be signed by each device individually. This means that if one device is compromised, my coins remain safe.

In terms of backing up, then it depends on the exact multi-sig numbers you are using. A 2-of-3 multi-sig for example will be more resistant to loss than a seed phrase/passphrase combination (which requires 2 of 2 back ups to restore), but will equally be more vulnerable to being discovered (since you require 3 separate back ups instead of just 2 (or ideally 6 instead of 4)).

Ideally, you would want to download the code and then build the binary yourself from scratch. This is only possible with a very small handful of wallets: https://walletscrutiny.com/

If you trust that the .tar/.dmg/.exe/whatever does indeed match the published code, then you should simply verify what you download either via matching hashes or signatures from the developers, as Welsh has said.

Reinstalling the OS is insufficient, as doing so does not necessarily scrub all the other data on the disk. You need to completely reformat the drive (and then ideally overwrite it all with random data) in order to delete everything that is on it first, and then install a fresh OS.

A good Linux distro will protect you from viruses better than any antivirus software on Windows.

You should also assume that any and all wallets you have on your computer are compromised. Once you can safely set up new wallets with new seed phrases, move all your coins in to these new wallets.

The solution is simple: Don't use centralized exchanges.

I don't need to use a centralized exchange to "cash out" my bitcoin, since I can either spend it directly with merchants or trade it peer to peer just as I did when I bought it.
I don't care if centralized exchanges start demanding even more ridiculous KYC or require you to identify all your personal addresses to them. I will never use them and so they have no jurisdiction over me whatsoever. If anything, such draconian rules will just push more and more people to trade using real DEXs, not these centralized fakes like LBC and Paxful.

Neither LBC nor Paxful were in any way anonymous - they were both entirely centralized and required all the usual ridiculous KYC. If you used either you did not have a shred of privacy.

Not true. There are dozens of actually peer to peer/decentralized/anonymous exchanges: https://kycnot.me/

Well, considering I've been trading in person for years and have never once used Paxful, the answer to that is a resounding no.

Lmao. Has everyone already forgotten when Binance publicly tweeted they were dumping FTX token and kicked off the bank run which led to the collapse of FTX? And then he calls people taking shots at him "fud" and "very petty". What a scumbag.

You can use RBF on Electrum for Android.

When making a transaction, make sure the checkbox for "Final" is left blank (this is its default setting). This will enable RBF. Then, if you need to bump your fee, on the "History" tab you simply tap on your unconfirmed transaction, tab "Options" at the bottom left, and then select "Bump fee" and choose your new fee.

0.78125 BTC, rather than 0.178 BTC, but essentially you are correct. The dates are not set in stone, however. A halving occurs every 210,000 blocks, which on average will be almost 4 years, but not necessarily so.

After the final halving in approximately 2140, the block subsidy will be zero, and all the reward that miners receive for mining will come from transaction fees. It will be several decades before this however that the block subsidy becomes so small as to be insignificant when compared to fees.

I don't think so. If it becomes too expensive to own a single bitcoin, then buy a millibitcoin. If that becomes too expensive, then buy a few thousand sats.

In that case it will be trivially easy to bruteforce the passwords using btcrecover. The longest part by far will be downloading and setting it up, but you can probably do all that in 20 minutes and then it would only take a few seconds to run.