Actually, many of the popular VPNs track you and log your data. In fact, they may even log data about your installed apps - not only your browser activity. It's quite hard to achieve anonymity when gambling, as even with Tor you could have JavaScript leak the required information to identify you.

If you want to do everything off the grid, VPN isn't the best choice imo.

I mean, Google does deserve a little slap in the face for the way they were unable to manage these fake Bitcoin ads and giveaways for so long already. I've been saying it so many times: it's almost as if they really want these scams to be around. AI or not, I think at this point it's quite obvious there's a need for human manual verification of Google Ads containing keywords such as "Bitcoin" and "cryptocurrencies" for example. I doubt there are so many legit requests for Google Ads they wouldn't be able to handle them. Most YT "giveaways" have very similar keywords that could be filtered out. A channel that never had a Bitcoin video on it could be flagged as suspicious, for example.

It's quite fair though to punish the guy for running an entire chain of ATMs without a license, I mean it's nothing compared to the abuses and unfair sentences given in some of the crypto cases. If the guy is guilty, let him serve his sentence. This doesn't hinder the ATM (and Bitcoin) expansion at all, it's not like he was legally running the chain of bancomats.

Guess all those places should be penalized as well for letting this happen as well..

The probability of winning even if you bet every day for years straight is so low you will most likely end up losing everything you've gambled rather than winning anything at all. Besides luck, there's not much you can do to improve your chances - maybe sports betting like you're playing, but even there you still have a luck factor in the game..

There is no perfect system, but I'd rather be my own bank and the only one under the control of my money instead of using centralized currencies printed by centralized authorities and used in a centralized bank account. In my country, you can give permissions over your bank account to other persons as well. The thing is, with BTC you can just transfer all your coins to your own secondary wallet and there goes the solution to your problem. Leaving BTC to others post-mortem should remain as it currently is: a personal choice. If someone wants to prepare for an if scenario, it's their own job to do so.

Good. I mean, I would rather not be constantly tracked by anyone else.

There are so many completely free storage options for your Bitcoin seed. If you cannot take one hour from your time and use it to understand how to properly secure your seeds, it's not Bitcoin's fault for it nor is it anyone else's. You cannot "steal" crypto that easily if you have proper security.

I do not know what the future of Bitcoin looks like as I'm not a crystal ball, but I do know that while there are some pretty rough issues going on and increasing on a daily basis right now (privacy issues), one day or one decade from now I will still have my coins regardless of Bitcoin's status. Decentralized should be the future, but centralization camouflaged with a little cherry on top is trying to hijack the movement.. and seems to be having success so far.

I guess the mystery is part of Bitcoin's beauty. As I said, if he ever wants to sell that huge stash of BTC, wealth inequality will basically decrease. If he doesn't, it'll be considered part of the "lost/dormant BTC" bag. After all, it could be a big stash of coins he may even give his following generations to use. But if one is questioning/concerned about the fact that Satoshi may own a lot of coins, it indirectly tells there's a fear underneath that he may sell one day.

Why do you care? Are you scared he might sometime dump his holdings?

This greed some people have is so annoying. Like, if he is holding his coins (or forgot them) and will never use them again, consider them a donation for everyone as he said himself. If he ever dumps them all, consider it another positive aspect as more than probably a million BTC would be redistributed, hence wealth inequality decreases.

Any way you take it, it's a positive thing imo. But why do people care at all and hope so much that he doesn't have a single coin anymore? Do they deserve theirs more than he deserves his?

I agree with your opinion up to this point. I'm not okay at all with the fading of my privacy, even if it means BTC would become the worldwide currency. There shouldn't be such sacrifices we have to digest in order to have the adoption we need. When it comes to privacy, I'd much rather continue having Bitcoin exactly the same way we have it today adoption-wise than feeling constrained and constantly monitored/tracked while using it. If that's how the future looks, I guess we can call it a defeat in face of the govs.

I just hate it when I notice almost everyone around me would give up literally anything over a price bump. What's the point of having a huge BTC adoption if BTC will be forced not to be BTC anymore?

It's much harder to prove a service is a scam than proving a "giveaway" is. Besides that, cloud mining websites do not have a single address they use so it's way harder to detect whether it's an address owned by them unless they've reused it. Blocking a service from Coinbase would've possibly sparked outrage, especially if it proved to be legit (very few cloud mining sites are legit) after a while.

Pro tip: stay way from too-good-to-be-true offers/services.

Why do you think this is a concern? The number of investors went up by probably more than 10 times in the last few years and I don't think it was a problem besides some rare and short term network oversurge. It's normal that the number of people interested in BTC will grow. It's still not as popular as it's meant to be.

The main and most evident issue when talking about forced self discipline is that you leave yourself with a restriction you may really not want to have in a matter of time. Like, imagine you won $100k but you set your account so that you only get to withdraw $1k a month.. and one week later you urgently need all your funds.

If there's a way you can somehow cancel this escrow thing, it'd make no sense to have it in the first place. So I personally say it's a bad idea to have forced self-discipline. If you really cannot abstain from gambling more than you can afford to, then you'd probably be better off gambling at all.

I'd be a big liar if I said I'm not here even 1% for the money. There are only very few out here that truly use BTC just to make it become what it is supposed to - all my respect for the BTC Pizza guy for helping Bitcoin get to the point we are at today.

What I don't like is that it lately becomes more about PayPal and other centralized platform integration short-term pumps than about Bitcoin itself. Like, having a PayPal and easily purchasing BTC within 2 clicks is literally nothing besides having a virtual asset in your centralized PP account. It's way different and so much more interesting when you have to learn about wallets, how blockchain works and so on.. rather than enjoying a number increase/decrease on your screen.

But price matters as well. I'd imagine a very significant % of the current BTC holders and believers would get out if BTC was to crash to $500 tomorrow. Price does matter, but lots of people forget that there are so many other important aspects of Bitcoin - acting as if, besides price, there's nothing else to it.

Speaking from my own experience, all my friends who've bought BTC through Revolut or other similar platforms know nothing about BTC and only use it as a speculative asset. The ironic thing is, they say they're very interested in it and do see it the revolutionary future. If so, then maybe learn about it instead of focusing on the price?

Most so-called "coins" with their market caps don't actually mean anything and shouldn't even count at all. In fact, if you check out multiple coin price listing websites (CoinMarketCap, CoinGeek etc), you'd find out there are some cryptocurencies one website may consider deserves to be on the list while another website doesn't.

Bitcoin dominance should be way higher than it currently is. It'll always be better than other alts. Easiest thing to find this out is by thinking about your own crypto movements. Do you ever only move alts? Because even if I hold some alts myself, I almost always have to use BTC in most of my trades.

Ethereum is up there because it carries the largest shitcoin bag on its back. Ripple is up there because of the centralized distribution and inflation of their coins. In the end, Bitcoin will still be needed in +80% of the cases.

So they prevented the transfer of Bitcoins to a certain scammy address, but should we feel good that there is some kind of prevention around here or should we rage over Coinbase for literally blocking an address from their platform?

The motive is great, but this reminds me of that time CZ wanted to do a block rewind after the Binance hack.

Besides what you mentioned, this should be a lesson for some newcomers out there: custodial wallet means your address could be censored at Brian's tip of the finger.

I'm quite sure they did have some people registering on their platform specifically because they blocked addresses found to be owned by the scammers.

Do at least a quick reading of what users above you have replied and try to stay on topic. If on the topic "Why Bitcoin adoption is on a constant increase" you reply by telling us what Bitcoin and Blockchain is just to fill that text box and then reply to the actual topic in 5 words, expect it to be removed.

As long as you spare a few minutes of your time trying to understand what the topic is about and coming up with a proper answer, you should be fine.

Is it a good news for worldwide crypto adoption or is it good news for PayPal adoption? Because it doesn't really look like we're helping crypto much in this case..

The only positive side is that you'll most likely be able to purchase BTC even as a complete newbie, and way easier than having to go through the pretty high amount of hassle you have to go through when learning about wallets, seeds, keys etc. But otherwise, this piece of information doesn't get me excited even a bit.

The only option they have is pushing for mandatory KYC for any kind of usage of BTC, with no more anonymous limits. Feels like they're slowly starting to whisper "KYC isn't enough anymore, guys", doesn't it?

Their "anti-criminal strategy" falls off a huge cliff the moment you start wondering how these hackers will cash out.. because they are most likely not that stupid to ever move their coins to a centralized exchange anyway. They'll probably use Bisq or other p2p methods in combination with mixers to get through unseen, so how useful is this blockchain identification thing then if the ways they'll cash out are KYC-less anyway?

Is it really useful in the case of preventing cybercrimes or is it not useful at all and just a pretext to try and take a good grip over the control/surveillance handle? Will it do more criminal prevention than it will harm the average Joe's privacy?

We'll probably reach the boiling point the moment they'll ask you to show your ID whenever you want to pay with or use crypto for the same excuse: Crime prevention.

That isn't an Ad. It's missing the "Ad" bolded term which should've been to the left side of the link and I think it's quite impossible for it to show up as "www.ledger.com" and redirect you to Chrome's web store.. unless you intentionally posted a screenshot of the legit link or they found a critical vulnerability in Google's security to make it show up as the legit link.

Get an ad blocker and try to stop using Google. I hardly ever use it, and only when I really can't find the results I'm specifically looking for - they surely do have a better search AI, but otherwise I think I'm better without it.

I'm getting a bad feeling as in I feel like it's only getting worse every time a new article pops up with these two terms.

This shows how silly and lazy the world has become. It literally takes you one "USD used in crimes in 2019" Google search to find out how manipulated you get by reading the press. Personal opinion: most of the people who get different things shaped up in their minds the wrong way are the same people who only read article titles and get to a conclusion solely based on them.

I understand there are criminals out there, but it's not my fault and I don't think it's right for them to take yet another right/freedom away from me because a douche is using BTC for his illegal activity. Nor is it okay at all to try censoring a free currency. This is probably going to be a continuous cat-and-mouse chasing game where at one point there's going to be a winner: the authorities or us.

There surely has been an instance even you have been through where you paid in cash at a shop and the banknotes you've used have once been used in an assassination or some other crime. This "used in crimes" excuse is just without sense .. honestly. It's a stupid excuse for abusive control.

I honestly don't know how I feel about this. While I obviously do want these cybercriminals to be found and arrested, I have a bad feeling whenever I see the words "Bitcoin" and "tracking" in the same sentence. It only looks like the "let's find a way to identify BTC users" plot thickens every day.

Reading through the lines, my previous statement is further confirmed. So how are we going to flag criminal wallets so that they cannot be used in the future? Because that's censorship, and Bitcoin is a censorship-free cryptocurrency.

As others have told me in a previous thread of mine about mixers, at one point we will most likely all own Bitcoins that came from addresses that have been used in criminal activity or in mixers. So are we going to flag all these addresses? How do you censor a censorship-free system?