Theoretical issues are there from second one.
We don't know if the HW maker is honest or has included a backdoor in creation of the seed. It's not "stealing the seed" per se, it's more like creating the seed by somewhat simpler rules to allow easier brute forcing by them.
This would be even easier imho than this "Nonce Covert Channel Attack", although this nonce attack could reveal the seed no matter where and how it was generated.

I guess that no matter who is making the hardware wallet, the user unfortunately has to trust that company at least a little bit. But this was true from start, hence the hardware wallets should be used for "daily funds", not for a mix of daily funds and cold storage (safely generated paper wallet or seed is still more suitable for that).

But, as the others said, I don't see why a HW company would blew its reputation by doing this kind of shenanigans, especially one with great sales over many years. And since the "finding" brings nothing new, it may indeed be just for advertising.


How about SeedSigner? Since that's 100% open source, maybe it can bear more trust? Plus it already uses dice afaik.

There was/is at least one lawsuit against CSW, initiated by COPA, but afaik the topic there is only the copyright on the Bitcoin whitepaper.
Maybe more will come after that one is won (and the legal costs recovered).

This is not a cold wallet. This is the recipe for losing your coins without understanding how that could be possible. It has happened before. As said, cold storage should absolutely never go online after the address was set up in it. The cold storage doesn't even need to be synchronized with the blockchain. You should really read more about cold storage.


Do you by chance store the blockchain onto an external disk? If so, your problem may be caused by the disk disconnecting (bad data cable/contact or insufficient power sent to the disk).

You have the know-how to keep your bitcoins in a cold storage. Most don't even understand good enough what Bitcoin is.
They will just pick a fund, and if that fund also invests into Bitcoin, or more likely into some Bitcoin related financial product, they may have a bit bigger pension.
This can be good for both the elderly and bitcoin ecosystem too, if along the route at least one of those entities must keep real bitcoins in their stash, and the full amount, not a fractional reserve.

This is a very good idea since I missed quite some points on hardware side. And although it tells only about some few gigabytes of space, I think that such size is for pruned nodes and I strongly suggest to just keep the full blockchain, which nowadays is more than 400 GB or, if also txindex is on, then it's over 500GB.

As hardware you need a decent device that you can leave running for long time, preferably 24/7, but not necessarily, since after the initial (long) blocks' download, afterwards it would be rather quick (of course, it depends on how many hours or days you don't sync). What is important is to have a big disk (preferably more than 1TB) also if you don't have too much patience then SSD would be better.
There is however, this topic you may want to read (Cheap Node Self Hosting: Just because you CAN does not mean you SHOULD) telling about the hardware choices. The worse the hardware, the more time you'll waste. So you better use decent hardware.

Knowledge: it depends on what you want. Starting Bitcoin core alone is not difficult. Configuring it is not difficult either. If you want more (eg. I have Bitcoin Core, and Electrum Server so I can use my hardware wallet with Electrum and also I have a block explorer), you need at least patience and some basic skills in following instructions on installing this or that (usually under Linux), but if you're not too picky there are tutorials too.

I'll get back to te system. While most of the things are made for Linux, nowadays you can put a Linux subsystem under your Windows 10 or 11 (maybe less, but lower Windows is no longer safe to use). So you don't have to worry much.

----
All in all, I think that running your own node is not that difficult. And if one just wants to avoid the FTX like problems, he doesn't necessarily need a node; just get a hardware wallet and use it with Electrum and you're already way better than most.

Greed, laziness and stupidity.
The greedy will always try to steal from the lazy and from the stupid. And of course, they may be caught to also be stupid and/or lazy and the "perfect storm" emerges.

As long as people consider exchanges safer than their own wallets, as long as people don't know how to keep their system secure and their seed/private key safe, there will always be some who will want to profit.
And when you're with a huge pile of money in your backyard, it's overly tempting to start working on fractional reserves so you can earn more and faster.


The problem is not the honest coins like Bitcoin, or maybe Monero, or maybe a few others too. The problem is the centralized coins (usually pegged to USD or whatever other value) the people don't understand that they're just as bad or even worse sometimes than fiat. And the problem is keeping the honest coins in centralized exchanges. And this can happen to Monero holders/traders as good as to bitcoiners.

This is worrisome, but I hope that if it's the case, larger pockets - MicroStrategy, Grayscale, COPA - would chip in. This would at least help Bitcoin (and those companies' investments).
But indeed, if we get there, open source may also be badly (and sadly) affected. That's not OK. Well, all this is not OK. I still fail to understand how can any country's legal system take serious CSW. Maybe Hodlonaut's case can be referenced though from now on for a bit of background...

OP was asking private message 

I think that this is the "proof" you need:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221004170338/https://support.bitmain.com/hc/en-us/articles/10687719622681-ANTMINER-S19-Pro-Discount-Coupon

It's that page you've found, as archived in 4 October.



Best of luck!

That's pretty much what I was also saying...

Multumesc 


  Ai dreptate. Imi amintesc ca acum ceva timp (cred ca ani) am fost intr-o campanie pentru un cazinou, banii au intrat pe contul de cazinou si trebuiau jucati inainte de a fi scosi. Bineinteles, am reusit sa pierd o parte semnificativa din ei. Dar na, noi sa fim sanatosi 

Since the numbers/ratios for the previous cycles are not 3.5 and 6.3, they will most probably not be 3.5/6.3 for current/future cycles either.
So the math is too simplistic and, sorry, but probably wrong.

Na, nu ma plang. Pana la urma a avut loc extragerea si, avand (toti cei ramasi) practic ceva mai multe sanse, am castigat si eu


Am citit intre timp ca cel putin unul dintre organizatori nu a platit premiul (sau cel putin nu inca, dar a trecut cam mult timp).
Dar banuiesc ca asemenea cazuri sunt rare.


Bafta!


Am si eu o retinere in a-mi face inca un cont si acolo; inca ma decid daca sa imi bat capul sau nu.
Si legat de predictiile duble, fiecare organizator cu decizille lui. Cand sunt scrise de la inceput e OK. In acest caz cred ca nu sunt, dar cat timp nu sunt mai mult de 3 predictii identice poate sa nu fie problema.

Just for the sake of correctness I will confirm that the signature verifies with the latest Electrum.

According to the HW lists with Secure chip, list updated in September 2022, Trezor still didn't seem to add secure chip to their devices.
And after the thing I've found in their blog (see my other post) I would not be surprised if they will not add secure element at all.

By what I've read here it looks like, by far, it was not an accident, instead it seems that it was meant to "help out" gate.io fake its proof of reserves.
I don't know the full story yet, let's keep our eyes open (and maybe also keep the discussion in one place).

While this can indeed give some confidence to the investors, I think that this can easily become a poisoned gift, in the same way CZ took SBF's FTT to "use" as "emergency break" when the things become shitty (FTX too inflated, too dangerous for Binance).

However, let's not cheer for CZ and the current price level. The current price level doesn't deserve that and CZ clearly does all this for his cold calculations.

It's not 100% clear what you've done, I will assume you withdrew your coins from MtGox to your wallet and exported the private key.

* I remember that certain wallets (Multibit?) were allowing to export the private key password protected. If that's the case you need both the encrypted private key and the password.
* A crashed computer has in most cases a recoverable HDD. If that's the case you may be able to recover the wallet file. That may also be password protected.

However, recovering the private key from a password is most probably impossible. The only case it would be possible would be that it was a brain wallet built from that password (is that the case? do you remember how you created the wallet, was it you from some words, or it was the wallet software doing it at start?), but if that's the case probably it was already found out and stolen, especially if the password was dictionary word.

I think that your best chance may be to get the data recovered from the old HDD.

Blockstream's electrs is a fork of the original (romanz') electrs.
It may be more professional, I don't know, but it may also be more resource hungry too.
But the setup I've made is based on what I managed back then to actually install without Docker (and I really wanted to avoid Docker). Mempool.Space I didn't manage to install on my configuration. And I didn't know about Blockstream's electrs.

So I will not say that the setup I've made is the best. It's just the one I could install. If you have time for tests, you can try other directions (maybe also document them better). If they don't work, you can use "my" setup as last resort option.

If you are in the mood for tests, Fulcrum can also be an option as Electrum Server (and may or may not save some time, but iirc it will eat up quite some disk space with its db).