All cloud mining companies are very risky investments. Depend on trust, because as a business, they do not have so many guarantees about their services. They are very close to ponzi schemes. Even in mining companies that own large farms it is much more lucrative to leverage what they receive and create a ponzi scheme than to have a legitimate business. Ponzi sold stamps until he realized that nobody was interested in the business to the point of investigating how it worked if the profit was exorbitant.

Ripple as a company has more porpuse than the token. This is sad for whoever bought and hold the token. I have sell mine when they passed BTC in market cap because I do not believe they have more value then a decentralized coin.

But for the banks is a great solution and will probably be really successful.

Bitcoin is still an experiment. It is a social, economic and technological experiment. And this after almost 10 years of the paper. We do not have version 1.0 yet. Everyone who is participating in this experiment will be very well rewarded if it is a success. And that is why the vast majority participate.

Now, when Satoshi created the code, the idea that he could be well recompensed in the future simply did not exist. What he mined was just to continue his early studies and the costs far outweighed any rewards he might have. Since the market was non-existent.

He did not plan, as it is now very common, to accumulate an amount before the coin was adopted to finance his life or his work with Bitcoin. We do not know how organized he was, but it is quite likely that he would lose the seeds of the wallets over time. That supposed value he would have accumulated should never be interpreted the way you did it.


This is very interesting, this amount is quite small. If compared to how many dollars are annually destroyed by use, the difference should be exorbitant.

ASICBoost is a technique for mining more efficiently (something on the order of ~20%, which is huge if margins are thin). There has been a lot of controversy over allegations that Bitmain has been using a form known as covert ASICBoost that is difficult to detect, in their own mining operations. Their hardware was built for ASICBoost, but they did not enable it for customers. That and some quirky behavior (mining empty blocks and championing their right to do so at a time when fees were skyrocketing due to congestion) led to suspicion they were rigging the mining game to their own advantage.

Noteworthy is that covert ASICBoost was incompatible with Segwit, and Bitmain was fiercely opposed to Segwit, holding up the critical scaling technology (and thus the Lightning Network) for months for reasons difficult to understand if they weren't using covert ASICBoost. They split off and created Bcash (which retains covert ASICBoost as an option so they could presumably continue milking their cash cow) when it became clear they couldn't stop Bitcoin from scaling with Segwit/LN.

Overt ASICBoost is now leveling the playing field as other miners take advantage and do so above board and transparently.

more info: https://blog.bitmex.com/empty-block-data-by-mining-pool/

I had no idea how many Merits circulating in the forum. I think that soon, a very interesting calculation to make, will be how many users are with the pending ranking for not having reached the quota of merits. Ranking up from Full to Legendary is a very difficult task. It would be interesting to compare how many members became legendary year by year. In 2018 we can have a lower number than 2016/2017.

Thursday at 3 o'clock. I'll always try to post something at this time. : D

That part is sensational. One of the biggest reasons when the debate is put on the existence of the dollar is about that function is unique to it. You can only pay taxes with the currency issued by your country. We may soon have citizens questioning the need to use only the currency issued by the central bank to pay taxes and fees. Since many people can regularly use Bitcoin to pay for their goods, for their food, to receive their salary etc.

This text is almost impossible to read. Why have they repeated his name so many times? Was he afraid to forget who they were talking about?

The bottom line is that he opened a Bitcoin mining company, but due to price volatility and the cost of borrowing with investors he could not keep it runing. And in the end he sold for a fraction of what he had invested.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by traded value, is seeking a fresh start in the Mediterranean.

The company, founded last year in Hong Kong, is planning to open an office in Malta, Chief Executive Officer Zhao Changpeng said in an interview. Binance will soon start a “fiat-to-crypto exchange” on the European island nation, and is close to securing a deal with local banks that can provide access to deposits and withdrawals, he said, without providing a timeframe.


Zhao ChangpengPhotographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg
“We are very confident we can announce a banking partnership there soon,” Zhao said. “Malta is very progressive when it comes to crypto and fintech.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-23/the-world-s-biggest-cryptocurrency-exchange-is-moving-to-malta

@naval recently said that the speed of hiring great professionals from Silicon Valey by companies working with Blockchain was reaching record levels. I think we are already in a second phase where, in addition to hiring the best professionals, this sector is attracting institutional and conservative investors to invest in companies. The third stage will be the big funds pouring money into the market.

So, it wasn't fake news after all. But it isn't clear if they have been asked to close operation in Japan. I think they have been asked to send more information about their Japanese users. The fact that the Asia market has opened in red after the decision that Trump has made, could explain the Bitcoin price fail better them this information about Binance.

These marketing choices are interesting and always have repercussions. They are effective when used in a public that already knows enough about cryptocurrency.

But I realize that the general public still has a lot of difficulties in understanding the concept of the public ledger and the idea that you do not have a certain token or coin in a physical sense, but, rather, an access to move it in the public ledger. And trying to transform the blockchain's idea into something physical, palpable, over time may further hinder the understanding of how revolutionary this idea is.

The blockchain is something different from the fiat currency. Not just because it's virtual, but because it's a decentralized public ledger. That is, it only exists there and nowhere else.

How not? This is an application for him to become a source of merit in the local Portuguese section. He is showing good topics in Portuguese, which deserve merit, but which have not received or will not receive since the number of sMerits available is very small for regular members and we do not have any Merit Sources that visit Portuguese section with regularity.

Having someone with the responsibility of rewarding good topics in the local sections will encourage more people to spend their time creating longer, more complete and informative topics. Not just to help newbies, but addressing more serious and advanced topics. And it could even help by slowing the search for Merit farms that may become commonplace in the local sections. Since members who often tag the trust of irregular behaviors by members do not usually visit local sections.

This is quite curious. I can not contextualize a logic that can explain something like this. What I understand is that these are listening nodes. But when it's really hard to locate most of the nodes, I do not know if that's such an important thing. Maybe China is moving to free Bitcoin again.

I do not see the slightest possibility of this happening in a short time. It would completely change everything we know about economics. It would end up with much of the influence that governments have. Some people would have great decision-making power, and few people would accept their power.

I think that is a very wise decision on their part. Use the best that every Blockchain has to offer. Steller is growing a lot, has an active git and is offering several new options to make more use of their blockchain. It's fast, cheap and reliable. And EThereum is dominant yet. It would be very risky a project of this magnitude to decide to use another blockchain exclusively.

Agradeço, mas vou passar a oportunidade. Espero poder continuar na lista para backup, podem mudar minha posição se assim desejarem. Depois de muito tempo consegui entrar novamente numa campanha do yahoo e ele está pagando pontualmente. E acho arriscado sair no meio da campanha dele pq ele pode do nada jogar naquela lista.

Child abuse imagery found within bitcoin's blockchain
Researchers discover illegal content within the distributed ledger, making possession of it potentially unlawful in many countries

German researchers have discovered unknown persons are using bitcoin’s blockchain to store and link to child abuse imagery, potentially putting the cryptocurrency in jeopardy.

The blockchain is the open-source, distributed ledger that records every bitcoin transaction, but can also store small bits of non-financial data. This data is typically notes about the trade of bitcoin, recording what it was for or other metadata. But it can also be used to store links and files.

Researchers from the RWTH Aachen University, Germany found that around 1,600 files were currently stored in bitcoin’s blockchain. Of the files least eight were of sexual content, including one thought to be an image of child abuse and two that contain 274 links to child abuse content, 142 of which link to dark web services.

“Our analysis shows that certain content, eg, illegal pornography, can render the mere possession of a blockchain illegal,” . “Although court rulings do not yet exist, legislative texts from countries such as Germany, the UK, or the USA suggest that illegal content such as [child abuse imagery] can make the blockchain illegal to possess for all users.”

“This especially endangers the multi-billion dollar markets powering cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.”

While the spending of bitcoin does not necessarily require a copy of the blockchain to facilitate, some processes, such as some mining techniques, require the downloading of the full blockchain or chunks of it.

“Since all blockchain data is downloaded and persistently stored by users, they are liable for any objectionable content added to the blockchain by others. Consequently, it would be illegal to participate in a blockchain-based systems as soon as it contains illegal content,” the researchers wrote.

Since mining is essential for the function of bitcoin, as the process records the transactions into the blockchain to verify trades and generates new bitcoin in the process, having illegal content such as child abuse imagery within the blockchain could cause significant issues for the currency.

“We anticipate a high potential for illegal blockchain content to jeopardise blockchain-based systems such as bitcoin in the future,” the researchers wrote.

This is not the first time warnings over the ability to store non-financial data within the blockchain have been issued. Interpol sent out an alert in 2015 saying that “the design of the blockchain means there is the possibility of malware being injected and permanently hosted with no methods currently available to wipe this data”.

The agency warned that the technology could be used in the “sharing of child sexual abuse images where the blockchain could become a safe haven for hosting such data”.

But this is the first time such content has been shown to actually exist, creating a moral and legal quandary around possession and the blockchain.

To be cheaper, faster, more secure and more universal then Paypal could ever be. Everybody could run a node on Steller and the plan is to distribute most of the tokes that are held by the foundation. And Jeb was thinking about lighting for a long time. http://jedmccaleb.com/blog/bitcoin-lightning-stellar/

TL;DR

So, he shows how it is possible that a reseller hack a Ledger before sell to the client. Upload compromised firmware that avoids detection from secure element and shows you on display predetermined seed instead of generating random seed.

 Estimating a fee is not an exact science. You should always look for the alternative that puts your transaction in the next block for the lowest price. I believe that relying on a single website is the worst alternative. Or always accept the suggestion of the wallet. Ideally, you should always search on at least two websites. But in addition, understand how the fee works. This post explains very well how to calculate your fee.

https://bitcointechtalk.com/an-introduction-to-bitcoin-core-fee-estimation-27920880ad0

https://coinb.in/#fee
https://estimatefee.com/