I personally don't bother much about it because I know that for each of us the "ideal society" is a different concept. While you may think society doesn't need wars and only really needs basic stuff for all of us to be fair to each other, a billionaire might think we need wars so that a part of the society they don't agree with goes away and in order to reach certain goals.

If and only "ideal society" was the same concept for everyone, we'd all be in one right now. But we aren't, because wealth inequality mostly comes from those who make it possible to exist (aka the rich).

While I don't think his existence in the Ethereum team is a danger, I think the influence he has over his creation is dangerous in many ways.

A lot of people, I mean too many people think that if Vitalik ever turns out to be a criminal, dies or something, Ethereum would lose the game. Correlating a cryptocurrency with a person's fate just because they created the cryptocurrency makes no sense. If Satoshi broke the silence right now and you found out he was actually a child predator, it'd make no change to Bitcoin.

It's still there and Satoshi's reveal would have absolutely zero impact over a coin. All that would be changed is that we'd know a mysterious person's identity. But there are too many people out there who act based on this stuff and it's actually them making the unnecessary change.

Tranzactiile crypto-to-crypto nu se iau in considerare. Se ia in considerare cat ai introdus tu in cryptomonede si cat ai scos in fiat (sau echivalentul fiat al bunurilor achizitionate, in functie de caz). In al doilea link, avem urmatorul citat:


Cu alte cuvinte, din citatul de mai sus intelegem de ce mai exact tranzactiile crypto-to-crypto nu se iau in considerare: volatilitatea ar duce la impozitarea unui venit ipotetic; ai da niste bani drept "impozit" pe ceva ce statul crede ca ai castigat din tranzactionarea monedelor virtuale.

Conteaza efectiv suma ta in EUR sau RON pe care ai introdus-o si cat anume ai scos in final, tot in RON, EUR sau alte valute. Sau, cum spuneam mai sus, echivalentul in fiat al bunurilor pe care le-ai achizitionat cu crypto daca este cazul. Din suma pe care ai scos-o in final scazi suma pe care ai investit-o. Ce iti rezulta va fi exact suma supusa impozitului, atata timp cat este pozitiva si depaseste cei "200 lei profit/tranzactie" si/sau "600 lei profit/an".

Sincer sa fiu, legile actuale referitoare la cryptomonede inca sunt partial interpretabile sau confuze. Insa din ce am citit de la inceputul anului incoace, e vorba de tranzactia initiala vs tranzactia finala (ai introdus 10 RON in Bitcoin -> ai retras 100 RON din Bitcoin, din care 90 RON profit).

Aici nu vreau sa te induc in vreun fel in eroare, asa ca ar fi cel mai bine sa iei legatura cu un expert in domeniul acesta pentru a te asigura ca nu faci o greseala. Logic ar fi ca, daca la o suma de 1000 RON ai scos sub 1000 in total, sa nu declari nimic pentru ca teoretic inca nu ai beneficiat de un bun, serviciu etc care sa echivaleze >1001 RON. Si chiar si daca depasesti suma de 1000 RON, daca am inteles cum trebuie legea, poti sa depasesti pana la 1199 RON dupa care se considera depasirea limitei de 200 RON castig/tranzactie.. si sa te afli inca sub cei 600 RON castig/an.

Daca ai introdus 10.000 RON in Bitcoin, pretul unui BTC creste si in final ai portofel virtual in valoare de 100.000 RON, daca scoti doar 3.000 RON sunt destul de sigur ca nu se considera profit sau castig. Tu practic ti-ai recuperat doar 30% din investitie..

Inteleg ca din suma totala pe care ai retras-o pana acum in RON sau valuta scazi suma totala investita de-a lungul anilor in crypto. Daca in final iti iese cu minus, nu declari nimic pentru ca inca nici macar nu ti-ai recuperat banii investiti.

Am aruncat o privire rapida peste legea 30/2019 unde scrie asa:


Eu din asta inteleg exact ce am scris pana acum in raspuns. "Castig" inseamna profit sau avantaj, ceea ce tu momentan nu ai din punct de vedere al sumelor incasate in RON sau valuta daca diferenta dintre totalul incasat in fiat vs totalul investit in fiat iti iese pe negativ.

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Lege facuta ca la romani. "Castigul sub nivelul a 200 lei/tranzactie" poate insemna si faptul ca ai investit 1000 EUR si ai scos 1010 EUR. In final, ai un castig ce nu depaseste 200 lei intr-o tranzactie. Eu inca nu am scos fiat din crypto, dar probabil as sta cu dinamita la fund dupa declararea castigurilor deoarece intrebarea mea cea mare e cum naiba o sa reuseasca ANAF sa descopere daca cifrele declarate de mine "se pupa" cu cele reale.

Ti-as sugera, cum am scris si mai sus, sa apelezi si la un expert in domeniu astfel incat sa fii 100% sigur ca faci ce trebuie. Nu sunt expert, dar asta inteleg din ce spun atat articolele, cat si ce spune legea.

Pai.. pentru ANAF e destul de simplu: au fost tranzactii fiat -> crypto -> fiat, corect?

Daca ai luat XRP in valoare de 1 EUR si in final ai vandut ETH si USDT in valoare totala de 100 EUR, inseamna ca ai avut cel putin 99 EUR profit ("cel putin" deoarece e posibil ca in portofelul tau virtual sa mai existe si alti banuti). Asta se numeste profit si ai si suma exacta. In cazul asta, platesti impozit pe cei 99 EUR profit. Acum vine intrebarea "bun, si de unde stiu ei ca eu sunt pe castig sau pe pierdere?" ei bine, asta ramane la latitudinea ta daca vrei sa declari sau nu si in acelasi timp e la "cacealma" pentru tine daca se vor tine de capul tau sau nu.

Mai este si un alt caz, unul in care daca te afli ai scapat: daca ai avut doar tranzactii pe anul asta care sa nu depaseasca 200 RON si, acumulate, sa nu depaseasca 600 RON (aici nu sunt 100% sigur daca e vorba de 200/600 RON profit sau venit), atunci nu trebuie sa platesti sau sa declari nimic la stat.

Edit: Atentie, la crypto in Romania se declara si implicit se plateste impozit pe profitul, nu venitul generat!

Edit 2: Uite aici doua articole ce ti-ar putea fi de folos:
 - https://www.avocatnet.ro/articol_53733/12-intreb%C4%83ri-%C8%99i-r%C4%83spunsuri-despre-ca%C8%99tigurile-din-criptomonede-%C8%99i-obliga%C8%9Biile-legale-aferente.html
 - https://www.avocatnet.ro/articol_52220/2020-e-primul-an-in-care-se-declar%C4%83-la-Fisc-ca%C8%99tigurile-din-criptomonede-Declara%C8%9Bia-unic%C4%83-modificat%C4%83-deja-pentru-asta.html

The e-sports interest in this game could've been predicted a long time ago; pretty much any competitive game nowadays comes with a tournament-like setup in case interest explodes and the game grows big.

It's just bad that these games are mainly played by little kids though; even the guy who won the $3,000,000 2019 Fortnite World Cup was only 17 at the time so was the 3rd place of the same championship. These days it seems like kids and teens are the main focus when it comes to trendy businesses, which I have no idea whether is scary or amazing.

This highly influences the average age of gamblers, so expect a lot of news about kids that gambled their parents' money away.

It's only been like what, a few weeks or months since Bitcoin was basically declared legal in India through a Court decision? It's not like it has been legal there for a significant amount of time in order to also significantly affect the price; doubts about this decision have existed ever since then.

Would've obviously been much better to hear that the decision is final and they are not planning to ban it again in the long term future, but I think a fuss larger than needed is made out of it.

I'm not sure you can store a hidden information on the NFC tag. If that's possible, programming the tag is probably not as easy as it sounds and a bad guy might someday want to inspect it and find the hidden container. I'd personally not do that.

One thing you can do is write an encrypted seed on it. As long as you have a strong password, you can pretty much safely store it around the house. According to an earlier reply from o_e_l_e_o, you'd need 39 random characters from the full ASCII set in order to have an encryption key as secure as the seed is.

This sounds amazing and I cannot thank you enough for implementing a privacy-focused thing. I only hope all the "leaked information" will not be accumulated and centralized somewhere, because that'd highly defeat the purpose of this "Privacy-o-Meter".

I always try to say we need to take a step back and look at what fingerprints we leave behind. It's never too late to do a checkup on your privacy, be it what apps you use on your phone, if you pay cash/with card or whether it is about the way you use cryptocurrencies. So if this is as good as is sounds, I praise you for it.

There are a few theories out there that sounded like some utopian world but the problem is how having the power and control in your hands might make the utopian theory turn into a nightmare as at one point you might be following more of your own ideas than what you initially planned to, and part of the community may not agree with it. There have been some attempts to create utopic societies/communities before but most of them ended up as a failure.

Some of these still existing utopic communities have quite interesting concepts. Nucla has made gun ownership mandatory, for example. Twin Oaks Community and the East Wind Community have a pretty interesting way of the community's selection of new members. These are all still alive communities, and they do manage to do the right thing apparently. Only if the entire world agreed to put greed aside and do the same.

When you get the taste of power, there's a quite good probability that you'll only want to earn more power than you already have. Wealth inequality will always exist especially because of this crave for power/control the human mind has. Give a little more wealth to the poor than and they'll almost always be hungry for more. The average person will not understand that if the rich and poor were fair to each other, it would've been much better than 95% working like slaves for the 5%.

The sad thing is, when a real leader comes up with really good ideas, they usually end up shot or assassinated in some other way. Come up as a leader of your country with this kind of mindset and it won't take long before you get taken down through a coup/assassination/whatever else. The poor may be happier with this mindset, but the 5-10% won't and although they're a minority as a number of people, they own the majority of the country's wealth so they are basically under control. They can easily change the real narrative and call you a dictator willing to destroy a country. This is the weak point of the poor.

For example, we had communism in Romania. Although we did go through hard times during the communism, one of the main plans Ceausescu had right before he was killed was to get Romania's debt down to zero. And he managed to do so, 9 months before he.. was taken down from the leadership and killed.

Yes, we had $11B of external debt and he was able to wipe it all. There obviously were a lot of things he did that I would not agree to submit to today, but if one thing was sure, it's that Romania did manage to get their debt all the way to zero and we did have a lot of development.

If at the time our country produced almost anything, today probably >90% of these factories have been either demolished or bought by foreigners. Today we have more freedom, but we do not achieve the things we used to achieve back when communism was here anymore. Probably not even 10% of that. Now we basically only have corruption and the false sense of choice when voting for and electing a new leader.

It honestly feels like we aren't even advancing anymore as a human race. It's mostly just new technology and more poor caused by the small percentage sucking all the wealth out of the middle/lower class. Other than that, remove the technology and you'd find that our society has been stuck at the same level for many decades - or maybe has even regressed, considering my second argument from this paragraph.

Maybe you're living in a country where taxes really are used for the good of the population/country. Give Romania 99% inheritance tax and all you'd really be doing is putting 99% of everyone's wealth in the leaders' pockets with every new generation; I wouldn't mind that much only if at least a part of that money turned into resources to be used for development. But that's surely not the case here.

I'm not sure how much of a nonsense it is when you have events such as stock market crashes where Bitcoin's price reacts instantly. BTC isn't part of a parallel universe, it reacts to events like normal stocks/currencies do.

It might be benefiting from the pandemic, but that's honestly a thing to see on a long term scale. The fact that the number of $1.2k investments rose so much when Trump gave the stimulus check showed that a quite significant part of the community agrees with the idea that BTC is a safe haven asset, although others don't agree with it.

Before you fear about the damage Quantum computers may do to BTC, fear the damage it is capable of doing to everything else that is computer/internet-related.

Just because they exist, it does not mean that they are available for hackers or negative-minded individuals yet. The entire internet/computer domain has to move towards a position where they're safe from these computers before they become widely available - nobody is that blind to let this become the thing without proper precautions. They probably pose as much of a risk to the average equipment as NASA's computers from 1995 posed for the average equipment at the time.

Even if you happen to be the VERY lucky one to get a "well funded" address through private key generating or bruteforcing, stealing not the morally best thing you can do - if someone found yours, you wouldn't like all your funds to be scrapped off your accounts either, would you..

It's an interesting research but at the end of the day, finding a used private key does not make it yours. You only get control of it, but that doesn't mean you can claim the money because that's literally theft.

Could it be that they're trying to suppress the actual volume of BTC and get the authorities accumulate and centralize large amounts? It's very weird that they all suddenly "wake up" after so long, makes me doubt their real motive.

Remember that Bitcoin has also been part of the Goldman Sachs conference this year and appeared in Land Rover's commercial. Almost looks like a plan on a massive scale.

Fake laughs have been used at standup comedy shows for a long time. In fact, Britain Got Talent or any other "Got Talent" shows use them too. The reason is that the audience doesn't actually laugh or cheer as much as they appear to be on TV. See Disney Channel or the Saturday Night quarantine episodes where there has been no audience really in the show.

They're probably going to use similar sounds FIFA uses in their games though, because they're very realistic and quite hard to distinguish from the real thing. It's kinda weird to have a completely fake one, but rather than having complete silence it's much better. It might help a lot if the camera will be kept as off-spectators as possible until they get to "pack" the stadiums with audience though.

Thank you for the detailed answers.

It definitely has some cons that make me doubt whether it's worth it to go for a cheaper HW or to buy the Ledger/Trezor instead, especially as we're talking about the safety of your funds. As both Ledger & Trezor are very popular and have gone through many security tests, I'd personally rather wait a little more and save money for one of them instead.

An interesting product however, I'll keep an eye on it. Maybe time will prove my gut instinct wrong.

You will get into trouble with PayPal if you use it to exchange currencies as you can see on their Acceptable Use Policy, but I'm not sure whatever that means. If I'm right, it should be that they do not allow you to purchase Bitcoin, Monero or any other crypto using PayPal. But you can use a few services such as Braintree or Coinbase to accept BTC payments AFAIK.

It's not news coming from PayPal directly, but different sources did confirm they're looking to integrate Bitcoin directly in the PayPal platform (see this article). But I'd be happier if it was found out to be a false rumor than if it gets confirmed. These news only further confirm my earlier fears that Bitcoin will only become more centralized and farther away from Satoshi's Whitepaper.

Awesome! Thanks for your review.

I don't know if I should feel safe having a camera on my hardware wallet. I feel like it's a potential privacy risk while the thing is turned on. Would've been much better imo if they had a little camera cover. I also cannot find any open-source mention of it, so I suppose it's closed source which I don't agree with for a HW. Even Ledger, although it's partially open source, makes me a bit suspicious about it.

Moreover, in comparison to what Ledger says (at least if we take their words for granted), SafePal has a Serial Number which means these devices could be tracked if you don't take the right precautions. In other words, if you purchase this device from their website using your real name and address, they could assign the SN of the sold SafePal to your personal data which is worrying, to say the least.

I have a few questions however:

• How does the device feel? From your first picture, the front buttons look like they feel a bit cheap - I know this is a $40 device, but does it feel sturdy or at least of average quality?
• If there's one thing I hate about my Ledger, it's the fact that I cannot for example see the balance of all my accounts without having to add them beforehand in Live. Can you see all balances directly from the SafePal?
• Does it have a rechargeable battery or do you have to keep it constantly connected to an USB port?
• As far as I understand, the hardware wallet does not need any kind of connection in order to complete a transaction as you could simply just scan QR codes, right? If you plug it in a PC, can you use any other wallet besides theirs with it? With Ledger for example, you can use Electrum.

So you're telling me that all those strategies casinos use aren't ways to bait customers and the ability of changing your session's setup doesn't almost always give you a false sense of having an advantage in the game? When you join a gambling session, you do so with an "I'm going to lose everything today!" mindset? I'm being realistic here.

I'm a gambler myself. This is basically why dice gambling is so entertaining: you are able to set your game differently every time to "change your outcome" when, in the end, it's either playing low chances with small amounts for a large outcome (which takes longer) or playing high chances with higher amounts for smaller but multiple outcomes (which takes shorter) but always gets to the same result: you either win or you don't. At least that's why it gets entertaining for me.

We both know that casinos are there to take your money. Realistically, it's likely that more people lose at the end of the day gambling but that doesn't take fun out of the equation. Without entertainment, gambling would've been grounded long time ago.

Following the same narrative I quoted from your reply, I shouldn't be talking about Bitcoin no more because most are deceived into thinking it's a constantly profitable investment or have absolutely no idea how to invest the right way, so in most cases it ends first in losses before they get to a profit.

If gamblers are always thinking casinos are places where you earn a lot of money or that different session setups give you an advantage, the reality is basically exactly the opposite yet a quick look over the Gambling discussion board gives you a very detailed view over how many have the "fallacy" mindset. Maybe saying it's a "collective deception" might've been more accurate than saying it's what casinos do.

Probably would've been better if I had bolded the part I was referring to, which was:

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Well, Bitcoin Block Reward Halving shows it's going to happen on the 10th of May, 2024 which is about 2 months and a half past your calculation I didn't twist anything, I said that the fact that the past 2 halvings happened a few months before 4 years does not necessarily mean that the next halving will happen even earlier too. Should the conditions change, it could take place exactly after 4 entire years, later or earlier.

In other words, there's no direct relationship between past halvings and the future ones. Back in 2016 after the halving, the same website said the ETA for 2020's halving would be 07th of July.

You are not right either; the next halving could take place even in December 2024 if mining 210,000 blocks takes that long. Otherwise, if there was an exact amount of months every which Bitcoin halved, it wouldn't have been called "halving every 4 years" but "halving every X months" instead.

1st - Nov 2012
2nd - Jul 2016 (4 years minus 4 months compared to the 1st)
3rd - May 2020 (8 years minus 6 months compared to the 1st; 4 years minus 2 months compared to the 2nd)