from the point of view of blockchain taint. yes exchanges can be considered mixers as you are not usually going to get the same taint you deposited in, when you withdraw.

however if you registered with an exchange using the same username/email/ip as you use for this forum. then its not really anonymous.

so if you were to talk about something illicit on this forum, where what was said here appears to relate to a real life crime.. authorities can check your post history to see if you mention any particular exchange you have talked about and get a court order for all records related to a username that matches yours on the exchange..

most exchanges have a 'order history' where you can see not only the trades but the deposits and withdrawal logs too..
they then know where you withdrew to, to "follow the money" even after you think you removed taint by syphoning it through an exchange

other scenario
you may even have done a bad trade/escrow on this forum with a employee of an exchange you use. and he decides to revenge-doxx you and reveal all bitcoin addresses linked to you.

ya ya ya has really drank deep the sacred wine from the core religions glass..

he calls hardforkers "bigblockers" lol
hardfork =2mb bloat for 2x capacity..
softfork = 4mb bloat for 1.8x capacity

softfork doesnt need consensus(choice)
hardfor needs consensus(choice)

here ill make it simple 4mb BIGBLOCKER  2mb not bigblocker
here even simpler   2mb or 4mb.. which is bigger? even a 5yo cant get that wrong

so softfork = bigblockers and dictatators..

think rationally, think about bitcoin code and logic, not core devotion..
try to get your religious beleifs far away from your comments. only talk about logic, code and benefits

seems all the arguments against a hardfork actually apply to softforks if you stop your religious ideology and actually read some code and thought about it.

please stop taking the wine and bread handouts from your religion while standing in their church and instead look for the real information in the real world

segwit has not solved malleability.. yet
segwit is not ready..  yet

its not even activated..
please wake up.. ur dreaming, or maybe you own a time machine and came from the future

why have "faith" in something that is not changing the world this very moment. and is only promises at this moment.
atleast wait until the promises are delivered..

as you say its not a religion but you have blind faith in Core..
seems from many of your posts you have lost total understanding of decentralization and only want a dictator (12 corporoate paid devs with 90 spelll checkers to pretend to be open)

satoshi already made his opinion known.

however we should not blindly follow one persons desire. or even a group of devs desires no matter what 'team' they are on.
that is a path to dictatorship.
satoshi recognised this and disapeared to try keeping bitcoin away from dictatorship.

however dictatorship appears to be returning. many people dont want to make a decision for themselves and want to be told what to do

core devotee's know this because they think the debate is about core possibly losing dictator control, to another team.. instead of the rational argument that there should not be any dictator control by any side. but instead a general agreement by the majority of all involved.

we should have clear and open OPTIONS and choices and allowed to freely choose the best option and have it only activating if there is a clearly large majority in favour for it.
its built into bitcoin already, miners wont change if there is a risk that they cant spend the rewards of the change. users wont change if there is a risk miners wont accept their new changed transactions.
so they/we need to be sure the change is positive and also majority accepted before it will even activate.

however

softforks for instance are not an open choice where people can opt-out and thus prevent bitcoin going down a one way street.
soft forks are more "follow the one way street as it turns direction"(by upgrading) or "put your fingers in your ears and close your eyes"(by not upgrading).

put it this way, nothing can stop a miner changing something in a soft fork today,..

those that dont upgrade are not opting out of an option. they are not preventing it from happening.. they are just deciding to sit back and not check new data because they dont understand the new data. so just blindly pass it on.

softforks should not be used for direction changing things. but just for small minor alterations/bug fixes.

LOL

consensus is the agreement of rules.
bad data is data that does not follow the rules..
data following or not following the rules is a separate argument to what the rules should be
this does not mean the rules cannot change if there is an agreement

again consensus=agreement(consent)..
so the rules are not HARD rules that should never change.. but agreed rules, meaning they can change..(and they do change)

and now for the things that should wake you up..

softforks change the consensus rules too.. wake up to that realization!!
softforks already have changed consensus rules.

take a second to hold that thought and let it actually sit in your mind and realise softforks change rules too..
have a cup of coffee and think about it from the logic of bitcoin. before trying to only think about core-dev devotion and dominance..

but here is the kicker.. softforks change the rules.. without any 'opt out' option.
you either agree by upgrading and fully validate the new rules. or if you dont agree. then you are just left being a blind sheep passing on data you cant check.

i know its very mind blowing to core-devotee's and u are probably getting frustrated and angry that i would open your mind to such a thing..

but please dont reply with your core-dev devotee hats on saying you love being a sheep and think that core-devs know whats best and happy they take control and make decisions for people.

instead only think about bitcoin, decentralization and the true meaning of consensus=consent.
think about the ramifications if 6000 nodes had no choice at all because a group of 12 corporate paid devs (and over 90 spell checkers to falsely appear open) were to be deciding everything.

(now i await the usual insults from core sheep, trying to hold core-devs up as kings and future dictators)

children dont understand banks/fractional reserves etc..

the best way to explain it is in gaming terms,

like their games assets (whether its tradable pokemon or weapons, food, healthpacks in some RPG)
these assets are stored based on the username and password.. you can send assets to someone else by knowing their username which you/they are free to hand out to anyone.. but no one can take assets(pokemon, weapons, healthpacks) from you unless they know your password and you cant send them to other people usernames without using your password to authorise the trade.

there are many websites where you can look up that statistics of who has what asset(pokemon, weapons, healthpacks) and you can use your password on many websites to move your assets to other people. the assets(pokemon, weapons, healthpacks)

the assets(pokemon, weapons, healthpacks) are not stored on just one website but linked directly to your username and many websites just store the statistics pages of what username has what asset

now the username is called a address and the password is called a private key.. do not tell anyone your private key as thats your key that should remain private. but if anyone you like wants to give you gifts or see what you have be free to tell them your address

^ this part here is what id consider a good selling point of any new media news outlet proposal.


a few people i spoke to thought about doing something similar. but more of a wiki hybrid thing too. where instead of just upvoting an entire article some people can make minor alterations to certain sentances aswell.
so its less like steemit where people 'power up' posts or medium that 'heart' posts. or facebook that 'like' posts, but more editorial to get the finer details more presise.

by this i dont mean the article is forever being changed adhok/live, but a sentance being marked/highlighted/asterisked to show that a variation to a sentance exists, where by clicking the sentance, the variations can be upvoted and if enough votes show the alteration seems more factual. then the alteration becomes part of the article, while keeping the alterations/original part of the highlighted behind the scenes selection.

forget steem.. its not an altcoin.. its just a "token" used within their website.
many see steem as a scheme rather than a viable currency, so dont waste ur time on it even if we all know its value is going down.
anyone disagreeing about my opinion of steem are usually steem holders, praying they have not bought something guaranteed to lose.

giving LARGE amounts of coins away for free is silly. this is because even with faucets giving away small amounts for free in amounts too low for noobs to use to make a transaction straight away to see/experience bitcoins abilities first hand.. the ease of getting these free bitcoins, means its needed to be small unusable amounts as the only way to deter faucet raiders from treating it as a salary, even if thats exactly what most faucet raiders are doing.

there are atleast 200,000 coins on exchanges at any one given time. plenty for people to buy. i dont thing that there is a debate about the 'elite' hoarding either. the 'elites' will ofcourse sell them at some point so relax about that..

all in all the supply and demand on exchanges and free give aways are about right. the nature of the markets has found its own natural levels and are working as they should.
what we should be concentrating on is these two things

1. capacity growth (avoid fee wars and bottlenecks)
2. merchant adoption (free advertising when merchants promote the new payment method)
both of which will increase user adoption with ease and not so much head banging. because people see its actually a currency and not some boiler room scheme

which the side effect of more users and merchant adoption is a bigger market cap for the greedy speculators to orgasm over, but mainly the better user adoption being more priority than price because more users, more uses=strong stable and better bitcoin from an infrustructure and usability standpoint, to fend off an altcoin becoming more popular

try not to bring sidechains into it.. sidechains are an altcoin.
if you want bitcoin to succeed then bitcoin scaling must come first not pushing people over to sidechains by locking them out of bitcoins and taking those coins out of circulation, just so that people play around with an altcoin and make the altcoin more succesful.(many devs want monero to be the bitcoin 2.0 (facepalm) sidechain)

however LN is a layer of bitcoin and not a sidechain.
this could benefit people doing the same trades day in day out (paying the same gambling sites, merchants often, faucet raiders, advertisers, etc often) but onchain capacity has to grow aswell. and before you slam down that thought.. core is actually ok with 4mb block bloat. so dont get distracted with 'bitcoin cant scale' or is doomed' nay sayers. they are only after pushing sidechains.
even core now agree 4mb can easily be handled by a raspberry Pi and any computer under 15 years old. so no need to worry about 100% datacentre nodes either, so thus that ends any crys of 2mb is bad.

in my view which i have held tightly for such a long time..
scaling first
adoption second
price rise third.

i have never been fooled by the speculators mindset of price rise first, adoption second and scaling third. as that is just a route to ruin bitcoin in favour of popularizing an altcoin

reply to most comments.
someone said they need my permission to use my tips... um nah you dont. its a public forum, feel free to use it, i dont care, its not really a 'trade secret'

some have said you have to rely on the price going up.
not really if there is a spread of 1.5% then getting a quick 1% is easy. if the spread is 5% dont be greedy trying for 4% stick to 1% and only go for 2%+ if you can sell the alts back to btc just as fast as selling at 1%

its not about price rises, its about grabbing quick 1% within current open spread.

EG
spread of an alt market buy:400   sell:422
you buy at 401 and aim to sell at 407 (yes 405 is 1% but that doesnt include fees, so 1%profit+fees= just over 406 so round it to 407)

the 407 order is way below the other sell orders of 422. so it fills fast.
rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat rinse and repeat
what not to do..
buy at 401  sell at 421, trying to be gready for ~4% profit may not work out because other people at 422 may move their order to 420 to outbid you and then your always fighting others to get yours filled first. wasting time and having to keep an eye on that one basket.

you have more chance filling 4 orders of 401-407(1%) in 5 minutes(totalling 4%) than fighting people and wasting time just for one order of 4%.

leaving an order at 421 is stupid . if the price moves downwards, your just wasting time. which you could have spent using new baskets of funds on the new lower spreads.

last tip

once the order has filled and you made your 1% profit. dont worry about what the prices were. all you care about is the current open spread, not the past or the future. just a good enough spread to grab 1% profit QUICK
EG
if the market spread starts out  400-422  buy at 401 sell at 407
minutes later spread went down 380-407  buy at 381 sell at 388
minutes later spread went down 372-380  buy at 373 sell at 379
minutes later spread went up to 380-388  buy at 381 sell at 387

it doesnt matter what the price was or will be, because you just made 4x1%per basket of funds in 4 minutes and not stupidly having orders sat at 421 where your waiting and hoping forever for the price to move back up to 421 again.
worse case if you did have an order at 421. just move it to 407 (1% profit) or 403(break even after fees) and leave it there. and concentrate on making 3x 1% basket profits with the other baskets of funds.

i know some of you are itching to say 'but if at the 3rd price movement it went down to 372 and then trailed back up to to a sell of 388 minutes later i could just wait it out and make 2% by buying at 373 and selling at 387

please dont think of greed of waiting it out for a price rise.
please dont think of greed of going for 4% profit if the spread was say 5%..
you cannot predict or guarantee you will get those numbers quickly and wasting 1 basket for an hour, just for 4% is worse than using that same basket several times an hour for several 1%'s.

if there is no over 1% spread on a current altcoin-btc market. dont remain loyal to that alt waiting for a spread to open up again. look for another altcoin with more then 1% spread and grab 1% profit quick.

all of them 1% profits soon add up.
EG if you have 10 baskets taking 1% here and there QUICKLY is way better than waiting for 2-5%
EG if you have 10 baskets taking 1% here and there QUICKLY is way better than throwing everything at one order and then missing out on new oppertunities when the price moves or other alts have healthy spread to move quickly on
EG if you have 10 baskets means if 1 order is stuck due to a price drop. you still have 9 other baskets to make profit on and not worry about that 1 basket.

my points are in regards to bitcoin.. not third party businesses..... just bitcoin

1. store funds without having to reinforce your floorboards to cope with gold bars under your bed
2. store funds in you brain without having to hold a credit card, bank notes
3. remembering just 12 words can last you a lifetime of unlimited 'accounts'
4. walk through an airport checkpoint naked.. holding nothing. while also holding your life savings
5. carry more then $10k value across a border, but checkpoint cops will never find it to confiscate
6. your right to remain silent means authorities cannot get to your brain wallet
7. you dont need to wait for banking open hours
8. holding bitcoin doesnt require home address and social security details being handed over
9. giving someone funds requires no permission
10. no paypal/credit card chargebacks
11. someone thousands of miles away can show a QR code on skype and you pay them without hassle
12. multisigs can be used for a childs trust. to make sure your children dont spend funds unwisely
13. multisigs can be used as part of your Will. where the important key is sealed in your will and family cannot spend it using just their keys without it. nor can your solicitor spend it using the Will key without your families keys
14. long term deflationary
16. any business can accept bitcoin with just a piece of paper to show customers. no direct need of credit card processing services
17. even homeless people can display a QR code on the street and start collecting funds without need of payment processors
18. no one can be in a minus bitcoin holding. they either have it or they dont.
19. you dont need to be a trillion dollar holding company to become a wallet(bank) service
20. there is not, well there should not be one dominant wallet service. there is always choice and options

i would type more but ran out of time. will edit later if i remember

this is why people use mixers.

EG you put in 0.3btc into a mixer and then get out 0.1 each to 3 addresses where the funds originated from else where and then you do the same with the 0.8btc to have 8 addresses of 0.1btc from elsewhere (random amounts but im saying 0.1 for easy understanding)

although people will see that 0.3 has moved and later the 0.8 has moved. they cannot categorically link 0.3 to the 0.8btc because you treated them as separate transactions

also the amounts you now hold on 11 addresses came from the mixer meaning its not the same coin as before. so its less easy to link the 11x0.1 to you due to lack of taint

now here is the interesting part.
people can still roughly work out when a mixer is used when they see funds move in and get split up in the next block,(paying others your funds) rather than people holding on for days or weeks(normal trends of not mixing).
after all people dont want to trust a mixer to hold funds long term.
they prefer the quick in and out. so mixers are not 100% analysis proof. but do make it harder to know who is who

this then makes it possible to work out that your funds are part of maybe half a dozen other peoples transactions in the next block.. so its still not 100% anonymous. they can rule out a few people by knowing your not accepting your previous taint. so any transactions that moved in previous block and are moving again in the next block with your taint is not you. and now its just a case of watching the other transactions that moved in and out quickly.

this is why the next generation of mixers will use lightning network. where people can spend and move funds numerous times and by they time it settles onchain in a few days, weeks. most people have paid for the goods and services and the funds have passed through many peoples hands not revealing anything about what happened in the middle

by going the speculation route of not having merchants. the bitcoin valuation will pump and dump more often. so the only way to stabalise bitcoin is to have a natural growth of users and merchants.. (which has a natural side effect of making speculators rich, so no lose situation) rather than the pure speculative route of barriers to entry, forcing capacity not to grow purely to increase fee's now for something meaningless over the next 2 dacades, and large whale investors having no real world uses of it.

natural growth of users and merchants is the logical, sensible route

trying to keep capacity down to force a fee war today is stupid to a magnitude of 21million.
fee's are not important today, the block reward exists.
fee's are just considered an unneeded bonus right now.

the fee's become important in 20+ years, it may even be longer then that if we keep bitcoin being useful to have the side effect of a larger market cap so that the reward amounts to a healthy fiat value to cover miners electric bill.

increasing capacity means more people. more people means less each person has to pay to get to a combined total that benefits miners.
this is something that can happen naturally without impacting people.

as for thinking that spending 10cents is meaningless.. that is the mindset of the western world and the mindset of people only caring about market caps. bitcoin needs and should remain useful. afterall once people start to think 20cents fee is acceptable and a $10 holding is just spam then you are just throwing people out of bitcoin making it as corrupt as the fiat banking world.

and this is coming from someone with hundreds of bitcoins.. but atleast i can put aside my greed and see bitcoin for what it is and what it should be

we dont need fiat lovers only thinking about pumping and dumping bitcoin just to hold a bag of fiat in the future.
if you only care about the fiat valuation then go pump and dump an altcoin. instead of trying to think bitcoin doesnt need real world uses.
without real world uses bitcoin is not secure and just becomes completely speculative,

as for "big blocks"
core is happy about having 4mb blocks ,, yea i guess you missed that fact. so the whole '2mb is bad' rhetoric over the last year has been an absolutle useless point to keep bringing up. even a raspberry pi and basic internet can cope with it.. so it had never or would never of been a centralization issue. (you have been spoonfed the lie by core fans for a year if you still think im wrong.. and core have proven it with their 4mb desire)

the 4mb core want.. only offers 1.8x capacity.. and once that has happened they cannot re-1.8x again.. its just a one time boost to capacity.
yet keeping to the traditional route and moving to 2mb offers 2x capacity. and in a few years it can be moved up again. and again.
no one is saying it need to be pushed to large amounts tomorrow. but being allowed to move at some point can allow capacity to grow at a natural pace along with technology growth.
afterall 15 years ago just 3gb hard drives were considered "massive" now 3tb hard drives are the norm
and guess what, that means a more secure and useful bitcoin while also as a positive side effect increasing the market cap so even the fiat lovers will be happy.

lets not be stupid and fall for the trap of making bitcoin just a speculative coin that is ultimately useless. lets do our part and continue to keep bitcoin useful.. otherwise cores plans of bait and switching people to a sidechain because sidechains will be useful would make people dump bitcoin.

think smart

british coin?

you do realise that from a real world point of view bank customers wont notice any difference.
uk banks already offer instant bank transfers so speed wont be any different. all it amounts to is security of the banks that can sack a few staff because they can run more efficiently. but for bank customers they will still have funds 'managed' by banks, so bank customers wont see it as a big deal or notice any difference.

all in all a bank using blockchain is just like a bank announcing a new type of secure mysql database.. meaning nothing to bank customers

bitcoin will still offer alot more than what banks can offer, because people wont see the benefits of a bank using blockchain based currency

agreed, in the context of bitcoin being the "one world order" single currency.

but if you think about it as just another of the 180 real world currencies, used in places that dont have a good currency/banking infrustructure. and not used 43times a month(buying everything) but instead just 5 times a month, (weekly groceries and monthly rent). then it is much more achievable.

also it doesnt need to suddenly explode from 2 milllion users today to 263million users next year. it can grow naturally and usefully.
even stats show that when 4mb blocks are activated (yes even core now likes 4mb after all the cries that 2mb was bad) we can have capacity of 8 million users doing 5 transactions a month happily in the near future, onchain.
(or if you want the greedy fiat lovers pump and dump stats: 1billion users doing 1tx every 2 years to HODL)

my point of my last post is that if we imagine it as a natural growth over the next 20-30 years with rational, workable expansion for real usage then trying to get 8million next year, 16mill in a few years and 32mill a few years after that, is natural and healthy and scaling also grows with it

trying to push for 1billion users tomorrow is flawed for many reasons and wont work or make bitcoin stronger in any way shape or form

as for the developed vs developing cultures
but trying to get 32million americans (10% population) to use bitcoin is actually harder than trying to get 32million indians(2.5% population) to use bitcoin, for these reasons:
1. developing coutries are more open to change and open to better financial self-control
2. developing countries need new financial tools, developed countries (blindly) think they already have everything they need
3. if you had a group of people... 2.5% is a less stressful number to convince than 10%

in short
32m population for real world usage as a medium term target is easier than a 1billion speculative background reserve currency target
by concentrating on a useful bitcoin rather than a speculative bitcoin makes bitcoin stronger.

if you disagree and are going to reply about something related to fiat valuations. then sit back and realise you are not a true bitcoiner if your only goal is to eventually hold bags of fiat. and also realise by going the rational route of useful bitcoin, will also positively increase the market cap so even you fiat lovers will profit

agreed,,
why waste efforts trying to convert 320m americans 64m brits. 700m europeans
when aiming for 1.2bill africans, 1.2bill indians, 4.5billian asians would hlp the world more. while having less resistance due to the lack of corporate control there

the main objection people have against bitcoin is simple
"what can i do with bitcoin once i have it"

so the obvious solution is to make bitcoin spendable. eg if you can buy toilet paper, car gasoline and baked beans. (travel, food, toiletries) then everyone will see bitcoin is not just speculative but actually real and useful.

yes i know people say that bitcoin should be a reserve currency and other currencies should be the daily spend currencies. but those people do not care about bitcoin and only want buyers to buy and hold so that sellers can sell at a profit back into fiat.
greed and narrowmindedness of just wanting a fiat increase could make bitcoin useless and eventually cave in on itself.(pump&dump coin)

by making it useful by expanding capacity and keeping the fee's low and having lots of merchant acceptance. would increase bitcoins popularity and gain more users which (side-effect: will increase the greedy fiat price).. will actually make bitcoin stronger and not cave in on itself.

in short
dont lazily advertise bitcoin as a speculaive reserve currency, purely for a price pump. actually realise bitcoin needs to grow and expand to gain real world popularity and usefulness. then everyone can be happy and bitcoin can be stronger.
dont fall for the sidechain for daily spend strategy. it wont help bitcoin