The "good Bitcoin bad Bitcoin" has been going on in many countries and India is in a state of confusion probably because it's harder to keep up with all BTC users at once.

With first-world countries going more & more digital, it's going to be easier for authorities to spectate & analyze what's going on with Bitcoin holders and traders while in 3rd world countries you have less digital, more physical & even barter. It probably scares them that a quite significant number of traders may not be submitting proof of identity.

As far as I can see, there is an exchange in India that allows deposits + withdrawals of up to 4 BTC per day without KYC, so no surprise the trading's on fire right now.

And I was just thinking to ask whether there's a way to find out if these sites operate under the same main owner/business. There are some shops in Romania that do the same: Altex, Media Galaxy and Flanco - many of our malls include at least 2 of them, if not all, with different price tags.

But SatoshiDice (mentioned by OP) has had a testing phase only a month ago that I participated in too - could it still undergo testing if it's all about changing a layout but using the same code?

I used to have annoying issues when using reCAPTCHA, Tor & Bitcointalk but I ended up memorizing the  BTCTalk Captcha code so now I'm using that one every time.

It usually takes me max 2 attempts to bypass hCaptcha with Tor while reCAPTCHA takes many minutes, especially when it says there were too many attempts from the IP (requiring a New Identity). This makes me think that hCaptcha is under Google's when it comes to bots.

The images are cropped every time when you have to complete a captcha though, aren't they?

As they always give images cropped from different positions, doesn't that mean they could give us 9 squares and depending on which one we click, the AI understands which part exactly of the picture contains the target object? Some squares contain only a very small part of the object or none.

I'm not sure where your frustration comes from - might be time to double check if stupid nationalism really comes from me, never did I state or even suggest that Romania is above any other country, lol. The best example I can always give is stuff that I see in my country because I live here..

Here, we have fiat machines that only let you cash out from your card and ones that also allow you to deposit fiat (think of it as "buying" digital fiat) into your debit/credit card and we call them both "ATMs". Hence, it was quite logical to me that I could call a machine that lets me buy BTC with cash an "ATM" too.

In fact, this is the definition of an ATM according to Wikipedia:

And this is the definition from Merriam Webster:

, meaning that as long as it performs a basic banking function such as handling check deposits or issuing cash withdrawals, you could call it an Automatic Teller Machine. Same goes for the newer functions we have at some ATMs such as exchanging funds directly from them - or depositing foreign currencies directly into them. To me at least, a Bitcoin transaction could be counted as a banking tx too - you're basically exchanging some fiat banknotes into a digital cryptocurrency.

If you take the definition of a vending machine, you'd find out that the definition of an ATM sounds way closer to the machines I said aren't counted among the 8k. I'll leave two definitions here, from Business Dictionary and Dictionary, respectively:

I only said there are a lot of places you could buy Bitcoin from that don't show up on the map of 8k ATMs and most people think that the mahcines you can also cash out from are the only ones you can get a BTC from. I honestly believe that an automated machine that lets you buy crypto with cash directly but doesn't let you cash out should be counted as an ATM too. Calm down maybe, nobody tried to hurt your lovely country.

AFAIK, Switzerland and Austria are both countries that quickly adapt to what's new. Austria had a lot of ATMs years ago when Romania only had one.

The thing is, the number might not be accurate. This totally depends on whether you also consider terminals that only sell Bitcoin as part of the ATM list too.

Romania has two providers that don't show up on CoinATMRadar for example unless you choose specific filters, and these providers are little machines you could only buy BTC from (they probably don't count as ATMs though). One of them is Qiwi which is also available in Russia, and as you can see we have a LOT of Qiwi terminals in Romania we could buy BTC from but those aren't counted among the 8k! The second terminal is NTS Pay which runs on the Qiwi soft too. NTS Pay probably doesn't show up on Coin ATM Radar even with specific filters.

Years ago we had ZebraPay selling Bitcoin too - there were thousands of terminals available literally at 2-3 streets away from you no matter where you lived. I guess it somehow went wrong now that they aren't selling crypto anymore.

So yeah, it totally depends whether you count these terminals too or not because if you do, then there are lots of options around you that you probably missed.

Except.. a study from 2016 found that EV emissions are almost the same as non-electric ones, which basically means it's all a marketing gimmick. Moreover, IIRC, lithium battery production creates quite a lot of pollution (this could be the information I'm looking for, but doesn't let me view without JS enabled).

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Not sure what exactly has provoked the current change of atmosphere - it might've been the lockdown, but the temperature and pollution levels in my area are way different than last year and the air feels so clean right now. But what's funny and ironic is that we pay for the alleged pollution we create while the army is secretly testing nukes in the ocean/underground as if my "dropped can of Coke" is just as dangerous as what those bomb tests are, lol.

Not to mention other weapons they're using, the massive leakages of different substances in the ocean etc. Again, please don't compare my use of plastic stuff vs what all of the above does to Earth! If we wanted a change, I think the top 10 richest people in the world donating only 5-10% of their wealth to make a change would change something significantly for the better of everyone without making them poor (and would probably account for more than the total amount the entire world donates for this cause in an entire decade) but ... oh wait, their billions aren't used for the good of the planet, are they..

It's still got too low volume (and very bad offers sometimes) to rely on it, but it could turn out to be a great BTC <-> stablecoin exchange. The thing is, most people choose comfort over utility and safety anyways - otherwise, there wouldn't be millions of BTC sitting in centralized exchanges as I'm writing this post.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if moving from centralized exchanges to a decentralized one where you're exchanging BTC into a stablecoin is the best thing one can do, lol. The only advantage in this case is that you're holding your stablecoins in your own wallet instead of someone else's. Kind of a double-edged sword when you think about it.

Mine was mainly faucets and through "free offers" (like those websites you could earn points for viewing a quick YouTube ad and then redeem stuff with points). If I count all the money I got back then from just this, it'd most likely account to more than $1k today.

Things have changed though, mostly because of the price but I wouldn't necessarily say that faucets are a big waste of time today like @Lucius said above.

Faucets gave very small payments back when I used to claim them too and I probably earned only like 500k satoshis overall in a matter of weeks but today that's $50 and in 5 years it could be $500! It all depends on what's going to happen in the future but there are obviously better ways to earn a satoshi than having to complete 100 captchas every 5 minutes.

It all goes down to your expectations and how well you research ways to earn BTC before rushing in to get that little satoshi in your FaucetBox. In the end, although you'd earn less, long-time faucet earnings could be worth it in a matter of years too!

True. But unlike Bisq, Komodo's Atomic DEX (this is for crypto-to-crypto exchanging only!) doesn't require much of a knowledge besides knowing the basic stuff about using a wallet, which is very newbie-friendly! They're also launching a desktop version now and I really have a good feeling about it. All you basically need to know is how to receive & send some coins and the exchange part is very simple: you say how much BTC you want to sell and how much XCoin you want to receive and that's it

So in the end, as a newbie without much of an experience you could buy BTC from a KYC-less ATM or through Bisq and then use Atomic DEX to swap between some of the most popular cryptos out there - they even have some stablecoins.

And there's a pretty good chance the grand winner will continue to bet in order to multiply and earn even more - rising the chances of losing it all again so the casino is never really on a loss. Happens more often than not

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I guess every casino applies as many strategies to keep you addicted and to make you come back, online or not. If you owned a casino, you'd do the same as your only interest is making a profit out of it. Online casinos have their own tricks too. One thing that kept me addicted to PrimeDice years ago was their rainbot and the faucet. I spent too much of my time for a faucet of 200 satoshis (BTC was under $300 at the time) and yet at one point I did get convinced to deposit too.

Hence, you could write a "Online Casinos Decoded" thread too as there are a lot of tricks websites use to keep you in touch with them.

The "maze" trick is used in some shops too, if you've ever noticed. There are lots of shops out there created in such a way that you have to see everything in order to get to the exit.

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THE CREATION OF BITCOIN brought upon various opinions, initially mostly negative especially as the darknet quickly became the narrative of its existence and real purpose. Before the usage of Bitcoin for criminal activity, only few knew about it and Bitcointalk, the main forum for the king of cryptocurrencies, has proven not to be pro-crimes along its journey of existence.

Ross Ulbricht launched The Silk Road back in 2011, when Bitcoin was still known by only few. Using Tor for anonymity and Bitcoin for payments, Ulbricht was able to create a completely censor-free and anonymous website. However, that was only under the ideal usage of it. In fact, Ulbricht, known under the name of "Dread Pirate Roberts", had probably made a few mistakes that cost his privacy, his site and finally - his freedom.

Although The Silk Road did allow criminal activity to happen under an anonymous identity, according to FBI, a CAPTCHA service leaked the real IP under which the uncensored website was running. This, together with a lot of research done by intel agencies, led to the finding of Ulbricht as the owner of it.

However, the finding of Ross Ulbricht by the FBI has sparked controversies as some started to believe that FBI has actually found Ulbricht's identity illegally unlike they made the story look. According to WIRED, something is missing from the story of finding his identity:


Does this mean that the FBI has illegally found who Ulbricht is? Anyways, the thing is that, although The Silk Road did indeed help illicit activity operate, I do believe that its existence helped Bitcoin grow up faster and gave it a big spark of hope overall. In all honesty, many of us have actually started researching Bitcoin and Tor starting from the moment we heard of either its insane price growth, the darknet or both.

SATOSHI'S DISAPPEARANCE remains a mystery. Although he mostly operated on clearnet websites to communicate unlike Ulbricht, intel agencies are acting as if they don't have a single idea about who the real identity of Bitcoin's creator truly is. Considering the FBI, NSA and CIA have been able to unlock some great mysteries out there, is it really possible that Satoshi has always operated under the 100% ideal conditions so that not even the best agency out there could get to 'crack the code'?

Controversy about the FBI is not only linked to The Silk Road's case. Only last year did we hear about a former FBI lawyer being accused of altering documents in order to initiate surveillance in Trump's 2016 campaign. According to PJ Media,


It obviously doesn't stop here. There are lots of conspriacies surrounding events such as UFOs, JFK's death, Hitler's alleged suicide, 9/11 and many other large-scale events that have not been yet declassified or, if they have, appear to have potentially critical missing information without which the dots cannot be connected. This is conspiracy now, but we have to ask ourselves: once (if ever) someone comes up and proves to be the real Satoshi, how and why do we trust him? What if the so-called "real Satoshi" is a false prophet of Bitcoin, willing to destroy it?

CRAIG WRIGHT is the perfect anti-example of Satoshi. If he was the real one, all he would've proved is that unlike many thought, Satoshi was a liar full of bullshit and, apparently, full of himself. Wright tried forging documents, falsifying e-mails and recently even f***ed up by declaring he owns the address containing Mt. Gox's hacked balances. But what else did he try to do?

Wright launched Bitcoin SV, as in "Satoshi's Vision", as a currency that supposedly follows the real Satoshi's vision unlike what we consider today to be Bitcoin. However, his bullshit fell just as short as everything he said in Court, on social media and everywhere else. Bitcoin SV is only his attempt to take over something that was never his. In fact, he even tried to call Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash creators basically thieves. Had his bullshit ever had a little bit of substance, Bitcoin might have been taken down long time ago already as we all would've thought the real Satoshi has returned.

Therefore, Wright is just an attempt of Thomas Edison, who has been accused of stealing inventions and claiming credits for something he did not really invent. Edison is, interestingly, part of a conspiracy: the fact that he might've been implicated in the mysterious case of the father of cinema who also misteriously disappeared not too long after his invention. However, unlike Satoshi's mystery, we do know who Louis Le Prince was before he vanished. According to Historic Mysteries,


This one sounds very similar to what would've most likely happened if Craig's words were taken for granted. In fact, there is a number of people who do take them for granted and support his coin. But taking a look back at the court history of Craig, it makes me wonder.. considering he still hasn't been punished for all the lies he made up in the court and for the forged papers, could he actually be working with an intel agency and under its protection in an attempt to change the course of Bitcoin's history?

TRUSTING SOMEONE TO BE SATOSHI COULD MEAN THE END OF BTC AS WE KNOW IT. If someone ever proves to be the real Satoshi with real evidence, it could prove to be a big danger for Bitcoin's future. Craig Wright has said multiple times that the actual course Satoshi wanted to take was creating a regulation-friendly coin. By the creation of Bitcoin SV, I would understand that Craig goes against the fundamental ideas of Bitcoin while allegedly following them.

As a lot of people are looking up to the real Satoshi, if anyone ever proves to be him (false prophet of Bitcoin or not), that entity will have a lot of influence over a lot of people.

It is quite well-known that intel has technology +50 years ahead of us. One example is quantum computers - if they became the norm tomorrow, too much of the Internet would become vulnerable to it, possibly including Bitcoin itself. But they own it and they could use it to change or prove things that aren't really true.

2020 is only one decade past Bitcoin's creation. The timeframe is still short enough for us to look for the truth and there are too many witnesses for someone to come up and change history.. but if we ever trust someone for being the real Satoshi, even with the most proof possible, we might fall into someone's trap. Digital means some things could be altered and forged well enough to create a false timeline of false events, unless verifiable.

Obviously, there is a significant difference between being against the law and being against laws that allow abuse. Most of the regulations we see being pushed every now and then go against privacy and against what Satoshi really wanted to create. Trading Bitcoin ETFs? Using third-parties and having to trust them when using a currency that was created to be trustless? Having the governments/companies hold the keys of our own coins when the keys should be our own..

Most of the authorities have shown they do not support Bitcoin by launching regulations and laws that supposedly go for Bitcoin's growth when, in fact, they really go against it. Take it as "attempting to kill the initial Bitcoin by making it non-trustless" - or changing the fundamental ideas of Bitcoin in a slow and steady way. One example I always mention is Know-Your-Customer, the regulation that allowed and still allows a lot of companies to legally seize and steal their own customers' money.

Trusting someone for being the real Satoshi might mean unknowingly trusting an entity who might want to destroy what the initial project meant to turn Bitcoin into and allowing a big change that may end up to be the death of Bitcoin as we know it.

Don't take this as a "I support criminals" statement, but without the Silk Road and all the illicit activity that happened through BTC on the darknet we maybe wouldn't have known today about its existence yet. Criminal activity is associated with lots of things, IIRC there was some kind of candy (or soap) cartel at one point

Governments aren't as "open-minded" as they seem imo: they push for a "legalizing & accepting Bitcoin" narrative while implementing rules that go against Bitcoin's fundamental ideas. And yes, you are right, fiat is used way more in criminal activity & corruption than Bitcoin is. Here's a quote from one of my older replies (will translate from Romanian):

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Very true. That's the moment when you literally only take what you see on TV & MSM for granted without ever questioning a narrative. Sadly, too many people are going through this nowadays.

I'll most likely go with ProtonMail for personal accounts and Mail2Tor for accounts I don't want to be linked in any way to my approximate location, name, IP etc. I would use clearnet to create a Proton account but that would basically expose my location, which I'd like to be unknown at all for some accounts.

I don't agree with that narrative either, but having a different coin for every single use case is just not going to help the market & crypto domain at all. Even among the top 200 projects, you find too much garbage (Verge? Bitcoin SV? Centralized cryptos? we had even BitConnect etc) that brings the worthy projects down or make them turn into "gems", as you say, that only few either have a lot of luck to randomly put their money into or are lucky enough to choose them as a personal preference of worthy coins.

Once we'll have a proper cleanup of the existing coins and the legit & worthy ones stay while the garbage goes, your meme will age well and hopefully it will.

Probabil ca, cel mai pe scurt, pot spune ca sfatul meu este sa te tii momentan de Bitcoin si eventual alte 2-3 alts din top (ai grija si dintre ele ce alegi, pentru ca de exemplu Bitcoin SV este in top dar nu merita nici locul 2000, parerea mea) pana cand reusesti sa capeti ceva experienta in domeniu. Apoi, cum se spune.. pune-ti ouale in mai multe cuiburi daca asta doresti.

Bitcoin si sistemul Blockchain in sine e greoi oricum de inteles, asa ca ia-ti timp, rabdare si studiaza. O sa dureze ceva, dar macar te pot asigura 99.9% ca Bitcoin inca va exista si dupa ce vei sti ce si cum in timp ce s-ar putea sa te trezesti cu o cerere de ceva date de "identificare" de la Pi sau poate ca nu te vei alege nici macar cu acea cerere.

That's just here, on the forum. It's usually associated with the darknet and the darknet is usually associated with "red rooms", "black markets", "hackers" etc. The image most have in their mind when you mention "Bitcoin" out loud is in almost every case one about some criminal activity. Unless you do a bit of research (which is just a Google search really), you'd have this idea from the MSM.

People tend to remember the bad stuff and forget the good.

Thank you! I came across most of these, out of which I liked Mail2Tor the most as it brings the option to send to & receive from clearnet e-mail addresses too. However, they do have some issues every now and then which really makes me question the reliability of this provider. Putting that aside however, it does look like a very good alternative. Onionmail and SecMail also look interesting, I'll give them a try.

Which one would you personally choose between Onionmail, Mail2Tor and SecMail?

The rest of them, besides Guerrilla Mail (which only allows you to compose messages on the clearnet address) I don't really feel like any of them fits my needs. I'm mostly looking to create clearnet accounts like you said using them, so Tor-only addresses aren't an option nor are other JS-enabled or less-known providers.

I get the intention of this thread which is nice, but unfortunately most alts really are less worth than BTC. In fact, most of them should actually be worth nothing right now.

There are some alts out there that I do support, but only a handful of them. The rest is simply garbage and we should have a "CoinTrashCan" separate site so that we'd have where to truly fit them.

They've already harmed it through regulations and by letting some abusive stuff happen "thanks to" them. It's never late for them, they already have a strategy put in place and it already works by slowly pushing laws that go in contradiction with Satoshi's ideas and vision.

They'll "join the movement" by falsely advertising digital currencies on Blockchain as if they're like (and better than) Bitcoin, fooling most people into believing they're entering a new, "better", revolutionary financial change on a decentralized network when instead they'll only join a more privacy-stripping currency than what we currently have today.

In my opinion, it's pretty much check-mate for us.

Not necessarily. There were gambling sites out there (IIRC, CS:GO gambling sites) where the more money you put in the pool, the higher the chances were for you to win. You don't have a 100% chance - for example, if someone puts $950 and five more players come up with $10 each, that's a 95% chance for the first guy and 1% chance for the rest (this if we exclude house %, of course).

The guy with 95% chances of winning could easily miss once and lose it all to one of the 1% players. The problem is when "sniping" happens and someone comes in with a lot of money to take everything, although.. they do have a chance as well and it could go very wrong.

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So basically each player will have a slot machine on his screen and they have to hit a "road combo" of 5 (or however many columns there are) in order to win, right?

Sounds fun to be honest, I've always preferred for example Blackjack in comparison with Dice because there's much more fun when you have other players with you in the session and bet "together". Haven't tried other PvP gambling games though, but they're fun for sure.

As an additional tip, go to Tor Browser settings and change to "Safest" protection level before visiting ChipMixer or any other website. With JavaScript enabled, you could have a website with a script that tracks your real IP down. Fortunately, ChipMixer has taken care of this by having a no JS requirement

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Under the ideal usage of Bitcoin (with Tor, mixed coins etc), you could basically say that you own an "anonymous BTC". The ledger may be public, but if you've been under an anonymous identity the entire time then it's useless really. But a very little mistake could cost your entire effort of protecting your identity revealing everything, of course.