When i get the chance, i will get or print a BTC T-shirt. Even a small logo could make a difference. Or perhaps a baseball cap, or some other thing i can have the logo, a sticker for a laptop, etc.

Maybe add a message below the logo something like: "In Code we Trust" or something related to Bitcoin's characteristics.

Especially because its 4 days later and things seem to be working normally. He lied, as usual.

Faketoshis being faketoshis, want attention. Maybe they earn some coin with views and social media exposure, who knows.

If the merchant trusts you and gives you credit, you can already do that. Same as if he were to accept a wire transfer later from you. Alternative if the shop has online presence, you could buy online and then retrieve physically (or use delivery).

If the merchant trusts you he could also just accept your unconfirmed transaction. And i know there is a way to make a receipt of sorts no idea what its called, but have seen it appear in Electrum when paying Bitpay while there is still no confirmation.

Absolutely sure you can do things without LN. A bar can keep an old fashioned tab for example. Just think of any arrangement you would do if a wire transfer was needed (your cards don't work, you are without cash, whatever).

Perhaps someone will make some killer app for merchants, like the Chinese have with their weird electronic money (pre gov), and give them ease to accept Bitcoin.

Don't be fool and write the seed words down. Its nice that you have this "analog backup", but make sure to secure it as well. You can use micro film fwiw and still need to carefully protect it.

I hope you always remember to never hand that film to third parties... Good thing developing shops have mostly disappeared.

No, Bitcoin is not in control of Satoshi, he cannot stop Bitcoin even if he/she/they wanted to.

A slight correction: Bitcoin is currently 11 years old. It started (main net running) Jan 3 2009.

BTW this is the case with all Free and Open Source projects. You cannot stop Linux if you get rid of Linus Torvalds (the infamous "what if a bus hits Linus" argument). With Bitcoin is even better, as Satoshi stopped any developing of it in 2010, and the project has continued without him/her/they.

A decade later nothing has happened, i don't expect anything in the next decade either. If some (or all) of the current core devs disappear, the project would slowdown updates until others take control, but the network would go on just fine. Other projects are less popular and often a 1 person show, those tend to be harmed the most. But Bitcoin has several people involved.

All transactions are public, they go to the blockchain.

You can connect anonymously to the blockchain, by using a node running as a Tor Hidden service. If you don't reveal your address to nobody, no one can tell it is yours. If you use Tor to connect to Bitcoin network, for broadcasting transactions etc, no one can tell you are using Bitcoin. They can only tell you are using Tor or just an encrypted connection when properly obfuscated (obfs4 bridges).

Download and boot Tails, install/open Electrum and configure it to use Tor (if not already), done.

Don't call it "deep web" (i hate when they invent those stupid terms), because what i described does not involve "the web" at all.

If your country has banned Bitcoin, this is the way to go. And don't de-anonymize yourself by making it possible for others to correlate your address to your real person identity.

You seem to ignore the fact, that Internet was specifically built to withstand a nuclear war. There is no single point of failure, there is no specific target you can hit to "stop" internet. Sure you could cripple it down, but it would be restored.

Bitcoin will keep working as long as there is a node running somewhere. I agree Bitcoin needs the internet, for the most part (it IS theoretically possible to make it work in another network), but i don't agree a war, and much less a war between two countries, can "destroy" internet. Iran cannot harm America, at least not to the point of total annihilation, but America can subjugate Iran at great cost.

Suppose you magically disappear the USA an IRAN, does Internet stop? NO. It would slow down, but it would be restored. Same with Bitcoin. Of course it will suck to the people of those countries, especially the ones getting bombed, but after its over things will go back to normal. You can take a look at Iraq, which was the place were this latest event occurred.

If these two countries go to war, most of the world would be unaffected. Heck my country has more relations with Iran than the USA, yet we have zero capacity to intervene militarily in anyway (and Trump would love the excuse to bomb us as well, as he promised but never did).

If i were to guess, these are traders taking advantage of the situation. Of course there are also people trying to preserve their money, and if the Iranian government is doing it, it would be an incredible precedent. Trump might find an excuse to hate Bitcoin even more.

Most Venezuelans were already poor once hyperinflation "hit", those large movements are from traders many of which don't even live in the country. So i can safely guess the same thing is happening in Iran. Sometimes foreigners rent bank accounts from locals for their trades. And yes, distortions often cause incredible local spikes in price, which would let you make a lot of money if you have the needed connections. ie: a bank account in the country, knowledge of local rules (bank limits), local contact etc. Yes there could be some rich people too, and some gov people its a free market after all. That's the beauty of a State-less economy.

Please note that its actually incorrect to say money is getting in or out certain physical place. If it becomes bitcoin, it is bitcoin everywhere. Bitcoin is border-less, once you change your country's fiat into Bitcoin, you have gained a worldwide asset. So rather than saying the money leaves Iran, you could say the money enters Bitcoin. It can still be used inside Iran at any moment, unlike doing the same with forex or some foreign bank account. The difference is huge if you stop to think about it...

Iranians buying bitcoin are not really taking the money out of the country, but they are saving it from both the country (Iranian State) and the potential aggressor/invader (see the military command economy they imposed to Germans after the fall of the 3rd Reich). This is one more reason why Bitcoin is so valuable rather than some physical asset that could be seized or destroyed, or a fiat that could lose all value overnight.

And why not British of somewhere else? Even if you get an accent, Americans would understand you. Besides no matter where you learn it from, your own Russian accent will permeate. Maybe less with more practice, but still will. Does it get in the way? Who cares as long as they understand you? This is a global world, it might even be best to get an "India" accent, if you want to fluently use "American" call centers (they outsource to India)

Alternative you could stick to American media, ie. TV, and try to repeat what they say in their very own accent. Oh, and do you know, within the US there are several different accents? You want to speak like a Texan, or Brooklyn? More fun is you get minorities there adding their own accents. In the end it might be futile to look for an "American" accent.

Vocabulary i agree, American vs British can be, tricky. But its never bad to learn both (and i admit mixing them sometimes lol).

Your garbage is rubbish, or the other way around

Oh and what is the average wage over there? Or what a construction worker or the like would earn in a month?

In richer countries, everything tends to be more expensive, but people ALSO earn far more. If you start measuring in, the % of your salary the thing costs, you will get a different perspective.

I will try to refrain from using my country (or the rest of "3rd world"), because it would screw everything, so lets focus in your nice "1st world" countries. Just how many months of work would you need to buy, say, a car?

Is importing from a cheap place like China not possible? Does your country impose protectionist practices such as import tax? But then again, do you get your State providing you "free stuff" such as Education, Health care and security?

Did you know, that countries like yours (Ie. Scandinavia) are THE MODEL everyone in the poor countries aspire to, but give up as an impossible far fetched dream? (i don't agree but that's what the politicians around here project). Often when you challenge a Socialist, they will bring one of the Scandinavian countries as example. OH and things like the best education figures coming from there doesn't exactly help either

To us, its like you live in Utopia and you complain because things are much too nice, you want to suffer some more. We call it "1st world problems". Solution is easy: Move into another country. You can do it, you are welcome everywhere. We are not welcome there, people from poor countries have serious obstacles for legally entering "the nice" countries, which is why you always see illegal immigration.

If you execute your idea, you are doing exactly what in free market you are supposed to do. You found an opportunity, and are going to exploit it. Over here, the State would prevent it, thus our economies remain in perma-ruin.

I'm sure you can find those in the service section (or somewhere within Marketplace). Remember that the people offering the services don't necessarily use robots there could be from human farms doing the exact same thing.

So even then "they update the algorithms" they get defeated. unfortunately this also makes things worse for regular users. Its like captcha, its an incredibly waste of money and time. sure, it increased the costs for automated things, but automated things still occur. Unfortunately the most affected are us when the idiot captcha server decides to take a hike (or gets DDoSed, whatever).

And, this also means that "followers" and "likes" are a giant lie full of garbage. Same as buying an account in a place where experienced accounts take real time and lots of effort (such as certain online communities or games). What this does is just increase the price, but not stop the practice.

Yes i suppose making it more expensive reduces it somewhat, but perhaps the real solution lies elsewhere. Imagine if Instagram never showed the number of followers? Oh well, i don't like social platforms anyway.

When you buy a product with "crypto", are you also not paying someone? These look redundant.

"Travel to places" i suppose this might mean purchase of plane ticket, or do you mean the expenses such as hotel etc?

Bitcoin is the only one that matters. Feel free to gamble with the altcoins, but don't expect miracles, or preserving their value...

History repeats itself. Copy protection started with Personal computers, especially after Bill Gates told programmers in the late 70ies to stop getting robbed for not charging money per copy...

And ever since this started, cracks also occurred. The net effect ends being an inferior experience to those that want to "play fair" (product activation, dongles, restricted to one or few devices, etc) vs those that make or find the crack.

Funnily enough, some software survived the test of time BECAUSE of the cracks. Some games were declared "Freeware" much later by their authors, long after they lost the source code or the ability to remove the copy protection scheme implemented in them...

Consoles also have a long history in this regard, with various consequences. There is a proven correlation in the success of a console and the possibility for said console to play "backup copies". Even if this is never officially talked about anywhere.

Its like your smartphone, the company that sold it to you does not want you "rooting it", but your appreciated value for it changes radically depending if you can successfully root it or not (freedom).

This also reminds me of game modding. Some games are unmoddable, they might have some value, but it isn't the same as a game that has mods or so called total conversions. Its like you are getting several games in one. I remember once purchasing a game, not because of its bundled content, but because of its large modding community. Indeed i didn't even bother with that game content much, but spent countless hours with community content. To an extent, its similar to Free and Open Source software vs Proprietary closed.

History teaches that the only good copy protection is no copy protection at all. This could be a reason of the surge of so called "freemium" or "free to play" games, this way they can avoid the issue entirely.

I have no idea what Denuvo is, but i remember reading the exact same news about previous (back then new) consoles. Is this a Google console, or a Google shop? It seems google failed to do proper research. Oh and proclaiming that you have "the best" protection, is a declaration of war to the world. You ARE going to get cracked...

Hmm i wonder whatever happened to the "fatal" flaw. Attention whore is attention whore. He could join, i don't know McAfee or the likes. Besides he outrageously proclaimed himself Satoshi, without proof of anything.

Why do you even call this "World" war, who else is being involved besides US and IRAQ(N?)

I had an acquaintance that proclaimed WW3 started at 9/11, however after that we just saw the US bombing Afghanistan and later Iraq, maybe there was some NATO support i forgot at this point.

This last event just looks like more of the same. Too many years without bombing someone somewhere is maybe bad for military weapon business, besides the US needs to get rid of old stock.

I don't even know who that guy was or why Trump ordered his assassination. When i learned about this "news" i was more or less: "The US as usual". Don't involve the world in American matters.

I'm sure i answered your question somewhere already, but in case you wanted it here, the answer is: Nothing. Bitcoin is unaffected by the economies of the involved parties. In fact you could say Bitcoin is unaffected to the World's economy, unlike fiat coins. So there could be more demand when the world economy struggles, not unlike precious metals, but that happens with or without wars anyway.

Some could say wars fuel the US economy, so Americans might want to sell their coins to invest in military weapon related companies. The Iranians or Iraqies would go into Bitcoin maybe to keep their purchasing power, if their country is attacked their (already bad) fiat would plummet. And its very convenient in case they flee the place.

In the meantime the rest of the world will continue business as usual, and not get involved. So calling it "World war", is arrogant at best. Indeed, the "World" doesn't spin around the USA.

Yes, and dealing with the "security measures" of internet banking are a PITA. Maybe yours is dreamy, but ours we get nagged with periodic password change, a special code sheet required for certain operations, the idiotic page kicking you after 60 seconds of inactivity, copy and pasting someone's account, name, id number etc. Be unable to pay service a in bank b, once i had a bug where i transfer an amount to my self and the thing decided to do it 3 times until it used all the money (thankfully it was to myself and not somebody else) when these kinds of thing happen, you are supposed to go to the bank to complain.

Its nice when you can avoid the queues, but not so nice that you have to use a bank in the first place. My country became cashless by force (of inflation) so people depend on debit cards (because credit cards stopped). I have done bitcoin transactions, and i would rather not bother with banks ever again.

Besides when you have to open a bank account, is not a pleasant experience. There is no need for any of this with bitcoin. Did i mention how long it takes to transfer money to yourself to another bank where you also have an account? And people complain about Bitcoin being slow... And then there is theft. Well when my country's coin went worthless, these stopped as the robbers no longer consider it worth it, but it used to be common to point a gun to someone and force them to withdraw all from an atm, or clone their debit card and capture their pin at the atm, or clone the debit card at a shop after you made a purchase (since they already got your card and pin).

Banks, i don't need. Fractional reserve banking, even less. Banks only started (openly) doing fractional reserve by the 20th century, when coins stopped using precious metals, they didn't just became paperweight physically, but also in value. But few people know the truth about banks and fractional reserve, and some fools even think the banks keep their money safe.

Answer: I prefer Bitcoin, screw banks, mobile or not.

Their manipulation is limited, much more than you think. Try to think, what would happen if one wanted to sell 1M BTC?

First, its not possible to do in a single operation, every tiny little operation will affect the price.

So as the sell order is placed, people would start buying pieces of it lowering the price, the other sellers in the market will adjust so the whale would need to as well, again and again and again until the whole 1M gets sold. This is not instantaneous. Even if he started selling at 7k, who knows what price it would reach on average at the end.

You think he can just buy back again? The same process repeats in reverse, you will probably end losing more than having done nothing.

Market manipulation is not as magical as some people seem to think. And yes, whales have tried, and failed.

Dump to 100$ is nearly impossible at this point it would take too long and the rush to buy back those coins would simply not allow it to reach that low. Again, you cannot just sell 1M BTC in a single operation, ignoring the legal formalities.

The free market is incredibly reliable, far better than any sort of State intervention. Pump and dump is something a whale may pull out with a little new altcoin, perhaps even in the very beginning of bitcoin, but not anymore.

Suppose all Satoshi coins are put for sale, that would still not be enough to "crash" Bitcoin, it simply doesn't work that way. The cheaper it gets, the higher the pressure to buy.

Market manipulation exists, but its much more limited than you think, thanks to this thing called "peers" (everyone else) it does self regulate itself. Especially when its something highly wanted, unlike some obscure altcoin.

Pump Bitcoin to 1M? There is just not enough money in the world for that. If you do your homework, you will notice that each "pump" and "dump" cycle is less and less % of Bitcoin's price over time, as the coin gets in the hands of more people, their manipulation ability shrinks. Of all the coins out there, bitcoin is the less manipulable, which in turns makes it more trusted. Maturity they call it.

The problem with some theorists is that everything works by magic inside their minds. Such as a perfect State controlled economy devoid of the "Evil" market forces. Until you try it, that is... And their arguments against the free market are just as absurd. If you are afraid of the free market, go ahead and move into one of the last "socialist" countries, see if you like living with a couple of USD per month, no healthcare, no education, no security, rampant corruption, shortages etc...

The freedom of bitcoin price ensures that, whatever price it has at any given point, it is a "true" price. Peg a coin artificially to any arbitrary price, and all you do is build pressure against a dam waiting to overflow... And once it does (and it will) it will take everything on its path...

The only alternative to freedom is even more freedom. More exchanges, more decentralization, etc. Speculate all you want, doesn't mean you can pull it out outside of your mind. But the fact that you can, is what ensures everything works. The moment the State intervenes, everything starts breaking apart. Luckily, bitcoin is immune to state intervention, which also gives you the freedom to, go ahead and try manipulating the market, see how long you can get.

I am absolutely sure, even if all whales tried selling bitcoin right now, it would still not crash it. A bit of fluctuation and a lot of action, yes, but never destruction as you claim it. Bitcoin is simply too useful for too many to fail like that, its only inside your imagination.

You know, i don't really expect LN integration to do much. In my opinion LN will not get wide use, its more a publicity stunt. "Hey we can do unlimited transfers per second now", yeah but there really is no need to.

Also, the price of bitcoin is in the hands of the market. This is a blessing, it is very fortunate, that no State or company is artificially pegging it only waiting for it to explode. The longer in the market the less "manipulation". This is a consensus of price on a global scale, it means freedom.

Bitcoin is slowly finding its price, and will fluctuate less and less overtime, as it has been doing so in all its history.

Because more and more people own bitcoin, speculation moves it less and less. This is maturity. You can still do such things with altcoins, but with bitcoin it is less and less so.

Bitcoin fluctuation is a sign of freedom, if you are a holder, you shouldn't care, just wait it out. If you are a trader, then use your knowledge to profit from it.

I think you are mistaken VERY mistaken. Yes, they interpreted that, under CURRENT rules, they should not tax profits. Meaning, they are urged to revise said rules...

This is a temporary benefit at best, If i were Korean, i would start to move investments abroad, or accept the tax and rules as they come (might be too late by then to change mind).

In theory, the Koreans should know that, the more they tax, the less investments will remain. But politicians being politicians, you can expect anything. State rules simply tend to get in the way of wealth making "in the name of national protection" or whatever.

No, if its not accepted people won't upgrade their nodes and the network would remain with the current rules. Its not as simple as developers simply pushing the change. Most improvements are minor and tacitly accepted, but if something this controversial would come you can expect a hell lot more of resistance.

Yes its technically 21 000 000 x 100 000 000 = 2100000000000000 satoshis, to be objective the OP would be asking, if they could change this into 4200000000000000 satoshis.

Everyone knows 42 is the answer. As for the question, you'd have to read a book, actually a guide... Something about mice running an experiment... (Douglas Adams actually said he didn't pick 42 for any specific reason, but this joke is endless).

As for the reason Satoshi used 21, i guess, it was the same (arbitrary). But most importantly, it was set and accepted as the rules. If it were 42 since the beginning, the result would be identical, bitcoin price would be exactly half, and people would have exactly twice of them. You could also do the opposite but i see no reason to change the rules at this point.