There's just no actual USE for it, when you try and USE Bitcoin you realise it's incredibly ineffective. I don't want to wait silly amount of times for a purchase to go through, look at digital purchases now in the market section, got and purchase an instant delivery, digital product and pay with Bitcoin. You will be waiting forever and a day unless you pay extremely high fees to have near instant confirmation, why would anyone use that when you can pay with PayPal or an alt and have it basically instantly.
Well to be fair, it's the most secure and stable (in a sense where it would be the absolute last to lose people's trust) crypto out there. Sure you can keep money in LTC or BCH, but I'm not as certain they would still be around tomorrow as I am with BTC -- something which is often overlooked when talking about currencies. You do have valid concerns with the transactions, but like majority of the community I don't think it will be this way forever; if it stays like this, then you're absolutely correct that it's going to have very limited use cases, and that perhaps it shouldn't be valued as it should. Only time will really tell, but for now you can't deny that its massive ecosystem sets it apart from other crypto. As for Satoshi's vision, it's still a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, so there's that. Beyond that, he has left development in the hands of the community, so I'm sure he would be at peace however it turns out. If he absolutely wanted things to have gone a specific way, he would have left a strict road map. |
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The problem with KYC is who is asking for it and what use they will give. There should be a KYP (Know your provider) so far we don't have such a thing! and nobody is thinking about it!
The first step before doing our KYC, we the users should apply KYP and make sure we know who is holding our personal info, the people behind centralized companies need to have their full names and id publicly, they need to be accountable, and transparent. after that, we should proceed to do KYC.
I'm not sure if having their ID public is a good idea, and it certainly isn't as fair as you suggest. Your KYC details aren't made publicly available and neither should theirs, unless they freely do it on their own. But hey, ironically enough, they do need to provide all of these details if they follow legal procedures in setting up a business, meaning you should be able to get a hold of SEC (or your country's equivalent) to be able to verify the details of their registration (or if they're even properly registered). I'm not sure if they'll tell you the names of the heads without a legal proceeding underway, but those details will be available to people who can hold them accountable anyway (i.e. the authorities). It is a good idea, however, to get to know who will potentially handle your data, so you should always do KYP anyway; except IMO more on what they do, how reputable they are, etc., and less on their personal identity which you won't be able to do anything with anyway. |
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I'd say you could still call mutable blockchains blockchains, because that's still what they're trying to emulate anyway. They'd still be closer in both function and form to run-of-the-mill blockchains than traditional databases. That being said, I don't see the point, and I wouldn't be surprised if they ceased to exist in the future. There was a CW piece that tackled this a while back: Within a private blockchain there is also no ‘race’; there’s no incentive to use more power or discover blocks faster than competitors. This means that many in-house blockchain solutions will be nothing more than cumbersome databases. Another reason why I'm fine with calling them blockchains is because language is inherently fluid anyway; words change depending on their usage. For as long as people call them blockchains (and they do), the definition of the term will be adjusted to accommodate them. |
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Vice recently came out with an article called Leaked Documents Expose the Secretive Market for Your Web Browsing Data: An antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is selling highly sensitive web browsing data to many of the world's biggest companies, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag has found. Our report relies on leaked user data, contracts, and other company documents that show the sale of this data is both highly sensitive and is in many cases supposed to remain confidential between the company selling the data and the clients purchasing it.
The documents, from a subsidiary of the antivirus giant Avast called Jumpshot, shine new light on the secretive sale and supply chain of peoples' internet browsing histories. They show that the Avast antivirus program installed on a person's computer collects data, and that Jumpshot repackages it into various different products that are then sold to many of the largest companies in the world. Some past, present, and potential clients include Google, Yelp, Microsoft, McKinsey, Pepsi, Sephora, Home Depot, Condé Nast, Intuit, and many others. Some clients paid millions of dollars for products that include a so-called "All Clicks Feed," which can track user behavior, clicks, and movement across websites in highly precise detail.
[...]
Although the data does not include personal information such as users' names, it still contains a wealth of specific browsing data, and experts say it could be possible to deanonymize certain users.
[...]
"It's very granular, and it's great data for these companies, because it's down to the device level with a timestamp," the source said, referring to the specificity and sensitivity of the data being sold. Motherboard granted the source anonymity to speak more candidly about Jumpshot's processes.
[...]
But Jumpshot's data may not be totally anonymous. The internal product handbook says that device IDs do not change for each user, "unless a user completely uninstalls and reinstalls the security software." Numerous articles and academic studies have shown how it is possible to unmask people using so-called anonymized data. In 2006, New York Times reporters were able to identify a specific person from a cache of supposedly anonymous search data that AOL publicly released. Although the tested data was more focused on social media links, which Jumpshot redacts somewhat, a 2017 study from Stanford University found it was possible to identify people from anonymous web browsing data. What this means for Avast users is that there is a profile of you out there, which likely shows that you're engaged in crypto, that can be traced back to your personal identity. Even assuming that the profile is only ever going to be used for marketing, data leaks/hacks could easily expose you to bad actors. All of this could lead to you losing money, one way or another. If you care about this at all, I recommend you uninstall Avast and all its other products now. This also serves as a reminder to only install absolute essentials on your computer, especially if you're using it to handle crypto. Windows Defender should be more than good enough as an anti-virus (even if Microsoft is spying on you, at least there would only be one company doing so lol) for as long as you observe due diligence. Better yet, you could give Linux a try -- dual booting is easy and you won't have to abandon your set up completely. |
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How is this a win when it essentially just retains the current status quo? Indians still risk having their bank accounts closed by dealing with crypto, and crypto companies are still shunned by the traditional financial system. I mean, crypto should be able to stand by itself, but we're not quite there yet. Not having active bank accounts leave you stuck outside a wall of red tape. They know this, and they're stopping just short of an official ban so it can't be questioned. It's more of the banks that are against crypto because they are seeing the potential threat and opponent of their business. But if this news is true, we have to see it from another viable source and coming from the central bank, they've said that they didn't even ban crypto as per this article from cointelegraph. India Central Bank Says It Hasn’t Banned CryptoThey're simply playing with semantics here. It's not a ban, but handling crypto will lead to denial of services. At the end of the day, you still can't use crypto and at the same time participate with the traditional financial system. That's like private establishments saying they don't ban firearms but you can't come to the store with one. |
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Wonder if this will actually get any use. Maybe someone with more expensive can chime in and explain why TOR nodes are needed?
They're not at all needed, but according to one source: A particular reason for this increase isn’t known. However, the privacy-minded TOR network has been a helpful tool in dealing with network problems while setting up a node. When someone is setting up a Bitcoin node, it’s quite a hassle to make sure other nodes can see it. They need to set up port forwarding on their routers, which is different for every router. TOR routes around this problem altogether. All users would need, is a TOR browser.
It's also possible that they simply don't want to be pinpointed. Either way, this trend isn't necessary, and isn't even necessarily beneficial for the system as a whole. |
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OP's (possible) source: https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-nodes-go-ultra-private-thanks-to-tor-network/I hadn't heard about that. Is it really secure?
Anonymity does not necessarily imply security. I don't think this has any real impact on overall network security. It makes it harder to trace individual nodes though, so good for them. It is an excellent method to make sneaky transactions, I understand that Bitcoin cash and monero are the ones used for anonymity, but tor is very useful for BTC when you want to be invisible and gives you the ability to change your IP address every time want, ideal if you are going to trade in the Deepweb or you just don't want anyone watching you, to activate the tor browser always requires a little more time is everything.
Tor can help, but do remember that the blockchain is a public ledger. It doesn't matter if you change up your IP if an observer can track your movements through your transactions. Tor can only really help you if you were already anonymous in the first place. That being said, it's far more important to break the links between you and your addresses through mixers or CoinJoin, both of which can be made more effective by using Tor. |
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As subject goes, is Bitcoin the maximum version?
Is it still possible to develop it?
You may want to spend a little more time reading about Bitcoin. It's still in active development, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. There are still a few glaring issues that are yet to be addressed. Can we still expect better coin than Bitcoin?
Of course. The possibility will always be there, it's the probability that is in question. |
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I didn't save the key anywhere. The string of random characters that make up PrivateKey is created using the BrainWallet method, the salt of which is the password I use, consisting of 20 characters (including special characters and numbers), so there is no chance to guess. This was done manually and offline using a tool of my own authorship. I know the mechanisms of private keys very well
So you didn't actually create your private key with Electrum? I'm just thinking out loud here, but it's kind of pointless to generate your private key offline only to later import it into a hot wallet. Anyway, are you suggesting that Electrum itself is compromised? If so, you might want to share more details so other people can verify where things could have possibly gone wrong. I personally don't believe Electrum has a problem, but that's only because there's no verifiable evidence presented thus far. I rarely use electrum wallet as their are plenty of breaches to their security and with your current situation it is almost 0% that you can still recover your funds even if you are desperate to take it back.
I can only remember two "breaches", the first of which is inconsequential if the user set a wallet password (with no verified Bitcoin loss), and the other only really affecting alerts which were used for phishing. I'm not going to say those aren't bad, but people who know what they're doing were never really at risk. Next time it will be best if you use a much more secured wallet like blockchain or your local exchange if you have some so you can easily reach the customer service in case there is a problem in your wallet like this one.
I'd still recommend Electrum over those alternatives to be honest. I also hate to break it to you, but customer service won't help you with anything unless (and maybe not even) they're the one who messed up. So if you got phished or caught a virus which led to your funds being stolen (which could very easily be OP's problem), you're going to end up just as helpless. That means these options are even worse because you have to worry about two parties messing up (you and them) as opposed to worrying only about yourself. |
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-snip- Sure, but as well as missing some opportunities, you also miss some big pull backs. That's the point - to smooth your entry price over time and bring it as close to the "average" as possible. If you have no desire to try to time the markets or read the charts, then it's a perfectly acceptable way for newbies to get involved in crypto. The articles you have linked talk about DCA in the scenario of stocks and the S&P 500. These assets aren't as volatile as bitcoin, and the S&P 500 index (for example) has been on a pretty steady upward trajectory for the last 10 years. In these cases, I agree that DCA is probably a worse choice. In bitcoin, however, when the price can drop by $1000 in under an hour completely unexpectedly, then DCA helps to reduce that risk. There's a DCA site for bitcoin as well here ( https://dcabtc.com/) where you can play around with the numbers. Even if you had started DCAing in during the height of the bullrun back in December 2017, you would still be in profit today. Such is the point of DCA. Yeah I completely agree with that, as I said with the rest of my post. I was just trying to rationalize why OP put it in his list by pointing out that there is a school of thought out there which doesn't believe that DCA is a fundamentally sound strategy. As far as profits go, none of the articles I have linked said that you won't profit from DCA, just that on average, DCA yielded poorer results among other methods tested. No such in-depth study (like this one) has been done on the crypto market, so I thought ones done on the stock market would be somewhat relevant to the discussion, given that there are a lot of people who apply the same principles and strategies to both. Edit: nvm, I found one: Conclusion
We created a simple trial comparing lump sum to the strategy of investing in the same amount monthly over a year, and found that lump sum still won ~67.9% of the time. Even the arbitrarily reduced dataset showed that Lump Sum beats DCA 60.8% of time.
I still wouldn't discourage people from doing DCA though, considering it's still a much safer way to invest your money (in BTC at least). |
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How should i prepare on this while travelling? They just placed KYC in Btc ATMs here in Finland, and i either need to have a previously registered Coinmotion account with kyc, or have online banking codes to withdraw any money.
So i am interested in how much i can rely on Btc ATMs with travelling on some other country and can i rely my Finnish online bank codes working as kyc or do i need to prepare somehow?
Is KYC itself your problem, or the fact that some ATMs require specific third-party accounts and/or online banking codes? If it's the latter, ATMs like that are highly unusual; they only really require some personal details, and I've never heard of any prior to your case requiring much else. Have you taken a look at other Bitcoin ATMs in your area? I suspect that the one you interacted with is an exception rather than the rule. If this isn't some weird 5AMLD compliance (and it would be big news if it is because it essentially kills off Bitcoin ATMs in the EU), I don't think you will encounter any problems while traveling. |
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Not a bad strategy, but even a scheduled buy every week is a good idea so you don’t have to watch the charts all the time. This of course is dollar cost averaging.
I mean, the post itself is pretty poor quality, but that doesn't mean that the sentiment behind it is necessarily bad advice. Dollar cost averaging is a perfectly legitimate investment plan, and over a long enough time period with bitcoin would always have made you a profit so far. While I agree (and this is what I personally do because I'm a shit trader), not everyone sees it the same way: Dollar-Cost Averaging Doesn’t PayWhy dollar-cost averaging doesn't make senseDoes Dollar Cost Averaging Work? (With Calculator)It's great for eliminating biases, but it makes it incredibly easy to miss out on opportunities, especially on a market as volatile as Bitcoin's. Even looking at its flaws though, I don't think it deserves a never do this warning for newbies. It serves as a perfectly good low-risk low-reward (compared to actual trading at least; BTC is quite inherently high-reward lol) solution for non-technical investors IMO. |
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It looks user friendly, but that's probably where the positives end. Here is a thread with good discussion about its safety features (Spoilers: it's quite negative). I get that they don't necessarily hold the private keys, but I'm sure most people would prefer generating their own. I probably wouldn't mind keeping a small amount in one, but a cold wallet is essentially useless if you can't trust it to house a significant portion of your savings lol. To each his own though I suppose. |
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Just to add, if you're still using a potato PC along with your Windows 7 (like 1GB or 2GB RAM which can't really run newer OSes properly anymore), and don't want to buy a completely new system to go with a secure OS, you can use Lubuntu, which is basically a much more lightweight flavor of Ubuntu: https://lubuntu.me/It doesn't take up much space either, so it should also be viable for dual booting even for older machines. It's also perfect for converting old laptops and such into air-gapped cold storages. |
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I'm not saying that it's his fault that he's rich but he is certainly adding to the existence of the gap.
That's great and all, but what is he supposed to do at this point? Redistribute his wealth? He's already doing that through his charities lol. Sitting in a Tesla and complaining that the world is getting polluted because of all those other stinky cars is as dumb and self-centered as it gets.
How is this even remotely close to what he actually said? He was pushing for higher taxes for rich people lol. The ideas he was proposing were completely anti-rich. He wasn't complaining about the gap, he was thinking about solutions on how to reduce it, and it requires zero adjustments from people riding stinky cars. As for climate change, he does have his own stance, and it's mostly about spending money on R&D, precisely so poor people (and everyone else really) would have actual viable (i.e. not anti-poor like everyone should buy Teslas) options to reduce their carbon footprint. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer in this world. That's the way it is and that's also how Gates made money from money so he can spare us his bullshit.
That's capitalism for you, which Bitcoin ironically enables. The reality is, we all play under the same rules, we just get away with more stuff the more money we get. This is precisely the same situation in Bitcoin where whales are able to throw their weight around -- such is the price for freedom. Don't hate the player, hate the game. |
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Weaken against what though? Against which currencies?
Everything, pretty much. What this primarily means though, is that the US Dollar Index falls. Either way, wasn't Trump talking about wanting to weaken the USD a while back? I'm not sure how weak Gundlach is talking, but the constant printing really might be intended to weaken it. |
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Bitcoin CAN solve this problem if it is NOT prevented by the banking system.
How so? Anyone can do what they want with Bitcoin, regardless of what their bank is saying. Even then, that doesn't change the fact that the ultra rich can buy more coins than us poor folk, so if anything, Bitcoin helps their wealth even more than ours. Look who's talking. One of the richest people in the world complains about inequality. He's like a fat pig bathing in champagne that looks out the window, sees a hungry dog chained to a post and screams -poor guy, find some food or you'll die! World is so unfair!
Uh, what would you rather have him do? Would it be better if he ignored the issue completely? I'm not saying that Bill Gates is the paragon of all goodness, but the rich people hate has gotten out of hand. The wealth gap isn't entirely their fault. |
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Just to clarify, most of these services won't promise to reverse transactions; most offer their services to track down the scammer and go after them with legal remedies. It must also be noted that there actually are legitimate entities that offer this kind of service like Ciphertrace, so it's not like people should be avoiding it like the plague. Either way, asset recovery services shouldn't be able to offer any guarantees, so be especially wary of those. Just make sure you do your due diligence in finding a legitimate service, but then again if you were already doing that in the first place, you probably won't get scammed. |
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Where are all the persons praising Europe as the crypto heaven when Binance moved to Malta, followed by Bittrex.  Malta was branded as such precisely because of its regulatory framework, not the lack thereof: The Authority acknowledged the regulatory challenges that the crypto sector is facing, saying that “the innovations in blockchain and crypto technology present challenges in the prevention of money laundering and terrorism financing.” That’s why the MFSA will employ so-called “SupTech” intelligence tools, which will put regulators in a better position to identify fraud, prevent money laundering, and funding terrorism. In other words, Maltese regulatory bodies will start to take progressive approaches and actively monitor licensed crypto service providers using a more advanced tool. I imagine the AMLD5 won't change much for larger firms, but I suppose that would depend largely on the added costs. If Malta is already actively implementing these AML regulations though, it's possible that exchanges might not have to adjust much. I'm a big believer in free markets and principles like caveat emptor. Common sense always told me to stay away from anonymous, fly-by-night companies. To me, you're just rationalizing nanny state regulation. There is nothing "positive" about it.
Well, beyond protecting the public, the article did mention that financial institutions could play nicer with crypto once it all goes down. Whether or not that's a positive thing probably depends on the individual though lol. |
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