Prize paid!

https://blockchain.info/tx/0457a16146945386f6188c7b73768051d97197a2bcb9aea03ab545e4099b1d87

And we have a winner! panjaul is the winner! As you selected to convert your price to BTC, please sign a message from your submitted address and your prize will be paid today, 15 EUR worth: 1FYov14bwXdUGi4YLqGmSDvumUCK8rXtB4

Selected using random.org out of 4 entrants each entrant was numbered 1 to 4, the number range on random.org was 1 to 4, number 3 came up.


Congrats and a happy new year! Post your signed message here for transparency and we will post the TX ID to

1FYov14bwXdUGi4YLqGmSDvumUCK8rXtB4

Yes it does, so I 1 hr 10 minutes we will be picking the winner with random.org

£3000 GBP for both units? Just putting an offer out there but not committing myself yet

£753 GBP*** is what I said, bitcoin price has crashed you know!

I just sold it to a local buyer for £800 so evidently was worth that as he offered it to jump the queue over another buyer... Don't forget in the UK add 20% onto everything that would be the cost in the US due to the taxes we pay at the point of sale (VAT) For example an antminer would be worth 20% more here than in the US for the same reason.

Breakdown:
Xonar Essence STX Sound Card: £100 - £120
2TB HDD: £50
3TB HDD: £80
256GB SSD: £70
Mobo: £100
PSU: £60
Blu-Ray Writer: £60
Nvidia GPU GTX 960: £120
i5 CPU : £120

Totals £720 at the current parts value online and yes I have checked.

So there is your answer That is  the current value of the parts individually, note this is an assembled machine and the sound card is a top of the line sound card.

We actually ran the competition at a loss due to getting less than 20 entrants however the importance of promoting use of hardware wallets, signing transactions in a secure element is needed. I have enough technical knowledge that I take pains over and over to mention why hardware or multisig wallets should be used. Private keys should not even touch your system RAM for good security.

I contacted f2pool, I have also planned to open a low latency pool as close to china as possible to give the miners in china another option.

As i discuss here:

http://betbybitcoin.com/warning-breaking-news-f2pool-reaches-50-6-litecoin-hashrate-51/

F2pool now has 50.6% Litecoin Hashrate. Anyone on multipools for scrypt please support the Litecoin network by mining at another pool!

Litecoin rightfully has it's place as silver to Bitcoins gold and i regularly transact with my Business clients in LTC as the fees are lower than BTC and it is likely LTC will scale for the lightning network. It is crucial therefore that we protect this currency. I am no longer mining on multipools now

I am getting them directly for now, if it gets larger than I will consider trying to obtain them wholesale. Hence the initial higher prices.

I am gauging interest ahead of launch, pre-launch two UK customers have the chance to get their weekly shop in CryptoCurrency.

I am selling my last desktop PC in my collection.

This PC is the gem of my builds

Intel Core i5 (LGA 1155 or 1156 I Think) - can be upgraded to i7 if desired
ASUS Motherboard
Xonar Essence STX Sound Card
Nividia GTX 960 Video Card
Corsair 500W PSU
Windows 10 (genuine license)
256 GB Kingston SSD
8GB RAM
2TB Seagate HDD
3TB Seagate HDD

So in total 3 hard drives, 1 of which is an SSD 2 are spinning HDDs. Comes with Keyboard/Mouse, monitor and power cables.

I am asking 1.1 BTC (£753 GBP) for this machine at current prices. I also accept Litecoin. Escrow is fine with PsychoticBoy or Ognasty, or you can collect in person and make your transaction or just pay cash.

I also accept payment in LTC, or DASH.

If you are willing to collect from Nottingham, UK there is also a desk and printer.

Entries accepted, so far three entries! So far one of them is our escrow provider psychoticboy too based on the entry!

So we have three entrants, we will close competition later today at 12:00 Lunchtime GMT so anyone who wishes to enter with the chance to win a ledger wallet for $1 USD go ahead!

Sorry to the first entrant but there is now no longer a 100% chance of winning XD

Currently the three entrants have a 1 in 3 chance of winning.

Technically we run the competition at a loss unless we get 15 or so more entries by tomorrow! however it has helped promote betbybitcoin and hardware wallets in general and we will probably run future competitions, and to the winner your coins will be secure provided you keep your seed safe, make it difficult for those hackers!

Open for entries until 12 noon tomorrow folks!

It is not the cloud storage that is safe, yes it can get hacked but the encrypted file containers are useless to anyone who may find them.

Human memory if it became a problem for me is no problem because even if I lost those passwords the seeds are written down where me and my partner can find them.

The cloud storage itself may not be secure, but the encrypted file container with those kind of passwords is. If by some messed up reason I forgot them then the seeds are safe where both me, my partner and my aunt knows.

Yes celebrity cloud was hacked, because they were not encrypted with a key only the client has.

This block size issue has the ability to change bitcoin into a store of value rather than a currency. To even come close to the volumes of visa or mastercard you are looking at blocks of like 500MB in size or more. Not happening. Rules out unlimited blocks.

Purists wanting to keep block size at 1MB and saying anything else is an altcoin, if this is followed BTC WILL NOT become a currency used at such volumes. It simply does not have enough capacity. No amount of burying head in the sand will do it. People won't want millions of transactions filling mempools which would also increase the difficulty of running a full node too to boot and waiting ages to confirm. The high TX fees due to limited block space has already pushed me and many of my clients to Litecoin for payments as the TX fees may not be high to a westerner but they are high for an Asian.

Segwit is the best solution, but unless a consensus is formed, I think there is a chance that if Litecoin adopts it first, then BTC will be the store of value and Litecoin would be the small daily payments for everything. I never expected to switch to an Altcoin for daily payments, but this block size issue forced my hand. This is why I see Litecoin as a true companion* to Bitcoin. I trust in both currencies.

So we stand at thus:

1. Unlimited Blocks - Introduces problems that if userbase increased, we face having to propagate large blocks and storing them of stupid sizes.
2. One time increase - Band-Aid solution to wide adoption as a currency, may make it smoother as a store of value.
3. 1MB Blocks - Never can become a mainstream currency, store of value only in long term.
4. Segwit - Scaling problem fixed, Lightning network or similar, soft fork, more block space

I hate to say it, but this is the reality of it. It is trending towards option 3, and unless we implement option 4 BTC will never become a mainstream currency everyone uses for everything unless some solution to the block size issue is there.

I use Litecoin for most payments and Bitcoin as a savings store, for the above reasons. So where do we go from here? No judgement of course, if BTC becomes a store of value, that's what it becomes. The technology underlying it can be used as a currency. I am not a Litecoin 'bagholder' saying this either. I own 800+ LTC all acquired in the past year.

Litecoin will deploy segwit first it seems, and as a business owner, I will not wait for Bitcoin to follow in it's shoes, my friends and clients I am all teaching about the benefits Litecoin offers over Bitcoin for general payments. I have been waiting a while and watched the endless debate in the mean time me and my clients have been observing fee increases.

So many poo-poo it as well, and I have even been accused of trying to pump it. Even at the price peak of BTC and LTC I sold none of them, although I have sold my mining rigs because I prefer writing and running my business to get coins although I may invest in the Bitmain LTC hardware when difficulty stabilizes. Using my BTC debit card where I can pay in LTC directly now I am happy with that too.

Bitcoin and Litecoin both have their places, both are good, but this debate needs to decide what everyone wants for Bitcoin. For it to stay where it is, as a speculation tool, as a mainstream currency (requiring change, and not be stuck in 2009, just as bad as moaning about people 'stuck' in the 1970s), or a store of value like gold which cant be controlled by banks so much.

There is no judgement of course, whatever it becomes will be come, the people will decide with the consensus rule. But as an adopter of Bitcoin for Business, I will say as a small business owner that pays my rent and bills nicely I have made the switch to Litecoin for my daily transactions over the internet with all but two clients, because as a small business owner Litecoin deploying segwit and able to handle greater transaction volumes makes it more suited as the currency I use to conduct business than Bitcoin which is more like digital gold.

This occurred as I had made a LTC transaction for a miner, it shaved 10% off the value and this was midway through the fall of yesterday when we made our transaction as it affected Litecoin as well. However be that as it may, I am not too worried as I am happy to hold my coins for quite a while.

Given the fact I remember the 24 word seed to my main savings wallet with the most coins in it the cloud issue even if it caused me a problem would only affect 20% holdings at most.

These passwords I originally wrote down, and recited many times over and over in the morning and evening until I recalled them and then destroyed them. 30 characters, random letters and numbers mixed in with random CD keys of games I reinstalled over several years over and random words and over complete with random symbols of my choice for the password.

So I think they are safe in the cloud and even if the cloud provider vanished its not my only backup.

As for my main savings seed that covers several grand of bitcoin, that was generated when I set up my first ledger wallet and only ever existed on paper, I recited it over and over until I recalled it perfectly. This was tested when my ledger wiped itself last year. Recalled perfectly without having to refer to the paper copies. I only keep paper copies for if anything happened to me I want my partner to get at the holdings and he is well aware of this fact.

I have my wallet seed(s) encryption file named something like SystemRecovery.bak or PS2MemoryCard.bak (an example) when its actually an encrypted folder, the size is 8MB in line with a PS2 card, for example.

Cloud storage CAN be used safely, if precautions are followed.

The idea of splitting seeds is good though, especially for most passwords used.

Maybe my clear memory is to do with autism but I have a memory like an elephant and despite using these long and random phrases even two years later I was able to open an encrypted file container used with one of these.

An example password (I retired this after it became compromised and it is used for nothing)

59984956bballs-=[]'#pedro-has-a-drill,./1234567891122335

This one ended up being swiped (potentially) when I had my hack last year and I decided to retire it, but this is an example password I have used and none of my other passwords are like it, as it has been retired and changed. Yes maybe I have too much time on my hands remembering stuff like this! If anyone wonders, that was the password to my Bitcoin QT wallet at the time. None of my other passwords even follow a sequence like that.

Another example of a retired password from my childhood

ive-got-news-for-you-boy6563431742-zxzxzxzxzx'#-=452sdfa-fuck-the-system
[Word Phrase that I like] [random recited numbers] [key repetition] [symbols] [random] [word phrase]

That is just one of many password formats I use, many don't even have word phrases but a longer random string in it's place. The random recited phrases and symbols are my version of a 'salt' for the phrase, rendering dictionary and brute force attacks useless.

Good luck finding a password like that via brute force. Lets get a farm of GPUs onto it And if it's not written down anywhere, it is useless to anyone looking for it that way. Neither of those two were written down whenever I used them.



Given some of the passwords I use, I might as well recite and recall the 12 word electrum seeds instead...

whywouldyouclimbtheempirestatebuilding is too simple and a directory attack would wipe a password like that out

Are my passwords as random as a true RNG? no. Are they better than a crappy PRNG? yes. Do they have enough entrophy to stop brute-forcing? I think so

I use these measures for a few grand, not 100k. Why do I do it? because I don't feel any hacker should have easy access to my funds because they should earn an honest living if they want cash or get a job ! And if by chance they get through all that, they wasted so much recourses for next to nothing for the time involved.

In a program like veracrypt if you are concerned about brute-forcing, pick the slowest hashing algorithm which they give you the option for, would slow down a brute force considerably although if you fear potential brute force the password is not strong enough.

I am launching a Crypto Grocery store, cryptogrocery.org. This is not an official launch. This is where UK customers will be able to buy general grocery items and toiletries to be delivered to their door, or hampers of general goodies. I cannot send many perishables by courier easily, but UHT milk makes an exception. Non UK customers would be able to purchase sealed packaging food items only and have a higher shipping cost.

Obviously I have to make a profit in this business so it will cost a little more than if you bought it from a shop!


As a service trial, I have two 'hampers' (have not got the baskets in stock yet):

2 Loaf Kingsmill or Hovis Bread
1 Carton UHT Milk
1 Carton Butter
1 50 Box of Tea Bags
1 500g of Sugar
1 Box of free range eggs
1 1kg of porridge
1 Bar of Soap
1 Bottle of Fairy Liquid
1 Bottle of shampoo + conditioner
1 Bag of pasta + Tomato pasta bake
1 Tube of colgate total toothpaste
1 Twin pack Toilet Roll

To trial for two UK customers

For 0.040 BTC or 10 LTC (price includes shipping)

The site is nearing ready for launch so nothing is on the domain yet. The service will Launch for  BTC  and LTC. The price also reflects the shipping of your shopping and also allows me to make some profit.

This is to be the beginning of grocery shopping using cryptocurrency in the UK!

Any takers, if anyone is interested! Then i will take the feedback of them to further improve the service. There are two of the above hampers available.

Transparency and for logging sake: The addresses used for ALL CryptoGrocery inbound transactions will be:

3DnJPRRETe4Neby52pbHdPNmTLNvux18YB (BTC)
or
Lbm5FcbiQmnoXg2FvaFWE78eWVA4gosGWc (LTC)

I will be using CoinPayments as the website payment processor, who will forward coins to these addresses (subject to change), but these will be the main addresses used by cryptogrocery.org as ID addresses so anyone else on here who may pose as cryptogrocery, validate the addresses either here or on the topic. Any promotional emails for subscribers from the site will also come with a signed message from one of these two addresses to verify who it is from.

Make regular backups of wallet.dat due to change addresses if you use it, and you do it well, keep some offsite too. Plus while you are at it, not powering up a HDD is not guaranteed to extend it's life, actually power up is one of the most stressful times for a component, one that is always spun up is probably likely to last longer, but thats neither here nor there but just a fact XD

I am more of a litecoin than Bitcoin user due to cheaper fees as I have quite a few clients whom we have switched to LTC, only two pay me in BTC now. This bitcoin block size andtx  high fees for asian clients (the fees add up for daily txs of a few usd) has pushed us to move to LTC. Only my clients from india still pay me in BTC now, all my others pay me in LTC. Same backup schedule applies, though.

I am an advocate of hardware wallets and secure diverse storage of your funds. So yesterday at 5PM i sell a KNC titan to a UK buyer, pleasant chap who paid me in Litecoin directly to my Litecoin QT wallet (this private key was also imported from electrum, generated from a seed but I also run a full node, but use this address for many transactions where i diverse my storage from there.

So I hold them in this wallet (£1750 worth of Litecoin) and made plans today to move them into my usual Hardware and cold storage wallets (all of which have multiple secure backups of their seeds).

My laptops SSD failed...  Gone. Nada. Before I moved the coins.

Of course, restoring my private keys from the written down seed was trivial, plus I had multiple backups of the encrypted wallet.dat of the private key.

Note there was also Litecoin from trading in there too, so we total about £2000 of litecoin.


Backup folks. I am not kidding. I have my electrum wallets, (all multisig) some business some personal on my laptop, backed up to random SD cards around the house, on my partner's PC and my tablet and phone. I imported the electrum wallet seeds to the mobile versions of electrum on my phone and tablet, i use my phone, tablet and ipod touch for google auth keys.

All seeds for HW wallets are written down and stored in multiple places, plus kept inside encrypted file containers THAT ARE ONLY EVER OPENED on an air-gapped PC  (or you efeat the purpose of a HW wallet, compromise of that password would mean compromising the seed inside otherwise, i use VeraCrypt) with a random password (which I do remember, i remember many years worth of game codes and random WiFi codes which i string together and add directory phrases between them plus symbols and number sequences).

This wallet was only used for temporary holding of funds from transactions, but that doesn't matter. NEVER DELETE wallets either.

Also a word of warning. A single backup of your  Bitcoin QT wallet is not enough if you send many transactions due to 'change' addresses when the keypool runs out. Use a deterministic wallet like electrum or hardware wallets.

Moral of the story, restoring from this took me 20 seconds, only had to rewrite a few 400 word articles which had not yet entered the days backup (and hadn't synced to onedrive yet) lost no coins and went on my merry way.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not unsafe to store seeds in the cloud IF and ONLY IF! you encrypt them using a SECURE (READ: Not directory words or simple) passwords on an air gapped PC and put them to the cloud in encrypted veracrypt containers via a memory stick and then download them from the cloud and open them on an air gapped PC once more. Provided the password has enough entrophy no hacking of your cloud account can reveal anything other than a useless encrypted container and the seed cant be stolen from hackers from it if you only enter the strong unique passphrase on an air gapped PC. I have not had to open these in ages but i am 100% sure of my password.

My main savings HW wallet i know the seed from memory now anyhow but i still have copies written down in case anyone else I know needed to get at it, and have restored it from memory only once, some of the older ledger's had a firmware bug which wiped them, since been fixed

It is the ONLY WAY to safely store seeds in the cloud. A weak password would mean you might as well put your private keys in there directly and wait...

I would offer 2.5 BTC for both if pics including your forum name can be provided, the stuff from Bitmain is actually cheaper than these with more hashrate and only 400 watts at the wall

His chance is 100% unless someone else enters XD I will admit I was expecting more takers due to the importance of hardware wallets!