Nope, there is no correlation. A State can do the same things any other whale: It can hold unto them thus reducing circulation and increasing price, burn them (lose the wallet keys) provoking the same, or sell/auction them which could temporarily cause a cheaper price giving opportunity to some to buy cheap and then price goes back to its natural place.

This is no fiat. Even is the State tries buying bitcoin, it can only increase its price until they run out of money. So this will never happen. And if they sell them, they will eventually run out of them and put it in private hands who could keep/lose/sell them the same.

Suppose the US gov acquires lots of Bitcoin, either by buy or confiscation. You seem to believe this would somehow impact bitcoin's price negatively, when it might actually do the opposite or nothing at all.

Just because a gov gets bitcoin it doesn't affect the value for everybody else. EVEN if this gov is hostile to it (ie. China).

Because you say so? I bet it will keep at around 7k.

However price prediction is impossible. a 10k price does sound reasonable at some point before the halving, in my opinion anyway.

This has been answered before. The answer is no. It tends to be the opposite, but not quite. Bitcoin is similar to gold, some investors seek refuge there when the economy goes bad. Bitcoin is not affected by the state of the economy, just like gold.

Very likely, they were simply "testing waters". They only stopped for now probably because of the public outcry. But all they need is some excuse, like some law/regulation and they will do it again, and i'm sure they will.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you upload content to youtube, they are in charge.

The internet is very hard to shutdown completely to begin with. Made to withstand nuclear blasts, it was designed as a military network without a central point of failure. As they say, "the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it".

For the most part, States can cause harm to their population in attempts to isolate it from the rest. If politicians had it their way, they would all be like North Korea, which is essentially a glorified LAN where only the approved content gets copied in.

But the good news is that not all countries are willing to accept this level of police state politics. And as long as they exist, the internet (and Bitcoin) will. Those living under oppression will have more difficulty, but with difficulty and skill still able to keep connected. Tools like Tor were designed for this very purpose. Even if it needs to be thru "hidden" services, the network will go on. Indeed there are many nodes there.

Satellites are pretty much useless for many reasons. Sure you could get an updated blockchain, but what about your own transactions? And can you even hide the antenna? Just pointing the thing is incredibly hard. Maybe those low orbit satellites from the likes of SpaceX and Google can use a simpler antenna, but so far the classic method which is similar to a satellite tv service is way too difficult for the average Joe (and if you have ever pointed your own sat tv, you still don't have the skill to do the same for a sat uplink, because that's only the first part, the "easy" part). Oh and imagine smuggling the parts in, it reminds me of smuggling asic miner parts...

Its not impossible, to have a "snapshot" of the blockchain, take it to an offline site perform some transaction, and later broadcast it when you get online. I think there is a BIP for that as well. imagine a bus that only gets connected at bus stops to update its transactions.

The unreliable link scenario is the first more common use, and this would simply extend that. Of course this still needs internet, just not all the time. You can in theory use other networks, but the world has far abandoned the idea of networks outside of Internet, because they would recreate the single point of failure problem. You don't want anything you can knock out and shutdown.

Oppressive governments naturally hate this freedom of information flow, of course they are also going to get the freedom of money flow.

Here is the deal: Bitcoin is not accepted by countries (governments), its accepted by (the) people. Big difference.

Those countries that tend to listen to their constituents, will allow it. The more oppressive regimes will oppose it, but sooner than later, most of the world will, simply because everyone is willing to.

Pretty much like coffee used to be banned in the middle east because it would stimulate rebellion against the State (historical fact).

Like many things, it becomes de facto and only later de jure, not the other way around...

A "deflationary" coin that simply doesn't lose its value overtime, in a world that has been preached over a century that inflation is necessary, to stimulate debt, credit expansion and this "growth" (Chicago). Such growth comes with a price, that is not attached when people instead save and then spend after having accumulated (Austrian).

Bitcoin cannot be accepted by people who have only learned the Chicago way, they fear it like the plague. With an Austrian economy you don't need a Central Bank or a Federal Reserve, in fact you don't need Banks for the most part, they can still exist but they have to go back to full reserve practices. So most of the non existent money that creates bubbles would disappear from the economy altogether.

The solution is Austrian economics. Bitcoin just happens to be a coin that doesn't lose value overtime, exactly what the Austrians wanted. Until then, America (or any other country) cannot escape from the inevitable cycles of bubbles and crashes, these are produced by the current dominant mentality, that promotes getting in debt as a means to "fast grow" the economy, but this "fast" inevitable brings its price...

Did you know the Austrians warned Americans during the roaring 20ies, before the infamous crash of 29? But they didn't listen. And they STILL don't listen, thus they will just repeat the housing crisis with perhaps some different subject "whatever crisis" again, and the world will also get repercussions for following them like lemmings.

If you did things the Austrian way, you wouldn't get in debt to grow the economy. You would potentially save, and only invest once the money has accumulated. Ah but the other countries would run circles in front of them, sure, but they would also crash.

The turtle and the hare race, might be a suitable analogy, of Austrian vs Chicago school of economy.

But no one listens. So start learning Chinese...

I don't think so. There is no benefit for Google (at this point) releasing their own coin. Not that they could not, maybe they will wait and see how it goes to certain someone.

But in my opinion corporations should stick to accepting Bitcoin rather than making "yet another", most likely destined to fail.

PS: Stick to Meta for forum related questions, including rules.

Don't you want just any wifi jammer? Basically something broadcasting noise at 2.4ghz, 5ghz and friends? This reminds me of the cellphone jammers, same thing but on the mobile frequencies, not exactly legal in some countries.

Of course this is also a nice reminder of why wifi cameras suck. Don't be lazy and wire the thing, you need to power it anyway...

It might be possible that next year, i will be visiting the land of vending machines, which also happens to be the first country to adopt Bitcoin. Then i will pay attention and check if some actually take bitcoin. However, i see an easier option. You can, say, use the card for mass transit with the vending machines, so it would make sense to have a machine that takes bitcoin and use that to add money to this card, which expresses amounts in fiat, so that particular machine would also be exchanging (pay processing), not unlike an ATM. They do have those for fiat, of course. It would take only a slight modification to add Bitcoin.

Used in this fashion you probably don't even need LN. You can simply send funds to it, and check again tomorrow, since you don't have to deplete your transit card to add more money to it, just do it in advance.

There are other countries that use similar transit cards for subway/bus and the cards can be used at convenience stores etc, and they even give you some credit (can go negative up to a limit) which is even more reason they don't need the transaction to be instant.

So you never even needed instant payments to begin using Bitcoin in vending machines in the first place, if the machine takes any other form of electronic money already.

If you want to design vending machines around LN, to use Bitcoin directly with them, that's fine. As the company handling the machine, is in their interest to keep their LN node(s) operating and well "fed". But i think they will wait until LN gets "finished", or at least in a very stable state, with the popular wallets supporting it.

That situation might simply delay the day when the limit will be breached, but i'm sure that day will come. Sooner or later Bitcoin will reach 20k. If it gets more stable, as you say, it might simply take more time, years or decades, doesn't matter. But i'm quite sure it won't lose its value permanently.

I actually expect that, the price will remain the same after halving just like you say, if there is a price change it will be before halving, and then a correction depending. You are quite incorrect about security, Bitcoin is secure with almost any hashrate, and this hashrate isn't going to change too abruptly, the network will almost certainly have enough time to adapt gradually to any new situation.

You even want to make it look like its some sort of danger, when its actually what its going to happen, and has been happening all these years. Mining is less and less profitable, therefore there will be less miners, but no, it won't make Bitcoin less secure.

What you don't get is that if miners leave its because it has become too expensive to mine, and so any "attacks" would be as well, they go together. This is why the security of the network is quite stable regardless. Of course you could argue the network is a tiny bit more secure with many more miners, but the opposite isn't quite so.

Mining aside, the value of Bitcoin remains since the vast majority comes from already minted coins in the market. Time has only reduced the amount of coins that come from mining, and has becoming almost negligible. Most of the coins that will ever be are already out there, and the current price is from this supply while the demand tends to increase (pushing the price up). The mining slows this somewhat but its destined to reduce until it disappears.

In any case don't expect the ath to be breached anytime soon, but even less expect losing value, it won't, not in long term anyway. There is no reason to ever leave Bitcoin except when you actually want to spend in something. Leaving out of fear that might lose its value, will only lead you to net loss. You WILL repent later. Just hold, and if it goes down, hold tighter (and buy cheap while you can).

There should not be a reason to find a time to sell, for selling sake. Bitcoin should be viewed as something you get in but not get out in the long run, just use what you must and hold on to the rest.

If you want to play short term trader, that's another subject entirely. As a holder, you shouldn't even think of selling, ever.

Bitcoin's main use is to preserve the purchasing power of your money, freedom in what you do with it, and when you actually want to purchase something. It is simply, a deflationary coin. It would be more correct to call it stable, but people have the wrong notion about that word. Bitcoin doesn't lose value overtime, but everybody else does. If Bitcoin were to peg its price to the others, it wouldn't be "stable" but inflationary. This is yet another reason why "stable" coins are a lie, if you peg to something that loses value overtime, you are losing value by design.

Bitcoin can in fact gain a little value because some coins stop circulating, because people lose their wallets, etc.

Most of the supply comes from coins that are already in the market. The percentage that comes from mining is smaller and smaller. It largely depends on the current bitcoin holders, just like gold, which most of it has been mined already.

As for the halving, in my opinion any uptrend may occur BEFORE the halving. After halving, could be a downtrend, or stabilization. It largely depends if this pre-halving uptrend comes or not, and how strong it is. The less strong, the less correction afterwards.

The twist with emulation is using an older device to emulate even older ones.

Ie. All Famicom(nes)/SFC(snes)/Gameboy/Sega, etc on a PSP... Heck, the thing even plays PS1 isos (same cpu).

Of course a PC can also do newer more difficult devices. something tells me when the time comes to emulate the switch, it will be very easy because the switch, unlike its predecessor, uses a very common off the shelf ARM android like device. That is how Ubuntu was quickly made to run in it...

But i like the flexibility of PCs more. With consoles all i see is limits, but yes some jewels are made for them, sometimes. Even emulation can often provide a superior experience, such as better image quality/resolution, save states, cheats etc.

Also bugged games like Skyrim, are a pain without a PC. You need to pass console commands often to fix things (and yeah, Bethesda did a very sloppy job there) but its great to be able to unstuck yourself out of bugs one ~ (tilde) command away.

The forum, or your OS web browser?

I don't see a thing. Did you even use unicode?

Let me suggest you change your thread topic with: "Arabic text test". It isn't useless, should not be deleted. It might be a topic for Meta rather than off-topic.

I can see the Arabic letters in the local Arabic section just fine.

I believe the product is on pre-sale orders anyway, but its something to consider next time anyone wants to seriously go this path.

Indeed the hardest thing is, replacing the OS, and having the new OS recognize all the hardware components. I don't think Samsung is any good for that.

Rooting can help mitigate things somewhat, but it can also open vectors for malware, its a double edged sword. Android is rather poorly designed, but iOS isn't much better so never think you are better in there (perhaps its worse if you lower your guard).

Full free open source (Linux with corresponding userspace) is the only way to be sure. While Android does use Linux, it doesn't use free and open source userspace, and what good is a kernel surrounded by garbage? Its like Microsoft replacing their NT kernel with Linux (which some rumors about a plan for doing it actually exist). And Apple falls in the same category.

Besides Pine there is also Librem. There are not many projects oriented for secure and privacy smartphone/tablet, it needs hardware documented so people can use the software they want, something the likes of Samsung don't care or don't wan't.

One thing you could do when rooting, is remove all the garbage the phone comes with, proceed to install F-Droid and install free open source counterparts. Its also a good exercise, because if you ever get an alternative OS phone, you might find you have F-Droid but NOT Google's playstore, so either way its good to familiarize yourself with what is available in the free and open source app space.

For example in my phone i replaced the camera app with Open Camera. Its so much better, it isn't funny how people actually PAY for worse replacements out there... You can find apps for most basic things in there, including basic phone, sms handling and contacts.

Of course not all phones can be rooted, or are easy to. There is a specialized forum for that. And chance of bricking it is high.

That is not what VPN is about, that is an unintended side effect that may, or may not be not true. It depends where the vpn server is, and to whose rules it operates within.

VPN is not a means for privacy, quite the opposite if you don't set it up, you are surrendering yourself into the hands of a third party. You can in fact do worse, thinking you are "safe" and make a serious mistake.

There are better anti censorship tools designed for that purpose, such as Tor, etc.

A vpn is only a virtual "private" network. It is meant to give you "local like access" to things. Imagine your printer is in another building, you connect both the printer and the computer via vpn and within your OS, you add it as if it was in your lan. Same with sharing files, etc.

This "lan" has its own router, dns, etc. Just like a regular lan in a home or workpĺace. If the server is say, in America, it will appear as if you were there. Technically the virtual network is formed securely using cryptography, to avoid snooping by third parties.

The ISP, or State, however, can detect this. Even if they don't know the content, they know it is occurring and can even know where its going (client-server), and in the case of China, it is known they will pay you a visit, especially if you are not a foreigner.

Therefore, it is even a bad advice to talk about VPN for the Chinese context. There are better tools suited for this.

If your wallet ever gets stolen, you use the seed word / priv key elsewhere and move all funds to a new one. That is basic common sense. 2fa is garbage, as long as the wallet has some decent password it will delay the thief long enough for you to do this. 2fa can actually give them another means of entry...

When something like this happens, you should just hold to it and do nothing, preferably turn off the thing and wait for instructions. This could have been a giant discovery, but you already ruined it.

My thoughts? Don't post to the forum after the fact.

Of course Bitmain made a mistake shipping you that, that's what makes it valuable...

You don't have to use Youtube for that, there is twitch and several others. Google can only hurt itself by going too draconian. Still, its their service, they can do with it whatever they want. If you give your content to them, you have to accept the consequences.

Not sure if p2p streaming will ever take off, many attempts have been made but they don't seem to catch on. People are too complacent to centralized services. They are even willing to fork money for them.

Oh and if your life depends on youtube, did it ever occurred to you that youtube might disappear tomorrow? Same with other centralized service. I remember warning people that Microsoft instant messenger would someday disappear, they didn't believe me, and now its long gone, all msn contacts lost, only a puny amount went into skype (which sucks even more).

Bitcoin cannot "solve exchanges", exchanges are beyond Bitcoin. It is not Bitcoin's business what people are willing to exchange it with.

If you earn Bitcoin, and spend Bitcoin, you are not using exchanges. That is what Bitcoin covers, its own network and only that.

As for fiat being replaced, give it a century or so. I predict by then the crypto algorithm would have been replaced by a quantum one, but other than that, it will probably be used.

Governments can do whatever, that won't stop Bitcoin. My government forbade forex for nearly two decades, before finally giving up. A Central Bank is useless in a post Chicago, Austrian economy where banks don't do fractional reserve anymore. Deflationary money doesn't need banks in the first place. Bitcoin doesn't lose its value over time like fiat does, therefore you don't need a bank to gain interest (which is always lower than inflation anyway).

There is also the generational transition, the older people opposed to Bitcoin will go, and the younger ones more willing to accept it, replace them in seats of power. The genie is outside of the bottle the mere Bitcoin idea and its working implementation serve to prove it.

Yes, time is in favor of Bitcoin. Out with the past, in with the future. Its already accepted worldwide today, underground in some places, openly in others. It can only improve from now. Thankfully the opposition is authoritarian and few, and old, they cannot escape time.