Not quite.

Each address has its own private key. There's also cases where different addresses can be accessed by the same private key (ie. you can derive a P2SH SegWit address and a legacy address from the same private key) but that's a different matter.

I think the "one private key" you heard about refers to the wallet seed. That is, when using a deterministic wallet or address generation algorithm, you can deterministically -- as opposed to randomly -- derive multiple private keys and their respective addresses from a single private key or passphrase (ie. the wallet seed). If you ever used Electrum, Mycelium, Trezor or any of those wallets -- that's the seed words you get for backing up when setting up a new wallet. Non-deterministic wallets -- such as Bitcoin Core, for the longest time -- generate their private keys / addresses at random, making it necessary to back up to the collection of private keys instead of just a single wallet seed / master key.

Some general info on deterministic wallets:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_wallet

BIP-0044: Multi-Account Hierarchy for Deterministic Wallets:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0044.mediawiki

BIP-0039: Mnemonic code for generating deterministic keys:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki

Most wallets nowadays are hierarchical deterministic wallets (HD wallets); that is: Using a single wallet seed you can not only derive a list of addresses, but a whole tree of addresses. This is usually reflected in the form of accounts, effectively sub-wallets. It would make sense for an exchange to provide each user with an address branch of their own, I'm not sure if that's really the case in practice though.



See above.



A wallet, in its simplest form, is a collection of private keys. Depending on the wallet software those may be stored in a wallet file or generated on the fly (ie. only the wallet seed is stored and private keys / addresses are derived as requested). Assuming a full node, this wallet software also checks for incoming and outgoing transactions.

The Bitcoin daemon is a headless wallet, that is: Instead of a GUI for users to click on, it provides an interface for other software to talk with.

Note that running the Bitcoin daemon on the same machine that hosts your web server is both the simplest and most insecure way to set up your infrastructure. At least assuming you use the Bitcoin daemon for generating addresses as well and not just watching the network.

Maybe, but not necessarily. This would still have required a dev team to continue maintaining the legacy chain (ie. non-SegWit, non-blocksize-increase), especially since 2-way replay protection would still be a requirement for both chains to survive on the open market -- otherwise one chain would get cannibalized by the other rather sooner than later, as exchanges wouldn't be able to reliably support both chains. Either way such a scenario would have likely meant that neither chain would have implemented replay protection, leading to a blockchain fight to the death.



The amount of people for the most part directly translates to skin in the game though, doesn't it? Dumping your coins on the chain you disagree with only moves power from you to people that actually believe in said chain. It follows that in the long run its more a question of fiat flowing in, rather than coins being dumped.



Fully agreed. But first Bitcoin needs to get its scaling problem in order, otherwise all would be for nil. Great user experience accounts for nothing if the underlying fundamentals are not ready.

If the core security model is based on cold storage with a watcher bot being just another line of defense for the hot wallet I see no harm done -- ignoring the additional complexity such an approach brings.

But just to stress it once again: Which transaction gets selected by a miner is largely dependent on their respective mining software and configuration, which may or may not take transaction fees into account. So even if your transaction fee is reliably higher than that of your adversary and both transactions start to propagate at roughly the same time, it's still a gamble. Worth a shot probably, but just be aware that beyond a certain minimum the size of the transaction fee may be irrelevant to some or most miners.

Well, it could work, but as mentioned by Xynerise there's absolutely no guarantee for it to work. Higher transaction fees does not necessarily mean "skipping the line" if your adversary has also put an adequate transaction fee in place. Problem being that your adversary will have a head start and given a high enough transaction fee has thus a better chance of getting added into a block than your defensive double-spend transaction.

Furthermore you mentioned that you would trigger this transaction if someone where to withdraw the full address balance. Wouldn't this also prevent your users from accessing their own coins?

You could implement such a bot as an additional safety measure, but it shouldn't be all that you rely on. The safer bet is automatically moving incoming user deposits to cold storage addresses, keeping only a fraction of coins available in a hot wallet for your user to withdraw. For keeping track of the hot wallet a defensive watcher bot may make sense, keeping in mind aforementioned deficits.

It is also worth noting that automating the movement of coins from cold storage to the hot wallet opens additional attack vectors, so be mindful of that, should you choose to add cold storage as part of your security model -- which you definitely should.

There already have been machines that passed the Turing test, as far back as 2014:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/08/super-computer-simulates-13-year-old-boy-passes-turing-test

Even ignoring the debate whether the metrics for a successful Turing test are actually meaningful and whether simulating a 13 year old boy who speaks English as a second language is a form of "cheating" or not, it's an impressive feat of course.

But passing the Turing test is still a long way from what we could consider general intelligence.

Merely acting like a human correspondent doesn't make a machine a problem solver. Merely solving problems doesn't give a machine agency. Merely having agency doesn't give a machine insight.

Machines are barely able to act like a human correspondent. They recognize patterns way beyond human capabilities but are not quite there yet in terms of problem solving. And that's just the first few baby steps to what could be considered general intelligence.

I'm not saying that it ain't going to happen. I'm just saying that we still have a long way to go, despite all the hype surrounding ML and neural networks lately.

Oh shit you're serious.

AIs that show enough general intelligence to act autonomously beyond reactive pattern recognition are still far off. It's definitely worth discussing the matter sooner rather than later, because once it happens -- if it happens -- society will have little time to adapt. But until that is the case I doubt that there's any form of artificial intelligence out there with enough agency and understanding to allow for meaningful conversation.

No.

While LN transactions are off-chain, it still requires on-chain settlement (ie. channel opening and closing transactions) thus the Bitcoin blockchain beneath it. The aim is not to replace miners and the Bitcoin blockchain, but rather to move a large part of transactions off-chain while using the Bitcoin blockchain as a decentralized, permissionless, trustless arbiter for settling the final balances.

No, but I've seen merchants giving their customers discount when paying in BTC. I guess that discount more or less corresponds to the fee they save compared to accepting credit card or other payment methods, many of which take quite a cut. So while Bitcoin doesn't work like that on a technical level, merchants could still take transaction fees into account when accepting payments.



Also credit cards offer consumers all sorts of perks for them using credit cards instead of other means of payment. That those perks are mostly financed by credit card fees, thus the merchants, thus the consumer is happily ignored since there are enough steps of separation inbetween.

I'm afraid you're too late, satoshi hasn't been active on Bitcointalk since 2010.



OP was asking for Artificial Intelligence though

No.

A single, innovative alt coin may take Bitcoin down one day, but thousands of useless alts won't do shit.

I think you underestimate how low the value and traded volume of an alt can go if no one is interested in it.

That sounds super shady, I'd stay away from that if I were you.


Best case you get a profit, but stand to be liable for money laundering.

This means trouble with both the law and your bank. Besides, depending on your local laws you may be required to report any bank transfers of EUR 10.000,- or more to local authorities before making said transaction. For example Germany has the "AWV Meldepflicht" for international bank transfers of EUR 12.500,- and above. I wouldn't be surprised if either Belgium or the Netherlands have similar regulations.


Worst case you stand to be liable for money laundering and are getting scammed.

For example some bank transfers are reversable, which might allow for a potential scam (ie. reverse the initial transaction after you returned part of their money). Or the bank account that you receive the money from isn't theirs to begin with. Other scam tactics may be possible as well.


So yeah, I'd stay away. Even if it were "legit", how are they to gain 52% extra if they pay you 30%? They would have to explain where the money comes from either way, so funneling it through a private bank account wouldn't help much. Besides, any operation of considerable size would likely have a bank account set up and / or company structure that allows for tax optimization without having to funnel it through private bank accounts.

Bitcoin.com is owned by Roger Ver who claims BCH to be the "true" Bitcoin, thus he refers to BCH as "Bitcoin" instead of "Bitcoin Cash".

The process for paper wallets is more or less the same for BTC, but I wouldn't trust Bitcoin.com's instructions anymore. Either way, paper wallets may be a bit unwieldy when setting up cold storage for an online service.



For example. I'm not sure about exchanges, but some of the Casinos use hardware wallets for cold storage and refill the hot wallet manually whenever needed.

Another possibility is setting up an air gapped machine (read: an offline machine, never to be connected to the internet or other networks and devices) with Electrum or Armory.


That being said: You really really shouldn't start an exchange. Judging from your questions -- don't get me wrong, it's great that you are asking and trying to learn -- building and running an exchange is way beyond your current capabilities.

I'm sure there are some finer differences between Lightning Network and Ethereum's Raiden when you get in the guts of it, but in essence, yes.

Both use hash-locked transactions to create a network of full-collateral, bi-directional payment channels to enable near-instant off-chain transactions with on-chain settlement.

This can't be stressed enough.

If you have to ask on a public forum on how to build a cryptocurrency exchange... you shouldn't build a cryptocurrency exchange.

Would you ask around how to create a bank? Because that's pretty much what you are trying to do. Except, with much larger risk involved.

Judging from the amount of "how do I get started with a cryptocurrency exchange?" threads lately I guess we can expect a new wave of hacked exchanges in 1-2 years caused by either misappropriation, glaring security issues or possibly both.

How do you protect yourself if you make a cash payment?

You go to the police, take legal action, etc... just because it involves cryptocurrencies doesn't mean there's no way of recourse when used as a means of payment for a traditional transaction. Your local laws still apply. Of course, in some cases -- eg. anonymous online trades -- enforceability of said laws is difficult, but I guess you wouldn't buy a house from an anonymous online source.

Either way, even when paying for real estate using traditional bank transfers there's usually an escrow (eg. an impartial notary) involved -- at least in Europe, from what I've gathered. Things may look differently in the US or wherever you live. I guess when paying with cryptocurrencies it would make sense to follow the same route.

I'm thinking more in terms of smart-contracts and utility tokens / currencies (eg. Namecoin) -- but fair enough.

I'd love to see a proper smart-contract platform growing atop of Bitcoin beyond what its currently capable of, but even with promising concepts such as Simplicity I remain slightly reserved about whether all of this should take place on one and the same blockchain. Even ignoring turing-completeness, which, in my opinion, is an inherently bad idea for smart contracts. But that's a different discussion.

Privacy is also an excellent example -- keep in mind that MimbleWimble is currently bound to become a cryptocurrency in its own right, due to fundamental differences in transaction and blockchain structure. I concur that for most people Bitcoin's privacy will be "good enough" though, especially given potential future improvements.



Very true. Case in point: The unquestioned trust in fiat currencies.



Technical challenge yes, but the general populace cares surprisingly little about digital security. So in terms of widespread adoption I see usability as the bigger concern.

In terms of security I don't think LN nodes are much worse off than regular hot wallets. Even with an encrypted wallet file, if your machine is compromised an adversary will only have to wait for you to unlock your wallet, leading to the same result. Keep in mind that LN is for active spending and not long term storage after all.

Given time I could imagine hardware wallets becoming LN capable as well. While there will be some compromise in terms of security -- after all this will require hardware wallets to sign transactions without human interaction and therefore a re-thinking of potential threat models -- I don't see any technical reason that would prevent the isolation of private keys from the rest of the operating system, as is the case today.

Note that even after the first confirmation a double-spend could still be successful, hence the requirement of services to wait until a predetermined count of confirmations. It's only that with each additional confirmation the odds of a successful attack shrink, with 6 confirmations being considered fairly safe from a probabilistic point of view. In reality for most transactions even 1-2 confirmations should be sufficient.

The "trick" behind PoW is that each block / confirmation requires a considerable amount of computation thus resources, making any sort of attack a costly manner while rewarding every miner that "behaves well" using the block reward and miner fees.

It's relatively easy to run a "strong" LN node though. Unlike mining you don't have a whole lot of infrastructure overhead. I'm not sure whether even economy of scales can be meaningfully applied to the cost of running a LN node.

Put differently -- how would a bank that is trying to make a profit undercut a hobbyist running a LN node in his basement? Anyone can run a LN node. Having bank-scale capital doesn't improve your odds.

Interesting point on how hashing power differences between Bitcoin and auxilliary chains / swappable alt coins could enable new attack vectors for market manipulation. I personally doubt that pegged units will act as an inflation of Bitcoin's money supply as neither do alts nor forkcoins (at least in my book, others may see this differently) but it will definitely change the way the game is played -- for better or worse. Good food for thought, I'll have to let your post sink in a bit.



I also expect the market to consolidate into a handful of currencies in the long term. While I expect the best-scaling currency to come out on top -- hopefully a decentralized one, as everything else is practically cheating imho -- I'm not convinced that a single cryptocurrency will be able to handle all desirable use cases. If only because there are rarely catch-all solutions that actually perform well.



I think if LN usage becomes a regular, everyday thing we use, then that alone will already be a sign of success. Sounds tautological, but what I'm trying to say is: If LN is a viable scaling solution, people will use it. Sure, it might take a while until it becomes more widespread, but if LN manages to cover people's needs in terms of security, reliability and usability, it will become the way to go. Most of which I deem a question of the right implementation. If people don't use LN, for whatever reason, it will have failed as a scaling solution, regardless of technological soundness and effectiveness.

As mentioned by the others above, I don't see this happening in a trustless, decentralized setting. Any alt that would go this route would likely die of hyper-inflation, due to everyone trying to gain as much leverage as possible. Any protocol layer on top of Bitcoin would go bust as soon as enough people are trying to run for the door -- ie. on-chain settlement.

However in a way it's already (potentially) happening in the form of BTC futures, leveraged trading and arguably USDT. All of which are run by central, more or less trusted entities, however.



I guess "nodes as banks charging interest" refers to LN transaction fees? Seems like a weird comparison though, as we already have a similar thing going on in the form of miner fees for on-chain transactions. Difference being, that in the case of LN nodes the fee market is much more favorable for people trying to transact money.