Why? There is little reason for a bullrun, especially AFTER the halving. If price goes up too fast, it will correct back down. Better let it climb slowly and steadily. Don't forget most bitcoins that will ever be are already out there in the market. Halving is actually a reminder of that, it slows down production so that the creation process doesn't end abrupt. But 18m of 21m in only 10 years have already been made. You can only mine the leftovers, and only by spending even more money than ever before. The creation phase for most intents is almost complete, give it one halving or two for large mining operations to finally cease.

It is now in the market, the coin is out there. Use it.

If you go long term you made the right choice. If you were expecting a quick return, you might get disappointed and even get desperate and then incur in loses by selling before you recover (which is the problem many have, lack of discipline).

In the future, that money will probably allow you to buy an electric bike, they have started to pour out along electric vehicles. I don't know if Tesla will ever get into that, but some Asian manufacturers already have, and one Italian if i recall correctly...

So you did prepare for the future. I hope you are familiar with the process of creating and using cold wallets, as for long term savings, a piece of paper with handwritten words are your best way to protect that investment.

Its a matter of cost. It isn't cost effective to pull a 51% attack. Hashrate alone isn't enough, difficulty also matters. Since this also adjusts itself depending on network conditions, you can safely assume the network will be safe at all times.

Of course if you compare Bitcoin with the altcoins, there is little to doubt. The altcoins are "cheaper" to manipulate/attack. But even there, such attacks have been very rare. Take a look at Dogecoin, who is even mining that? Has it been attacked? Dogecoin is a Litecoin clone, so its very close to Bitcoin (closer than most altcoins anyway) except they made it infinite in supply. Years ago it exhausted its halvings, and even with strong scrypt asic miners, people don't bother. I think its mostly merge mined at best.

Its proof of the market self balancing. If its valuable, more will mine it, which makes it more difficult to attack and more secure. But when the benefit of mining lowers, so does the incentive to attack it. You would probably spend more attacking it than whatever you expected to obtain in the first place, in both scenarios: High hashrate high price, low hashrate low price.

This has been occurring anyway by difficulty increase due to asic efficiency. So now you have to add this in addition to the halving. I don't know when large mining will stop, but it is gradually becoming more and more unprofitable and at some point, it will simply cease as a profit making thing.

Those smaller miners, that have free electricity (because they prepared, etc) and the ones that don't care to spend money keep mining, will be the last ones to remain. Since Solar and other renewables can't simply sustain those megawatt crazy mining operations, inevitably mining will shrink and the reduced difficulty will somewhat offset benefitting those last miners. Of course i kinda also expect a sort of reduction in asic supply, since the likes of Bitmain won't be very compelled to keep pouring money into a product that is losing demand.

I remember the previous halving, and people were doing the very same comments. Things delayed only because Bitcoin price rose up later that year, but there is no guarantee the same will occur again or in the same proportion. If anything, price fluctuation tends to reduce overtime.

And, most Bitcoins that will ever be, have already been produced. The last couple million will take a hundred years, and from those the vast majority will be minted next decade. Think about the 2024 halving... 3 bitcoin per found block, 2028 1.5ish....

Bitcoin has beautifully accomplished its design goals, even better than anticipated by Satoshi.

Don't forget usefulness to the holders. Is it storing value? Is it secure, easy to exchange?. Value of things are not cost of production alone, this is an element many people fail to understand. The value of things are subjective to the person. It is the reason there is demand in the first place, otherwise nobody would want it as it would be completely useless. Bit it happens to be both useful and limited in supply.

This is a highly recommended read: The Theory of Money and Credit by Ludvig von Mises. (free ebook)


And this is why Austrian economics are a must to a world with Bitcoin.

I agree, this event is useless. First everyone is not doing it, which defeats its purpose. Second, its only once a year, it isn't incredibly difficult for online agents playing fractional reserve to anticipate the day and prepare for it. Third, all this does is provoke an unwanted spike in traffic. This is the day you can expect your transactions to last a day rather than an hour...

I agree that Jan 3 should be celebrated, but as Bitcoin day rather than this pointless exercise in futility.

Incidentally, none of the exchanges/sites that cheated on users, actually failed on Jan 3.

False. People use the command line because its easier/faster, but its completely optional. In windows too you have the command line, and there is people that use it rather than doing 20 clicks for the simplest of tasks...

And, Windows is bad enough when not pirated. Using a dubious crack who knows what additional malware they could install, or leave even more backdoors open. Yes the official iso is downloadable free, yes you are supposed to pay to activate it later. I think it will just nag you and show some message in the desktop until you do, don't remember what else they restrict, wallpaper changing or something silly like that.

Why in the name of God are you even running a node on windows? Windows alone is a huge waste of resources, AND privacy and security nightmare. There is no reason you should not stick to a tiny linux server, that only takes a few hundred megs to install.

I have used this software before, it is very light and easy to run (on Linux, obviously). The largest strain comes from the Bitcoin node itself (i have zero idea about LN). You could run it in your Linux desktop and never notice its there (Electrum + personal server feels the same as running core).

I applaud the Tor integration, thanks for this release!

Actually the advise is valid. One thing is the wallet internally handling it (but never exposing it) and a whole other thing is when the user handles it.  One thing that should never be done, is actually display, and much less copy and paste the private key. That is why even the seed word pnemonics are a tiny little better, especially since you only see them once at creation when the new wallet has zero funds...

If you scan, copy or print the private key directly, there are many malware that could recognize it. This is why the traditional paper wallets are so discouraged, and people are urged to use the seed words instead (which dumb malware might not distinguish from, say, what you are typing here).

Of course ideally you would not be running insecure OSes in the first place. It is my opinion that running Electrum or any other wallet on windows is very irresponsible. Windows should not be used for anything serious, not money handling, banking, passwords, bitcoin wallet, 2fa, etc. You should stick to a secure os, such as Linux or BSD for these tasks. Next step is, of course doing the whole wallet creation in a separate offline computer that is live booted for this task (and such computer doesn't even need a hard drive).

Electrum is a light wallet, indeed that model is more insecure since you are trusting a third party server, rather than the blockchain directly. BUT, you can ALSO run your own private Electrum server on your own node and tell your wallet to connect locally over your (hopefully) secure LAN... So the light client part is optional.

I find Electrum very flexible in this regard, it is better than core and many others in my opinion.

When you create the wallet, the very first time, it will show you the seed words for you to write down and verify. Those seed words are the most important thing, you should write with your own hands in a piece of paper, and secure that very well. It is more important than anything else, really.

It appears you don't understand well how 2fa works, but anyway. Always, whenever you activate 2fa, the first thing you see for activation is a qrcode with a 16character "key" below. In the case of 2fa, THAT IS YOUR BACKUP. Again, you should write that key somewhere you won't lose it. With this key, you can reuse your 2fa in a different device, what you call "sync".

OR.

Don't use Google Authenticator, and instead use Authy or similar, which do provide backup if you don't mind learning yet another password for the backup and trusting a third party to secure them for you (its supposedly password encrypted).

Those things you have to do at creation time, not afterwards. If you are missing either the wallet seed words or the 2fa key, you are in trouble. You'd think the wallet password or the 2fa are important, but all you really need are the seed words. Without them, your chance lies in still having the other two.

PS: 2fa apps never connect to anything, its just some crypto math trickery with time. You could have your GA in a tablet without wifi and it would work identically (as long as the clock is also correct). There really is no sync.

China’s new digital currency ‘isn’t bitcoin and is not for speculation’
(Cissy Zhou - Published: 6:00pm, 22 Dec, 2019).


There you have it. "Different to Bitcoin". This should all give you a hint on where this is going. Yeah, as if i would trust the Chinese government more than the free market. Of course, that is exactly what they intend to project: the almighty Chinese State can do it better than the free (speculation) market...


Were you expecting otherwise? State coins are NOT good, virtual or not. The fact that they want to distance themselves from Bitcoin specifically, proves that they are well aware of it, and how it challenges their authority. And for them the "natural" course of action is to oppose it. Of course the other "stable" altcoins are meh.

A very unwise decision. Bitcoin is solid and can be hold long term, the others? Not so much. If you are a high risk short term experienced trader, you might get some profit from these highly risk altcoins, but as in most tradings, 90% lose.

I agree with balancing stocks with Bitcoin investments, that is fine. You can add traditional assets like metals/minerals, or even some forex if you feel riskier, its your portfolio after all... But with altcoins? Expect loses and loses and loses for years to no end. Only rarely they might spike (or you could have luckily bought a dip before a spike).

Sure you could have a world bank handling bitcoin loans/escrow, but forget about fractional reserve practices... One of the reasons for reserves is having collateral when getting in debt. With Austrian economics practices, you would avoid getting in debt in the first place.

Of course in addition, or rather than, gold reserves, countries can also buy bitcoin if they wish. Its just another asset on the market, at least for that intent and purpose. If you take it into a world level, i fear those that control this reserve would have too much power, and its not really needed, especially now that we would be abandoning fractional reserve practices and can instead start using our own savings.

Sovereign powers and business can only embrace Bitcoin when they study and understand Austrian economics. Until then, they will always fight it because they fear deflation over the misleading dominant school of Chicago dogmas in the economy.

Maybe you have never done it. In case you didn't, do note that, asic miners are not free, and electricity for the vast majority, isn't free either. While its still barely profitable for some, it isn't something to "get rich" anymore, like it might have been years ago.

AND, there is always a chance for a price downtrend to put you out of business very fast, especially if you are close to the borderline of margin/loss, as many large miners seem to operate within (which is why they rather lose more in pool fees by going PPS just so they could have a constant income regardless of pool luck).

Taxing mining is silly, highly prone to evasion. You might as well just tax them with the power bill.

I hate tokens, they are parasites piggybacking on somebody else's blockchain. It is incredibly annoying that not only you need to get the token, but also the coin that owns that blockchain to move things around. Sometimes their wallets hide this, but is a serious hindrance.

I have disdain for altcoins in general, but at least use your own blockchain...

This is definitely THE reason. Why does it have to be a reason? It is natural for prices to fluctuate on any asset on the free market. sometimes more people sell, sometimes more people buy, and sometimes it balances.

You can speculate all you want, but i don't think there is a "mastermind" behind any price movement. You (and everyone) are however constantly getting information in the form of price from the action of past transactions, and people can make educated choices based on it. This precious data is destroyed if the asset is artificially pegged to, whatever. This is why you must never trust "stable" coins.

Clones already exist, but apparently this rumor is not against crypto but scam content that happened to use crypto as vehicle.

That said you should never depend on anyone. Google could in fact declare any crypto material forbidden overnight. Its their service, after all...

But suppose its true. Then what. It would not affect Bitcoin one little inch. It might affect some youtubers that make their living from that, and they would have to emigrate to one of the many available. Its not really the end of anything.

It is also not the first time "social media" bans "crypto". I think i could mention Facebook among others. Did it hurt Bitcoin? Nope. Only p2p decentralized networks can resist censorship, the rest can be intervened at any time without warning, by the State or the company itself if they decide to.

You cannot return the genie into the bottle, and covering their eyes won't make Bitcoin disappear, it is a reality they will have to face. If they want to see it as asset, fine. Their concept of money involves fractional reserve, and they can't do that to Bitcoin without getting caught. So its ok if they treat it like some asset if that's easier for them to digest.

They have the opportunity to join and see what they can do in the new economy, they can become an exchange, lend and store but using full reserve rules.

Some of their business will have to change, or people will just bypass them. I think they will either way shrink in size. As more people get into Bitcoin, there is less and less need to use the bank.

They could use blockchain, and the likes of ripple among themselves, but the new reality is that they will have to lower the fees for wire transfers. They have this giant competition called Bitcoin, which can easily move millions in mere hours worldwide for a few cents.

Yes. Turns out, someone else had the same idea:

https://www.gutenberg.org/

And yes, there is always the problem of copyright. This forces the information to be split, some under paywall some in different organizations, and sometimes lost. In the end you are forced to search for the subject. Thankfully you CAN use Wikipedia as starting point, always paying attention to the references below and continue your search.

Before the internet, this was a subject of dreams. Its a recurring theme in sci-fi, "large" computers with "all" the knowledge you could ever want and more.

We are in the information age, it is now a reality. You complain its disorganized, but it actually is quite well organized, in Wikipedia, you get a quick glimpse and continue from there. There also happens to be a ton of info in "multimedia", Youtube and the like. For example the Khan Academy. Self learning is easier than ever with the internet, but it also gives you access to unlimited entertainment, so it rests on you. There is also unlimited social interaction, both to waste time or to learn. You can get in contact with groups dedicated to certain specific subject, like this forum is for Bitcoin and you come here to learn about it.

Youtube-dl is still the best downloader there is.


And it happens to also work with these sites.

You just copy the url, give it you youtube-dl in a console and it will do its best to get the best quality audio and video. IF you want a specific video or audio format (or only either) you then add some command line options in front of the url.

Why can't everyone appreciate the beauty of the command line interface? It frees time to developers to do the things that matter, such as making sure the thing still works everytime youtube changes something.

Did you know that Google rudely removed all youtube downloaders from Chrome's add ons? They used to exist, but not anymore...

Most downloaders out there are really really bad. And i don't think you should be willingly be giving your viewing habits to third parties (its bad enough that Google has them). This is the real thing, and its free and open source, no ads, no tricks, no third party servers.

Did you know this beauty can download whole playlists and channels? Oh but there is more, so much more...