If you want privacy you'll have to look elsewhere. Of course it will also mean a reduced app ecosystem, but then again it might be for the best, especially if you want a phone and not a gaming platform disguised as such

Try this:


https://itsfoss.com/pinephone/
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/11/pinephone-specs-price-release-date
https://news.softpedia.com/news/the-pinephone-open-source-linux-smartphone-is-now-available-for-pre-order-528169.shtml

They say its about 150$.

If you mean wealth redistribution, the answer is no. But, it can trigger better economies, that will eventually improve conditions of life to everyone. If, only if, they adopt Bitcoin and with it, the Austrian school of economy.

Until then, the world will still be plagued with bubbles and their nasty pops, of whom only a select few survive. By going Austrian, things would slow down, and what little is gained, is solid. Much like Bitcoin's price, the slower it gains, the better.

Substance abuse is probably unrelated as this occurs in all levels of society. You could bring the legal/illegal discussion in another thread (there is one or more in offtopic or politics iirc).

You could also exchange back into FIAT only the amount you will need to spend, and keep most of your bitcoin as savings. If you are earning in fiat, i guess you could exchange a part of it into Bitcoin and leave the other part for expenses.

This is the problem with the transition, the waste of time and fees exchanging fiat to bitcoin, and bitcoin to fiat. Payment processors merely do that for you, and for that you have to pay their fees. But if you are earning in bitcoin, things like that Skrill card can be very useful in exceptional situations.

And do not underestimate the idea of being your own bank. It is both a blessing and a responsibility. Learn how to properly manage your wallets, have a savings cold wallet and a "change" daily use wallet, etc. Then enjoy the world of a bankless life.

You can no longer "get rich quick" with bitcoin, but you can get poor very quickly with fiat now, either by action, or inaction. The government doesn't need to crash to crash its coin, all they need to do is the wrong move.

And, governments can in fact fall, and countries can get into wars, etc. None of it affects Bitcoin, but can easily kill a fiat.

I wish Bitcoin replaced fiat soon, but it won't be this quickly. The richer nations have little incentive since their fiats lose very little value yearly, and the poor nations don't have the money to buy.

When your country is good, you don't see the point. But when your country's economy collapses, it is too late since your money has already become worthless, and you might stop loss at best. See Argentina, if they had moved into Bitcoin last year, today they wouldn't be fighting for scraps. Of course, they can stop loss before it gets worse, and it WILL get worse. Never let the State intervene the economy...

It still belongs in the service discussion area as this issue you have is with an specific service (exchange) and is not related to Bitcoin.

They can use Localbitcoins like us. Venezuela has been suffering those "limits" since 2004, only recently they lifted most restrictions against the USD (up until a few months back, it was technically illegal to buy things with it but people were doing it anyway).

Of course the smartest thing to do now for them is go Bitcoin and then do whatever. Because they will skip all the restrictions that way. The government destroyed their fiat so people naturally wants to get rid of it, which the government immediately forbids. We know that tale very well here and its consequences.

Funny you mention authorized exchanges, we have that too here in theory. But, its not like they have stopped people from using the favored aforementioned Finnish exchange instead...

When you think something is "too extreme", its because you haven't lived on these parts... Don't forget, Ecuador and Bolivia banned Bitcoin, and Ecuador doesn't even have their own fiat, they use the USD... Hopefully the new Bolivian regime might change that... As for Argentina, as long as they go in the path against freedom, especially economic freedom, they have a very dim future, just look at us.

The more the State tries to "control", the worse things will get. The only good control, is no control but a completely free market.

Even I have never touched Lightning Network, i have ran a full node at most (back when my adsl actually worked). Frankly these subjects are advanced. I expect that "journalist" to at least have an active account here and asking questions. LN is not even in a finalized state...

Saying "no way this technology is ready" what does exactly mean? Bitcoin is ready, LN is not. Setting up your own payment processor, is not a subject most bitcoin users will ever face, some merchants might, and even them can hire people to have it set up for them. Its like saying computer programming is not ready because its hard...

Setting up a BTCpay store is a great project, but its NOT for newbies. But guess what, that is completely unrelated to Bitcoin.

DEX are also complex beasts. Again not for newbies, it is not "basic". I myself have a hard time making bisq run, because of its embedded tor which "should" work in most other countries without censorship. And those exchanges have a very low volume anyway.

Most things this person seem to be focused on, are related to exchanging. If you are a merchant and directly price things in bitcoin and receive BTC directly, you don't even need a payment processor. Maybe some accounting software, and again that's beyond Bitcoin.

Is a hardware wallet hard to use? Guess what, that is also NOT Bitcoin's issue. You do not need one, ever. They are a convenience, but its an OPTIONAL convenience. A paper with 12 written words make the best "unhackable" cold wallet, no gadgets required. The hardware wallet becomes handy if you want to spend small amounts of money and don't want to use your insecure windows or android device. They should not be used for storing large quantities, leave that for the cold piece of paper...

This is no "cheerleading", its facts. Bitcoin is ready to use, LN might not. So? To use bitcoin install a light wallet like Electrum and transfer, done. If you want to receive payments, give them one of your wallet addresses. How is this not ready? Mind you, normal people don't run nodes, in fact most people never will.

Is this an issue with the CASA device? Then point it in the title, don't blame Bitcoin if Casa doesn't do what you expected, direct that to the developers of it. Perhaps this is yet again coindesk just wishing more traffic to their site...

Well there is your problem. The whole point of a VPN is to have a bunch of remote things look as if they are in a LAN you also belong to. So you install a VPN server somewhere (there are plenty of Free and Open Source solutions) and then make all your remote locations use it.

If you don't understand this, maybe you'll have to hire someone to do it for you...

VPNs are not meant for anonymity or obfuscation, if you manage to achieve a bit of that, its more by accident than intention.

Any raspi or similar embedded computer can do these things and much more.

If China's fusion reactor becomes a success, they will kick everyone else doing it for profit.

I don't think Bitcoin price will increase enough to compensate for the diff rate increases, historically it is the opposite. As time passes mining becomes less and less profitable. The large price increase only delayed the inevitable a bit more.

If your power is cheap/free then sure. But if you are already close to the border, forget it. Time to shrink or leave.

Home mining can be doable if you use an abundant cheap power source, such as the Sun, a river, wind (or sand in a mountain).

Currently? You'll have to wait about a year. If you have other means of income, go ahead. Sorry to not sugar coat it, but this is the best pool there is with zero fees, and yet the Chinese whale miners don't seem to care.

If the hash rate increased, payments would be more frequent.

Well this interview made me discover their mining proxy. I am in that very situation they describe for the reason this mining proxy even exists, i need to lower my bandwidth so i am now giving it a try. It doesn't appear to be working, documentation is very poor... Miner connects to proxy, but proxy doesn't want to connect to pool or the pool doesn't see it, whatever.

At least it can keep the miner "busy" when there is no connection.., so I'll leave it as 3rd pool choice until i can figure out why it isn't connecting. Nope it doesn't like not having connection after a little while of dns failure. It is anyone's wonder why the "brilliant" minds of Bitmain, make the miners actually consume more power and produce more heat when there is no connection and the miner has no actual work to do...

The interview also mentions something about a new mining protocol called "BUMP" which makes me wonder, Any reason the Slush proposal wasn't considered? They appear to address the same issues.

So does Atlantis.

I wonder when will anyone seriously start construction of undersea domes. Surely its easier than building the same on Mars?

It is a matter of trust. Whom do you trust? Your government? Your bank? A charismatic millionaire? Code, that is what defines Bitcoin, not the whims of a group of politicians their misguiding economists, or perhaps the board of some conglomerate or a rich man. Bitcoin code is the only one that rules it, and it cannot be easily changed without the acceptance of the vast majority of the owners.

Fact is fiat currency can become worthless overnight, over an executive decision. But not Bitcoin, it cannot be changed like that. You are simply trusting your country or group of countries to always do "the right thing", but wouldn't you feel safer if you removed them completely from the equation? How about money that keeps its value no matter what happens?

Remember when a country gets in trouble, its coin goes down with it. Maybe the usual fiats will always remain "good", or maybe not. Maybe you would do well to invest half in Bitcoin and the other half in fiat.

The financial crash of 2008 is a byproduct of the dominant school of economy, that preaches getting in debt rather than save, and causes money from nowhere "credit expansion" which inevitably lead to these bubbles. As long as the world insists in following those practices, they will keep occurring. A deflationary economy such as the one proposes by the Austrian school, never forms bubbles in the first place.

Slower but sure. Save then you buy, instead of get in debt to buy then you slave.

And yes technically Bitcoin is one of the best forms of virtual currency. Even gold is easier to counterfeit. If we suddenly went back to using actual gold coins, we all wouldn't have the capacity to verify that each coin weights exactly the same, and is exactly made of the right gold. Besides for online trade it would suck, and sending gold physically would be a security nightmare. Its already bad enough with fiat, with wire transfers that can take days or weeks...

I do not agree with your use of the term cryptocurrency. Sorry but no, i cannot say the same about your cited altcoin, especially that one that reversed its blockchain, AND has infinite production. Nope.

I cannot be stable when everyone else is losing. Fiat currencies all intentionally lose value, in various degrees, because thats what the school of Chicago dictates and all the politicians follow it like dogma. Sometimes even here you see people who can't grasp the concept of deflationary money or how an economy could work with it, because they have yet to read the Austrians.

Overtime price fluctuations are shrinking, and this is probably how it will be. Gold price fluctuates, but much less than in the past. It should still go up, very slowly, because of the aforementioned inflation all fiats (and some altcoins) with limitless production do.

Remember that, the less it fluctuates, the safer. But when it does fluctuate, all you have to do is wait it out. Unless you are a trader and not a holder, but that is another matter.

After that spike in 2017, price movement has slowed down much. That is good. If it moves too quickly correction will occur. Zoom out and you can recognize its historical pattern, which is a logarithmic curve that starts gaining value very rapidly but slows down overtime.

In short: Slow is good. Panic *anything* is bad. If it goes down just wait it out until it recovers, no matter how long. You have a deflationary coin here, its not government backed money that may never recover...

But you don't have to aim for "crazy" numbers, anything above purchase price is already a win, as long as you go above whatever fees the exchange takes etc.

Some traders say 20% would be good to cash, others say 2%. Everyone's strategy is different, i'd say long term it should work regardless, but i wouldn't be hoping for crazy numbers like 100k. Something more rational like 15k would be sufficient. And if you happen to buy at a peak you have to wait it out. Worse were those that bought at 19k, and eventually, that price will be reached again, but it could take years.

Just try not to buy when everybody else is... That's already too late. Now looks fine to me, 7k~8k isn't too bad. If it were to drop down to 6k the wait to 8k shouldn't take as long as a wait to 19k...

But as time passes, big traders have less and less influence. Look at it in percentage, and you will clearly notice. The more coins that get spread, the less they can do.

I believe that Bitcoin price fluctuation is destined to shrink overtime. It can never go flat, because the coin isn't artificially pegged to anything by no one, and it can't go down because its deflationary, with limited production now in its final stages slowing down into a crawl. Most bitcoins that will ever be have already been minted. The last couple million will take a century to complete.

Traders need the fluctuation to make money, so of course that pressure will always be there. This is a sign of freedom, there is nothing more dangerous than a pegged "stable" coin.

Do note that moving from 100 to 1000 would today be the same as moving from 7000 to 70000. I hope you see the fluctuations today are much more smaller, even with that 20k spike of 2017. Time is in favor, and this is called maturity.

I agree with this subtle promotion campaign. So far i have only done it online. In a physical store if i don't see some sort of sticker or sign, it hasn't occurred to me to ask, but you might never know...

There are no "Quantum PCs" The current Quantum Computers are primitive and MASSIVE, they need a whole building. We might be many decades early for Quantum PCs. And the "dangers" to Bitcoin will come much before Quantum PCs exist, and that is still many years away.

Deloitte is wrong, and the actual term is "Quantum Supremacy", as there is a prize involved in achieving it. There is nothing amazing about it. Bitcoin has mitigations ready and there is nothing to worry.

Well Costa Rica isn't that bad of a country. Do that in Venezuela and the whole thing disappears overnight. They might survive inside private property, with constant surveillance (ie. a Mall), but ATMs are useless with hyperinflation unless they stick to foreign currency. They just can't hold or give enough banknotes...

What the tourists need is for the merchants, restaurants, hotels, etc. to accept bitcoin directly. Besides the fees ATMs take are outrageous. Something like a sign with "BTC is welcome" would do wonders, even better if they could give price in bitcoin (and they use a rational exchange rate to the equivalent in fiat).

In my opinion ATMs have a bigger chance in developed countries, or at least in countries without rampant criminality or inflation, such as safe tourist spots.

The S9 miners do not need all three boards, a single board works. You have another problem. Of course two boards also work.