no problem
you should wait at least untill the blocks of 2016 were downloaded and parsed. If you don't see incoming transactions by the time you see your wallet caught up all the blocks of 2016, something else might be wrong...
But, if you had funds in your wallet in 2016, the odds are good that they'll show up as soon as the blocks funding your addresses are downloaded

1) is the wallet finished syncing?
2) core does not ask for a password, even when the wallet itself is locked. You can run core with a locked wallet and generate new addresses. It's only when you want to spend funds you'll have to unlock your wallet (there are some other functions you can't use unless you unlock your wallet, but a lot of functionality is available without unlocking)

If it's a non-HD wallet (this might be the case for a ~2016 wallet), the wallet should contain pregenerated private keys. If , you use the gui, you should be able to create a new deposit address, this address should have been the same address as was generated in the past. You can check this address on a block explorer and see if it was funded.

I'd advise you to backup the encrypted wallet.dat, then let bitcoin core sync completely and see if transactions start to show up in your transaction history... If they do, you should be able to unlock your wallet using your password and spend these funds...

running core in pruning mode does not cut down syncing times... It only saves diskspace!

You have 2 problems: core syncing and electrum syncing

Electrum syncing
should not take more than 5-10 minutes, since you only download the block headers... If it takes longer than a couple of hours, you can have one of the following problems:
1) connected to a "bad" node
2) network problems on your side
3) running an old, or bad version of electrum

the sollutions to these problems
1) click on the green/organge/red button at the bottom right corner, disable automatic server selection and pick a different server
2) check your own router, firewall,...
3) make sure you downloaded electrum from electrum.org and check ThomasV's sig

A last sollution that can always be tried in general is:
downloading the latest version, installing it on a different pc, restore your wallet from the seed phrase, stop the wallet, reboot the pc, restart the pc, load the wallet again and see if it works now...

Core syncing
Core will download more than 200 Gb of data (blocks). It will verify each and every block, and all transactions in every block. It will build a utxo dabase and constantly update it... This takes time...
A good CPU, sufficient memory,  an SSD and fast internet might cut down this syncing time, but you can never expect your wallet to be fully sync'd in less than a day (and such a synctime would require a really expensive dedicated server)

If you have really, really good reasons for which you HAVE to HAVE access to your funds, there are ways to export your private keys and import them into an SPV wallet (like electrum). Offcourse, you'd have to solve your electrum syncing problem first...

If you install any full, funded wallet (be it core, electrum, btcd,...) on an online webserver and use it to automatically handle payouts, it is per defenition a hot wallet.

You can find info about the json rpc interface: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/merchant.html

There is no such thing as 'incoming transaction speed'. Transactions are broadcasted trougout the network in a matter of seconds.

If your fee (in sat/byte) is in the top 1 mb in the current mempool, you have a decent chance your tx will end up in the next block. I'm on my phone right now, if somebody didn't give you a full explanation by tomorrow morning, i'll try to explain in detail when i get in at work tomorrow morning..

It's quite hard to understand what you're asking exactly.
Do you want to know wether or not you'll be able to make the ASIC you purchased run faster? In this case, you can experiment with the alternative firmware that's available for some of the bitmain products. You can also overclock your ASIC and/or make sure it runs in an optimal environment (heat, moisture, dust, fast network, low latency pool connection,...).

This being said, using alternative firmware and overclocking *might* harm your hardware... So do it at your own risk.
Also, overclocking *might* result in more hashes per second, however, the amount of Joules per Terrahash that's being used might also rise (costing you a lot more in power). It's perfectly possible that your ASIC running at 13.5 Th/s draws 1300 Watt, while the same ASIC running at 13.7 Th/s draws 1600 Watts (imaginary numbers)

Sure, you can use your watch-only wallet to create unsigned transactions, then transfer them to your cold wallet for signing and back to your watch-only wallet for broadcasting.

Or, you can just install electrum on a 100% clean desktop PC that can actually connect to the internet, generate a new seed (write it down), export the xpub to your server for a watch only wallet. In this case, you can just spend your funds from the electrum wallet on your online desktop PC.. Offcourse, this setup is less secure than a real cold wallet.
A different, safer, sollution would be to use a hardware wallet and export it's xpub (and import it on your watch-only wallet on your server). This way, you could spend your funds by using your hardware wallet

Just a remark here... Wouldn't it be easyer to run electrum as a daemon and create a watch only wallet by importing the cold wallet's xpub?

This way the online electrum daemon would derive addresses from the xpub, but there would be no way for a hacker to rob you, since the xprv is only stored in an offline machine. This setup will save you a lot of headache, time and fees...

I know this doesn't answer your questions directly, i was merely trying to give you a different perspective... Sometimes we get caught up in a sollution that's stuck in our mind without considering there might be better sollutions to begin with

yes, electrum can be run next to core, eventough i'm wondering why you'd use electrum if you're also running bitcoin core... I have no experience with btcpayserver, but if it's using core in the background i wonder if btcpayserver is also able to handle payouts if you import the xprv instead of the xpub??? If not, you should be able to import the xprv into the bitcoin core instance you're running anyways and use core's json-rpc interface to handle payouts (i've never done this myself, but iirc, it should be possible, altough i don't know if the derivation path is the same between both implementations???)

Here's the link you were asking for: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/merchant.html

First things first, you are right:
xpub = master public key, which can be used to derive deposit addresses
xprv = master private key, which can be used to derive private keys, these private keys can be used to calculate the public key, the public key can be hashed to generate the address

I have never used btcpayserver, but if you created a wallet by entering your xpub, it's a watch-only wallet, so yes, you'll need a different wallet to handle payouts.
What you could do is use the electrum wallet from which you exported the xpub, if it's a "real" wallet (generated from a seed or an xprv), it should keep track of the same addresses as generated by your btcpayserver, so if you run electrum as a daemon, it should be able to function as a hot wallet.

If you run btcpayserver and electrum on the same machine, you might aswell directly import the xprv in btcpayserver? I don't know how safe btcpayserver is since i have never used it tough!

There are to many unknown variables to answer your question...

MadGamer can be correct, but since you're talking about deriving addresses from an xpub, you might aswell derive them using the bitwasp library, use a python script or run an electrum daemon.

The first thing you should do is detect incoming payments... This can be done with the walletnotify option in core, or by querying an api, or with websockets if you're using an electrum daemon.

The next thing is: when you detect an address being funded, you should know which software you're using for a hot wallet... Depending on the software, there are different ways to initiate a payment. core: json-rpc, electrumd: websocket, python, bitwasp: creating + signing a transaction, online wallet: api

You'll probably need some kind of intermediate script that either polls for incoming transactions (either as a daemon, or from the crontab), or which is called by your wallet if a funding tx is detected (depending on your wallet). This script will probably need to call the payment function of whatever hot wallet you have.
I'd strongly suggest not putting your hot wallet on the same machine where you've put your xpub, it kind of defeats the purpose of using an xpub to derive new addresses to start from (unless i'm missing something here).

Thanks for notifying me... It's indeed an invalid json, i'll fix it tomorrow morning

EDIT: had some time, fixed it right away! Thanks for the heads up!
BTW: it's perfectly normal to use your own node, even for smaller projects. As a matter of fact, i'd encourage anybody to use their own node. Using my service requires trust... I could easily modify the respons i send to any query, my node can lag, my node can be the victim of an attack...
That being said: i don't offer wallet services, you can't create desposit addresses, sign transactions,... By keeping these sensitive services away, i kind of mitigate the problem (afaik).

This service is just an easy sollution for anybody who wants medium-complex core functions without running core, probably even from a shared server without any functionality (you can create static pages and use javascript to communicate with an open socket, thus add dynamic functionality without any server side scripts).

Exactly... It's actually a pretty good defense...
If i follow the logic, the encryption key of the wallet file is sha256(salt2.sha256(salt1.password).nickname).

It'll become virtually impossible for an attacker to use a rainbow table using this scheme, and the resulting 256 bit encryption key they use with AES-256-CTR is pretty good if i'm not mistaking

Sorry, but no.
I hate to be the barer of bad news, but unless the perp used an address that can be linked to an online wallet or exchange, you can't get the ip or the email of the receiver. Even if it can be linked to an online wallet or exchange, you'll probably need a court order for this wallet/exchange to fork over the user's details, and even if you get those details they could be fake (fake id, one minute mail, proxy or vpn,...).

Bitcoin is irreversible and pseudo-anonymous. Pseudo-anonymous means that you can follow the outputs when they're being spent and see which address they funded next, but you can't couple a name, email, ip, homeaddress to the address that's being funded (unless, once again, it was an online wallet or exchange's wallet). There are ways to break the link between addresses so it becomes impossible to follow the unspent outputs, if your thief knows anything about bitcoin, he'll probably use a way to break the link between the address he used to scam your friend, and the address he uses to store his ill gotten gains.

Unless the thief is incompetent, you should consider those funds to be gone

Nice work
look great...

I do have one question tough: i was looking up my own node:

https://lightblock.me/lightning-node/03301e633b25d769377bf75ce6b6ed2ec570270bc06c8c02bf33c5bd2aa47da098

It seems the stats are a bit off, my node has been running for way more than a month (iirc)

I'm actually using websocketd (http://websocketd.com/), so the language of the script itself doesn't really matter
Thanks for your offer to help with the development, but at the moment i can handle it... I'm just gauging intrest to see if i'll only develop the functions i need for myself or if i need to develop the full range of functions.

^^ agreed
I just wanted to link to one of those explorers that supports bech32: https://bitupper.com/en/explorer/bitcoin/

It's not mine, but i like the way this guy is starting his explorer so i wanted to give him some support.

BTW, in this case it probably has nothing to do with opening or closing lightning channels, the values are to large, at this moment most segwit implementations only allow channels funded with up to 0.16 BTC (IIRC)

I'm currently developing websocket access to some of the functions of my full node. For a small fee, a developer, site owner or private person could use a secure websocket connection to execute most of the not-wallet-related node functions. This way, he or she get access to some core functionality without having to maintain a full node, he or she can even use javascript to include functionality on webpages on very limited shared hosting formulas.

In the beginning, i was thinking about creating such a websocket daemon for private use and throw away most of the outdated code on mocacinno.com and use a websocket connection instead... However, i tought by myself: maybe somebody else would be interested in such a websocket connection to?

Without further comments, here's a dev console view of the initial test of my websocket daemon... Be advised, only a very small part of the functionality i want to include is currently included:

https://193.70.78.148:9090/node

You'll need a private key in order to complete the handshake and testdrive the websocket... If you're interested in testing it out, send me a PM and i'll give you a testkey
I've modified my code for now, anybody connected is now automatically authenticated for the time being

Currently implemented
Authentication to the websocket:

• Starting the authentication process
• Completing the authentication process
• Querying the authentication status

Blockchain queries:

• Query the current best block hash
• Find a block using a blockhash
• Get the latest block
• Get blockchain info
• Get the current block count
• Query the blockhash for height x

Todo
Blockchain queries:

• get getblockheader for blockhash
• get chaintxstats
• get current difficulty
• get all the mempool info for a certain tx (ancestors, descendants, entry)
• list all tx's in the mempool

Mining:

• get block template (for whatever you'd use it)
• get mining info
• get network hash ps
• submit block

Network:

• get connection count
• get net totals
• get network info

Raw transactions:

• decode raw transaction
• decode script
• get raw transaction
• send raw transaction

Util:

• estimate fee
• estimate smart fee
• validate address
• verify message

Custom:

• analyse unconfirmed transaction
• Have a timestamped message signed by me (an independant partie)
• Calculate optimal fee at this point in time

My feelings exactly!
There are a couple things people should know: there is no central authority, you are your own bank... The content of your wallet file is all a hacker needs to steal from you, and a transaction is irreversible...

Everything else isn't important for the "average" user (IMHO). Everything he/she needs to know can be deducted from these 4 facts, for example: it's not a good idear to give anybody access to your wallet file (not even an online wallet service)... Or: it's not a good idear to pay a random guy over the internet...

Like kingcolex already said, most people don't understand the tech they're using on a day to day basis... An example a bit closer to bitcoin: do you think 50% of the people using an ATM machine know how this machine works on a technical level? Do you think they know how bills and coins are being created by their central bank? Do you think they know how the local or global monetary system works? They don't care, they don't need to care . All they know is: they have to give their employer a bank account number, if the employer sends funds to this number, they can take a plastic card, put it in a slot in the wall and get some weird pieces of paper. He/she can then exchange these pieces of paper for goods or services.

Offcourse, bitcoin still has a long way to go before it becomes as enduser-friendly as it should be (imho).

i guess you probably used one (or more) unspent outputs totalling 14364 XVG as input, and created 2 outputs: 1 output of 500 XVG to the receiver, and an output of 13864 XVG to your change address.

Does your wallet shows your old balance - 500 XVG, or your old balance - 14364?

In the first case (old balance - 500 XVG) above guess is probably correct.
In the last case (balance - 14364), double check if your wallet is completely synced. If so, something else might be going on.