Reports have it that bank frauds still continue to happen despite of strict security measures being taken by the banks. Just between January to July 2018, just timeshare fraud alone had 1.155 reported cases. It's when you’re told you can go on a free holiday or get rich by joining an exclusive holiday club or timeshare programme, but you’re eventually forced to pay for it through small print in the contact. That is not to mention other types of fraud like identity theft etc.
This gets me thinking, is it safer to just have bitcoins, or cryptocurrencies for that matter since it's not regulated by banks? What do you think?
Well, i think the example you give isn't a really good one... Human stupidity is human stupidity wether you're using the traditional banking system or bitcoin. If you're stupid enough to sign a legally binding timeshare contract, it doesn't matter if you have all your funds in a traditional FIAT bank account or HODL'ing BTC, you'll still be forced to pay up each and every month. That being said: bitcoin is decentral, there is no central authority, and it's based upon time-tested cryptographic techniques. This means that, if you hold a traditional bank account, a judge can just sign a piece of paper with which the timeshare company can go to your bank and force them to wire your money to their account. In a BTC world, no piece of paper could ever take your BTC behind your back, you'd always have to make a transaction yourself OR you'd have to fork over your private key/seed phrase/HW wallet pin code. That being said: a judge will always have ways to force you to pay your debts... I'd rather pay a timeshare company their dues instead of going to prison. The big difference lays in de decentralised part: if you use traditional banks, your account details are just a row in a centralised relational database managed by the banking industry. If they get a piece of paper signed by a judge, they can just edit, update or delete your record in their database (with our without your knowledge/aproval). In the bitcoin world, nobody but you can spend your unspent outputs (unless they have your private keys). |
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I send email here banappeals-w6pquw43@theymos.e4ward.com , but still no response. So if i got banned, i dont have any chance for unban? Because ban appeal email is dont work. I ve got banned for this message Good news. We are on right way. Someday cryptocurrency will be #1 value in the world. We’ll maybe even have the opportunity to create new value systems of transparency, collaboration and decentralization with what the blockchain quantum internet becomes in a symbiosis with the future of AI. I know, im not so good in english, but I'm trying to improve my language skills. What's wrong with this message, for which I received a endless ban? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2104277Are you sure that's the post you got banned for? Because i just looked at your post history, and i only had to look at the very last post your made: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4639727.msg45001511#msg45001511https://web.archive.org/web/20180910074847/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4639727.msg45001511The post is plagiarised from here: https://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/bank4.htmI'm not an admin, nor a mod, but i know the admin usually punishes plagiarism with a permanent ban. I've seen loads of people appeal a perma ban for plagiarism, and i've never seen anybody getting unbanned... |
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I have an account that is banned from posting and sending mess. I don't know it's forever or not. After a period finding out, I know the reason why I'm banned. It's just the misunderstanding and language barrier. I posted the topic with the same name.
Thus, I write this post to apologize with the moderator and please unbanned my account.
I'm not an admin, nor a mod, but i've been on this forum for quite a while, so i've seen these issues far to many times... In 99,9% of the cases, answers to your questions are as follows: 1) if there is no timeframe indicated, it's a permanent ban. It basically means: "you, as a person, are banned from this forum forever" 2) it's against the rules to create a new account and continue posting while being banned. This is called ban evasion... Basically, when you're banned you're allowed to create 1 new account (or use 1 existing account) to open 1 topic in meta to discuss your ban. Since you created a new account and already created 2 posts in 2 topics: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4687078.msg45472151#msg45472151, this is called ban evasion (which is a bannable offence) (link to the archived topic: https://web.archive.org/web/20180910070435/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4687078.msg45472151) Like i said: i've seen hundreds of people complaining about being banned, asking to pay off their ban, begging to be unbanned, even threatening with suicide... And for as long as i've been here, i've only seen 1 person actually being unbanned... Just to make sure you understand the odds of your appeal actually working. |
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It's a permanent ban. I don't think anyone is monitoring that email address, or if they are you'll be wasting your time trying to get someone to unban you via it.
So how to avoid it i wont get ban next time to bad 200 post get ban it can make me end up suicide Sorry to be the barer of bad news, but there should be no next time... Permanent ban means: "you, as a person, are banned from bitcointalk forever". If you create a new account, you'll be evading your ban, and if you're caught using your new account -, itwill be banned right away... The only thing you can do is take a long sabbatical. Just stop thinking about bitcointalk for a year. After this sabbatical, come back and pollitely ask the admin if you're allowed to create a new account... Altough the odds of him allowing this privilege are small. BTW: if you really think about suicide just because you lost an account with 200 posts, go to your family doctor right away... Losing a forum account isn't worth taking your life over. There are many things you can do offline, or even on other forums... |
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I think we have two options here. The first is to throw in a paper wallet and store it in a safe environment. The second option is to buy a Ledger.
Yup, these 2 wallets are perfectly fine... However, IMHO, the absolute safest way for anybody to store their BTC is by offline installing an up-to-date version from linux on an airgapped PC, don't install the network drivers. Next, install the latest version of bitcoin core, and create an encrypted non-HD wallet. Now, you have completely random private keys being generated by the latest version of the reference client on a machine that has never been online. Offcourse, this airgapped cold wallet is not easy to work with... You need to make regular backups of your encrypted wallet.dat, you have to create unsigned transactions on an online machine and transfer them to the offline machine, sign those tx's, transfer them back to the online machine,... It's a drag, but IMHO it's the absolute safest option. |
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I think many companies engaged in blockchain provide online wallet services for free, such as blockchain.com which I think has a fairly large level of security. You can add some two-step verification to your wallet.
if compared to online wallets and offline wallets, the security level is better online wallet
I don't agree with this statement. Even if you pick a strong, unique password and add 2FA authentication, this will NOT help against any security flaws introduced by the operators of the online wallet/exchange. If the exchange has a bug, you can lose everything If one of the exchange's employees is dirty, you can lose everything If the exchange goes bancrupt, you can lose everything If the exchange turns scam, you can lose everything No type of 2FA authentication can save you from these issues... And these issues are not neglecitible nor are they marginal... Above issues happened dozens of times before, and they'll happen dozens of times in the future. Next to these attack vectors, you're also more vulnerable to phising (if you're not using an online wallet, you're not vulnerable to a mail urging you to sign in to a phising site) and if your pc gets compromised, the level of vulnerability of an online and a desktop wallet are about the same. I just don't get why people insist on using thirth parties to store their BTC, and in doing so are fine with all the extra attack vectors they expose themselfs to... |
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A few weeks ago I got an email telling me that my password had been changed by someone on my poloniex account. So, I suppose therefore my account was hacked. Immediately I went to freeze the account and changed my password. But the thing is, I don't want to risk that happen again with a large amount stored in the exchange.
Where would be the best place to keep my BTC while I'm not trading with it in an exchange? I don't feel as if storing it on my own hard drive is very secure as hard drives can fail, and what can you do if that happens..?
i guess allmost *any* wallet is more secure than either an online wallet or an exchange wallet. If you don't controll your own private keys, you don't controll your funds... Here's a list of wallets to chose from: https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-walletAs for your concern about the durability of your hard drive: if you have a HD wallet (like 90% of the desktop and hardware wallets available), you can write down the recovery seed on a piece of paper, laminate it and store it in a safe place... Otherwise you have to take regular backups of your wallet file. Just make sure your PC is clean, use a strong password to secure your wallet file and have a backup of your seed phrase or wallet file... Offcourse, if you hold a lot of BTC, you should go for a hardware wallet, a properly generated paper wallet or an airgapped desktop wallet instead of a regular desktop wallet. |
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I know the consesus is to tell the op to do the installation himself... But since his question was if somebody was able to install bitcoind for him, i just wanted to say that, yes, i can install bitcoind for him if he wanted to. I could probably also walk him trough the process step by step without actually logging in to any of his machines.
Not the best idear to give somebody access to your machine, but if he's just running a node to be part of the community and not to actually use as a wallet, i don't see a lot of problems with this... He can just give somebody (for example: me) an unprivileged account to a clean VPS, install all prereq's himself and afterwards change the account's password, remove the wallet.dat and restart the daemon and check the checksum of all installed binary's...
Now, if the OP is actually thinking about using his node as an actual wallet to keep some of his funds, i'd agree with every body else's advice: it might be better for the OP to install bitcoind himself.
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Is it possible to add two correct blocks at the same time, making them both valid to prevent orphan blocks? We might rely on both of them thereafter making them both correct. Does this approach vulnerable to some attack?
Next to the (valid) remarks other people have given, can you give a sollution to this problem in your theory: What if both parallel chains get a parallel chain? What if the parallel chains of the parallel chains get parallel chains? You might end up with 4 chains, then 8, 16, 32, 64 (offcourse, not all parallel chains have to get parallel chains at the same time, but i hope you see my point). In the end, a miner would have to update his UTXO set by scanning blocks of unlimited parallel chains at height x (or maybe not all chains are at height x at the same time???)... And at this point he/she can try to solve a block using the hash of the last blockheader of any of those parallel chains, if he finds a valid header for one of these chains, he can broadcast his block and the other nodes would have to figure out which of the parallel chains the block belongs to. |
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This game is a mix between experimenting with the Lightning Network, gambling and using any technical knowledge you might have  I've blurred the private key that can be used to spent all unspent outputs funding address 1Prize3tdjrM23QER3f5nZH7uqHfb2SVnqUsing a lightning wallet, you can purcase one or more unblurring steps untill you start distinguising the individual characters. As soon as you think you can read most of the letters of the private key, start guessing the key untill you're able to clean out these funds. Without further hesitation: https://unblur.ninja/image.php?id=79 |
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coins.ph didn't got hacked. Coins ph has a good security because to register, it requires you to input your valid id and a picture of yourself with your valid id. I think that you're just being hacked by phising site which requires you to confirm your personal information including your email and password. Always remember the original site of coins ph or use their application so you can avoid being hacked.
Well... I've never used coins.ph in the past, and your end conclusing is defenately correct (make sure you're visiting the correct tld), i wouldn't go as far as to say a site has good security because they implemented KYC validation. Did you ever have the chance to vet coins.ph's sourcecode? Do you know if they store the bulk of their funds on a hot wallet? Do you know if they store private keys on a web-accessible db? Do you know their encryption scheme? Do you know their employee's hiring policy? My point is pretty simple: losing funds from a web wallet can come from 2 sources: either you did something "stupid" (like following a phising link, getting your PC infected, ...) OR the wallet provider did something stupid (like getting hacked). All the KYC regulations in the world won't protect you agains the second attack vector (the online wallet provider). By using open source, community vetted, wallets... Either (airgapped) desktop wallets, hardware wallets or paper wallet, you seriously decrease the odds of losing funds, since you run your own wallet. Just my 2 satoshi's tough... |
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Who guarantees the integrity? A central authority? The existing community?
What if a new member decided to join the community, he'd have to trust either the central authority or the "old" community (the community members that once had access to the full blockchain before it was pruned). Doesn't sound like something i'd want to be part of.
It's guaranteed by blockchain itself. You can not add or replace anything in the existing blocks so you can be sure that "this unspent output" is valid since the block which contains this transaction does not break blockchain integrity It's true that currently, you cannot change anything in a block because it's a blockchain. The header of the next block contains the hash of the header of the previous block, the merkle tree of the transactions, a nonce and some other data that isn't interesting in this discussion. So, pruning leads to this situation for a newcomer (unless i'm missing somehting here): Block height x header: version, hash of header of block x-1 that cannot be verified, merkle root, time, nbits, nonce Block height x+1 header: version, hash of header of block x, merkle root, time, nbits, nonce Block height x+2 header: version, hash of header of block x+1, merkle root, time, nbits, nonce It's the very first line that's interesting: nobody can verify that the hash of the header of block (height x-1) is correct, because we collectively pruned that block if we'd followed your proposal. Sure, people that were here since the beginning should have no problem with this, they once stored block height x-1, so there would be no reason not to trust block height x's header... But if a newcomer would enter the community, he'd just have to assume that block height x's header is valid, but he'd have no way to independently verify this. This would also mean he'd have no way of knowing his UTXO was built correctly, unless somebody was sending him all historic blocks, which cannot be done if they were collectively replaced by empty placeholders like you proposed. Now, bitcoin core already allows you to prune your blockchain locally, and as long as some people still store the complete blockchain, everything is fine IMHO. You can even switch to an SPV wallet if you don't want to sync, but the moment everybody prunes the first couple of blocks, new members would have to start trusting other members instead of being able to verify everything themselfs. This might still be fine in the beginning (eventough i think it's not fine), but in the end we'd have to start trusting a decreasing number of people that once stored the very first blocks, centralising the trust to these individuals. Sure, it's a moving chain, and as long as you were there from the start you can prune whatever you want and still trust the whole system... It's just that if you were not there from the start, and you only trust yourself (like you should do), you're starting to see the problems. |
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If every node in the network would prune block 1 and 2 (since all unspent outputs created by transactions in these blocks were now spent), how would the network ever know about unspent output c? It would be impossible for somebody to verify where unspent output c came from... We would just have to assume unspent output c exists, funds address 1b and is valid?
there is no need "to verify where unspent output c came from" as blockchain integrity guaranteed it's enough to know that this output is not spent yet Who guarantees the integrity? A central authority? The existing community? What if a new member decided to join the community, he'd have to trust either the central authority or the "old" community (the community members that once had access to the full blockchain before it was pruned). Doesn't sound like something i'd want to be part of. |
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I think the odds are pretty good that this is just one of the many phising attacks... It doesn't mean coins.ph is hacked... But the only way to gain some certainty is if the OP would post the email's headers.
the email came from info@coins.ph. How did they get the domain name if not hacked ?? Post the contents of the email here and we'll tell you exactly how you are wrong. Exactly... Here's some light reading in case you're interested: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&newwindow=1&q=how+to+spoof+email+address&oq=how+to+spoof+email+addresLike i said, we need to see the email's headers in order to find out if the mail was actually sent by coins.ph or just spoofed by a scammer. |
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I would guess that it is the name of the email sender rather than the email address. This is a common phishing attempt for paypal users and now they are targeting crypto. However, this crowd is a bit more of a techno crowd so are less likely to fall for those email phishing scams
You'd be supprised how many newbies are using online wallets and have no clue about what's really happening underneath. I think that a phising mail sent to a big email list, attacking a well-known service, will probably result in several victims each time it's being sent. Not that i have any data to support this claim, but i've been around this community for a long time, and i've had to tell a lot of newbies their funds were irreversibly stolen because they trusted an online wallet, and fell for a phising mail.... |
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I got an email from info@coins.ph that I have received Bitcoin but I do have an any account with http://coins.phlooks like coins.ph got hacked. Be careful with other bitcoin wallets. This is the correct address: https://coins.phHow can you say if got hacked if you received bitcoins? Usually a hacker would emptied everything, so you are lucky if you got something in your wallet right now. And this is their blog: https://coins.ph/blog/I haven't seen any news about this hack that you are talking about. Edit: This is their official thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558587.0I don't think the OP posted an exact copy of the mail he/she received. If i had to guess, the original mail probably contained a link to a phising site instead of coins.ph, and if the OP would have had an account on coins.ph and would have fallen for the phising mail, he would have entered his credentials on the phising site to check for the incoming transaction. At this point, the attacker would have had the chance to capture OP's credentials and use them to log in to the real coins.ph and drain OP's account. I think the odds are pretty good that this is just one of the many phising attacks... It doesn't mean coins.ph is hacked... But the only way to gain some certainty is if the OP would post the email's headers. All of this being said: using an online wallet is NEVER a good idear IMHO... This is, once again, proof of one of the many things that can go wrong if you trust a thirth party to manage your wallet online. |
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i am newbie here in bitcointalk forum i want to learn to gain merit because you cant be promoted if you dont have a merit.
can any suggestion how to make a effective topic? because all topics here in bitcointalk is usual to all in crypto.
please help me to make a topic that effective to gain a merit
So, if i get this correctly, you're having troubles gaining merit because all topics opened on BITCOINtalk are talking about CRYPTO? If i got your OP correctly, i have some bad news for you: this is a crypto forum. If you're not interested in learning about crypto, asking crypto-related questions and helping other crypto-enthousiasts, you have no reason to be here. I you're serious about "gaining merit", just start reading, learn, and once you've gained some knowledge, start sharing this knowledge with others... Don't spam, don't give advice about topics you know nothing about,... And don't open topics about gaining merits. Just by opening this topic, you got yourself a spot on my ignore list (not that that's a real problem, i usually reserve my merits for really, really, really interesting posts, so you're not losing a lot anyways). |
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Having spent most of my early days programming in basic assembly language, I still have a slight mistrust of "high level languages". However, I realise that computing has become so sophisticated now, and one needs to support a wide variety of platforms. I'm going to need to write a couple of programs for some upcoming projects, and I'm not sure that PHP is the best solution. I've been downloading the free eBooks from PackT, and I notice that many of them are guides for Python, and include books for specialist topics. I haven't started to read them yet, as I wanted to make a decision on the best language to start my experiments.
Do any of you guys use Python, and what do you think of it?
I use python all the time, both for hobby projects, crypto projects and my IRL job. Like TheArchaeologist already said: there are tons of libraries available, even for crypto related projects, making your life a lot easyer  |
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Very sad... Did you read the TOS? Was the $5 mentioned on their website, on the screen of the ATM, somewhere? If not, i'd probably demand my $5 -$0.14 (the actual fee) = $4.86 back... The way i see it is that they can't just charge whatever they want... They have to be clear about all the fees they'll charge beforehand... But that's just my personal opinion These bitcoin atm machines have a purpose and it is not for general trading. They are used either for convenience or totally anonymous trades. Usually these are proceeds from criminal activity looking to either store wealth or covert dirty funds
Do you have any proof for this claim? I've met several people that have used ATM's, and none of them did this to convert money from criminal activity or launder money. The people i've met used the ATM's because they're a fast and easy way to invest in BTC... You don't have to learn how exchanges work, you don't have to go trough the process of identifying yourself, you don't have to make a trade,... |
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One thing isn't 100% clear to me tough... In your OP you said "It only cost you pennies to send me the bitcoin (I think 8 cents).".
Do you mean they only added a fee of 0.00001146 (8 cents) , or do you mean they could have gotten away with a 0.00001146 (8 cents) but added a 0.0007165 (500 cents) fee nontheless.
In the first case, i might even think about calling it a case of semi-robbery, unless they clearly stated in their TOS that they always substract $5 to cover the fees, but they'll use a fee that is appropriate at the time of creating the transaction, even if the fee is lower than $5. In this case it's just bad business practices.
In the second case, they're incompetent. Using fixed fees is a thing of the past.
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