What do you mean by that? I am not sure I understood. Unless you meant that governments care about not allowing merchants' and customers' being private, so they can always keep an eye on their trades and their identities.


Do you think Satoshi chose to make Bitcoin pseudonymous and not anonymous for this reason? I mean it could be an argument, that if Bitcoin had Monero's features, then the governments would want to shut it down instead of surveilling it.

This is an "advantage" as far as I am concerned. Governments can't control Bitcoin, nor Monero. The latter is definetely more private, having implemented both stealth addresses and ring signatures. To tell you the truth, I believe Monero serves its purpose very well. It's a private currency that can be used as a medium of exchange. Bitcoin, on the other hand serves a great purpose as a store of wealth, since it is more scarce and has limited supply. I love bitcoin and I use it for payments, even though I see a lot of hate regarding its higher fees. But I use it and I encourage everyone to use it.

Satoshi Nakamoto, as a cypherpunk, knew how important privacy is. I am not saying that Satoshi Nakamoto implemented Bitcoin alone, nor that he never interacted with other people. In fact, there are multiple emails where Satoshi Nakamoto exchanged ideas and thoughts with a lot of people. They also had an account in this forum, where he interacted with a lot of users. But, what I am saying is, nobody knew who they were in real life.

If I had a guess, I would speculate that Satoshi Nakamoto and other cypherpunks cooperated in Bitcoin's development. The result (Bitcoin) isn't perfect, but it feels like the creator has thought every single detail. My experience with programming so far has tought me that 2 pairs of eyes is always better than a single pair. Having said that, my guess would be that Satoshi Nakamoto is just one of the people who worked in Bitcoin.

I don't know if it's a bluff, or if it's because of the Ouzo I am drinking right now, but is there really a surprise? I went through all the pages (kinda rapidly - because of the alcohol) and didn't spot it!

Unfortunately though, I saw Leo's posts and felt sad... Anyway! Sorry for mentioning that...

Haha that's bluff mate. Unless you left it in the past week or so. But I am not buying it either. I am an intern. I learn from you. So I don't buy it! Haha

When you created this post, could you ever imagine that there would be some gangsters destroying everything that's left of it? Derailing it like there is no tomorrow?

Are you proud of what you created alongside our queen?

Btw. I am on round 7, I just forgot to mention it

Better than having a dirty soul, like I do...

What would you take in exchange for telling me first? I am curious to know!

Should it be bitcoin, or perhaps other types of services? Let me know and you shall have it. All I want is the info regarding the surprise. And I want it desperately  

I am not aware of this exchange, but I saw it is a KYC exchange. So, if you are certain that you want to do KYC for an exchange, which is your right, even though I disagree, why don't you use a bigger one, like Kraken for example, which is supposed to be one of the best KYC exchanges out there? Or perhaps Binance, Coinbase etc.

What are these puzzles you are refering to? I am not aware of puzzles like this, where you are given a public key and you need to derive the private key.

If an attacker wanted to find a private key from the corresponding public key, what they would need to do would be to solve the ECDLP. Check this post for further info by o_e_l_e_o: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5393030.msg63258028#msg63258028

There is a very good tool discussed here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5244940.0

That was certainly a great joke!

Even the text that the account owner decided to post, hahaha : "I am Satoshi Nakamoto! I have returned!"

Sounds like "Satoshi Nakamoto vol.2" or "...previously on Satoshi Nakamoto"

I guess OP is making fun, there is no other excuse. The only thing we can agree is that CSW is not Satoshi.

This is exactly what blockchain analysis companies do. I am strongly against them! Essentially what you want to do is to make sure that a UTXO pass certain rules. Thus, what you want to do is to mess with Bitcoin's fungibility, making it look like some coins are good and some coins are bad.

Let me draw a picture for you. Let's say that instead of you, bitcoin nodes decide to do coin analysis.
Imagine a node, that runs blockchain analysis and validates only the transactions that pass certain rules. This would be a disaster for Bitcoin. All our efforts, all our hopes would be gone!
By the way, Bitcoin Knots is hard form of Bitcoin Core. They do exactly that! The node allows only for specific input size, making it impossible for them to validate transactions from Whirlpool coinjoins. Do you think this is correct?

Do you know that KYC exchanges are allowed to run blockchain analysis software to allow incoming funds only from coins that haven't been mixed or coinjoined? Do you think this is correct? Imagine receiving a UTXO, making coinjoins with it, to make it impossible to tell which input matches which output, and then sending it to a KYC exchange to cash out. Then, the exchange will simply run its software and they will say "thanks for gifting us the bitcoin, good luck in your life".

Do you also know that "The zkSNACKs coordinator will start refusing certain UTXOs from registering to coinjoins." ? This is a tweet that was made by wasabi devs. Just saying... I didn't invent this tweet, I didn't imagine it... They said that they can "potentially" refuse your coins from being coinjoined. Do you think this is correct?

I am in favor of coinjoins. I am in favor of doing whatever you like with your coins. Don't fall into the trap of "tainted" bitcoin. If you want the piece of mind, just do some coinjoins and you will be fine.

Don't use KYC exchanges anyway because they know who you are! So they know who "takuma sato" is in real life.

Use bitcoin as a tool. That's what it's meant to be.

Decide wisely who the "enemy" is. If you are worried that you own coins from illegal activities, let me tell you that anyone potentially owns this kind of coins, even if we use coinjoins. The only way to tell if the coins you own derive from illicit activities is to run blockchain analysis.

But please, make sure to remember that KYC exchanges are a disaster. Blockchain analysis is a disaster. Use reputable open source software instead and maintain your privacy. Let's say that in order for you to be private, you need to find a way to make "takuma sato" a persona that receives coins from a campaign, but then this persona sends the coins somewhere and nobody knows where.

Cypherpunks say (I think it was https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=976210 who said it):
- "If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide."
- "No! Because I do nothing wrong, I have nothing to show."

Yes of course it has a chance, once people realise that it's easier to store and easier to transact with it, compared with gold.
But, of course, central banks own a lot of gold, so they have a huge impact on the market. Give it some time and eventually, my opinion is that Bitcoin will surpass gold's capitalization.
I don't think it is so important though. What's more important is to realise that Bitcoin is freedom, in a sense that it allows us to ditch the central banking system that rules the markets. It allows us to transact P2P without needing any authority to act as an intermediary. Bitcoin is a tool, just like cash is a tool. There is no need to speculate. As long as I can buy the same product using the same amount of bitcoin, paying P2P, I am good!
Bitcoin, used as Bitcoin, is better than Bitcoin that can be exchanged for higher amounts of FIAT. That's my opinion of course.

Notes:
1. OP can you please change the OP to make our pictures look better? Perhaps it's my monitor, but our pictures appear very narrow and the width is not proper. I realise you wanted to use a specific height, but there is no way for someone to see the image unless they click on the link for the original post.

2. I liked Mia Chloe's pictures a lot. They generate a strong passionate feeling that only street photography can create. They also portray a place where I have never been. Good job!

3. I liked the first picture by Amphenomenon a lot. It is well edited and the colors create a feeling of something extra-ordinary, like it was shot in outer space. Good job!

4. I didn't vote for myself. It didn't feel right, but I agree with the decision to be allowed to vote for ourselves too.

The worst thing about Bitcoin that can happen with authorities, is not having a clear - transparent system to know what happens with your holdings. For instance, if you own X amount of satoshis and the capital gains you have is an amount of Y euros, you don't know what happens with the taxes. Must you pay taxes on the X satoshis that you own? And if so, how much? Or must you pay taxes on the capital gains? And if so, again, how much? This is a pain in the ... especially if the authorities suddenly decide in the future to apply taxes and they catch you unprepared. They will treat you like a criminal for not paying taxes in the past, even though legislation doesn't currently exist.

Receiving funds in the same address from a signature campaign is the most common option. However, even in the scenario that you mention, if you (as an entity) are well hidden behind the "takuma sato" persona, how will the person that you pay know who you are in real life? And, at the same time, why should they care?

Anyway, your point is important, so I get it. One user here (paid2 - I mention the name since he discussed it openly in another thread) does something clever, which is a good option to consider. I saw that BlackHatCoiner mentioned it above too. You can use a non-kyc exchange, like the one in my signature and exchange all the funds from your address into XMR. Then you can use the same exchange or any other that you want to exchange from XMR back to BTC (obviously using another BTC address). Don't forget to use Tor for this. You will make it impossible for the payee to imply that "takuma sato received X payments from a signature campaign and then used these funds to pay me".


Lightning is always an option but it looks like OP didn't mention it as an option. Perhaps the merchant only accepts on-chain.

However, in a completely symmetrical way to the one I mentioned above, OP could do some LN swaps instead of Monero swaps. It works exactly the same way. You get rid of the funds you own and then receive some other funds to send to the merchant.

Let me be more clear. In 2020 I decided to buy ETH and I was also involved in NFTs. I also held some other ERC20 tokens.

In 2021 I transitioned to Bitcoin only.

Ethereum went to PoS which is a purely centralised protocol. The NFTs are a madness for no reason.

So, to answer your question. I HATE altcoins. I call them shitcoins. I will never own any of them again unless they have a significant advantage over Bitcoin. The only one I have found is Monero.

So, I don't understand your point. I have no experience, I don't want to share my experience, I don't do altcoins at all. So I don't talk about altcoins with people. I think it's my right not to care about altcoins even though, like you say, we have the internet. This is the same internet that promotes every type of scam. So no... Not for me...

Electrum for Bitcoin
Feather for Monero

You can't go wrong with these 2. They are reputable open source wallets.

Thanks for your effort to organize this event. By the way, I have been thinking... Are we (the participants) allowed to vote? I guess if so, we must only vote other contestants' artworks.

The user didn't mention random number generators.

In fact, your idea will not improve performance. In the original scenario, OP runs a for loop and prints each number to the file. In your scenario, you create an array and then you do the exact same thing, looping the array.