What client downloads a single block once every 5 years? A full node does its own validation of the blockchain. That's why it doesn't have to trust anyone else. SPV clients are completely different. The easiest way to mitigate this is probably by downloading and validating the blockchain. For which you'll probably just make another full node. It doesn't compare block height because it's grossly inaccurate to assume the height to be X at unix time X because of the changing hashpower.

How do you trick a full node? Feed a full node a chain full of transactions that doesn't follow the rules, it'll refuse too accept, no matter how much proof of work it has. SPV clients lack the full blockchain that full nodes has and it thus has to assume that the longest chain is the honest valid chain. It will not specifically check each block for it's validity and thus if you were to feed SPV clients (in the context of sybil attacks) with block headers that doesn't follow the protocol rules, the SPV client will blindly accept them. In contrast, since the full node validates the entire blockchain, it will ensure that each and every block has a valid POW and all of the transactions follows the protocol rules.

The damage that you can potentially do with SPV client is a lot more than what you can do with a full node only.

The thing is most of the spammers posts things that are wildly inaccurate but it is technically not off-topic so you can't really report them, the most that you can do is to try to correct them and the next post would be another spammer posting the same misinformation. It's especially difficult when there are spam megathreads that is pretty much just an echo chamber.

I hate how Bitcoin Discussion has deteriorated to a point whereby any meaningful discussion is especially hard to find.
I know Lutpin used to have such a list with a fair number of participants. Unfortunately, that's pretty dead. Would've been quite useful even up till now.

Taxation on capital gains is fairly common. Places without those taxes usually attracts billionaires so that their wealth will be taxed less significantly. Attempting to prove the extent of your capital gains would be an administrative nightmare, in terms of determining how much to tax so I don't expect most countries to start taxing cryptos yet. It's not that unfair to impose a high tax on capital gains though, IMO.

AFAIK, Electrum automatically eliminates dust outputs from change by spending it as fees.

I suspect that you've gotten your units of Bitcoins wrong. Are you sure you're using BTC and not mBTC? Many newbies were confused by the UI and tends to treat the mBTC as BTC, thus resulting in them trying to spend 0.0001mBTC, etc.

I think 100+ is an exaggeration, wasn't it close to 30 or so? Even so, the problem will persist for any client that doesn't know the new rules and will still blindly follow the other chain which still follows the older network rules. So the problem wasn't specific to full nodes.

However, my POV is that given that SPV only validates block headers, it still can't be as secure as fully validating nodes and operates under the presumption that the SPV client will not get sybil attacked and the longest difficulty-wise POW chain is valid. I'm not sure how that could be disputed.

But I would like to consider @aliashraf POV as well, have you had a discussion on this on the forum or could you point me to the relevant sources?

Somewhere around there. I don't believe that there would be a huge price difference between getting a 500GB disk and a 1TB disk drive, at least that's what I found recently.

You'll still have to accommodate for the OS and other miscellaneous stuff as well. If you're looking to get it for the long run, I'll think the tiny bit of price difference would be worth it for the possible headaches in the future.

I don't think there is any pre-defined goal for Bitcoin, nor there is any one that is able to set goals for Bitcoin. Depends on how you view it, the very invention of Bitcoin fulfilled Satoshi's goal to make a currency that's trustless and decentralised. I don't think he ever envisioned Bitcoin to become this successful and thought of it as a way to make micro transactions.

IMO, the very end (and ideal) goal of Bitcoin is for it to achieve widespread adoption. Until we are ready to ditch fiat and go for Bitcoin, that won't happen any time soon.

What is your purpose of running a full node? For your personal transactions or to help the network?

Running a pruned node allows you to save the storage space while still preserving the same level of security that you'll enjoy from a node that synchronizes fully.

125GB is far from enough for you to synchronize the blockchain fully and you'll have to prune it. The downside of that is that you can't swap the wallet files out as and when you like. You'll have to resynchronize the entire blockchain if you want to do so. Pruned nodes are perceived to be less useful than actual full nodes due to the fact that it can only serve a limited amount of information. You'll want to get a disk of at least 1TB if you want to run a node without pruning. Pruning will discard the unnecessary files that you won't need if you don't care about the things mentioned.

As for the OS, I don't find much of a difference between them. If you want to focus on privacy, Linux is the way to go. If you want better value, you shouldn't choose Apple. IMO, it's up to your personal preference and what you'd like to get.

It shouldn't go to another address. What Dave meant was for the change to be sent to an address that is generated from the seed MyCelium has generated for you. I haven't used a paper wallet in quite a while so I'm not sure if that happens.

I honestly don't think MyCelium would be incompetent enough to make such a mistake. Could you send the transaction ID so we can see what's happening. I think it's unsettling to know that it doesn't sweep the paper wallet completely.

So how much miner's fee did you pay? Do you have the relevant TXID? Did you specify any amounts to send? Could provide some clues as to why this is happening.

I haven't seen MyCelium's source code for quite a while, I don't like mobile wallets in general and find them pretty poorly maintained actually.

There's an auto mod that automatically nukes the user, CMIIW. I'm not sure why it isn't working now. Some of the bots actually masks the spam by copying other posts and inserting their spam in the middle, will be harder to counter in that case.

If your country doesn't have a steady inflation, then it won't be good. Inflation stimulates consumption by the consumers by making goods more expensive in the future. A steady inflation is also indicative of a steady economic growth as the aggregate supply and demand can be kept at the intermediate range which ensures a healthy utilisation of the resources. Hyperinflation (like Zimbabwe) or deflation (in the case of Japan some time ago).

I really don't think you understand what inflation is, at all. Do your basic research.

There was a huge influx of spam recently but not uncommon. Just use the report to moderator button to report it. It'll get removed soon when one of them reviews it.

What does expected value has to do with the generation of entropy though? Each of the dice has an equal chance of landing on each of the face. The expected value shouldn't matter since you're not calculating the average value of the dice nor anything similar.

Each of the unbiased dice roll will provide a certain and fixed amount of entropy because it is truly random. For example, if the 5th value is 6 in the first set of 100 and the 5th value is 5 in the second set, the resultant seed will be different. For someone to crack this, they'll have to land the dices at exactly the same value for 100 consecutive times, with the same permutation. This would be a pretty near impossible feat, giving the user a 256bit of entropy.

Actually, has there been a successful attempt to intentionally sabotage the RNG within an OS during a key generation?


I think using dice rolls to generate entropy is not that bad of an idea. Especially when the point of it is to ensure that ColdCard isn't tampering with the seeds. Given that the key pad only has space for numerical characters, using dice rolls to generate entropy for a ColdCard wallet is probably the only way for the user to be sure that the RNG of the ColdCard isn't compromised.

I literally never said quantum computers can't ever attack asymmetric cryptography. I merely stated that its not feasible to attack  cryptography using what we have now.
Okay. Call me ignorant all you want. What you need for a quantum computer to do to specifically attack asymmetric cryptography is to be good at factoring. As of now, I haven't seen any of them that are efficient enough to crack keys. D-Wave designed quantum computers with a high qubit using quantum annealing but that isn't suitable to be used with Shor's algorithm because you'll need fast factoring. There, you have discovered a computer with a high qubit but isn't effective when used against asymmetrical cryptography.

With that respect, it's like comparing to having a sports car on earth and a sports car in space. The latter is absolutely useless without traction.

As with China's new discovery, I won't read too much into it because they only presented a proof of concept which may or may not work. It could very well just be an exaggeration of what we have as of now.

Can you read up on what Shor's algorithm is first? You can't simply defy the laws of physics by "inventing a new algorithm". I believe Grover's algorithm is what you're looking for with cracking symmetric cryptography but that is very easy to counter as well and is likely to be ineffective against Bitcoin or similar implementations.

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I sincerely hope that you didn't just quote my post without any evidence. I would love to see some study done on the effectiveness of using quantum computers that utilises quantum annealing to attack ECDSA or similar cryptography.

They disagreed with what Bitcoin did in the past. Why would they move their site off the domain? They ain't stupid.
I think common sense tells you if you don't trust a site, you shouldn't use the site. There are plenty of different sites to validate your signed message. Coinb.in for example, which is well designed. You can't tell if a site is trustable because your browser is get the data from the server and the information can change at any point in time.

I would recommend you to just use your wallet's utility tool or download the coinb.in's github version.

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I'm pretty sure the utility itself says Enter Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin address.

You can't explain. Just don't get caught. If your country deems Bitcoin to be illegal and you still use it, you're doing it at your own peril and no amount of explanation is going to convince them that they shouldn't prosecute you for using Bitcoin.

I, for one would immediately set up a Tor browser and route all my traffic through it. At the very least, they cannot link the stuff that I do with Bitcoin to my real life identity. Concealing your identity would be the top priority and you would probably be better off trying out decentralised and P2P exchanges.

I don't think banning Bitcoin is effective nor reasonable. But as always, do things at your own risks; there's always a chance that you'll be caught.

D-Wave has made a quantum computer with 5000 qubits. Can it be used to crack symmetrical cryptography? No, it can't use Shor's algorithm as intended and it isn't really a true quantum computer.

If they have really achieved such a quantum computer, I can guarantee you personally that they won't bother to attack any blockchain technology. TLS and web encryption are the treasure trove to them. Getting a bunch of Bitcoins from old addresses with exposed public key is NOT worth their time at all, believe or not.

Anyways, you can always implement quantum resistant algorithm and it is not too hard to fork it.

I've never seen someone who writes the letters that looks EXACTLY the same and looking like some kind of font at the same time. Must have some real steady hands amirite?

And of course, I would love to see a picture that doesn't include a photoshopped post it.