It depends if privacy is part of your definition of security or not. Airgapped is good if you want to broadcast txs through an amnesic Tor-enabled system like Tails. Sign the transaction on your airgapped PC, put it on a stick (or even better: use a webcam and only scan the signed transaction QR code), broadcast it on Tails and shut it down. Done - everything is now erased as if your tx never happened.

Hardware wallets are just more convenient. Plug it in and it's ready to go.

For me, the reason I prefer airgapped is because you can use an airgapped PC without ever connecting it to the online one and safely broadcast txs without ever interacting with each other. If I use 3 devices (airgapped for signing, offline phone for QR code scanning and online for broadcasting) chances of infecting the airgapped PC are close to zero. And by using an offline phone to scan QR codes, what you're doing is making sure the code does not contain anything malicious.

Moreover, you can download, install and use on an airgapped PC only what you like and want. If you want a free as in freedom OS with fully open-source apps like Bitcoin Core, you can easily do that. With HWs, it's harder.

For example, Ledger requires Ledger Live (or ledgerctl, which I never got fully functional without proprietary stuff or exchange of information through various servers) to install and uninstall apps. That sucks for me because although I can use BTC with Wasabi for example, I first have to go through Ledger Live to install the BTC app on my hardware wallet. And Ledger Live communicates with various servers again.. and so on. Airgapped is 100% offline at all times. If you want to check the balance of an address, you can boot Tails on a separate online PC, open up Electrum and check the balance of a single address. Now the nodes don't know what other balances you possibly own.

Security flaws are present in all devices, be it airgapped PCs or hardware wallets. The only thing is, airgapped PCs are more obvious than hardware wallets are due to their sizes. It truly depends on what you're looking for.

Parerea mea e ca ii subestimam prea mult. Nu ma refer neaparat la cei din guvernul Romaniei, ca mi-e greu sa cred ca oameni care nu pot nici macar sa vorbeasca intr-un mod coerent au auzit de (si folosesc) Monero, insa cred cu tarie ca membrii guvernelor altor tari fac asta.

Daca Comisia Europeana foloseste Signal pentru comunicare si in acelasi timp vor sa oblige platformele gen WhatsApp, Facebook etc sa introduca portite de acces pentru guverne care vor anula criptarea end-to-end a comunicarii, de ce nu ar folosi Monero in timp ce vor sa interzica monedele virtuale anonime sau vor sa le anuleze anonimitatea?

Ba chiar dimpotriva, eu consider ca ei deja au idee cu ce se mananca Monero-ul asta.. Ca doar nu a decis IRS-ul americanilor aiurea sa ofere recompensa pentru de-anonimizarea tranzactiilor XMR. Pe vremea cand nu cunosteau, nu comentau.

Ultima oara cand am cautat, am gasit o gramada de grupuri romanesti de Facebook care faceau reclama la seminar OneCoin. Cum reusesc inca sa ramana in viata desi exista mandat international de arestare pentru cea mai mare frauda "crypto" .. nu stiu.

Probabil omu' care accepta OneCoin acum un an de zile fie era o alta victima, fie incerca sa atraga victime. Fiind taximetrist, cred ca e o strategie buna de a determina oamenii sa deschida subiectul, ca sa poata sa ii momeasca. Trist, oricum, ca lumea cade prada inca unei astfel de tepe despre care gasesti n informatii la doua click-uri distanta..

As previously stated through PM, I am changing my payout address. My new address is: bc1qrep5et3k8vaqmy27d5kg26uxs758exlssxtnjm

Might be wrong, but doesn't this actually possibly make crypto worth less in terms of USD?

Bitcoin is deflationary, USD is inflationary. Hence, USD becomes worth less in time and Bitcoin does the opposite.. because the USD purchasing power is being lost in time while Bitcoin's purchasing power increases.

If USD goes deflationary together with BTC, both earn purchasing power in time. If this happens, it is possible that USD will catch up with BTC in terms of deflation rate. As a result, USD gets more power.. so perhaps you can buy 0.1 BTC with $4k today but in 6 months with deflationary USD you'll be able to buy 0.12 BTC with the same amount. Deflationary currencies have the capability to potentially cancel Bitcoin's effect against inflation.

Not an economist though, so this statement might very well be dumb. Someone feel free to correct me.

To me, it's neither Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum. It's Monero. Bitcoin is the traceable, public and transparent blockchain and Monero is the opposite. That makes it much better than any other coin and especially better than Bitcoin clones like BCH, BSV etc out of which 99% are just copy-pastes with very little changes to the fundamental values such as block sizes and halvings.

Ethereum brings no advantage over Bitcoin, especially now that it's PoS which makes it even worse when it comes to power of the Elites and security. If more money gives you more power, then there's no point in having crypto first of all. Fiat already gives advantage to the Elites very well.

This makes no sense to me. What were you trying to say?

Guess we can take so much of Bitcoin's creation and development and interpret it the same way we think of various texts in school in a thousand ways although we maybe never get to the point the author really tried to underline or .. the author didn't even leave any secret meaning at all, lol. I agree with Lucius, we shouldn't get Bitcoin compared with religion because this'd raise a lot of potential issues and it's pointless really.

It's called Genesis because it's how Bitcoin started. Why do we need to find an explanation for everything? We have it, it's being developed, it's working and it's making our lives better. That's all that matters right now imo.

Guess it's about much more than just vaccines and people still don't get it. The economy doesn't seem like it can be fixed anytime soon, we're uselessly and endlessly chasing tails but the final result will still be the same. Virus or not, there has to be another agenda behind and they're thoroughly following it. Vaccines have been known from the start to be only a potential stopper of the virus, but it proved useless in the face of all those other mutations. If after 1 year even with a vaccine I still have to fear going out in public, something's wrong.

You can't have fairness in a world where we have so many billionaires owning almost the entire world's wealth. If you wanted to create a fair economical system, first of all we have to redistribute wealth to the poor. Many thought BTC was helping lower the wealth inequality including me, but it's not that way unfortunately..

One big reason is that billionaires todag are still early and can still get very big positions in the crypto world before the masses get in. See MicroStrategy and Tesla, they're two examples of this happening. They can easily afford a significant % of the total supply. Unfrtounately, it might turn out to actually widen the gap between the poor and tbe rich rather than shrink it.

Not necessarily. Could be a grim future for those who currently don't care about their privacy however. Bitcoin might in fact be the coin that will survive the easiest the more authorities will want to analyze. Since it's transparent, they love it. But for those who don't care about protecting their identity, authorities may have questions about their history at any time.

Atomic swaps exist, but they aren't that reliable. What I'm waiting for is a product that is easy to use and is used by lots of people so that it works as flawless as a CoinJoin does.

Now that I kept wondering about your posts all day, I think the first step you should make before continuing to CJs, Mixers or Monero is moving from wallets like Electrum to Wasabi. Wasabi tries its best to hide your identity and to even block you away from making privacy mistakes. Coin Control is enforced and Tor is being used for more privacy.

As I recommended previously, use Wasabi and read their docs. Meanwhile, read more about protecting your identity online and especially with crypto. It's achievable, but takes a lot of time and attention.

Because I don't like strangers fiddling with my personal finance and I hate how they brainwashed us to think looking for privacy makes you automatically a criminal. It's the same reason I only operate with cash unless card is necessary. I don't see why someone needs to know what kind of toilet paper and condoms I like to buy, lol.

It's my money, it's my business. Am I a criminal? Okay, track me down and find what I'm up to! No problem. But putting everyone under surveillance is plain wrong and a big privacy mess. Just look up "EU #ChatControl" and Apple's new algorithm for photo scanning. That is over the top, not what we're doing. ChatControl is like everyone's letters were read by authorities/the postman back in the '80s. Who would've agreed with that?! Today, it seems like everyone silently agrees with it..

And then, just imagine a rough authoritarian government takes over and they develop a blockchain analysis tool to know who precisely was/is using crypto and what for. They have all the information available in an open, immutable ledger nobody can prove wrong. You could be interrogated for stuff you've done simply because your finance is all right there, waiting to be analyzed. Why would I give them this opportunity?

I'm thinking over the long term. They're looking for draconic crypto legislation anyway, so it wouldn't be surprising if they went even farther away with it. Some of us may be over-paranoid - I prefer to be like that and feel so much safer that way.

Back to the topic, I think having two coins, one pseudonymous and one anonymous, is just the perfect blend. You can't expect to have lots of privacy with Bitcoin however, simply because it was built to be transparent. We could have updates and improve its privacy, but ultimately we might start losing users due to the same reason you think Monero isn't something average Joes would go for. Once Atomic Swaps between XMR and BTC get real though, you can simply change the coin without leaving any trace whenever you feel like going back to privacy/transparency.

So the only standing methods you currently have to obscure your tracks are CoinJoin, ChipMixer or Monero. Also, practice Coin Control and be careful with the change.

In fact, it might be great for you to read Wasabi's docs: https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/. They explain lots of stuff about how little mistakes make for big costs privacy-wise.

I know we're on the BTC side of the forum, but here's my 2 cents: if you want to achieve max privacy and care so much about it, I'd rather move to XMR if I were you. With Bitcoin, achieving privacy costs a price not many afford to pay and requires a very high level of attention..

Moreover, Mixers & CoinJoin are nice if you want to obscure your real coin tracks but at the end of the day they do still appear in the transaction history and based on my own experience, it's more likely that you get your CoinJoined or Mixed coins blocked than it is that you get your Monero blocked. That's simply because they care about blocking those intentionally hiding their tracks than blocking those who may only be using a coin like Monero instead. Weird, but it is what it is.

If you want privacy on the long term, XMR is the way. If you want to just hide your tracks every now and then, mix them or coinjoin them but remember this costs and any little mistake you make might compromise your privacy.

For example, I had an Electrum wallet with CoinJoined and mixed funds. It had non-mixed/CJ'ed funds as well though, but I labelled them. My system somehow messed up and thankfully I had a seed backup, but when I recovered the seed I found out I had no idea which were the anonymous coins and which were the non-anonymous ones.. so I had to pay again for a CoinJoin and I probably also mixed non-anonymous with anonymous coins which is just a mess. If you coinjoin your funds now and then mix them with a non-CoinJoined UTXO, it's like you never CoinJoined your funds. So as I said, unless you are going to be very careful with how you're using your coins, XMR is the way to go..

mindrust probably was referring to shipping products. Yeah, Amazon requires them knowing your personal details as well, it's the same thing as Walmart delivering to your house.

Truth is, it's quite hard to preserve your anonymity close to 100% at all times. It'd mean you would have to meet up with someone in a non-supervised location (which is now basically trading safety for privacy) and exchange your coins to your local fiat currency, and whenever you want Bitcoin again you'd have to do the opposite.

We're living in a world where the "Big Brother" network is everywhere, I'd imagine in UK you'd have to meet up somewhere next to a forest if you wanted max privacy since UK is clogged up with surveillance cams.

At the end of the day, this all depends only on what you want to achieve. If you're looking to increase your privacy to a level where nobody is ever able to find out that you're using crypto, it'd become more of a burden than you imagine. But even then, how do you meet up with the dude online? Using a burner phone? How do you buy the burner phone? What about the SIM card? How do you keep it away from surveillance? How do you drive to the location without cameras knowing that someone with your vehicle's license plates drove to the same area or so?

BTC will only resist inflation if we want it to do so. If most of us see it as a hedge against inflation, it'll be that way.

But on the other hand, I am also afraid of the existence of "virtual" Bitcoins such as bonds or what companies like PayPal/Revolut are selling: just the value of 1 BTC rather than the coin itself. I think they're going to try to introduce some kind of artificial inflation at some point to hurt Bitcoin. That remains to be seen though, and I don't think there's any "cure" for it anyway..

It's a new space, so not many know how to stay away from scams. For many of us, it's been simply a lesson on our own skin rather than having someone to teach us how to do this stuff without messing up. What is worse is that not many know of open-source and why KYC is bad, which makes so many people vulnerable even today to scammers..

There will come a time when perhaps the majority will know how to stay away from the most well known scams. But we probably have to wait at least a few more decades until this is common sense.

Such true words, man. So many people tend to forget that the authorities do have a long history during which they have used the personal and sensitive information of citizens to fulfill their own agendas, no matter if good or bad. The fact that so much of your information sits in their hands at all times is crazy, and what's even crazier is that people don't care!

But I think we got too used to living in normalcy (or have been used to do so until 2020) that we just forgot about how rough a government could become in a matter of days. We've somehow been taught that no matter what, governments will take care of you and will ensure you have a beautiful life but the reality is quite contradictory. There will come a time when our (or our childrens') information that they collected will be used against us. It's more about when than if. But again, best we can do is just protect ourselves and try to wake up others as well. And between you, me and the government, the last is imo the most evil out of us.. so by trusting them instead of you, I might actually be making my biggest mistake lol

Corect. Si sa nu uitam ca, in ciuda faptului ca au anuntat ca utilizatorii Tor vor fi monitorizati implicit si in ciuda avertizarilor lor legate de existenta pietelor negre de pe dark web, agentiile americane de inteligenta sustin Tor.

La urma urmei, oricat de multi bani si control ar vrea autoritatile, chiar ele vor ajunge sa utilizeze metode gen CoinJoin sau Monero pentru a-si spala proprii bani.. deci fie ca vor sau nu, cerere pentru crypto tot o sa fie. Iar acolo unde nu se vrea deloc utilizarea crypto si oamenii simt ca nu miroase ceva a bine, se ajunge cum zici tu, in underground.

Ca vrem sau nu, crypto is here to stay. Iar asta e fascinant

Poate ca e mai mult o strategie de testare sau de alungare a cetatenilor care vor sa foloseasca crypto sau o fac deja. Banuiesc ca numarul de utilizatori crypto scade destul de mult in momentul in care cineva vine si schimba regulile aproape saptamanal. Pe de alta parte, pentru ei e un moment crucial in care trebuie sa ia o decizie finala si radicala: ori acceptam, ori interzicem. Dar banuiesc ca vor intai sa vada cati sunt pro/contra pentru ambele decizii inainte sa marseze pe vreuna dintre ele.. Acum vorbesc strict de ceea ce priveste UE, ca legat de celelalte tari am ramas un pic in urma.

Oricum, oricat de multe tari ar interzice vreodata BTC sau crypto, trebuie sa retinem ca intotdeauna va exista cel putin o tara care sa le sustina. Pentru ca pentru unele tari, mai ales pentru cele mai mici din punct de vedere al economiei, lipsa sustinerii crypto din partea marilor guverne reprezinta un mare potential. Deci oricum ar fi, crypto va ramane. Iar pentru cine vrea si poate, nu doar va ramane in viata crypto ci va oferi o libertate pe care nicio alta moneda nu ti-o ofera.

Sa stii ca AliExpress au si produse originale la preturi extrem de mici, partea mai nasoala e sa le gasesti.. ca dureaza zborul China - Romania cateva zile si apoi Romania - destinatia finala cateva luni e alta treaba intr-adevar, nu stiu ce o fi acum de cand s-a introdus taxa obligatorie pentru orice valoare. Probabil s-au mai potolit romanasii cu comenzile, ca e mai inconvenabil.

Cu tranzactiile offline.. da, nu sunt "100% offline", insa de exemplu un mesh de GoTennas ar putea functiona genial intr-o situatie de dezastru. Plus ca, desi n-am prea studiat foarte mult TxTenna, banuiesc ca tranzactiile prin acel device sunt mult mai sigure din punct de vedere al privacy-ului decat ar fi o tranzactie facuta prin PC. Dar din nou, nu-s expert si posibil sa zic prostii.

Cand vine vorba de incredere.. exista un punct in care chiar nu mai ai ce sa faci decat sa te increzi in cineva. Ca nu ai incredere in mine sa iti efectuez propagarea tranzactiei, tot te rezumi la a te increde in cineva. Ca e furnizorul tau de internet, sistemul de operare, hardware-ul etc.. cred ca orice ai face, tot exista ceva in care sa ai incredere ca iti afiseaza corect informatia si efectueaza actiunile pe care tu le vrei.

Interesant redphone-ul, dar inteleg ca tot e nevoie de conexiune la internet pentru a functiona. Am specificat GoTenna tocmai pentru ca nu necesita sa ai conextiune atata timp cat cineva in aria de acoperire a device-ului are tot un GoTenna, conectat la internet.

Some hackers do this as a way of living. I believe big companies or platforms would pay big money for found flaws especially if the hackers return the funds, although not all of them do so (neither the hackers or the platforms). There are lots of people who've found their job by breaching through security.

Interesanta informatia, multumesc pentru link. Da, faptul ca de vreo 2 ani de zile orice face China vine si aici in doar cateva luni e mai mult decat ingrijorator zic eu. Sa-l luam drept sablon arata ce directie luam, chiar daca multi n-o vad asa din pacate..

Nu stiu daca ar merge ca tranzactiile statului sa fie publice si celelalte nu. Ar fi cazul ideal, dar crezi ca ar suporta vreun guvern asa ceva? Ceva imi spune ca e mai in avantajul lor sa nu fie publice tranzactiile decat in al nostru. Asa cum e astazi in avantajul lor existenta Monero. Daca s-ar face un studiu 100% anonim si cu raspunsuri legitime, eu pot baga la propriu mana in foc de nu-s macar 40% dintre guvernantii lumii hodl-eri de XMR.

Acolo unde a fost loc de mai bine, au intrat ei si au incercat sa ii dea afara pe ceilalti, pe cetatenii de rand.. vezi cazul GoTenna, care a mers bine si frumos pana a intrat armata SUA pe film iar acum au probleme de stoc, customer service, update-uri etc.. pentru ca GoTenna se ocupa de o vreme buna de timp mai mult de armata SUA decat de orice altceva. Se tot speculeaza ca vor sa vanda ultimul stoc dupa care sa anunte renuntarea la produsul GoTenna Mesh (produsul pentru oamenii de rand) si sa continue mai departe cu varianta Pro sau mai sus, adica variantele pentru institutii si organizatii..

Si nici n-are rost sa ne intrebam de ce, pai comunicare gratuita peer-to-peer criptata si posibilitatea de a efectua tranzactii BTC fara internet.. o mare problema!