The WALLET stays the same. You can use just about any of them. The private key that you need to get the coins into the wallet also stays the same. HOW YOU GET THAT KEY CHANGES. Some, probably most coins have the private key printed under the hologram. Some coins have something else printed under the hologram that requires a 2nd step to get to the private key. Some coins (which you should avoid) have some online component needed to get to the BTC. <-- The issue with this is that you are relying on someone / something else that you must trust to get the coins. See here for issue: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5369583.0-Dave |
|
|
|
|
For the most part the link that Lucius posted was correct.
BUT keep in mind there are some coins that used some different ways of showing the key under the hologram.
Cryptolator, and at least one other, used a passphrase that you had to put into a brainwallet to get the private key.
There are a few, that should be avoided, that use an online site to get the private key / coins.
-Dave
|
|
|
|
Cleaning up the post and merging some things.
Hello
I was surprised to see this as I have used bitrefill and I am not aware of anything similar in Europe. I have searched and it seems to me that it is only available in the United States.
Anyway, I don't quite understand why you are worried about them asking for your driving license to pay your bills. Is it because you have been asked a second time? Did I understand correctly?
I have used bitrefill pretty much anonymously, but if I wanted to pay my house bills, then I guess it's like paying them through the bank, they know who I am.
Some people want to be 100% anonymous, so this limiting their customer base. But, since some regulations probably require it there is probably no way around it. It is possible that bitrefill will contact the company you are paying, and will provide the account number along with your identity information, and ask if the identity information matches the account holder. I am not able to see any of the companies that bitrefill offers this service for, however, it does appear they will only pay certain bills, which is unlike most bank's bill pay service when if a particular company is not listed, you can have the bank send a check to a particular address payable to a particular company. Their FAQ page does say that they will verify with the payee that the account information is valid before allowing you to pay the bill. They offer a lot, just about every car loan and credit card, tons of utilities and even HOA and mortgage payments. Health insurance was listed as were some hospitals and other health related things. Can even pay your taxes. BUT some things are way to generic. Picking on "Suffolk County Treasurer Sewer District Funds" as one of the things listed. There are at least 3 Suffolk counties that I know of in the US which one is it? -Dave
Both payments hit the accounts sometime overnight. So the 3 business days they say does look to be accurate. They did not show on the accounts till this morning when I looked BUT they are dated yesterday. Going to send out another 2 small payments later today and will report when they hit. -Dave
So other 2 payments hit. So the service does work with no issues. So it looks like a good service. Thumbs up from me :-) Got a generic how is it going email from someone at bitrefill and I replied. They answered VERY PROMPTLY about me not being able to pay the cable bill (looking into it) and on the needing of ID. On the ID: On the identification part, we unfortunately are not allowed to offer bill pay for the US without proof of US residence. We are keeping the US Bill Pay product separate from all of our other offerings so people can continue to use gift cards without an account. This information is not shared with third parties and details are in our privacy policy. People can pay bills that are not just in their own name like helping pay a family member's bills. He knows about this thread. So hopefully if there are any questions / issues that are raised here there will be a response. Glad to see a service that actually listens to their customers and responds to things. -Dave |
|
|
|
|
Also with interest rates as high as they are now if you were borrowing to buy BTC it's going to not be as attractive.
If you OWED money for somthing with a variable APR you might have sold some BTC (even at a loss) instead of paying more interest.
And with US I-Bonds and others paying OVER 9% at the moment some people might be investing there.
Just my view.
-Dave
|
|
|
|
Is it possible to make Abe from a version of Tenebrix that uses the original Berkeley DB and is a clone of Multicoin unchanged since September 2011? I understand I might be able to run a localhost version to test out while I run my full node. It's the first Scrypt coin - Litecoin was the third but I understand they forked Bitcoin code and not MultiCoin.
Yes you can. I guess the question is why would you want to? Abe is (was) a nice project, but there are many better explorers out there at the moment. Kind of like tenebrix, was interesting back in 2011 now....... -Dave |
|
|
|
|
So a large regulated service is following the directions of the governments of the countries it operates in.
<shocking>
Seriously, if you are a Russian and kept your crypto on a regulated exchange for this long after the sanctions started. AND after Putin put in new money controls in Russia.
Well sorry to say you are an idiot.
Not your keys not your coins, but after all of this going on....yeah what did they think was going to happen?
-Dave
|
|
|
|
.....
Sometimes is not the government, it's other people / businesses. It's really none of Gemini's business if I bought my coins at Coinbase. But, now I can't take them out of CB mix them and put them into Gemini. Should it matter? Probably not. Does it matter? Probably not. Can it matter? Hmmmm that's an interesting one. Going from one regulated exchange to another should not matter. But what if I'm a super math wiz investor and I figured out a way to make some money on arbitrage or something. If Gemini sees all my money coming from one source they might dig deeper. There are many other edge cases, but the point it still the same. Worth discussing, but in the end we all know it's happening anyway. -Dave |
|
|
|
We need a bit more information. I posted about this a few years ago, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5205304 and it's still worth discussing today. How tech savvy are you? How much is a lot of money. What is a lot to you may not be a lot to others and spending $100 to protect $1000 may not be worth it. And so on. The advice posted above is VERY GOOD, but it's also a bit generic. And without more info that is all we can give you. Followed by this is a public forum the more info you post the more info people may be able to find out about you which may have other security implications. -Dave |
|
|
|
|
If was mentioned it before and nothing was done then you did nothing wrong in the spirit of disclosure. Once it's been discussed and out there bringing it up again is fine.
Actually it's better since it means that if something does 'go wrong' because of it there is no hiding the fact that it's known.
Don't know what could really happen except some people doing some bad things in the auctions section in terms of bids, but that is somewhat easily resolved with your and other post scrape bots.
-Dave
|
|
|
|
As as been discussed over here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5364742Older laptops are probably the way to go. Windows & linux (your choice) a battery to hold you over power blips. No need for a screen, you can do it all from laptop itself. With the current chip shortage 4GB & 8GB RPis have gotten a bit expensive. -Dave |
|
|
|
....Often, what is best for the consumer alligns with what will make a company the most money. The reason for this is because consumers will ultimatly act rationally and in their own best interest, and if a company is offering a product that is not in line with what is best for their customers, their customers will not buy said product....
I think I pulled a muscle laughing. Yeah the Pinto was a great deal for consumers, or the Firestone tires failing or killing people. The manufacturers knew the product was not in the 'best interest of customers' but selling them made a higher profit. Cigarettes, foods with know carcinogens and so on. Companies will offer what makes them the biggest profit. Consumers will usually buy what appears to get them the best deal for the money. The same applies to financial products too. Be it stocks & bonds or crypto or whatever. -Dave |
|
|
|
It is moving from 'you should do this' to 'this is how you should do this' Is this better, though? Putting aside my well known feelings regarding centralized exchanges and KYC for a minute... At the moment, as you say, KYC/AML and centralized exchanges is all over the place. Some do it one way, some do it another way. Some are very strict, some are not so strict. What one exchange accepts, another might refuse, and vice versa, not just in terms of KYC and personal information but also in terms of so called "tainted" coins. Does putting in place some sort of framework to make every exchange work to the same level actually benefit the average user? You already have absolutely no privacy and no security if you are using a centralized exchange, so that can't exactly get any worse. But at least you might end up with fewer cases of accounts being arbitrarily locked because one exchange's requirements were different to another, or one exchange was utilizing some blacklist that another one wasn't? I don't know. I agree that this makes things easier for institutions. I'm not going to lie and say that I don't care if some massive asset management firms come in and drop a few hundred billion dollars in to the market - obviously I'd like the price to go up and the increased legitimacy and adoption that such a move would bring. But at the same time, I'm not going to let this kind of regulation touch me. As much as I like higher prices, I like the fundamentals of bitcoin more. You have that risk now just using banks. People have gotten accounts locked for too much PayPal or Zelle or wire transfers from legit sources that were for some reason flagged. I think we all agree more money in the ecosystem is better for the fundamentals. TLDR; privacy is a bad thing.
....
Pretty disappointing that mixing coins is "officially" an illicit activity now. Doesn't it sound oxymoron, though, to exchange centrally and use a mixer? Pick a side; you can't protect your privacy if you don't have any.
Although I do wear the ChipMiner signature, I have always said that for the amounts that I assume most forum users you can do a better job doing it yourself using an exchange or 2 that does not require KYC and a few privacy based coins. Mixers are convenient, but far from the only way of hiding where your coins came from. -Dave |
|
|
|
I really doubt this data point, because this data would only be formed using the bank transactions of Many Russians which have added their money into the exchanges or wallets like coinbase for purchasing bitcoin, it will largely exclude information of those who have held it on a private key wallet and have received the bitcoins from some other method. Because it's impossible for Russian authorities to differentiate which wallets belong to Russians. and to be honest the private key holders must be the ones having the major chunk. As per an estimate done a few months back only 6% of total bitcoins are there on exchanges so calculating it that way $130B might just be 5-10% of the total Iceberg.
Although its pure speculation that could be what they are going by, or something similar. i.e. all the exchanges that reported to them came to $13 billion. So multiply by 10 and come up with $130. Since they will not say how they got the number, if we do believe it to be true, then it's as likely a scenario as any. -Dave |
|
|
|
I guess you only have bitcoins in a "change address" of your BRD wallet's Segwit address, because it wasn't checked by that button. I'd never considered that before when suggesting that people should use the "Detect existing accounts" button. I went to check the code, and you are absolutely right: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/586d3a4361f5dbb9ce9ffdfdfeb276664b5bbfaa/electrum/bip39_recovery.py#L18-L62As you can see from lines 47 and 51, it checks the first 20 receiving addresses, but does not check any change addresses. I'm sure there are other wallets, which like BRD, send change from one account to the change address in another account, which could result in the same situation here of "Detect existing accounts" missing an active account. Worth raising an issue on GitHub? Yes, definitely worth it. It's things like this that drive people nuts trying to deal with BTC wallets. Then they wind up here looking for help, and unless someone read this thread, remembers this thread, reads that post with the issue they never get help. If it's on github, it's at least there for a lot of people to see and discuss. -Dave |
|
|
|
It's nothing new, really. The document essentially boils down to: "Collect KYC data, use blockchain analysis to monitor all deposits and withdrawals, figure out where all coins are coming from and going to, and cross check all that against blacklists and other databases". This is what pretty much every centralized exchange already does. I think the only thing that's new is the explicit recommendation that exchanges should directly partner with blockchain analysis companies.
As much as I hate such incredibly intrusive privacy invasion, as long as it is isolated to centralized third parties then it doesn't affect me. Whenever you use a financial third party - in fiat or in bitcoin - then you are subjected to their rules and regulations, and by extension the rules and regulations of your government. This has always and will always be the case, and bitcoin won't change this. Conversely, it is trivial for me to avoid all this nonsense by continuing to refuse to use such centralized third parties and instead use bitcoin as it was intended. Institutions can buy their carefully selected coins from their carefully selected platforms, with no privacy, no security, no ownership, complete centralization, while fully trusting a variety of third parties, if that's what they want. I'll continue to use bitcoin as it was designed instead - trustless, self-ownership, censorship resistant.
Yes, with a but. It is moving from 'you should do this' to 'this is how you should do this' Putting aside the entire lack of privacy and intrusion part, that as you said has always been there for fiat institutions. It allows for businesses dealing with BTC / crypto to have a better set of rules to point to. If you are a lawyer working for a big financial institution and your boss comes to you and says how do we do "X" in the world of banking you pull out a book that you can barely lift and say "here is how it's done". Crypto has been a bunch of 'well, we should do it this way OR that way there are some rules over here and..." At which point the boss walks away and says "nevermind let someone else deal with it" Now, if they come and ask about crypto, the big book of rules comes out, and they put more effort into doing it because they have something to fall back on if it all goes wrong. Which goes to what @mk4 and I started with. It allows, hopefully, for bringing many more larger institutional investors with a lot of money into the ecosystem. -Dave |
|
|
|
|
I don't see it as a lot of money for a country with a population that large.
There are about 145 million people living in Russia so it's only about $1000 a person.
Obviously most people hold $0 and a few hold $billions.
Then you have all the scam exchanges (yobit and similar) all the scam casinos operating out of there. Add in all the money the state sponsored Russian ransomware gangs took in and it gets up there.
Russia also has (had? a lot have fled) a lot of really smart tech people. How many of them are sitting on 1000s of dollars of crypto? It does add up.
And a big question, does that number include Russians who are no longer in Russia? Ex pats who are living elsewhere.
-Dave
|
|
|
|
|
I have had many dealing with WhyFhy so I would have no issues trusting him with this.
Did a quick test and the key was delivered and it did work.
Would like to see a way for there to be NO email involved, it's just another point of having another service know something about you.
The KEYS would still be secure but it's a way to trace a BTC address to an email address.
-Dave
|
|
|
|
Can somebody tell me why the forum accepts that there is signature advertisement for a clear scamming service? Why is there all this effort in tagging people etc. if you could just remove the whole campaign?
The forum (and it's operators) DO NOT REGULATE SCAMS. We, the users do. That is the entire point of the trust / feedback / merit system. Act like a scammer get a tag. Don't and you will be fine. -Dave |
|
|
|
....
And it might not even be a pool at all, could just be a proxy pointing the hash someplace else. When difficulty was a lot lower and BTC was a lot less although starting a pool was sever simple or easy it required a lot less trust. That is the real issue today. As @mikeywith said there are older trusted pools out there that exist. NOT saying you are a scammer, but unlike US courts where you are innocent until proven guilty. Here we tend to take the guilty until proven otherwise view. Oh, and your fee is too high. VIABTC solo is 1% solomining.io (p2pool) is 1% and so on.... -Dave |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
