Guys can I chime in on the profitability of solar panels debate? In my country solar panels are mostly used to power water heaters and bear in mind that the weather conditions here are relatively good throughout the year so there is usually sufficient solar energy from the sun to heat your water. But what are you going to do when the weather conditions are not optimal for the solar panels to work efficiently like in the winter and fall when the weather is cloudy and the sun is not out? Unless your solar panel mining farm is in a tropical country with non-stop sunny weather I doubt your solar panel installation will pay off in the long run. And solar panels are not cheap either and require an initial investment on top of your other mining hardware so in the end you are putting in a lot of cash and rely upon many changeable factors that can lead to negative profit easily. At least with grid power you know what you are getting 24/7 and can project what the current and future expenses will be according to the increasing difficulty.

Bitcoin can act both as a currency and as a store of value. Heck everything can have the function of a currency if it has a value. What is the difference between getting paid in bottle caps or in Bitcoin if it has the same fricking value in dollars aka fiat? Who cares if the majority of Bitcoin is hoarded in the top 500 addresses anyways. What is the currency of the pawn shops? Things. Why do they take useless old things? Because they have a value. Now I don't expect Bitcoin to replace fiat as a global currency because things need to be pegged to fiat to have a value. If I can buy a sandwich with 1000 bottle caps or 10mbtc at the end of they day for $4.5 I will use whatever is more convenient. And because I don't want to haul a bag of caps or a piece of precious metal with me I use Bitcoin. In my honest opinion adoption has nothing to do with the debate of whether Bitcoin is a currency or not.

First I would like to congratulate you on being brave and withdrawing all your savings in the bank and investing that into Bitcoin. I think you have the chance to earn a lot more now than waiting for a tiny interest rate or in your case nothing at all. Actually I like your idea of hiding the private keys in a very unorthodox place that would not attract the attention of thieves. The bird fountain location is probably the last place one would look for something valuable as opposed to a concealed safe in your living room.

I have used Mycelium wallet on all of my Android devices and I haven't had any problems with it. I think it's safe to keep some coins on a mobile device but not all of your stash. I don't recommend backing up your private keys on your phone though as it may get stolen and the thieves will have access to your Bitcoins on top of that. Also it's best to password protect your mobile Bitcoin wallet just in case. You can export the private keys to a couple of thumb drives or write them onto a CD or whatever else method you feel safe using. Personally I have them encrypted in a password manager for quick assess if needed.

I guess I would love to have 21 Bitcoins in 2 years as this seems to be the magical number for everyone because 21 million Bitcoin will be ever mined so if I own 21 of them that means I will be one of the privileged people in the world  Jokes aside I will be happy with any profit that I have made till then as this is just extra income in addition to my daily job. It's a pity I am not one of the very early adopters who made the big bucks though 

I wouldn't rely on Internet jobs to get money quickly when in need because you can usually get paid at the end of the month or every 15 days which is a standard time frame for online ad companies to send you a pay check if you do online marketing for them. Of course being a freelancer one can find jobs that pay faster like in a couple of days but usually there is a lot of competition for such gigs and it's very hard to get the job in the first place. If I were in dire need of money I would just get a second part-time job and ask for an advance payment or get a loan.

Paper wallet is the best cold storage for me because it's plain old paper that can easily outlast all the fancy new hardware wallets and other storage devices like memory cards and thumb drives. And as an added protection you could laminate your paper wallet and put it in a safe deposit box and that will certainly last forever. Hardware is not reliable and it can break down at unexpected times. Heck I have bought HDD's and SSD's before that had bad sectors or became unusable in a matter of days after the purchase. I suggest using at least 1 paper wallet along with your hardware devices to store your private keys on.

Yes I have spent Bitcoins shopping online for stuff when I am low on cash on my debit card and there is a very appealing deal I don't want to miss out on. For example I have already bought a couple of games on Steam with Bitcoins because I found it more convenient to use that instead of going to the bank to deposit more money to my debit card balance. Also I have bought vouchers and coupons with Bitcoins for fiat businesses because I like the bigger discounts. But in general people are reluctant to spend their Bitcoins and tend to hoard them in hopes of getting a greater profit after a price rise.

If the price of Bitcoin reaches $5000 I would probably sell whatever coins I am holding at that moment and exit the Bitcoin scene. But I am doubtful we will see such a price rise in the near future. Maybe after a couple more halving events we will see a much higher demand and the price will rise accordingly. My projection is for 2035-2040 when Bitcoin hopefully will have gotten more mainstream and the demand will have increased.

I have read a bunch of articles about Craig Wright and Dave Kleiman after Craig's interviews with the BBC and the skinny on their story together is that allegedly Craig lent Dave a lot of Bitcoins and after Dave's death his brother recovered a thumb drive which he gave to Craig Wright. Now the interesting thing is that Dave was a security maniac and used to type in 40 character passwords manually. The theory is that he encrypted this thumb drive in such a way that no one could decrypt the contents. The rumor is that the private keys to the 1 million coins of Satoshi Nakamoto are on that USB stick 

Well the issue is not with Expedia dropping Bitcoin payments but with the Bitcoin community not willing to spend their precious Bitcoins on vacation packages lol. People tend to hoard their coins for long-term investment and use fiat to pay for hotels and air tickets. I don't think Bitcoin will gain a lot of traction as a currency though. It will always be an investment vehicle for speculators. Let me ask you guys this question. If you have $1000 in fiat and $1000 in Bitcoin which one are you going to use to book your hotel and why?

Nah I don't think anything bad will happen to the Bitcoin network if the Chinese control 98% of the hashing power. They have invested so much capital in these ventures that they would be absolutely insane to be messing with any 51% attacks when their entire livelihood is dependent on the Bitcoin price. If the Chinese try any funny business they will be shooting themselves in the foot because they risk going bankrupt 100% when everyone bails out of the Bitcoin market and the price crashes to the ground.

NSA or any other agency won't gain anything by destroying Bitcoin because it's not a threat to the national security of any country right now and I don't think it will be any time soon. Plus Bitcoin is open-source right? So any tampering with the source code or placing backdoors would be easily noticed wouldn't it?

Damn all these asics on the racks are making a lot of noise. I hope the employees at this mining farm have noise-cancelling headphones or sound dampening for their office because I would go nuts if I had to stay in there 24/7. By the way, it looks like this place is located in the middle of nowhere. I wonder if this was on purpose to set up business in a secluded area or they decided on that place because it was cheaper to run the farm in the countryside.

Perhaps the option to use Bitcoin as a payment method wasn't very popular among Expedia customers and the management decided to drop support for Bitcoin because they saw no use for it other than bragging rights. I think if Expedia had not limited Bitcoin payments only to US customers the demand could have been higher as a lot of people in Europe and Asia use cryptos as well. It's a pity nevertheless.

Mate my starting post count can't be at 3812, because from 24th of April till 6th of May I made exactly 100 posts. You can see in my profile that I am at 3898. You need to subtract 100 posts from 3898 and you will find my real starting post count. Please check your math again because this is a very disrespectful way of shaving legitimate posts.

I prefer using online Bitcoin wallets for my easily accessible coins that I need for daily life and a paper wallet for everything else that is not needed urgently and that goes into long-term storage. I haven't decided on buying a hardware wallet yet as I am quite happy with my options at the moment. If I am going abroad and need Bitcoins I will put some on a mobile wallet like Mycelium or BitGo.

To me, it doesn't matter who the real Satoshi Nakamoto ends up to be. Also I don't think having a degree in Computer Science or wearing business suits fit the bill for the 'perfect' Satoshi because looks most often than not can be deceiving and this is a pretty common occurrence in the Bitcoin scene. Are we sure that Satoshi is male? 


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Would you not like it if Satoshi looked like this?  By the way this is taken from the AMC TV series 'Halt and catch fire' it's a pretty good show about developing the first computers you should check it out.

To be honest I am still undecided about what exactly Craig Wright is trying to achieve at the moment and I don't like to make rash conclusions so my current vote status is 'not sure'. If there is conclusive evidence that Craig Wright is actually the creator of Bitcoin that's OK if not then I guess we will have to wait for the next candidate  All in all I am currently on the fence.

It would be very handy to be able to pay your utility bills with Bitcoin sometimes when you are short on cash so I think it's a great idea from the government of the city of Zug to add Bitcoin as a legitimate payment method. I find it a little bit strange that they decided to cap it to only 200 Swiss francs though but anyways it's another mainstream win for Bitcoin