But I thought I also read 25 when I looked it up a few days ago.

OP isn't updating in here, but if you look up his posts on the economics board you'll see (some of) the actual reports they do... they're not completely incompetent from a quick glance (mentioning for example Fibonacci Retracements), but I'm not sure at all those reports are worth  ~300USD. Looks too vague to be really useful IMO.

guess they're doing better than expected.... says *250* users now

Not sure if it's a scam though. From the looks of it they deliver reports. The quality of those reports could be another matter of course.

fucking saved :D

First, my apologies if this is the wrong subforum. I hope the 'Technical Support' forum is the right place to ask the following questions.

A quick preliminary clarification:

I'm not completely new to Bitcoin (but not a veteran either), and I've already read a number of security suggestions/tutorials/etc. With that in mind, I want to say that I am *not* looking for 'best practice' solutions, which presumably would mean offline usage of a full Bitcoin client, creating a paper wallet, etc. This would be the most secure, I understand, but it would not be practical for me, since I actively trade. I am just mentioning it because I want to avoid being scolded for e.g. using an online computer for transfering btc. This means I am interested in *understanding* what I do right now better, and if necessary, *improving* my practices, but please note that I am not aiming for an absolute maximum of security, but a careful balance between security and usability.

Here are my questions, grouped by topic:

(1) OS security

As mentioned above, I perform transfers on an online (more about that aspect later) computer. The OS I use is whatever is the latest stable version of Ubuntu.

Question (1.1) How safe am I from attacks during runtime, that are based on OS vulnerabilites, or programs that run on my computer. Assume that an attacker has *no physical* access to my machine, but knows my IP address and attempts to target me. My knowledge of Linux isn't particularly deep, so I don't know if I'm correct in my belief that a properly patched Linux distribution like the one I'm using is more or less 'safe' from, for example, trojans/software keyloggers, etc. How safe am I really, and what can I do to be safer? :D


(2) Bitcoin client security questions

I'm using Electrum. The electrum wallet is protected by a strong password.

Question (2.1) How safe am I using Electrum as my client? I understand that Electrum is not completely trustless because I don't have a full copy of the blockchain and rely on servers that I need to trust. So how likely are attacks on me via my choice of client? For example, is there any chance I could be connected to a "dishonest" Electrum server, who will be able to re-direct my btc transaction, or double spend?


(3) Network security

There are two scenarios in which I would possible use Electrum, or trade on a Bitcoin exchange webpage: at home, and at a public place.

Question (3.1) How safe am I when I am connected to my own WiFi network at home, which is WPA2 secured? Is there a plausible chance someone in the vicinity could intercept and decrypt my communication (i.e. break WPA2), and get for example access to the account data at my exchange? (please assume again a sufficiently strong password was set at both the exchange, and for my WiFi network)

Question (3.2) How safe is a *public* WiFi connection? Assume the WiFi connection itself is *unsecured*, but the webpage I'm using is reached via https. I'm sorry to be so clueless, but I don't really know if in that case my communication with the exchange webpage is in clear text or not? Can someone (the network admin of the unsecured network, or someone else eavesdropping) intercept my communication with the exchange website in clear text and interfere with it?


That's all.

Sorry for the wall of text :D To offer a small incentive to read through all of my dumb questions and even *answer* them, I offer a 0.025 btc = 25mBTC ~= 19 USD tip to the first poster who answers all of my questions in satisfactory detail (alternatively, I'll split the tip up between answers if no single poster answers all of them). Not much, I know, but just a small token of gratitude. If you prefer not to be tipped, please say so.

Thanks.

I don't know how this idea got started, but the graph posted by justusranvier is decidedly not a sigmoid function, it appears to be an exponential function when mapped on a log chart, which would make it a super-exponential function.

Hey there partner. We don't like your superexponential kind 'round here, y'know. Too many bad memories. *twitch*

request 1: occasionally, the API with one of the exchanges breaks down, I guess. (quite often bitstamp unfortunately). I know you can do nothing about that. The problem is, it happened that I didn't even *know* that your site didn't pull new trade data, because the little "updated" counter kept saying "update in the last 1 second" and so on. I guess the API connection stood, but no new data came in. On my mobile device, I don't see the 'recent trades' column, so I had no way of knowing that the price btcwisdom displayed wasn't the current one. Any idea how to solve this? some change to the second counter that points out if no trades came in in the last minutes or so, and that most likely the price isn't accurate at the moment?

request 2: just increase the (candle) history size a bit... just a tiny tiny bit (sorry for nagging. I know you already answered that feature request, saying that it's too ressource intensive for now... but one can hope )

I really think you overestimate the importance of mtgox at this moment. Sure, they're still relevant, but they are now one of three mostly equally important exchanges.

Better analogy: when you're in a hole, get some explosives. They might blow you to pieces, but maybe real world physics = FPS engine physis and you can rocket jump out of that hole

seriously though, I don't see a difference in principle between not investing more than you can afford and not taking a loan higher than you can afford. If he knows he can repay the loan within tolerable living conditions in case his investment fails, it's not necessarily an irrational choice.

Dude, I like your posts. Between admitting buying back in at a loss and saying (a few pages earlier) that absolute rules re: investing by taking a loan are useless, you make a lot of sense to me. /nohomo!ballsdidn'ttouch

Not exactly happy long-term customer here as well.

According to my bank, my non-trivial transfer went out from their side about a week ago. Still no deposit on bitstamp :/

I'm going to assume that's what you really did, so then I'm wondering: that strategy only makes sense if you assume that we're going to correct down to between 1/8 to 1/4 of the current price. Which didn't even happen in the April 10 crash in any substantial volume (don't know how much you're expecting to buy, but let's say it's more than neglible amounts). That's pretty hardcore bearish, not just "we're overbought right now and will correct back to July levels" but "we're going back more than half a year, well below the previous ATH". Would actually be really interested to hear why you think that's the case?

Oh,  hi there (^_-)

Not completely sure it's that simple. Not a physicist myself, but from a half laymanic/half formal class on the current physical understanding of time I got the message that at least in many subfields of physics the question discrete or not would be avoided, since time is not taken to be one of the fundamental properties of their models. I am highly correctable on this one though

8=============D
 <----this many---->

Not bad, huh?

Because both the human mind and formal algorithms need a way to divide continuous time into discrete chunks?

k, funny But seriously, do you know if btc price coverage is part of their "routine" financial program, or just a irregular feature if we hit another ATH?

Huh? NBC reports on Bitcoin price, really?

I didn't say which whale failed. One of them will, though

8 year olds, dude. 8 year olds.