Because that is how the protocol was written. The client just has a list of private keys and knows nothing else.

If you want to create the transaction and send it there are many places that you can do that manually. But if there is an issue you have to track it down and figure it out yourself.
If you are sending it out through a fully synced node that has a known set of protocols / commands then is there is an issue you can reply with a known error code.

Otherwise if you want to transmit to the network you still need a list of nodes that will accept it, or you have to run your own node or at least get a list of peers you can transmit to.

Or you can just run your own full node and call it a day. As has been discussed, you can get an old machine with a 1TB drive for well under $100 and do it yourself if you are worried.

I just setup an electrum server last night for a test. Went for an old Dell 3rd gen core i5 laptop $45 and and used an old spinning drive that I had sitting around. But if I needed the drive it would have only been another $25 or so. If you are concerned about privacy then it's not that difficult to do. I cheat and just copy the blockchain from an existing node I have but outside the sync time it's not that long a process and not that tough. What I wanted to do didn't work but that's another story.

-Dave

Drifting even more from the original post but makes you wonder if a 'proof of cold storage' protocol thing would be good.
Bank "A" signs something that says they have 100BTC
They can then open 10 x 10BTC lightning channels to 10 other financial institutions without having to expose that BTC to 'the real world' until it's time to close them.

Without a lot of programming & security I can see it being a nightmare for abuse. BUT I can also see it making the risk assessment that much easier. They don't have to worry as much about hacks if their money is sitting in a 3 of 5 multisig wallet and only gets touched / balanced at the end of the week (or whatever)

I'm sure there are a ton of reasons why it can't work but it's a thought.

-Dave

Because that is how electrum (and other light wallets) work.
They don't hold any blockchain data and connect to the servers to get balances and transmit transactions.

You can get around this by running your own server but at that point you don't have to worry about SPV spies.

Side note, but if you are concerned about privacy when using things that rely on other servers then you should be sure your client allows you to select which server you connect to.

-Dave

They will still know what addresses are connected when you make and sign a transaction that is transmitted through their server.
And
If you just keep making queries and never send a TX it would be trivial to figure out that they are just bots.
And
If you ask about some of my addresses that are going out through a known server then they know at that point that you are not 100% legit. So if other addresses are known to be transacting through certain servers and you ask about them it will also be obvious that you are just looking.

I'm sure there are more issues out there too with this.
Good in theory, do not see any real way of implementing it.

-Dave

The right tool for the job. Will always depend on the job.
Want to move a lot of lumber. Then a full size pickup is great.
Want to deliver pizza in a crowded city. Then a smart car might be better.

JD saying rust is good for system / real time is fine. Unless it's a low power embedded system, then assembly language might be better, small and fast execution.
And so on. There is no good / better / best without knowing all the details.

-Dave

This is at best a guess as to what will happen and how things will come to be in terms of encryption & cryptography and how to better prepare for it.
A lot of very smart people are putting a lot of time into it, but in the end we don't know how it will play out.
For now at least the biggest threat to encryption & cryptography and security in general is still the thing between the keyboard and the chair.

https://youtu.be/9TgP4par0ws?t=130

-Dave

Let me start with ouch. I just rolled my eyes so hard I think I pulled a muscle in one of them.

But, with the NHTSA starting yet another investigation into Tesla https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-opens-investigation-into-580000-tesla-vehicles-over-game-feature-2021-12-22/
he had to say something to distract people.
I actually joked to someone yesterday that there would probably be another Cybertuck tweet coming. Guess he went with a crypto tweet instead.

As for the 'shade', I think more and more people are not paying a lot of attention to him with the crypto stuff anymore. There are still a ton that do, don't get me wrong. But more and more I see him getting a smaller and smaller reaction to his tweets.
And although it's 100% not important or related at the time of this post BTC is back above $51000 so in the very short term a lot of people did not care.

-Dave

The problem with the above attack is that it's just not worth it.
It really would have to be an epic one and done kind of thing, since after that payment processors and the rest of the internet are gong to know that miner is doing something funky.
And what are they really going to get out of it.

It's the equivalent of doing a "Mission Impossible" getting into the server room to steal a bag of chocolate. And then never to be trusted again.

And if it's real durable goods, say you got your Lambo and got out of the dealership before they figured out what happened. You are going to do what when the lawyers show up at your house asking for money?

It's all theory, but no more theory then me getting onto the roof of a WalMart store so I can get into their IT room to install my own router so when I go back in and run my credit card to buy my PS5 it just gives and approval instead of really running my card. I would be better off just grabbing the Cisco 8300-2N2S-4T2X router out of the server room and running out the door with it.

-Dave

I really can't ever see getting a "real" number at this point in time. And they are saying 1/8 of the world will have crypto. I just don't see it.
Too many people with no access to it. Too many people who don't know or understand it. Too many people who don't trust it. And so on.
If they said 500 million I could go possibly.

The other issue is getting "real" numbers:
Once person can have accounts on Coinbase & Gemini & Binance & many more accounts. And all the unregulated / non KYC exchanges that you can't even get user into from.
Truly accurate numbers are just about impossible.

Just my view.

-Dave

Following the links and a bit of googling will get you a lot of the old source code.
Keep in mind quoting myself:


If you want to / have to compile it do not try to make it work with newer versions of stuff. Go out download all the old Ubuntu DVDs with all the software and dependencies and install it in a VM and compile it there. The time it will take to hunt down every old package and then trying to get them to work on a 2021 OS will not be worth it. There are copies pre 2010 Ubuntu and other linux distros out there will all the needed packages. Trust me on this. Not saying it can't be done, but it's a lot harder.

-Dave

Replace the dollar? Probably not.
Become ubiquitous for payments and commerce? Probably.
Become a much more known thing and traded everywhere? Almost certainly.
The biggest issue with it replacing any major currency is the fact that some countries, for good or bad do need / want to have some form of control over money.

Think of the 2008 financial implosion. Without the ability to bail out some financial institutions it would have been much much worse.

-Dave

1st off my bad for not commenting earlier but back in October they backed off taking bitcoin:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/14/united-wholesale-mortgage-ditches-its-plan-to-accept-bitcoin-ethereum.html

I think this quote from the above link sums it up nicely:


No to mention for the US you have the tax implications when you sell so if are making your mortgage payment with BTC then you are adding to your tax burden (if you are selling above what you paid for it)
And, just as a thought, if you are living on crypto so to speak, and you see a spike in BTC price you may be better off selling on Coinbase^* or the like sending the $ to your checking account and paying your bill from there. This way if you want to sell NOW when you think the price is good, you don't have to deal with the mortgage company.


-Dave

^* Not going to get into the lack of privacy / anonymity of Coinbase and other places. You were going to pay your mortgage with BTC they know who you are and where you live :-)

Up until now I did not know H&R as anything other then "those tax people".
Possibly I just did not notice, so when I got to the office I asked the 2 other people who were there, one of which is a bookkeeper if they knew what else H&R block did and all I got was "aren't they tax people"

So with my sample size of 3 most people just see H&R as tax people. However, they DO other things, how much I don't know but I can see them needing to / wanting to defend the trademark. OTOH, asking people what Square does you will probably get a longer list of stuff so H&R might have a bit of an uphill battle.

The other side of the coin is that as of NOW H&R Block has a market cap of $4 billion on revenue of $3.4 billion (as of the end of their last fiscal year)
Block / square has a market cap of $73 billion on revenue of $9.4 billion (as of the end of their last fiscal year) and as of now are on the way to having a $17 billion dollar year this year.
In theory Block / Square could absorb H&R somewhat easily. And add to their portfolio and services group.

-Dave

What most of these articles seem to be missing is the fact that when these addresses do become vulnerable some time in the future, unless a lot of other things are changed in the way people use encryption changes many more things will be vulnerable and most of them are worth a lot more money.

You think some p2pk and reused p2pkh are vulnerable. Try some older NFC / RFID cards. How about old web & internet services and so on.

I put stuff like this in the FUD pile and move on. Yes it's going to happen, yes people will loose money, and YES there will be a way to stop it long before it happens and yes some people will not do it. They are the same people who go to https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and find that the one password they use for everything has been compromised and still do not change it.

-Dave

IMO yes there is a crash coming.
This is all Dave's opinion and nothing more.

1) There are a lot ob businesses out there that rely on cheap money / low interest rates. They have been deluding themselves that everything is fine since the crash in 2008 while borrowing insane amounts of money to stay afloat. Now that interest rates are going to rise they are going to implode....and blame everyone but themselves. That is going to be the start.

2) The 2nd part is going to be businesses who have not changed with the times. You can blame boomers / millennials / democrats / republicans but it does not matter. We are in a different world then we were in 2 years ago. It was going to change anyway, covid just made the changes faster. Is you restaurant not on Uber Eats / GrubHub / Door Dash. We;; guess what, you are going to loose a ton of business.

3) People who have been riding cheap credit the same way I have businesses in #1 above, sorry people shit is going to get real. Be prepared to sell stuff or loose your home.

And then it all comes tumbling down.

However, since the current younger generation has seen this in the 2000 crash and the 2008 crash they are going to be more prepared for it and adapt better and more quickly then the boomers that were fully in charge in 2000 / 08 (full disclosure I am VERY close to boomer age)


-Dave

Agreed.

Would also be interesting to reach out to the other vendors to ask about their after sale support for issues like I had with my OpenDime.
They could have told me 'too bad, so sad' and that would have been it.
But on the same note, at the time of the incident, I had to reach out to them through social media to have them send me a form to fill out and send back to get an RMA to send it to them.
Nowhere on their site was a link to "OpenDime broken, click here"

Getting the if your card is broken this is the repair & recovery methods & options would probably be good to have and something to discuss here when talking about these products.
Even to the extent of repair location.

I know I have had a couple of credit card chips go bad over the years. And my AMEX tap to pay stopped working the other day so it is something to think about.

-Dave

OP, what model RPi are you using?

I had 3 miners running on a RPi3 but the original RPi & the RPi2 struggled with having more then 2 per chain.

Would have liked to have seen under-voltage / CPU temp warnings for the Pi controller in the web interface, but they never put them in for some reason.
I *think* that some of the issues that people have had through the years with the Avalon stuff was the fact that they spend $1000s on miners and everything else and then used a $1 power supply to run their RPi.
Even with what the OP is seeing. Is it the Pi not keeping up because it can't or is not keeping up because the CPU is throttling due to heat or low power?

I always wondered why they never released a PC based control software.

-Dave

You can check the opendime sourcecode here: https://github.com/opendime/opendime
IMO separating them between things that have electronic hardware and things that don't.

There are some advantages and disadvantages to both. But for long term storage, something like the ballet may be better since there are components to go bad so to speak.
Posted about it the other day, but this could have gone worse for me: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5218987.msg56370760#msg56370760
Same with any of the other devices that contain electronics that can be damaged.

-Dave

I think you are asking about seed nodes.


Very very simply:
You run the core client for the 1st time, it goes out to a list of nodes that it has pre-programed and gets some information from them including a list of all the nodes they know about.
The node then connects to those nodes and gets a list of other nodes and starts download the blockchain and so on.
There are many that are operated all over the globe by dozens of different people.

-Dave

Painting the picture with too broad a brush.

Are *some* banks afraid of Crypto? Yes.
The same way they were afraid of the internet and online banking and banks that had no physical branches so they could compete for the same customers without a lot of expenses.
Some banks are VERY friendly to crypto:
https://www.americanbanker.com/payments/news/signature-bank-raises-its-bet-on-cryptocurrency

Are some central banks afraid of Crypto? Yes.
The larger ones that can't adapt fast enough, or have certain rules or controls that force them to operate in a way that crypto makes more difficult if not impossible.

Some other thoughts and comments:


2.5 trillion for you or me is a lot of money. For a world wide economic instrument it's not a lot.


The 1 CUSTOMER of a central bank is the government of that country. They are supposed to follow, more or less, what the government wants. In theory the government is supposed to be working for the good of the people, but that discussion is for another thread.

-Dave