Mostly correct, although I would argue that algorithmic stablecoins like Dai do have some use - for example as a means to save money in countries with an unstable currency like Argentina. It might have some use case, but saving to a stablecoin must be one of the worst things you can do. First of all, saving on fiat currency is generally not a good idea, especially these days that it gets de-valuated day by day. And since stablecoin reflects to a fiat currency's market value, it's a bad tactic. Second, as said by pooya87, there are no guarantees that the company does have the necessary reserves, and that it'll continue maintaining this stability. In fact, from a Forbes article of 2021, Tether released that they hold about 75% of their USDT in cash. The rest 25% comes from investments. And that wasn't always the case; they switched from 100% cash to 75% in March 2019. Summarily, it isn't safe, because there's another centralized entity introduced to the whole situation, along with the FED. I disagree The only use case I can think of is anonymity. Say a merchant doesn't want volatility of bitcoin, and want (ironically the volatility of) their fiat currency. They can accept USDT, and you can acquire it and immediately spend it without holding it for a long enough time to experience losses. |
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Pretty much what hatshepsut93 said. If you use the term "backed by" as an insurance that 1 BTC can be traded at any time with 1 unit of an other asset, then it's wrong, because bitcoins aren't liabilities, same as bank notes were during the gold standard epoch. But, "backed by" is a synonym to "supported by" as well, which in this case is true; bitcoin's supported by a variety of merchants across the world. The respond is actually pretty simple, just ask them to show you a real use case of shitcoins like ethereum in real world that is not for gamblers and speculators. But, is that a good question? Say the same merchants who accept bitcoin, added ethereum to their available payment options. Would that unmake ethereum a shitcoin? Take a better example: Fiat. Everybody accepts fiat, but I can't deny it's a shitcoin, because a small group of non-elected people decide the monetary policy, and there's only one full node running.  |
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I don't like seeing the Bitcoin users as collectivists. Pretty much the opposite. Running a Bitcoin node is a process dedicated to the individual. Each individual has the same rights, as anyone, to change their rules with no one's permission. The Bitcoin network never tells you what to do. You're just receiving information and instruct based on the rules you've chosen to follow. Those who are running full node they do not get anything but contributing in the ecosystem without any selfish act. No, no. They pretty much do gain benefits. Running a full node grants you privacy, security, and self-sovereignty over all. In fact, running a full node does a lot more contribution to the person running it, than to the network bandwidth-wise. |
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Don't expect the same gains as the Bitcoiner's who held for 10 years. I do expect gains, because we're in the usual time when very few talk about bitcoin now more, and it's not over hyped by even soccer banners. I also expect gains, because within the next few years, maybe 8, 10, 15, I'm quite convinced that it'll someday become a necessity for some merchants to move to bitcoin, because they aren't going to have an alternative.
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I'd advice you to not look on social media when it comes to bitcoin. There's absolutely no way to time the market if you're not a broker or another company that owns valuable data that can help you make some judgements in the short term. And believe me, this kind of data isn't worth zero to be shared in places like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Pretty much the opposite; it's worth a lot.
TLDR: Trust nobody. Opinions are like assholes. No guru wants your good.
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why does it matter which way you do it, treating it as a string vs a number though? SHA256 takes bytes as input. Each character from a dice rolls string takes 8 bits, whereas in a dice rolled number (integer with base 6), each character takes about 1.66 bits on average (1, 2, 3, 4 give 2 bits, while 5, 6 give 1 bit). Therefore, hashing a string would give you a false sense of security. For example, string "123456" is 6 bytes, but (123456) 6 is 6*1.66 = ~9.96 bits. which is about 1 byte. To think it more simply, in a string, each character takes up to 2^8 = 256 different values (00000000, 00000001 [...], 11111110, 11111111), but a dice roll can only give up to 6 different values. Therefore, a 128-bit random number doesn't have the same security as a 128-bit string that is consisted of 16 dice rolled characters. |
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Let's clear up some confusion. - Price doesn't change according to the hash rate. It never did.
- Hash rate doesn't change according to the price in the short term.
- Hash rate isn't solely based on the price. There are various factors that determine it in the long term. Bitcoin price, energy price, ASIC price, regulations, technological efficiency, and more.
Also, we are far from a bull run. Either be patient or get off the Bitcoin roller coaster now. |
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Ugh, would you mind if you lower-cased for a sec? You know. Like an ordinary person who doesn't yell at you.
Bitcoin isn't backed by an asset, because it is itself an asset. Just like gold isn't backed by anything other than its shiny physical beingness, bitcoins are units that reflect to a digital currency that is supported by merchants who have collectively and individually recognized it can work in favor of them.
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I'm worried that I won't succeed on accumulating as much as I want. Jokes asides, there isn't something I'm less worried about nowadays than the future of bitcoin. About the first point: I assume that there is a risk of failure on this currency given that bitcoin is still beta software. Yes, it's still treated as an experimental software, but I'm comfortable with that. In any case, what isn't experimental? Is fiat currency not experimental? Of course not, gold standard was abolished in 1971, and we're now observing the consequences of monetary policies that depend on irresponsible politicians. |
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That's a weird code! It basically generates the random bits but uses it as a string instead of binary! From what I can see, it takes the dice rolls as a string (e.g., "1642566[...]3231454"), converts the string into bytes, and performs SHA256 to that (as it can't do otherwise, you can only feed bytes to SHA256). In this code, encode() is used to convert the string into bytes. Maybe not something better but maybe you're putting "full time cryptographers" on a bit of a pedastal. Exactly what is one of those? Do they work in some college and get paid to publish research papers? Does it matter if they get paid to do research? Some do, some don't. It's pretty much of a fact that a cryptographer knows more than ordinary people know about cryptography. [...] Maybe a more secure approach for SeedSigner would be to generate the seed phrase in another way (e.g., Electrum), and have it imported later in SeedSigner. However, Electrum's standard for mnemonic isn't the one SeedSigner follows, that is the BIP39, and I'm not sure if just importing an Electrum seed phrase as a BIP39 would be equivalently secure. At this point, I shouldn't be using SeedSigner, because it isn't as reviewed as Electrum is. That, alone, is enough in terms of security, but it's so confident and portable device, oppositely to a laptop. (And more secure as an idea, because information is transited in an airgapped way, with no external devices such as USBs) |
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[...] Let me see. I do confirm that bitcoin-23.0-win64-setup.exe does have an SHA256 equivalent of "4198eba8ac326d8746ab43364a44a5f20c157b6701f8c35b80d639a676df9011". I do confirm that I've imported achow101's public key (0x152812300785C96444D3334D17565732E08E5E41) which is one of which you can't verify the signatures with. I do confirm that SHA256SUMS is signed by achow101: ~/Downloads$ gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc
gpg: assuming signed data in 'SHA256SUMS'
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 07:03:04 PM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 152812300785C96444D3334D17565732E08E5E41
gpg: issuer "achow101@gmail.com"
gpg: Good signature from "Andrew Chow (Official New Key) <achow101@gmail.com>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andrew Chow <achow101-github@achow101.com>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andrew Chow <achow101-lists@achow101.com>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andrew Chow <achow101@pm.me>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andrew Chow <achow101@protonmail.com>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andrew Chow <achow101@yahoo.com>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andrew Chow <andrew@achow101.com>" [unknown]
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: 1528 1230 0785 C964 44D3 334D 1756 5732 E08E 5E41
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 07:17:06 PM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 0AD83877C1F0CD1EE9BD660AD7CC770B81FD22A8
gpg: issuer "benthecarman@live.com"
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 02:54:30 PM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 590B7292695AFFA5B672CBB2E13FC145CD3F4304
gpg: issuer "darosior@protonmail.com"
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 11:25:24 AM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 28F5900B1BB5D1A4B6B6D1A9ED357015286A333D
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 09:39:41 PM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 637DB1E23370F84AFF88CCE03152347D07DA627C
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 11:22:55 AM EEST
gpg: using RSA key CFB16E21C950F67FA95E558F2EEB9F5CC09526C1
gpg: issuer "fanquake@gmail.com"
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 11:36:47 AM EEST
gpg: using RSA key F4FC70F07310028424EFC20A8E4256593F177720
gpg: issuer "gugger@gmail.com"
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 11:22:08 AM EEST
gpg: using RSA key D1DBF2C4B96F2DEBF4C16654410108112E7EA81F
gpg: issuer "hebasto@gmail.com"
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Sat 23 Apr 2022 11:39:06 AM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 287AE4CA1187C68C08B49CB2D11BD4F33F1DB499
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Sun 24 Apr 2022 11:31:28 AM EEST
gpg: using RSA key F9A8737BF4FF5C89C903DF31DD78544CF91B1514
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Sat 23 Apr 2022 03:39:56 PM EEST
gpg: using ECDSA key C388F6961FB972A95678E327F62711DBDCA8AE56
gpg: issuer "kvaciral@protonmail.com"
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 07:18:09 PM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 9DEAE0DC7063249FB05474681E4AED62986CD25D
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Sat 23 Apr 2022 07:43:29 AM EEST
gpg: using RSA key E463A93F5F3117EEDE6C7316BD02942421F4889F
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 11:56:54 AM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 9D3CC86A72F8494342EA5FD10A41BDC3F4FAFF1C
gpg: issuer "aaron@sipsorcery.com"
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 03:32:27 PM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 4DAF18FE948E7A965B30F9457E296D555E7F63A7
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Sat 23 Apr 2022 08:21:37 PM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 28E72909F1717FE9607754F8A7BEB2621678D37D
gpg: issuer "vertion@protonmail.com"
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
gpg: Signature made Fri 22 Apr 2022 11:50:58 AM EEST
gpg: using RSA key 74E2DEF5D77260B98BC19438099BAD163C70FBFA
gpg: issuer "will8clark@gmail.com"
gpg: Can't check signature: No public key
(I haven't imported any other public key, that's why it can't check the rest of the signatures) |
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I'm all in for having cheaper energy, which is what renewables are all about. Efficient and abundant despite of their demand, therefore cheap. The problem is in the title; they won't come as cheaply as imagined. Given the fact that most governments that depend on the U.S. need desperately energy supply, and given that the U.S. does have the power to fund the said companies, we can expect large quantitative easing, which will obviously happen at the expense of the citizens.
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Another major reason is the first mover advantage that Windows has though. AFAIK, Linux comes with a user interface since 1992, which was a major upgrade (from CLI to GUI). I don't know how Microsoft had spread their software back then, to get advantage of their first moving position, I wasn't even born, but I know that offices did have a massive upgrade in efficiency with Microsoft Office in 90's. It might had been late to move to a brand new OS for most managers, and perhaps a risky move too, given that Excel is just better than the LibreOffice alternative. Bill had an impressive strategy, no doubt for that. |
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827 is a random number. To be precise, I meant a pseudo-random number. Computers won't ever generate that number in a range of [1, 2^256], even if it's random, because it doesn't look random. My point is not that all SHA256 outputs are insecure, but rather you might very well generate one which is not nearly as secure as you think it is. Okay, I now think I understand what you're saying. Yes. There's a chance it returns me a number that doesn't look random. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never seen an expert say to feed some dice rolls to SHA256 and use the output to generate a wallet. Depends on the expert. Is it a cryptography expert? If that's so, I don't know any such person who's designing software. If it's a software engineering expert, there is one implementation of the function that takes the dice rolls as an input, and uses the SHA256 of that as a seed. SeedSigner. Both using HMAC-SHA(x), which is different from SHA(x). Both of which, though, are hash functions. Would you feel more confident if you had the dice rolls hashed by HMAC-SHA? |
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It is not only about stealing users' coins, it is also about "stealing" users' personal data, which is very hard, if not impossible, to spot early in the case of closed-source wallets. Exactly, that's why I don't consider them private, SPV asides. If you don't put transparency above all, you can neither convince us you have good intentions, nor you have coding skills, and therefore, your software can't be called secure nor private. And that's exactly what's happening with closed-source wallet software. The developers either put some backdoor, or they're just not competent enough. The best example is Windows. And yet, number one in usage. That's the power of marketing. |
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But new member should be more welcomed when they are starting their activity here, when they receive appreciation, they stay. In threads of my interest (Economics, Dev & Tech, Bitcoin Discussion) I encourage newbies who choose to start a new topic, and either have an important question to make, or an idea on behalf of them, or just an interesting project they're working on. But, I agree that I should try more. As I see it, as a new member, same users posting everywhere, the new members posting in several threads about discussions (don't have the posts appreciated at all) These same users are posting everywhere, because apparently, they're encouraged to do so. It's clear that some are a treasure for the community, and that's why they get most of the merits. As for newbies, I strongly disagree that their posts aren't appreciated. Point me at newbies who did share something helpful, interesting, funny, or just entertaining, and didn't get recognized. Plus all the drama about what is sent and to whom is sent, I saw threads about 5 merits sent and the user was marked as an abuser. You're talking about the fundamentally flawed capsule thing? I didn't do any drama. It had just drawn my attention that NotATether, who's a respectable member in technical stuff, found this clear fraud somewhat useful. |
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So 20k users received at least 1 merit in 4 years.. That's an average of less than 1.5 new members per day that have been rewarded. Taken the fact that most users here are either shitposters or failed AIs, this number is such a decent one. The users joining number has to be way higher! And the users who have actually something interested to share should be quite greater as well. But they aren't. |
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Then that alone should be enough to convince you that there is more to consider here than just inputting a string in to SHA256 and being happy that whatever it outputs is secure enough to use as your entropy source. I refuse to accept that a random number once used as input in SHA256 gives non-cryptographically-secure result, not because I put myself above experts, but because experts say it. Take an ECDSA signature. In most Bitcoin wallets, value k is no longer generated using an RNG. Instead, it's a hash of the private key and the message. Quoting the important part from RFC 6979 (which is the standard most such software follow): This document defines a deterministic digital signature generation procedure. Such signatures are compatible with standard Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) digital signatures and can be processed with unmodified verifiers, which need not be aware of the procedure described therein. Deterministic signatures retain the cryptographic security features associated with digital signatures but can be more easily implemented in various environments, since they do not need access to a source of high-quality randomness. Besides ECDSA signatures, the second half part of HD wallets is deterministic. Hence, the entire structure relies on the fact that random numbers passed through hash functions are cryptographically secure. But damn it Jim! Is this in a manner of speaking? Who's Jim?  |
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Thank you for the acceptance. I have updated the avatar and set personal text to "neodice.com". Edit: In the spreadsheet, shouldn't the pay rate be 1 mBTC instead of 0,1? For the avatar campaign members. You can apply if you are only interested in the avatar campaign (20x) - 0.001 btc/week |
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I guess there will always be a market for custodianship of cash, fiat, gold, you name it. So, probably also for Bitcoin. Sure, but it's so ironic, because unlike fiat and gold, bitcoin was made for this very purpose, that is cutting off intermediaries in transactions. It might have some benefits, even that way, but think that if everybody thought likewise, it would have no benefits at all. Control of monetary policy would be down to exchanges' administrators, which is the only benefit left from forfeiting self-custody. Some exchanges actually have 'bank' status, meaning when they go bankrupt, some amount per customer is exempt from the liquidation sum. Can you name me one? Most I know have no such policy. And they shouldn't, in my opinion. Handing over your electronic cash to a company because you don't trust yourself to hold it, at the same time that's the very essence of the thing you're handing over, is not an attitude I would want from the cryptocurrency communities. Also, how can a company pay out their customers if they don't have money? |
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