It's definitely a security risk.

Even using the same private key or seed phrase across multiple bitcoin wallets is a security risk. The more different pieces of software you import a key or seed phrase to, then the more potential security bugs or vulnerabilities you expose it to, and the more chance of something going wrong. I don't use Litecoin or Dogecoin, but given that Doge is a literal memecoin, then I would bet a lot of bitcoin on the fact that many of its wallets and other software are far more buggy and less secure than similar bitcoin wallets. Even if your key isn't stolen directly, then something fairly simple like reusing r values can result in your private key being calculated by an attacker.

I wouldn't even use the same private key to generate both a legacy and a segwit address in bitcoin. I think it's a bad idea to use the same private key across different coins.

So, and correct me if I'm wrong here as I've not been keeping up to date with this case, does that not imply Celsius are not only planning to just keep the contents of all earn accounts, but are also planning to try use the 90-day clawback rule to try to recover any withdrawals from earn accounts in the 90 days prior to them filing for bankruptcy? So even if you moved your funds from an earn account to a custody account, if you did it within the 90 day limit then those funds will be forfeited too?

I'm not sure I agree. If you think about it logically, then miners claiming fees is not really that different to a coinjoin transaction, when considered solely from a taint point of view. If anything, miners claiming fees should be more tainted, not less. I'll explain my reasoning.

If you take an output from a coinjoin transaction, then you can approach that in one of three ways:

• We have no idea which input(s) created that output, so the default is to consider it clean
• We have no idea which input(s) created that output, so the default is to consider it automatically tainted
• That output is associated with every input, and so if any of the inputs are tainted, then that output is also tainted

If you take the fees in a block, then the only logical approach is that those fees are 100% provably associated with every input spent in that block, and therefore if any of the inputs are tainted, then the fees are also tainted.

I do agree that the industry treat block rewards (fees included) as completely clean, but doing so makes no sense, and by any logical metric then block fees are every bit as tainted as coinjoin transactions. It is a success on the part of blockchain analysis firms that they have managed to widely convince everyone in the space that this is true, when in reality is it completely arbitrary nonsense, just like the rest of taint analysis.

Huge exchanges like Coinbase, which admitted to selling customer data to third parties? Or like Binance, which have been hacked for KYC data which then appear across various darknet markets? Or maybe other huge platforms like OpenSea, Robinhood, Coinmarketcap, or BlockFi, all of which have had data breaches resulting in user data being strewn across the internet?

It doesn't matter how big, how well known, how long established, or how reputable any platform is. Every single time you complete KYC you are taking a significant risk. The only safe KYC is no KYC at all.

That's not accurate at all. There are a number of peer to peer platforms which not only don't collect KYC, but don't even have a mechanism in which they could collect KYC even if they wanted to since there are no accounts or registration required. Check out Bisq or RoboSats for example, or others available here: https://kycnot.me/.

Further, there is no evidence that KYC is effective at preventing money laundering. KYC is about surveillance and control, nothing else.

Until you trigger one of their unknown algorithms and they lock your account and demand KYC.

Bisq, RoboSats, LocalCryptos, HodlHodl, LocalMonero, AgoraDesk. More here: https://kycnot.me/

Apart from the complete lack of privacy. And the risk of your details being hacked/stolen/leaked/sold. And the risk of identity theft literally ruining your life. No, nothing wrong at all.

This is precisely what bitcoin solves.

It already is. If you use bitcoin through a centralized exchange, you are already at the mercy of the government.

Even if you receive fiat directly in to your bank account when trading bitcoin peer to peer, the government just sees a transfer from one private individual to another. It doesn't know that any bitcoin changed hands.

Doesn't mean it isn't being checked, even if by some automatic algorithm at his bank. And if something flags up, you can guarantee that payment is being put on hold while the bank investigate. This is simply not possible with bitcoin.

Here are the most well known ones I am aware of:

https://hrf.org/donate-bitcoin
https://www.unicef.org.nz/donate-in-crypto
https://www.savethechildren.org/us/ways-to-help/ways-to-give/ways-to-help

You'll also find an enormous list to choose from here: https://thegivingblock.com/donate/. You an search for individual charities and nonprofits to donate to directly, or you can pick an "index fund" in a sector of your choice and your donation will be used across multiple nonprofits in that sector.

Blockchair also have a charity scheme here: https://blockchair.com/donut

As I pointed out earlier in this thread, you should only use a non-KYC account on KuCoin if you would be happy to complete KYC if you needed to to get back all the coins you are storing on their exchange, or alternatively happy to simply abandon all the coins you are storing on their exchange. Every centralized exchange which offers non-KYC accounts has the ability to demand KYC from any user at any time, and will lock your account and seize your coins unless you comply. If you don't comply, your coins are lost.

So yes, you can use KuCoin without KYC, but you are at constant risk of either having to complete KYC or losing everything you have on your account.

Far better to use DEXs which never request KYC and do not have the ability to seize your coins.

So I have to go to the bank, prove who I am, have my ID checked, have the cashier produce a check, have it signed, have it countersigned, send it to the other person, they have to take it to their bank, have it checked by their bank, arrange with yet more third parties to actually transfer the funds, the list goes on. That's a lot of third parties who need to agree to the process, any one of which could decide to deny my request.

With bitcoin, I make a transaction, I sign it, I broadcast it. Done. There is no one to deny me anything.

Exactly! The beauty of bitcoin. Can't do that with a bank.

Or just trade peer to peer.

I don't think I've misunderstood. My point is that strict regulations are exactly the reason why exchanges end up freezing accounts and seizing coins. This kind of behavior will not be decreased by stricter regulations. On the contrary, this kind of behavior is actively endorsed and promoted by governments. It is the governments passing down regulations which say all coins which haven't come from a KYC linked address or wallet are suspicious. Compare this to DEXs which are not bound by such regulations, and never freeze or seize coins or even have the ability to do so.

If the governments of the world get their way, then the only way to use bitcoin will be on a centralized exchange.

The USD is received directly by you via whatever payment method you choose. If you choose a bank transfer, then you will get it directly in your bank account. If you choose some payment processor like Zelle or CashApp, then you'll receive the USD in your account on those apps. There is no wallet on these DEXs which stores USD for you.

Some of the ones I have listed above support a few select altcoins such as Monero. If you want to trade bitcoin/altcoin pairs, then there are a variety of non-KYC instant exchangers you can use, but I'm not familiar with this area so I can't recommend any. Maybe try the altcoin boards.

Use them for what?

All the DEXs I have listed above let you trade bitcoin for USD and vice versa peer to peer, using a huge variety of payment methods. You can pick and choose which payment methods you are interested in using. At no point do you need to trade for or hold any stablecoins, and given that most stablecoins are centralized and fractional reserve, better not to touch them at all if you can help it.

The whole point of a dust attack is that the attacker hopes that people will spend/consolidate dust outputs from two or more different addresses together in the same transaction, thereby providing a high degree of certainty that those two addresses are linked together and owned by the same person or entity. Since the transaction you linked spends many dust outputs all from the same address, then there is no privacy leak here and the attack gains no knowledge about any other addresses this person/entity owns.

If the user in question here wanted to move $100 million in fiat from one bank account to another, how much paperwork do you think they would need to fill in for their bank? How many people would they need to speak to and get permission from first, both at their bank and the receiving bank? How many third parties would need to sign off on it first? Now consider the same situation in paperwork. How much paperwork did this person have to complete before making this bitcoin transaction? Exactly zero. And how many third parties did they need to speak to and get permission from first? Exactly zero.

The regulations on the crypto industry are exactly the reason why centralized exchanges pull shady moves and freeze or suspend accounts - because they know the government is breathing down their neck at all times so they have to spy on all their users and freeze anything in the least bit suspicious. If you want even stricter regulations then expect even more accounts being frozen, not fewer.

Here's an analogy:

I am a merchant. You want to buy some things from me. You try to pay with cash. I say "I cannot see the full history of this cash, so I refuse your money". So instead, you tap your debit card. I say "I cannot accept this money without knowing the full history of it". I demand access to your bank account so I can see where all your money comes from. You leave and come back with your bank statements, but I don't like what I see, so I refuse payment. You then try to pay with PayPal. I demand access to your PayPal account so I can see where all your money comes from. You unlock your PayPal account on your phone and hand it over for me to look at. This PayPal money looks OK to me, so I accept it. You then leave the shop and start telling all your friends "Make sure when you shop there you have all your bank statements with you so the merchant can look at them, and make sure none of your money comes from anywhere except your employer, since they can't trace those funds." Your friends all look at you like you are crazy, and then simply choose to shop with the merchant next door who doesn't do any of this nonsense.

Whenever this situation comes up, with the discussion of centralized exchanges and privacy, it always seems that the default position is "Sacrifice all your privacy and let people spy on you so that you can use a centralized exchange". In any other financial situation that would be seen as utterly crazy, as I've just shown above, but for some reason with bitcoin people just accept this nonsense? The problem here is not mixers, or coinjoins, or Monero, or any other privacy technique - the problem here is centralized exchanges. If you don't want a centralized exchange to seize your coins, then don't use a centralized exchange. There are plenty of decentralized exchanges to choose from.

The logical position when faced with entities which are stealing coins is not "I should bend over backwards and sacrifice everything to hopefully mean they don't steal my coins!", but rather to simply not use the entity which is stealing coins.

I've never argued against NFTs from the point of view of memes or "poor art" being worthless. I've argued against them from the point of the very concept of me "owning" a meme but that everyone else can still use, share, edit, print, display, etc., is pointless. I think NFTs probably have future utility in terms of proving ownership of physical assets such as property, vehicles, etc., maybe even for trademarks and copyrights, but not for memesa.

Even if Foxy declares that she absolutely loves NFTs and thinks they are the best thing since sliced bread, doesn't mean I still can't think they are 99% stupid. And Foxpup is getting our avatar space (and a few hidden bonuses too ), not some hash of the avatar she designed.

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Still, as I said above, if you want to port all your NFTs to bitcoin, then I, or anybody else for that matter, can't stop you. People like me are obviously not the target market here. So rather than arguing about the utility or futility of NFTs, let me ask you (as someone who is obviously heavily involved in NFTs) this: Why do you think people are doing all this activity on Ethereum instead of on Bitcoin? What should we do to get this activity on to Bitcoin instead?

Who cares? The bitcoin belongs to this individual. They are free to hold it, move it, sell it, trade it, dump it, anything they want, without any input or interference from third parties. Such is the beauty of bitcoin.

The number of provably lost bitcoin numbers a few thousand at most. There are over 19 million coins in circulation, any of which could be unloaded on to the market at any time. No one is waiting for the market to "forget" about their coins.

Further, moving coins doesn't mean they are being sold.

How do you know that? Perhaps this person has just bought a luxury mansion for $100 million.

There is no decentralized or peer-to-peer trading using shielded addresses? Then what's the point of Zcash?

I'm not convinced. Seems like a case of selection bias to me - i.e. purposefully selecting a subset of the data to make it show what you want it to show, while ignoring the rest of the data which doesn't show this.

The author of the tweet has picked 6 points which fall in to the categories of "Dormant for 7-9 years" and "Greater than 5,000 BTC", and said the prices drops after these 6 movements. However, if you go to look closer at the chart, then after points 3, 4, and 5, the price actually increases. So we really only have 3 points in which the movement of these coins corresponds to a price drop, which is easily within the realms of coincidence.

Now look at the other categories. There are over a dozen points within the "Dormant for 5-7 years" and "Greater than 5,000 BTC" categories. The majority of these points do not show a price drop. Indeed, the two most recent points in this category are huge - movements of 70,000 and 90,000 BTC respectively. In both cases, the price went up immediately afterwards.

I don't see why 5,000 BTC movements of 7-9 year old coins would make the market fall, while movements of up to 90,000 BTC of 5-7 year old coins would make the market go up instead. I think the author is looking for a correlation which isn't there.

The easiest analogy I know of regarding this is to consider each output from a transaction like physical bills or bank notes.

Let's say I'm a merchant. Alice pays me a $5 bill for something. I put that $5 bill in my wallet. Bob pays me $20, so I put that bill in my wallet too. Charlie pays me $10. Dave pays me another $5. I now want to put all the money in to my bank account. So I head to the bank and pull out my wallet. I can't hand over a single $40 bill, despite the contents of my wallet being $40. Instead I have to give them the $20, the $10, and the two $5s, to make $40 in total. All the money comes from the same place (my wallet), and it all adds up to the total ($40), but it is still very much separate amounts of money until the bank takes it and turns it in to $40 in my account.

The same is true of bitcoin, even bitcoin which is all sent to the same address. Just like the bank notes coming out of my wallet, the bitcoin coming out of the same address in the transaction you have linked does not combine in to one single amount until it is spent.

It's also worth pointing out that donating increases your privacy. If you deposit an exact amount and then withdraw the same exact amount, then you have lowered your anonymity set. If you deposit an amount, donate some of it, and then withdraw a different amount, you have a much larger anonymity set.

Implying that the only people who use mixers are doing something illegal, which isn't true. We've know for years that a very small minority of coins which are mixed are linked to illegal activity, and by far the largest source of coins entering mixers are directly from centralized exchanges - i.e. people simply looking to regain some privacy from the ever increasing surveillance conducting by centralized exchanges and their blockchain analysis partners.