It is an interesting concept, the exchange does not hold any funds and does not do much between the users. But it does kind of verify who the buyer and seller are. So all the wallets are held by the users.

Sounds kind of like Visa / MC. They don't hold the funds the peoples banks do. All Visa/MC do is pass the data along. And takes their cut.

But unlike most other DEX they are holding a bit of data about the users. Which probably makes all the compliance people happy.
We can all think it sucks, but in the end it's a US based business who has to follow some rules. We also don't have to use it if there are other alternatives.

It might not be the best or even good but more options are always better.

-Dave

I would think it would be the opposite. If I have to worry about taxes if I sell I am going to keep sitting on my BTC I would think most other people are the same. If you don't need to sell and your are worried about the tax burden, you will wait till 'later' to sell it and deal with it. Most people buying / selling / trading as an investment see the taxes as just part of the cost of doing business so it does not matter to them.

Just my opinion.

-Dave

Non wallet but...Years ago, we used to receive security dongles that were vacuum packed with custom plastic with a serial number. Inside there was a dongle and a scratch off card. The card had 3 numbers on it.
#1 was the serial number of the bag

#2 was was a code that had to be entered to activate the dongle. Once that code was entered in the dongle it never needed it again so you knew if someone got it and activated it.

#3 was one you could enter online that would then display a 6 digit number there were some button pushes you would do on the dongle and if it was not tampered with should display that same number.

No idea how secure it really was, but it did give you that warm feeling that they were trying.

-Dave

The other thing that nobody seems to be talking about is fake ID. Could be a US thing but teens are well known for being able to get ID that says they are older to buy alcohol. Do you really think some ID check system is going to be able to catch the fact that person X is really 16 and not 18 / 21

Same with problem / self excluded gamblers in real casinos. With multi million dollar camera systems and a ton of other monitoring, physical casinos are still regularly finding self excluded players and throwing them out. There have even been lawsuits where excluded players have won jackpots and not been able to claim them since they were not supposed to be there. Went through the courts and universally it was more or less "Too bad, so sad, no money for you" the casinos usually donate the money to charity, but they still don't get their winnings.

So unless you shutdown all online gaming, there are always going to be issues. If you really think KYC is going to stop it for the people who really want to gamble, you are sadly mistaken.

-Dave

So the other day one of my nodes had an issue and I shut it down:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5369431.msg58486063#msg58486063

Then a couple of posts later @Rath_ did point out that you could tweak the config files of both LND and c-lightning to change the lock times that you create and accept. I knew that but never really thought about it. We should probably come up with a list of "things you might not want to leave at default" that can be discussed.  Timelock / fees / min and max channel size /

-Dave

The flip side is also a lot of banks want certain things to happen before they allow money in and out of your account. So although there are no set rules many non bank business follow the same pattern. I have had to do a ton of bank verification for my brokerage account and some other things before transfers were allowed.

Keep in mind with the brokerage they had all my information and the initial deposit was with a check from the same bank they wanted me go though 4 steps to verify.

-Dave

Also keep in mind after Jan 1st 2022 PayPal will being issuing 1099-K tax forms for anyone who receives more then $600 in funds unless it's tagged as friends and family. So if they are paying for work as goods and services and you are moving the money around there could be tax implications to think about.

https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2021-11-04-New-US-Tax-Reporting-Requirements-Your-Questions-Answered

Do you really want to be the one on the hook for Federal & State taxes for the amounts that your friend needs to move around?

-Dave

For those who have not followed my other posts I have been running a few nodes in a box: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5364113 today the fan in one of them failed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5364113.msg58485606#msg58485606

Since it's an RPi the fan is more or less not needed. BUT since it was making a really annoying noise I decided to close all the channels and shut it down. Well, since 2 of the other ends were offline I now waiting for them to close. Whatever, not a big deal. But, if I did have a lot of BTC locked up in a channel that I needed I could see that being a real annoyance. I know on an intellectual level that this could happen and it's just a wait it out. But it's still something people should think about. And since this is about the experience of running a LN node. Well, I guess dealing with things like this is worth a mention.

-Dave

So the fan in one of my Argon cases just went bad. I bought the case on Amazon, and just sent Argon a message through them. Let's see how their customer service is. Yes it's a generic fan that they use and I do have a few of them sitting around, but I want to see how they handle the issue.
Got the case July 26th, had it built and running a day or two later so it lasted a little under 4 months

Edit: They contacted me through Amazon today (the 22nd) and said they would ship a new fan. Will update when it arrives.
Edit #2: Got the tracking number (24-Nov)
Edit #3: Got the fan board in yesterday Dec 10 2021. it was shipped from China to the US in a padded envelope...that looks like it was run over by a truck. Not even going to bother installing it, just going to order one from Amazon and call it a day.

-Dave

I didn't originally mean the drunk boat buying / $300 of tequila just more of the security aspect.

As in everything else went wrong bit of security.
If you are being held for the $5 wrench attack, they will eventually get all your BTC $50 at a time or have you turn off the geofence or drive you near your home / secure zone.

It's more of how I and and some people I knows spend BTC / crypto in general. And some of them even after a ton of screaming by me still have really poor security.

I have a hot wallet on my phone with more crypto then I should, that's on me and a recognize that. It's being spent, but slowly. But even with that and a fair amount of places I can spend it I really don't spend much crypto when I am outside my home or office.

A little digression here but; I am cheap to a certain extent, and I also use credit cards to my advantage as much as I can. Grocery stores I have a 4% cashback card, gas stations a different 4% cash back, restaurants a different card with 4+% cash back and so on. As of now BTC / crypto does not really get me that. So when I am spending it outside of my home / office is usually going to a friend for something or at the rare location that does take crypto and I only have a card that gives me 2% back there. Many of the people I know are the same way.

So if for whatever reason I am sending out a large amount of BTC / crypto when not at home or work something either went very wrong OR someone has gotten access to my phone and wallet due to MY sloppiness.  BUT, there are plenty of users both new and somewhat experienced that do not have great security. This is just another layer for users like them and a bit more security for someone like me, who probably does not need it but it would be nice.

There would be a ton of implementation issues to be sure. But, it seemed reasonable when I posted it.

Like the equipment I was programming that brought this on, I was doing it in a secure facility that you have to go though a front door with a guard and you need a RFID pass to get in and then though a biometric door and another RFID secured door and then get into a locked cabinet. Then you can only program it when you are using a console cable plugged into a PC.
I really think that it's overkill to need a BT signal too.
But as several people pointed out on a different forum, that is that location. How many of these units are in a more relaxed office setting and although they should be in a locked server room, some tech actually does the initial setup in their cube. So now if the tech goes to the bathroom / get a cup of coffee and forgets to lock their PC you can't screw with the switch routing. I thought it's pointless, but everyone else thought it was a good idea.

-Dave

That will have nginx listen. If you have IP6 configured and running on the PC and the IP6 IPs on the router pointed to it then you are good.
It's probably not worth putting in a lot of time at the moment getting it working, IP6 is not that big in the world at the moment despite many ISPs pushing it.

-Dave

100% what vv181 said. Cloudflare will not work with "non standard" ports.
Not sure why, but it's what they do. You probably should not use them anyway for this kind of stuff. Do you really want a 3rd party reading all your LN transactions?
Also, unless you have the IP6 ports mapped back to your PC through the router AND have IP6 on the PC AND have nginx responding on IP6 do not give the IP6 info in DNS.

Because, if someone who does have IP6 tries to connect it will not work. If a network that is using IP6 to IP4 tunneling that you don't even see (a lot of cell phone companies do this) then it will not work.

-Dave

They are accepting it until mid January, so no surprise it's still listed. We also don't know if it's a bluff or not. Up until some IT person takes it out of the payment processing API they can still reach and agreement with VISA over the rates. It could just be they are both seeing who blinks 1st I think Vida will, possibly not a first but after a few weeks I think they will come back with a better rate.


That is for the US, the UK already went MasterCard

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cobrandcard/marketing.html?pr=ukndplat&plattr=footer&place=camp&ie=UTF-8&ref_=footer_cbcc
With an insanely high 21.9% APR I might add. As in wow holy fuck that's an interest rate.

-Dave

Should not matter for the most part so long as they are moving the correct amount of air (CMF) or more at the RPM that the miner is expecting.
What model fan did you get to replace the stock ones? And why?
The stock ones that they used, were at least for me and the people I know, just about indestructible vs the ones from other miner manufacturers.

-Dave

Also the US, it's based on where you received the asset in most places.

The 3.5 billion seems like a large number but it's really not.
As stated 1 billion was from 1 thing and with all the covid restrictions in place a lot of assets that could be seized were not.
2022 is going to see a lot more homes / cars / buildings seized then this year and last yeat.
Bank accounts, brokerage accounts, crypto are easy to do during a pandemic. Other physical things are hard.

-Dave

For more information about the old firmware and options for a new unit take a look here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5359720.0

As for the good / bad it's not like the old unit won't work, and they are giving a discount on the new hardware, so it's not totally terrible.
And it's still better then the Nano X battery issue.

-Dave

There are already custodial somewhat nanny wallets (Conbase) I was just thinking about how some BMS systems as I said are now geofenced for some features and the networking stuff I was working on needed to be in BT range. For both things it is just about impossible to be working on the wrong unit.

For the switches they can't even be programmed without being physically plugged into them. My thought was if I have a cable plugged into it do I really need more security?
Their thought is, if you are programming it and walk away to go to the bathroom or something and forget to lock / log out of whatever you are using to program it, it's still secure since you are now out of range. Just that last line of defense. 4
Same here, all your major funds are locked in a HW wallet, but you still have some on a hot wallet on your phone. It's would just be the last little bit of security on your phone.

The drunk boat thing was just a bit of humor.

It was just a thought, didn't know if anyone else would agree or not. Seems not so much.

-Dave

Having something that is everyone's face about BTC and crypto in general is a good thing.
I am not a fan of crypto.com but I think if you asked just about anyone here who is good in the crypto field you would get a ton of answers.
Is the crypto.com arena any worse then Gemini stadium or The Coinbase theater?


New Yorker: "Who cares, they are just Laker fans"

But seriously, it is like you said, people will call it whatever they are used to. There are several small venues here that have not had their old names for years that are still referred to by them. Some others I know have sponsors but you only see them on the tickets and on the venue. Not really referred to that way. 

-Dave

It's not to stop the determined criminals, just if you are out and about and for whatever someone gets access to your phone. Not a professional thief going after your funds more of you unlocked your phone, you opened and unlocked you wallet and then "X" happened. It's just one last line of defense.

I was configuring some equipment today and although it did not USE Bluetooth to do anything. I had to be in BT range to do certain things to make sure I was working on the proper unit. I thought of the post I made a few weeks ago and figured it might be worth a discussion.

It might also stop this:



-Dave

From the article:

So Visa used Brexit to raise fees and Amazon said no.
Not surprising since they are both the 800lb gorilla so to speak.
Visa is massive in terms of card issuance and Amazon is well....Amazon.
I don't really have an issue with either doing what they did. It's business 101.
Make as much money as you can as long as you can.

With GB leaving the EU and not keeping the financial structures in place it allows businesses like Visa to do what they want. If others follow suit then either Amazon and others will stop taking all cards or just raise prices.

-Dave