No. What you have scored out leaves the basic process, but as I said, the article recommends creating grids based on previous grids, which does nothing except make it exponentially more likely that you end up with an unrecoverable back up:


I disagree with this. If someone finds your grid seed phrase, then they only have to guess your pattern. If someone finds your wallet seed phrase, then they only have to guess your passphrase. The set of all possible passphrases is orders of magnitude larger than the set of all possible patterns, and the set of all possible patterns will be greatly restricted since 1) users will draw actual patterns as opposed to selecting random boxes, and 2) users will read their boxes in a specific order (most probably left to right then top to bottom).

This. What the protocol allows you to do is not a moral guide. You can spam people with dust outputs, you can bloat the UTXO set with unspendable outputs, and you can store arbitrary data on the blockchain. You can run a centralized service which blacklists certain outputs or overpays transaction fees by 100x. And you can steal someone else's bitcoin by finding their private key. The protocol is neither a legal nor moral authority, and just because you can does not mean you should.

Such an approach would require encouraging tens of thousands of people to download and use Wasabi and compromise their own privacy in doing so. Not a great approach.

It's a fundamentally different approach, and overcomes many of the downsides of coinjoining. Ring signatures are constructed locally and do not require any input from the ten decoys you use, meaning no centralized coordinator, no liquidity problems, and no coordinating with other users. The outcome of a Monero transaction is not a case of "this input is definitely linked to one of these outputs, but I don't know which one" as it is with coinjoins, but rather "I don't know which input is being used, and I don't know where it is going".

More importantly than that, is that emojis differ between devices, between operating systems, between languages, between websites, between apps, between software, even better different versions of the same software. You could easily find that a simple update to some part of your device, even an update that happens in the background you are unaware of, could render your "seed phrase" incorrect and unrecoverable. Far too risky.

But with every such fun project, there is a non-negligible risk that someone actually uses it and loses all their coins. I guess I just don't see the point.

I mean yes, obviously if you are in possession of a private key then you have the ability to move and spend the relevant coins. But that does not make you the original owner of those coins nor does it change that what you are doing is theft.

I am reminded here of the conversations about known fraud CSW not signing a message from the genesis block coinbase address. Obviously he can't because he is not Satoshi, but even if he could, such a message would only prove ownership of that key and would not prove he was Satoshi. Such a signed message is a necessary minimum to even start the conversation, but it is not proof of identity on its own.

For the record, I am firmly against any KYC for addresses or other such nonsense to prove ownership as has been mentioned in this thread. OP owns the private key and so can now take the coins if he choose. There should be nothing at a technical level to stop that from happening, but I am still of the opinion that doing so is theft.

My last response to franky1's nonsense and then hopefully we can stop derailing this thread.

It is both. Centralized exchanges and now Wasabi treat bitcoin as non-fungible, but the ability to do so is based on an open ledger which is not private (like Monero's is, for example).

Mixers have never once let me down. My coins are impossible to trace through the blockchain, and I've never once been subjected to taint analysis or had coins frozen because I do not use centralized exchanges. Blaming mixers for exchanges implementing taint is like blaming Tor for Google spying on you. The correct response is not to stop using Tor and make Google's data collection as easy and thorough as possible - it is to stop using the products and services of Google, a company which is intent on invading your privacy and selling your data. And the correct response is not to stop mixing or coinjoining or otherwise obfuscating your funds and allowing centralized exchanges to track every single payment or transaction you make - it is to stop using centralized exchanges which are intent on invading your privacy and selling your data.

All I get is that you behave like a government agent, advising people to open up themselves as much as possible, take no steps to protect their privacy or even actively surrender it, and allow the government to monitor absolutely everything that they do in order for the government to leave them alone. This is just the "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument, which has been debunked so thoroughly so many times that anyone who still repeats it is either stupid or malicious.

I'm choosing to ignore the rest of the post since it is just the usual completely off topic junk about big blocks and Lightning which franky1 shoehorns in to every post he makes.

Here it is: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5187401

Draw a picture in a 16×16 grid and it will use it to generate a 256 bit number which is then used as a private key. As pointed out in that thread, this is still just a glorified brain wallet and should not be used.

It gives a list of the 8 valid final words and lets the user pick the one they want. They even suggest writing down the number of the final word you pick on the grid.

franky1 of course totally missing the point here, as usual. The ability of a random person to track you down or trace your transactions with no starting point and only using a public blockchain explorer is in no way equivalent to a massive blockchain analysis company which is collecting data from most centralized exchanges, including your real name, all your deposit addresses, all your withdrawal addresses, and your IP addresses, and cross linking that against huge amounts of data bought from data brokers and their own private blockchain analysis software. Saying "Well, you can't find me therefore I'm anonymous" is utterly juvenile; it is akin to inviting you to hack my computer, and if you fail then declaring my system impenetrable.

I just made a post about these wallets in another thread before I saw this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5409403.msg60732226#msg60732226

In short, these wallets are a terrible idea and solve absolutely nothing. The article you've linked to from Bitcoin Magazine takes the stupidity to a whole new level, though. They want you generate a grid, write down its seed phrase, draw a pattern on that grid, remember that pattern, use that to generate a new grid, draw a new pattern on that grid, remember that pattern, and then use that to generate a wallet. So now you still have to protect a back up of a seed phrase as you would anyway, but you also have to remember two or more distinct patterns exactly, where exactly on the grid they go, and which one goes on which grid? With no error correction mechanism should you make a single mistake, meaning a single mistake will be essentially impossible to detect or correct. And you want to convince me this is better than a seed phrase and passphrase combination?

This sounds like a sure fire way to lock yourself out of your coins forever.

I don't understand why people make insecure things like the emoji wallet and tell people not to use it. Best case scenario no one uses it. Worst case scenario someone loses their coins behind an unrecoverable seed phrase. It goes without saying no one should use the emoji wallet.

The border wallet is different because they are promoting their scheme as a genuine alternative, which it absolutely isn't. It is a mash up between a regular seed phrase and a brain wallet, and takes all the disadvantages of both. To recreate your "entropy grid", you need a 12 word seed phrase which they give you. Without your entropy grid or your seed phrase back up, your wallet is permanently lost. This is exactly the same as a regular wallet and its seed phrase back up. However, you also need to memorize the pattern on your entropy grid and where exactly it goes on your grid. If you forget either of these things, then again your wallet is lost.

Their example of using the bitcoin symbol is a poor one, since there are dozens of different ways you could draw the symbol and there are 1,534 locations you could put the correct symbol on the grid, meaning probably around 100,000 possibilities. And there is no way to use something like btcrecover to brute force the correct one should you forget, since the entropy grid is randomized.

So all things considered, you still need to back up a 12 word seed phrase and carry it or the entropy grid with you across the border, with the added disadvantage of forgetting something resulting in complete loss of your coins. Truly the worst of both worlds.

That would be very interesting if that was the case, especially given the recent news that a Coinbase employee is being charged with insider trading. If a single employee being accused of insider trading or some other financial crime is enough to result in an exchange having a majority of their assets frozen and therefore forcing them to suspend all activities for their users, then every customer of every exchange is taking an even bigger risk than previously thought by leaving any coins on those platforms. Not only do you have all the usual risks of scams, thefts, hacks, insolvency, etc, etc., but now you also have to trust every single one of their employees not to do something risky or stupid which could end up in your funds being inaccessible.

Bump. Plenty more centralized exchanges and platforms have bit the dust.

8 August - Hodlnaut suspend all withdrawals, trades, and deposits - https://www.hodlnaut.com/press/hodlnaut-message-to-our-users
9 August - Nuri files for insolvency - https://nuri.com/blog/nuri-filed-for-insolvency/
10 August - Hotbit suspends all withdrawals and other activity - https://hotbit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8074249353495-Announcement-on-the-Suspension-of-Hotbit-Website-Service

That last one is interesting - they state it is because a bunch of their senior managers have been subpoenaed and their funds frozen due to a criminal investigation.

Don't worry though. While centralized platforms continue to shut down all over the place and their users lose everything, the CEOs of these platforms continue to make some nice profits at your expense: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/08/09/dormant-wallet-linked-to-alex-mashinsky-used-to-cash-in-on-cel-token-surge/

To paraphrase Antonopoulos, if you can't use your money to buy drugs, which is the second largest market in the world after food/drink and has been for thousands of years, then your money is not really money at all. There is no money in the world which you can't use to buy drugs with, and if your money can't be used in the second largest global market, then it isn't actually money.

That doesn't stop governments and their agencies using this to help promote their taint nonsense. Just don't pay any attention to the fact that the annual fiat spending on illegal drugs eclipses the entire market cap of bitcoin.

Zerocoin and later Zerocash are the protocols which led to the creation of Zcash, not altcoins in their own right. Zcash is not private by default, requires trust in the initial set up, is ran by a centralized entity which awarded themselves 10% of all Zcash ever created, and is transitioning to proof of stake. I have seen nothing which convinces me it is better, or indeed even close to, Monero.

Neither does a private key. The same as a car key, having access to private key might let you access the underlying asset, but it does not mean that the true owner has relinquished their claim on that asset or that you are legally allowed to take that asset. Using the private key or the car key to take the asset which is not yours is theft.

Now that is a flawed analogy. You find this magical document, but you have absolutely no way of knowing that the true owner doesn't also have a similar document and indeed the keys to the car, and is just choosing to use public transport for a while, or is working from home, or has decided to walk/cycle everywhere to stay fit, or is keeping the car as an investment, or is waiting for their child to turn the legal driving age to use the car, or 100 other reasons that they might not be actively using the car, and then you swoop in unannounced and take it from them against their will.

Your inability to track down and contact the true owner especially when that owner may very well still have full access to that asset and simply be choosing not to use it for the time being does not make it OK to deprive the owner of that asset.

I don't agree with that at all. The default position is that people do not consent to you taking their possessions. If I find your car keys, but hear no response from you after a month of phoning you, then it is not 50/50 that you are consenting to me taking your car.

OK, end of discussion, but I also don't think OP is a thief for finding a paper wallet. The act of moving those coins in to his own wallet and depriving the true owner of those funds is what would make him a thief.

Obviously not, and I never said anything even close to that.

I don't care what the law says. If I take bitcoin which belong to someone else, that is morally wrong. Finding something with no way of returning to the rightful owner (e.g. cash) is different to finding a bitcoin wallet where the rightful owner very well may still have access and by taking the coins you are depriving them of that access.

I honestly don't understand what you are arguing here. Taking bitcoin which isn't yours is morally fine?

Which is why I mentioned entirely different Firefox installations above. If you run one version of Firefox with certain add ons and settings via one IP, and a different version of Firefox with different add ons and settings (and maybe even spoof your user agent) via a different IP, then it becomes significantly harder for browser fingerprinting to link your two browsers. Even better if you run one from inside a VM.

Or go for the safest method and just use Tor.

I have never claimed that and I would never claim that. But the fact remains that if you take bitcoin which belong to someone else, then you are stealing. I don't care if you give someone a pre-initialized hardware wallet, or you hack a software wallet, or you stumble across a paper wallet, or you find someone's seed phrase, or a newbie shares their private key online, or even if you managed to find an address collision, or you fork the protocol to seize coins which dont belong to you. Taking someone else's bitcoin is morally wrong.

I don't understand why you keep bringing up taxes and the government, as it is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, especially when you know very well my disdain for governments and their surveillance regimes. I have never stated that OP should hand over the wallet to his government, but taking the funds for himself is still theft.

Yes they are. There are various entities which give regular salaries to Core maintainers and devs to allow them to work on bitcoin full time. Wladimir van der Laan is employed by MIT under their Digital Currency Initiative. Pieter Wuille has been employed by Chaincode Labs and Blockstream. Blockstream also employ Andrew Chow. These companies all employ other developers too, as well as companies like Lightning Labs and Square.

Bitcoin Core development is only slow when compared to altcoins, most of which have no working product or anything of value to lose should they introduce some major bug or accidentally fork their chain.

I mean, in the West already all your movements are tracked by the handy GPS device that 99% of the population carry with them at all times, and all your purchases are tracked through your debit/credit cards, online accounts, store cards, and so on. But as above, people get some tiny convenience and so are willing to pay the price.

Perhaps they think that by simping for the government then the government might leave them alone.