Well, Bitcoin security looks very good for some years now, no risk at all there; the only "problem" is that miners pay more and more for every satoshi they receive as rewards.


Miners can't sell at a loss. Or at least not for long. Yes, they may be still selling, it may mean that they're still on profit, but with every Ehash/s up, that profit is smaller. And that's going on for quite a while, hence I expect sooner or later they'll stop selling and forcing the price go up (and if that doesn't work out, unplug the gears, at least temporarily).
That's why I said "sooner or later". I don't expect this happen overnight, but we're going in that direction.

While "Bitcoin hit a new high amid price volatility" may be misleading, the fact the hash rate went ATH again is interesting, especially since there's energy crisis in some areas (hence probably increased prices for electricity here and there), semiconductors shortage (hence I expect somewhat smaller production of miners) and political drama (omg bitcoin consumes this and that and it's not even green!)

Thanks for the nice news. I have hopes the price will also get (sooner or later) follow better this trend.

Since you're paying in an altcoin (something maybe called Bitcoin, but working on Binance chain), I think that altcoin services would be more appropriate for your topic.

Non custodial means that you (and only you) have access to your wallet seed phrase or private key.
If the amounts in discussion are big then it's advised you acquire hardware wallet or learn how to properly setup and use cold storage (hardware wallet would be much easier).
If the amounts are rather small and it won't be a big loss if you get hacked and lose those funds, an Electrum on PC (downloaded from electrum.org and verified) or Electrum on Android (but at least go to electrum.org and get the link to the correct Electrum on Play store) would do the job. Make sure you write down the seen and save it securely.

You are somewhat right.

First of all, some governments do or will push CBDCs. Those can be seen as government issued stablecoins, they are not cryptocurrencies and they're clearly centralized. Those pose some risk against fiat in hand, and not 3rd party issued stable coins or cryptocurrencies.
Yes, some also accept now Bitcoin as legal tender, but they're too few yet and don't change the actual state.

No matter what digital currencies governments approve or push, fiat money in hand cannot easily go extinct. There are always areas (usually remote areas or in closed places - like caves where tourists still go) where internet may reach with difficulty, there are cases (power outages) when life have to be able to go on normally, and yes, there are people who, for whatever reasons, will not use the technology. The governments must ensure everybody has access to money, hence they'll have to keep some amounts of hard cash in circulation.

With quite a good number of bad decisions made (including in my country) in the name of IMF, I don't think that they are best suited to say anything about panaceas.
Of course, banking people might call my words a heresy

And yeah, we've been expecting a reaction from them. I may say it has come pretty fast, actually (are they getting scared?)

He doesn't have to loan, if he has the patience to put up with all scammer wannabes, hats off to him.
And from what I've seen, he's right almost every time.

As long as you don't provide a proper collateral, it means that there's a good chance you want to scam.
Even more, you already have negative trust feedback, meaning that you don't care if you're tagged to not paying back the loan.

My advise is to:
1. Stop asking for loans, you won't get a more polite answer than this and may actually get more negative feedback.
2. Make another topic about the P2P trade you want.

Imho you should use another computer, if you have that alternative, as cold storage, properly safeguarded and always offline/airgapped, at least until the point you are 100% that HW worth it for you and you are convinced 100% on which one to buy.
HW makes sense if you use bitcoin a lot from outside of your home, and the amounts are big. Else, a cold storage for the big funds and an unsafe wallet on your phone for small (daily?) funds can easily do the job.


Of course, this assumes you know what you're doing, but I expect so.

1. If John gave you that paper, if he had a copy of that paper he could easily have access to the same wallet and transfer the funds out of it.
Since he seems to be a scammer with false identity, I find this very plausible. I've heard plenty of horror stories about nice persons met on Tinder.

2 . Without the original paper or the original wallet you cannot recover your funds, the Visa card info is useless here.
Even more, from the story about this John, I would not be surprised if the paper was containing only an address (hence you can only see the funds, but not spend) and your wallet was a watch-only wallet (again, see, but not spend).

All in all, with or without the prison time, I think that the chance is high that you've got scammed by this John character.
And even if you weren't, with the info you have it's not possible to access those Bitcoin.

Sorry...

There's no difference between "now" and "then". People always want to get rich quick. And if they don't follow some common sense/basic rules, they can too easy end up broke.
So while your conclusion is correct, the first sentence is odd..



No, just no. The fact you lack cash means that if you get a loan to invest and the investment goes bad (i.e. bitcoin price falls greatly for longer term), you will have no means to pay back, making your life (even more) miserable. If you go on this path you will also have no means to wait until the investment price gets back on profit (which, in case of Bitcoin did always happen until now, sooner or later).
PS. You should improve your writing style, it's hart to read/understand.

While he indeed went mad, I don't think that your scenario is feasible. You are talking about living creatures there, which will most probably have to survive living without oxygen, possibly high pressures, then going literally through fire, and afterwards still be alive and infecting.
Let's not be overly paranoid...


Imho it greatly depends whether the transit contract was made with Serbia/Hungary, which I don't think so, or with Russia.
Since Russia has broken its side of one contract with Bulgaria, I don't see why wouldn't Bulgaria break the other contract with Russia as response.

Ukraine is most probably still allowing the transit to not hurt Germany and the other countries, not to favor Russia. On the other hand, the customers affected by Bulgaria closing the pipe would be anyway countries cheering for Putin.

Well, not when I'm buying it


It has happened to me even with an online payment, so I don't think that inserting it into POS could help, but, why not, I might try that too when I get the error.

Yep, unreliable, but I didn't really want to discuss here about the competition.
Shortly, about every 4th-5th place I try to use the black card, it gets rejected and the app shows that 2 transactions were attempted.
For example if I want to buy something worth 100 RON, I see a 20 EUR and an 100 EUR (!!) transaction, both rejected.

I don't know either, I'd expect it to be either significantly more expensive, either have availability issues, since wind and sun are not 100% reliable, but I don't know how would that be implemented.
Moving out might be expensive, but, depending where they move, it may or may not pay off. It's clearly a risk, especially now, with so many problems with the energy (and it prices) over the world.


You do have a point here, I may have been scared for nothing and maybe indeed the hash rate of NY state is not significant.

This is wonderful news, unless I am missing something: the first country having its own currency (CFA) and still adopting Bitcoin.
...Shame that it's a country with still ongoing civil war. It will give ammo to various naysayers.

While I would like to see mining businesses not only go for regenerable electricity, but go for producing their own green electricity (see the reasons here, most important being that they won't care on long term how low will the block rewards go), I don't find this law good because it can:
* force miners move (even out of USA) instead of complying
* force miners shut down, even for a while (move out), leading to sudden drops (even if small) in the hash rate, hence to congestion on mempool

I don't think that we can. While we expect they rather keep their business running than stealing people's money, we cannot know if they indeed play fair and go random, or generate their numbers by a rule. But...

In theory if they do this, the seeds the devices will generate will be a rather small subset of all the possible seeds (so they can brute force them in a reasonable amount of time).
However, if this would happen, there's a very big chance collision would happen, and rather often, between different users' seeds/wallets. If this happens, most do post about it (especially if it's them losing money).
Yes, I know, if this happens, people tend to point to hacks and unsafe storage of the keys, but still.. there would be much more of those imho.
Also I'd expect some users be nice and, instead of stealing, start writing about it.

Imho for now it's pretty safe to assume they did play fair until now.

It will get interesting to watch how the politics will be developing now.
From what I've read, Serbia and Hungary, both cheering for Putin, get supplied through pipes passing through Bulgaria.
While Greece, although using Russian gas, offered help to Bulgaria, I've heard nothing from Serbia nor Hungary. I'd expect Bulgaria close down that traffic, it would be simply normal.

You greatly misunderstood me, so here you are:

Well, this is imho a great point and, if US legislation works in the same way as my county's, this can be attacked for discrimination and get "nulled".
Hence I see it as a pointless and pure political move.