I would argue that Paypal's move was larger because it reaches far more people, and gives Bitcoin a use-case we didn't expect. I know the way they're handling it is far from ideal, but letting people hold and potentially spend their coins within their platform (which a lot of people already use) increase demand and trust. I feel like that move is what actually sparked this meteoric rise in the first place.

On the other hand, Tesla is just another company jumping in, they just happen to be the biggest one thus far. I actually see this as an inevitability; if it wasn't them, it'll be someone else.

I still don't like how erratic Elon Musk is, especially now that he has a legitimate reason to pump Bitcoin's price. He probably holds more power than any individual in the crypto space right now, and I'm legitimately terrified of what he can do with that power. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but he can get away basically scot-free if he decides to pump then dump BTC, right?

So still no, but it seems like they plan on allowing users to spend crypto in the future based on the way they phrased these answers (emphasis mine):



I'm not sure the SEC will allow them to get away with something like that, or if they would even dare. It also seems that Paxos is handling the trading under the hood, so I wouldn't be sure they're trading air. It would absolutely be huge if they allowed people to withdraw crypto, but they're a payments service primarily (meaning they're not trying to be a crypto exchange), so I wouldn't count on it.

I don't think he was interested in crypto initially, but he's been wanting to bring tech jobs to Miami:


He even said he wants Miami to invest in Bitcoin in the same article. He probably recognized that crypto was starting to boom, and he wanted to be one of the first to ride the wave and hopefully set up a hub as tech firms are leaving San Francisco. But yeah, regardless of his initial intentions, this can't be a bad thing for Bitcoin.

The biggest advantage was actually on complete public display in the headlines recently:


You can't really do that against crypto lol. Here's a short summary of what happened. It essentially boils down to control: no one can stop you from doing what you want with your coins, whereas nearly every other option is subject to some bigwig's approval.

McAfee was a clown, Elon is just clowning. The big difference? Elon knows what he's doing.

This makes Elon is a lot more dangerous; he's been fined for memeing around with Tesla stocks in the past, but with Bitcoin, he can say and do anything he wants without any real repercussions. It's also terrifying how much sway he apparently has, especially considering he seems like the type of person to just do whatever he wants.

All that being said, I dislike how much people pay attention to his antics. All you're doing is giving him more power. I personally believe he's making money out of this (along with a sizeable ego boost), but once he stops benefiting from it, he'd likely drop it in a heartbeat.

I could be wrong, but it seems like they haven't officially confirmed that the leak is actually legitimate? I checked their posts, and they haven't had any new updates.

Getting compromised is one thing, but the least they could do is warn the users who were potentially affected that they could be targets of phishing attacks/identity theft. I know they're probably doing this the way they are to avoid possible legal complications, but it's still incredibly scummy.

The private sector actually could, but they would need the green light from their government. I can't find any examples from the US, but here are some from Asia:

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/indonesia-may-allow-private-sector-to-buy-and-distribute-vaccines

https://mb.com.ph/2021/01/04/ayala-corp-procuring-450000-doses-of-astrazeneca-covid-vaccines/

Apart from that, I'm sure some corrupt government officials somewhere are going to try to capitalize on this, so I'm fairly confident that there actually are legitimate sellers on the black market. Good luck finding them though lol.

I will admit that I only glanced at the replies, but I think people who said that 1 BTC = 1 BTC were thinking that Chipmixer may see it that way, considering it's a Bitcoin business. They didn't change payment rates even when basically every other campaign switched to USD equivalents when Bitcoin reached its old ATH of ~20k, so it's possible that they stand their ground again now. Under that context, where fiat is not taken into equation, 1 BTC absolutely does equal 1 BTC. The obvious flaw in this assumption is that Chipmixer's costumers likely do not see things the same way, so they're probably earning less BTC-wise.

Under your context of 1 BTC being paid out in 2018 vs 1 BTC being paid out in 2021, you're absolutely correct. There shouldn't even be an explanation for this, it's definitely a lot more valuable now.

Either way, I'm pretty sure no one on the thread actually believes that rates must be kept as is just because 1 BTC = 1 BTC lol; that was probably just wishful thinking and not an actual argument. Only extreme purists really ignore Bitcoin's fiat value.

Sure, but that's a very roundabout way of simply saying it's a hedge against traditional finance lol.

Either way, I'm not too sure how well received a take like this would be, considering most people wouldn't even believe that the traditional financial sector is at risk; compare that to property damage, illness, etc. which actually happens on a daily basis around the world.

I think the number of people who actually believe that Bitcoin is even a hedge against traditional finance should also be put into question. Most people I see around the internet are more casual investors than cypherpunks, and even the recent wave of institutional investors themselves are big players in traditional finance. I definitely think the ideology has merit, but it's likely not the selling point some people seem to think it is.

Absolutely, I'd say the question lies more on banks actually offering the service, and how attractive they would be vs. existing options. Even institutions could prefer more specialized services like Coinbase Custody. I'd like to say that exchanges have first-mover advantage in this case, but considering crypto isn't necessarily mainstream yet, they absolutely still could catch up by attracting newcomers if they actually tried.


Yeah, I'm sure they would want to capitalize on this somehow. I wonder if they would actually want to utilize public blockchains though; JPM for one already has their own coin, and I don't see them backing down unless it completely fails. Other big banks could also be developing their own under wraps for all we know.

I've been reading around, and quite a few people seem to think this is the US' response to China's DCEP.


It definitely seems so, but it would ultimately depend on what banks decide to do with the green light. I'm not so sure about people keeping their BTC in banks because that would defeat the purpose, but I suppose less technical people will see that as the safer option. Ethereum probably benefits from this the most though, considering how many big stablecoins are already built on top of it.

To be fair, exchanges aren't exactly known for saving users money on fees. It's not an entirely new concept either; I'm sure most people who handle crypto have dealt with stupid transaction fees from banks at some point in their lives, so they probably already know it comes with the territory even without being explicitly told so.

But hey, having exact figures on how much they actually profit from it may actually push a few users who only use exchanges to look into non-custodian options, so I'm definitely all for it. $1k for a single batch is pretty disgusting.

That graph is actually about Bitcoin interest in Google Trends, not fees. https://coinb.in/#fees still recommends 5 sats/byte at the moment. You're right though, we don't know how long this will last; high fees seems like it'll be the norm going forward, especially with Bitcoin doing as well as it has as of late.

5 sats/byte according to https://coinb.in/#fees as of this moment. It was around 15 sats/byte a few hours ago too.

This would probably be the best time to consolidate or move coins around.

It's also a bit late, but have a happy new year, people of Bitcointalk!

I see a lot of people saying greed, and while I agree it's very prevalent, I actually like that there are a lot of them to choose from. I mean, the cash grabby ones are obvious enough (copy-pasted code with few inconsequential modifications) and should die in a ditch, but in the sea of those, we also got a few like Ethereum and Monero which can actually fulfill different use-cases from Bitcoin.

Either way, even functionally similar coins like Dogecoin have their own community, and that's good for us users -- the freedom to choose backing communities which resonate with us more is never a bad thing, and actually reinforces decentralization of the crypto scene as a whole.

All that being said, it's still best to be careful with them because they definitely won't be as safe as Bitcoin for your money.

One more way to look at this is you're paying them to move your coins -- they have no obligation to provide you their block space for free.


Lightning fees are practically negligible at the moment, and it's structured to stay that way. You already have to pay on-chain fees to actually fund your channel, so I'd say it wouldn't be worth it if you had to pay hefty fees per transaction. Any figure I can come up with is going to arbitrary though, so I'd say that what we have now is perfect as is.

I'm not sure if this has been posted elsewhere on Bitcointalk, but I came across this on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ledgerwalletleak/comments/ki1nsz/received_phone_call_threatening_kidnapping_and/

Basically a leak victim being threatened with violence. Yikes. If you personally had your info leaked, you may want to drop by there; they seem to trying to organize a class action lawsuit.

Yeah, AML measures have always required relevant parties to flag transactions of $5k or more:


This provision is under the PATRIOT Act so it's likely been in effect for 15+ years, and I'm pretty sure it covers crypto. Maybe the new proposal requires more data to be provided though? Reporting of $3k worth of transactions is also new.

This made me want to check out Trezor's privacy policy, and it turns out they delete order data after 90 days at most. It still comes down to trusting a third party to handle your data correctly, or to even do what they claim they'll do, but at least they're a lot less vague with how long they keep your data:

Trezor:


Ledger:


This probably goes without saying, but maybe the best advice to give at this point would be to stay away from Ledger completely. I wouldn't even trust Trezor to be honest, but it's up to the individual to weigh the risk of letting others handle their information.

Not the person you replied to, but in a nutshell:

• Install Ubuntu in something that will never go online (Old PC, small partition, a persistent flash drive, etc.)
• Download the Appimage from electrum.org, put it on a flash drive
• Transfer the Appimage to your offline Ubuntu, run it, then create a wallet -- it's now effectively a cold wallet
• To find out how you can use your cold wallet, refer to Electrum's documentation

If you are able to make sure that your Electrum copy is clean, your Ubuntu device will never go online, and that your seeds are secure, you'd basically have an impenetrable wallet.

Edit: I realized kano wants you to delete the wallet altogether; it's a bit safer since you won't need to worry about your device being compromised physically, but also means you will need to restore your wallet to spend from it. If you decide to do this instead, simply format whichever device you chose to use after setting up a watching-only wallet from the link I shared above.