Countries like Kazakhstan have low prices for electricity simply because it's obtained from burning the oil/gas they extract and the prices are dictated (arbitrarily) by the government, not the international prices (and basically free market). The price is low for boosting the local economy.

So if they convince the miners leave, the country may have a good chance to actually earn more on long term, by selling those resources to other countries more expensive than they would sell the electricity to the miners.

I don't agree with Kazakhstan policy, but I can understand its logic (if this was it).
And the miners.. well, as long as they are focused on getting the cheapest electricity no matter how it's obtained and how doubtful is the regime of the county they conduct their business in... maybe, just maybe, they deserve this. And as said, the new price is not that big either.

Maybe the actual thieves received most of the fiat obtained from those 25k BTC converted.
Maybe these who got caught are only the launderers/money mules.

I'm not that sure about the fabricated evidence. (But I also won't rule anything out.)

Cobra doesn't agree with this.

Normally QR would be the best, since nobody could interfere with a powerful enough antenna.
But QR also can be a problem if one doesn't look around carefully, since nowadays more and more cameras are surveilling the public spaces.

On the other hand, a properly made hardware wallet and a properly made companion software wallet should display all the information you need to properly check whether you indeed sign the transaction you expect. And then maybe convenience will win (although it may be more convenient for some to use NFC and for others the QR).

QR is more widely compatible and I'd prefer it (does your laptop have NFC?)

Do you expect people have a crystal ball, or have been coming back from the future to answer you?
If not, then you know that any answer is a (more or less) worthless speculation.

If Bitcoin price will be to-the-moon and beyond, if the on-chain transactions will be many, the miners may be just fine with the earnings from the transaction fees of whatever it's included into the mined blocks.
If some miners will not be happy with that, they'll leave, the difficulty will decrease and the rest of the miners will earn more.

Hopefully until then most of the miner will use energy they get from free (eg solar panels they've finished paying for many years "ago") hence all they mine will be basically money for free.

One thing that's not clear to me: did your guys have their own hardware or they've bought hashing power at some website claiming to be doing cloud mining?

However, one simple rule: if a platform is asking for (more) money in order to allow you withdraw your money, then it's a scam.
If your guys have bought into a cloud mining there's a very big chance their (deposit) money was stolen and they've never mined anything.

The jibber-jabber about "flat mining", "give money for RBF" is used by the scammers to look professional and doesn't actually make any sense.


It looks like a scam. How on earth you didn't start with checking whether the (source) money actually exists?

What people want is not clear. People often don't know and contradict themselves and each other.

Regulation is often seen as bad/evil. And yes, I understand that the requirements for KYC are basically stupid and while it partly covers governments' incompetence, it opens Pandora's box in terms of abuses from all directions.

On the other hand without regulations Bitcoin can't grow. Without regulations some actors can pump and dump, can fake volumes, can use bots to rise the price artificially and such. Without regulations companies may not buy into bitcoin (and lower demand means lower price, and lower price makes some cry). Without regulation the average Joe may not trust Bitcoin to buy. Without proper regulations the banks may not allow you buy or sell Bitcoin (and freeze your fiat if they catch you doing it). And without regulations most merchants can't/won't accept Bitcoin. Without regulations scams can rise easier.

All in all.. yeah, regulation is evil and the tool of evil. It is against the liberties. But without regulations it's also very bad.
So.. what did people want? Both and neither . In the same time

This may need explained better: all the competing miners will get work to do. That work's difficulty is made in a way to ensure the next lock will come at about 10 minutes after the previous.
While all work basically the same, the first miner that manages to finish that job will get the "jackpot", meaning the block reward and tx fees.
It may also worth mentioning that the miners we talk about are the solo miners and the pools. For all those participating to a pool the reward is split if the pool has mined a block.

There are some businesses selling crypto cards without KYC.
And here there are 2 categories:
1. Known crypto-card businesses' non-KYC cards which are fewer and fewer and have extremely small lifetime top up amount.
2. Cards offered basically for extra fees on other peoples' name. I don't know them that good and one has to be very careful since it's a risky and gray area (at best) business, it may worth mentioning, since afaik at least one such business does exist and it doesn't scam its users.

DarkStar_, would you please be so kind and change the payment address for me?

Basically for convenience.
While you can easily sign with the offline phone just by transferring images between that phone and the laptop, if you use an USB with a live OS and Electrum you'll need to restart the laptop for signing (and also the transfer with yet another USB is considered unsafe).

Not that much. I remember though that I've seen so much junk I was wondering why they bother moving it there/putting it on sale. I don't understand that market so maybe you're right.
Maybe I'll go and try to sell there some stuff, starting with my Nokia 6110


That is indeed a good point I didn't consider. I was considering that he will be too busy/loaded with TV, laptop and such, hence won't bother for an old phone.


Maybe. On the other hand, why get all electronics which is more difficult to hide and sell, than just everything that's related to crypto which may fit easily into one pocket?

---
However, I don't understand thieves and you guys do have good points and I may be very well be wrong.
All in all, I'm happy that I've shared this little experiment. I've got quite a lot of interesting input.

You have mixed things up a bit, sorry.
* The cars are delivered so late not because there are so many buyers, no. It's because the semiconductors shortage.
* The PC, laptops (and even tablets) sales have grown hugely in the last year(s) because people switched to working from home, kids are doing school from home

But yes, the prices are up. Some still buy basically all the crap, some are going out like crazy (you're so right about holidays and the cars on the streets - especially as gasoline prices are sky high), some others have difficulties in buying enough food or paying the gas and electricity bills.

Not only the memory of printers, which in most cases is not targeted and can be "fixed" with a reset and/or one more page of whatever sent to be printed, more like nowadays the printers can be wireless/network attached, hence online.

1. A thief may very well ignore a 10 years old smartphone.
2. I'd expect to be more likely for a thief to come because one was bragging about bitcoin. And then the thief will be looking for hardware wallets and will know how they look like.


No. It was a test, I've been using testnet coins, no need for more safety measures there.
For the real deal reset to factory may help, although I don't know how much, since it will have no SIM card, no WiFi, no Bluetooth, no NFC started. All the transfer will happen through images.

While you're right that this forum has a huge lot of information and most of what you need is here, I'd add that:

* the part about scams you've got it wrong, as Lucius has already pointed out
* I find TryNinja's search engine (it searches the posts of this forum!!) easier to use: https://ninjastic.space/search

Impressive achievement, congratulations!
I am very curious which are the boards with the most (good) reports, but I don't think that such numbers are available now on this forum software.
Also: do you use some tool/robot for this or you just read so many threads and posts and report by hand?
(I won't ask whether you're human, although...hmm...)

It's a good call. And indeed, HODLing has its downsides too. One has to have money he can afford to lose or have it locked for long time. One has to have read and trust the investment. And one has to learn patience.

If he has patience and trust/knowledge he will not be tempted to FOMO then panic sell (buy high, sell low), since Bitcoin price has its ups and downs, which can make hodlers too uneasy.
But I agree, holding is much easier than trading.

It depends greatly how the loan is also used and how can it be paid back. Clearly taking a loan for investing into crypto is dangerous and in most of the cases not a god idea. Still, many companies develop on debt/loans, people buy houses and cars with loaned money... actually with fiat hit by inflation it can even be a somewhat good business sometimes.

So it's similar to gambling only at the extent the many (wrongly) see crypto trading in a pretty much similar way as gambling. Unfortunately some even consider themselves traders.

You can't teach everything in one go, indeed, but best is to start right. Else one will start with a wrong impression and make (more) mistakes. I advised for a safer option: paper wallet or seed. Best option for holding.
In time he can learn then about exchanges and the whole ecosystem. On the other hand, if something goes wrong with the funds at exchange, his brother will become disappointed and may turn his back to bitcoin.

About Electrum vs Binance, you are also wrong. Binance is safer than Electrum? Tell that to all the Nigerians with the funds frozen by Binance. The "not your keys, not your coins" rule applies there too. And it hurts.
(Also, you can find out and read to how to use Electrum as a cold storage, meaning completely safe, if you do it right).