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4661  Other / Politics & Society / Re: The 10 worst health HOAXES pushed as “science” over the last 100 years on: July 03, 2017, 05:02:32 PM
LIE #1. If a health study is “peer reviewed,” then it is evidence-based, reliable and true. Did you know that as much as 90% of the published medical information that doctors rely on is completely wrong? It’s true.
Did you know that as much as 100% of the statistics published on Natural News are made up on the spot?  It's true.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_by_assertion.

I really wish that these sites would back up their statements properly, because I agree with a few of the things that they say (although a lot of it, e.g. climate change being a lie, is just straight-up bullshit).  If they wrote some articles that contained real information instead of sensationalist clickbait bullshit, it would be much easier to promote some of their views to other people.

These clickbait sites wouldn't exist if you stopped supporting them.
4662  Economy / Exchanges / Re: Where to buy Bitcoin for US customers? on: July 03, 2017, 04:41:42 PM
BTC-E is Russian, and not regulated well enough to be safe.

You'll find that the Coinbase price is almost the same as the Bitstamp price, because both of those exchanges are fully functional, safe and regulated.

I would suggest either using GDAX (Coinbase's dedicated exchange, with much lower fees), or Bitstamp (a trusted European exchange).
Alternatively, you could trade peer-to-peer using LocalBitcoins.
4663  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Does Bitcoin has any intrinsic value? on: July 03, 2017, 04:32:05 PM
To be honest, it doesn't have much intrinsic value, because the open-source code can be copied and someone else creates a new cryptocurrency which is exactly the same.  The "limited supply" is only limited for this one thing, and there can be an unlimited number of other cryptocurrencies which also have that same "limited supply".

Admittedly, Bitcoin does have a huge brand and originality, but a better marketed coin would still have an effect (and ETH has, even though it's not much good).  What gives Bitcoin value is public support and faith.

But fiat currencies have absolutely no intrinsic value at all.  They lose value every year because they are not backed by even public support, and they're based on debt anyway.

So if you want an easy way to move money which has some kind of intrinsic value, Bitcoin is far better than any other monetary system that I can currently think of.
4664  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: Is Technical Analysis or charting is accurate? on: July 03, 2017, 04:15:10 PM
Technical analysis is extremely dumb.  It's basically a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I mean maybe there was a little bit of truth in these patterns, but almost all of it is just technical analysts doing exactly what they expect the pattern to cause.  If everyone agrees that a head-and-shoulders pattern is bearish, they start selling and then what they said becomes true.

There are a couple of real things which could mean something, like volume, but fundamental analysis is the only thing that's really meaningful here.
4665  Economy / Economics / Re: Can Bitcoin Volatility Be Controlled? on: July 03, 2017, 04:04:29 PM
From most merchants' perspectives, there is no volatility at all.  They don't need there to be volatility, because as soon as they receive a payment they can convert their coins back into good old fiat, which is what they wanted all along.  The idea that they "accept Bitcoin" is misleading, because while you can pay in Bitcoin, what they're really looking for is fiat.

There are even companies like Bitpay which can let a merchant accept Bitcoin and then give them fiat deposits directly into their bank account without them having to lift a finger, and all this is done with just a 1% fee.

I know 1% sounds like a high fee, but Visa, PayPal and most other payment systems charge much higher fees than that.

So volatility absolutely doesn't stop merchants accepting BTC, nor is it something that can be changed easily.
4666  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Craig Wright: "You dont need to hold the blockchain. Its ok if only banks do." on: July 03, 2017, 03:55:39 PM
ETH network has not enough complete nodes and look the result : less transaction and already stuck.
Really?  Last time I checked ETH has quite a lot of nodes.  We can't get a 100% accurate estimate of how many Bitcoin full nodes there are, because sites like this are only talking about full nodes with open ports.

A lack of full nodes is a problem because of the importance of decentralisation and removing the control of entities such as banks.  However, fewer full nodes would not result in less scalability - Bitcoin and ETH are just not scaled properly, which does not relate to the exact node count or the exact amount of hashrate.  These things are about security, not scalability.
4667  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: The "Satoshi Risk" on: July 03, 2017, 03:33:29 PM
The coins in satoshi's known addresses have been left there and not moved.  It's possible that satoshi is afraid of doing so due to fear of his identity being tracked, or that he no longer has access to those addresses. 

It could also be that he simply doesn't intend to sell, and would rather spend the coins when he can (after all, he did create a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system" - why he would sell his real money for fiat I have no idea).

Also, the 1 million figure is quite unlikely to be true, and the couple of hundred thousand that he most likely has in reality would not crash the market as severely as you think, especially since it's extremely unlikely for him to offload all the coins at once and that even if he did, it wouldn't be the end considering trading volume of >1 billion dollars these days.

P.S. I also think the "Satoshi risk" is one of the main reasons why the Bitcoin ETF was rejected.
The SEC were extremely open about their reasons for rejecting the ETF, and are a traditionally conservative institution.  I think this is childish reasoning from you.
Quote from: coinmore_org
P.S.S. Satoshi, if you are reading this, please come back and express your views on how this scaling issue should be addressed
As if no one's asked that before...
4668  Bitcoin / Press / Re: [2017-06-29] The Online Porn Industry Continues to Adopt Bitcoin for Payments on: July 03, 2017, 03:22:33 PM
Porn is not taboo in many countries, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_by_region .... so saying it is taboo, is showing the unbiased

labelling being done. 
Taboo is mainly about social and religious restrictions, rather than legal ones.  Your link details the law about it in various countries, but that isn't relevant to whether Bitcoin would be preferred.

The point is that revealing your personal information to porn sites for payments is scary for some people because they want complete privacy about what they're doing (it's embarrassing).

The problem with too many of these sites accepting Bitcoin as payments is that they're law-abiding websites, and they could face backlash from the state if they accepted payments from minors or people in states where buying porn is illegal.

While paying for porn is a very slowly dying thing IMO, it can still increase awareness.
4669  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: can a shop keeper implement bitcoin payment and not know it! on: July 03, 2017, 02:52:37 PM
I love the bit where the shopkeeper says not to spend Bitcoin, because it'll only go up in value.

I wonder how they think Bitcoin would go up in value if no one uses it and the supply increases...
4670  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Confirmation became really fast, what has happened? on: July 02, 2017, 10:16:03 PM
Any evidence that the recent congestion has been due to spam attacks? Big blockers want big blocks in order to be able to have transactions confirmed in the next block with low fees... Spamming the network would be making sure they don't get exactly what they want. Sounds counterproductive.
Spamming the network gives a sense of urgency.  It gives miners an incentive to reach consensus (or other miners, if there's a certain agenda behind it).

However, I also don't buy into the narrative that it's a spam attack from "big blockers"... I feel that almost the same justification could be given to claim that people are doing this to push the LN and offchain transactions. 

There's no way of telling if it was an unknown force pushing for any solution at all, or if it was a group with a specific agenda on a specific side of the argument.  Or if there is, I haven't seen it yet.

But there definitely was a spam attack.  There were a couple of addresses I was pointed to in that time with >100,000 dust transactions of the same amount, relentlessly in short time frames.
4671  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What Is The Best Way To Store Your Bitcoins Offline? on: July 02, 2017, 10:08:34 PM
You should not use an outdated version of Electrum. You will have problems sending and fee estimates will be too low. Newest is 2.8.3 at Electrum.org. Electrum explains how to use two computers (one always offline) for cold storage here. Almost no one bothers with this setup anymore since hardware wallets are more secure and inexpensive. Get a hardware wallet.

I read somewhere that there there were some issue with a hardware wallet, I don't remember which hardware wallet was it, but I think it was trezor.
Using a TREZOR, I can say that it's working very well for me and that I haven't had any issues.  I've downloaded the recent software update and received significant amounts of BTC as well, no problem.

Ordinary PCs aren't very secure if they're connected to the Internet, and hardware wallets are much easier to get than a fresh PC, so it makes more sense IMO.

Due to a couple of things related to hardware wallets though (you give them your address for shipping, and you get the opportunity to upgrade with Satoshi Labs' software), paper wallets are still the most obvious choice.  Just don't knock hardware wallets because they're very good for everyday spending.
4672  Economy / Speculation / Re: WALL Observer : BTC/USD price tracking and discussion (Phoenix Revision). on: July 02, 2017, 11:07:30 AM
I've always thought Google search trends are an underrated way to measure hype.

Bitcoin search trends right now are showing the apathy that some of you are talking about:  https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F05p0rrx.

However, the cryptocurrency trends and blockchain trends have not been acting in the same way.  This could imply that users this time around have matured about the technology, and potentially that the speculation is less feverish (a bullish sign in the long-term).
4673  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: The Barry Silbert segwit2x agreement with >80% miner support. on: July 01, 2017, 08:31:23 PM

My fear is that the bulk of the bitcoin users are so dumb technologically that they will just use whatever Coinbase and the other big websites are using. Then you have all those sites and 80% of the hashrate (according to NYC agreement) approving Garzik's coin code... isn't that a problem?

Decentralization will be the end of bitcoin it seems.

Everybody is free to propose anything. If 80% of the miners decide to fork off, they'll have bitcoin. If %10 of the miners go UASF, they'll have bitcoin either. If %10 the miners do nothing, they'll also have bitcoin.

Bitcoin.com will say theirs is the real bitcoin,
Bitcoin.org will promote their code,
And so on...

The end is near. Abandon ship.
I disagree.  All those people would have Bitcoin, but the majority chain would end up having the merchants and economic support.  There is a kind of herd movement, and that majority chain would still be decentralised just like the original Bitcoin has been for the past nine years.

Every time a bear market is looming (like it could be now), you'll see plenty of people creating reasons for why this, in particular, is dead or not worth as much as it is now.  Personally, I think that it's mostly wrong and that in a few years we'll be on a new problem that doesn't matter either.

The funny thing is that all those people who "called" the bear market will say "I told you so" when it starts going down... but they'll act mysteriously silent when it starts going way up again.

The bottom line is that the end is not going to come for a very long time, and that these are early days.  We're all waiting for something to happen, and something will either happen or it won't but either way, most of us will end up following along with whatever happens instead of confining ourselves to some little chain with 10% hash rate.
4674  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: We won't have the people's money on: July 01, 2017, 08:19:19 PM
One of the main goals of BTC is to be the "people's money" which cannot be controlled by central beings.

But there is a fundamental problem which will prevent it to be so: it lies upon the Internet, which is something controlled by governements.
Indeed if the free economic exchange enabled by Bitcoin can in some way bother the elites (Rotschilds, Rockfeller, Soros and their friends), what prevents them to just force all ISPs in the world to block all P2P traffic associated to Bitcoin ?

Remember that the Internet is just a buch of interconnected ISPs and universities , which in turn are controlled by the governement and must obey the laws.

If we don't have the people's communication network , we can't have our money system.

I am sure its one of the things Satoshi's must have put into consideration before  coming out with bitcoin and if its something they can do, I am sure bitcoin wouldn't be this popular at this time considering the number of years they would have been able to shut down everything as you have rightly noted.
It can be done, and net neutrality laws are being eroded by some countries lately, including creating laws for tracking Internet activity and requiring websites to keep logs.

While this is worrying (and RodeoX was particularly scared about it, I recall), I see it as something that could have happened at any time.  There's a point at which that action would become so outrageous to the public that governments just can't get away with doing it, because the public uproar would be immense and would completely destroy their popularity.  Considering that the mainstream media seem to have softened up to Bitcoin somewhat recently, I see it as unnecessary for governments to try doing this, especially since they can basically track it anyway if they regulate it well enough.
4675  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: What happens after SegWit2x? on: July 01, 2017, 03:59:44 PM
There are also some suspicions that Segwit2x is just another distraction to prevent UASF happening or at least cut off its possible future support.
Suspicion?  It's 100% obvious that it's trying to diminish UASF's support.  The whole point is to get it activated before UASF becomes too popular.  There's no way anything would have happened this month if it wasn't for UASF being a threat.
Quote from: mindrust
There is a possibility that we may never ever get segwit2x. They may delay segwit2x to the last second and leave UASF with little support on Aug1 and they may change their minds about it afterwards.

That's not a small possibility considering that Jihan's/Roger's real thoughts on segwit.
Honestly, I see that as unlikely.  Looks more like a conspiracy theory than anything particularly intelligent - after that there would just be the threat of a different UASF a bit later instead.
4676  Economy / Speculation / Re: WALL Observer : BTC/USD price tracking and discussion (Phoenix Revision). on: July 01, 2017, 02:15:45 PM
SegWit activated in July-August safely = moon.

Or the other scenario: Segwit activated = a brief bull trap rally, followed by a crash ("buy the rumor sell the news") or simply a continuation of a downtrend already in progress.

Sorry to sound bearish, but if you are going to be a completionist you have to at least consider this as a possible outcome as well.
OK, fair enough.  That's a pretty likely outcome actually.  Litecoin, for example, settled for a while after SegWit activation before it got caught in the hype of the crypto bull market.  Bitcoin could do the same - people buy in when they expect SegWit to happen or when it's locked in, then they don't know what to do after that until other cryptos lead the way (probably bearish).

I'm not worried anyway.  I bought most of my coins way earlier than this, so I'm pretty safe with my stop loss set down low.
4677  Economy / Speculation / Re: WALL Observer : BTC/USD price tracking and discussion (Phoenix Revision). on: July 01, 2017, 01:42:55 PM
Of course I've seen this behavior before. Remember it well. It was the summer of 2014...
I think it's just people waiting for a future event.

SegWit not activated in July-August safely = 2014-ish behaviour, possibly moving into a bear market.

SegWit activated in July-August safely = moon.

Right now no one knows what's going on, so nothing is happening.
4678  Bitcoin / Mining speculation / Re: Hi! I want to Mine can you help with my due diligence? on: July 01, 2017, 08:52:41 AM
This is invaluable. Thank you for your response. After reading I do have a ton more questions lol.
I do have an irl friend of many years who is ready to go in 50% with me.
If I am able to get around the first pitfall of receiving the units, maybe by not making a bulk order;
would it/could it be risk cancelling to rent out the mining power, instead of mining coins for ourselves?
Thus ensuring a steady income regardless of bitcoin fluctuating value? (excluding a complete crash and death of the bitcoin, God forbid.)
In bulk amounts that might be hard.  You could try Nicehash, but you can't know that your income will be steady.

You can't really start a cloud mining service, because almost everyone assumes they're scams (99.9% of them are), and you'd have to put a huge amount of work into something that's properly regulated/is legitimate.

As a miner on a large scale, you're essentially a speculator as well.  If the price doesn't continue rising, then the difficulty might catch up with the price, at which point mining naturally becomes only just profitable.  If the price rises so much that the difficulty flies up, your machines might seem inefficient and you wouldn't get the profits anymore.

For now, you would get profits in ~6 months as Amph points out, but because of the difficulty it's unrealistic to expect that to actually happen.  I still think it's a moderately good investment, but you have to appreciate that this is a high risk/high reward choice for you.
4679  Other / Off-topic / Re: What Are Your Thoughts On Vegans? Or Going Vegan ? on: July 01, 2017, 08:34:03 AM
What Are Your Thoughts On Vegans? Or Going Vegan ?

Do you have concerns about animal abuse by eating meat or using animal products?

Do you feel strongly that it is your right to eat meat?
I don't like factory farmed animals that are treated like garbage, given terrible living conditions and pumped with antidepressants and antibiotics.  That has come to bother me more and more vs. farms that treat their animals good, or even hunting for your own venison in the wild.
The way I see it, it's impossible for a farm to be ethical because it's unnatural.  People can talk about "the food chain" all they want, but the reality is that they way animals are being killed is entirely unnatural, whether it's with a gun, a factory farm, or just a regular free range farm.  Humans would naturally be lower than, say, lions in the food chain, but if humans want to they can just shoot the lion with a gun.

The idea of animal products which are not meat is even more confusing, because cows only produce milk after having a child, much like what humans do.  Not only is it stealing the cow's milk which is supposed to be for cows, but cows produce far less milk after it would no longer be needed for their calf.  This means that far more cows are produced than the amount that are needed to stay on the farm, so inevitably the calves are taken from their mothers at birth and cows have to be killed to sustain the production of milk.



Clarification:  vegetarianism is to not eat meat or fish.  If you eat fish, you're called a pescatarian.  If you don't eat meat, fish or any animal product, and you refrain from the use of animal products in your life e.g. leather, then you are a vegan.  A lot of people are getting confused about this.



I also wish that people would stop saying "I eat what I want to" or statements of that sort.  They don't contribute anything to a discussion, because no government is telling you whether you can eat meat or not.
4680  Economy / Scam Accusations / Re: Tor wallet SCAM !!! on: July 01, 2017, 08:19:59 AM
Hmm.

Tor.

Custodial Bitcoin wallet.

Now, what might be the most likely end game for such a set up?

It's fairly easy to guess.
It's like as soon as people hear about Bitcoin and start using it, they just give up any normal rules of where they put their money, which is strange as hell considering that they should do the exact opposite and be much more careful than they are with fiat.

It's like, "hey, people use Bitcoin on Tor, so look at this online wallet that's on Tor!  Let's put our coins into that!"

No due diligence, no checking if they're a regulated company, no checking for information about the owners, nothing...

Same thing happens with investments.  Normally none of these people would give their fiat to a company that promises to pay them back >3% daily, but apparently with Bitcoin they feel it's acceptable.  Maybe it's a side effect of all the stories of people getting rich with Bitcoin that cause people to lose all of their judgement.
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