this calculation is incorrect. 226 bytes is the median transaction size on the network. the actual size calculation is as follows:

148 bytes per input
34 bytes per output
10 bytes required for transaction framework

typical users send one input and two outputs (the second output being a change address). 148 + (34 x 2) + 10 = 226 bytes.

but your idea is correct here. as much as i hate web wallets like xapo and coinbase, you can accumulate lots of UTXOs (payments) there and simply pay their algorithmic network fee per withdrawal. it'll be a lot cheaper than trying to send 20 inputs in a transaction (unless you are willing to send very low-fee transactions and wait for unreliable confirmation or pool acceleration).

but it should be noted that keeping funds on xapo or coinbase means you don't control your funds; you are trusting a third party to keep your funds safe.

not really. we see these kinds of exchange imbalances all the time. people definitely arbitrage the difference. but from my perspective, it's not worth missing out on the market volatility. the fiat banking system is so slow; is a 6% gain really worth being locked out of the market for several days or even weeks at a time? (it's actually less than 6% once you account for transaction fees, trading commission, and bank wire fees to withdraw € and re-deposit it to kraken)

also, banks don't like being used like this. you're likely to get your accounts shut down if you regularly arbitrage the markets like this. one alternative is to simply keep funds on both exchanges, and then re-balance your ETH/€ holdings on each exchange such that you ETH amount stays the same but you € holdings increase. the problem is that sometimes these imbalances remain for weeks at a time. i tried this a few years back when chinese exchanges were trading much higher than the west. i ended up being locked into CNY for much longer than i wanted to be since the gains from the bull run were so much bigger than any possible arbitrage gains.

i think that's the whole point of joint regulation. it's much easier to enforce tax and KYC compliance if the largest economies act in tandem. the fact that joint regulations are being discussed at the G20 level concerns me.

the thing about bitlicense was that there were lots of friendlier jurisdictions for businesses to turn to. if the G20 countries act together (and i don't know how likely that is), that could absolutely stifle innovation and partially drive the economy underground. my sense is that over the next year, we are going to see strong attempts by governments to more closely monitor/control fiat inflows and outflows from the bitcoin economy (with an emphasis on exchanges).

i'm finally feeling squeezed enough by the fees that i'm thinking of upgrading to the new bech32 wallet. can i just install it and generate new wallets on the same pc without worrying about my 2.9.0 wallet files? i'd rather not just sweep the seeds into new wallets due to privacy/utxo selection issues. prefer to keep them all working side by side if possible.

i tend to drag my feet on wallet upgrades due to paranoia over this sort of stuff....

i'm pretty sure it's just a regional thing. i'm in the USA and when i log into coinbase, i can buy or sell bitcoin cash up to my regular limits. when i switch to gdax, i notice that only the BCH/USD market is live. the other markets (EUR and BTC base pairs) were removed. they're definitely concerned about insufficient liquidity and they're probably trying to prevent volatility like when it launched.

i'm guessing coinbase will regret adding BCH. i've never seen a market so manipulated. in the meantime, they've reinforced the civil war within the community for a long time to come.

this is basically a money transfer system known as "hawala" where funds are transferred among parties without actual movement of money. there's nothing wrong with this premise. in fact, it's the underlying idea behind opendime:



this is a tricky problem. generating a new key and sweeping the funds to it incurs miner fees. opendime has created an interesting solution. the USB wallet device is disposable and must be physically broken in order to spend any funds kept on it.

as long as the device is intact, you can check the balance and use it for trading.

if you're using google authenticator, then we're talking about TOTP tokens. it doesn't have anything to do with the sim card or phone number (thank goodness, because those things can be compromised via social engineering).

it doesn't depend on wi-fi. it just depends on proper clock syncing. as long as you don't format your phone or delete your google authenticator app, you should be fine. your token will stay intact and you can keep using your old phone.

but i would say this: when you get your new phone, you should install google authenticator. then remove the old 2fa from your accounts and add a new 2fa token to both your old phone and your new phone. it's really important to have multiple back-ups. also make sure to have a manual copy of your token.

in the meantime, governmental agencies (EU or not) are probably already working with blockchain analysis companies to build their own databases. we may not be registering our bitcoin wallets yet, but they are definitely watching us. chainalysis scrapes the internet for data about the bitcoin network, and over time, connections to our identities can be made. it's time to get serious about privacy -- TOR, e2e encryption, mesh networks.....


i'm guessing some kind of joint effort will be made by western governments to scare people into paying taxes. that's the primary fear for now; i don't think they feel threatened with regard to fiat currency. these databases, combined with new laws like SB 1241 will probably be the result.

it stands for "Merklized Abstract Syntax Trees." bitcoin magazine did a pretty good introduction here. in the simplest terms, it's a proposed addition to bitcoin (finally formally proposed on the mailing 3 months ago) that can allow for smaller transaction sizes and more privacy. more efficient implementation of smart contracts is a big part of it.

here's a simplified rundown from Mark Friedenbach:

personally, as much as i hate bitcoin cash, i think this is being blown out of proportion. the bitcoin cash chart looked exactly like a bunch of other altcoins i was watching, all trending upwards as BTC corrected downwards.

did it leak to some employees? probably. but coinbase also said a week earlier that they were adding new coins, and we knew they were supporting bitcoin cash withdrawals by next month. i already assumed that they would be adding the market; it was just a matter of when the announcement would be made as we approached january.


new coin listings don't usually warrant advanced notice on other exchanges. what did coinbase do with LTC and ETH? was it similar to this? last i heard from coinbase on the matter, they said this:

these are pretty bad suggestions. no advocacy of hardware wallets, at a time when complete noobs are rushing into the market? pitiful. i'm glad they're at least telling people to get coins off exchanges. but the opening section almost makes seems like they are discouraging people from using hardware wallets because they can be "lost." well, that's what recovery seeds are for! frankly, i think the suggestions to use the coinbase vault and paper wallets are misguided at this point.

with this many noobs entering the market, i think we need to emphasize hardware wallets at every turn.

i usually agree: buy the rumor, sell the news. but this is a slightly different situation because it's actually a new investment avenue that is much more accessible to main street investors. more importantly, ETFs are often used for long term investment (not just short term hedging like futures), so i would expect money to be locked up in ETF investments longer on average than futures trades.

in other words, this isn't just about gambling and short term speculation on the price. i think people are underestimating what it means when both mom and pop and kids right out of college can roll 1% or 2% of their salaries into a bitcoin fund ---- with an employer match!!

bcash was intended to damage bitcoin. in fact, looking through calvin ayre's facebook pictures, one caption stated that he and craig wright (satoshi fraud) were busy "plotting the death of bitcoin" back in september. to me, it's pretty clear from roger ver and jihan wu's rhetoric that they intend bcash to be a replacement for bitcoin.

i think the others are just schemes to enrich the "developers." each one has a gimmick that differentiates it from BTC, just like 99% of altcoins. there are pre-mines, etc. they're just riding the hype and trying to shovel some free money into their pockets.

i'm not too worried. i don't see these forks as any more threatening to BTC than other altcoins. people are just using the name issue to rationalize their irrational fear of bitcoin's failure.

there's no ETA. we've only just seen the first mainnet LN transactions on the network in the last few weeks because the network specs were just agreed on recently. there are significant bugs being worked out on the testnet.

LN developers were recently quoted as saying they are "not going to rush anything" since there will be so much money on the line once LN launches. they are very concerned about funds being lost due to corner cases they haven't discovered yet.

i think we'll see public use of LN sometime in 2018....but that could be 12 months from now.

it will allow easy access to bitcoin exposure for mainstream investors. and not just the e-trade/scottrade variety of investors, but everyday working folks with retirement accounts. in the same way that employee/employer 401ks allow access to various stock indexes, cash, and commodity funds, people will start having access to bitcoin funds from their retirement accounts.

that means that people can use platforms they trust (not shit exchanges like coinbase and bitfinex) to invest in bitcoin with their retirement accounts tax free. and they can dump in just a tens or hundreds of dollars at a time. bullish!


interestingly, it looks like the big boys shorted the CME futures launch very hard. they shorted the very top. don't underestimate institutional FU moves on the chart that are designed to make you panic sell your coins!

i think we need to realize that bitcoin isn't ideal for micropayments as is. including every $2 payment on the blockchain for all eternity doesn't make sense if we want people to be able to enforce the consensus rules with their own nodes. i think that in a year's time, both you and bitcointalk will have open LN channels that will allow a much cheaper payment.


it's much cheaper to trade the CBOE contracts, which are valued at 1 bitcoin. i'm pretty sure that you can access the market with considerably less using leverage.


i haven't seen any recent changes to the fees charged at bitmex or okcoin. trading commissions (on futures) on either platform are significantly cheaper than spot margin exchanges like bitfinex.

i'm not sure we can plan on that. we're already seeing a high volume bottom and fomo buying. coinbase prices are up nearly $5,000 from the lows! if this is really just a dead cat bounce and we end up making another leg down, then i still have the same thoughts as before. i don't expect bulls to let the log trend fail. if they do, it's probably not worth buying for a while:


my gut feeling is that the bottom is already in. sucks because i was ready for this dump and my bids were missed by just ~$200. praying for retest of the lows here....

it might be. i think it would be a nasty shock to the market, but i also agree with the sentiment that no single exchange has nearly as much market power as gox did back then. with bitflyer, bithumb and coinbase in the mix (as well as dozens of competitors), i think the shock would be absorbed fairly quickly.

i know btc-e wasn't nearly as big as bitfinex, but it was one of the oldest, reliable exchanges. when it went down, it hardly moved the market at all. and the bull market accelerated after that (much like after the silk road bust in 2013).

it's a typical correction. during this epic rally, we have regularly seen 30-40% drops along the way. if history is any guide, then we should probably be ready for the price to drop another 10-15%.

we could actually drop significantly lower than that and still keep the logarithmic uptrend intact. right now, the trend line i am tracking is ~ $8,100 and rising. as long as we don't break below that trend line, then the parabolic trend can form a new slope and continue. as long as the trend holds, i expect a very strong bounce and eventual new highs.

as i read it, here is the pertinent law with regard to money transmission:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1960

with regard to commerce, i don't see any substantive difference between LN nodes and bitcoin nodes. in both cases, nodes propagate transactions across the network. they don't substantively affect buying/selling. in the case of LN nodes, operators are just being compensated for bandwidth use.

LN nodes don't intuitively know anything about illicit funds. routing is such that nodes don't know where transactions are from or where they are going. they can only identify the "hops" in between. so that clause seems like a non-issue.

it's the "transferring funds on behalf of the public" that leaves me scratching my head. i suspect that it doesn't apply because LN nodes aren't really transferring funds. they are transferring hash images that relinquish control of other people's funds. it's a very interesting legal issue. but again, no matter what the conclusion is, i don't see how this is fundamentally different than bitcoin nodes.