The word "unicorn" has some strict meaning in finance - it refers to a startup company that reached a valuation of one billion USD and is not traded publicly. Bitcoin isn't a company, it isn't a stock - it's a currency or at least a commodity, and it was always traded publicly, so comparing it with stocks is completely pointless. It's like if someone discovered a new chemical element or a mineral and started comparing its price with stocks just to impress people.

Bitcoin is the only "safe zone", the coins that you named are just shitcoins that are dying slower than blatant scams, but they are still dying - they don't see much real world use, they don't make large improvements to their protocol, many of them are based on completely flawed fundamentals, like Bcash with their big blocks. Ethereum will likely live the longest, so in some sense it's "safe", but it doesn't mean that it's a great long term investment.

There's nothing wrong with earning merits fast on its own, I've seen some low-rank members who have more merits than activity or even posts - this happens when a person is extremely knowledgeable of Bitcoin and makes good posts that demonstrate their knowledge.

What you are describing is cheating the merit system and breaking many rules of the forum, so no wonder it gets people banned and results in red trust. I think the person that you shows as an example fully realized that they were up to no good, they just thought they will get away with it. Still, newbies can sometimes break rules without realizing it, like when they copypaste articles - so it's important to learn the rules of the forum first.

Because he is a celebrity, and people generally talk/care more about something that happens with a celebrity rather than with strangers. And in this case some people almost celebrate it, because Peter Schiff criticizes Bitcoin often, even though like you say - it's a mistake that happens to newbies quite often. IMO it's a problem that isn't addressed enough, I think wallet software - regardless if it's a site, an app or a desktop wallet, they all should have a page with red border and big warning site that tells people in upper case letter to back up their keys or their coins will be lost forever.

Are you going to sell it for Bitcoin exclusively or there will be option for fiat payments too? If both types of currency are supported, you're not taking any big risks, so even if Bitcoin payments will be rare, it won't break your business. If you want to increase the chance of getting Bitcoin payments, you should target tourists and advertise your business on the Internet while point out that you support Bitcoin - make sure that your business is added to various Bitcoin shop maps, for example.

Just look at Bitcoin's github - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

As you can see, there's a ton of activity, commits happen frequently, there are open PR's and issues, there are hundreds of contributors, and there are absolutely no signs of Bitcoin's development slowing down.


As of now, no coin is even close to being better than Bitcoin, they have features that come at a price of reduced security and decentralization, a price that Bitcoin developers don't want to pay.

This stat isn't really that useful, as an address with one Bitcoin doesn't mean that it's owned by one person, and vice versa. I have more than 1 BTC, but I never had one or more BTC in one address - I consolidate my funds, but not too much, since it's bad for privacy and doesn't make my save on fees past certain point, as I don't plan to send such huge amounts in one transaction.

Maybe these addresses with > 1 BTC are just a result of consolidation done by exchanges or hodlers, I don't doubt that the number of Bitcoin owners is growing, but this is a poor way to determine by how much it has increased.

This is true, you can easily live your life without ever touching Bitcoin, and it's not as impactful as not having the Internet or smartphone or other invention, but this doesn't mean that Bitcoin is useless. Some things aren't widely popular, but still have people who find them very useful - think about something like the Tor browser, which has tiny share of all browsers, but is immeasurably valuable to those who need privacy.

It's actually worse than that, with cars and guns everyone understands how dangerous those things are, as everyone heard some stories about deaths caused by them, but it's not immediately obvious that Bitcoin is dangerous too. Yes, wallets warn users about the loss of private keys, but people usually don't pay much attention to such warnings. People who introduce others to Bitcoin should bring closer attention to this issue, but they often don't do it, because they themselves are newbies, so we have a closed circle - careless newbies create new careless newbies, and if someone spends little time in Bitcoin community, despite owning Bitcoin, chances are they are sitting on a time bomb of losing their keys.

Done! https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/a198aa79ed1dee8cc4f7501b000c8d9ef373aad826d4fa1bc15990d32e303c77 -> https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/9521384c888e5a91c579378728df9808427e4da4f5c7373f527efb79794b64e9

(bumped the fee)

I imported it in Electrum with p2wpkh flag, worked like a charm!

Now I only need to find what to do with this private key...

I'm never surprised when someone runs some software on some hardware that might not be directly suitable for it - after all, it's just programming. People run Doom on microwaves or whatever, so running Bitcoin on a quite advanced computer of a car isn't some remarkable achievement. Plus, it doesn't sound very practical, why not run your own node at home on something like Raspberry Pi and connect to it over the internet with your phone when you go outside?

Why you keep saying "blockchain" when what you actually mean is Bitcoin? Satoshi didn't create blockchain technology, he never had intention creating something that will benefit big companies, he aimed to empower regular people. Blockchain is just a buzzword that companies use to boost their stock, why should people learn about it unless they want to become developers in this niche field? Teaching Bitcoin on the other hand is quite a good idea, since it's still can be hard to use as it has some pitfalls.

It's actually the opposite - having two signatures with the same k allows you to compute k, and when you know k you go straight to extracting private key. So, when you already know k, one message is enough.

This is a really fun challange, I'm kinda stuck right now with my solution, but I already made some progress and learned a bit about ECDSA and Bitcoin, so even if I won't win, I'm already happy and I don't think the time I've spent is wasted.

Edit:

So, I've found a key, it resolves to a different address but the signature with k = 2020 is (almost, aside from recid) the same as the challenge:


Edit2: I think I understand what you did - you took a private key, signed a message with it, then switched the recid in the signature to lead to another public key, which you then also replaced in the signature. Is this correct? Though I still can't find any address with balance that corresponds to the private key that I found.

I can think of many reasons why Bitcoin will break its 4-year cycle pattern, and it might already be happening as the last years bull run wasn't fitting this model.
As any asset matures, volatility is expected to decrease, since liquidity of the market increases and uncertainty decreases. I think this is already slowly happening, I remember seeing a metric called Bitcoin's volatility index, and it's lower than it was in early days.

Next, big market movements are often unexpected, so it's quite possible that the post-halvening bull run will get delayed, or we'll have to go through another short bear market before it.

Also, halvenings are becoming less impactful, the supply is getting closer and closer to its cap, despite the fact that this point will only be reached in 2140, we will come very close to it in 2030's. So, there will be less and less reason to be bullish about halvenings if they aren't as impactful as in early days.

That's precisely the point of the manipulators behind these shitcoins - they want to lure people with promises of juicy pumps, but the moment people will start buying it, the manipulators will dump their bags and crash the market, only to start this process again later in a few months. Only there's no guarantee that they will get pumped in the future, every time can be the last one if these scammers will decide that they got enough and stop their manipulation. Maybe Ethereum is a shitcoin, but at least it's a honest shitcoins that tries to build something ,unlike these scamcoins created by Ver and CSW.

Do you remember that famous image which compares Bitcoin's marketcap to gold, silver, fiat money, stocks and other assets? Bitcoin was like a drop in the ocean, and even though it grew a lot in the recent years, it's still so tiny when compared to whole fiat economy. And because of that, it has no measurable effect on global economy, at best you can hope to observe its effects on local economies that are known for their Bitcoin use, like for example Venezuela. But even that requires some serious scientific research with the numbers.

Investing in alts for long term is crazy, look at the recent years - they were all consistently going down over long period of time and for a good reason - there's too much competition, cryptocurrency is barely adopted so the world doesn't need thousands of coins. Most of them will eventually die, and it's quite hard to predict which ones will survive, and there's no guarantee that the survivors will increase in price.

If you still want to put your money in alts, do so only with amounts you can afford to lose, and choose from the most popular coins with good reputations and not some obscure shitcoins.

This is why people should never get red trust or ban for simply being a "shitposter" - majority of people start that way, and if you punish newbies for being newbies, the community would simply die. Even if only few people improve, it's still worth to give everyone a chance instead of being harsh to them.

There's a simpler explanation - the journalists did their job - reported new events, and the community panicked because the market was already showing weakness. In reality we have news that can be interpreted as bullish or bearish all the time, but people choose to ignore the opposite news and pay closer attention to those that are aligned with the market. No need to come up with conspiraces when there's a simple explanation, especially since this conspiracy is so theoretical - no names are voiced, no evidence is presented, only an idea how it could have occurred.