I was a huge supporter of Ledger Nano S until it stopped recognizing my wallet in Google Chrome.    A lot of my friends bought a Ledger Nano S on my advice and they are still running Windows 7 Professional and they are experiencing the same thing. Why should they change their OS or be forced to use Ledger's software <which most of the times are not working> to be able to access their coins.  

The firmware upgrade was also a nightmare, so I am slowly but surely thinking that hardware wallets are just too much of a schlep for people to use, even though it might still be one of the most secure methods to store your coins.  

I also do not want to spend 1000's of dollars, testing many different hardware wallets and ending up struggling with software incompatibility and having to put my friends through the stress of dealing with difficult firmware upgrades and stuff like that.  

I am slowly but surely leaning towards a combination of say, Electrum and loads of Paper wallets with small quantities of coins to use as a cold storage alternative.  

Anyone have any other advice or tips to get the Ledger Nano S to work with Google Chrome App, because they still support it... right?  

Yes, I read every post I make and I see 1000's of people dying of this virus and I want to see that Bitcoin can be used to make a difference.

The thing with fiat cash is this, MANY people handle that cash on a daily basis and the coins and notes are normally placed in the same basket, where it spreads the contamination to the other cash that are placed in that same basket. So the probability for for contamination is higher, because the contaminated cash touch other coins and note that are not contaminated. The virus are also spread through fecal matter and tests have shown that fiat cash are very dirty and a lot of it has shown traces of fecal matter.

The food merchants normally have to adhere to proper food hygiene and when a crisis like this happen, they would probably be more aware of the dangers of contamination, so they will increase measures to reduce the risk. Washing food containers & utensils in Bleach to kill the virus. (The Health inspectors will also be more vigilant, since this virus originated in live food markets.)

Also, people do not just buy physical items, they can buy virtual goods and air time, where they do not have to touch anything. If they used cash to buy this, they could have been infected. <Paying for parking meters / wearing gloves and cooking produce at high temperatures and destroying the containers or using your own.>

If you took the time to read the articles I added in my previous post, you would have noticed that test were done to determine that the virus survived up to 9 hours on physical surfaces, like metal, plastic etc..

Let's look for a better solution and not criticize other people for thinking out of the box.  

That is where you are wrong my friend.  The world health officials know that the respiratory disease is capable of spreading through human-to-human contact, droplets carried through sneezing and coughing, and germs left on inanimate objects. Source : https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/researchers-say-the-coronavirus-may-be-more-contagious-than-current-data-shows.html

The Corona virus can also survive up to 9 days outside of the body, so it will definitely infect you, if you touch it on any other object other than someone's body. Source : https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/02/09/scientists-predict-coronavirus-may-live-for-up-to-nine-days-on-surfaces/

One of the most effective ways of killing the virus on these surfaces is to use common household products like "Bleach".    <So you will not go to jail if you wash your money> 

When you say "big", you refer to the storage space needed to run these nodes, right? Well, the developers answer to people who have limited storage space was already addressed with "Pruned" nodes.

You cannot set a limit on the Blockchain size, because it will render that Blockchain obsolete. What happens with the blocks and transactions once the limit is reached? People cannot simply stop using Bitcoin, because they ran out of disk space.

Your intention is good, but the application of the idea is not practical. You need to find a way for people to selectively configure what part of the Blockchain they want to use <how far back they want to go> and then to reduce the overall space needed, based on the storage they have. 

The problem come in when you need to trace a block or transaction and you do not have the full Blockchain at your command. 

I watched a Youtube video last night about the food merchants in some of the markets in Wuhan <China> and I noticed that most of them are using electronic payment methods to pay for goods. < Wechat Pay >

Ok, it is not Bitcoin, but if more merchants using Fiat currency can switch over to Bitcoin, you might see less infections. The reason for this is simple, because the Corona virus can be transmitted from person to person via cash being used on a daily basis.

People can also do online payments with Bitcoin to avoid handling physical cash and thus avoiding infection. It can also prevent people from being infected from a host of other viruses and bacteria that can survive for days on physical coins and notes.

This is just one more reason for people to move away from physical payment methods and shifting to a cash-less financial system in the future. 

I am already in the habit of searching for "Bitcoin News" on Youtube and then marking it for "watch later" as I go, but I sometimes miss some the of latest news, that does not get caught in a search pattern like that. The algorithm used by Youtube has changed a bit, so you might not get the latest stuff all the time.

I usually supplement those results with the info provided on r/Bitcoin in Reddit.com and I subscribe to some Bitcoin news channels on Youtube that are actively pushing the latest Bitcoin news to the front.

I would welcome any method that would shorten that process, like you suggested. Let us know when it is done, looking forward to something that would save me some online time.  

I gamble for the entertainment, so staying within my budget is quite simple. I have set aside a percentage of my income for entertainment and I work out how many times I can gamble and/or go to the movies and out for lunch in advance. If I go over my budget for one of these things, I do not have any money left over to enjoy the rest of the month, so I am forced to stay within my own budget.  

I have to be honest too, if I am on a winning streak... it is sometimes very difficult to cash out and to stop, because you always feel that it is not your money that you are gambling with. I normally go on too long and I break even with what I started with, but it is always a lot of fun.

I promised myself, if I start chasing losses, I will stop gambling.  

Karl, are you guys going to launch something special for Valentine's Day like you did in previous years? I kinda liked the idea of finding some object on your site <insert red hearts> to collect a reward at the end of the day. 

Does the game developers have some Slot game based on "Love" to be introduced on Valentine's Day? I know our local Brick n Mortar casino makes a big thing out of Valentine's Day. < Offering free lunch & dinner and champagne and some free credits on deposits >

Looking forward to something nice from you guys and gals. 

You can be sure of 2 things in life and that is death and taxes, but I want to add another one, which will be government manipulation of their local economy. We saw what governments have done with bailouts when the Banks nearly caused a global financial crisis and we will continue seeing governments using tactics to keep markets from collapsing.

The Chinese government have to find additional money to fight this virus and the affect that it is having on their local economy and a sure thing will be to jump into bonds and also to use tax payers money.

We might not like it, but it is emergency measures to save lives, so we should actually welcome it. I applaud them for reacting this quickly and being able to build a massive hospital in 10 days.  

I hope you have tons of money, because the SEC is not the only government organization that are enforcing rules and regulations on this planet.    The price of Bitcoin is determined by a global open market of supply and demand, so it will be difficult to determine who the market manipulators are.

The SEC only have jurisdiction over US matters, so what are you going to do about the irregularities that are happening on markets in other countries? Your lawyers will first have to identify the culprits and then you have to fight them with different lawyers in international courts. 

Also remember that market manipulators have loads of money to hire expensive lawyers too, so you have an impossible task to take on these giants. 

If I may ask, what are you using to mine these so-called bitcoins? My apologies if I am wrong, but you sound very new to Bitcoin. Are you sure you are mining Bitcoin <BTC>? ...or are you possibly mining some wannabe fork coin, like Bitcoin Cash?

Let's get back to your questions : The last coin to be mined is built into a complex system of code in the protocol that was developed by Satoshi Nakamoto. He has predetermined specific actions to happen in parameters set in the code that will execute, once certain conditions has occurred. So based on the fact that current developers can read and interpret those parameters, certain calculations can be done to accurately predict when the last bitcoins would be provided as a Block reward in the future.  

So, based on those calculations, we will not be around to see that happen in 2140 <more or less 122 years from now>    

It might help if you gave us some more information or even a screenshot of the error. What Operating system are you using and what browser are you using? Have you tried several browsers to see if it is just a browser incompatibility error or a add-on that are blocking this? <Ad blockers?>

It might even be your anti-virus software that you are using that are giving you a false positive. The site might use some script file that are detected as a malicious action. A lot of anti-virus software check for heuristic behaviour and they report something as Malware or a virus, when it is actually a legitimate script.

Please give us some more information to help you. 

I think with all the hype of the Corona virus in China, investors shifted some of their capital in industries that are not situated in China and also industries that are manufacturing the same products.

The correction in the price is indicative of the hype going down and investors realising that the impact of the Corona virus is not as bad as everyone had anticipated. Bitcoin have even seen a boost in the price, because people were looking for assets or commodities with a store of value or safe haven characteristics.

The sheep in the markets will follow the hype and the price movement and it usually triggers a predictable panic cycle like this. The wise investor will ride it out and even buy more shares at a cheaper price when this happens.  

The building of a strong merchant network is key to the success of Bitcoin. This is where most of the Alt coins are failing, because they think everything stop, once the token are developed. People need a motivation to buy the token and the motivation is usually some advantage that Bitcoin has over other payment methods.

The one used in the example of men using the token to buy sexy lingerie is one of the things that gives Bitcoin an advantage over it's competitors. The pseudo anonymity protect the user of that token and more boutiques and sex shops should be approached to ask if they would be willing to accept Bitcoin.

Why should there be a paper trail back to the customer to show his adult purchases to some centralized financial organization or the government to which it is reporting to.    

Ok, two things :

It is a bit dodgy when you only receive good feedback from "Newbie" accounts and not from more reputable long-term and known gamblers on Bitcointalk.    ( I tried to register with a Virtual PC, but I ran into some proxy problems on my side, so I am busy trying to test and troubleshoot it. ) I also do not like the link shortener that you are using to re-direct people to the site. <What is up with that?>

The second issue that I have is the KYC requirements for withdrawals. This is kind of a buzzkill for me, because I am used to Crypto casinos without lots of barriers and requirements for withdrawals. It is a joy to gamble at a casino that is protecting your Bitcoin pseudo anonymity. < Most people do not know how to break the link between their main Bitcoin hoard and the services they use on a regular basis > 

The site design looks promising though. 

Are you the owner of this site or in any way affiliated with them or are you simply sharing the information of the site? <possibly referral?>

When I started out experimenting with faucets, there were some faucets that had a very high withdrawal limit, so you would be using the site for many months, before you would be able to withdraw your funds. Most people gave up, because the withdrawal limit was simply too high and the effort of login in every day and using it for hours was simply not worth the reward.

The faucet owners knew this, but they never reduced the withdrawal limit, because they wanted that to happen. In the process they got continuous traffic to their site and they seldom had to pay out anything for that traffic. The 0.035 BTC or $342 withdrawal limit for this site is way too high and a similar scenario would happen to most users.

Sites like this might make some good money, if they lowered that limit in the beginning to draw in more gamblers for the site and later they can increase the limit, if they become profitable. <Most businesses run at a loss for a while, before they start making money.>

I am not saying this is a scam, because I have no proof, but I am saying they might be using the wrong business strategy to attract loads of users to their site.    <User retention is more important in the long run>  

Why are you asking this, if you say you already have that?


The most irritating feature of many of the old faucets was the bombardment of advertisements. When the advertisement companies started to pay less or stopped paying for faucet traffic, most of the faucets failed. The ones that survived was the ones that moved to a gambling business model, like Freebitco.in. <The longest surviving Bitcoin faucet>

I personally think you should ditch the advertisements and also go for a 100% gambling concept to fund the faucet payouts. It will give the faucet users a more entertaining experience and you will have less hassles with advertisers.

The facebook integration will totally destroy Bitcoin's pseudo anonymity, so I would try to avoid that, but the same goes for payment processors and things like PayPal.   

Centralized exchanges are no different than any Banks out there, because the operate under the same rules and regulations that are prescribed by their governments. <KYC & AML regulations>

They are also profit driven financial organizations with shareholders and partners from the financial world. Many of them have worked in the financial industry for years, so it is natural for them to operate in the same manner.

They do not have the goal and aspiration for this technology to grant people financial freedom, because they are purely profit driven. They could care less, as long as they are making a huge profit. They will not even allow you to sign a message with your private key or do it for you, because you are simply a entry on their internal ledger system. <You do not own the Private keys to your Bitcoin address>

They came into the Bitcoin scene to cash in on the opportunity to make some more money, not to make the on-ramp and off-ramp into Bitcoin easier and more convenient.  <They just kill pseudo anonymity and add extra fees to Bitcoin transactions> 

A lot has been made of the Coronavirus, but the reality is that it is highly contagious, but not that lethal compared to other viruses. I think some article mentioned that it only has a 2% death rate of the 1000s of people that was infected. Yes, it is still very scary and even with a 2% death rate, people will still worry about this.

The other thing is that most businesses in China are still functioning as normal, but people are using protective measures to protect themselves against the virus. <Wearing masks & constantly washing hands etc.>

The most affected areas are under quarantine and if most of the ASIC chips were manufactured there, it would have a bigger impact on the hash rate in the future. <Less ASIC miners = slower increase in the difficulty> 

It is also worth mentioning that the miners fees in most cases do not end up going to a single miner. A lot of smaller miners are mining within a mining Pool and the rewards <Block reward & miners fees> are distributed according to the hashing power that was contributed by the miners in that Pool.    - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_pool  <Hope I understand it correctly> 

Also, when the Block reward are diminished over time with all the Halvings, the Miners fees will have to increase in value or transactions will have to increase dramatically to make it profitable for miners to continue mining in the future.

Just to give you an idea of what kind of money we are talking about.  --> https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transaction-fees-usd

Luckily for us it looks like the transactions are gradually increasing over time. See this chart for more details :
https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions-total?timespan=all