I do agree with you and somewhere along the line you have to trust someone or something. But if those who are probably honest (I like that you aren't claiming that they are since people can turn) go rogue, together with the developers, would there be many people left to discover their wrongdoings?
Depends on who you trust, I guess. Scenarios like that can happen but the probability of it happening to major projects like Bitcoin Core is significantly lesser than one which is less active. There are additional financial incentives at play too, given the amount of value at risk across the ecosystem. Those who hold significant amounts of bitcoin and who are capable of auditing the open source software they use have a strong financial interest in doing so. This should act as an additional deterrent against exploits. Looking at the poll there's more people in our community verifying the code of open source software than I expected. Nice. This is Dev & Technical Discussion. Post the same poll in Bitcoin Discussion and watch what happens.  I also wonder what the results would look like with 1,700 votes rather than 17. |
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Therefore if I maintain an account that is strictly BTC for my business (No fiat at all) is there a way that can work instantaneously exchange BTC to local currency for transaction both incoming and outgoing? This would be extremely convenient without having to constantly manage account fiat / BTC exchanges on a daily or weekly basis.
Look forward to any input on this matter.
There are two services I can think of that could achieve this kind of payment flow. The first is Wyre. With their Wyre Checkout widget, you can invoice your clients in fiat, they can pay via debit card or Apple Pay, and you'll receive bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies. You can use Wyre's API to exchange fiat and cryptocurrency within your own account. I'm less sure about the second one, Bitwage. They provide a way for people to receive part of their paycheck in bitcoins. They assign you a bank account -- which you are supposed to give to your employer -- and when you get paid, they convert all or a portion of each payment to bitcoins. In theory, you could use this bank account to receive ACH bank transfers from your different clients, and have the payments converted to bitcoins. However, without looking deeper into their terms, I can't be sure whether this type of activity is actually permitted. |
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What has bitcoin done to you? Is it Happiness or Regret?
When I look back at all the unnecessary crap I bought with bitcoins over the years -- not because I really needed to, but for the hell of it -- I definitely get some pangs of regret. The friend that got me into Bitcoin has even more severe stories than me. He used to spend a few bitcoins a week buying eighths of weed from Silk Road. On the other hand, I'm happy that Bitcoin helped me realize financial freedom. I'm happy that I managed to turn a couple close friends onto it, so ditto for them. I'm happy that I managed to hold onto a few coins over the years, even if I regret spending dozens and dozens. |
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I also remember many of you were part of this scam exchange promotion. And many of you that claim to be ethical and always do due diligence you were promoting this scam.
Were they known to be a scam from the get-go? I vaguely remember some hubbub about Livecoin a while back, but since I had never used them I never really paid attention to the details. I'd lump them in with the likes of YoBit. There have been consistent complaints about long term disabled wallets, which is effectively theft. There have also been plenty of complaints about withdrawal issues, nonexistent customer support, unjustified account banning, etc. Like YoBit though, plenty of people swore by them for years, having never experienced any issues themselves. Until now, that is.  |
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I don't really verify the codes and the only reason is that I do not know any coding language. If I did, I would personally verify the codes by myself (or at least take a peek over them). This describes most Bitcoin users, myself included. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect laypeople to inspect every open source code base they use. If that were a requirement, mass Bitcoin adoption would never happen. Part of the reason this is acceptable is that open source software published by publicly known, well reputed, and verified developers reinforces strong incentives against malicious exploits. In the case of popular software like Bitcoin Core or Electrum, we can be reasonably confident that thousands of programmers are pouring over the code, looking for bugs. After a sufficient amount of time has passed, I consider an update to be relatively safe. Regardless of the incentives involved, exploits are always possible however, so I wouldn't keep all my eggs in one basket. I've generated private keys using multiple implementations and setups I am reasonably confident in for long term storage, because I know no single method or software is foolproof. |
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“2017 in many ways felt like 1999. In 1999, people didn’t know if they were buying Pets.com or Amazon.com,” she said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live. “It was just a wild, frothy time and 2017 for many of us felt the same way. A lot of coins, a lot of names, a lot of capital flying around. This cycle is so different because the narrative is very focused on bitcoin.”
To me, that's how it felt during the first half of 2017. The Winklevoss ETF was rejected by the SEC and then Ethereum and ICO tokens completely took off. After Segwit was locked in, however, all attention turned back to Bitcoin. I remember it quite well because my altcoin holdings were worth less and less bitcoins as the fall wore on. That was painful! Now that all the focus is on Bitcoin, could we be seeing that process playing out in reverse? There has been a lot of talk about institutional investment driving the Bitcoin market recently, but Bitcoin isn't completely alone in that. Grayscale has been buying approximately half of all mined Ether throughout the year, and they now control about 2.6% of the total supply. I get the feeling that altcoins will soon have their day again. |
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So I'm from the US. But i travel quite a bit and am outside the US majority of the time. My seed is stored online. I do have my hardware wallet nano ledger s with me though. Now I didn't want to bring my seed with me when traveling because well imagine something happens at customs and my bags get searched... well what if customs search through my stuff and then see a paper with my seed. And of course there is a chance they know what it is and can write it down etc. I heard many examples of those workers stealing from luggage, so imagine a search and then they see piece of paper and its words and they know what crypto is. But that is rare of course.
But when i travel abroad, I don't want to have my seed in the apartment as I don't think that is safe. Where im located, there is lot of breakins... thats how it is here. Thief would take electronics and wallet etc. Doesn't matter what neighborhood you are in... its like this here and very common. So people that say move... well most places are like this. Even places that has security. And because of this, i left my seed back in the US. I mean look even in those rich places in california, you have breakins etc. You should be using encryption, particularly if you store a copy of your seed online. That way, theft of your seed won't automatically result in loss of your bitcoins. You could type your seed in a plain text document, then encrypt it with password protection. You could also physically store your seed words in a way -- or in multiple parts -- where only you would be able to recognize and reconstruct them. If you leave them written down as a 12-word seed, there's a decent chance someone will recognize them as such. Now what I'm curious is for those of you who travel or move... how do you bring your seed with you? Obviously if you are moving to somewhere else in the same state, well you can drive there with it so no big deal. But what if you are traveling from say florida to los angeles? Or florida all the way to canada or europe? I mean having the seed with you written on a piece of paper when traveling when flying got to make you all nervous right?
Having multiple encrypted digital copies solves all issues. Just make sure to a create a system where you'll never forget or lose your encryption key. |
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There are two distinct but related proposals in play. One regards the "self-hosted wallet" rule change discussed in this thread, which would require money services businesses to collect KYC information for transactions of $3,000 or more to a non-custodial wallet. The second was actually published in late October, and is intended to implement the FATF Travel Rule. The rule requires KYC collection on cross-border transactions with a de minimis threshold of no higher than 1,000 USD or EUR. The Fed and FinCEN are taking a ridiculously hard line by lowering that threshold to $250: The existing requirements in 31 CFR 1020.410(a) and 31 CFR 1010.410(e) and (f) to collect, retain, and transmit information on funds transfers and transmittals of funds currently apply only to funds transfers and transmittals of funds in amounts of $3,000 or more. The Agencies are proposing to lower the threshold under the Recordkeeping Rule, and FinCEN is proposing to lower the threshold under the Travel Rule, to $250 for funds transfers and transmittals of funds that begin or end outside the United States. Of course, the "self-hosted wallet" rule change would apply to these transactions as well. From what I can tell these are both just proposals, but that may be a formality. I expected FinCEN to pass new regulations complying with the Travel Rule a while ago. I would be surprised if they proposed this rule change right before Trump exits only to forget about it. |
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As it turns out, India will not be banning Bitcoin trading. They're now getting ready to tax Bitcoin traders instead: India to Impose 18% Tax on Bitcoin Trading
India’s Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEIB), an important part of the Indian Finance Ministry has put forward a proposal to the Government to impose an 18% tax on Bitcoin trading in the country.
According to a report published by the Times of India, an estimated amount of the total Bitcoin transactions in India stands at around 40,000 crore INR ($5.5 billion), the newly proposed 18% good and services tax (GST) on Bitcoin transaction means at least 7,200 crore INR ($1 billion) additional tax revenue for the Government.
The report outlined that the CEIB has requested the Indian Government to recognize Bitcoin as an intangible asset to impose a GST levy on all Bitcoin transactions in the country. CoinDCX reported rapid growth in new users and volume recently. The government must be taking notice -- just as it's also looking for ways to pay for the country's sizeable and ongoing stimulus programs. 2021 is shaping up to be the year of cryptocurrency regulation. Happy New Year.  |
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This is rather chilling news. I hope Coinbase and other lobbyists have some success in deterring the Treasury Department. Now we have some context for this rather thoughtful piece published by CoinCenter last week: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Unhosted Wallets This is only one step before the 6012. Indeed, that's one of the first things that comes to mind, although I see that as more of an eventuality. If you look closely at what Brian Armstrong is saying, the rumored regulations seem to focus on VASPs and a potential requirement to verify the owner of an address before fulfilling withdrawal or other requests. It's an expansion of KYC into KYCC -- "Know your customer's customer." That's still far removed from forcing Bitcoin holders to disclose their holdings and public addresses. You're right however, that this is the direction things are likely headed in the future. |
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As for ChipMixer, I believe they have very good reasons not to implement Bech32 yet:
I'm not sure I follow that logic. The anonymity from using ChipMixer does not rely on an attacker not being able to tell an output came from ChipMixer. Indeed, it is trivial to identity a ChipMixer output, given their characteristic funding transactions with 50 outputs of 0.016 BTC, or similar. It is therefore irrelevant if an output is legacy or Bech32 - it can easily be identified as a ChipMixer output either way. Rather, the anonymity comes from being unable to link these outputs to any inputs due to the time travel funding structure and set chip size. Thanks for pointing that out. I may have been approaching this question from the wrong angle. Two questions for you: If ChipMixer were to, in practice, exclude users who haven't upgraded to Bech32-compatible wallets, how would that affect the anonymity set of the overall service? Would it matter, in your opinion? When you say an output could easily be identified as a CM output, I assume you are talking strictly in terms of an heuristic analysis, and not necessarily in terms of blockchain analysis, correct? That is to say, if I merged and split my own outputs exactly as I have observed ChipMixer doing and then sent you some of those chips, you would assume they came from ChipMixer. |
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Yes. There is one trusted person in my life who knows how to recover my bitcoins (or most of them, at least) if I die. Now, if we both die -- in a car crash or something -- I'm not sure. A few family members know that I own bitcoins and I'd like to think one of them would be smart enough to dig through my belongings and put the pieces together if I died, but that's more of a tossup. Another completely (yet related) question would be, whether they would not only manage to access them, but to keep them in custody, move them, sell them without messing-up No, and she doesn't want to learn. Women! We've agreed that she'll contact a family member we mutually trust to help her secure and/or liquidate them. |
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Thank you for sharing. I had almost forgotten all about this case. I'd love to see the actual evidence in regards to the "Locky" allegations. I recall WizSec speculating that BTCe was probably in the business of laundering funds for various hackers, and not necessarily behind the hacks themselves. With Locky, I can't find anything more than this linking Vinnik to the malware in question: An investigator with the international police organization Interpol told the court that with the help of the U.S., which provided data from BTC-e, it appeared that most of the ransom payments were sent to an account that was linked to Vinnik. He would obviously be useful to the authorities in solving various ransomware and money laundering cases, but I haven't exactly seen a compelling case against him, in regards to the allegations that he owned BTCe or developed and distributed Locky. |
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No custodian is insured as far as I know. No insurer will do it. Certain places like Coinbase have insurance but only for their hot wallets.
I was researching BitGo and noticed they do provide a $100 million insurance policy where they act as qualified custodians, with the option to upgrade to a $500 million policy. This applies to cold storage. Still anybody's guess what happens if every Bitgo customer requests a withdrawal.
I know BitGo is quite significant in terms of network transactions, but I would be very curious to know how much is actually in their sole custody. They do lots of multi-sig arrangements with their clients, especially exchanges, and they also offer self-managed custody where they only set up client infrastructure including BitGo API, but have nothing to do with custody itself. |
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I'm surprised to see Blockstream Green and Casa on the list. Fortunately, they will both likely be deploying Bech32 address generation in the not-so-distant future. At least, that's my interpretation of this and this. As for ChipMixer, I believe they have very good reasons not to implement Bech32 yet: I've always assumed it was due to the slow network adoption of Segwit. Until a few months ago, Segwit transactions comprised significantly less than 50% of transactions on the network. Moving all of Chipmixer's activity to Segwit would have therefore compromised its anonymity set. Best to use the most common form of Bitcoin address, right? Now that Segwit adoption is hovering in the 50-60% range, the transition is more justifiable. (To be fair, I'm not sure about the proportion of bech32 vs. wrapped P2SH usage, though.) As it turns out, Bech32 only represents 3.5% of the network if measured by number of UTXOs, or 4.6% if measured by the number of BTC stored. From a privacy perspective, it seems reasonable for ChipMixer to continue holding off. |
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Payment company PayPal is considering options for absorbing cryptocurrency companies to expand its product line. Among them is the BitGo custodian, Bloomberg reports, citing knowledgeable sources. This is a big deal. BitGo is a giant in the institutional custody space, probably the largest after Coinbase. Some of the world's biggest exchanges are their clients. They also launched an institutional trading service earlier this year, although I'm not sure how much traction it has gained. With PayPal's existing customer and merchant base, they're already positioning themselves to be a giant in the Bitcoin exchange and payment processing industries. If they absorb BitGo on top, they could be right up there with Coinbase in terms of overall industry influence and market share, almost overnight. I don't love it, if I'm being honest. |
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I mean it was really expected that it will favoured SEC right? Because KIK and the people behind really offered unregistered and security tokens based on facts and evidences. I'm expecting that the decision though might come up early, nevertheless, it's really a blow to KIK because they are really trying to comeback with all those airdrops, but it seems that it also back fired on them because the problem really die after the case against them, if I'm not mistaken the price sinks to as low as -99%, meaning it almost went to zero.
It's actually an overall victory for KIK, which the market is now reflecting. The price of KIN has nearly tripled since this happened. Beyond the $5 million penalty, the disgorgement leaves the rest of their assets alone and doesn't force any trading restrictions on the KIN token. The SEC doesn't view the token as a security and thus, it doesn't violate securities laws. The only matter KIK was penalized for was the ICO itself. The ruling does have some negative implications for the rest of the ICO ecosystem. It is now official court precedent -- not just SEC actions followed by settlements -- that companies can't run an ICO as a way to raise funds for a token ecosystem that doesn't exist yet, even if it will one day become a utility token. This wasn't unexpected, though. The SEC has long asserted that legal position. |
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150 millions or more in hot wallets seems like a large amount, do they really need to keep that much ?
I used to do arbitrage trades between Poloniex, Kucoin and Cryptopia, two out of three have now been hacked. I had nothing left on Kucoin fortunately...
Actually, 3 out of 3.  It was a long time ago, but it's worth repeating that Poloniex was once hacked. They also had a scandal last year where they stuck their margin lenders with losses to the tune of $13.5 million. One good thing is people didn't lose their money That remains to be seen. I really hope no one loses money. There have been plenty of "hacks" in the past where exchanges made promises initially, only to renege or disappear later on. |
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Thanks for the explanation. I had the same thought as mk4 -- splitting their user base and brand seems like an odd choice. Buy bitcoin and Liquid Bitcoin right from the AQUA app, no documents required. I wonder how long that will last and what the limits or thresholds are. Wyre does cover ID verification in their terms, though it only applies to registered users. I just hope no situations arise where someone gets their bank card debited and then Wyre pulls some KYC shenanigans. I just tested it and you can't buy more than $1,000 at a time through Aqua. I also tried from both US and European IP addresses and was restricted to ApplePay, which has its own ID verification thresholds. So all in your total fee is going to work out to around 8%.
That's what I'm getting too, whether you buy $100 or $1,000. I recall that's what Bitstamp was charging when they first integrated credit card buys, though they've since lowered those fees to 5%. |
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When people on here venerate 'crypto hubs' like Gibraltar and Malta I seem to be completely unable to find anything of any note that's actually operating in unfettered paradise there. Malta doesn't make it easy to research licensed entities. Supposedly as of May this year, 340 firms applied for licenses in 2019 and 26 are now actively registered, but the register on the MFSA's site is broken so I can't see which companies those are. They did recently publish a list of companies operating without a license, but I don't recognize most of the names since they didn't publish DBAs. I think a lot of companies temporarily registered there because they had a transitional phase where you could operate outside of compliance or with a rubber stamp temporary license. OkCoin did that, if memory serves correctly. That transitional period is long over now though, so I assume most of those companies moved their registrations elsewhere. |
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