What you have described is neither a hardware wallet nor cold storage. It is a hot wallet which you turned off for a few months, and is only marginally more secure than a hot wallet which is always on.

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In terms of  the discussion about RDRAND and entropy sources, this is relevant:


And of course, if you really don't trust any of this and still think your entropy might be compromised, then as BHC says, just flip a coin.

This transaction didn't actually pay OP at all. His friend just consolidated inputs.

The friend then went on to make another transaction paying 122 sats/vbyte, which I presume is paying OP, and OP has then sent that output to what seems to be Binance with a fee of 241 sats/vbyte.

I would suggest to OP to learn a bit more about bitcoin transactions. In total those transactions paid around 163,000 sats in fees ($40), when the whole thing could have been achieved in two (or even one!) transactions, and paying less than 5% of those fees.

Correct. I think we discussed this in another thread a while back:


I do still require to import a single address or single private key from time to time, and so I use Electrum for that. I would still like Sparrow to have this option, but I have since discovered you can indeed sweep an individual private key in Sparrow - you just can't import it. Sentinel is another option for watch-only addresses, as you say.

If you were running this set up and still needed to use watch-only addresses, then you could of course import the addresses directly in to Bitcoin Core, since you can't do it on Sparrow.

I fail to see the link between this and your assertion that the state should be allowed to monitor everything. Even if bitcoin didn't exist, my stance on privacy would be the same. Indeed, my stance on privacy was the same before bitcoin.

My quote that you shared was referring specifically to this case, where potentially innocent people are being convicted of laundering money based on unreliable and probably downright false "evidence", which is being shielded from any independent verification. The government know this, but they don't care.

And I'll point out again that the Boston marathon bombers were not identified due to mass surveillance, but due to private citizens. If individuals or businesses want to use cameras on their private property, that is their right. The government does not have the right to record all people in all public places. And as I linked to above, the evidence shows that mass surveillance does not prevent any crimes.

No. They do not prevent crimes, and the downside far outweighs any theoretical security benefit.

Lots of bad advice in this thread.

If you do anything at all on a computer you do not own, you should assume you have zero privacy and security at all times. You have absolutely no idea if that machine is infected with malware, has a keylogger, or whatnot.

If you look up an address on a block explorer, that address is linked to your IP, alongside everything else linked to your IP which is more than enough to personally identify you.

If you look up an address via a VPN, then that address is linked to your VPN's IP address yes, but also to your browser fingerprint. Your browser fingerprint is almost certainly unique enough to identify you unless you have taken a range of very specific and technical steps to make it less so.

If you look up an address via vanilla Tor, then that address is linked to your Tor exit node's IP address, and the browser fingerprint is non-unique. This is probably fine, but also depends what else you do with that same Tor identity.

As soon as you start looking up multiple addresses, then in addition to the caveats above, these addresses are all linked together.

Using a watch only wallet such as Electrum or Blue wallet, not via your own node, is worse (not better!) than using a blockchain explorer. Not only is it far easier for blockchain analysis companies to run servers for these wallets rather than a blockchain explorer service (and we know many do run such servers), but your wallet will query all your addresses (even unused ones) which reveals all your addresses simultaneously and provides a more certain link between all these addresses (as well as your IP address as above).

If you want privacy, run your own node. From there, you can either run your own blockchain explorer service, you can run your own Electrum server, or you can even just use a wallet such as Sparrow which links directly to your node with no further software required. If you aren't running your own node, you are relying on a third party, and that third party can compromise your privacy.

Pending as in it sees it and it is unconfirmed, or pending as in it doesn't see it at all and is waiting to hear about it?

If Electrum says it is local, but a blockchain explorer sees it but it is unconfirmed, then it sounds like it has been dropped by some nodes due to the fee being too low. The server your Electrum client is connected to has dropped it, but the blockchain explorer hasn't. Or perhaps the blockchair explorer has also dropped it and doesn't see it at all.

Either way, what I would do is the same: Simply delete the local transaction from Electrum, create a new one with a higher fee, and then broadcast this new transaction. It won't matter if your old transaction is opted in to RBF or not - the Electrum server you are connected to which has already dropped the old one will accept the new one and should have enough connections with other nodes running default limits or running full RBF that it will propagate sufficiently to be mined. If not, then share the TXID here and we can help.

Just have your friend right click on the local transaction in Electrum and select delete. Then make a brand new transaction as they normally would, but with a higher fee. Use the fees box on this page to select a reasonable fee: https://mempool.space/

You have succeeded in creating and broadcasting a transaction paying the address you were trying to pay in your OP. It is here: https://mempool.space/tx/913859fb1eed893c79e6eb287c96eb94df2a18117602a2fd0897c11e0d9a7ed7

Unfortunately, you have chosen an even lower fee than the previous transaction which is still unconfirmed. This transaction is around 40 MvB from the tip of the mempool and won't be confirmed any time soon. It is, however, opted in to RBF, so is easy to replace with a higher fee transaction if you want.

Your address bc1qcsudyax32m3n2mdj83jdrme8c2m4t0znsgv99h now has two unconfirmed spends and no balance remaining should these transactions confirm.

Yeah, I can see it on Blockchair now also. Although this is completely irrelevant - whether or not one node in the network drops it or keeps it in their mempool makes absolutely no difference. The transaction as it stands is not going to confirm for weeks, at least. What OP needs to do remains unchanged:

There is no saying that it was the service in question which rebroadcast it. Anyone at all who knew about the transaction could have rebroadcast it, including any node on the network or anyone who viewed the transaction on a block explorer.

Although as of right now, Blockchair seems to have dropped it again.

We cannot prove nor verify any of Chainalysis's claims because their code and methods are complete black box.

Imagine the reputation Chainalysis would get if this went in their favor here. Let experts review their code, have their code independently validated, and then have their results form a central piece of evidence in such a high profile court case. They would be the only blockchain analysis company out there who could claim these accolades, and as a result would increase their customer base as well as being able to increase their prices. It's a perfect situation for them. All they have to do is let a few experts audit their code.

So why won't they let anyone look at their code? The potential upside for them is tremendous. It's almost like they know that this won't happen and instead their code will be torn to shreds and shown up for the absolute nonsense it is. What more can you expect from a company whose head of investigations doesn't know what a segwit address is or know the difference between bits and bytes.

No one can predict the future.

At the time of the last halving, fees were 1 sat/vbyte. In the two weeks following the last halving, they peaked at around 30-50 sats/vbyte for a relatively quick confirmation, and then fell back to 1 sat/vbyte again.

No one can say for sure. I would note the current fees right now are the highest they have been in around 3 months, so right now would seem to me like a bad time to consolidate UTXOs.

10⁷⁵ is 1% of 10⁷⁷.

Bitcoin private keys fall within the following range:

The two keys you and seoincorporation have used:

C3... to CB... is around half of all keys starting with C. Keys starting with C are around 1/16th of all keys. 100/16/2 = ~3% of all keys.

So yes, the range shared above is two orders of magnitude lower than the set of all keys.

What software did you try to bruteforce the wallet with?

Before you enlist any third parties, I would encourage you to try yourself using https://btcrecover.readthedocs.io/. Make sure you make a back up copy of your wallet.dat first.

We can guide you through the process of setting up a tokens file for your attempt, but as others have mentioned, you'll need to have some idea of what your password will look like. Letters, numbers, symbols? Uppercase, lowercase? Any words or patterns? Dates? Names? What other passwords were you using at the time? Will this password be similar?

The version you have linked is very out of date and hasn't been maintained in 6 years. This is the active fork:
https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover
https://btcrecover.readthedocs.io/

Absolutely. Bitfinex and Tether are the same company. After Bitfinex had its assets seized for fraud and money laundering, Tether printed 700 million USDT out of thin air and handed it to Bitfinex so they could keep operating and not collapse. Imagine being guilty of fraud, printing almost a billion dollars out of nothing to bail yourself out, and yet still people continue to deposit their coins to your platform and continue to buy and hold your centralized stablescamcoin. And don't forget that Tether also admitted multiple times in court that USDT is not fully backed up 1-to-1. It's literally a fractional reserve scam, ran by fraudsters, which prints more out of thin air for their own benefit. Yet people call it "stable".

...yes? Did you miss the slogan "Big Brother is watching you"? Did you miss the Thought Police? How do you propose The Party manages to prohibit specific books, specific speech, and specific thought, if it isn't conducting mass surveillance? Your assertion that "the state should be able to monitor everything" is the first step on the road to 1984.

Because I've committed no crimes. Which is all the more reason the state has no right to surveil every aspect of my life.

People taking out their phones to film a specific event is completely different to blanket mass surveillance at all times. And no, as I've shared previously in this thread, there is zero evidence that mass surveillance prevents crimes, and even the NSA admit that.

We don't. But either you accept that blockchain analysis is bullshit and therefore all their claims should be completely dismissed and ignored, or you believe they are completely accurate in which case you must also accept that the vast majority of mixer use is perfectly legitimate, as they themselves claim.

So... they have to keep a small fraction of all deposits in reserve?

It's almost as if all centralized exchanges should have 100% of customer funds in reserve at all times. You deposit, you trade, you withdraw. The only reason an exchange would run a fractional reserve system is if they are helping themselves to your money and spending it without your knowledge.

Or just do what the likes of Binance and Tether did, and borrow/print a few billion out of thin air the day before the audit to make everything look fine! Not shady at all.

I'm not sure. I do use Lightning, but not to anonymize coins.

In theory, you will indeed be breaking the link between the bitcoin you send and the bitcoin you receive. But there are a lot of caveats to that:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/state-of-bitcoin-lightning-network-privacy
https://abytesjourney.com/lightning-privacy/

It's going to be better than nothing and just sending a regular on chain transaction, but I'm not convinced it's the panacea that some people believe it to be.

If you don't want to use electronic methods, then that only really leaves cash in person or by mail. Depending on your country/jurisdiction, you may have options like a cash deposit to a bank account or a money order.

They should, yes, but centralized exchanges have a long history of scamming their users, charging outrageous fees, locking accounts, seizing coins, helping themselves to users' money, and so on. You shouldnt trust them for a second.

Centralized exchanges will only ever become more regulated. No government is ever going to ease up on the regulations. If you use centralized exchanges, then you should expect worse and worse service and more and more rules over time.

Thankfully there are more decentralized options, and more advanced decentralized options, than ever before

I can't disagree more. This is a crazy position. Imaging wanting to live in 1984!?

Right, because there has never once been a single case of data being leaked, hacked, or used inappropriately? The fact is if this data is gathered, it will be used against you, regardless of whether you have committed any crimes.

Videos from businesses and individuals, not from government surveillance cameras.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/after-tragedy-boston-more-government-surveillance-not-answer

It would of course be the right thing to do from the sender's perspective. But is it the right thing to do from the individual miners' perspective? They have honestly mined a valid transaction, and now their pool operator is denying them the profits? Should it really be up to the pool operator at all? Should each individual miner not get to decide what to do with their share of the excess fee which they earned honestly?

I don't think it's as simple as "I paid too much in fees, give it back".