And what stops a scammer make 10 000 000 minimal wallets and perform an attack?

While you are correct with the fact that Bitcoin mining uses quite a big % of renewable energy (which in most cases also makes the mining more profitable), I think that you've got it wrong with the idea of hype. I feel that it's the opposite and those tweets were made to grow the hatred against Bitcoin and its mining.

Indeed. But keep in mind that shipping also has its costs and pennies after pennies everything is adding up, especially as we are individuals buying small stuff here and there. And at the end, bigger companies buying entire containers will be able to sell in local shops at same or even lower price.


Lately AliExpress adds the taxes in the last step before paying. You may end up paying more than you expected, but on the other hand it fixes exactly this kind of abnormal loopholes.

Another idea would be to install a virtual machine onto that laptop and install this kind of things onto the VM, which you can easily dispose completely.
Or you can boot from a Tails USB, and tails comes with Tor browser too.

So there are some ways. Clearly not as comfortable as installing Tor browser directly, still...

While I did buy from AliExpress, I have no experience with actual Alibaba. Good to have means to filter out scammers, but I'll still wait for one more source for the info  

As a small note, you've broken a little the quoting in that post; maybe you want to fix that.

Yep.
The only thing with US that it's a country made of states which have their own laws. And while some states welcome openly crypto, others try to regulate it as strongly as they can (almost to a limit close to banning, but banning will probably not happen).

So while it's not the entire US bitcoin friendly, you can find plenty of places in US who have all it takes to become a crypto hub tomorrow.

Been there briefly on their beginnings and it was shitposting all over. Of course that since I knew Bitcointalk already I had higher standards, but I can't tell for others. People did spend time there and I can't really tell why.
But if it went from bad to worse then yeah, sooner or later they went from potential competition to no competition at all.

Oh well, if there aren't better sites then maybe it's the fact that forums are no longer a thing in 2021. And since the search engines may not send the users here.. the number of newcomers is lower than it could be.


The evil fee may indeed have its role in all this.


Something else that may worth mentioning is a possibly growing problem of group(s) ganging up and using DT and trust feedback for their own goals/benefit and may discourage people (especially on local boards, I guess) and make them leave the forum. But I don't actually know how big this problem is. I do see now and then "dubious" people ending up in DT, but I didn't pay that much attention (yet?).

I don't know if it was 10 EUR or 20 EUR, but yes, I have the same dilemma.
Those are no longer as profitable as they were in the past and for the later few I already have to pay tax.
Ordering from China may not become "a think of the past" but will most probably become much less frequent.
Ohwell, nothing (good) lasts forever 

While it may be a stronger message if they destroy the goods publicly (and the information may go viral), I also agree that's a waste (especially with the chip shortage lately) and they could have monetized them (e.g. sell them) to recover some of the "damage" caused by those who were stealing.

Anything can happen. It's not that Electrum would be unsafe, but it depends a lot on how (un)safe the computer/laptop is.
So unless you have the knowledge and willingness to keep 1 BTC+ on airgapped cold wallet, I also recommend you use a hardware wallet. And it doesn't matter that much if you lose your hardware wallet as long as you still have the safely kept seed (or course that after losing your hardware wallet you'll have to move your funds away, just in case)

Although the withdraw page has the correct Electrum prefixes if "Import to Electrum" is clicked, I think that it could be useful to add a red "(p2pkh:)" where the page tells:


But I agree, the topic is covered, people have to just read

And yes, I've also tried it out the ToR v3 link (thank you @ChipMixer for being kind and let us try it out). All went smoothly, no problems at all!

I think that you try to find a relation in unrelated things (from what I know the result of a bet is not related to the result of the previous bet0 and I have a feeling that you try some sort of martingale, at least when you are careful. And martingale is simply bad.
And yes, your mind should not care either what has happened in the previous bet(s).

If my trust rating looks OK (I'm not sure what does that rule cover), then I'd take:
7 - NeuroticFish

If not, no biggie.

Thank you for the raffle.

When you are "prepared" you probably use strategy and you're very careful what and how you bet. Since betting is basically governed by random, there's a good chance that when you're prepared you're doing it wrong.
On the other hand, if you're relaxed and enjoying it, when you lose you don't count it (remember it) as bad as it was, and when you win... but luck is luck no matter how you play.
Maybe you start actually playing for enjoying it (just keep in mind to gamble only money you afford to spend/lose); it's the better way and if indeed you get easier wins like that then why not?

There was in the news about problems related to a big exchange where people were trading dollars vs a coin that can be created by some computer processing and the coin can work without banks.
It was the end of 2013, the exchange was Mt Gox, and actually Bitcoin was no longer mined by CPU (nor GPU). I thought I've missed the train and I spent (too) long time with altcoins until I actually became Bitcoiner, but nobody's perfect. But that was when I first heard of Bitcoin.

Yes it was/is that yobit forum - I don't know if it runs and how is it going - , then there's some crypto/altcoins forum the bounties not-in-correct form for bitcointalk were held there, then there's a few forums that were advertised also here .. I don't know how good are they doing, but I guess that some of them do exist.

Actually the topics were removed and the users were banned (my BPIP extension shows that they are banned). Is there anything else you'd like to be done?!

5% down from 119-120 EH/s is not that worrisome.


I'll wait until more reliable sources will tell that, especially as (too) many Alibaba sellers are not to be trusted and the chip shortage is not over.

They should have been regulating them better from start, in a way to clearly prove they have the backing they claim in each and every moment.
Now... it's different. As said, they want to smoother the path for CBDCs and get "the competition" basically out of business by requesting this and that.

This would mean that the pool software looks for information that's not relevant to them and, more important, the miner sends such (extra) information to the pool.
I don't see why could/would that happen, since a developer (and maybe a packet sniffer) could detect that and would lead to a scandal, if it's the stock firmware/software.