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Whenever pursuing sanctions against a major economic player, there is the risk that the dollar’s status of the global reserve currency will degrade. 

Russia has a lot of Nukes, and is not an economic powerhouse. Ignoring this fact, it appears that the sanctions are working and will end up crippling the Russian economy.

You can try sending a large amount of coin via copying an address and see if the transaction goes to the right place.

It is really not possible to know if you have been infected with malware with absolute certainty.


No. if you are infected with malware, you cannot trust any output that your computer produces. This includes any displayed information. There is the risk that malware will change what is on your clipboard and will continue to display the address on your monitor but will change what is transmitted to any website.

I view the stated "goals" of Putin to "denazify" Ukraine more as propaganda, and not necessarily something that Putin actually believes. I see these "goals" as a pretext to invade. Putin wanting to expand Russia's territory is not something that will be accepted by his people, or the rest of the world, and even his current supporters would likely oppose his actions.


I think nukes serve more as a deterrent than an actual weapon of war. In other words, the threat of using nukes is going to be more effective in winning a war than the actual use of nukes.

There are many risks to using nukes against Ukraine.

You mentioned that (trying to) using nukes may result in Putin's subordinates ousting him from power. I think this is a very real threat. There are many reports that most Russian soldiers do not really want to be fighting Ukraine, and were misled when they were initially deployed. Using nukes against Ukraine would remove any potential pretext that Putin is trying to save innocent lives, and those who allow Putin to remain in power may decide that Putin staying in power is too dangerous.

Depending on how the nuke is delivered, other countries may detect that a nuclear attack is about to take place, and it may not be clear who the attack is against. Putin has vaguely threatened nuclear repercussions to those who interfere with his war, and much of the West is supplying Ukraine with weapons. It would not be outside the realm of possibility that Putin could prepare to nuke Ukraine (or actually do so) as a means to hide the fact that he is (also) about to launch a nuclear attack against another country (or countries). If a country makes a (mis)calculation that they are about to be hit with a nuclear attack, they may launch a nuclear attack against Russia. Alliances have been betrayed in world wars, so even China may reach the conclusion they are about to be hit with nukes.

Russia's last real trading partner is China. Currently, China is supporting Russia, in large part because they want to take Taiwan. I don't know if China is comfortable continuing to support Russia if Russia starts using nukes. There would be the potential that China could face sanctions if Russia were to use nukes and China were to abstain from imposing sanctions against Russia. China facing strong sanctions would risk an uprising by the Chinese people, and I don't know if China is willing to take that risk for a war that they don't stand to benefit from. China's economy is already in a bad position due to its housing bubble popping. China does not need to take Taiwan immediately, and China knows how to play the long game to get what they want without going to war (see what China has done to US colleges, and how that has negatively affected the US).

The war is already unpopular in Russia. Using nukes against Ukraine would result in many innocent lives being lost. Currently, there have been a fairly small number of civilian deaths in Ukraine. There is the risk that the destruction from a nuclear attack would be sufficiently bad that the Russian people would oppose Putin in large enough numbers that it would be impossible for him to stay in power.

edit:

If the sanctions are sufficiently painful, those in power in Russia may be willing to negotiate to have the sanctions lifted, and may be willing to give concessions in exchange for the rest of the world trading with what is now Russia again. I do think what af_newbie is probably a stretch, at least as long as China is willing to trade with Russia.

I assume the reason why your clients want to "accept bitcoin anonymously" is because their donors wish to donate in a way such that their identity is not linked to the donations.

If your clients receive donations from donors, there is the potential that your client will spent the coin in a way that will link all of the donations together, which is the equivalent of using a single donation address.

There are various ways of accepting bitcoin in a way such that a new address is generated for each potential transaction. Others in this thread have mentioned some implementations, and I will not suggest one above what has already been discussed.

However the above is not going to solve your underlying problem. The ideal solution to what I believe is your client's problem is that your client's donors need to be able to send bitcoin in a way such that the transaction cannot be traced back to their identities. A good first step to doing this is to not reuse addresses, not publish any addresses that belong to them, and to use coin control.

He likely received a temp ban at a minimum.

The trust he sent was not removed because he is a scammer. The trust was removed because the trust amounted to being spam, and for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post in this thread.

The purpose of the sanctions is to cripple the Russian economy, so Russia does not have the ability to continue its war effort. Wars are not won with weapons that each side had at the beginning of the war, they are won with weapons produced during the war. So if Russia is unable to continue to produce tanks, planes, and bombs, they will be unable to continue to fight the war.

Another purpose of the sanctions is to incentivize the people of Russia to overthrow/change their government. Russia is no democracy, and there are risks to speaking out/protesting, however, if these types of things happen in large enough numbers, the Russian government will be unable to suppress the protests.

The gas pipelines from Russia provides Russia with money to finance its war in Ukraine. Russia's only real trading partner left is China, but China is not going to give away goods for free. If Russia cannot sell its gas, the Russian government will stop having the ability to buy things. Russia receives approximately 40% of its receipts from sales of gas.

I don't think this is a good solution, just as it is a bad solution to violent places in Central America.

When people being oppressed can simply leave the control of an oppressive/bad government, there is less pressure on other governments to pursue change because the people being oppressed can simply seek refuge. This also gives the people of these bad governments less of an incentive to try to change their government. Unhappy citizens will try to leave instead of changing their government.

Russia is no democracy, and when citizens dissent in smallish numbers they will be punished. However, if enough of Russia's population resists its government, the government will collapse. Allowing people to immigrate from Russia will reduce the incentive for people to resist their government. It is also something that will take a very long time to have a meaningful impact.

Yes, as I mentioned in my previous post, it is a good practice to check the address before signing a transaction.

If someone knows or believes their computer is infected with malware, I would advise them to not trust any output their computer gives them, including information displayed on their screen.

If you remove the requirement that a miner/node needs to "work" in order to find a block, it will become trivial for a single entity to create an ~unlimited number of "miners" from a small number of computers.

Regarding your specific proposal, network connections among all nodes are not going to have a small enough latency for it to work. Also, it is not uncommon for different nodes to have a slightly different times for a variety of reasons. Bitcoin's implementation of PoW, for example, allows for nodes to have their time be by up to 2 hours.

Your proposal also made me think of another reason why PoS is inferior. With PoS, if you are connected to a set of nodes, you have no real way of knowing if you are receiving a valid copy of the blockchain. More specifically, if you receive two copies of the blockchain, you do not have a good way to validate which copy is correct. With PoW, if a node is sent two copies of the blockchain, it is trivial for the node to determine which version is valid because it can trivially calculate which blockchain has the greater amount of total work.

The exchanges will have to comply with any sanctions imposed on Russia. This likely means they will be unable to send any fiat money to Russia. If there is a sanctioned person who has an account with an exchange, they will be unable to access their money.

Bitcoin is not nearly liquid enough for Russia to move any meaningful amount of money through. Russia also has no need to use bitcoin for his financial transactions, they will just use Chinese payment systems.

With Russian forces in Ukraine, it will likely make NATO nervous. If NATO believes Russia will not stop at Ukraine, it may decide to intervene before Russia makes it way into a NATO country.

Also, if there is evidence that Russia is committing war crimes, the US may impose a no fly zone over Ukraine, which would probably be described as being involved.

I have seen a number of TikToc users posting live streams of what is likely to be a sound recording of someone crying, and a repeating video of an old building in poor condition, with the caption saying they need money to escape.

It is sad that people are taking advantage of the situation for their own personal benefit.

That would likely be something that qualifies to be removed from the various trust profiles, as it is spam. There is also an argument the sent ratings amount to death threats, which would be against another rule.

China is hoping that western governments will be scared to help Ukraine. They are on the side of Russia. China has similar ambissions for Taiwan. 

Putin took months to build up his military, and while he was doing so, he claimed to be doing military exercises. This gave the people of Ukraine time to be aware of the threat of a pending invasion, and it makes the pretext that Putin is using for the invasion clearly false without even knowing the details of Putin's allligations.

Russian soldiers appear to be demoralized, and do not appear to believe in what they are fighting for. There are reports that the solders were told they were going to the Ukraine border for exercises, not for war. There are reports that Russian solders are surrendering without even taking any fire.

Putin is known to take big risks by western standards. He also owes his power to the oligarchs in his country, some of whom have faced increasingly stiff sanctions in recent years. The KGB does not have the same surveillance capabilities that China does, so it is difficult for Putin to truly know who is and isn't loyal.

It is also possible that Putin is unsure of who he can trust inside his inner circle. The west exposed Putin's plan to execute a false flag attack well ahead of time and may have made public the planned invasion date ahead of time. Both suggest that Putin has leaks coming from his inner circle.

It is not uncommon for peace talks to be held in person. Although asking to have the talks in a country that is not neutral does pose a risk to the Ukraine deligation, and does smell like a trap.

I think this is what is behind the recent push to get bitcoin to convert to PoS. There is not a technical rational behind wanting to switch. There is a desire to implement the green new deal.

If your server is only used for development, as others have mentioned, your best bet is to just exit bitcoin core cleanly and restart. You can create a script to do this after hours at a time when the lowest number of developers are going to be using your server, and provide those who use your server advance notification of the downtime.

With PoW, a miner needs to make an investment in mining equipment for to mine the cryptocurrency. If that equipment cannot be used to mine that cryptocurrency, there is no other way for the equipment to create value for its owner. If the miners as a whole were to act badly, the mining algorithm could be changed, and the mining equipment would become worthless.

Similarly, with PoS, a miner must "lock up" their coin in order to receive mining rewards. This is similar to a miner buying a miner, except without the mining manufacturer. If a PoS "miner" were to produce invalid blocks, their "locked up" stake would be lost. It would be up to the other PoS "miners" to determine if another miner is producing invalid blocks. If the miners as a whole were to act badly, the value of the coin would become worthless.

In both PoS and PoW, if the miners as a whole act badly, they will lose their investment. However, with PoW, the underlying coin will survive. This is an important distinction. If a large PoS miner were to successfully act badly, they could potentially enter into derraritive contracts to offset the coin they have "locked up" that is mining. This removes the requirement for a PoS miner to actually invest in their "mining" operation. OTOH, a PoW miner cannot easily hedge their investment if they intend to act badly while mining.

I would point out that if malware is able to change the content of your clipboard, it is also possible the malware can change what is displayed on your screen. So unless you are using a device that is insulated from any malware your internet-connected computer may have, such as an HW wallet, or an air-gapped computer, checking the entire address will not do much good against malware.

It is however a good practice to double-check the entire address before finalizing a transaction, in case you copied the wrong address, or didn't actually copy anything when you already had another address in your clipboard.

No they haven't....

There are literally lines of people lining up to receive weapons who are signing up to defend Ukraine from the tryant Putin. Zelenski has called on his people to make Molotov cocktails to throw at tanks and Russian (invading) troops.