ouch... i had no idear the testnet feature didn't work on coinb.in

I just went trough your post history, and yes, it's perfectly possible nobody gave you a merit for those posts... I mean, you're not giving new information, no posts that required extra effort,... in most of your posts you're just agreeing with others, or you're bringing points that have been discussed dozens of times already.

Also, there is no need to only count merited posts, your merit count is clearly visible... If you stop posting to get merit, but just start being a member of the community by asking real questions that have anything to do with crypto currency's, by helping others or by actually providing new insights into a discussion, you'll get some merit sooner or later

No need for mentoring on how to avoid plagiarism, i can help you in three simple sentences:
Do not copy somebody's work and present it as if it were your own. This is illegal in most countries, and on most discussion forums. It is also illegal on bitcointalk.

IRL, plagiarism will get you expelled, fired or you can even land in jail... On bitcointalk, the admin is more lenient and just gives you a lifelong ban instead of banning you AND reporting you to the authorities for an in real life punishment.

First of all: this might be interesting to you: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Timelock

There are several technical sollutions, but a newbie friendly one can be found here => https://coinb.in/#newTimeLocked
I would advise against running this on an online computer tough... Downloading the sourcecode and running it offline is safer.

Also, i'd suggest playing with this on the testnet first, don't lock funds before you've made yourself familiar with how this works

Ok... So, in order to summarise the issues (once again), i dug into your site and made following screenshot of the services your provide.
I take these services as a contract: mixing is based on trust. If I read a list like this on a mixer, i think there should be no wiggle room for discussion, the list is iron-clad. Even a single lie in a list like this should have grave consequences!
You are a mixer, you should do, without any discussion, everything you promise on your main page... No smallprint, no hidden twisted phrases in your TOS that allow you to divert from your promises... A mixer should be upfront and completely honest about everything they claim.
Also, and i keep repeating myself: no selfmade defenitions... Mixing isn't a new business, if you say things like "freshly mined" and "letter of guarantee", it should mean exactly the same on your site as it means on any other mixer out there.

I've included a color code:

• Red: proven to be (partially) untrue
• Yellow: unproven or unprovable
• Green: (mostly) true

Red: proven to be (partially) untrue

• Low service fee: Our service fee is random between 1.00% and 2.99% => I have seen 1 legit user posting details of 1 mix and the service fee he payed was 19,3% (proof). You do not indicate any other fees on your main page, nor in your TOS
• Farm mixed fresh: Coins are freshly mixed from our mining farm => I have proven there are no meaningfull coinbase rewards within a reasonable distance.
   (proof). You keep throwing statements around telling us you want to protect your miners, and i keep telling you that it simply does not work like this: a coinbase reward is always visible. If you mixed fresh coins, they were exchanged with tainted coins and you're giving away tainted funds, not fresh.
• Fast support: We reply to all our clients within 1-24 hours and we support PGP encryption => but there are (trusted) users claiming they never received a reply
• Letter of guarantee: You can check the guarantee letter on our check status page => i could not find a link to your check status page, and even if there was such a link, you cannot publish a static page and use it as a letter of guarantee (extra info)

Yellow: unproven or unprovable

• Logless transactions: Logs are destroyed automatically after transactions complete => unprovable, but no mixer can proof this, so it shouldn't be used against you or your service
• Two pools system: We have a receiving pool and a sending pool => i only had the option to study one mixing session, it did not allow me to verify this claim
• Talkless database: Receiving and sending database are seperated => unprovable, but no mixer can proof this, so it shouldn't be used against you or your service
• Fully automated: Our site is fully automated to ensure highest level of privacy => eventough automation has little to do with privacy, and i have a gut feeling this claim might not be 100% true, i cannot verify
• High volume mixing: Our reserve holds high volume of fresh coins for mixing => i personally do not believe you hold the volume you say you're holding. I'm not even talking about the amount you claim to actually hold, whilst advertising an amount that's 100x higher (proof). But there is no 100% conclusive way to proof anything. You say you hold 50 BTC, the one publicly available mixing session does not show this, you refuse to sign a message... It's possible you hold 50 BTC, but i seriously doubt it (but cannot provide proof)
• The highest level of protection: We take privacy protection seriously as it is our core business => after analysing Tryninja's mixing session, i seriously believe i'm seeing funds payed out to your other clients (and all output addresses from a single session are payed out in one single transaction aswell), the phrasing "highest level of protection" is also a pretty big claim... I seriously doubt it, but i cannot provide any evidence

Green: (mostly) true

• Variable receive time: Random delay between 5 minutes - 6 hours to ensure privacy => Eventough i've seen clients of you claim to have waited far longer (so your statement is partially true), the time seems to be random... If it's in order to increase the privacy, or because you're manually creating transactions, or because you're waiting for dips in the mempool so you can pay lower transaction fees and keep more money to yourself... i simply cannot tell
• Multi Crypto Support: We currently support 6 different coins => eventough i've only seen people testing out BTC mixing, you do seem to accept other coins aswell
• SSL protected: Our sites are protected from data leaks => this is true, no MITM... You're using an X3 certificate, which is good
• No registration required: We do not collect personal data and no registration required => seems to be true, unless your customer wants an api key
• Onion Site friendly: Our service is also available on TOR network for better privacy => true

Next to this, there are other issues:

• At least one user claims not to have received his mixed coins. You say you refunded him (no proof), he says he didn't receive anything (no proof either)
• There is no address check, you can enter whatever (incorrect) address you want, and your system will blindly accept it
• Not all security headers are fixed: Strict-Transport-Security Content-Security-Policy X-Frame-Options X-Content-Type-Options Referrer-Policy Permissions-Policy
• Nginx 1.10.1 was released in 2016... Time for a new version?
• Your website seems to be down quite often, which might mean there are underlying issues with the hardware or the setup.
• I'm not a native speaker, and i'm a dyslectic... Still, i spot loads of spelling mistakes. This might indicate a very cheap translation, or a slightly modified google translation. Which might result in subtility's getting lost in translation.
• A daily reboot? Why? I have production systems that run 24/7 between 2 patchcycles. It's not uncommon for a linux server to remain online for several months.
• I have read the discussion you had with VOD, and i found it childish you kept calling him a girl. Where i'm from, it's no shame being a girl, but the way you kept repeating this word tells me you meant it as an insult. That's not how a business is supposed to operate... Really...

A letter of guarantee is an actual contract that lists the deposit and the withdraw addresses, the fee structure and the timeframe of validity. This contract needs to be electronically signed by you... Either using a pgp keypair or a bitcoin keypair... The public key (or address) HAS to be known by the community beforehand. This way anybody can verify the contract (even if your site is down, or if you'd dissapear).
This is what a "letter of guarantee" means in the bitcoin mixer context.

I just visited your site, and i can't find a "check status" page... Even if i did, a "check status" is not equal to a letter of guarantee...
Some random pieces of text are NOT a letter of guarantee, a canary is NOT a letter of guarantee...

I'm happy the issue for this particular user got fixed, but you really need to rethink your concept... The current setup does not suffice (as proven by this user's issue)

Once again: you can NOT make up your own defenitions... A letter of guarantee is a letter of guarantee... Freshly mined coins are freshly mined coins... Fast support is fast support.... A low fee is a low fee...
You can not use your own defenition of these terms. If i buy a blue car, i want a blue car. I'm not happy if the car retailer uses his own defenition of blue and gives me a yellow car instead.

Nah, it's not a big deal... You can have as many alt accounts as you like... It's not against the rules... There are some people tough that make it a sport to connect alt accounts

You realise you're not using the same account as the one you used to create the OP, right??? Forgot to log out when switching to your alt account?

Great work.

One tiny remark: i've run countless tools in a screen session myself... However, it might be a good idear to add the creation of a systemd service in order to run the pool? That way, you can make sure it's restarted if you reboot your machine, or if it would crash for some reason..
You could also run bitcoind as a service (or whatever coin you're creating a pool for)

for example (untested!!!!, will probably need to be adapted to your walktrough):


bitcoind.service => clone (and edit) https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/contrib/init/bitcoind.service in /lib/systemd/system/bitcoind.service

create nomp.service in /lib/systemd/system/nomp.service

then, start and enable bitcoind.service:

check the service and the debug.log and check if it's online

then, start and enable nomp.service:

check the service to check if it's online

At this point, you should be able to restart your server, and the daemon and nomp should start automatically without needing to start screen sessions to run your setup

I has been a long time since i last checked out this mixer... But with this incident i re-investigated.

@Whalemixer1: your OP talks about a "letter of guarantee". In reality i just tested out starting a mix, and i don't see a letter of guarantee, i see some pieces of random string which you call "Whale CODE", "Whale PASS" and "Referance ID". What guarantee does these random strings offer to your clients? It looks like the answer is "none".

In your sector, a letter of guarantee means you generate an actual letter where you basically write down that anybody who sends funds to address(es) a, b, c,... during the next x hours, in a maximum of x transactions will receive x% (or x satosi's) deposited to address(es) x, y, z,... in a maximum timeframe of x hours.
Then, you sign this letter, using a private key (either GPG or BTC), from which the public key (or the address) is known to the public so it can be verified.

If you had done this, there would have been no discussion at all... Either your client did not have such a letter, so he was not entitled to a refund, or he did have such a letter proving (without a shadow of a doubt) that he was entitled to money from you. Now, it's word against word... He says he has some random pieces of string that don't give him any kind of proof, you say you cannot find these pieces of string in your database.
Your site was down repeatedly... How was your backend? How was your db? Did some funds magically appear in your wallet? Now, do realise that we won't take your word for it if you tell us that no funds magically appeared or your db was uninpacted... But if you had technical problems, and you did not provide your users with a real letter of guarantee, and there is even a slight possibility this user did indeed start a mix and funded one of your addresses just before your site went down, i guess you'll have to refund him...

Once again: you cannot make up your own defenitions... You're working in a business branche that exists for many years already... "Fresh coins" = "coins that are freshly mined". "Letter of guarantee" = "signed, verifiable letter that allows a thirth party to indepentantly verify if you cheated or not"

I was trying to stay away from this thread, so i wouldn't bump it unnecessary...
This being said: this situation looks serious enough to step in. An unanswered accusation + the clearnet site seems to be down (can't check the .onion, since i'm @work, and we're not allowed to visit tor links)

AFAIK, whalemixer gave you a letter of guarantee that was signed with either their public pgp key, or with one of their addresses (can't remember which one). Would you mind sharing this letter in PM with somebody trusted from the forum (doesn't have to be me, you can pick somebody with a high rank you trust) so we can verify your claim? If somebody trusted checks your letter of guarantee, and it is valid, the community will stand by you if you decide to open a scam accusation or raise a flag. Do realise that the person you send the letter of guarantee to will know the address your "clean" funds were sent to... So if you don't trust this person, the mixing process is rendered void by this action.

btw: if you find somebody you trust, it might be a good idear to encrypt the letter of guarantee (the admin has access to the PM's, cloudflare is able to cache them aswell, and if the db is ever hacked again it's possible the hackers will also have access to those PM's)... Several users have posted their public key in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1159946.0;topicseen
here's mine: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1159946.msg14280786#msg14280786

euhm.... i don't really get what you're asking...

Do you mean, if a transaction spending an unspent output with a value of 1000 BTC gets broadcasted, would the price dump before it was included into a block?

In that case, i don't think so... funds have been moved in the past, 1000 BTC is a lot, but i don't think anybody would change their strategy from HODLING to selling just because such a transaction was broadcasted. Those whale watching services pump a lot of information about high value transactions into the world regularly. Most of the time it's just an exchange or a whale moving funds between their own wallets... But who cares?

@Charles-Tim: yes, i did give a general comment, not one specific for one user group.
Just to be completely clear: i'm leaning towards ledger, i'm not starting a holy hardware wallet war . I personally own both ledger and trezor devices and i'm happy with both (and both feel secure to me). Ledger does indeed use closed source components, but they have been around for a very long time, they're a public company, and their devices have been tested extensively... So even tough they're using closed source component, i still trust them.

I know the discussion of Ledger vs Trezor has many pro's and con's for each device... If you own one of them, and use proper opsec, you're probably much safer off compared to any desktop wallet on an online machine. That being said, after reading all pro's and con's, and owning hardware wallets from several vendors for many, many years (my oldest HW wallet i still have, eventough it is no longer funded, is a HW.1), my gut feeling tells me that ledger might be a little bit more secure than a trezor, and a trezor one feels more sturdy than ledger devices (the trezor model T on the other hand, feels less sturdy).

Now, when it comes to user friendlyness, i personally find ledger's wallet implementation a little buggy (their UI looks great, but i'm regularly confronted with bugs), trezor's new wallet implementaion on the other hand seems to work better (whilst also providing a clear, user friendly UI)... But i usually only use those implementations for certain altcoins, since i always use my ledger and trezor devices together with electrum instead of the vendor's wallet.

Wow, in my opinion, that writer completely gives the wrong advice about everything except (maybe) his choice of hardware wallet...
Best Overall: Coinbase (An exchange)
Best for Hardware Wallet for Security: Trezor (eventough i'd personally lean towards Ledger if we're talking about best security, due to their chip)
Best Hardware Wallet for Durability: Ledger (eventough i'd personally lean towards Trezor one for best Durability)
Best for Beginners: SoFi (WTF)
Best for Free Buying and Selling: Robinhood (eventough they basically cheated gamestop buyers)
Best for Mobile: Mycelium (meh.... storing funds on a cellphone isn't a good idear to begin with)
Best for Desktop: Exodus (this one isn't even open source.... I don't think Exodus would be in my top-10 wallet provider's list)

Just to be clear: above list comes from the top article, it's defenately not my list!

Even worse are those with a reasonably high rank on bitcointalk (even green trust),  that come into threads where you're trying to convince people to switch from "custodial online unknown wallet X" to "non-custodial, open-source, peer-reviewed, desktop/hardware wallet Y" and start saying things like: "I've been using wallet X for months now, and still i'm not robbed... Go ahead and use X".

What i mean to say is: there are even longtime members on here that promote custodial and web wallets, and actively spread FUD against known hardware wallet brands...

Well, offcourse it's completely up to you... If you can get your hands on nearly-free gear, and you believe the price will skyrocket whilst the diff will stay low... Sure, you can go for it... However, i think those odds are (really) small.

Personally, i would not start a mining operation if i could not recuperate my investment in 6-9 months at the current price and a diff of 30T. But then again, i'm not a big risk-taker. In reality, that would mean i should be able to buy latest gen gear from China at a fraction of the price AND have a power price that way lower than 10 cents/kwh... Ideally, in the 3-6 cents/kwh range.

Let's put it this way: if you were my close, personal, IRL friend and you came to me for advise, i'd tell you not to do it because the odds of getting burned are to big... Especially if you're going to get a loan to start this business... Banks want to get their money back, old ASIC's are worth close to nothing... So having a 50k-100k loan might make them confiscate your wage (if you have one), make them sell some of your belongings, or even your house.

Next to electrum, you also have Wasabi. I usually use electrum instead of my hardware wallet's default wallet (i own trezor and ledger devices, but their user interface is not as good as electrum's), just because electrum's feature set is greatly superior to their wallets.

As a non-SPV wallet, you can always go for core, which also allows you to see all unspent outputs funding your addresses.

I always wonder why people mess around with unknown wallets when you have electrum, wasabi and core at your disposal. It always make little sense to me when i see newbies entering the forum, talking about "unknown wallet X" or "custodial web wallet Y" when they might aswell do it right and pick a decent one instead.

I'm not a specialist here, but i did have a quick glance at your table.

What i'm concerned about is that your worst case scenario isn't what i would pick as a worst case scenario...
Also, i don't see your power bill into this picture, everything is calculated in USD and EUR, so it's very hard for me to see if you included this factor into your calculation.

You do have a scenario where your diff increases to 25T, but you couple it with a 47% price increase.
You also have scenario's with a price decrease, but you couple it to a "mild" difficulty inrease.
And you don't take into account those antminers tend to break quite often and only have a 3 month warranty (if you buy them brand new).

Also, i started searching for place where you could buy an S19 pro. They weren't sold by bitmain anymore (apparently), and the few seamingly reputable stores that still had them in stock asked prices ranging from 8000€ to 15000€/piece. I'm not sure if you'd be able to buy 8 S19 pro's + cables + shelves + network + PSU + A/C + import tax + S&H for 56.000€

Now, for what it's worth, i would probably go for a different "worst case" scenario:
8 miners * 8000 € =64.000 €
21% import tax = 13.000€
S&H, shelves, PSU's, cables, A/C, fans, switches,... = 5000€
fixing machines, keeping the running for > 2 years, replacing broken ASIC's = 15000€

total hardware cost =~ €100k

total power draw = 26 Kw

total hashrate = 880 Th/s

Difficulty => we know there's enough hardware out there to push the diff back up to 25T. We also know the year prior to China's decision, the difficulty had an increase of ~7T in one year. Since your ROI will defenately be more than 1 year, i'd go for an average difficulty of 30T. You have to realize the odds are pretty big that turned off hardware falls into the hands of somebody mining at a much cheaper power rate than you, and this person will probably buy thousands of second hand units making the price he pays per unit a lot cheaper than you buying 8 or 10 units.

Price => Eventough the price might rise (it's actually very probable), we're making a worst case scenario here... The current price is ~$32k, but the price has drastically decreased in the past aswell... so let's assume the bottom price is €20k in >2 years

Let's see our income in one year, with a writeoff for your hardware of 2 years :
Hardware costs: €50k
Power costs: 26Kw * 24h * 365 days * 0.16€/kwh = ~€36,5k
Total cost: €86,5k

Income @ 880Th, 30T diff, including a 1% pool fee:
(((((Hashrate (hashes/sec) * average block reward * 600 * 65535) / 2^48) / Difficulty) * 6 * 24) * 0.99) *365
(((((880.000.000.000.000* 6.25 * 600 * 65535) / 2^48) / 30.000.000.000.000) * 6 * 24) * 0.99) *365 = 1.33 BTC/year

That's an income of ~€26k/year. That's not enough to pay your electricity costs...


Now, once again: this is my worst case scenario... It's a little far fetched, but not impossible...

That's true, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be used against a 51% attack...
In a real life example, bitcoin gold used checkpoints vs a 51% attack:

source: https://www.coindesk.com/attempted-51-attack-on-bitcoin-gold-was-thwarted-developers-say
source: https://www.coindesk.com/attempted-51-attack-on-bitcoin-gold-was-thwarted-developers-say

I'm not saying that this is what we should (ever) do, i'm just brainstorming potential idears and thinking about improbable scenario's (like the CCCP attacking bitcoin this way)

The forum does not host images for you...
You need to upload your image to an image host allowing hotlinking (like imgur), the include the hotlinking url in your post.

As a newbie, the pictures won't show, but the link will, so we can have a look at the image that way.

We're currently in a difficulty dip, while to me it is unclear wether we'll see an increase in the exchange rate in the future...
So, you can think of the current situation as the "probably best case moment", the odds of things getting less profitable in the near future are big (eventough they are not 100%, there's still a chance the diff will dip even more, or the price will explode).

That being said:
https://www.coinwarz.com/mining/bitcoin/calculator?h=880.00&p=26000&pc=0.19&pf=1.00&d=14363025673660.00000000&r=6.25000000&er=1&btcer=34791.24370000&ha=TH&hc=2407.00&hs=-1&hq=1

At current difficulty, current price, not including breaking ASIC's, taxes, S&H, cooling,... You'd make an equivalent of ~124€/day.
This would mean ~403 days to break even IF the difficulty doesn't peak, IF the price doesn't drop and IF you calculated all the costs correctly... A lot of people forget import tax, shipping and handling, shelves, airconditioning, power cables, routers,...

Personally, i wouldn't start a mining business with a 403 ROI (best case scenario). If i were you, i'd follow your friend's advice and just buy BTC (if you believe the price will rise). But in the end, it's up to you...

Just as a last note: if you're guessing for a price increase, and you're actually thinking about mining at a loss (with the 403 day ROI), you're always better off just buying BTC... I see this misconception quite often.

Let's take this fictional example:

Person X mines 1 BTC at a cost of $50.000, while the actual price of 1 BTC is only $25.000. He keeps his 1 BTC and waits untill the price of 1 BTC rises to $75.000 to sell. He now has $25.000 in profits.

Person Y buys $50.000 worth of BTC (so he invests the same as person X). He now has 2 BTC. He keeps his 2 BTC and waits untill the price of 1 BTC rises to $75.000 to sell. He now has $100.000 in profits.

Who made the best investment? The person buying $50.000 worth of BTC, or the person investing $50.000 in mining?