I believe I spent my normal (non-source) merits on that post, and I can pretty much do whatever I want with them. If theymos thinks that this is abuse, he's welcome to remove me as a source.
I don't understand why people care too much on how others use their sMerits (source or non-source sMerits). Good posters will do easily to earn merits, but it takes time to read & learn from documents, guides, rules; read carefully OPs and previous posts before commenting. For them, I don't think they have reasons to complain on why I have not yet earned a single merit? The merit system is broken, and should be fixed or removed. They do not care about the ways other good posters spend sMerits. Nowadays, people think that sMerits are not only used for good posts, but also used to show agreement/ like. I have no issues with any kind of approach, as long as they don't do sMerits exchanges back and forth, especially for scam platforms, and terrible posts (in term of post quality). Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.
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~ If a Mod can confirm vphasitha01 is still not banned, I'll remove him from [ LIST] Banned users. Since he last posted in November, he might have been banned again. posted a comment in the last month, so this user is not banned. There are at least two more evidence that @vphasitha01 has never permanent banned. (1) We have never seen ban appeal for that account. (2) That account sent first sMerit after months, on 20th August 2019, here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5176834.msg52204192#msg52204192I read somewhere months ago that permanent banned accounts are unable to send sMerits to others (after theymos stepped in and reverted merit transactions from abused accounts months ago). I just read, and honestly did not see original post on restriction on ability to send sMerits from perma-banned accounts. So, by the way, if someone know it, please share it here. I much appreciated your help. |
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Some may not even know that this option exists, others may be too lazy for such a thing, while some simply forget to look at their topic when given the right answer.
Besides what you already mentioned, there are some more reasons that OPs don't lock their threads after getting answers they want: (1) Don't know that if they don't lock their threads, spammers will join and might turn it into spam place. (2) They are not real forum users: Don't care what happen next with their threads and the forum, just ask and leave the forum after getting answers. |
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I don't think so, Tor increases privacy in general, and wallets that allow Coinjoin transaction use Tor by default in order to enhance privacy of bitcoin transactions. There are other factors that combine together and contribute to the privacy of users. I don't see any convincing reasons to judge that Tor increase risks of bitcoin theft, honestly. Enhanced privacy with Wasabi & Samourai wallets |
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Then come some restrictions to the trolls: If their troll-score gets too high they are restricted from creating new threads. Higher still, and a possible temp-ban is in order. What do you guys think?
I support your suggestion, because troll is not allowed, but I still see some users continously troll over years, and it seems they have not yet get any kind of bans (as I know). Not sure what happened more than 2 years ago with trollers, but last 2 years, I have not seen trollers got ban (by their trolling, not from plagiarism or spam, eg.) 3. No trolling.
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I still haven't got my head around this bumping thing. I get the impression that the members with the biggest bumpers will be the one with the boards on ignore. Is this true?
I think you should use most powerful bumpers, instead of biggest bumpers. Bumpers' bump power depends on two factors: - Total activity last year. - Total earned-merits last year. So, I think you are wrong, because nowadays, users struggle with merits, not activity, so spammers likely have same total activity last year compared to high quality posters. In contrast, their total earned merits last year definitely are considerable lower. Generally, spammers will have much smaller bump power. More powerful bumpers will have more effects with their bumps (mini and super bumps). |
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Then why bother starting a thread at all? Is theymos blocking your PMs?  This is not the first thread with local rule for only theymos. I guess admin likely blocked OP's PM for months. By the way, the thread looks like a merit-laundering place for merit sources (just kidding).  Local rules - only the most senior admin may comment on this thread.
Only Cobra, Cyrus and Theymos may reply. Satoshi can chime in, if he feels strongly about the situation, which I expect he would.
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Aantonop said in one recent video that coinjoin is even considered "illegal" in some countries. I wasn't able to find something backing this up in a quick search.
I checked on the official site of Wasabi wallet, and found. I also updated OP with this section. What's the legal status of Wasabi/CoinJoin? [5]USA: On May 9, 2019, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an interpretive guidance that stated the following in section 4.5.1(b): An anonymizing software provider is not a money transmitter. FinCEN regulations exempt from the definition of money transmitter those persons providing "the delivery, communication, or network access services used by a money transmitter to support money transmission services."
Wasabi is an Anonymizing software provider so it is not a money transmitter, thus not under Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) regulations. Basically we can continue to operate like now and it is compliant. |
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So if I understood it correctly every browser displayed a warning that the site might be a fake one. But Chrome, Firefox and Opera actually displayed the fake apple.com site in their address bar?
I assume changing the punnycode settings would be enough for the real address to be displayed by Firefox, that just leaves Chrome and Opera showing the fake apple.com site in the address bar.
It does not right, because browsers only show Warning if there are people reported those fake sites to them, and their team verified those reports and took actions. In general, people have to secure their devices and their accounts by themselves by being as careful as possible. Relying on supports from browers and community's reports are too late to protect them from threats, and attackers might steal their money in minutes. |
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- Using CoinJoin increases your privacy but you have to read rules of platforms before sending your funds to them. Platforms tend to restrict CoinJoin transactions.
- Only use Coin Join transactions if you have fully control.
- Avoid using Coin Join transactions on third-party platforms that don't allow it.[e].
"Not your keys, not your bitcoin" [3]It is a vital rule, so if one want to enhance privacy, s/he should learn to use non-custodial wallets that provide enhanced privacy, like Wasabi and Samourai. There are so many mixing platforms but it is risky to store your coins too long on those platforms. Someone made that mistake and lose their coins on scam mixing platforms. There are two wallets for this purpose: - Wasabi wallet
- Samourai wallet
They are both use Coinjoin to give users modification options to enhance their privacy. It is worth to warn you all that those wallets only enhance your privacy, and not give your completely privacy. Additionally, the personal practice of user will determine level of privacy they have. Now, let's see what is Coinjoin- CoinJoin: Bitcoin privacy for the real world
- CoinJoin is a trustless method for combining multiple Bitcoin payments from multiple spenders into a single transaction to make it more difficult for outside parties to determine which spender paid which recipient or recipients. Unlike many other privacy solutions, coinjoin transactions do not require a modification to the bitcoin protocol. [1]
- In very simple terms, coinjoin means: “when you want to make a transaction, find someone else who also wants to make a transaction and make a joint transaction together”. [2]
Wasabi walletWasabi Wallet 1.0 Is ReleasedWebsite: https://wasabiwallet.io/FAQsWhy Wasabi ?Wasabi Wallet is an open source, non-custodial, privacy-focused, desktop Bitcoin wallet offered by zkSNACKs Ltd. It differentiates itself from many other wallets for its strong focus on user privacy.
#1 - Wasabi walletThe Wasabi wallet uses CoinJoin in order to anonymize BTC. - Pros: Easy to use; fairly cheap ~0.15% fee; pretty good privacy; automatically uses Tor - Cons: ~0.1BTC minimum; with a great deal of effort and investigation, transaction analysis may still be possible, especially if you leave other traces; the coordinator could possibly do an active sybil attack against specific coins Wasabi wallet has processed 5372 Coinjoin transactions as of writing What's the legal status of Wasabi/CoinJoin? [5]USA: On May 9, 2019, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an interpretive guidance that stated the following in section 4.5.1(b): An anonymizing software provider is not a money transmitter. FinCEN regulations exempt from the definition of money transmitter those persons providing "the delivery, communication, or network access services used by a money transmitter to support money transmission services."
Wasabi is an Anonymizing software provider so it is not a money transmitter, thus not under Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) regulations. Basically we can continue to operate like now and it is compliant. Anonymity setsWhat is anonymity set? The anonymity set is effectively the size of the group you are hiding in. [4]If 3 people take part in a CoinJoin (with equal size inputs) and there are 3 outputs then each of those output coins has an anonymity set of 3.
There is no way to know which of the anon set output coins are owned by which of the input owners. All an observer knows is that a specific anon set output coin is owned by one of the owners of one of the input Coins i.e. 3 people - hence an anonymity set of 3.
Your Wasabi software has limited information on what the anonymity set should be, so the anonymity set that the software presents you is just an estimation, not an accurate value. With Wasabi we are trying to do lower estimations, rather than higher ones.
Both Wasabi and Monero can be thought of in terms of "anonymity sets". If you're spending some BTC with an anonymity set of 50, this means that an observer can see that the sender is one of 50 people, but they can't tell which. So someone investigating a particular transaction you sent would have you "in their sights" to a certain extent from the start since you're among the 50, but in order to prove that you sent it, they'd have to either eliminate 49 other people from consideration or find some other evidence linking you to it. Wasabi always aims for an anonymity set of 50 when mixing. Monero has an anonymity set of 11 per transaction. If you cascade transactions as I suggest above, then this multiplies, so after two transactions you have an anonymity set of 11*11=121, and after a cascade of three you'd have an anonymity set of 1331. The quality of each member in the anonymity set isn't quite comparable, though. Monero is able to hide transaction amounts, which is helpful, but I tend to consider the quality of Monero anonymity-set-members to be lower on average, since many are probably owned by hosted wallets or other possible global adversaries. See alsohttps://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/PrivacyYou currently pay a fee of 0.003% * anonymity set. If the anonymity set of a coin is 50 then you pay 0.003% * 50 (=0.15%). If you set the target anonymity set to 53 then Wasabi will continue mixing until this is reached, so you may end up with an anonymity set of say 60, and you will pay 0.003% * 60 (=0.18%).
There are also edge cases where you do not pay the full fee or where you pay more. For example if you're the smallest registrant to a round, you will never pay a fee. Also when you are remixing and you cannot pay the full fee with your input, then you only pay as much as you have, but if the change amount leftover would be too small, then that is also added to the fee. Currently the minimum change amount to be paid out is 0.7% of the base denomination (~0.1BTC.)
It is also possible that you get more back from mixing than you put in. This happens when network fees go down between the start of the round and its end. In this case, the difference is split between the active outputs of the mix.
Avoid to recombine mixed coinsIt is advisable to limit the recombining of mixed coins because it can only decrease the privacy of said coins. This links all the consolidated UTXOs in one transaction, creating only one output, which then clearly controls all these funds. That said, if you combine less than 1 BTC it is less likely to reveal your pre-coinjoin transaction history. The potential issue comes when you spend that coin. Depending on what you do with the coin you might reduce the privacy of the resulting change (if you send half your coin to an exchange for example, as they will know that you own the coin change). As a result it is best not to recombine ALL your mixed change, though you may wish to recombine some coins if you are planning on hodling for many years as this will reduce the fees required to spend the coins later.
More guides on Recombine mixed coinsVerify first, before installingIt is the same rule with other wallets, verifing package first before installing (if wallets have that option). It is strongly recommended to VERIFY PGP SIGNATURES of the downloaded packages before installing Wasabi. This protects you against malicious phishing sites giving you back-doored Wallet software. Don't trust - Verify!
There are different wallets, for: MacOs, Windows, Linux, Ubuntu / Debian. Download hereHow to install?Install InstructionYoutube guideChoose other Bench32-support wallets that have coin control featuresWasabi wallet only supports to generate Bench32 address, but it does not support to send your bitcoin to others Bench32-address, so you have to choose other alternative wallets to do this. Suggested wallets [4]: Read more: Why does Wasabi only use SegWit bech32 addresses?Some notes on Wasabi wallet- Wasabi wallet implement bitcoin transactions through Coinjoin inputs and Coinjoin outputs, but the wallet is unable to know which outputs of belong to which inputs. This is why it brings more privacy to users.
- Practice of coin control after mixing will identify the level of privacy users have. That depends on practice of users, not the Wasabi wallet.
- Wasabi wallet uses Tor by default, and users don't have to set up Tor. a
- Do not turn off Tor in Settings, because it might damage their privacy by IP address.
- Verify first, before installing
- Wasabi wallet only generate Bench32 address (with prefix bc1 at the start of address), but unable to send BTC to other Bench32 address
- Don't send all of your bitcoins to a new wallet, instead import your seeds into new wallet in order to protect your privacy.
aAll Wasabi network traffic goes via Tor by default - no need to set up Tor yourself. If you do already have Tor, and it is running, then Wasabi will try to use that first.
You can turn off Tor in the Settings. Note that in this case you are still private, except when you coinjoin and when you broadcast a transaction. In the first case, the coordinator would know the links between your inputs and outputs based on your IP address. In the second case, if you happen to broadcast a transaction of yours to a full node that is spying on you, it will know the link between your transaction and your IP address.
Samourai walletIt is important to note that at beginning, lead developers of Wasabi and Samourai wallets worked together to build one application, then their vision to develop diverged and they splited to develop different wallets. From that, we have Wasabi and Samourai wallets. Read more there: https://www.coindesk.com/a-battle-between-bitcoin-wallets-has-big-implications-for-privacyWebsite: https://samouraiwallet.comDownload: https://samouraiwallet.com/downloadBlog: https://blog.samouraiwallet.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/samouraiwalletSupport: https://samouraiwallet.com/supportThere are so many different features with Samourai wallet, from there you can have a quick comparison between them. Please click on Details link to see detail explanation of each feature. DOJOAmong them, Dojo is the one that makes Samourai wallet is different and help users conveniently and easily to set up their Bitcoin full nodes. Offline With Samourai wallet, users can easily switch between online and offline mode to use their bitcoins. That is an amazing feature from Samourai.
References:[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin[2] https://wasabiwallet.io/[3] https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/[4] https://wasabiwallet.io/#faq[5] https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/FAQ/FAQ-UseWasabi.html#what-s-the-legal-status-of-wasabi-coinjoinWasabi developer https://medium.com/@nopara73https://twitter.com/nopara73?lang=en[/list] Theymos' opinion on privacy[1] [Guide] Decent mixing methods (on Wasabi-CoinJoin and Monero) [2] Technically aspects of Monero, Grin and potential for future developments AFAIK, that medium post is nothing new. Base mimblewimble isn't really designed to be a "black box of reliable anonymity" in the way that Monero or Wasabi-CoinJoins are, where connections are hard-broken. It's more of a framework on which you could build solid anonymity using techniques that have largely not yet been perfected, plus major scaling benefits. Monero = CT + stealth addresses + ring signatures. Grin = CT + "stealth addresses" + mimblewimble. Because grin replaces ring signatures with mimblewimble, its privacy is less reliable than Monero's. Probably the grin developers have tried to make their mimblewimble transaction aggregation methods good, but I currently wouldn't put much faith in it, and IMO it'll take many years of research to get something really solid. That said, CT + stealth addresses offer a certain base level of privacy, and grin's method of handling stealth addresses (using an interactive protocol, exchanging "slates") is both more scalable than Monero and probably more private. If your goal is to mix coins, grin is definitely not for you right now, and it may never be. Monero's goal is maximal privacy, regardless of the cost. Grin's goal is excellent privacy, consistent with scaling.
[e]: |
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Months ago, when Coinbase released the news that they narrowed down lists of their targeted coins for coming listings, includes DASH. I believed DASH will be one of listed coins after their technical investigation and preparation finish, that what we have now. It is easy to predict because how Coinbase can ignore such a coin with huge global communities behind, like DASH. The coin has longer history, better reputation, and has lots of more powerful technical features than lots of other coins in list of Coinbase. Anyway, congratulate DASH community for this great news. After visiting the Coinbase's blog site to read the news, I saw another article on phishing attacks, that is helpful for DASH enthusiasts if they want to create accounts on Coinbase. Note that there are some types of phishing attacks, that will be listed below (for more details, please read full article on Coinbase's blog) Phishing attacks and how to not fall victim- New Device Confirmation Phishing
- Email Password Phishing
- Phishing via Text Message
- Phishing via Email
- Coinbase Login Page Clone
- Internationalized Domain Names
There are some helpful guides: What is Punycode and how to protect yourself from Homograph Phishing attacks?What to do to avoid phishing sites[LEARN] Phishing Quizzes - Beginners & Experts |
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Wow, nice find on that link! I used to browse really old threads (some of them are fascinating) but never came across this one, and it's a great idea to make it visible again. I knew about that topic by one of prominent users, months ago. As I answered below, it has actually been mentioned in Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ, but something like buried in the mud. Consequently, there is very little readers notice about that point. There are some seriously bad thread titles in sections like Economics and Bitcoin/Altcoin Discussion. I don't know how many I've come across where the title is "Bitcoin" or something extremely vague like that. I think I've even reported a couple of threads because the title was waaay too vague. Then there are threads in the English section where it's blatantly obvious the thread starters know zero English--some of them are almost laughably bad.
Newcomers to the forum should definitely be schooled in how to write a nice, concise thread title which also makes it clear what the thread is about. I'm hoping this here thread gets some views, because it's pretty useful. Props, OP. It's one of those forum issues that never really gets addressed because it's more of an annoyance than a major problem.
It is same as one thread I saw yesterday, Bitcoin Beginner Question / PLEASE HELP. A real newbie (not spammer) asked for help, but if we simply look at topic title, we don't know what that users need. I gave him/her my advice, but it seems s/he did not care about it. I also have a feeling like only good posters care about their topic title. In my opinion, that thread by theymos should be a sticky thread on the beginners and help board or should be added to the HELP option of the forum as a hint for users seeking help on how to properly use the forum posting options. It has already mentioned in one of pinned threads: Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQIf one is lazy enough to ignore that thread, s/he will be lazy enough to ignore another pinned thread if there is a special thread for Topic title style guide. |
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You actually spent significant amount of time to make the thread, that gives some information I did not know.
Despite there are some powerful built-in features from Browsers like Firefox to protect users when they modify some options, I think you should leave an important warning for all crypto enthusiasts.
"Always keep your computer screen as clean as possible"
Because it will help you to see strange dot (.) or anything else like that. One does not clean their computer screen, by hands or by special cleaning solvent spray might be more easily to fall in to traps of Punny codes. They will don't realize strange 'minor' things on computer screen, between 'punny' dots and real dust.
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I guess you have a typo for the 13018 merit date...
Thank you. I made that typo for weeks, and did not notice about that. Fixed it. |
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There are dump guys will sell their bumps, as some sold their merits with batches of 25, 50, 100 merits in early days after merit system began. If they are dump enough to sell their merits, their trust, they will be dump enough to sell their bump power. Honestly, I don't have issues with such bump changes, and I think other good posters don't care. Why they should care about Bump changes while they only posts when they have good things to say? I do believe that it has at least three main purposes: - Reduce bumping spam. - Help healthy topics get into places that belong to them. - Catch abusers, and somehow eliminate or destroy their accounts. We might see another type of Appeal: Bump Appeal. |
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What kind of noise from Sportsbet.io and Watford, for Bitcoin! |
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 Today we can announce to you that we are putting the Bitcoin Logo on the sleeve of the Watford FC playing strip! This will be a permanent addition and it will be starting this weekend! < ... > This is a big move to bring bitcoin to more people globally. I don't know how Sportsbet.io team and Watford made that deal and get acceptance from League operators to bring Bitcoin logo officially and legally on sleeve of Watfor FC playing-strip. Anyway, it is a very good achievement, not only for Sportsbet.io and Watford, but also for bitcoin in particular and crypto currencies in general. There will be less people think that bitcoin is a fraud, and crypto currencies will be less considered as criminal-related stuffs. |
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I guess topics are first ranked by "bumping" and then by latest post if I'm not mistaken.
Exactly. I mentioned above and theymos wrote in OP. Topics will be sorted by topic bump score first. Then if two topics have same bump score, they will be sorted by the second factor, which is latest post time. It is what topics will be sorted by default options in those three boards, but if one want to use old sorting option, s/he can modify it by using non-default sorting. Non-default sortingOn the targeted boards, sorting under this scheme is the default. You can go back to the older sorting by clicking the "last post" column header. On the non-targeted boards, you can see the sorting under this scheme by using a link like https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=1.0;sort=bump;desc . I'm not sure if this is at all useful. (It's also possible to super-bump topics on these boards, though there's no real incentive to do so.) I don't think posting will result in reports if users make good posts. There are two ways to bump topics, through posts or through bump button. I just don't know that bump through posts will be counted with "Bump!" posts (that is likely what you asked) or with "Contentful posts (not Bump!)" or both of them will be considered as bump through posts. Topic bump score depends on:
- Mini bump: through post
- Super bump: through bump button
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Next to this, a new forum software is being developed for bitcointalk... This decreases the odds of migrating to a newer version of SMF that might be mobile friendly. The new forum script developed for bitcointalk is called epochtalk. The main problem is that epochtalk doesn't seem to move out of beta phase (it's been in beta for yeeeeaaaarrrrssss)... Not much is being developed, and it's just not moving along (at least, so it seems to me)
Epochtalk has nearly finished, but there are some things that contribute to delay the switch from the SMF-based forum to Epochtalk forum. - Still some bugs that might affects data switch - Admin (theymos) is more familiar with SMF, so he would like to stay with the SMF-based forum, because he is the only one coder for the forum. Staying with familar platform might save time and reduce troubles when admin need to add new rules, such as recently bump changes. A big possible reason is that I'm the only person who does development on the current code, and my time is limited. Another big reason is that this is a huge forum with complex dynamics, and even small policy changes can have big effects which need to be thought through very carefully.
- There is a known forum used Epochtalk codebase, so if one is interested in new forum software, just visit and check that forum. Cryptos-Currencies.Com : First forum using Epochtalk |
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I don't want to install another app on my phones when I can have better experience and more comfortable with computers. There is no good methods to give better experience on phones than computers when users have to type a long document.
If mobile app is only for reading, it is unnecessary because I think experience with web-browsers is good enough.
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