Try to stop thinking about addresses and think about UTXOs instead. It makes absolutely no difference if you have 100 UTXOs on one address, or the same 100 UTXOs spread over 100 addresses. All else being equal, then the fees to spend these UTXOs will be identical.

Every transaction you create will use up one or more UTXOs as inputs to cover the value of the coins you want to spend, and the fee you need to pay for the transaction. Your transaction will create a minimum of one output UTXO to whichever address you want to send coins to. If there are any coins leftover between the sum of your input(s) and the sum of your output(s) and fees, then they will be returned to you in an additional output UTXO in what is known as "change".

This depends on the UTXOs.

Let's say you have a single UTXO containing 1 BTC. You send 0.5 BTC to someone else, then the remaining 0.5 BTC will be returned to you in a single UTXO.
Let's say you have 10 UTXOs, all containing 0.1 BTC. You send 0.5 BTC to someone else, by using up 5 of the UTXOs. Your remaining 0.5 BTC will not have moved, and will still be made up of 5 UTXOs of 0.1 BTC each.
Let's say you have 10 UTXOs, all containing 0.1 BTC. You send 0.5 BTC to someone else, but this time you use up all 10 of your UTXOs. The 0.5 BTC extra will be returned to you as a single change UTXO of 0.5 BTC.
Let's say you have 10 UTXOs, all containing 0.1 BTC. You send 0.5 BTC to someone else, but this time you use up 8 of your UTXOs. The 0.3 BTC extra will be returned to you as a single change UTXO of 0.3 BTC, and you will still have 2 more UTXOs of 0.1 BTC each which have not moved.

There are endless possibilities here. You can choose to spend the minimum required to cover your transaction, or include extra UTXOs to "consolidate" them in to a single change UTXO to save on fees further down the line.

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Here is a good page regarding outputs which I suggest you have a read of: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/beginners/outputs. That entire site has a lot of good beginner-friendly guides.

Perhaps they could drop an email to US Congressman Bill Foster and ask him how he plans on making bitcoin transactions reversible, and follow the same idea to allow them to confiscate bitcoin. You can pass whatever laws you like, you cannot reverse nor confiscate bitcoin without the relevant private keys.

What an absolutely insane opinion. You think it is a step in the right direction to let governments around the world start helping themselves to other people's bitcoin? You trust Putin with the ability to just take bitcoin from your wallet because he decides you are a criminal? You trust Xi Jinping? Kim Jong-un? The whole point of bitcoin is that this can never happen, and any change to the code to allow such a thing to happen would immediately be the death of bitcoin. Thankfully, that will never happen.

Looks like a big surge in mixer traffic and coinjoins coming from Russia in the near future.

The USB cable can and will still transfer data even when not updating the firmware or apps on the device, such as when Electrum looks for the unlocked hardware wallet to decrypt the wallet file, or when transferring signed and unsigned transactions. The difference is there is no cache of data which is waiting to be written or in the process of being written to the USB device's filesystem, which you could corrupt by unplugging the device. If you unplug the device while you are in the process of transferring or signing a transaction, then the worst that happens is that that transaction isn't signed correctly or lost and you have to create it again.

Sure, if you unplug the device before the transaction is broadcast then your transaction will be lost. Your device will still work just fine when you plug it back in though, since at no point were you writing anything to a critical filesystem.

It has to communicate with the software on the computer at this point. The hardware wallet does not have the capabilities nor the software to broadcast a transaction on its own. It simply transfers the signed transaction back to the wallet software on your computer to be broadcast.

There is no need to "eject" a hardware wallet from your computer as you would do with a mass storage device. As long as you don't unplug it when you are actively upgrading the firmware or installing/uninstalling apps or software on it, then you are perfectly safe. See the following quotes from both Ledger and Trezor staff regarding this issue:



I have never ejected either Ledger or Trezor devices and always just unplugged them when I was finished using them, and have never ran in to problems with either.

Bisq is great, and it is my preferred P2P exchange for a couple of reasons. First of all, it does not depend on a centralized website, but rather you run the open source software yourself and connect to other users directly over Tor, which keeps privacy to a maximum. Secondly, I really like the multi-sig 2-of-2 escrow they use between buyer and seller.

However, it does have some downsides which make it not as newbie friendly as mk4 has pointed out. Downloading and running software is completely different to every other exchange, and so has more of a learning curve. Setting up and accepting trades becomes more difficult since your software must remain online at all times. Further, to fund the safety deposit for each trade, you must already own some bitcoin, which makes Bisq impossible to use for brand new users.

It's a great exchange to aspire to using eventually, but I would also suggest most new users looking to trade in a decentralized manner to look first at LocalCryptos and Hodl Hodl.

Coal and gas are cheaper because they've been around longer. The first coal power plant was built in 1882. Commercial solar panels have been on the market for what? 20 years? Once solar panel technology is also 140 years old, many times more efficient than it is now, mass produced around the world, on top of every new building built, then it will be far, far cheaper than coal. The cost of a megawatt-hour of energy produces by a solar panel has fallen by >90% in the last 10 years alone. Yes, it remains cheaper to produce electricity from coal in a preexisting plant than it does to build new solar panels from scratch, but when you compare building a new coal power plant from scratch to building new solar panels form scratch, then solar panels are already winning. In another 20 years there will be absolutely no contest between the two.

It mirrors what people say about bitcoin and the traditional financial system. Bitcoin, like renewable energy, is brand new on the scene, challenging something which has existed for hundreds of years. It is better though, and in time, it will take over.

I do agree that blaming bitcoin for being dirty is completely hypocritical though, when you look at all the other incredibly wasteful and dirtier industries that go completely unexamined by the media since they have no ulterior motive to attacking them.

I agree with your general sentiment regarding a first wallet being something that is simple to use and handles the more complicated stuff for you automatically, but the issue with using an exchange for this function is privacy. By the time someone realizes that the blockchain is an open book, then if they have chosen Coinbase as their wallet then they have probably already completed KYC, linked their bank details, linked any deposit or withdrawal addresses to their real name, and if they have started to try to move to a better wallet such as Electrum or Wasabi, then they've probably revealed the addresses in that wallet to Coinbase as well. Once you've already compromised your privacy to such a huge degree, it can be incredibly difficult to get it back, obfuscate the history of all those coins, move them in to clean addresses not linked back to you, etc. And it will be near impossible to remove your personal details from Coinbase's servers, keep them safe from hacks or thefts, and stop Coinbase from handing them over to the myriad of agencies and governments they work with.

As much as I hate closed source multi-coin wallets, I would advocate for an easy to use one of those over an exchange any day. The privacy still isn't amazing by any means, but at least you don't have to complete KYC.

Which is another huge mistake. If I sent you a letter with a Bank of America letterhead (replace with the name of your bank) saying your account is being upgraded and you need to send all your money to this new account, you would be branded a fool if you fell for it. This is essentially no different to what this fake Ledger letter says.

I'm not disagreeing that this isn't a flaw with Ledger devices, especially when they suggest examining the hardware to ensure authenticity (which we now know is not a guaranteed method), but you have to really not be paying attention to what is going on to actually fall for it.

Follow up question: Do we know if anyone has actually fallen for it yet?

That's right. Here's a link to a post I made a while ago which explains why the differences exist - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5343500.msg57236516#msg57236516. Interestingly, taproot transactions have a smaller raw size despite having a slightly larger virtual size.

Speaking of pros and cons, I'm toying with the idea of moving all the coins I currently store on hardware wallets to a 2-of-2 multi-sig with one Ledger and one Trezor device once taproot comes along. Doing so would provide very good protection against any critical bugs or vulnerabilities discovered in either one of the devices, with taproot keeping transactions small and fees low. The only downside I can see is the slightly increased time required to make a transaction, and carrying two devices with me rather than one if I want to take my hardware wallets with me anywhere. I'll just need to wait for taproot implementation.

And still, as with almost everything in crypto, if the user just followed the instructions then the entire attack is useless.

There are multiple steps, quite clearly laid out in Ledger's documentation, which would stop this attack. Did you buy from an official Ledger seller? Did you connect to Ledger Live to confirm authenticity? Did you update the firmware? Did you pay attention to the warning to never enter your seed phrase anywhere but directly on your hardware wallet? Did you pay attention to the fact that nowhere in the set up guide does it mention mounting as a storage device, running software, or entering your seed phrase?

Reading and paying attention to any single one of these, let alone all of them, would be enough to foil this attack. The more I think about it, the more I realize just how monumentally you need to mess up to fall victim to this, regardless of whether or not it is detectable that the device has been modified.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it shouldn't matter.

Most of the time, when people talk about master public keys, they actually mean account extended public keys. Your actual master public key isn't actually that useful since the majority of wallets use hardened derivation somewhere in their standard derivation paths, meaning your master public key cannot generate these addresses.

When Electrum displays your xpub or zpub, it is displaying your account extended public key at either m for legacy (which is in fact your master public key) or at m/0' for segwit. It then derives addresses at /0/0 for both. If you import either the xpub or zpub to some BIP39 software, then it should assume that you have already used the path m/44'/0'/0' or m/84'/0'/0', and also derive addresses at /0/0.

If I create a new segwit Electrum wallet, take the zpub, go to Ian Coleman, paste it in to the BIP32 Root Key box, select BIP141, and then derive at m/0/0, the addresses match.

At that point, you are probably wasting your time trying to get them to change wallet. They will not be interested in a better wallet until they become interested in bitcoin or cryptocurrency for reasons other than "get rich quick". And actually, storing coins on some closed source multi-coin wallet like Coinomi rather than a better wallet is the least of their concerns. They are far more likely to lose everything by using a scam exchange or buying a new bugged or scam altcoin.

Even then, bitcoin.org recommends some wallets like BitPay, which I would refuse to even download on to any of my devices, let alone trust with my coins, given how horrendous BitPay are as a company.

And then the same user comes back 6 months later saying how their exchange account has been locked and they can't access their coins or their blockchain recovery phrase doesn't work. Every wallet is fine until the day it isn't, by which point it's usually too late for users using custodial services. It's such a moronic argument as well. Might as well say "I've been driving without a seatbelt for months, so it is perfectly safe and seatbelts are unnecessary."

You need to look in to using Coinbase Pro, rather rather plain old Coinbase.

Here are the fees for Coinbase: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/pricing-and-fees/fees. As you can see, they charge a spread of 0.5% and an additional fee of 1.49% for transactions over $200. For lower values, they charge flat fees which work out to an even higher percentage. The pros of Coinbase is that it is incredibly simple to just hit the "buy bitcoin" button.

If you swap to Coinbase Pro, then you instead use the fee structure here: https://help.coinbase.com/en/pro/trading-and-funding/trading-rules-and-fees/fees. You are charged only 0.5% for all trades. The downside to this is it is a little more complicated to place a market or limit order than it is to use Coinbase.

You can move fiat and bitcoin freely between Coinbase and Coinbase Pro, since they are just different front ends to the same exchange.

Most wallet automatic selections are designed to either minimize the number of inputs required for the transaction, or to consolidate a bunch of extra inputs at the same time, and pay little to no attention as to which addresses of the wallet those inputs happen to be on. Not only are these not perfect solutions, but they can be disastrous for privacy.

It never fails to amaze me that multi-million dollar corporations hire entire teams of professional programmers and engineers with multiple qualifications and expensive salaries and yet still produce inferior products to a couple of people working from their own homes for free. Usually the best software, from Linux to Electrum, is free and open source.

And if you want to use Electrum privately, then just run your own Electrum server and point it at your own full node.

In terms of privacy, it pretty much is the end of the world though. Linking addresses together as inputs in a transaction is probably the single worst thing you can do, short of posting your xpubs on a public forum.

Even if I use an SPV client, only the server in question can link my addresses. They may or may not share that information with other users or entities. They may or may not even store such information. If I link two addresses together in a transaction, then it is permanently in the public record for everyone to see, forever. I'm not saying you should disregard the impact of using an SPV wallet, but linking addresses via a transaction is much worse.

Sounds like Ubuntu is probably your best choice then.

Provided you have access to your seed phrase to recover your full wallet, then yes. Your watch only wallet cannot move any coins on its own.

xpubs are not unique to Electrum by any means. You should be able to change your phone wallet to any other piece of software which supports watch only wallets without issue, but many wallets do not provide this functionality.

Do you have any experience with Linux? If not, then Linux Mint is probably the most user friendly, especially if you are coming from a life of using Windows. Elementary OS is probably the best if you are more familiar with MacOS. If you think you can handle something a little more, then Ubuntu is probably the most well known and widely used distro.

If you want to go for maximum security and privacy for your airgapped wallet, though, then I would probably opt for Tails. There is a bit of learning curve here though, as Tails is designed to leave no traces behind and will not save anything between sessions unless you specifically set up persistent storage. Tails will automatically encrypt your persistent storage. You can read a guide here: https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/persistence/index.en.html

If you don't use Tails, then you will need to look in to encrypting your wallet file some other way, as otherwise anyone who can gain physical access to your airgapped computer could steal all your coins.

I'm sure other users will completely disagree with me and can provide other recommendations though. Such is the nature of the myriad of Linux distros.

All of our lives have changed a lot in the two years. Home, work, socializing, travel, everything. There is something strangely comforting about the incredible regularity of Foxpup's payments. A rare constant in a wildly fluctuating world.

And as always, my thanks.

I wouldn't even consider using a wallet which did not allow me to see which outputs were present on which address within that wallet and instead just opted to show me a single global balance.

I am pretty meticulous about privacy and not linking addresses together. If I give out address A on this forum, and address B to a peer-to-peer trader who learns my real life identity through a bank transfer (for example), then the last thing in the world I want to do is spend coins from address A and address B together in the same transaction and completely de-anonymize myself.* Maybe I want to see individual outputs so I can combine them with other outputs on the same address to generate an appropriate amount of change or no change at all. Or maybe there are a few addresses which I don't mind linking together, and so I want to be able to consolidate from those ones specifically, while excluding the other ones in my wallet. Being able to see exactly where all your coins are is a pretty core feature as far as I am concerned.

*In reality, I could never do this even by mistake since I use entirely different wallets for such purposes, but the point still stands.