Honestly, if I was to buy a Ledger I think it's safer to buy it from a local retail store where I can pay in cash.  Ledger has had at least a couple of data breaches that exposed their customers' email and physical addresses.  I was stung by at least one of those leaks, and my email inbox has been spammed by scam attempts and generic shitcoin related BS.

I wish more hardware wallet manufacturers made their wallets available at local retailers.  There is a risk the wallets could be tampered with throughout the supply chain, but most hardware wallets can have their firmware flashed, which would reset any malicious firmware that a hacker could introduce.

All in all, the ability to buy a hardware wallet at a local retailer for cash could go a long way to preserving your privacy and security.


Agreed.  I own both, and find them very secure and practical.  I'm also thinking of buying a Foundation Passport, which looks like the safest Bitcoin-Only hardware wallet on the market today.  Plus it's made in the USA.

Rather gimmicky, if you ask me.  I don't get the benefits of the magnetic stacking feature, or the wrap-around screen.

It seems like it's full of marketing gimmicks meant to attract those who are unfamiliar with hardware wallets in the first place.  Do they really expect people to buy multiples of these, when you can use the same hardware wallet with multiple accounts?

I may not be their intended demographic, I don't need my hardware wallet to store shitcoins or NFTs.  But if it's easy to use, and given Ledger's marketing budget I wouldn't be surprised to see many of these get sold.

You didn't seem to make any correlation between these two statements, but ironically they're both in the same post.  Short of exposing his true identity I don't know what ChipMixer (the individual) can do to prove to you he's not conducting a NSA sting.  It's likely the reason that Tornado was crucified is because the developers were publicly known, and ChipMixer skates along because they are not.

It's certainly not provable that ChipMixer is or isn't US.gov honeypot, and the operator's anonymity can be applied as evidence in either argument.  What is known is that criminals use ChipMixer.  If they were tracked by the government due to their use of ChipMixer, that evidence would have been used to prosecute them.  Since ChipMixer has been around for 5 years, and I don't know of any incident where use of ChipMixer has been used to prosecute anyone, I can claim that as evidence they are not a honeypot.

Maybe the government is playing the long con.  Maybe they're careful to not expose their "source" by eliminating data they've obtained as evidence.  Or, maybe ChipMixer is run by an anonymous individual who's been extremely careful to not expose himself to arrest.

Nonetheless, the use of a centralized service will not provide anyone with anonymity.  For those of us who use mixing services for privacy, ChipMixer has been a safe and reliable provider regardless of who's behind it.

Wow, that's a lot of coins to risk, but in hind-site it's almost as safe of a bet as the S&P500.  Maybe even safer, more profitable, certainly way more fun.

Brazil is looking like a house on fire.  No letting up, 4 goas before the 37th minute.  I almost feel sorry for Korea, they still have 45 minutes of embarrassment to endure.

Electrum is my favorite light client, so I went looking for a donation address a couple years ago and also came up empty.  I can only assume that the development team is working pro-bono, or they've received a significant donation from a sponsor.  Electrum is so well maintained and releases are so regular that it seems unlikely that the dev team isn't being compensated.

I've had a couple of dealings with FatManTerra, he seems like a reasonable guy.  Obviously I don't agree with his claim about ChipMixer but as others have already said, there's no way to prove or disprove, so we'll have to leave it to each person to decide for themselves what their risk threshold is if they chose to use ChipMixer.  Having said that, I did respond to his thread on Twitter, against my better judgement.

As for his shitcoining fails, that's not relevant to this discussion.  I'm not trying to defend the guy, but he is entitled to his opinions.

I know I'm not mathematically out, but I've been considering myself as out for the past couple of weeks.  Still trying to make an effort to keep my team relevant, but I haven't put in the effort this year to research injuries or predict who's going to step up to replace the injured players.  A big part of FF is luck, but if you put some time into research it helps make educated decisions on waivers.

Best of luck to those of you still in contention, but if I can spoil your chances I'm going to put in my best effort to do so!  

Lol, sorry if this comes off like I'm being an asshole, because I am...

But why in hell do you care if your wallet app is decentralized if your trading centralized shitcoins like ETH and USDT?  And on top of that, why would you even trust a "decentralized wallet app" with a centralized service like a Debit Card which spends centralized Fiat?

None of this makes any sense.

None of that matters.  I think you're overvaluing the method by which you connect to servers, hoping that your method of connecting is helping you remain private and secure.  It's not.

For example; if you are always changing your IP through Tor or VPN, but always connect to the same server, that server operator knows it's the same wallet connecting every time despite the different IP addresses.  Connecting to different public SPV servers every time only distributes your transactions to more server operators, increasing the potential that someone will use the data to target you.  There's no method of connecting to a public server that will guaranty your privacy.

Realistically, the only way to privately use a wallet that needs an SPV server connection is to run your own server.  Electrum Personal Server is easy to use, very light, and will provide you the privacy you seek.



That could help, but it seems like a lot of trouble.  It would be much easier to just use Bitcoin Core as your main wallet, and effectively achieve the same results.  Core doesn't need to connect to SPV servers, and if you use each address only once then you're taking full advantage of Bitcoin's inherent privacy features.



Not that I know of, but you could use a P2P exchange to trade your bitcoin for bitcoin with a different transaction history.  Personally, I use Bisq to do just that.  I trade my bitcoin for Monero, then trade that Monero for someone else's bitcoin, effectively breaking the traceability of my transactions by replacing them with someone else's transactions.



I can only speak about Electrum, Sparrow, and Trezor Suite since they're the only ones I've used extensively.  All will allow Tor connections, but you need Tor running as a service.  If you have the Tor Projects browser installed it'll run Tor as a service while the browser is running, but it shuts down the Tor background service as soon as you close all the browser windows.  Tor Project's website has instructions on how to run Tor as a background service for Windows and Linux.  It's a very light daemon, and uses very few resources, so there's no reason not to have it running by default as soon as the computer boots up.

Good luck.

That thread made for a fun investigation.  I encourage anyone with an hour to kill to read it, as it turned out to be an epic discussion of ethics, morality, buried treasure, and mushrooms.   It's too bad we couldn't convince easternklass to share more data from the "wallets" sooner, it may have prevented some from getting scammed.

USA vs England was a pretty good match, and the draw was not a bad outcome for the US's prospects.  Group B is turning out to be a tougher nut to predict than I originally thought.  The US should have beaten Wales, and they looked like the better team against England.  Hopefully they'll take 3 points from Iran, but again, in their match with Wales today, Iran didn't look like the same team that let England score six goals.

The group stage has been fun so far.  Brazil is fun to watch, so many familiar faces from the Premier League.  They looked pretty comfortable against Serbia, it's hard to see them not taking 9 points out of the Group Stage.  

This just tells me that it's a good time to buy bitcoin. 
Many folks are still bullish, and many investors buy regardless of the price.  Even at a 3% premium the current price does a lot for one's dollar-cost-average.  Also note in the screenshot you posted, the really high percentage offerings are for small amounts.  Most people aren't going to bother to sell $39 worth of bitcoin, but if they were planning on buying something at Amazon anyway, an 8% discount can't hurt.


Zelle is far from perfect for the seller, chargebacks are possible.  But it's one of the better options in the USA for now.  Cashing out isn't hard at all, the money is deposited straight to your bank account.  I've never had issues with it, but Bisq tends to be one of the safer trading platforms for various reasons.  For both buyers and sellers with US based bank accounts, Zelle is the most convenient payment method available.

Thanks for the encouragement.  Winning isn't everything for me when joining the pools, I really enjoy the community aspect and the competition.  I'm traveling for pleasure at the moment, but I should be home early next week and I'll have time to reevaluate the pools.  Right now I'm having way too much fun with family and friends to sit in front of a computer for much of my time.  That will change once I'm back to work and things are back to normal.

The only time my bank has called to ask me about a transaction is when I'm buying bitcoin with Zelle, but the funny thing it is when they did call it was because of a relatively small amount compared to other transactions.  I just tell them it's for "general transaction" and don't give them any more details about why I'm sending Joe Schmoe money.


Banks aren't going to give you an account without KYC, and I don't mind either.  If I'm selling bitcoin I will pay capitol gains tax on my proceeds, and likewise claim a loss if I have to sell for less than my purchase price.  So linking my KYC to deposits into my bank account doesn't bother me.

1.  Mayweather
2.  Over 2.5 Rounds
3.  Round UD

Game 1: 27' 1-2 Liverpool
Game 2: 27' 2-0 Arsenal
Game 3: 27' 1-0 São Paulo FC

14. Israel Adesanya
13. Weili Zhang
12. Dustin Poirier
11. Chris Gutierrez
10. Claudio Puelles
9. Renato Moicano
8. Dominick Reyes
7. Erin Blanchfield
6. Wellington Turman
5. Karolina Kowalkiewicz
4. Choi Seung-woo
3. Ottman Azaitar
2. Montel Jackson
1. Carlos Ulberg

Match 14 winner Total Strikes: 52

It's an interesting thing to witness failure on such a large scale when most of us would and could live quite comfortably on a very small fraction of their net worth.  I wonder how much of an affect their investment strategy had on their marriage, and how much the tension between them has had on his success (or lack thereof) this season.

Anyway, he's been the goat for so long, and he'll continue to be the goat for decades to come.  The endorsements alone are likely to keep him financially secure for the rest of his life.  A super-models marketability, however has a waning outlook in most cases.  Unless your Heidi Klum, she's still hotter than Gisele if you ask me, but having a full time plastic surgeon on your payroll can give that appearance. 

Those look like a lot of fun, but unfortunately I feel like I don't have the skill, experience, or time to participate.  Good luck to all.

I am looking forward to the games, however and will likely place a bet or two once the competition starts.  It's been a long time since the USA has been involved, so that's adding to the excitement for me.  I'm not giving my countrymen much of a chance, but it'll be fun nonetheless.

One of the important things you have to keep in mind about Bisq is that the approved electronic payment methods are largely selected to enhance the safety of the seller.  I reckon privacy is also a prioritized consideration, but I believe safety is higher priority.  As you mentioned there will always be a trace of evidence that could link you to a transaction, even if that trace is purely circumstantial in nature.

I tend to agree that f2f cash trades are likely to provide the most privacy, but in this day and age it would be pretty darn difficult to ensure anonymity.  Unless you left all electronic devices at home, including your modern car, there will be some circumstantial evidence of your presence, potentially linking you to a trade that took place.

Personally I use Zelle to buy and sell using Bisq.  There is a leak of personal data, but in my case it's only my real name and the email address or phone number that's linked to my Zelle account.  No bank data is leaked to the trade partner.  Privacy is maintained by the fact that all the data required to conduct a trade on Bisq is stored on your local machine, and is only made available to your trade partner while a trade is active.  You don't have to worry about your data being leaked or hacked from a centralized server because none of your personal data is stored on any servers.  The only link to your "account" that exists on a Bisq server is the Tor address that you've been assigned by your local client.