Probably not. The only way to check is by looking at the resource usage, htop should show you how much ram is getting utilized and the CPU as well. I've never really had a bottleneck while using Tor, or at least it isn't that obvious to me at all.


As in my own RPi got corrupted due to an unclean shutdown. It has nothing to do with me synchronizing using my computer.

It's normal. Raspberry Pi is notoriously slow and the record for me was 5 days with a fairly fast SSD and a RPi 4, can take up to weeks depending on which RPi you have. The CPU, the RAM and USB (again depending on your Pi) are bottlenecks.
That's what I did with my subsequent synchronization after it got corrupted a few times. Either that or just copy the entire dir of a copy that you've already fully synchronized (if you have).

I used to think heuristics are sufficient to prevent fraud but that isn't really that applicable as time goes by. If every transaction has an opt-in RBF, then chances are, there would be an inherent degree of risk to every of your transactions and it isn't sufficient cushioning for most merchants. Bitpay used to have a pretty neat zero-conf for loads of TXes but I haven't had it in the recent years. The network has become more volatile and unpredictable so losses from these zero-conf TXes are potentially going to occupy a larger percentage.

The risk is of course, relative and that the measures taken are all valid. However, given that we've gotten so many off-chain solutions, I don't really think it is necessary for merchants to still be undertaking these risks with their transactions.

Yes. People will start panicking, but again depends on whether they're willing to spend a few millions or even billions to recover a few million bucks worth of it.
Look, there is nothing to decrypt in Bitcoin. Nothing on Bitcoin is encrypted, or at least by design. It is possible to store encrypted strings on it but that is not the question here. Quantum computers will eventually crack ECDSA or asymmetric cryptography, which basically means all the cryptography that we're using for security online. Which also means thousands of terabytes of sensitive data that the governments would love to get... Don't you think it is far more worth it to get those than to get a couple of Bitcoins?

Point is, quantum computers will be very expensive to use and potentially fairly unstable at the earlier stages. We're still decades away. But by then, we would've introduced alternative schemes and adopt them to largely mitigate the threat of it, at least. Pre-emptive measures are always possible.

The pool validates each and every share submitted by the miners. Each of the shares have a certain difficulty and thus a certain weightage pegged to it; an ASIC submitting a share with a larger difficulty (ie. 50) would earn the same amount as one that submits 50 shares with 1 difficulty. The work done for both are proportional and thus the compensation would be proportional to the shares and the difficulty of it being submitted as well. PoW makes it such that it is expensive to find a share of sufficient difficulty but quite trivial for a hardware to actually validate them. It isn't a problem for pools to validate each share that the users submit, by the fact that pools often implemented PPLNS or that of sorts, it discourages miners from intentionally holding shares that meets the actual target as this lowers their remunerations.

Tl;dr: Pools do check for the validity of the shares and the shares represents their contribution to the pool; lesser effort = lesser rewards and zero effort = no rewards.

Don't use on-chain transactions for small amounts, it isn't economical. A $5 USD transaction would be 0.0001BTC, and that excludes the fees paid by the customer, the fees paid by you in the future as well as the time needed for the transaction to get a confirmation. If you want a speedier process and something that doesn't incur that much fees, consider lightning network. I find that the adoption is rather small, partly due to the lack of motivation for people to switch. It'll be better for more merchants to progressively start to adopt alternative solutions.

Perhaps, though it is quite important to note that there are better alternatives as well. Fees almost always spike during bull runs, at least from previous experiences. I've no doubt that some of them are more reluctant to keep it out of their exchanges, you'll probably either miss the opportunity or pay a ton of fees.

Speaking about fees, I know LN has been experiencing quite a growth since then while having far lower fees. Might be a factor as well.

Yes, that is correct. I have the same sentiments actually, so not technically a disagreement because I never believed that you can ever scale on-chain, to match those of major payment processors. As you've mentioned, due to the convenience (to a certain extent also its feasibility) and the general reluctance to adopt Bitcoin as an actual currency.

The disagreements (CMIIW) that we've had is; whether we should have sustainable limits on the block size increase. Believe that I've made my point here, so it's just a clarification.

Don't need to double the resources needed for every user to use Bitcoin, that is completely unnecessary. If there is a hypothetical scenario that ECDSA, or whatever signature algorithm Bitcoin is using gets cracked, then too bad. We have better things to worry about at that point, Bitcoin isn't the main priority.

If a quantum computer manages to derive the private key from the public key, then either you accept that it is inevitable or we burn them before that. QCs are not cheap, if you manage to get a private key of some Bitcoin address with it, then you've at that point, either completely wasted your time (could've probably done something else with it) or QCs are mature enough such that everyone is already aware of it. Ps. QC is not a magical machine that takes minutes or hours to crack an address.

Privacy, yes but security no.

Yes. You can. Transfer the blocks and chainstate and then start the client with a rescan.

Perhaps there is no need for on-chain transactions? With high transaction fees, no one wants to really spend their Bitcoins nor take it out of their exchange. I don't think that "active" addresses are a suitable metric for measuring how many Bitcoin users because there are so many factors and the results are often fairly skewed.

None. So long as you're not involved in any illicit activities, you should not be subjected to any sanctions or criminal proceedings. You are not aware of the activities and more importantly, you aren't the person involved in it. It is pure BS to be treating those Bitcoins to be tainted, because as usual, taint is a terrible concept to deny legitimate users from using Bitcoin. If anything it is more of a ploy by regulatory bodies to discourage people from using Bitcoin.

If you are using any exchanges that discriminates (so to speak) tainted coins, then I suggest you to switch to another. There can be a myriad of reasons for them to hold your coins hostage or to freeze your account, "tainted" TX is just one of them.

Fees only serves to help with the speed at which you're going to get a confirmation, ie. the number of blocks before you get a confirmation. It doesn't help with the security, in any way if you include a large fee but you accept it before it gets a confirmation. If the transaction is small enough, includes sufficient fees and has no opt-in RBF, then you could possibly accept it without any confirmations.

Anything above a single confirmation should be sufficient, unless you're talking about a million dollars. It is extremely unlikely for anyone to execute a 51% attack against a $1000 transaction. There is no reason to extend the wait and would just cause unnecessary hassle.

Ignorance is more common than you think. Security can't be guaranteed by your conscious decisions; people often make mistakes that compromises their security though it might not appear so to them. It sounds incredibly easy; okay a clean computer and an airgap, but there are plenty of instances of airgap systems being compromised as well. Just because someone might've done their due diligence doesn't mean that security habits are ingrained in them.

Like it or not, an airgap is not immune to loads of attacks. By choosing an airgap over a hardware wallet, you're giving up certain benefits of the latter for certain benefits of the former. There isn't a one-size fits all solution for everyone. Cherry picking vulnerabilities of hardware wallets while ignoring those of the popular wallet software doesn't present the full picture.

Not necessarily. People choose the fork that they deem to be better for the community in general. Given the various stakeholders, either you come to a compromise or you choose the best for yourself.
Miners don't want the network to split, simple as that. If there comes a day that miners or the community are willing to destroy Bitcoin, by having a hard fork that separate the key stakeholders (or economic agents), then Bitcoin is doomed. It isn't about what chain is more profitable to mine on or which has more security, it is about making the rational decisions for themselves, by looking at the bigger picture. If you tarnish the reputation of Bitcoin and/or otherwise destroy the confidence of the general public and potential investors, then you're just digging a hole for yourself.

No... It's not that. Genesis block is just a fancy name for the first block of a blockchain. If it doesn't exist, then that means you never had a blockchain in the first place.
Look at the definition of genesis. It doesn't commemorate Satoshi at all.
Wrong.

Ah yes, of course religion always appear somewhere.

I'm not sure what is the point of the threads that you've started. Bitcoin isn't a cult. Bitcoin isn't perfect, Satoshi isn't a god, you really don't have to create a new thread to worship them everyday.

The actual standardness limits actually puts the threshold native segwit transaction at 294 satoshis, not 546 satoshis. Electrum includes <546sat output as fees because they didn't want to change the threshold, which is understandable because more often than not, it costs more to spend it. However, it is still important to note that just because Electrum always doesn't include change <546 satoshis, it doesn't mean that it is done because it violates the standardness rules.
You can never eliminate dust, that is a fact. You cannot prune them because it makes no sense. Including better coin control will help but it would be marginally more useful at the expense of more privacy leakage from the user. Whether this is an area for improvement is a whole other issue.
Dust isn't that common actually. If you have a dust output, then more often than not, the transaction was once non-standard and miners had to manually include it. You're probably defining it in terms of either costing more to spend it than the actual value or just low value inputs. More often than not, wallets will eventually spend them but it is not always the case. Dust will always exist, while there are proposals for Electrum to start including those smaller and insignificant inputs, I highly doubt it would be widely implemented because the dusting attack will often link many addresses together.

Governments aren't dumb. They ban Bitcoin because it is antithetical with their systems, where they are unable to control the capital of their citizens to any extent and being unable to print money at will. In more autocratic economies, they've shifted to currencies that are controlled tightly by the government, with digital yuan as an example. China used to had quite a huge capital outflow and it wasn't very beneficial for China.

Governments will almost never adopt Bitcoin, there is simply no reason to. Giving up a stranglehold on their fiat doesn't bode well for them at all. In the eyes of the government, whatever Bitcoin can do, fiat can do as well.

Which side do you think would fold first? Would the users want to follow the majority of the miners, but aren't necessarily in agreement with them? IMO, no. Users are far more pragmatic than just going with whatever the miners says. Unless of course, they are able to reach a compromise but it is hardly true that the community only cares about the decisions that the (majority of the) miners make.

If a hypothetical fork were to happen, and that miners were all insistent on a specific fork that isn't in favour of the community (or were in a sense ridden with hidden motives), who suffers more? Miners who are already surviving on thin margins or the general community which doesn't really stand to lose much? I agree that the best case scenario would be cooperation from both parties, but it really doesn't mean that miners has to "authorize" any changes! That is a flawed system and also why we have backup plans to force activation of soft forks.

I thought the idea of UASF during the peak of the block wars would've been a good example of which party stands to lose more by prolonging the fight. They were so adamant on a block size increase. If miners could've successfully coerced the community into adopting a block size increase, then why didn't they go on with it? FWIW: This encompasses the rationale behind UASF: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1805060.0.

It isn't a vulnerability per se, your seeds aren't compromised in that case. The premise for the "attack" requires the malware to be in knowledge of the master public key as well as ensuring that the user doesn't store the PSBT file used on it. It is such a novel attack and certainly isn't as bad as it seems; fact that competitors are willing to continuously try to break their competitor's wallets is pretty beneficial for the enduser.

Most users actually don't know how to properly use and contain an air-gap and would often accidentally unknowingly break that airgap. Depends on your technical expertise, but I find hardware wallets far better for most users and that most are designed with countering common attack vectors in mind. Either is fine, it isn't particularly difficult to jump airgaps, if your attacker are persistent enough.