@magneto: completely correct... I focussed on the technical part, but you do have to have quite a bit of BTC in order to setup a proper mixer. If you don't have enough coins, you might start dispersing tainted coins, and people won't like that... And it's true a good mixer operator will have a fulltime job running his mixer...

That's a rather tricky question TBH... Monero is a privacy-oriented coin, but if you buy a hardware wallet online using a credit card (or paypal, or wire transfer) and have it shipped to your home, then buy monero on a KYC exchange using a credit card (or paypal or wire transfer) and withdraw said monero to an address generated with your hardware wallet, i'm pretty sure certain 3 letter agencies will be able to track you down if they really wanted to.

You would have to buy the monero P2P using cash, then transfer it to an intermediate wallet (so the seller loses the trail) and then move it to your hardware wallet... I guess that would make it harder to track.

Anonimity is a bit of a discussion point in this community. I, for one, think it's perfectly fine if you (or anybody else) don't want any invasion of your privacy and start using mixers, coinjoin or privacy coins. Others will probably think it's sketchy...

Ugh... Their next victim...
Sad to see people are still falling for their trap.

They have a long history of selectively "closing" high-value accounts because they were flagged. They refuse to give any comment as to which algorithm they use for flagging accounts, and they ask over-the-top ridiculous things in order to unlock your own money. This includes, but is not limited to  providing screenshots from incoming transactions, proving where your money comes from, photo or videochat, paying for notarised translations of private documents and  providing your social media account (https://support.freewallet.org/support/solutions/articles/9000184127-how-to-pass-kyc-procedure-).

Their modus operandi seems very similar everytime:

• they block a high value account
• they refuse to say why
• they ask ridiculous, over the top KYC questions
• they are slow and repeat the same questions over and over, sometimes stretching the process for months
• they hope their victim loses interest in the matter, so they can keep the money (this is just my feeling)

The only thing that SOMETIMES seems to speed up the process/solves something is making a lot of noise... They seem to be sensitive to negative publicity in some way... Post on bitcointalk, PM them the link to your post (they are active on bitcointalk and will probably jump in this thread sooner or later), post on facebook, post on twitter, make blog posts about them, rate them negatively in the appstore, get a lawyer,... The more noise you make, the higher the chance of getting your issue solved, or at least, that's what it looks like for somebody who has seen dozens of these threads accusing them of theft.

The best example of noise is what they did to Elon Musk: the selectively closed his account, but he only had to tweet about it once to get it solved... Why? Because having Elon Musk tweet something bad about you is bad publicity. Bad publicity = less users. Less users = less accounts to selectively close. Less accounts to selectively close : less income.

I've created a concept for somebody several years ago.
In it's essense, a "classical" bitcoin mixer isn't all that hard to understand... Just generate a mixing session where a user submits the address where he wants to receive clean coins, present him with a deposit address, monitor said address for unspent outputs funding said address, calculate how much clean coins the customer is entitled to receive and then create a transaction using a wisely chosen set of unspent outputs.

The real "magic" is chosing the correct set of unspent outputs. You can do so by seperating the "receiving" wallet and the "sending" wallet, maybe even on seperate machines, maybe even by deriving "receiving" addresses from an xpub, so you cannot spend the incoming unspent outputs, maybe by using things like exchanges or services with hot wallets, maybe by coinjoining, maybe by using other mixers, maybe by just tumbling your coins. You'll defenately need some knowledge to make sure your customer will stay happy, if he receives coins from his previous mix, he probably won't like your service.

On top of this, you need bulletproof hosting, DDos protection, a hardened (multi)server setup, darknet presence, anonymous tld registration,....

You'll also need to think about things like a letter of guarantee, output tuning, fee rate estimation, randomisation of the type of unspent output,...

Defenately not an easy task. With the current crypto climate, i wouldn't dare of writing up a mixing service anymore. To much heat to bring to yourself... Also, you'll need a pretty competent lawyer, mixing might be legal in some countrys and illegal in others...
My proof of concept many years ago was made up of a 3 server setup: a frontend sending PGP encrypted messages to the database and a backend hosting both receiving (watch-only) and sending (hot) wallet. Every server had his own keypair, all packages sent between any of the servers was always encrypted. The data in the database was also encrypted. The disks of the servers were encrypted. No logs whatsoever. The frontend was just a gui where the session was created, everything was stored in the db. The frontend had 2 network interfaces: an internal and an external. The database only had 1 internal interface on the same vlan as the external and backend server (the db could not be reached over the internet, it was patched using a fourth repo server that was turned off by defauld, had 2 network interfaces and was only started so the db server could be patched). The backend also had 2 interfaces: one on the internal vlan, one external interface. All 3 servers had a different OS/distro (freeBSD, centOS and debian), and each server was bulletproofed pretty well. The backend contained all code, everything was written in python, the wallets were connected over tor, and the peers were carefully selected.
And even then, it was ONLY a proof of concept i made for a thirth party, it was never brought into production. If it would have been brought into production, i would have had to bring in a second trusted dev to review my code, and move everything over to a bulletproof hosting facility. But this wasn't the initial setup anyway, it was not what my client had in mind to begin with, so we never did that.

If it's just a way for you to learn about the ecosystem: why not... If you're serious: honestly, i wouldn't touch your mixer with a ten foot pole after seeing you came onto bitcointalk and asked for a tutorial on how to create a mixer... Doing something like this correctly requires an above-average amount of knowledge about the bitcoin protocol, the bitcoin community, the scripting language you'll be using and proper system administration knowledge... It's not like you'll ever find a step by step tutorial that teaches you how to setup a good mixer.

Did i say it was idiotic? I did not say this... You're free to ask questions (especially if they haven't been asked before) and you're free to discuss any crypto related topics...
What i said was: i'm sorry, but when i read your post, i have no clue what altcoin, website or service you are talking about... You seem to be mixing questions about an HYIP (but you don't clarify which one), questions about altcoins (but you don't say which ones), questions about algorithms, questions about bitcoin,.... So you're still free to ask these questions, but you'll have to rework your post to make sure people actually know what you are talking about.

Your guess is correct, just right-click on the link and save the .asc file locally... Then use whatever tool you have installed to verify the signature.
If you have more questions: you can search the forum, and if you don't find the answer: don't hesitate to ask them here

Besides being in the completely wrong subforum (why on earth would you think some kind of walktrough? of a HYIP? belongs in the Development & Technical Discussion subforum), the reader of your post doesn't have a clue as to what you are talking about...

I mean, there are hundreds of craptokens and thousands of sites that allow craptoken "mining" trough some sort of game... Usually these sites are scams aswell... But the very least you could do is clarify what kind of ponzy, scam or hyip you are talking about (without actually placing a link to their site, you don't want to give them an increase in pagerank).

I'm not a monero holder, but i quickly glanced at getmonero.org.
It seems to be a project page listing the exchanges and reference wallet (plus links to other wallets). This means you wouldn't be buying your monero from getmonero.org, nor would you be storing them in an online wallet (unless you specifically chose to pick one of the online wallets from their list).

You'd be buying monero from an exchange... Which is where most people buy their crypto... You can do P2P trades, but most people get their crypto trough an exchange (AFAIK). Some exchanges enforce a KYC policy, other are more private...

Once you buy the monero, you can transfer them to a hardware wallet, yes... You can probably do this straight from whatever exchange you pick, there should be no need to go "exchange" => "intermediate wallet" => "hardware wallet"... Instead, go "exchange" => "hardware wallet"...Both trezor and ledger support monero... And yes, you'll have to pay a fee in order to make the transfer.

It might be a good idear to start a new thread instead of bumping a 4 year old one with a question that's not related (nor equal to) the question initially asked in said thread. It's called necroposting, and by doing this, you'll probably get a much lower response rate.

This being said, you didn't provide nearly enough information to give any meaningfull answer... Are you still able to log in? Do you see transaction history? Did you try to contact their support dept? Address, transaction id's,.... Without any extra information, other people won't have a clue as to what might have happened either.

So, what i would propose you do is:
1) stop posting in this thread
2) contact block.io support
3) if they don't answer, create a NEW thread with sufficient background info
4) realise that we are not block.io support staff... We don't have access to your account, we are unable to fysically give you your funds back... We might give you some pointers and some tips tough (if we have a gut feeling of what might have gone wrong)

I, for one, have not looked at this service in 4 years... My input might not be that good... I didn't even know they still existed.... But maybe by following above steps, somebody who used their service recently could chip in.

Sure,  but those "just extras" are pretty important... They make sure that master private key never ever leaves the hardware wallet... That's a pretty big deal, not something you should just catalog as "just extras".

By this defenition, a car is just four wheels and an engine. The steering wheel, chassis, airbags,... are just extra's.... They add nothing to the basic functionality of your car (which is moving automatically)...

It might be a good idear to send them a PM to notify them of your post...

But all in all, putting pressure on them trough posting on forums, facebook, twitter, review-sites seems to be a hail-mary short that pays off rather often. It seems they don't mind selectively closing accounts and trying to keep the funds for themselfs, but they don't like bad publicity... So when they're called out on their shennanigans, they often cave... It's possible you'll have to make a bit more noise, like posting some evidence before they decide their reputation damage is worth more than your 1.2 ETH....

There are several concepts here:

when you create a "normal" transaction and broadcast it, it is "instantly" received by (most of) the nodes of the network... Not really instant, but it won't take more than a couple of seconds...
Once a node receives your transaction, it's put in the mempool of each individual node. So, most nodes will know the transaction exists, they know which unspent output was spend and which address was funded (at least, for a "normal" transaction, in theory there are different kinds of scripts, so your transaction doesn't *have* to fund an address per sé)

So, the moment you "send" a valid, standard, average fee transaction, most of the nodes of the network will have your transaction in their mempool in mere seconds, and most wallets monitoring the receiving address will show an UNCONFIRMED transaction allmost instantly.

In order to get your transaction into block (get a confirmation), a miner has to create a block containing your transaction, and find a block header (trough iteration) whose sha256d hash is under the current target. By adjusting said target every 2016 blocks, the network makes sure the AVERAGE time between two blocks is ~10 minutes. I have to point out that it's an average time... 2008 blocks that are found after 2 minutes and 2008 blocks that are found after 18 minutes => 10 minutes on average, and the diff won't be adjusted!

Wether or not a miner picks your transaction from it's mempool to be part of the block they're trying to solve, they usually look at your transaction fee (in sat/vbyte). Important fact: the fee has nothing to do with the monetary value that's being transmitted and only depends on the transaction size (in virtual bytes)

NotATether's sollution works...

If you want an easyer method that allows you to greatly simplify the backup procedure, you could also use electrum, let it generate a seed phrase, write down this seed, then go to electrum's console and do:
wallet.change_gap_limit(10000)
wallet.storage.write()
listaddresses()

Then you'll get a list you can import into a db.. Do prepare to wait a LOOOOOONG time... A 10.000 gap limit isn't small...

TBH, my sollution isn't per defenition better than NotATether's, it's just differrent

Electrum doesn't fetch the unspent output from the electrum node... So, no, if you had the private key you wouldn't be able to spend the coinbase reward using electrum's gui...
That being said, you could theoretically use electrum to sign an unsigned raw transaction spending the coinbase reward if you used a different tool to create said transaction... At least, i guess this would work... Never tried it tough... Maybe somebody else did try this and could weigh in?

Maybe the lenght of this "text", the first character, the last character and potentially some description of the character set might be usefull (for example, only capital letters, alphanumeric,...).
Don't post the rest of the "text" tough, don't give it using a PM either... In case your seller used a weak encryption scheme, sharing the "text" might lead to loss of funds...

I'm not sure if anybody will be able to help you, but the description "some text" defenatly isn't enough...

You could theoretically find an online form that allows you to push your transaction to several nodes... Some nodes might have different settings regarding to their mempool. This being said: even if you find such a node, your transaction will probably end up in their mempool and their mempool alone, since their peers probably won't allow your transaction in their mempool when it's broadcasted to them... So your odds of getting such a transaction confirmed "just like that" is very small...

I guess you're stuck with either waiting untill the average feerate drops dramatically, or you can find a BIG mining pool that's willing to include your transaction into the block they're trying to solve... You'll probably have to offer them a big reward for doing this tough...

Thanks for testing

I'm not going to reply to each individual test, but in general, i can tell you that the GUI problems are known and on my to-do list.... They'll get partially fixed in the next release  which i'll roll out later today or tomorrow. I expect them all to be fixed once i roll out an actual beta release (we're still in pre-alpha at the moment)
As for the rest: i've read all your replies with great care, and i've seen a couple of features that are defenately doable, so i'll add them to my to-do list.

 

@bitmover: offcource, by the time i looked at the transaction in question, it had 3 confirmations already, so it was pruned from my mempool before i could track down the source of the problem  .

My gut tells me that the previous issues were due to the fact i had ridiculously small settings for my mempool (max 50 Mb, max 2 hours before pruning), and the current issue *might* have been because the transaction was mined between testing the non-TLS and the TLS version??? I'm not sure tough, but like i said: can't test anymore because the transaction ended up in a block before i could have a look at it

I haven't really gotten around to the gui, enduser stuff... But your proposal (to concat the 2nd and the last 2 lines) sounds good... I'll do that when i have some dev-time tomorrow... I'll also try to test a bunch of transactions between the TLS and non-TLS version. The non-TLS version will be stopped pretty soon (there's no added value to be had from running a non-TLS version), but i'd like to be sure the issue with transactions popping up on the TLS version and not on the non-TLS version aren't caused by a bug.

Thanks for testing! It's highly appreciated

By the way, in case more people willing to test pop up: you don't really have to use the form (for now), you can just post the txid directly to https://www2.mocacinno.com:8082/page/feechecker using tools like postman... This makes it easyer to bulk-test or debug

In the meantime, based on the feedback in this thread, i've fixed following issues:

• For some reason, i had my node configured with maxmempool=50; mempoolexpiry=2(probably because i was strapped for resources a while ago). Now, i've changed these values to 250Mb, 1000 hours... Should be better this way :-)
• Based on Joel_Jantsen's feedback, i've changed the title of the feechecker page a little bit... The code isn't actively running tough, but it's already present in the github repo

I've also setup redirects from my old site to the new daemon, since the old feechecker didn't work anyways... Data POSTED to feechecker.php is redirected to the new page aswell...

The next couple of days, i'll probably try to fix some of the gui elements, links, layout problems and do a better check of the feechecker...
Once again: if somebody finds any bugs, don't hesistate to let me know!

No, if you lose your private key (or your "encoded" private key in any other form, like a seed phrase, an sss scheme, a QR code, a brain wallet passphrase, ...) your can no longer access your funds. There are no ways around this. You need your private key to sign the transaction(s) spending your funds.

You look at it from the perspective of somebody losing their key (which sucks), but you can also look at it from the security perspective: bitcoin would not be secure if somebody was able to retrieve keys "out of thin air".

There are exceptions, but nothing you (as a normal user) should worry about... Since i don't think you'll be using anything but a standard wallet (which is fine btw).