Respectfully, I disagree that LN is the long term scaling solution, but along with mass adoption of SegWit it can help us survive until we find one. I will personally never use LN for a number of reasons, but primarily because it's inconvenient (both parties have to be online for the duration of the transaction) and what's a much bigger issue to me - it requires you to store your private keys on an a device connected to the internet, which is a big no no for security reasons. It's also centralized, which is another factor in play.

I recommend reading this article: https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800

This guy makes some excellent points.

I'm sure LN will find its use cases, but it's not the answer. I believe we can do much better than that, it will just take time.

I support 100% legalization of ALL drugs for several reasons. Sure the majority of them are harmful substances that can and do end (and ruin) people's lives, but since alcohol, cigarettes & sugar are legal, why make drugs illegal?

People should be thoroughly educated on the effects of all the substances instead. High school kids should go on mandatory trips to prisons and rehab centers to see with their own eyes what substance abuse can do to a person. I believe this would be 100x (rough estimate) more effective than the failed war on drugs.

Read this for example, it's a thorough analysis with lots of valid arguments: https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/four-decades-counting-continued-failure-war-drugs#full

Now read what happened in Portugal over the years afterthe government decided to decriminalize drugs: https://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_Sheet_Portugal_Decriminalization_Feb2015.pdf

Check this comparison between the Netherlands and the US: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/chapter/netherlands_us

Even if I don't take drugs myself, I think legalization, or at the very least decriminalization of drugs would be entirely beneficial for everyone.

In all honesty I think it would make this forum a better place. I'm pro-merit for now, but it's too early to say whether it will turn out to be an effective measure in fighting shitposts and outright spam. What would most definitely rid this place of spam, low quality content, account farming and the majority of useless accounts bringing absolutely NOTHING to the table would be the disappearance of signature campaigns. That would actually be the easiest way to make this forum great again.

You're probably better off mining altcoins with a GPU rig (these are more versatile, as with GPUs you can mine multiple algorithms, whereas Antminers' focus is Bitcoin and these device only support the SHA-256 algorithm). An added bonus with a GPU mining rig is that you can resell graphic cards, whereas Antimners will eventually become expensive paperweights (check out the prices of older devices & their hashing power - pointless to run them currently). AdolfinWolf mentioned NiceHash, this is a good starting point for any beginner, since it allows you to sell your hashing power to mine altcoins (while automatically switching to the most profitable algorithm) and automatically pays you in Bitcoin.

This is something that we can 100% agree on.


Mass adoption will take time, there's no shortcut. I think the worst thing that happened to Bitcoin recently was gaining mainstream attention. We simply weren't ready for that big of an influx of new users and possibly won't be in the next couple of years.


Are you seriously suggesting that there are more currently more merchants accepting BizBytes than Bitcoin?

Both these arguments are essentially what Bitcoin stands for. There are dozens of centralized altcoins with CEOs, marketing teams and whatnot, I don't think Bitcoin has to become one of these to succeeed. Decentralization is one of most important core values stated in the white paper. Don't get me wrong, I understand where you're coming from - it's hard to treat BTC as currency in its current shape, I 100% get that. I just believe that the scaling issue is complex and it simply has to take time to implement the right measures to solve it. The community has come a long way and the core contributor numbers have increased significantly. I still have faith in Bitcoin, and I have patience, which you seem to lack. Either way, there are some other interesting projects that are definitely worth investing in. I wish you good luck, but I'm personally sticking with Bitcoin.

There are also multiple online fee calculators out there if you don't feel like calculating yourself. To name a few:

https://estimatefee.com/
http://bitfees.info/
https://www.cheaperfee.com/
https://coinb.in/#fees

I am in no way affiliated with any of these sites by the way, but hope you find either of them useful.

Check out "Understanding cryptography" by Christof Paar, it's a good starting point. Another good one to start with is "Introduction to Modern Cryptography" by Jonathan Katz & Yehuda Lindell.

Both  "Cryptography Engineering" and "Practical Cryptography" by Bruce Schneier are worth a read as well.

There's also a "Handbook of Applied Cryptography", which is available for free in PDF format here: http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/hac/

I don't think there's nearly enough money in these futures contracts to affect the price of Bitcoin by itself. What seems more likely is that they are an instrument to create more FUD which affects the market far more than the money itself. I wouldn't say that the market tanks every time these contracts expire - today's drop is the result of Coincheck hack rumors & them halting withdrawals and has nothing to do with CME futures settlement.

I'm not a big fan of the Lightning Network either, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it a scam. It's not a long-term scaling solution either in my view. It's not very convenient to use, at least to me, since it requires both parties to be online at the time of a transaction. What's worse though is that it requires its users to put their private keys on an internet-connected device, which is the primary reason I will never use it. I am sure there will be some use cases (maybe some people eager to pay with Bitcoin for coffee will have their dreams fulfilled for example). What would you propose as a solution though? An increase in block size?

I've no idea why anyone would give Google Authenticator app a negative review. It's perfectly safe to use & this is my go-to solutoin when adding an additional layer of security anywhere where it's available. MUCH safer than 2FA via e-mail or phone which can easily be spoofed. Just install GA and go ahead.

You summed it up perfectly, hilariousetc. Most of the new accounts here are cancer, bringing absolutely nothing to the discussion and shitposting solely for the purpose of ranking up and taking part in bounty campaigns. I'm happy with the introduction of the merit system and I hope it will discourage spammers from posting shittons of low quality content littering this forum. Just look at the post history of some of the accounts who bitch the loudest about merit, the majority of them are exactly what this system aims to rid of. Only time will tell if successfully, but in my view this is a step in the right direction.

+1 on this, it feels like most of the currently active users are either shitposters, spammers (both these tend to moan the loudest about the recent merit introduction) or should have never left their local boards in the first place.

I hope making 40 consecutive posts that bring any value to the forum will make the prize of the challenge redundant to any participants. Either way - good luck everyone!

This definitely helps with adoption, but I think the impact on price will be marginal. Sure, they might "steal" some customers from other exchanges, but I am also certain that it will gain attention of stock traders who otherwise didn't care for Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies before. They have approximately 2 million users and with the introduction of Bitcoin markets I'm pretty sure they will attract more, especially due to no-fee trading. Mind that they are only opening the BTC market to 5 states for now though.

Did you click the link from the e-mail? It should allow you to recover the account. Also, if it happened more than 14 days ago, you should be able to recover your account with an answer to the secret question that you set up (if you set it up, that is).

How about you read the thread from the beginning and stop shitposting, SMH.

EDIT: or one of the dozens of other threads in the Meta section (...)

I'm with Vod on this one. Most of the activity comes from shitposters and spammers. There's an unbelievable amount of low quality content written with the sole purpose of increasing activity, probably for bounty campaign reasons. I wouldn't want any of these shitposters and multi-account holders to have a saying in anything, let the "elders" do their bidding.

Exactly this. The Pharmacist is doing God's work fighting shitposters and spammers. Bringing mafia into the equation is just as ridiculous as thinking the earth is flat.

I would start here: https://www.investopedia.com/university/technical/ if you follow the chapters from 1 till 12, you sould grasp the basic concept behind TA.

“Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets” by John Murphy is a decent book on the subject, it might be over 30 year old already but TA doesn't really change. There are dozens of others out there, I think I saw a list of books on TA on investopedia as well. Good luck!

If you're forced to keep your coins on an exchange for the time being, I urge you to make sure you have a strong alphanumeric password & what's even more important - Two Factor Authentication enabled. I recommend Google Authenticator rather than 2FA via sms, since I've read about cases of people who had text messages / calls redirected by hackers. Stay safe.