It's... complicated. I think that what he means by democracy is... "wider". 
I think that he means that the fact that huge amounts of illegal money can be easily hidden into crypto, many wrongdoers cannot be sent to jail (it's too difficult for the weak/ineffective and half-corrupted law enforcement system). Most of those have big political power and will hinder the attempts to move the country towards a "proper democracy" where the law matters.

The fact a wallet file was not used/sync-ed for a while it doesn't mean the meaningful private keys were not extracted and the funds spent.
Also there's a good chance the file was edited for misleading, especially to convince you pay for it. See @HCP post:

The rich people do afford to lose most of the assets they've used as collateral and they'll still be rich.
Normal people should not use loaned money for any kind of investments.

Indeed, that's not the path to follow. So not much use to "show how it is made" imho...

Rich people have always loaned money. And the article, although old, tells from the start what they do with the money: buy cheap all the assets that have short-term problems and good chance to rise in the future.
Since they do have plenty of money, even if it's locked into another valuable assets, getting loans is an easy way to get liquidity.
Nothing new under the sun.

Since the article is from April (!) I really don't know what's the reason for this topic... an attempt to scare the newbies?

Imho rebranding is not necessary and could do more bad than good.

There are already plenty of altcoins with slightly different logo and something (Cash, Diamond, ...) added to the name to confuse newcomers.
If even the original Bitcoin would change the logo, some websites will have the old one and some will have the new one, confusing newcomers even more, especially (as also written in the linked article) since the actual logo can be already seen in paid advertising.

OP, you either have a malicious Electrum clone instlled, either have some malware/backdoor on your computer, either somebody else knows your private keys or seed.

The coins are gone and that cannot be reversed.

Make sure you don't get other coins sent to that wallet. And you can start thinking on what is the culprit.

Where did you download Electrum from?
What version it is?
Did you verify the signature?
Did you / your Electrum created the wallet/address or you received it from someone?
Is your system Windows? Do you use antivirus?
Where did you store the private key/seed? Was that on e-mail or Dropbox? (common mistake)

His influence was ... mixed. He made a lot of noise and helped increasing the awareness for Bitcoin.
On the other hand he did indeed a lot of bad to the altcoin scene, among many other (ICO) scammers. And indeed, unfortunately, many followed his words because they were expecting that he did some background check for the projects he advertised.

1. If your old Electrum pops up a window telling to update from there do not follow that link.
2. Backup your seed or wallet.
3. Go to electrum.org and download the newest version.
4. Verify your downloaded electrum as said in the previous post.
5. Install, use..

Although I guess it's probably (well) deserved, I can also almost see the news coming out and telling that crypto is bad because it encourages tax evasion and so on...
He's a public figure (after all) and he did try quite badly to associate his name with crypto industry.

You could have kept the investment. An investment is money you "afford to lose", which can also mean it's not necessarily something you can "withdraw" quick and easy.
One exchange is down, more will come sooner or later. You've missed the big picture.



You know that quite a number of banks got closed in history? And there are still plenty of banks, since new ones got opened. It's the same with Bitcoin exchanges too. As I said, you've missed the big picture.



Although it's solely your decision if you leave Bitcoin for good or not, I'd say you keep the Ledger Nano. The chance people will buy it from you is tiny (nobody can tell it's "clean" or you've changed it and you'll steal their money in the future) and you may buy again sometime in the future. (Never say never!).

We call those ranks, not roles, hence the confusion.
And the easiest to find something like that is to search: bitcointalk ranks

You guys should go to Wirex thread and read a little.

Wirex has monthly fee. ATM withdraw is expensive. The buy/sell prices are not nice. Afaik FX fee is still big (although it's advertised it will be removed?!). Of course, others have this kind of problems to. But I'll continue.
Wirex support sometimes is helpful/useful, sometimes not.
Wirex sometimes has issues and the usual advice was to not handle big amounts at Wirex at once.
Sending SEPA transfer out of Wirex is sometimes a lottery.

I do have Wirex card. Is not bad, but also is not as good as it should be.



The 40-days problem.... you usually have to ask again and pray you find one of the few from support who can actually be helpful.
But the timing was bad. They were busy now with the crowdfunding. I also had a ticket that got answered late (and with nothing helpful in their answer).

I think that the pharma companies expect to have something like the flu vaccines. People will have to get it at around 2 weeks before the "expected outbreak period" to be effective.
Hence it's pretty cheap for how new it is.
(Imho this is great as business model and awful for health, but who cares?)


After the first few million shots we'll have a better image.
After such a rush it's clear that at least some will be awfully bad. Of course, some will blame the virus.


The politicians who decide have advisors for this kind of stuff. And the advisors are obviously people from the pharma industry.
Also most probably new drugs will be much more expensive, unfortunately.

Da, este unul din motivele pentru care am scris ca e facut cu picioarele. Sau poate se asteapta ca pana are loc licitatia sa creasca pretul 
Dar sa revenim seriosi, la ceva atat de volatil, .. nu stiu ce e in capul lor. Plus ca sumele sunt relativ mici, nu sunt convis ca se preteaza la o licitatie.

Not many exchanges try to do anything "extra". And I guess that it's rather disappointing to pay / work on blog entries to teach people and then see that almost nobody reads that (yes, they afford to pay somebody do that, but it's still disappointing).

The information about how Bitcoin works is there on the internet. One has to take some time, research and read. Most won't do that.
Imho it's more the users' blame than exchanges'.

Now indeed there are not enough vaccines. But I think that quite soon there will be enough. Not everybody wants vaccines. Also afaik vaccines have to be administrated some weeks before people get any chance to get ill so the body develops the immunity (and may even do bad to already sick people).
But as said, since governments are paying the big bucks for vaccines, the "gold" rush is on.

The actual good news is that also cures get developed. I don't know how expensive those will be but together with the vaccines they'll cover (sooner or later) what we actually need.
The bad news is that all this takes time. Too much time...

It's technically different to use Bitcoin than one would use fiat or card. Unlike cards your own Bitcoin is not insured and you have to be careful how you handle it. The block time and how transaction fees work (and the difference from exchanges' withdrawal fees!) also may be hard to understand at first.

But I also understand your point. The most praised wallets are quite complex for newcomers and especially if they are not used with computers and applications on the daily basis they may get scared or simply make mistakes. But sooner or later good and easy wallets will pop up. They have to. Just lately the developers were more oriented in adding LN for example.

19 - NeuroticFish

Thank you!

Bineinteles, licitatia e facuta cu picioarele, ca la noi, dar totusi e o premiera, mai ales prin prisma faptului ca statul roman nu e atat de nestiutor in crypto cum poate ca ar crede unii.

The numbers they are reporting may or may not be according to the reality. They may have sold or they may have bought more than reported.
But they do have huge amount of Bitcoin and while it's a good news - it's indeed a proper investment in Bitcoin - it's also scary, since it gives them quite a lot of power in manipulating the price if they want to.



You obviously didn't follow the discussion. 4 posts before you was written that their fees are actually pretty high for what they are doing.