My friend died in a grisly road accident two months ago. He had accumulated quite a substantial amount of bitcoins and he had told me that he wanted to sell them when the price hits over $1,000. he had accumulated then when the price was below $250 a few months ago. Given that we had exchanged bitcoins on various occasions, I decided to check one of the addresses that we transacted with him and realized that indeed it had bitcoins.

My concern is that they will get lost just like that because no one knows the passwords that he used. He left behind a very young family of wife and two beautiful daughters. I feel if someone can gain access to these bitcoin they will help the family a great deal. I know it is difficult but I wanted to know if there is a way that the address can be "hacked" to enable his family gain access to the bitcoin.

If we think about different currencies - Bitcoin is a real step forward. It is not supported by gold or something else. It depends a lot on whether people use it and believe in it.
For which purposes you think Nakamoto created Bitcoin? To earn a lot of money? Or just to create something new?
Maybe, he wanted to show the different nature of money and that it doesn't need government to exist, for example?
What are your thoughts on the topic?

A friend sent me this earlier. Worth a read because it contains good advice.


http://www.844bankbtc.com/bitcoin-selling-mistakes/

Most common mistakes of amatuer Bitcoin sellers

Every day amateur bitcoin sellers post on one of the bitcoin forums about how they were trying to sell bitcoin and got scammed. These amateur sellers are commonly known as “windowlickers“. They lose their money, their bitcoin and still consider themselves smart enough to make money with bitcoin. The fact is most sellers lose more money than they make.

Here is the list of the most common mistakes amateurs make.

Selling bitcoin they can’t afford to lose. People often come into the forums talking about how they were scammed and now cannot pay bills. If you can’t afford to pay bills you shouldn’t be trading bitcoins. Even the best traders get scammed so plan to lose money.

Charging to little. Those profits are what keep you in business when prices fluctuate or you get scammed. Lower your prices to undercut your competition and you are cutting your own throat.

Accepting PayPal as a payment method. Yes, some people accept PayPal but they have a ton of experience and know tricks you don’t. If you accept Paypal you will get scammed, you will lose money and Paypal will come after you. Paypal can even take the money back out of your bank account and send you to collections/ruin your credit

Thinking PayPal friends and family is not reversible. Yes, it is reversible. If you search the trading forums you will find many windowlickers that have been scammed trying that. Then when you get scammed Paypal will look into your account. Paypal is smart enough to know that you don’t have hundreds of friends and family around the country sending you thousands of dollars. Your account will be frozen and you won’t be able to withdraw any money for 3-6 months. For the record EVERY form of Paypal payments are reversible.

Believing that anything you can say will help you win a Paypal dispute. Paypal doesn’t care what windowlickers say. The guarantee the buyers will be safe, not the sellers (it is in the Paypal terms that they don’t protect people selling bitcoin or other “digital goods and intagible items”) If the windowlickers were smart enough to win their dispute they wouldn’t have been accepting Paypal in the first place.
Taking Venmo/Skrill/Neteller. These suffer the same chargeback issues as Paypal but at a MUCH higher rate because they are even more infested with scammers than Paypal is.

Believing a website/forum can help and/or protect them.  Websites like LocalBitcoins and Paxful do what they can but they are understaffed and their primary concern is making money, not settling disputes or answering support tickets. The forums are full of other people just as clueless as you that have no power over the website. Understand you are on your own and expect 2-5 business days for a reply from support. Be prepared that the replies you get may not actually help you.

Believing reload cards like gift cards or reload cards are safe. They can be reversed and scammers do it all the time. Paypal MyCash cards and Amazon are the worst. There are also a lot of scams that will get your accounts shut down after the card has been loaded, you banned and a mark on your credit. Any money stored in the account will be locked and you will never see it again.

Trying to get cash off of reloadable or prepaid cards. Reloadable and prepaid cards are made to put cash on and then spend like a credit card. The way the card companies see it is that only idiots and money launderers try to put cash in and then take cash back out. This is one of the more common mistakes of an amateur and often causes accounts to be banned.

Releasing bitcoins without cash/payment being fully in your possession. Remember, most consumer based payment methods can be reversed.

Selling out of escrow. Hopefully you don’t really need an explanation why this is stupid.

Giving out personal information like bank account numbers or their phone number. There are tons of scams that use these. The professional sellers that do give this information out have safety features on their accounts to protect them.

Believing cash deposits are safe –  There are a number of scams that target bank accounts. These often end up with the police investigating the owner of the account and the bank’s banning the owner from their system (regardless of who is at fault).

Accepting credit cards. These are the easiest scammed of all because credit cards automatically default for the owner of the card and its up to the retailer/seller to prove that the purchase was one the card company approves of.

Believing that if a seller requires a photo ID they will be protected. Photo IDs that will fool police are easily bought online. Even if it is a real ID, most services do not care when they find out that the transaction involved bitcoin and will chargeback against the seller.

Since bitcoin is trending now world wide because you can easily earn this and it exchange in real cash. Is bitcoin the new value of currency in the internet? Is he the new money? Can we use it in buying foods and etc in the future?

If you think about this it is pretty obvious that the mind set and mentality of the majority of Bitcoins users is what is holding Bitcoin back and what could be the downfall of Bitcoin in the long run.

Everyone is so scared of being scammed and go to great lengths to try and 'help' others not to get scammed that it makes Bitcoin an unattractive payment method for shops to accept. Escrow is one of the most absurd things about Bitcoin - what happened to buyer beware? Now it is seller AND buyer beware as you still can't fully trust the escrow. While I accept that if I want to sell something as a new member I have to use escrow - fine for cheap items, I would not risk selling something expensive and sending it to the buyer until the funds were firmly in my possession, this is how it has always been and how it should remain. The buyer should be the one to take on the risk - they can decide not to do this and move on, that is also fine but the buyer should not be able to dictate terms to the seller, it should be the other way around. The buyer is not forced to buy.

Also the method of buying Bitcoin is tedious at best. Until we can effortlessly buy Bitcoin with a credit card - without having to make an account at an exchange, Bitcoin will not reach its full potential, I know I have spoken to friends who don't touch Bitcoin as they cant buy it as they could gold for example.

Until Bitcoin is treated like any other currency or commodity it will not become what it should be.

Stop holding it back, a few people being scammed (usually down to their own stupidity) is and can be for the greater good. I not talking about blatant theft, if someone buys Bitcoin from a new member, with no history, no trust and no proof then it is their fault.

What do you say? Isn't earning bitcoin through the likes of signature campaigns, tweets and posts really boring? I really think so, at least its not an attractive or appealing way to earn bitcoin or any money for that matter.
What do you think? What are the most interesting and appealing ways to earn Bitcoin Online?

Weekly Limits: You Can Now Trade More Digital Currency

We’re excited to announce the launch of weekly buy/sell limits on Coinbase. In the past, we used daily limits.....

https://blog.coinbase.com/2016/09/22/weekly-limits-you-can-now-trade-more-digital-currency/

I think inorder to make a living with Bitcoin, You need to earn from 0.01 to 0.03 already per day .
Is there a way to do this ?
I don't know .
I am looking for a system where I can set and it's Autopilot .
Like Mining, however, Mining doesn't work well for me .
Is there any suggestions ?

I have had an issue with Paypal and while I was trying to look for a solution on the internet, I came across this website (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/paypal_02.html) where everybody is complaining about Paypal. Most of the complains were actually similar to the one that I have. I thought Paypal is a credible company but now I have started feeling worried about my funds stuck in the accounts.

I forgot I had some coins put away in a bitcoin lending site to try P2P lending. This is what I see when I logged in to see my "investments"

Four pages of red glory. I stopped clicking after page 4. Brilliant.

Sometimes people ask me "What makes Bitcoin so secure? Why is this technology so safe?

How would you answer this question? Do I have to answer it with regards to Proof of Work?

Thanks for your thoughts on this 

I wonder how many of you guys have already started bitcoin related business.

What do you think that will happen once the real Satoshi reveals himself (and proves that he created Bitcoin)? Will Bitcoin ever be the same? Will governments try to pursue Satoshi and put him in jail?

This will be something interesting to know, once it happens (if it ever does) sometime in the future. Please feel free to share your thoughts here. 

Izabella Kaminska hasn't a clue, says Bitcoin is a flawed solution to a problem that doesn't exist.  


https://www.ft.com/content/3bea303c-7a7e-11e6-b837-eb4b4333ee43

She lumps blockchain and bitcoin in together as if their both trying to solve the same problem.

I googled it up and found this site:
https://donate.cubits.com
Is it trusted?
If you have any other website then please reply here.
If there isn't any way to donate in bitcoins then I would like someone to help me,I will pay you in bitcoins.

I would like to know what experiences did you had when you first started with Bitcoins. As for me, I had many that I would like to share with you.

When I began in the Bitcoin world, I was a complete rookie with no proper knowledge of how did mining worked or anything about cryptocurrencies. I just thought about Bitcoin as another payment processor like PayPal. But when I joined the BitcoinTalk community, I learned so many things along the way. In my process of learning in the first days, I decided to invest into cloud mining services. Since I didn't knew much about it, I invested a plenty amount of Bitcoins to start my journey into it. During that time, I had gotten into many different services. Those were GAW Miners, then Cointellect, cloudminr.io and finally Hashnest. After getting scammed many times by the services mentioned previously, (except for Hashnest) I have lost many Bitcoins. As a result, I decided to never invest into cloud mining and thus dedicate myself into learning more about the cryptocurrency and look for other ways to earn Bitcoins. It was then that I enrolled into the signature campaign that I am currently into and during all that time I began to earn Bitcoins as well as diversify my investments into different alt coins. Now I am dedicated to trading Bitcoins and other alt coins, as well as working for it (like the signature campaign and working as a freelancer) in order to earn coins and build up my portfolio along the way.

Anyways, what would be your experiences with this exciting cryptocurrency? 

Hello guys, I just joint a bitcoin mixer campaign, I am new to bitcoin mixer service, and very curious about this.

My question is: Bitcoin mixer or anonymous altcoin(such as xmr, dash), which is more anonymous?

PS: feel free to click my signature to mix your bitcoin with only 1% fee.

When and how you Got your First Dollar in Bitcoins???

It would be fun to see a national bank (state owned) publishing the increase in holdings to various assets with the addition of Bitcoin on the list.
A well known country with diverse holdings like Switzerland with its huge stake in Apple could perhaps dip a toe.
Gold stockpiles are reported although one could guess not every country publishes its stake very accurately.
Is it possible that some clever finance ministers start accumulating and perhaps don't bother with putting it on the books? Is it even possible to buy in any reasonable quantities?
It could fail, but if it doesn't, they could buy a huge stake of power in international finance for pocket money. That would require the dreams of the Church of Satoshi coming true.

Just remember that countries last a long time and can hodl for a long time.

Crypto-revolution antifragility V CHECK

It would be very embarrassing to show they bought into an obsolete money with hard earned and taxed cash.