Well, moderators have chosen to do a job and theymos could always opt to hire more forum users as moderators. If we could get some staff or admins to chime in about how the workload is these days it would be very insightful. However I don't think there's as much spam lately as there used to be.

When you hear of a forum having a board about services, what springs to mind should be posts about hiring people and looking to get hired.

The board for services in bitcointalk is literally flooded with posts about signature campaigns however. And as these posts get constantly bumped by new responses, they come on top all the time while any poor person trying to advertise their service can only post one bump a day...

A possible solution would be to simply create a new board for signature campaign topics. Let's call it Forum Campaigns for example. Review and signature campaigns can be posted there.

Another thing to maybe make the services board more lively would be to create a new section for those seeking to hire people to do tasks. This way it's easier to browse sections separately based on if you want to hire or get hired and it would also make posting more attractive due to increased visibility.

Bitcointalk Username: alani123
Profile Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=121796
Post Count: 6352
Forum Rank: Legendary
Are you able to wear our Signature, Avatar & Personal Text? Yes, when you accept.
Stake Username: Anth0nius

You are right, I think I meant to also link his commentsry but forgot. Here it is https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/928308564208373761

It has been so long and no signs of Binance.com actually adding the payment methods they claimed they'd be adding...


This is all I see when entering my account.

The support keeps saying to keep checking periodically as it is supposed to come anytime now. Well, I can't help but wonder when is "anytime now"?
Has anyone in EEA actually been able to deposit EUR in binance.com after the announcement in OP was made?

Λοιπόν έκατσα και έγραψα τις σκέψεις μου σε ένα post το οποίο κατέληξε μεγάλο λες και ήταν άρθρο...  Ρίξτε μια ματιά:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471530.msg63049838#msg63049838

Είναι κάπως περίεργο που αυτό εδώ το post έχει καταλήξει να είναι το πιο πολυσυζητημένο θέμα στην Ελληνική κοινότητα εδώ. Βέβαια η αντιπαράθεση τραβάει και το θέμα παίρνει πολύ συζήτηση οπότε δεν μου κάνει εντύπωση. Αλλά και πάλι, νομίζω είμαστε λίγο αποσυνδεδεμένοι απ' την πραγματικότητα του crypto στην Ελλάδα που πλέον είναι πολύ διαφορετική. Το debate για τα μεγάλα Blocks στο bitcoin τελείωσε με την εφαρμογή του SegWit. Και να πω την αλήθεια δεν ξέρω αν θα μπορούσε να ξανα ανοίξει με όσα έγιναν.

You can PM me with a way to message you (for example Telegram or Signal) and I can provide you with any details you might need.

Applying for : Avatar Campaign
Merit earned in the last 120 days: 32
Bech32 address: bc1q54u6us9hj79wf3hldxqk9hekzjmksuc26fwcev

Rank: Legendary
SegWit BTC address: bc1q54u6us9hj79wf3hldxqk9hekzjmksuc26fwcev

What the U.S. government dubs as "global terrorism" is actually a very big part of the worldwide population. Large parts of Syria, Lebanon, all of Gaza, Afghanistan, Iran... See, the issue with this fact is that there's not enough crypto for everyone. The U.S. has fought against many countries and groups as part of its efforts categorized under the flag of "war on terror". If you ONLY take the Afghanistan operations into account, the total cost was $2.313 trillion for the United States. That alone is almost double than all of cryptos market cap...

So where do you think the money for "terrorism" comes from? Well, it's the banks again... Surprise, right?


So make no mistake. When someone tells you that bitcoin or crypto in general funds terrorism, the only correct answer is that if we're concerned about that, we should completely close down banks because they are the primary funding source for all terrorism.

I made a post to specifically discuss potential mistakes and wrong decisions that were made in the aftermath of the 2015-2017 big block scaling debate:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471530.0;topicseen

If you think you have any input on the matter feel free to drop by there too.

Yearn finance isn't anything special these days. For anyone stumbling up on this thread you should really check out beefy.finance. It's a yearn fork but on like 20 blockchains, implementing infinitely better strategies and overall awesome, featuring any coin you can imagine too.

I didn't make this post to say that bcash is good. I made this post so we can look back and maybe learn a thing or two. With even Peter Todd saying that it was a waste of resources to implement SegWit without a blocksize increase, maybe it's time to accept that at least to some degree there were mistakes that were made. How else are we going to improve? Cryptocurrency isn't a race to the bottom. If we somehow prove that is trash, that doesn't improve bitcoin... We have to be more practical.

It's such a weird story. The Business Insider reporters got to know from a partner of his that Thiel was INTRODUCED to the FBI, and then that same partner ratted him out. it's odd to know this series of events without context. What does a businessman have to gain from talking to FBI agents? Money? Connections? Leniency on getting caught? Who knows... Hopefully crypto wasn't affected by this because Thiel is a big stakeholder in many major projects.

Any achievement humanity has made, is due to our ability to record and pass down our progress, as well as recognize our mistakes. Likewise, by looking at bitcoin's history, we can learn to improve this technology that millions of people have come to be using.

The famed "blocksize debate" that took place between 2015-2017 had a profound effect to the bitcoin community as well as bitcoin's future as a whole. So in this post a I'd like to make reference to some important proposals, as well as highlight the takes of several industry heads at the time.

The point of contention
Circa 2014 bitcoin developers were caught between arguments on what methods should be used to address bitcoin's apparent lack of capacity for more transactions. Apparently bitcoin's 1MB hard limit for block size was for many considered a limiting factor on how much bitcoin could grow to accommodate a potential increase in demand to transact on bitcoin's blockchain. For that, different developers and groups came up with different solutions, most prominent of which will be mentioned below.

Bitcoin scaling solutions proposed during the 2015-2017 block size debate
First we have Bitcoin XT, proposed by Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_XT
This was a bitcoin client that would lead to a hardfork if more than 75% of miners agreed to its proposals in the last 1000 blocks.
The proposed solution to the scaling debate was to increase the block size to 8 MB, also doubling it every two years.

Bitcoin Classic was another proposed hardfork. It was developed b Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik most famously among others.
Classic's proposal was to hard fork to a 2MB block size limit, and by 2017 transition to a dynamic max_block_size.

Segregated Witness is the solution that passed. It has essentially allowed for 4MB blocks without requiring a hard fork. It also opened up bitcoin functionality enough to make the Lightning Network concept viable for operation as well as allowing more advanced scripting. It's also worth noting that SegWit finally begun its implementation on mid 2017, way later than when the debate had reached its peak.

Further solutions
The following solutions are still being worked on to potentially be used on top of bitcoin alongside with SegWit.

Sidechains are also worth a mention. Sidechains are the solution preferred by Adam Back, who has openly stated that he prefers sidechains as a scaling solution to Lightning transactions. He and his company Blockstream are currently developing the Liquid sidechain.

The Lightning Network is perhaps the most talked about scaling solution for bitcoin, currently having a capacity over 5000 BTC which has kept being expanding fast over the last few years. 

The concerns over big and dynamic blocks in 2015
It's important to not forget what the talking points for each proposed solution were back when it was decision time.
In early 2016, Jonas Schnelli, a full time bitcoin Core maintainer, was quoted stating the following against 2MB blocks.


In this quote its easy to see how conservative bitcoin developers sought to be with the blockchain size, and how an increase in block size might severely affect the decentralization of bitcoin due to bandwidth constraints in many parts of the world. Contrary to the path projects like Ethereum have followed by having a full blockchain size in the terrabytes, bitcoin still chooses to form its network with full nodes. Users of bitcoin can still to this day download and easily synchronize the full blockchain therefore also contributing to decentralization. This lack of compromise is what has defined bitcoin through the years.


What's currently going on with scaling solutions?
The current state of affairs with bitcoin scaling solutions it that even after several years of development, we aren't sure if a scaling solution is ready to be put in place for widespread use. The Lightning Network's integrity was recently put in question by one of its core developers, shaking the project's very foundational principles and questioning if it would even be viable as a widely used scaling solution.

We're left with sidechains, the decentralization and robustness of which hasn't really been studied widely. While sidechains are still in development, it's almost certain the compromises in trustlessness and decentralization will be far from what on-chain bitcoin transactions can offer. So it's questionable if a sidechain could fulfill bitcoin's promise for an electronic form of cash that would complete trustless transactions in a decentralized manner. Essentially the best talking point for sidechains up until now is that they bring more functionality on top of bitcoin, but probably this happens at the expense of other foundational principles.

Is bitcoin ready for scale after SegWit?
So far, with the existing demand on bitcoin transactions, SegWit has been contributed positively to containing the demand. As of writing this article BTC transactions are reaching record levels of cheapness at least for the last few years. However, one must think with a wider time scope when examining such issues. Taking into account the 2021 boom in demand for bitcoin transactions, it's obvious that there was a period when bitcoin transaction fees remained at high levels between 2020 and 2021.

So really we see a fundamental issue that was constantly being brought up in 2015 at play here. When the crypto boom of 2021 happened, bitcoin's existing infrastructure wasn't exactly ready to welcome all the transactions from people that wanted to use the blockchain. While the transaction capacity didn't particularly need to be large in 2015, it would have been nice for infrastructure to be in place. This brings to mind the "If you build it, they will come." principle that is often associated with infrastructure. Anything intended for widespread public use, must be future proofed. Building something for the masses requires the architect to be forward looking...

And when demand in 2021 exploded, bitcoin's infrastructure wasn't there to sere everyone. Certainly back in 2021 having transactions cost $60 was a deterrent for many that would have wound up using alternative methods to transact value. And with on-chain transaction demand driving fees to levels like that as recently as 2021, it's certain that bitcoin's technology has yet to offer a solution for the masses to make cheap transactions on bitcoin. Be it sidechains or Lightning Network, we're just not there yet.

Weaknesses of SegWit from the 2015-2017 scaling debate scope
However, looking back at things, it might have been easy to forget that back in the day, Chinese miners didn't exactly follow the sentiment of minimum bandwidth through and through. At some point in 2016, Antpool, who was the biggest pool and associated with the biggest miners back then, was signalling that they wouldn't support SegWit if it wasn't accompanied with a blocksize increase. So in hindsight, the authenticity of the bandwidth conservation argument that was so often cited against a block size increase in 2015 comes into question.

Another thing worth mentioning in hindsight is that even SegWit pioneer Peter Todd later admitted that in the end it was a waste of resources to implement SegWit without a hardcoded blocksize increase coupled with it. Moreover, a detail many people miss is that Bitcoin XT was criticized by Adam Back for requiring a threshold of support of 75% to be implemented, calling it too low, while by 2019, more than two years after SegWit's activation, only an estimated 36% of bitcoin transactions were using it.


'Trash' on the blockchain?
Aside for high demand for transactions actually fulfilling bitcoin's intended purpose, transacting monetary value, on-chain scripting has allowed for recent trends like Ordinals and the so called BRC-20 tokens has been taking a lot of space in the bitcoin blockchain. Which combined with SegWit's 4MB block limit, makes up for a radical departure from the reasons why other solutions weren't adopted as a result of the blocksize debate.

If we are to examine the considerations of bitcoin Core developers that were expressed during the 2015-2017 period, the bandwidth bitcoin would consume was a very serious concern. Even scaling to above 1MB was worrisome as seen by the quote mentioned above. However, SegWit took quire a radical departure from this principle. Even more so recently, bitcoin developers Luke Dash Jr, came out very much against certain developments like Ordinals and BRC-20 that SegWit has allowed for in bitcoin.

Conclusions
The blocksize debate set bitcoin's development back and made quite a few prominent scientists turn away from developing bitcoin (Namely and perhaps most notably Gavin Andresen, Jeff Garzik and Mike Hern). In the end it's hard to determine if much progress was achieved through all these years. It appears as though bitcoin's future was based on a vision of relying on external solution, that in the end aren't getting close to providing a reliable off-chain solution for fast and cheap transactions even after all this time.

One might feel the need to ascribe hidden interests behind decisions that were taken. But the real valuable takeaways would be to recognize mistakes. Are we to believe that everything was done right in terms of scaling bitcoin? Were the aforementioned bitcoin developers that stopped contributing to the project after the debate was over just wrong on their proposals altogether? Should bitcoin perhaps make some radical changes now, better late than never? All these questions and more are worth seeking the answers to realize a better future for bitcoin.

It was almost too good to be true. I was even wondering how come DTCC would list a security that isn't approved yet.
The rumors were running wild in the meantime, and not even a word from DTCC itself. It only remains to be seen if prices will fall after this...

So apparently Peter Thiel who's known among many bitcoiners for being an early investor as well as a venture capitalist contributing to several companies in the space, is now outed by one of his ex-partners as being an FBI informant.
https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-fbi-informant-charles-johnson-johnathan-buma-chs-genius-2023-10

The story doesn't go in any detail about Thiel's involvement in crypto and if his relationship with the FBI might have had any effect in these matters, but him being a "valuable informant for silicon valley" should raise a few alarms. There are numerous widely used projects in which Thiel is a stakeholder. Him being an informant could imply a connection between his bolstered involvement with cryptocurrency. Anyone got more tea on this?

To test for bias you would have to make thousands of impartial iterations, this becomes harder in real world conditions because entropy comes into play a lot with many things.

In that sense this is a very nuanced question. I don't think it would be practical  to go at such great lengths for a seed generation technique maybe no one else has used. But if you want to test randomness for security's sake on something like this, you might have to do it yourself. Get a dataset of dice rolls, plug it into your seed generation algorithm, and examine the randomness. Probably you'd need another algorithm for that. A biased dice could lead to some patterns where following certain paths becomes more likely through a certain algorithm for seed creation. But if the bias is too small then maybe it's not a risk.

All I'm saying is that making a wallet that doesn't require the user interacting with private keys or seed phrases might sound like a nice concept but it really depends on execution as to if it will be any more useful than any hardware wallet. The very principle of hardware wallets was that private keys and seed phrases are secured by the hardware it's held on. In fact any wallet would have a private key, just maybe use it differently. So if their goal is to not be able to export your private key, it might even be an anti-feature actually making things harder instead of bringing more innovation.

Some countries, perhaps based on religious reasons, may ban gambling as a whole. Based on Islamic and fundamentalist christian principles, Gambling is a work of the devil and should never be done by those seeking to follow god.

But other than that, government also like to ban online casinos that they can't tax. However, the funny thing is that most licensed casinos don't follow the "provably fair" principle in any way shape or form. So in fact an educated gambler would be better off gambling at provably fair casinos. Honestly governments aren't so much concerned with the safety of users, they just care about getting paid. However choosing to gamble "illegally" on unlicensed crypto casinos can sometimes be a better option for user safety and fairness.