Here are the links to #6155 and #6219.

Just tried this out, and it is a really nice feature. Essentially after inputting your seed phrase and checking the BIP39 box, on the next screen you still get the usual p2pkh/p2wpkh-p2sh/p2wpkh selection and the derivation path box if you want to enter a custom path, but you also get a button which says "Detect Existing Accounts". If you press it, Electrum scans a list of common derivation paths and returns any which have been used.

Here is a list of all the derivation paths that it scans (currently 13 different paths): https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/928e43fc530ba5befa062db788e4e04d56324161/electrum/bip39_wallet_formats.json

I think it would be nice to maybe expand that list to be more of a "catch all" since it will be primarily used by newbies who don't know what a derivation path is.

If someone reuses an email address across multiple platforms, particularly social media, then the email address alone is more than enough to completely identify someone. Couple that information with which exchanges they have registered an account on with that email address, and that is a security risk.

Given that (as you say) you can use a brand new email address for this, then why do you ask for an email address at all, unless you are using it for the above reasons or to add to a spam mailing list for your hardware wallet? Just display the information in the browser.

I agree, but they really shouldn't be seen as "good enough" for anybody. People who recommend storing your bitcoin on web wallets and exchanges because they are "simple" or "easy to use" are missing the point, I think. The whole point of bitcoin is to "be your own bank" and not trust anonymous third parties. Recommending newbies to use these wallets is giving them the wrong impression of bitcoin right from the outset. It teaches them that it is just like fiat, that you let someone else store your money, that you simply log on to their servers and tell them what you would like to do with your money, that they can lock your accounts if they don't like what you are doing, and so on.

It teaches them to give over all responsibility for the safety of their coins to someone else. It teaches them not to bother learning what seed phrases are, or how to store them. It teaches them bad habits which become difficult to break.

I am so ready to buy back in at $1k! He said that was coming back in November last year, when bitcoin was at $6k. Too bad he's been so completely wrong so far. Any time now, eh?

Except that's not necessarily true. A price drop says nothing about the number of different people buying or selling. 1 person selling 1000 BTC while 999 people are each buying 1 BTC will cause a price drop.

I want to buy somewhere around 10-15 Monero in total for BTC. Happy to do smaller trades and buy any amount up to this limit. Rates as taken from Coinmarketcap at time of trading: https://coinmarketcap.com/converter/xmr/btc/

Would prefer to deal with a well trusted user and someone I have interacted with several times and personally would trust. I would be happy to send first in this case.

If you are neither of the above, then you will be sending first. Happy to use a mutually agreeable escrow if you cover the fees.

Nym is an interesting project, but last I read they were incentivizing users to run their nodes and mixnet by paying them in tokens:

It seems this latest round of bitcoin incentives is only for their testnet. Once they launch their main services, I would imagine they will again be compensating people in their native token - I don't see how they would have enough income otherwise to continue to pay all node operators in bitcoin. (As long as they don't go they way of the last big crypto privacy project - Brave - and sell out their principles and all their users for their own profits.)

Even more reason not to use a non-verified account on Binance, or any other exchange offering the same thing, then. There have been plenty of reports of users having their accounts locked simply because they logged on to their account from a VPN server in a different geographical region or country to the one they signed up with. And of course, responding to their support explaining that you are using a VPN server is never enough, and they always demand full KYC to unlock the account in question.

He doesn't actually admit he was wrong about Bitcoin at a fundamental level though. Just that he was wrong that it was going to crash in August. He immediately doubled down with his ridiculous predictions by saying that bitcoin only rose up to $12k thanks to gold (), and that it is still going to crash. Surely this time he'll be right!?

This is the same guy who claimed that his wallet forgot his password. His technical knowledge and understanding of bitcoin (or general computing for that matter) appears to be close to zero. His advice regarding bitcoin is the last thing I would listen to.

There is a huge difference between a theoretical database of actual criminals and what blockchain analysis companies such as Chainalysis are doing. If Chainalysis are following the trial of some "tainted" bitcoin through a number of transactions, how can they reliably tell when it has changed hands? What about when it gets passed through a mixer or a coinjoin? Does the trial go cold, or do they now class all the outputs from that mixer or that coinjoin as "tainted"? And just because something was mixed does not mean it was illegal - we know that the majority of mixers' traffic is coins directly from exchanges from users simply looking to increase in their privacy.

First, there is no such need. Just as illegal mass surveillance has never been proven to stop a single crime or terrorist attack, a "crypto criminal database" would be nothing more than a tool for the government to spy on and monitor its citizens. Secondly, that's not what that article says at all. Here's a direct quote (emphasis mine):

Cash has always been, and still is, the preferred medium of exchanges for criminals.

This is a frequent occurrence as I explained above. Any new account you open will likely ask for KYC simply on the basis of matching IP addresses, even if you do not deposit any coins that their ridiculous algorithms deem "tainted" or "suspicious".

Both these exchanges use various types of escrow (either a multi-sig or something akin to a smart contract) for trades exactly to prevent this from happening. See below:
https://hodlhodl.com/pages/faq#how_does_escrow_work
https://blog.localcryptos.com/how-bitcoin-escrow-works/

Any exchange which requires KYC for some of their accounts can lock your account and request KYC at any time, for any reason, and there is nothing you can do about it. If you want to avoid KYC altogether, Binance (or any other centralized exchanges) is a bad choice.

That's the beauty of truly decentralized exchanges such as Bisq. It isn't a website like most exchanges, but rather a piece of software, not unlike bitcoin itself. Users download it, they run it on their own computers, it connects peer-to-peer over Tor to other users running it, you put up your own offers or accept offers from others. Even if made illegal, even if the website and GitHub are shutdown, you can't stop people running it on their own computers

Other peer-to-peer exchanges OP can try in addition to Bisq are LocalCryptos or Hodl Hodl.

Exactly. Retroactively checking if your coins are still safe is pointless.

You should know your coins are secure because you created your wallet(s) securely. I have encrypted paper wallets which I have not checked the balance of since I created them, which for some has been several years. Partly because I do not have the address written down or stored anywhere else for deniability reasons, but mostly because I know I set them up in a secure fashion and I know they are stored securely. Do you visit your bank every week to take a look inside your safe deposit box "just to check"? Of course not.

Further, if you are checking your address(es) repeatedly on a block explorer, then you are compromising your own privacy.

the only caveat to this in cases of critical vulnerabilities being discovered. If that's the case you should either update immediately, or if you really want to wait a few weeks, then do not use the app/software at all until you have updated. You should also turn off auto-updates for this reason, especially when it comes to software which is holding your bitcoin. A couple of lines of malicious code pushed to your device in an auto update and your coins can be gone.

Their FAQ still states that they will accept zero confirmation bitcoin transactions valued at under $200 which have a "sufficient transaction fee", although they do not say what constitutes a "sufficient transaction fee". Their order pages still say 6 sat/vbyte, but they have said that consistently for months regardless of what the mempool is doing, so that definitely is not accurate.

However, if you read the thread linked to above, specifically this post and this post, it seems they no longer accept zero confirmation transactions at all.

It's not that they don't accept RBF transactions, but rather that they don't accept zero confirmation RBF transactions. In fact, I'm fairly sure they don't accept zero confirmation transactions at all any more, despite what their website says, so RapTarX would have been out of luck regardless.

If you need instant orders in the future, then your options are either to deposit BTC to your Bitrefill account in advance and then pay for cards using your account balance, or to pay via Lightning.

He was trying to start a global thermonuclear war, so he's now busy playing himself at tic-tac-toe.

If you want extra peace of mind, then the thing to do is to set up an airgapped Electrum wallet.

Essentially, you take an old computer or laptop and ensure that it will never connect to the internet again - remove the WiFi card, the ethernet adapter, and so on. Create an Electrum wallet on it and back your seed phrase in the usual way. Then export the master public key (xpub) from that airgapped wallet, transfer it on a flash drive or scan it as a QR code to your main internet-connected computer, and use it to set up what is called a "watch only" wallet in Electrum.

This watch only wallet on your main computer will only be able to view your addresses and coins, but will not be able to spend anything, even if you download malware, a fake wallet, or your computer is physically accessed. To make a transaction, you use the watch only wallet to generate the transaction, move it via flash drive or QR code to your airgapped computer to be signed, and then move it back again to your main computer to be broadcast.

The AI is currently being rebooted. Normal service will resume shortly.

That's subjective. As far as I am concerned, Coinbase have a terrible reputation and I wouldn't trust them with a single one of my satoshis.

A closed source wallet is barely better than a custodial wallet. You have no idea what is in the code, and people have lost funds to malicious code and updates before. Coinomi wallet was found to be sending users' seed phrases to Google server to be spellchecked, all unencrypted.

Jerome is right. Although the Coinbase wallet is a standalone wallet, you still need to pick a username and register an account. I'm also sure he means that since it is a separate app, if you buy bitcoin on the Coinbase exchange app, you have to make a withdrawal transaction to transfer them in to the Coinbase wallet app.