you have been scammed.

As a rule of thumb: if anybody asks you to pay them in order to receive money you're due, it's a scam. Think about: they owe YOU money, they're holding money that would legally belong to you... Why on earth would they ask you to send them more money in order to "unlock" funds you legally own if it wasn't to scam you?

Think about a FIAT equivalent: you're standing on the street and somebody you have never seen before asks to borrow $100, and promises to meet you in the same spot after 1 week to return your $100 and $10 intrest.
The next week, you're standing on the agreed upon spot, the guy appears but instead of giving you $110, he says: "i'm currently in possesion of $110 that belongs to you, but i don't trust you, so you'll have to give me another $20 and let me walk away... When I come back, i'll give you the $130"... Mind you: you've never seen this bloke before, you don't have his phone number, you have no way of tracking him down... Do you think many people would fork over another $20? Why would crypto be any different?

Thanks for finding the source
I haven't read the article, but if your representation is correct, i can sum this case up pretty easily:

• An article that has been written without detailing the exact methodology or exact figures is making certain conclusions.
• Fudzilla (what's in a name) used this article to write a second article using their conclusions, without even quoting the first article (which already didn't give enough details as it stands)
• OP posted a small part from the fudzilla article

After a second quick glance, i already saw a discrepancy between OP's statement and fudzilla: fudzilla claims (without proof) that transacting 1 BTC costs $76, they're not talking about cost per transaction, but cost per BTC.

Once again: i'm not saying these numbers are wrong, i'm just saying that given these articles, there is no way to verify these claims... Our community usually operates using the slogan "don't trust, verify"... No numbers, no calculations => no trust... Sorry... Doesn't mean those numbers are wrong, just that i don't trust them at face value.

$1000, $500, $100, $50.... Those are just numbers TBH.... Let's see HOW you find these numbers instead of being generous while still guessing lower numbers.

I'm not saying the number in the article was wrong, i'm not saying $50 is wrong... I'm saying that, without any sources, $50 is just a number, it has no meaning whatsoever. As long as you're guessing, why not guess a transaction costs $0.005... Why is that guess worse than $50? I haven't seen any real calculations, my quick glance at the article made it look like the writer is just pulling numbers out of thin air, then proceeds to use them for a lot of calculations (full disclaimer: i just quickly scanned the article)...

Start with the current difficulty. Using this difficulty, you can get a rather good estimation of the current hashrate.
Then estimate the mix of ASIC's that would be needed to reach this hashrate. You'll have to get the biggest ASIC producer's numbers: how much of which model have been sold over the last 2-3 years?
Then, you'll have to find out where the biggest mining farms are located: are they using "leftover" energy produced by hydropower (energy that would otherwise go to waste) or are they using energy produced by burning coal, or maybe something in between?
What happens with the leftover energy? Is it recuperated? How about old ASIC's, are they being recycled?

Then, you'll have to study FIAT: how much trees are cut down, how much cotton, how much energy is used in the process of transporting raw materials, making paper, printing paper, distributing, running bank offices, making vaults, filling ATM's.
Then, look into the server parks that are needed by big banks...
Then, you'll have to find a way to compare FIAT energy costs with BTC transaction costs... The amount of FIAT being exchanged for goods and services on a daily basis VS the amount of BTC being exchanged on a daily basis, and their respective energy costs.

Finding an exact answer to this question is probably complex enough to fill a 4 year phd program, so i'm not even going to try a back-of-a-napkin estimation

I've quickly scanned the article... They're talking about "the research rapport" without listing any sources.
At first glance, this article looks like just a bunch of numbers thrown together tbh.

In reality, nobody knows how much electricity is being used, and which source is used to generate said electricity.

Everything depends on which exact mix of ASIC's is running at any given moment, and which energy mix is being used to generate the electricity for each of these ASIC's (coal, nuclear, wind, water, biomass).

Also, in order to be fair, to the total energy cost of solving a certain amount of blocks  (and the sum of the outputs off al transactions therein) should also be compared to the total energy cost of an equivalent amount of FIAT... I mean, the whole process of designing, printing, transporting, banks, ATM's, checking, destroying, servers managing bank account,... they all use a lot of energy aswell...

I have never observed anybody getting banned for presenting verifiable truths, and i've been here for a while already... Since it's impossible to proof nobody gets banned for telling the truth, i cannot present said proof.

I've seen people picking fights with the admin, i've seen scammers, i've seen people getting involved with all kind of shady behaviour,... I haven't seen anybody getting banned for this.

I HAVE seen people that got banned for plagiarism, for doxxing, for relentless trolling and spamming, for threatening with physical violence... But not for telling inconvenient truths.

Since you ask, i can only assume you got an (alt)account that was banned?

In the end, every company has the opportunity to be their own processor... I've setup a webshop that uses my own btcpayserver and uses the nomiddleman woocommerce plugin that uses an xpub to derive new deposit addresses. The store sells physical goods, so the store owner already has the name and address of their clients, i see no need to ask for extra KYC info.

On saturday, i bought some stuff from an online webshop owner that actually manually generated an address and mailed it to me... Pretty artisanal, but it worked flawlessly... Better that way than losing clients due to bitpay i guess

You always have the option of installing electrum (verify the signature) and use electrum with your ledger nano S instead of that dreadfull "ledger live".

My ledger live is always giving me problems... Errors... Sync issues.... So i switched to electrum instead. This only works to manage your btc wallet tough, not many altcoins have a working electrum clone i'm afraid.

In order not to create any confusion, i wanted to add that the "never expire" option is for electum's internal accounting only... Addresses do not expire, people can still fund an address even if electrum "expired" the payment request... It's just for electrum's bookkeeping, it has nothing to do with being able to use an address or not.

The address is the easyest.... In the request tab, you should find the uri, but not everybody will be able to use this uri, so the address is easyer.

By the way, don't make a poll to ask a basic question.

I don't see why not... It won't be an easy task tough...
Who can push data? If everybody could create a new report and add it to the blockchain, it'll be spammed to hell...
If you'd use some kind of POW algo to require some work from data submitters you'll limit some whissleblowers while still getting spammed (but less than if you'd require no work to "mine" a block)...
If you'd require a valid signature to submit data, it cannot be submitted anonymously...

And i'd be afraid of some governements making it illegal to run a node... I can think off a few that would probably give harsh prison sentences to people hosting sensitive information.

Exactly, re-using the address would only have (minor) downsides... Your public key would have been broadcasted and you'll lose some privacy... Neither of these things is a "big deal" (unless you value your privacy to a great extent).

yes, reusing your address is possible...

There are 2 (small) downsides:
1) it might hurt your privacy
2) as soon as you spend funds, your public key will be broadcasted...

The first downside has privacy implications, but not everybody cares, and if you only receive/send funds from/to non-KYC services and never publicize this address, privacy consequences might be minimal or nonexistent.

The second downside is very minimal... Normally, a private key gets derived, a pubic key gets generated based on this private key, the public key gets hashed. This hash is your address. If you never re-use your address, or wait to spend funds received by your address untill you no longer use it (and spend all funds at once) your public key will remain unknown untill your funds are spent. If you re-use your address and have unspent outputs funding said address while you have already spend some funds, the public key will be known by the public. Nobody can hack you by knowing your public key (so far), so i wouldn't really worry about it.

There still has to be a reason... It's possible you've kept your wallet.dat safe and encrypted, but there are 2 possibility's:
1) you're looking at an unsynchronised wallet, a wrong wallet or you're confused about change addresses
2) somebody found a vulnerability...

I presume you know the basics, so the odds of 1) are small (but not nonexistant)... So you'll have to figure out who found which vulnerability and fix said vulnerability... We can only give you pointers i'm afraid... I've listed the top reasons i've seen in my years hanging out on bitcointalk... The list is not complete, but it should cover >90% of the cases.

Good luck

Well, i've been around for a while, and even in this situation, there are plenty of attack vectors:

• fake wallet software
• backups with weak passwords that have been kept in cloud storage (or passwords that have been saved in the same cloud storage where the backup was kept-
• copy/paste virusses
• remote access tools (RAT's)
• OS vulnerability's
• physical access by a collegue, friend or family member
• exported private keys that were kept in an unsafe way
• daemons that have been exploited (scripts that contain the unlock password in clear text)
• wallet vulnerability's (eventough i can't remember any serious vulnerability's in core the last couple of years)

Some questions to find out what went wrong:

Did you keep backups of your wallet.dat?
Where did you store your password?
Did you download the wallet from it's official source and check the signature (or compiled it yourself from the sources in the git repo?)?
Which OS are you using?
Do you have "random" programs installed, or is your pc "sparkling" clean?
Do you have a virusscanner?
Does anybody else have access to your PC?
Are you 100% sure your coins are gone, i've seen new users getting confused with change addresses?
Is your wallet fully synchronised?
Are you sure you're looking at the correct wallet.dat (do you see history of the thief's transactions?)
Did you ever export private keys?
Are you running a daemon and using scripts to lock/unlock your wallet?
Any special config in your bitcoin.conf (if you post the content, make sure you don't post any sensitive information like passwords, ip's or hashes)

Like i said in my previous posts, if you're really robbed (and not confused about change addresses, looking at the wrong wallet, or using an unsynchronised wallet) you're plain out of luck i'm afraid... But you'll still need to figure out which "hole to plug". If you don't figure out what went wrong, you'll never be able to trust your setup ever again... Not only your cryptocurrencies are on stake, but basically your whole setup (and everything you do on your machine)

i agree with @NeuroticFish, but wanted to add that malwares or fake wallets aren't the only way(s) to lose your keys..

For example, i've seen several people lose their funds because they stored their recovery seed in the cloud (dropbox, apple cloud, box.com,...). Also physical access to your computer (even trough rdp or vnc) or pre-initialized hardware wallets are to blame from time to time.

The questions you need to ask yourself:

• Where did i download or buy my wallet from
• Did i check the signature of my wallet (or, in case it was a bought wallet, was the package already opened, or was it pre-initialised)
• Is my pc sparkling clean, or did i install software from unknown/untrusted sources on the same pc where i'm running my wallet
• Does my pc run an up to date virusscanner and firewall
• Did i use a strong, random password to encrypt my wallet
• Where did i store my seed phrase, and any wallet backup
• How was the seed phrase generated
• Who knows i'm holding crypto assets

For your current funds, it's probably to late, transactions are irreversible... But you'll have to learn at which point you screwed up your OPSEC as to not repeat the same error again...

Maybe Theymos could register a secondary domain and slap a copy of SMF on it with an empty database, then use a 301 redirect for that whole altcoin subforum to the secondary domain... I'm pretty sure those spammers wouldn't even notice they were posting their crap somewhere else.

A short brainstorm for tld's:
spamcraptalk.biz
bountyreportspammers.info
spammyspammyspammy.com


nah, i know there are some pretty good posters in the altcoin subforum aswell... People that have valuable input, i'm just sick and tired of seeing those spammers flooding the first page and drowning out any meaningfull topics...

This isn't new i'm afraid, they've been doing this for a long time... IIRC, they used to have a cutoff amount, smaller amounts wouldn't trigger their KYC procedure... It seems that cutoff amount was now removed, but that's about it (i haven't used any shop that used bitpay for a long, long time, so i'm not really up to date with the crap they've been doing lately)

Here's some more info: https://debitpay.directory/anti-bitcoin/ (not my site, but i use it as a go-to reference when people talk about bitpay)

Als ik het goed begrijp (ben geen jurist of boekhouder) is het aan de belastingsdienst om te bewijzen dat je niet speculatief bezig was... Hoewel, belastingsdiensten en fairplay zijn niet echt synoniemen...

bron: https://www.tijd.be/netto/belastingen/aangifte2020/glipt-de-winst-op-bitcoins-door-de-mazen-van-het-belastingnet/10226857.html

no problem... Let us know if you run into an other problem... Bitcoin has a learning curve, everybody who's starting out will run into problems sooner or later, there's no shame in asking some questions