https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-02/tor-project-almost-100-funded-us-government-report

U got to love the GOV

First they tell u that using BTC will make u 'free'

Then they tell u that TOR will  make you do stuff and never get caught

Now U find out that all free software on the NET, including BTC are honeyposts, you could have known?

Well the OP is a newb, but I will help him,

First of all you are right, Satoshi was not a coder, and nothing in BTC 1.0 is anything a 3rd year CS student hadn't heard of,

IMHO Satoshi was a math-guy, self taught to code,

Here look at the history "Death&taxes" wrote in 2013 here in this forum "Satoshi was a shitty cryptographer, he picked the worst shit around both sha-256 & ecdsa-secp256k1", so there goes the theory that Satoshi was a 'crypto expert' NOT

Sure you look at BTC 1.0 source its terrible, but the reason that 1.5 is clean, is cuz 1,000's of guys have clean up the C++.

Now its been rewritten in python by Buterin, and into GO by others;

The code is NOT commented, for the life of me when people say 'open source' but NO comments I call this obfuscated code, code without comments is just BS, but then nobody is willing to admit this, I'm firmly believe most likely the comments might have been stripped,

BTC was written by a TEAM at NSA, the moniker SATOSHI was just handle to coordinate the dissemination, the actual authors pulled their comments so it would appear the code was written by a solo individual, it was not, this is clear studying 1.0

I agree with the theory that the ppl at NSA weren't smart enough to finish the project, so they released it into the wild.

1.) SHA-256 is NSA
2.) ECDSA SECP256k1 is NSA, paid to certicom, fact
3.) the bitcoin-satoshi white paper is 100% stolen from a 1996 NSA document called 'how to make a mint', funny that NOBODY ever gives NSA the credit for the white-paper? funny huh? http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm

Chow  & Maxwell keep the Myths of BTC alive, perhaps paid well by the original, but even more likely they are part of the orginal NSA team, and thus they stand by permanently to 'guide' their child

The above is/was just a little history lesson on btc

It's already BEEN done, its called BITCOIN-GOLD aka BTG, and guess what its owned by the same ppl who own the chinese mining asics in china, they covered their bets by owning the GPU variant of BTC

Even here on this forum, but done  its called BITCOIN-Z, btc-z, its here and trades at 0.0000001 cent, and they made 21 billion of them Again, it uses the exact same GPU hash as EWBF miner, e.g. zcoin

chinese miners own +90% of the biz, IMHO they own this forum by way of amazon(server), which is tied to alibaba, where Ma is partners with the ASIC guys, ... its all a handful of people that control all,

How can you rectify this? U can't, its too late, ... its like a child growing up and realizing he has to get get a job, and can't live with parents forever, someday the HODL'rs wake up and realize the parents are chinese and own it et-al

Run your own full node and set the fee to ZERO, most exchanges and pools, and day-trading platforms are middle men, and are collecting the 'fees' because most of the mining pools are held in just a few hands, who get these fee's back, and they own the wallet 'software' out there, ... all these fee's just roll btc back to mother mining pools in china, that control +90% of all, ...

But if your run a classic node yourself, you don't have a middle man, and if you set your fee to zero, it will eventually get accepted into the system.

It really all just depends on how cheap you want to be, but if you want to experiment and do lots of 0.00001 btc transactions, you definitely don't want to be paying a 0.001 fee

Just run your own full node

...

Remember FEES go to the GUY that found the block where your transaction is recorded, the problem is that GUY who finds the block is +90% most of the time a GUY in china that sells ANTMINER's who controls almost all the BTC mined on earth, so feeding fee's to these people just helps them monopolize btc

Fee's are BIG MONEY these days, fee's used to be nada

Well that the caveat 'brute force' which is called DUMB, there are many ways to MINE bitcoin's, and they don't have to be a linear search;

The search space can be reduced to 2**40, from 2**128 ( 2**256 birthday )

DUMB 2**256, linear search, like Large Bitcoin collider, just DUMB search

Birth-day drop's search space to 2**128,

Smart baby-step/giant-step algo's can drop search space to 2**64

When searching your not looking for ONE,your looking for 500 million collisions with value, there are probably say 10k 'lost pristine coin' ( addresses ), finding one of them not much easier than finding just one, ...

But when you tie it all together, cultivate 200 million addresses with a balance, that drop 2**32 from the 2**64 space,  once your down to millions just a very good computer can be used to collect 'lost coin'

The above said is HODL mean "LOST"? If I HODL for 10+ years are my COIN? lost? I think not
But its important to go over the reality of the thing, too often I see DUMB shit on GITHUB, or even what LBC is doing, just DUMB, but people who are serious about this shit are doing it.

The very people who buy btc with credit-cards are the very ppl who should not be buying btc, the banks, know that the 2017 gold-rush run-up $200 to $20k of BTC was based on CC purchasing, and with -80% of the gain just wiped out last month $320 billion cap down to $120 B, most of this CC money will never be paid back, thus there is NO point to knowingly finance a guy that's going to default.

Think of it this way the banks are looking out for their idiot customers

The bank didn't shut down btc, they just quit handing out free money to buy btc, when they felt comfy with the loan, they were glad, but the writing is now on the wall that the gold-rush is over.

Banks like a non-comforming loan ratio that's low, like say 5% of customers in default, but when say 50% or more of the customers can't pay their visa bill, that bank has BIG problems, GOV problems; GOV say's to the bank, 'why did you allow this to happen??", if GOV gets pissed off at these banks for their losses of "FIAT", then no more free low-cost fiat for that bank.

First step would be to 'get out of dodge', go find a CRYTPO  friendly country, without an IRS-like org gestapo behind your GOV, friendly country's do exist; This all reminds me of that email anonymous guy, when the GOV demanded the backdoor he un-plugged his servers, when your small enough you can 'just walk away' and delete the data, most of these big org's like "COINBASE" were created by rich connected people to begin with, thus they're not going to walk away, as they're investors OWN the IRS Company ( USA is Corporation since the Civil War );

No doubt that NSA created BTC & Satoshi, thus first step is to RUN, 2nd step is to use software that ain't tainted by NSA, and that is so small that the IRS doens't have it on their gaydar

...

BTC is now 10 years old, the CORE is essentially a GOV ORG, the 3 legs of BTC are mining-pools, exchanges, and trading platforms; 2 of the 3 are owned by USA and not china, if USA can drive mining-pools out of asia to the west, then USA will have full control of the 3 legs of BTC

I don't see much hope in BTC for 'privacy' given its too bit and too many CIA companys are selling block-chain-browsers, soon they'll be chasing ppl who own $10, just because the fine is $10k

Perhaps the SOLN will be a total dark-web btc?

Lastly, ask again why the pristine "SATOSHI COIN" is still after 10 years unclaimed and untouched?? Because the early people KNEW very well that all this stuff would be TRACKED, remember how Satoshi freaked out to shit when BTC went to bed with Wikileaks??

The problem with BTC is that it based on a MTN of lies by websites and various people who OWN the 3 legs, once 10's of 1,000's of people have been screwed by the IRS, and burnt by the Dec-2017 BTC -80% haircut the lies will be very hard to sell to the HODL true believers

Satoshi 'white-paper' never talked about exchanges, mining-pools, or trading-platforms, it was all peer2peer for the little ppl, perhaps some smart kid in Bangalore will 're-invent' btc?

 now the IRS is using big data to construct a tax DNA profile of all US citizens.  Almost all filings are online, and the IRS is linking that together with data from various private sources onto multiple petabyte sized databases harvested by super computers.  Even if they can't crack bitcoin they can overturn the rock you are hiding under by other means.

just like NSA owns google, just like CIA owns microsoft, all big companys bend over to put in back doors for GOV, in order to stay in biz, APPLE was a hold-out, and look how quick jobs died of cancer

Now the miners, exchanges, and trading platforms that are BIG will all become masters to the NSA, .. who would have thought?

What is it about oxymorons and bitcoin? On the one hand we're told to HODL, on the other hand not a day goes by where some poster suggests we should STEAL all the bitcoins 'neglected' ( in COLD HODL STORAGE ); Funny how people want it both ways,

1.) Don't sell your btc, HODL and keep the price rising

2.) If you do HODL, and don't churn your BTC daily, yearly, monthly ( just like a gov bank ), then some good MINER ( +90% china ) has the right to re-claim,aka steal that btc

An outside observer would tell you that the Powers that Be, want to have it both ways, they don't want you to sell, but they also reserve the right to steal from you, that what they told you to HODL

In summary, that's why this request will always get shutdown, the notion of BURYING your GOLD for ten+ years and returning to the same site and digging up your GOLD is the very reason why BTC was created. The idea that some jackass (MINER) can reclaim your public 'gold' cuz you weren't around is just PROOF that most ppl in the BTC community don't care one nil about the original SATOSHI PLAN for btc.

...

Lastly, roll your own BTC block chain, that's why there is already +2,000 BTC clones,.... DO-IT, do it today and frequently;

lots of good papers written on the limitations of BTC blockchain, and they all say the same thing, if you want to be de-centralized, then you can never hope to have more than 30 trans/sec ( currently 7 ), or a block larger than 4MB; or a clip short than 10 seconds ( currently 10 minutes )

[ VISA does what 10k trans/sec?? BTC will never be a VISA, BTC is a bank for rich ppl just accept it ]

It's probably GOOD that BTC can never support high transaction rate, this means it can NEVER be a back-bone for 'TRADING', which means that day-traders will have to find another racket

BTC is already HIGHLY-COMPRESSED, there is not much more that can be squeezed out of a block;

When the dev's are asked this question the response is 'we don't care'

Most ppl just want to pump&dump btc to the moon, and don't consider privacy as means to the end of 'getting rich quick & easy'

As to the nature of your question, there is MONERO ( which claims to be secure ), and there is the z-cash coin family which have z-obfuscated addressses to backup the public address scheme, the thing with MONERO is its choice of ECDSA is known to be weak and have a back-door, while MONERO may be 'secure', its not secure from the ppl you should fear ( NSA wrote the ecdsa curves for monero ), like NSA wrote Secp256k1 for btc, like NSA wrote sha-256 for btc, ... THE ONLY real privacy is a coin that has no link to NSA, I think zen-cash fits that case

Again, over the years when dev's have been asked its always "We don't care about privacy"

That's ok, it opens the market up for other coins that DO CARE ABOUT PRIVACY

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-25/bitcoin-slides-coinbase-informs-13000-customers-imminent-data-handover-irs

What a 1,000 years we have been saying this, all exchanges are just  government fronts for the tax collector, honey-pots so they can 10X increase taxes on those who 'play'

NSA created BITCOIN, and all exchanges, and pools, and trading platforms are all owned by GOV; Perhaps some of the mining pools don't even understand they're owned by GOV, but if they're BIG they will comply, otherwise pull the plug.

What of the orginal promises of bitcoin??

privacy? security? an ALT to fiat, an escape mechanism from big-brother? but what if BTC was fed to you by big brother?