Lightning network is perceived to have zero fees, but this is not true. In fact, still exist and add up over time.
As an example, for a 0.027BTC transaction the fee I paid was 0.000164BTC which is comparable to the on-chain fee.
Is there a way to minimize those fees somehow? For example, has the coice of node on Electrum (ACINQ vs. Electrum trampoline vs. trampoline hodlistreco) any effect on future fees paid?

Have been trying for over 3 hours to get a lightning payment through. I am always getting a "Payment failed - No path found" error message, and the log shows "TRAMPOLINE_FEE_INSUFFICIENT".
Very ftustrating, lightning payments are effectively unusable with this.
Related github issue: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/8297
Any help from the devs?

I broadcasted a low fee (11sat/vbyte) transaction last week, just at the time when they fees went up.
I knew that the fee was low and that the transaction would take a few days to confirm (according to https://twitter.com/CoreFeeHelper , it would take around 3 days) but it's been a week and my transaction is still in the mempool. Sometimes my wallet (electrum) shows it with a blue "unbroadcasted" icon and I have to rebroadcast it again. I also sometimes use "free" tx accelerator services which basically rebroadcast the transaction everywhere.

My question is what is the algorithm that a miner picks a transaction from the mempool to include it to a block?
Is it a greedy algorithm which just picks the ones with highest fees? Is the "age" of a transaction in the mempool also a factor? Or is it just a combination of fee and a random choice?

Hello,
I'm looking for a DEX or non-KYC CEX that can swap BTC lightning <-> LTC.
I looked at changenow.io but not sure about its reputation.
Any other suggestions?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/localbitcoins-closes-down-the-p2p-crypto-exchange-service

Νομίζω βέβαια ότι πέρασε ο χρόνος του, αφού έτσι κι αλλιώς οι συναλλαγές που προσέφερε δεν ήταν "local" πλέον εδώ και πολλά χρόνια.

I am doing some research on what is the potential impact of shorter public keys, hashes or signatures in Bitcoin transactions (leaving the security implications aside). So I basically want to see how a Bitcoin transaction exactly looks like in terms of bytes, basically a figure similar to the figures of IP packets which show that the first 4 bytes indicate the version, etc, then the source IP is 32 bytes as payload etc.
So far all I have found is this website for a bitcoin transaction calculator
https://bitcoinops.org/en/tools/calc-size/
However it just computes the final size and does not show clearly which part takes how much space.
Is there any better website/image that shows the elements of a bitcoin transaction in a byte level?

I have been using lightning payments for the last few months quite often, but now all of my payments seem to fail all the time.
After providing the deposit request, the payment does not go through and I get an error window "Payment failed Giving up after 25 (or sometimes more) attempts".
In the lightning network I am connected to 4 peers, 15K nodes and 83K channels.
I also tried trampoline routing with the same results.
Any ideas on how to make lightning payments work?

I read here how the UTXO set is structured in the leveldb
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Core_0.11_(ch_2):_Data_Storage#The_UTXO_set_.28chainstate_leveldb.29

In the key-value pairs of the database, I don't see the amount for each UTXO represented.
When a client or a miner wants to check for the bitcoin amount for some UTXO, where is this fetched from? And how is it done securely? (i.e. without anyone being able to manipulate this amount?)

Suppose I buy from a merchant who accepts bitcoin (e.g. Newegg which uses Bitpay).
Is this a taxable event? i.e. should I report my purchase to IRS?

My electrum wallet holds a segwit address beginning with bc1..
Under the "coins" tab I see it has many output points for the same address. Now the fees are low I think I can take advantage of it and consolidate all points into a single one, so I won't have to make larger transactions in the future (with multiple inputs).
My questions are:

a) How can I consolidate multiple output points?

b) I have a non-segwit wallet which always maintains a single output point. How do I prevent this from happening in my segwit wallet in the future? (i.e. maintain a single output point as well?)

I have a signed transaction file .txn (signed on a PC) and want to load and broadcast it in Android electrum. I don't see such an option, is there any way? Maybe can broadcast it using another app or website?

[Our new tool does exactly that]

Imagine the shipment of your new shiny ASICs has just arrived. You open their boxes, plug them in and open your web browser to their interface. You are asked to choose your mining pools to mine with. Now you would could just use that pool you have been mining with all those years (and maybe just pick a couple of backup pools) and enter its address to all of your ASICs. Maybe you could just opt for the "safety" of a reputable PPS pool which offers steady payouts with no luck involved, although you pay a 4% fee for your peace of mind. Or maybe you want to try a new pool, with lower fee and higher potential overall income.

Our new tool does exactly that: help you answer the question which pool(s) to join maximize your profit with the lowest risk possible. Available at http://smart-miner.com/ and based on academic work (link in the website), it models this question as an optimization problem.

Using this tool you can get the optimal distribution of your hashpower by choosing among the most well-known Proof of Work cryptocurrencies and their associated well-known mining pools (if our tool does not include some specific mining pool you want to consider, you can always manually add it). Our tool automatically fetches all the required parameters for those cryptocurrencies and mining pools - all you need to do is

• choose your cryptocurrency (or cryptocurrencies)
• choose your mining pools
• enter your power in hashes/second
• your risk-aversion value (smaller values indicate higher risk, higher values indicate lower risk)

Then our tool will output the optimal way to distribute your power. We even take cross-chain mining into account, for example you might want to mine Bitcoin with one pool and Bitcoin Cash with another one.

You might now think of what is the actual potential benefit for you as a miner if you use our tool. First of all we do not promise that you will double your rewards if you mine for a couple of weeks - you probably know already that cryptocurrency mining involves luck, which varies especially for smaller mining pools. However in our work we show the potential benefit for the miner in a longer term period (e.g. 4 months or more). Specifically, we made several instances of retroactive comparisons in Bitcoin between a “passive” miner who just picked some pool to consistently mine on, and an “active” miner who used our tool every few days to optimally distribute his power. In all those instances (each involving a wide range of different problem parameters), there was a substantial benefit for the miner in terms of reward value over income variance.

Note that our tool is an early version - most likely there is still room for improvements. We welcome your comments and suggestions!

Disclaimer: This article is based on academic work. We do not suggest or advertise for (or against) specific mining pools in any cryptocurrency.

I was looking for the mining pool pie chart for the last 24 hrs from btc.com and blockchain.info
https://btc.com/stats/pool?pool_mode=day
https://www.blockchain.com/pools?timespan=24hours
Both sites report about 5.5 - 7.1% of "unknown" pool. Anyone know (preferably with concrete data) who is behind this "unknown" pool? Is it maybe a large mining farm that mines solo?

Αυτές τις μέρες τρέχει ένα πολύ ενδιαφέρον συνέδριο, το Stanford Blockchain Conference το οποίο κατά τη γνώμη μου είναι από τα πιο σοβαρά στο χώρο
https://cyber.stanford.edu/sbc19
υπάρχει και live stream (10 ώρες διαφορά με Ελλάδα)
https://livestream.com/accounts/1973198/Blockchain2019

selling a $55 Bitmain coupon.
Price $10. Expires in 5 days.
Payment with any cryptocurrency.
PM for details

Πωλείται χρόνος ομιλίας Cosmote Whatsup λόγω σημαντικού αρνητικού υπολοίπου στο λογαριασμό.

Η μεταφορά θα γίνει μέσω της υπηρεσίας Cosmote Mobile Easy Transfer. Όροι χρήσης παρακάτω

https://www.cosmote.gr/cs/cosmote/gr/easy_transfer.html

Τα ποσό που θα μεταφερθεί πρέπει να είναι πολλαπλάσιο των 30€. Για κάθε 30€ δίνεται 6€ bonus δώρο.
Πληρωμή με BTC ή ETH στην τρέχουσα ισοτιμία bitfinex.

ΡΜ για λεπτομέρειες.

Κουπόνι Bitmain $55, ημ. λήξης 30 Νοεμβρίου. Πωλείται 20€.
Πληρωμή με οποιοδήποτε κρυπτονόμισμα. Όποιος ενδιαφέρεται ΡΜ

Hello
I am looking for historic data for mining pools to perform a study.
e.g. for Antpool, how many blocks it mined in January 2018, and for each block what was the Bitcoin network hashrate and what was the pool's hashrate.
I would also like to export them in readable format e.g. JSON.
I only found this in btc.com
https://btc.com/stats/pool/AntPool
which the data is not exportable (you have to click the button on the bottom a million times)
Blockchain.info only has history for 4 days..
Any suggestions?
Thanks!

(P.S. To moderators: Please do not delete my post again for no reason. If I'm posting on the wrong section please let me know which forum section would be applicable and move it there.)

Για όσους ενδιαφέρονται, είναι να γίνει συνέδριο το Νοέμβριο στην Αθήνα (Divani Caravel) σχετικά με cryptocurrencies και blockchain technologies:
https://www.decentralized.com/
Διοργανωτής είναι το Πανεπιστήμιο της Λευκωσίας.

For sale is my vanilla WoW private server account. Included in the account: a lvl60 8/8 T3 mage, a lvl60 T2 paladin and 20k gold.
Price for the whole account 0.0063BTC, or the equivalent in any other cryptocurrency.
Send a message for more information.