Samourai Wallet has been taken down by the U.S. authorities: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/founders-and-ceo-cryptocurrency-mixing-service-arrested-and-charged-money-laundering. You can verify by opening samouraiwallet.com (it's under the authorities' control).

Another privacy enhancing tool goes down the road. Apparently, the governments use everything in their disposal to undermine the users' privacy. Samourai team had recently announced that they were developing a decentralized version of whirlpool, using the Soroban network. It could be the case that they foresaw their own disappearance.

Very frustrated. An important reminder and good quote is needed here.

>You will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography.

Yes, but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.

Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.

R.I.P. Samourai.

I want to get an answer to this question from the community of Bitcoin.

The opinions on fungibility go like this:

• No: Many places buy the "taint" nonsense and treat bitcoins unequally. Therefore, you might be discriminated based on your coins' history.
• Yes: No matter the history, 1 BTC = 1 BTC, always. The protocol doesn't treat them differently, and we shouldn't interact with businesses that enforce this "taint" notion, which is evidently based on inaccurate fallacies.

I'm personally on the latter group. Third parties can treat them however they like. They're just losing me as client. Decentralized solutions treat all coins equally, as they should.

In the Monero community, there is a prevailing perspective that due to these businesses, Bitcoin is not fungible, and Monero is. My question is: have you ever paid a business that buys the "taint" nonsense with Monero? Does it make any sense to enforce this BS while accepting a completely private currency that you cannot track? In my view, if a business performs blacklists on my bitcoins, it absolutely doesn't accept Monero. You either accept both Bitcoin and Monero as fungible, or you blacklist the former and delist the latter (due to your inability to track it).

I may be hated for saying this, but what's currently happening in the mempool is a feature, not a bug. The fact that we have a fixed-sized block limit means that the current clogged up state would inevitably happen sometime.

Another important reminder: Censorship won't prevent monkey jpegs. Let's leave asides if censoring monkeys would undermine one of the important properties: It just technically doesn't work. People who spend dozens of millions of dollars in monkeys everyday can bypass every censorship measure and save them straight to the UTXO set, which would be a lot worse for the rest of us.

Here's another: As long as the law of supply and demand defines the price of block bytes, we can never on-board billions or even millions of people on a layer-1 solution, unless we undermine another important property; being practical to verify the ledger.

Final reminder: The free market decides the ideal tradeoff. "Is it better to have a dynamical block size?", "Would it be worse if we traded 'being practical to verify' with 'being for the poor'?", "Would a tail emission save the situation?". These questions are not easy to answer. However, we have a lot of cryptocurrency options, each tailored to meet different needs. It's up to us to determine which option suits us best and to refrain from complaining about the shortcomings of a single solution.

This topic has been moved to Archival.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5488310.0

Παλαιότερα πίστευα πως τα οικονομικά είναι σαν την πληροφορική, την ιατρική, τα μαθηματικά. Στην πληροφορική υπάρχει μια αντικειμενικότητα. Δεδομένου ενός input, παίρνεις ένα output. Αν μια θεωρία είναι συνεπής, τότε όλοι καταλήγουμε στο ίδιο συμπέρασμα. Και στην κοσμολογία, τα πράγματα είναι αντικειμενικά και βασίζονται κυρίως στις παρατηρήσεις και σε θεωρίες / μοντέλα που είναι συνεπή με τις παρατηρήσεις. Δεν είναι τυχαίο που όλοι καταλήγουμε στο ότι η γη είναι 4 δις χρόνων, π.χ.

Τα οικονομικά είμαστε σίγουροι ότι είναι σαν αυτές τις επιστήμες; Το λέω γιατί πρώτον υπάρχει άμεσα conflict of interest. Ένας τραπεζίτης μπορεί να είναι σπουδαγμένος, αλλά... είναι τραπεζίτης. Κατέχει μια εξουσία που πιθανώς δεν τον συμφέρει να αμφισβητήσει την ορθότητά του (ή της θεωρίας του).

Επίσης, με βάση τον ορισμό της επιστημονικής μεθόδου, το πρώτο κριτήριο για να χαρακτηριστεί μια εργασία επιστημονική, είναι να διαχωριστεί το πρόσωπο (εννοεί λογικά τον ερευνητή;) από το αντικείμενο:

Κριτήρια για να χαρακτηριστεί μια εργασία επιστημονική, είναι:

• Διαχωρισμός του προσώπου από το εξεταζόμενο αντικείμενο.

Όταν το αντικείμενο είναι ο ίδιος ο άνθρωπος και τα μέτρα που πρέπει να επιβάλλει στον ίδιο για την ευημερία του, δεν ξεφεύγει λίγο το πράγμα;

Βγάζει περισσότερο νόημα να πούμε ότι δεν είναι επιστήμη, και γι' αυτό υπάρχουν και διάφορες σχολές οικονομικών (Αυστριακή, Κεϋνσιανή κλπ), χωρίς να υπάρχει μία που είναι απολύτως σωστή ή λάθος. Αυτές είναι οι σκέψεις μου, δεν ξέρω, μπορεί να είμαι λάθος.

Υπάρχουν πολλά αστεία βίντεο που ξεχνάω να τα αποθηκεύω, γι' αυτό αφιερώνω αυτό το νήμα σαν bookmark για όλα. 


https://youtu.be/coHC_9ApBdg

Μ' αρέσει να βλέπω debates με gold bugs τόσο πολύ. 

Αν κάποιος ενδιαφέρεται, πουλάω τα παρακάτω σαν πακέτο.

- Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain 3rd Edition.
- Mastering the Lightning Network: A Second Layer Blockchain Protocol for Instant Bitcoin Payments 1st Edition.
- Mastering Monero: The future of private transactions Paperback.

Και τα τρία τα έχω διαβάσει και θα έλεγα πως είναι απ' τα πιο κατανοητά βιβλία για όποιον θέλει να ασχοληθεί με τα τεχνικά του Bitcoin (του Monero κάνει λιγότερη εμβάθυνση, αλλά στοχευμένη). Όλα έχουν ανέβει και δωρεάν απ' τους ίδιους τους συγγραφείς, είτε σε pdf είτε στο github. Εγώ απλά είμαι παραδοσιακός. 

Τιμή: 150,000 sat ή το αντίστοιχο ποσό σε XMR.
Αποστολή με BoxNow.

Διάβασα κάπου ότι τα 210k BTC της MicroStrategy δεν τα κάνουν self-custody οι ίδιοι, αλλά τα έχουν αφήσει στην Coinbase. Ισχύει αυτό; Τι γνώμη έχετε; Ο Saylor γενικά φαίνεται άτομο που έχει καταλάβει τη δυναμική του Bitcoin και στάνταρ στακάρει ο ίδιος στο δικό του wallet, αλλά μου έκανε εντύπωση όταν το διάβασα αυτό.

Για ποιο λόγο να τα αφήνουν σε CEX όταν χακάρονται τόσα κάθε χρόνο; Αρνούμαι να πιστέψω ότι θεωρούν πως ένα περιποιημένο multi-sig προσφέρει λιγότερη ασφάλεια απ' το να εμπιστευτούν έναν απ' τους πιο anti-Bitcoin οργανισμούς που υπάρχουν. 

[← Previous Question]

Bitcoin quizzes are technical questions of educational character that improve the average user's knowledge on Bitcoin, and help him rank up. You can read more about it in here.

As of today, we acknowledge the probability of a malicious pool turning evil, attempting to reverse your transaction with 10 confirmations. We are also aware that the probability of finding a certain number of blocks within a certain time frame follows the Poisson point process, which is a random mathematical object consisting of points distributed independently of each other within a space.


Question: At the time of writing this, a rich billionaire decides to purchase lots of unused, available ASICs manufactured by Bitmain, with the intention to attack the network. He has acquired so much computational power, that he, alone, can generate 300 EH/s (exahashes per second). Once his setup is done, he turns his ASICs on and attempts to reorg the chain. Assuming that the rest of the hashrate remains constant, how many confirmations do you need to be 99% certain that your transaction will not be reversed by the attacker, and why?

Απ' ότι φαίνεται, θα είμαστε επίσημα εγκληματίες μέσα στα επόμενα τρία χρόνια: https://twitter.com/echo_pbreyer/status/1770853127798861868.

Όπως καταλαβαίνετε, είναι γελοίοι οι άνθρωποι, αλλά ήταν θέμα χρόνου μέχρι να γινόταν. Το να ασχοληθούν με καθέναν από εμάς που χρησιμοποιεί BTC και XMR σαν peer-to-peer cash, λίγο δύσκολο, όπως δύσκολο είναι και με τα μετρητά. Αυτό που θα καταφέρουν, τουλάχιστον όπως το βλέπω εγώ, είναι να αποθαρρύνουν καταστήματα στο να τα δέχονται σαν μεθόδους πληρωμής.

[generously merit]

[← Previous Question][Next Question →]

Short introduction for anyone who missed the first quiz:

I decided to start these forum quiz-series, where I'll be asking questions of educational character, to improve the average user's knowledge around Bitcoin. The questions will mostly be technical and historical. To create an incentive, I will generously merit the first person who replies with the correct answer. If that is not good enough incentive, I'll create a leaderboard!

• Your answer needs to be explanatory. Not just a yes-no or a single number.
• If nobody finds the answer until the cut-off date, I will submit it.
• Have fun! It's a game.  

The first question was a tribute to the whitepaper. Now let's see how good we are at math.


Question: What is the chance of having exactly three blocks mined within the next 10 minutes? You can assume that a new block is mined every 10 minutes on average.

Cut-off date: 27/03/2024.

[generously merit]

[Next Question →]

I decided to start these forum quiz-series, where I'll be asking questions of educational character, to improve the average user's knowledge around Bitcoin. The questions will mostly be technical and historical. To create an incentive, I will generously merit the first person who replies with the correct answer. If that is not good enough incentive, I'll create a leaderboard!

• Your answer needs to be explanatory. Not just a yes-no or a single number.
• If nobody finds the answer until the cut-off date, I will submit it.
• Have fun! It's a game.  

Question: The dominant mining pool, at the time of writing this, turns evil and uses its hash-power to reorg the chain. A customer of yours sends you a transaction. If you wait for 10 confirmations, what is the chance that the dominant mining pool successfully double-spends / reverses your transaction?

Cut-off date: 23/03/2024.

[Mint]

I've decided to offer a very collectible Yu-Gi-Oh item of mine for sale. The very first Seto Kaiba deck released in the known Trading Card Game for the enthusiasts. Cards are in Mint and Near-Mint conditions.

(You can open an image in new tab to see it in full resolution)

It appears to be the case that there is no Starter Deck Kaiba 1st edition in English apart from factory sealed (which can worth beyond $5000, such as this one). If you search on Ebay and Cardmarket, you might find it in Portuguese, Asian, German and Italian, but no second-handed in English.

For this reason, I'll price it at 500 EUR, which is about 1/10th of the factory sealed. Please note that the current collectible is European product and not North American. That's why each card's number is SDK-EXXX and not SDK-XXX. Also, take into consideration that the box (for reasons yet unknown to me) does not display "First Edition" on the top, while the cards are in first edition. I would be glad if you found and shared another offer about second-handed SDK 1st edition in English. As far as I've searched, there is none.

• I only accept BTC and XMR.
• You'll have to pay any shipping costs, especially if you're outside the EU.
• I can provide you more pictures if you're interested.

[Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number:]

Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number: Bitcoin Core 26.0
Operating System: Raspbian Lite OS (64-bit)
System Hardware Specs: 4 GB memory, 2 TB external HDD.
Description of Problem:

TL;DR: I switched disks, and somehow either the blocks or the chainstate got corrupted, and I had to reindex. I'm one week now, at progress=0.313028. It seems like it goes much slower now. Yesterday it was in 0.30. At this rate, it will take more than a month to reach the tip. I was thinking if it's possible to eject the HDD, plug it a computer with better specs, so it could finish... this month. It should be possible to do, right? The disk is loaded with Raspbian, so I could theoretically load it during boot in any other machine.

(Asking just in case I don't mess things up)

I'm searching for a high quality image of the popular The Times newspaper. The best one I've found is this: https://talkimg.com/images/2024/01/15/3fefd.png. Is there in higher quality? I was thinking of making a poster, like this one.

[Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number]

Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number: Bitcoin Core 230000 (23.0).
Operating System: Linux raspibolt 6.1.21-v8+ #1642 SMP PREEMPT Mon Apr  3 17:24:16 BST 2023 aarch64 GNU/Linux.
System Hardware Specs: 3.7 Gi total memory (929 Mi used, 122 Mi free, 2.7 Gi buff/cache, 2.7 Gi available), 1 TB external HDD (153 GB left available).
Description of Problem: My node finds no addresses to connect. I have tried removing peers.dat and restarting bitcoin daemon. I have also tried restarting the computer. I have confirmed it has Internet connection, and it does initiate connection with the DNS seeds. It simply finds 0 addresses. I have tried adding a node with addnode, but it remains at 0 incoming and outgoing.
Log Files from the Bitcoin Client:

Code:

$ tail -f /home/bitcoin/.bitcoin/debug.log
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z init message: Starting network threads…
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z net thread start
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z dnsseed thread start
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z addcon thread start
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z Waiting 300 seconds before querying DNS seeds.
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z opencon thread start
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z msghand thread start
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z tor: Got service ID <deducted>, advertising service <deducted>.onion:8333
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z AddLocal(<deducted>.onion:8333,4)
2024-01-13T11:04:50Z init message: Done loading
2024-01-13T11:07:15Z Imported mempool transactions from disk: 278 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 expired, 0 already there, 0 waiting for initial broadcast
2024-01-13T11:07:15Z loadblk thread exit
2024-01-13T11:09:50Z Loading addresses from DNS seed seed.bitcoin.wiz.biz.
2024-01-13T11:09:50Z Loading addresses from DNS seed seed.btc.petertodd.org.
2024-01-13T11:09:50Z Loading addresses from DNS seed seed.bitcoin.sipa.be.
2024-01-13T11:09:50Z Waiting 300 seconds before querying DNS seeds.
2024-01-13T11:14:50Z Loading addresses from DNS seed seed.bitcoin.sprovoost.nl.
2024-01-13T11:14:50Z Loading addresses from DNS seed seed.bitcoin.jonasschnelli.ch.
2024-01-13T11:14:50Z Loading addresses from DNS seed dnsseed.emzy.de.
2024-01-13T11:14:50Z Waiting 300 seconds before querying DNS seeds.
2024-01-13T11:19:50Z Loading addresses from DNS seed seed.bitcoinstats.com.
2024-01-13T11:19:50Z Loading addresses from DNS seed dnsseed.bitcoin.dashjr.org.
2024-01-13T11:19:50Z Loading addresses from DNS seed dnsseed.bluematt.me.
2024-01-13T11:19:50Z 0 addresses found from DNS seeds
2024-01-13T11:19:50Z dnsseed thread exit

I've started developing an old project that I had left behind, bitcointalk lightning tips. If you're interested in this idea, I kindly ask you to post your opinion below.

For the time being, it will work like this:

• Accounts can be created by proving you own your bitcointalk account. Once registration is complete, you will be given a private code which must be kept secret. You only need this to login, and your session lasts for a long time.
• To tip a post, you need to have a balance. To have a balance, you need to deposit via lightning. You will be given an invoice to pay from my server.
• When someone tips you, your balance increases. To withdraw your bitcoin, you provide a lightning invoice (bolt 11).
• A browser extension will be available, where you can view tipped posts in the same way merit transactions are publicly available. e.g., Merited by BlackHatCoiner (4), sat tipped by BlackHatCoiner (1,000)
• Tips can be also made privately if you don't want the rest of the users to view to which users you send or by which you receive tips.
• A registered account can tip any post, even authors that do not have an account on my server. They can claim their tips once they register.

I would like to dedicate this topic for discussion. I want to see how many people are interested / would use it.

My main problem is the architecture of the browser extension. I'm struggling to see how you will query my database for tips. Querying 25 tips (which is the maximum posts a page can have) sounds like really slowing down the browsing experience in bitcointalk. Do you have any recommendations on to how to do this efficiently?

[Rules]

Hey. I'm BlackHatCoiner, and I'm renting my avatar and personal text space. I believe my stats are pretty good to effectively promote your product.

(source: bpip.org)

Rules:
- I reserve the right to refuse advertising your service with no explanation.
- I reserve the right to stop advertising your service if I suspect shady activity.
- Due to high fees, I prefer being paid in an altcoin like XMR. I can accept lightning as well. Just not Bitcoin on-chain.

I have participated in a number of signature campaigns, with the most popular being ChipMixer, Whirlwind, Mixtum, and currently Jambler. I usually talk about the Bitcoin network, privacy and security. Do not expect me to engage in gambling or altcoin discussions.

You can contact me in private with your offer.

(spam will be deleted)

testing... testing

I couldn't leave without saying a goodbye.

Due to personal issues I'd rather not disclose, I'll have to resign my position in this wonderful place. It has taught me so much. Thanks to everyone who helped me comprehend all these amazing concepts. We can truly shake the world with just a few lines of code. How about that!

Good going.