Recently I got to know that a new blockchain forum, specifically it's a India based blockchain forum that has been created.
This forum has been created with an idea to collaborate with the government on verticals such as CBDC, Metaverse and NFTs.
Currently around 40 influencers have joined this forum. I wasn't able to find the name of the forum though.
None of the articles has mentioned the link of the forum too.

What do you guys think about this forum ?

Source: India blockchain forum plans to chart future with governments, regulators

The title says it all. As far as I know there is one genuine Ledger Hardware wallet "reseller" in India.
But still, the wise ones recommend to directly buy the hardware wallet from official websites only.
Now comes the question what would be the best way to buy a hardware wallet in India.
Also, which one should it be? Ledger or Trezor ?

The second question is if we buy directly from the official website would there be a risk in delivery ?
May be the customs can keep it under their radar or tamper it or raise legal issues against us?

Throughout the years I have just been holding bitcoin and ethereum in a non-custodial wallet but now I have decided to diversify my portfolio.
There are a lot of potential altcoins out there and I have picked up a few. Storing altcoins on an exchange id obviously not the right thing to do.
While I know that hardware wallet would be the best place to store altcoins I want to know other options as well.

Thinking about long term perspective.

1. For now, I have been thinking to store them on a non-custodial wallet but then again which wallet should it be ? My choice would be Exodus but let me know which one is best.
2. Would it better to store different altcoins in different wallets or decrease the hassle of maintaining different wallets and settle down with just one with all the coins.

It's a tough year for SOL supporters because of the recent outages in the Solana blockchain.
Bots keep on attacking the blockchain by spamming millions of transactions yet the devs don't have a solution to these.
It's no rocket science that spammers are using the low fees and high TPS as a leverage but this has to stop soon or else SOL will collapse just like LUNA.
The latest outage was today when the team had to restart the blockchain because millions of transactions were being spammed on the network and so they had to halt the blockchain.
I was once a strong believer of the Solana blockchain but this is really bad for a blockchain and completely unacceptable.

More talks: https://www.reddit.com/r/solana/comments/v33tcs/does_the_solana_dev_team_not_have_a_robust_qa/

[Resources:]

I just saw this video on Youtube which explains how Solar 3.0 is gonna change the world of using Solar energy for producing power.
It uses Perovskites to create Solar cells which are highly efficient in extracting energy from the sunlight.
Now comes good part, it would cost 15 times less than the traditional solar panels that are commercially used these days.

So I thought why not use these for bitcoin mining. It would be cost efficient and hence it will increase the profits for mining bitcoin.
Although, it is not officially released yet it will surely be used at large scale and will gain immediate mainstream adoption from my perspective.

Resources:

https://medium.com/0xmachina/solar-energy-3-0-the-perovskite-solar-cell-1e33531ee6ee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQmFVcD-Mbo

I have read that many people choose to store their bitcoin private keys on steel plates by engraving the seed phrase on the plates.
I thought of doing the same and so I searched for vendors around me and contacted one of them.
After discussing with the vendor I got to know that we can engrave the keys on steel as well as aluminium plates.
He also said that aluminium plates are cheaper than steel but on the other hand steel is stronger than aluminium.
And so I have the below two questions to ask you guys before I proceed with securing my keys.

1. Should I go with aluminium or steel plates ?

2. Wouldn't it be a risk if I give my keys to the vendor to engrave it on the plates ? What if he steals my coins?
Also, If I don't give the words to the vendor how will he engrave it ?

One solution that I can think of is to find 3-4 similar vendors and give a few words to each of them to engrave on the plate

Lira is the fiat currency of Turkey which is facing a sharp decline in it's value. The rise of inflation in Turkey has dumped the value of Lira.
With an inflation rate of about 20% - 25% the price of Lira has declined about 45% this year with a peak dump of about 20% in a week and 15% in a day.
Those numbers are high enough and causing a panic in the market. The media also say that it might be at the edge of hyperinflation in Turkey.

This has caused a rise in the price of bitcoin in Turkey. People are opting to use bitcoin when the fiat currency is falling sharply.
The inflation has influenced so much that the president of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced a crypto law that will soon be shared with the Parliament.
This means crypto will soon be legalized in Turkey. I think it's a good decision and will help Turkey fight inflation well.

Sources:
Turkey’s crypto law is ready for parliament, President Erdoğan confirms
Turkey’s Inflation Is An Example Of Why We Need Bitcoin

I have heard many people say that never sell for a loss but what does it actually mean ?

Assuming you have bought a coin at $10 and the price goes down to $9 but you don't sell.
You could have placed a stop loss at $9 but you take "Never sell at a loss" so seriously that you decide to not put a stop loss.
The price goes down to $8 but you are too good at HODL. Suddenly the market crashes and the price goes down to $5.
You could have limited your losses at $9 but now your portfolio is down by 50%.
Now the price has to go 100% so that you breakeven with no loss no profit whereas you could have bought back at $5 and gained potential profits using a stop loss.

This is why I think "Never sell for a loss" is a myth and we should always use a stop loss and play safe with a good risk to reward strategy.

Charlie Munger the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway is yelling that it would have been better if cryptocurrencies had never existed.
The 97 year old man says China made a right decision on banning bitcoin.

Well I was shocked to see him speaking ill about cryptocurrencies but the response he got for his tweet was very surprising.
The crypto community gave him solid replies which proves that the crypto community is growing stronger than ever.

Has the revolution begun ?

Source : Crypto community responds to Charlie Munger yelling at Bitcoin again

I would not lie but I knew this was gonna happen. When Solana was at rank #15 I read its whitepaper and I found it very fascinating.
I knew that this coin has a very good potential and it will soon rise in marketcap and claim it's position in the top 5.
Currently it's at rank #4 and on it's way to claim the #3 position. Yet many people think it's a shitcoin and I don't know why.
It's at least better than many of the other coins and I personally think it does deserve a spot in the top 5.
Although I think Solana would face a correction very soon and decline in price and marketcap, in the long term I still see it in the top #5.

We have seen bitcoin being shown in TV series, Web series and movies but have you ever seen bitcoin being shown in a song ?
I guess no but here we are. I was just watching a song on TV today when I saw the bitcoin symbol BTC being shown in the song.
Now this is some next level promotion for bitcoiners   Honestly, I don't think the general public would have even noticed that since many people don't know the symbol of bitcoin.
Below is the link for you guys to listen to some nice music and watch bitcoin being used as a prop

Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS1KrgB49H4

The first occurrence is at 1:32 and later it was shown many times in the video.
I guess bitcoin has surely caught many peoples attention as a money making scheme which is why it used as a money prop in the video.
What do you guys think ?

So I started running a bitcoin full node on my Raspberry Pi 400 around 5 months back and was able to do all the setup required and run the node successfully.
I was feeling happy that I was actually supporting the bitcoin network and the community by running the full node.
But that wasn't the case since we have to relay the information by allowing inbound connections to our full node.
Although I knew we have to allow inbound connections to our full node I thought that was done by default when we setup the full node initially and begin downloading block data.
Today I just thought of checking it back again when I noticed that we actually have to manually setup the router to allow inbound connections.

So I started configuring my router and enabled static IP address for my raspberry pi and enabled port forwarding to port 8333.
When I tested my connection on https://bitnodes.io/ I was still getting the redbox meaning my full node was not allowing inbound connections.
I tried various stuffs and kept verifying the connection on bitnodes as well as CLI but no luck.
It was then that I found out that we have to wait around 10 minutes on bitnodes website and 30 minutes on the CLI to verify the inbound connections.
Long story short I just had to wait for a couple of minutes to verify the connection but I kept experimenting again and again.

Feeling happy now to support the network #again 




P.S : One question though - What are the risks of someone finding our IP address by finding out our node ? Can he potentially exploit our device ?

To begin with, I am not promoting this platform but asking for opinions and reviews as to how good it can be.


I just came across this platform called GoSats which offers a debit card where the reward points are given in the form of Satoshis. I found this really exciting because getting satoshis for spending fiat sounds really cool to me.
Collecting those satoshis can someday become a big amount if we keep using the card. Also, when bitcoin price spikes up the value for these satoshis will increase as well.
Most of us here use debit or credit cards and we get reward points which we even forget sometimes. I am not really sure if this is a genuine platform or a scam.
But if this was genuine product I would certainly like to get my hands on this card. What do you guys think ?

The website is https://gosats.io/

Check it out and let me know your thoughts about it. I wish many such startups establish a wider crypto adoption in India.

[Source : https://qz.com/india/2045269/indian-crypto-unicorn-coindcx-gets-funds-from-facebooks-saverin/]

I don't know why google has started sending me notifications about things I browse. But one of those notifications landed this post here.
I received a notification this morning from Google where it lead me to an article with the title "India gets its first cryptocurrency unicorn".
I thought for a moment and was wondering that India already has so many cryptocurrencies yet these guys are claiming to be the number one.
As I read the article I came to know about the term unicorn venture links to a startup company with more than $1 billion valuation.
So I thought of sharing this post here and see how you guys react.


CoinDCX has started raising funds for to increase it's workforce and attract more Indian users into the crypto community.
It raised $90 million in series C with investors from Facebook, Coincase, Polychain etc...

What do you guys think will be the future of CoinDCX in India ?
I have noticed, it has even started paying more attention on advertising through TV and social media recently.

Source : https://qz.com/india/2045269/indian-crypto-unicorn-coindcx-gets-funds-from-facebooks-saverin/

[How to find out it's a scam:]

We all know how we get added to some groups without our consent on Telegram. Anybody can create a group impersonating anyone on Telegram.
This time the scammers are trying to impersonate Binance and lure users to fall for their scam.
First they add you to their group. The group has a pinned message which says Binance is launching a BNB smart contract.
It says to deposit your ETH to their smart contract address and then you will receive 15% extra profit for it.

Funny thing is, they have even attached a link to binance blog for awards. This isn't related to what info they have posted on the pinned message.
Below is a screenshot.




And as expected, when I sent a message with the keyword "scam" in the group it removed me from the group.




I have posted this because most of the people use Binance and beginners are prone to get attracted to such schemes.
They might fall for it thinking it is indeed Binance.

How to find out it's a scam:

1. No reputed exchange will add you to their group. Just think, why would Binance add you to their telegram group ?
    Besides that the number of people in the group are too less for such a reputed exchange. If it were a real Binance group it would have far more members than that.

2. Getting instant 15% profit ? Too good to be true right. Every scheme which is too good to be true is probably a scam.

3. If it were not a scam then it would not have removed me from the group on accusing it for a scam.

Don't fall for such traps. Save your crypto and invest wisely. #DYOR

I am not a fan of cricket but today as I was meeting my friend at his shop I watched cricket on Sony Six for a while since he is a fan of it.
Just when advertisement started I noticed that there was an ad by CoinDCX which was promoting bitcoin.
The ad said to buy bitcoin from CoinDCX. This is the first time I have seen bitcoin being promoted on Indian Television.
I think this is just the start and many companies will follow this suit to promote their coins on Television.

So I just saw this grid trading option on binance futures and thought to try it out. At first it looked like a nice strategy but then it was completely weird.

I created a grid with 8 grids and 4x leverage but as soon as the grid order was created it should have bought some initial coins but it didn't.
I saw some youtube video and they said that if the initial order is not placed then we should terminate the grid and adjust the upper boundary price to get the initial order executed.
This looks weird. Can somebody who has used it explain why this happens or is it a bug at binance's end ?

So now that bitcoin is recovering well from it's drop we can expect a bull run again.
We all know how Elon pumped and then dumped the market through his influential tweets.
This what happens when people listen to others blindly and invest.
DYOR (Do Your Own Research) is the approach that everyone should follow.
Don't panic sell. There will be many such waves and many such influential people who might try to manipulate the market again.
HODL has always proved to be strong.

Why this thread ? - It's more like a wake up call to newbies and all those who blindly follow others.

P.S : I voted for 3rd option

I am having a full node. What do I do to fetch data from it as per the user requirement ?

Let's consider the below examples with x = any random number

1. I want to receive all address "with x+ BTC"

2. I want to receive all transactions "in last 24" hours which transacted x amount

3. fetch blocks between date ranges

4. fetch transactions where fees was x


If it were a normal SQL database we could have used SQL queries such as

Select tx from full node where amount=x

but I am not sure how to receive block data from the full node.
I want to develop a program where I can code to retrieve the above data.

So recently, I had setup a bitcoin full node on my Raspberry Pi 400 and started to download the block data.
I noticed that although my internet speed is good the block data is getting downloaded at a very slow speed.
I am not sure but I think it might be because of one of the following reasons

Internet traffic (I use the wifi on 3 devices including the raspberry)
Low system config (obviously the raspberry has a low end config. Does it have something to do with slow downloading of block data ?)

My internet speed is 100 Mbps (megabits) constant yet it takes about 45 minutes to download 150 MB of block data.
Is that normal ?



If anyone wants to look at my Raspberry Pi 400 setup
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5333360