Any mining expert here in India ?

I would like to know if anybody who has been mining know what's the cost of mining setup and the ROI.
Which coin they mined and how did they managed to stay away from cops 

Most of the exchanges have a minimal trading fees of about 0.25%
I see many people discussing trading fees here and there and that how high the trading fees is.
Does 0.25% really make a huge difference if you are earning at least more than 2% ?

I am in mid 20's and holding and accumulating as much BTC as I can. I try to save a small amount of bitcoins every month so that I can do something with it when I retire.
But what if something unfortunate happens to me. What should I do 'now' so that the coins can be used for a good purpose in the future by the right person.
I know I can hide the instructions to the private key for somebody to take it in the future. But my question is whom should I give it to ?

I do not want to give it to my relatives or children since I want them to earn on their own and never depend on others money.
I know I can donate it to charity but what's the guarantee that the money will be gone into good hands and will be used for the right purpose ?

Are there any options that you guys think of ? Have you guys thought about such a scenario ?


Edit 1:

You can donate to any FOSS foundation that takes bitcoin if you prefer that.

This guy deserves some merits. This is the best answer I have read in all the posts. What's the best I can do with my bitcoins ?
Bitcoin is open source so why the hell not donate the money to the open source community itself.


Second best option is to use the money for family medications in the future. May be using the money for health insurance of my family or creating a will to use the money when my family is in need of medications.

There had come many ICOs in 2017 and a good number of STOs in 2018 and many IEOs in 2019 but hardly a few have made it to 'relatively better than others' list.
I wonder why haven't there come potential coins like ether. The only project that looked promising to me this year was bittorrent which was lauched on binance launchpad.
But even that is not going so well these days.

Is the world out of ideas or solutions?

We have seen many people complaining that they had mistakenly sent bitcoins or any cryptocurrency to an address which they didn't want to.
Many times hackers hack other's wallets and steal their cryptocurrencies.

Everybody knows what an OTP is. It adds an extra layer of security in your payments.

What if we developed a wallet and integrated the OTP feature in it which basically when approved broadcasts the transaction on the blockchain ?
In my opinion this would add a layer of security. OTP doesn't need to be centralized and hence it won't break the decentralization part of bitcoin (but obviously a centralized wallet can still break it)

[Free Courses]

Thought of making a short list of courses for beginners. I have personally not tried any of it but I think it might be useful for anybody who wants to take courses on the Blockchain Technology.
Will update the list periodically and insert/delete as per the availability of the courses. Other members can suggest more links too. I will review it and add it.


Free Courses
1. Coursera - Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies
2. Khan Academy - Bitcoin : What is it ?
3. Udemy - Blockchain 101 for Beginners
4. CognitiveClass - Blockchain Essentials
5. Onemonth - Blockchain (Basics)
6. Introduction to Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain
7. Coursera - Blockchain Specialization

Paid Courses
1. Udemy - Blockchain Technology: A Guide To The Blockchain Ecosystem
2. Blockgeeks - Ethereum Developer: Build A Decentralised Blockchain App
3. Linuxfoundation - Blockchain for Business
4. Ethereum For Beginners


Other valuable links
1. IBM - Blockchain Tutorials
2. Khanacademy - Money, banking and central banks

Websites for courses
1. EDX
2. Coursera
3. Khanacademy
4. Udemy
5. Cognitiveclass
6. Onemonth

Most of us already know that HYIP (High Yielding Investment Program) are mostly fake but even then I have seen many newbies and beginner investors investing in such programs and then complaining about how they lost their investments in bitcoin. This is not about bitcoin but about staying away from such scams. Bitcoin in general has nothing to do with it. Any investment which guarantees to give out potentially higher returns in a short amount of time is most probably fake. They might show you proofs about withdrawals but people should know that it's a trap and they want you to fall for it.

Matrix programs are one such huge scam that has been carried out in India (don't know about other countries) for a long time. There have come companies like Ebiz who manipulated people into joining their so called company and then they tell you to bring in more members in order to get profits. Thus every person who joins the company has to bring in more members to earn more money.
Thus this becomes a matrix and this does breaks at one point. The most popular scam I can relate it to is Ebiz in real world and Bitconnect in the crypto world.

So Newbies, beginners, investors and everybody who is unaware of such scams, please stay away from such scams and stop blaming bitcoin if you fall for such scams by your own mistake.

Technical analysis, Fundamental analysis and Sentiment analysis are some types of analysis which works well in Forex and Stock market.
But none of these works well and in sync with the crypto market. Is there even a single type of analysis which can give if not accurate then at least a near target price ?
Most of the times the market plays against us which indulges us in bearing losses.

Do you guys think Psychological analysis can help us in making better decisions and setting better targets?
Predicting the price as per the news and events in the market and how people react to it could may be give us better profits.

To begin with, I don't have deeper technical knowledge about the blockchain as many others here have. Which is why I would like to get opinion for a solution which I think might be possible to reduce the blockchain size.
Again, I am no expert and just expressing my views to get some better reviews and understanding of the blockchain.

Considering that the size of blockchain has already crossed 200GB+ I think the simple solution here would be to archive this data from the Blockchain and store it on some particular locations from where the archival is easy to access.

Let us consider that we have archived all the blocks until 200GB and have stored on some secure place. Also, we have attached a hash/signature to the archive and modified the consensus such that every new block that is generated includes a hash/signature from the archive. So now instead of validating all the previous blocks, the miner will validate only the hashes of archived blockchain, previous block and the current block.

This will save the 200GB of data that a miner has to validate and reduce the size of the blockchain. I know there must be some flaws in this system. Let me know in the comments.

I don't know how would it be possible but HTC has just announced that it's new smartphone will have the capability to run a full node of bitcoin blockchain.
HTC has announced in a press release on May 11 that it's new Smartphone the Exodus 1S will contain the full bitcoin blockchain.

According to Google the minimum system requirements are as follows
Windows/Mac/Linux
200GB of storage
2GB ram
An internet connection
6 hours of continuous run

While the ram and internet connection is not a problem the other things might not be ideal for the current smartphones.
200GB on a smartphone will make it's price very expensive (where HTC smartphones are already so expensive)
6 hours of continuous run would decrease the efficiency of the smartphone and will probably lead to a bricked smartphone.

How they are gonna do it is still a mystery. Honestly, I don't think they are gonna make it or probably they are faking it.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/consumer-electronics-giant-htc-announces-bitcoin-full-node-on-exodus-1s-smartphone

How would the thought of buying shares/stocks with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin/ether strike you ?
For me it would be great because it will make one eligible to buy international stocks with an ease.
It will eliminate all the middleman and create a truly decentralized ecosystem to buying stocks/shares.
What are your thoughts/suggestions/comments on the idea ?

A hacker has been hacking into many accounts on Github and has been wiping out the code repository for various accounts.
The hacker has demanded bitcoins in return for the backup of the code repository. Other services like Bitbucket and Gitlab had faced same issues.
Microsoft is still silent on these attacks and has confirmed that there was a security breach in their web services like Outlook, Hotmail and MSN.
While Gitlab and Bitbucket say that the hacker compromised the accounts with proper Usernames and Passwords, Microsoft say that this might be due to the security breach.
It's unusual to see a developers playground getting hacked. The hacker must be greatly skilled to challenge such a tech giant and accomplish to execute a ransomware attack.

Links:
https://coingape.com/github-hacked-bitcoins-security-weakness/
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3075130/gitlab-github-bitbucket-code-hack
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18531222/hacker-data-theft-ransom-stolen-git-code-bitcoin

["The phone’s second-generation model will reported extend its supported blockchain apps to areas such as browsing, messaging and social media. This will be in addition to the phone’s existing support for cryptocurrency and transaction management, alongside personalized e-wallets."]

The first blockchain smartphone by HTC was released in late 2018. The company said that the sales had 'met expectations' which I think is a good sign since people would have become aware of blockchain since then.
Now, HTC has decided to launch another blockchain smartphone to boost the sales further. HTC has stated that the new blockchain smartphone will have additional features. While the previous one just had the 'Exodus' wallet installed, the 2n gen smartphone will have blockchain based apps integrated with the browser, messaging and social media.

"The phone’s second-generation model will reported extend its supported blockchain apps to areas such as browsing, messaging and social media. This will be in addition to the phone’s existing support for cryptocurrency and transaction management, alongside personalized e-wallets." - said Phil Chen, Chief Decentralized officer.

So what do you guys think about the new 2nd gen blockchain smartphone.
Will this make a difference in the market?
Will the sales cross the 'met expectations' mark and really boost the overall sales ?

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/local-media-htc-plans-to-launch-2nd-gen-blockchain-smartphone-in-2019

Is it even possible to create a hardware wallet and integrate it to a normal USB pendrive. I am not talking about transferring the paper wallet to USB.
I am talking about copying the code embedded in hardware wallets like Trezor and Ledger Nano S and then integrating it to USB drives.

A few questions that came in my mind:

1. The above devices have a built-in screen that protects their device with a password. Now obviously our USB drive won't have that feature. If we remove that feature and implement the other features would that be doable thing ?
2. Basically, the hardware devices are just USB drives with embedded code. Why can't it be copied and integrated on other USB drives ?
3. If it is possible why haven't we seen people doing it ?
4. Can't a hacker get hands on one of these device and manipulate the code to get access to the wallet ?
Well I do know that it is encrypted through cryptographic algorithm which makes it almost impossible to hack the wallet by manipulating the code but I would like more info on this.

For some reason I wanted to find the average interest rates of bitcoin. The average interest rates needed are for last 5 years.
I did try to look up for it by myself and all I could get was an index of prices for couple of years and some graphs and charts.
Although I could retrieve the necessary price and manually calculate the average interest I would like if there was some tool or website for it.
Kinda lazy to manually do the calculation too    . Any recommendations on website/tools ?

It's been long since we have heard any Indian tech company using blockchain but the wait is over. Indian tech company 'Tech Mahindra' is now in collaboration with tech giant 'Samsung' to use it's Nexledger blockchain technology which is used in finance, manufacturing, logistics etc.. . Samsung has plans to expand the Nexledger blockchain technology not only in India but also in Europe and the U.S.
This move will create an impact towards the Indian government and may be the next hearing of the Supreme court turns out to be a positive one for India.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/indian-it-giant-tech-mahindra-to-use-samsungs-nexledger-blockchain-local-media?utm_source=Telegram&utm_medium=social

I just noticed a bug or lets say it a glitch because it's temporary and it was not present earlier. The page layout is a little disrupted as you can see in the below picture.
I didn't know which section it belonged to hence I am posting it here. Moderator can move it to appropriate section. Also, let me know the section so in case something like this happens in future I can post it there directly.

Pic 1:


Pic 2:


Edit: Hold on, I guess it's due to the 'code' that is present on that particular post.
If I am right, can the moderator please delete this thread. Apologize for this nuisance.

Alright, so I just checked bitcoin's price a few minutes back and it was around $4150 and then a few minutes later I get a notification saying bitcoin's price is now $4250.
I was like okay   good to see bitcoin rise but then a few more minutes later I get a notification again sayin bitcoin' price is now $4550 and I was like WTF
What's with the sudden surge in price ? Looked for info on cointelegraph but I guess they are trying to find the reason for the same or may be they are late in publishing the article this time.
Anyway, good to see it rise but curious to know the reason why. Will update the post if I find the reason behind it.

Edit 1: Current price $4800+ . According to my experience with BTC I think it's a pump and dump because such surge without reason usually indicates a pump and dump.

I was amazed to find this hack and I guess I am too lucky to find it on today's date. Nobody can stop me now from being a Legendary.

The hack is to send 1 merit to Satoshi's profile and receive 100 free merits instantly or free.
Link to Satoshi's profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3

Proof :


Haters might say that I have edited the element's text using 'Inspect element' and then took a screenshot of it but hey I am a noob.






#AprilFool'sDay - Do not take seriously. Thread will be locked in 24 hrs.

[Source:]

Coinmarketcap is definitely one of the most popular crypto website which is being visited by thousands of people everyday. According to statistics, CMC has about 800,000 visitors everyday.
CMC is the industry's best tracking service for market cap and volume but last week Bitwise(a cryptocurrency index fund provider) claimed that CMC is faking most of the exchanges' volume.
CMC then took a notice of this and then made the below statement on twitter:

"We are listening to all our users' feedback, and we are working hard to add a suite of new metrics so users can get a fuller picture of exchanges and crypto on the site."

This has fairly proven that CMC is indeed faking volume but the good news is that they will soon be launching new metrics for the investors to derive their own readings from the given statistics.
Don't you guys think that if a crypto giant like CMC could indulge in such activities then we should probably not trust any of the websites/exchanges and various crypto services.
If things like these keeps happening how would the average person trust the crypto economy. It would also be hard for crytpo traders/investors to make accurate judgement/predictions on their investments.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinmarketcap-will-alter-listing-metrics-after-latest-fake-volume-research

Update: I seriously did not expect to have so many posts on this thread and I must say that the arguments/discussions made in the posts below were quite remarkable.
Reading the posts I could say that there were mixed reviews from many users. Some say that this is not new and it has been going on from a long time while some were surprised to know this.
Some people don't think that CMC is faking volume while some say that they are definitely faking it. Some say that it is the exchanges that are providing the fake volume resulting in CMC inflating the price while some say that CMC is corrupt and is faking volume just for money.

My conclusion is that CMC might be involved in such activities but they say that they will improve the metrics. While we should definitely not completely reply on CMC, we should wait on what changes they bring on the metrics. It depends on us on how much we trust CMC and we should decide on our own and derive our own statistics when it comes to fetching volume of various coins.
Also, a user posted this site "https://openmarketcap.com/" as a better alternative and I think it's worth a try. Let me know in comments what do you guys think of OMC.