English being my secondary language, I almost always find myself in situations such as stating things using words that could be interpreted or just not being able to make my point across. That leads most of the times to the need of explaining my point so everyone would understand it the way I meant to say it.

However, I've started looking a little bit through my posts and honestly I have a little feeling they might be too long. I write very long posts and I am starting to doubt many are reading them, because reading 5 posts of mine would probably take you more than 7 minutes to read..

I really like writing and sharing my thoughts with this community, but I'd rather write shorter posts and have them read by more than have long-a$$ ones nobody would waste their time on reading.

So I wanted to ask.. how long is considered "too long" for a post? Are mine okay or should I write shorter ones? I'm trying to contribute as much as I can, but I don't want to turn my account into a wall of text nobody reads.

[L]

I was looking through news and found an article about Google results. Upon reading the title, an alarm clicked inside my mind: this could result in a scam spree of the people new to cryptocurrencies!

Google has released a new design update which makes Ads on Google results indistinguishable from normal results.

With that being said, we, as cryptocurrency users, need to take extra care what we are clicking on. Knowing there used to be (and most likely still are here and there) scams promoted through Google Ads by creating links that look VERY similar to the real links, now that the ads are almost indistinguishable there are higher chances you could click on a fake link and be the next victim of phishing/a scam!

How does it work: someone buys the domain "bLtcoin.org". The website will look exactly like "bitcoin.org", but there will be download links to malware and trojans that are programmed to steal cryptocurrencies from your wallets. The fake website will be promoted through Google Ads. If you change "L" to a non-capital letter, the two websites now look like this:

1. (FAKE) bltcoin.org
2. (REAL) bitcoin.org

On mobile for example, the "l" and "i" are harder to distinguish due to the smaller font. Here's another example: "m" can be faked by using non-capital "RN":

1. (FAKE) coinrnarketcap.com
2. (REAL) coinmarketcap.com

And this isn't the only way you could enter a fake website. Buy "coinmarketcap.org" instead of ".com" and promote it, and I guarantee a lot of people will not notice the difference, especially those who have not visited the website many times.

The following photo was copied from the source link I put below. Look how similar ads look to normal results after the latest update:


Therefore, please be aware what website you're clicking on in the results page. A fake website could also imitate an exchange you're usually logging to, in order to steal your credentials and your funds.

Source of the news about Google changing its design: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-desktop-design-change-favicon-icon-ftc-guidelines

I might copy this thread and place it somewhere in the Altcoins board in order to make sure this gets full exposure.

Roger Federer is the first living man to be placed on a minted Swiss coin. The announcement had an insane number of positive responses internationally.

55,000 coins have been minted and ready to be sold last December. The sale was supposed to last from 2nd of December to 19th of 2019. However, within the first hours of the sale, it was already sold out and the website crashed. Periodically, the website kept coming back online and crashing over and over. I had absolutely no chance to get my hands on the first issue, unfortunately.

Swiss Mint stated that, depending on how well the first issue of the coins will be sold, they might sell another 40,000 silver coins during 2020. The first day of the sale in 2020 is 23rd of January, so today. Last December I promised myself I wouldn't let this second round of sale finish without having an order placed from my account..

It's been a month and a half and Swiss Mint has already been through the crashing issue once. I thought the problems they had last month were a lesson to them, but apparently no. Today they listed a second issue of the coins featuring Federer.. and the website is down again. I keep refreshing every few minutes but without luck.

I guess I don't stand a chance to get my hands on the second issue of the coins either.. this is so disappointing.

[is]

So I'm reading daily these news about Bitcoin, Blockchain, cryptocurrencies etc and I sometimes find some surprising articles.

A few weeks ago I found this article I'm still thinking about almost every day, because it's a scary thing going on and it actually is the truth: most of us are not looking at technology anymore and the way Bitcoin could change a lot of things around us for the better, but for the money and profit we can earn.

Back in the day when Bitcoin had close to $0 value, everyone was in it for the tech as almost nobody thought and believed there is a chance of it touching even half a dollar. The fascinating Satoshi story and everything made Bitcoin so interesting and the early investors and adopters of it made a lot of progress. If you watch the documentaries of those people adopting BTC in its early stages I'm sure you'd be so jealous you haven't heard of it "at the right time"...

but but wait a minute.. what are you thinking of when I say "hearing about Bitcoin at the right time"?

I'm sure more than 60% of us think about the price when reading these words. Bitcoin is here as a different payment system and as a solution to a lot of world's problems, and yet we're ignoring all that and going all in for the price?!

That's disrespectful to the early adopters, and that's disrespectful to Satoshi himself. Take a look at his wallets - billions since 2009 and yet not a little part of a Bitcoin has been moved. Dead or alive, doesn't matter and probably nobody knows, but we should take it as a lesson. Instead of focusing on the price and profit, we should all focus more on its influence in the world. We should focus on turning the possibility of it changing the world into reality, and trust me.. the price will come with it.

Here I'm not talking necessarily about miners. I'm talking about all of us who've heard of Bitcoin and are using it. Imagine it's 2009 and Bitcoin had close to $0 value, what would you do? Leave it forever because you couldn't get money profit off it, or would you continue to support it and adopt it knowing its potential? If you were the early adopter, what would you do?

We do have some members here who've adopted Bitcoin in an early stage. Actually, we have a pretty large number of members since then who are still active here considering the community size of 2009-2010.. even 2011. Today almost everybody around the world has heard of BTC or at least the Blockchain technology, but most have only heard about its volatility and that's what scares them away. Another thing is Bitcoin being pretty hard to be understood by newcomers, just like it's been hard for me and everyone else around in the first year of using it.

And now let's talk about the real purpose of this topic. Let's talk about Jered Kenna, who has posted one month ago the following tweet after 3 years of pause:

25 Sep 2019
Everyone scared by the @Bitcoin dip. Amazing how many people stuck around for $31 to $2 and the next year. Passion for the project vs current focus purely on making money.

Link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/JeredKenna/status/1176892921230086146


25 Sep 2019
Also fwiw I don't really hold any crypto. I think I have like half a BTC a few BCH and 50,000XRP.

I love the tech but lost the love for the industry. I still think it's brilliant but I'm not active. If I say something like "buy the dip" or HODL it's what I'd do if still in

Link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/JeredKenna/status/1176947341682794497

And that's scary. Jered Kenna is the creator of TradeHill Inc., the first Bitcoin exchange in the US. If that still isn't scary enough, we have this more recent tweet which gave me goosebumps:

3 Oct 2019
We used to say: "people will be able to send money home to their families for 5 cents"

now we say "keep HODLing for 100k or 1 million"

We used to say let's build something amazing that will create that value and now it's how many people can we get to buy in.

Link to tweet: https://twitter.com/JeredKenna/status/1179820820631359488

Just as a reminder, he's a very early adopter of Bitcoin and he basically lost his love and hope for it. This should be a big warning sign to all of us, because he has accomplished a key point in the Bitcoin adoption by creating the first US exchange and yet we're all looking right now just at the money we could earn from its volatility.

I would give a suggestion as a key to switching the focus from money to technology and adoption, but I don't know what to say except: try finding a way to make a change. Try making a change in the crypto world, not by creating another coin. Focus on Bitcoin and its capability. Make a change and profit will come as a default.

I have a question for all of you: what have you done to make a change in the Bitcoin world?

Here's the news article I read that made me think of this entire post: https://business.financialpost.com/technology/blockchain/why-an-early-bitcoin-millionaire-says-hes-lost-his-love-for-the-industry

Hey!

This "tutorial" is for the people who lost their Secondary Password for Blockchain. This probably only works for the older users (those who have been using Blockchain since the previous UI), but newer adopters should try it too. Hopefully, you'll get your funds back.

So I had a wallet (on my previous e-mail) on which I had some funds. One day, suddenly, my secondary password stopped being recognized. I have been using Blockchain since 2013 though, and in 2015 or 2016 they updated the UI and added the "Transfer Funds" feature. Looking through my lost account I noticed my addresses were "Imported" so I thought there's no way I could get my private keys. Months later, I entered my e-mail and made a quick search with the keyword "Blockchain", and scrolled down to my very first received e-mails. The second one I got had a "wallet.aes.json" file attached to it, which I downloaded and imported at https://blockchain.info/wallet/import-wallet, which imported my lost account without a password.. and that's how I got my funds back.

What happened is probably because of the new UI. They changed it and made the upgrade mandatory. I never opted for it because I always saw the old one easier to use, and it worked for a few months after which I was "forced" to do it. As soon as the new "Transfer Funds" feature has been added, my usual BTC address has been moved to the "Imported Addresses" list. In the beginning I thought there's no way to recover my funds because the imported addresses are NOT included in the JSON file you receive in your e-mail, but for me it worked.

I hope I helped you get your funds back. This is how I got mine, so long after trying thousands of password combinations and even asking some wallet recovery services for help.

Have a great day!

So BU is trying as much as possible to block SegWit for BTC and vice-versa.. do you think SegWit will ever be activated on Bitcoin during these 26-activation periods?

EDIT: I just noticed I posted in the wrong category.