That's right, these attacks are theoretical. The article states some of the commands would need user interaction. The only confirmed use of this exploit is for tracking targeted individuals:


It doesn't look like there's any risk of having crypto stolen at all, since it's practically limited to tracking specific targets.That being said, it's still terrifying considering there's not much any of us can do if we have vulnerable SIM cards. It also seems like most US carriers are unaffected.

Genuinely curious, what do you think the average person using Tor should set up to avoid getting attacked? Anyway, I agree with you that they're covering their ass, but more from regulatory pressure than anything else.


Missed this on my first post, but I thought I'd clarify: The Tor Browser is not just Firefox with settings changed. Tor is geared towards anonymity.


I personally don't think it's ideal for regular browsing as it makes captchas hell and can be excruciatingly slow. Its primary use for anonymity, which some people might want for doing Bitcoin stuff.

It's possible, but since it comes with HTTPS Everywhere out of the box, I'd say it's a remote possibility. The possibility certainly isn't significant enough to conclude that Tor is inherently less safe than other popular browsers. Localbitcoins has been being increasingly hostile to anonymity for a while now, so such a move with no explanation is just them keeping up with that trend.

Maybe scammers do prefer to use Tor, like what has already been brought up, but it's not like using it yourself would leave you more vulnerable to them lol. Either way, it looks like using Tor isn't a ToS violation yet.

Most of their products apparently aren't considered because:


It's also not confined to just cryptocurrency because they're apparently expecting a huge bump from the digital identity sector of blockchain technology. Considering the fact that big corporations are working on projects like this, I could see this field rapidly developing within the next five years. I'm not sure why people might need specific devices for these applications, but these researchers know more than I do.

It might also have to do with Bitcoin threatening their remittances:


1.2 percent is a pretty significant chunk and crypto has the potential to take all of that away, since it doesn't look like they have any resources to spare for its monitoring and regulation. It sucks for their citizens since this area is one of Bitcoin's strongest use cases.

As much as I agree that Bitcoin cannot be interfered with, plenty of users will be affected. Even if you ignore the price dumps, losing access to exchanges is a big blow to a lot of people. It's also going to affect the way it's used as a currency, as deals are going to have to be done in secret, and under threat of prosecution.

Some users can choose to be resilient, which I suppose is the beauty in it, but we have to acknowledge that authorities still have a high degree of influence over Bitcoin's ecosystem, even if they can't really touch the network itself.

It is locked, since it's not as much a hardware wallet as a glorified paper wallet (which he conveniently made for you):


I don't know how they could think this has more security features than a standard hardware wallet considering you have no control of any of the security steps: address generation, generation of the two encryption codes, and combination of the codes into the private key. Regardless of whether they're trustworthy or not, this is just a very misleadingly marketed custodial wallet at best.

Also worth mentioning that this article is almost certainly a promotional piece; they just needed to headline it with something to bait readers. Notice how they prop up this guy's reputation from the get go, and how the prediction isn't talked about in detail at all lol. Still, I suppose it's good that people know in advance that they need to avoid him and his wallet like the plague.

Lol I just stumbled upon an article about Trump's tweet wanting negative interest rates earlier:

https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/09/11/bitcoin-trump-interest/

The US could easily join in on the countries with negative real interest rate, and soon. I just hope people know what this means for their portfolio (and money, really), and how Bitcoin could be a good diversification option given its unique qualities.

Not who you quoted but I'll chime in anyway. Basically yes, because you're trusting them not to do something they're fully capable of. I don't think they could be motivated by profit in this case though, considering the fact that successfully pulling it off would also entail Bitcoin prices reverting to ice age prices in a hurry. Attackers basically have to sell everything the instant they double spend, or else it's likely they lose massive amounts of money (due to prices sliding) and any future mining income (since an attack like this would probably destroy Bitcoin and most if not all alts).

The thing is though, most Bitcoin holders will probably ignore any ETF despite clamoring for it. All it means for them is more money in the market, and Bitcoin being legitimized as an asset class to some extent.

It would then come down to context as to whether it's bad or not. Is it bad to hold? For experienced Bitcoiners, that's almost certainly a yes. Actually holding coins is going to be better for just about every purpose. Is it bad for the market? It could be, but the opposite is also very possible, if not more probable.

At the end of the day, no ETF is going to affect Bitcoin itself, so I'm personally not against it. It may be bad for corporations to stock up on huge amounts of coins, but they're free to do just that anyway, ETF or no ETF.

It's not that they're needed, authorities are just implementing already-existing laws. Bitcoin ATMs were recently ruled to be "an entity that facilitates the transmission of or holds fiat or digital currency by way of brick-and-mortar, kiosk, mobile, internet or any other means", and thus will have to comply to regulatory measures. Regular ATMs, and even money transmitters that have nothing to do with cryptocurrency are subject to the same regulation.

But yeah, they're apparently only applying this to Bitcoin ATMs because they failed to pass specific legislature for their licensing, according to this article. Pretty dirty move if true.

Not to mention you're also exposed to more potential vulnerabilities. I'd say only uBlock Origin (note that this is different from uBlock) and HTTPS Everywhere are really necessary for general use, considering you know the do's and dont's of the internet. Adding NoScript (or ScriptSafe for Chrome users) into the mix is ideal, but they're not exactly easy to use and may frustrate less technical people.

If you really need all your tickers and other flashy QoL extensions, I would recommend that you not do anything sensitive on that broswer, at the very least.

I would be wary of Kaspersky, as they've been accused of having ties to the Russian government. They have since shaken a few things up, but why run the risk when there are other viable alternatives that aren't caught up in controversy?

I don't know about Avast, but Windows Defender should be good enough for the average user. It has been rated pretty high for a while now, and it comes with the advantage of not having to trust yet another third party (I'm assuming you trust Microsoft by running Windows lol) with potentially sensitive data. Some people recommend that it be run along with Malwarebytes. Really though, nothing will protect you more than knowledge and vigilance about potential threats.

Man I didn't think this could be real, but then I stumbled into this:


The numbers do boil down to about 3%, which is pretty ridiculous. Bolded part also emphasizes why they haven't been too keen towards Bitcoin adoption (more regulatory hell when they can't even handle existing ones), and why its acceptance probably won't help. Instead of looking for external solutions to their problems, they're most likely better off fixing internal problems first.

I just want to point out that more people looking into Electrum is good under the original context of the quote. bob123 was basically saying that plenty of people with the technological know-how have already reviewed its code considering its popularity, meaning you don't necessarily have to review it yourself, and that you need to trust the developer less. I'm not saying that popularity doesn't have its downsides, but it's one of the reasons why Electrum is generally considered trustworthy.

To be fair, this is much easier said than done. I wouldn't even call it a recipe as much as a goal -- nearly everyone has their eyes on this, considering an opportunity can arise at any time, but the lows and highs are never easily identifiable in the moment. It's easy to say it's a quick way to profit in retrospect, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20. I'd say simply hodling long term is still a far better course of action for inexperienced traders (so most hodlers lol).

As for oiling merchants' gears, profit doesn't always have to be involved. You spend fiat regardless of whether you have extra, so Bitcoin shouldn't have to be different. To each his own, of course, but I've been seeing way too many people take up the approach of only ever spending their profit.

Protesters still keep their identities private, especially since their police have been stepping out of bounds with their arrests. They even resorted to using dyed water at some point to make it easy to identify those who participated after the fact, because they don't know who the protesters are. Bitcoin absolutely can help in this case, especially if other retailers follow the lead of stores like this.


Can't get donations if you don't raise awareness, unfortunately. Sure this might put Bitcoin in some crosshairs, but events like this show off one of Bitcoin's strongest use cases. If it shouldn't be promoted here, where should you promote it?

CSW started this himself. In an interview, he says that KIeiman's estate will have to pay a 40% estate tax for the inheritance, meaning they're going to have to dump around 200k BTC. This is wrong though, because as the article notes in a correction, Florida has already eliminated estate taxes.

Another thing to note is that mixers might not even be the biggest enablers when it comes to criminal activity, contrary to popular belief:


I hope these enlighten those who somehow don't believe that mixers have legitimate uses just because a random mixer got shut down.

Can't sell Bitcoins you don't own. It's highly unlikely that CSW is currently (at the very least) holding anywhere near that much, so this settlement isn't even set in stone yet. Also worth noting that Dave Kleiman is dead -- his relatives are the ones taking CSW to court.


I don't think Satoshi's identity is involved at all, but we might need better sources:


Their business apparently had to (publicly, at least) do with mining, which might explain the wording of the ruling.