Well, it depends. Is your ETH already KYCed and linked to your identity? If it is, then sending it to a centralized exchange and swapping it for KYCed bitcoin won't make your privacy any worse (assuming you are happy with the security risk of sending your coins to a centralized exchange). From there you will need to mix your bitcoin using either coinjoin or a mixer.

If your ETH was all purchased peer to peer and not linked to your KYC, then swapping it on a centralized exchange puts you back to square one. You can still do this and then mix it as above, or you can trade it peer to peer and just be patient while you wait on enough liquidity to swap it all.

Yeah, this is the biggest problem with JoinMarket - it isn't just plug and play like Samourai or Sparrow.

Yeah, I get that. My point of importing the seed phrase again was to ensure your wallet is indeed just a single signature wallet derived from that seed phrase and not some more complex multi-sig set up which we would never be able to recover using just one seed phrase.

Having read through the .pdf again, I'm not so sure:


There is no mention that they use nested segwit addresses, which is the type of address every other wallet will try to recover when given a seed phrase and a P2SH address type. The sentence above I've just quoted suggests they may use some strange custom 1-of-1 script, in which case you will never find it by just playing with the derivation path. You will need to find the exact script being used.

Does mSIGMA have the option to import transactions from elsewhere? That would be the easiest way forward - create an unsigned transaction elsewhere, import it to mSIGMA for signing, and then export it for broadcast. If not, then I think the easiest option is going to be to spin up your own node and get mSIGMA to connect to it. Otherwise you will need to comb through the entire source code to figure out exactly the script type and derivation path which is being used.

Alternatively - have you spend from any of these addresses in the past? If so, we can view the script for them on the blockchain.

The .pdf I linked to above says it should connect to your own node. Are you running a node?

Can you import your seed phrase back in to mSIGNA and regenerate the same wallet with the same addresses? If so, then it is hopefully just a case of finding the right derivation path. But I worry given what is written on that .pdf it is going to be significantly more complicated since it apparently uses an unknown multi-sig arrangement.

I've found an archived version of their old website here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150316215945/https://ciphrex.com/

It says there, however, that it was a multi-sig wallet.

I've also found their old GitHub here: https://github.com/ciphrex/mSIGNA

Looking through the issues on that GitHub, people are talking about .vault files. Do you have one of these?

You could potentially try to download their software and see if you can import what you have back in to mSIGMA, and then from there extract the raw private keys? I'd be careful downloading and running such long outdated and completely unreviewed code, however. You could also try making a copy of the .priv file and then simply opening it with a text editor and see if there are any private keys inside?

Edit: Also found an archived copy of their "Getting Started" pdf here: https://web.archive.org/web/20190410173347/https://ciphrex.com/docs/mSIGNA-Getting_Started.pdf

There is a package called rng-tools, originally written by Jeff Garzik, which will do this:

https://github.com/nhorman/rng-tools
https://linux.die.net/man/8/rngd

Shot noise, as you would get from a webcam pointed at a light source, can be a source of true random numbers.

I ended up sticking with what I know as I mentioned in this post because my list of things to try out is growing ever longer, so I scrubbed Umbrel from that list for now. I'm just using a second hand laptop I bought for cheap from a friend, and I'm only running bitcoin related stuff on it, and not the media server or any of the other non-bitcoin stuff I mentioned in my first post in this thread. That's also on my to do list, haha. It's running Debian.

I had not, but that means Umbrel is unlikely to get back on my to do list any time soon.

Nodes do this, not miners.

I wouldn't say the block header is hashed "with" the nonce; rather, the nonce is already part of the block header. And of course the block header is actually hashed via SHA256 twice.

Coinomi is a terrible wallet. Closed source and insecure. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

This is only a good idea if you are running Electrum as a cold wallet. Despite many problems with a vast array of hardware wallets recently, they are still safer than your average hot wallet.

The number of bugs which have been discovered in older PRNGs alone makes me never want to do this.

Passport - https://foundationdevices.com/

I admire your optimism, but none of that is true. Governments the world over are fully committed to mass surveillance via any and all means available to them. The information which has been leaked regarding these programs is shocking enough, but will be absolutely dwarfed by all the true scope of the surveillance.

I'm not sure where you got that information from. Wasabi feed every single UTXO which attempts to coinjoin, regardless of criminality or not, directly to a blockchain analysis company for analysis and surveillance, with that data then stored, shared, and sold to other third parties.

What are you trying to achieve? Do have KYCed bitcoin which would want to unlink from your real identity? Are you trying to mix some other altcoin?

So just leave your coins for longer for unlimited free remixes, and you will certainly mix with other users running their own node. Or use JoinMarket instead. There is literally no reason to ever subject yourself to blockchain analysis (and pay for the privilege!) by using Wasabi.

The "nothing to fear, nothing to hide" argument is so monumentally stupid and so widely discredited that to use it in this context you are either an idiot or actively malicious.

Because, as I've given you evidence of at least a dozen times and you have completely ignored at least a dozen times, Wasabi coinjoins are deeply flawed and result in outputs being linked to inputs due to various factors such as UTXO sizes and address reuse. Why would I want to run an inferior coinjoin coordinator when I can just use a much superior product such as JoinMarket or Whirlpool?

Cool strawman. That's not what I said at all. I said Coinfirm will be analyzing the inputs to ascertain their history and see to whom they belong, not Wasabi. You were the one here which conflated Wasabi and Coinfirm as being the same entity, which is frankly pretty hilarious.

This. Funding blockchain analysis is malicious. Gaslighting people in to believing that funding blockchain analysis is somehow in their best interests is just downright evil.

Emphasis mine, and that's my concern. It's technically possible to set up this inheritance and recovery type of multi-sig arrangement yourself, but as you correctly point out, it is beyond the skill set of the vast majority of average users. It will also be beyond their skill set to recover their coins if your service disappears, and that's a very dangerous situation to be in. And you are not incentivized to release a tool to allow them to do so, since then they can easily bypass your pricing model.

You are essentially hoping that some unknown developer will be kind enough to develop a tool to allow users to recover their coins, for free, in their own time. That's a big assumption.

Now you need to remember your pattern, how many times you repeated it, which hash function you used, how many rounds of the hash function you used, and so on. All to end up with a password generated from <30 bits of entropy. And if you use your own function, then you could easily make a mistake rendering your password very insecure and if you don't back up your function then wave your coins goodbye. Plus relying on your memory for passwords is a recipe for disaster, which is why every good wallet tells you to write down your seed phrase with pen and paper.

It seems to me like a massive overcomplication of a very simple process - generate a random passphrase, and write it down.

Wallet scrutiny are pretty clear about what they do and what they don't do here: https://walletscrutiny.com/methodology/

They are looking only at whether a wallet can be reliably built from the code provided. They make no statements as to the security or otherwise of each wallet.

If you are looking for a good bitcoin hardware wallet, I would suggest Passport.

Given that Trezor now support blockchain analysis by their partnership with Wasabi, they are a very poor choice of hardware wallet. Add in their support of AOPP last year, and they have a very anti-privacy ethos, which is not what you want from a hardware wallet manufacturer.

No, it is source verifiable, not open source. There is a difference, as explained by the link I provided.

I see. And they do all this through Mixin Messenger, right? Can they do it through any other piece of software, or it has to be your software?

My understanding is that the whole network is dependent on your XIN altcoin and its nodes, of which there are only 20-30? What happens when your network goes down? Does Mixin Messenger go offline? How does the average user (i.e. one who cannot clone github repos or compile software themselves) manage to recreate the members key and access their coins?

Coldcard is no longer open source - https://nitter.net/sethforprivacy/status/1651039483419058177#m

Closed source, and were discovered to be sending seed phrases in plain text across the internet. Not a good choice I'm afraid.

Not to mention that its a freaking browser extension! I have absolutely no idea why it is so popular; I can't think of a less secure way to store your coins than in a browser extension of all places.

I've spoken at length about why no one should ever use Wasabi so I won't repeat all that here. Suffice to say, they directly fund blockchain analysis, they are anti-privacy, pro-surveillance, and pro-censorship. If you want privacy, Wasabi is the last place you should look.

There are two main much better coinjoin implementations you can use, either Whirlpool or JoinMarket. Whirlpool is accessible via Samourai and Sparrow wallets, and JoinMarket from their own software here: https://github.com/JoinMarket-Org/joinmarket-clientserver

Some do. There is currently 8,300 BTC of UTXOs on Whirlpool. Lots more use centralized mixers instead.

I haven't studied this in depth, but as far as I can tell it works as follows.

Mixin Safe is a 2-of-3 multi-sig.
There is one key held by you, the owner key.
The second key is held by your family/friends/colleagues/other trusted contacts, called the members key.
The third key is held by Mixin Safe themselves, but is timelocked for a year, called the recovery key.

You can spend coins using your key and the key held by your trusted contacts with their approval. If you lose your key, or your trusted contacts lose their key, you can recover your coins after one year with the key you do still have and the recovery key.

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I would also say that I will never use such a product, for a couple of reasons. Personally, I do not want a third party involved in my storage, and I certainly don't want to be paying a third party to be involved in my storage. I also highly value my privacy, and don't want a third party being able to see all my holdings and transactions. I know there is a market for such products given the recent Ledger Recovery nonsense, but that market is not me.

However, on poking about the website a bit more I have one main concern, and it revolves around the members key. How does it work exactly? It is a multi-sig embedded in a multi-sig? Is it SSS? How do the threshold number of members come together in order to recreate their key? Can I pick the threshold? Your pricing model says you charge $20 per transaction(!). How can you enforce this when I am supposed to be able to access my key and the members key without you? If the members truly did hold this key, then I can recover my multi-sig to any wallet and make transactions without paying your fee, no? Something doesn't add up.

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