Who Uses Bitcoin?

Normal People, Family & Friends
People like you and your family use Bitcoin to transfer earned income and savings directly to their children, without government intervention.

Normal People, Whose Savings Are Being Destroyed By Inflation
People like you and your family use Bitcoin to to preserve their savings from inflated fiat currencies.

Normal People Making Small Purchases on the Internet
People like you and your family use Bitcoin to conveniently purchase individual songs and other intellectual property on the internet.

Businesses
Businesses use Bitcoin to avoid expensive chargebacks from dishonest credit card purchasers, and to lower the cost of doing business.

Refugees from Repressive Regimes
People trapped in corrupt jurisdictions use Bitcoin to protect what they have earned.

Philanthropists and Other Generous People
People who learn about genuine suffering use Bitcoin to eliminate the middle-man and send anonymous contributions instantly to wherever they can help.

Journalists and the Media
Journalists and the media use Bitcoin to provide incentives and protection to Whistleblowers.

Travelers
People who travel for business or pleasure use Bitcoin to reduce the risk of carrying cash or credit cards.

If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.

The U.S. government stopped printing $500 bills, $1000 bills, etc. so that transporting or possessing large amount of currency is cumbersome and impractical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_denominations_of_United_States_currency

(You probably like that too)

But the good news is that you can now create whatever denomination you can afford and store it on one of these


these


or even print your own paper wallet.

Until they "regulate" it out of existence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
Executive Order 6102 is an Executive Order signed on April 5, 1933, by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt "forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates within the continental United States". The order criminalized the possession of monetary gold by any individual, partnership, association or corporation.  The Supreme Court upheld all seizures as constitutional, with only one justice dissenting.

(You probably like that too)

Anonymity in financial transactions is fundamentally incompatible with government taxation and currency controls.

Which one do you prefer?

Do you like banks (and other "financial institutions") reporting your transactions to the government?
Do you like IRS rules and regulations?
Do you like mandatory payroll reporting and withholding?
Do you like low value (max $100) currency?
Do you like TSA searches that result in confiscation of "undeclared" currency?

Time to put a face on the name.

Benjamin Lawsky

I like the generate random seed method that KeePass (free and open source) uses.  Your choice of mouse movement and/or keyboard gibberish.



KeePass needs to generate several random bytes (for the IV, the master key salt, etc.). For this, several pseudo-random sources are used: current tick count, performance counter, system date/time, mouse cursor position, memory status (free virtual memory, etc.), active window, clipboard owner, various process and thread IDs, various window handles (active window, desktop, ...), window message stack, process heap status, process startup information and several system information structures. Additionally, KeePass uses random bytes provided by the system's default CSP RNG.

This pseudo-random data is collected in a random pool. To generate 16 random bytes, the pool is hashed (SHA-256) with a counter. The counter is increased after 16 generated bytes. This way, as many secure random bytes can be produced efficiently as needed.

"law enforcement remains in unanimous agreement that the continued widespread availability and increasing use of strong, non-recoverable encryption products will soon nullify our effective use of court-authorized electronic surveillance."  _{- Louis Freeh, former Director of FBI}

Seed PRNG with accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, barometer, or GPS if available?
http://www.gsmarena.com/glossary.php3?term=sensors

Exhibit A

https://developer.android.com/reference/java/security/SecureRandom.html

I fought the law and the Lawsky won.

I made my point.  We do not agree. 

I can live with that.

That is weak.  You made a mistake.  Admit it.

Why are you encouraging people to sign up on Facebook to see this?

What does one million new Facebook users mean to you?

"Signing up enables you to track your progress throughout a course and engage directly with your instructors and fellow students. It also enables us to deliver an amazing experience via on-site recommendations and course recommendation emails for the courses we think you will love the most!"

Less tracking please, not more.

These are the trees.  This is the forest.

Thank you.

The government's war is on the accumulation and use of undocumented wealth.  Their tools include banks (and other "financial institutions"), IRS rules and regulations, mandatory payroll reporting and withholding, low value (max $100) currency, and TSA searches.

People respond with barter, cash economy, attorneys, gold and silver, and Bitcoins.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Whenever you surf the internet, you are creating a list of all the sites that you visited.  The government has that data.

Could any of the sites on that list be used someday to effectively portray you in a negative way, in a legal proceeding or IRS process?

But Tor has found a way to characterize their users in a very positive manner.

 The top 10 countries with their respective number of active nodes are as follow.
1   United States   31124
2   China   15658
3   Germany   10602
4   United Kingdom   7526
5   Russian Federation   7484
6   Canada   4890
7   Australia   3671
8   Poland   2557
9   Ukraine   2505
10   Netherlands   2488

I was also surprised when I saw that happen the first time.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137272.msg2227831#msg2227831

Who Uses Tor?

Normal People Family & Friends
People like you and your family use Tor to protect themselves, their children, and their dignity while using the Internet.

Businesses
Businesses use Tor to research competition, keep business strategies confidential, and facilitate internal accountability.

Activists & Whistleblowers
Activists use Tor to anonymously report abuses from danger zones. Whistleblowers use Tor to safely report on corruption.

Journalists and the Media
Journalists and the media use Tor to protect their research and sources online.

Military and Law Enforcement
Militaries and law enforcement use Tor to protect their communications, investigations, and intelligence gathering online.

https://www.torproject.org/

Effective ✔