Anybody can help me connect the original message with a 7x9 board? I was working on rewriting the message into 7x9 and 9x7 grids, but the Xs don't align with any particularly meaningful objects on board (like leaves and/or chess pieces). I thought about aligning the M (text message) with the key or ribbons, but the key is in between the tiles and the ribbons are on the rightmost column and I cannot align it either.

EDIT: It is an old idea, but at that time the "hearts on fire" painting had not been published yet so puzzle solvers who connected the original message with a chessboard idea played with a 8x8 chessboard. To no avail, at that time. I am wondering if there is any new value in the idea after we have received new puzzle pieces.

Hello, I have a question and I wonder if the BTG community can tell me truthfully. BTG was air dropped some time ago and since then there have been several reports by some users who used their software (the software listed on the official BTG web page, that is) that not only stole the BTG but also BTC and BCH in twin addresses (protected by the same private keys).

My question is if this thing has been solved, i.e. can I use the BTG official full node client without the doubts of possibility of jeoperdizing my accounts.

Thanks. Any thoughts welcome.

well you know what a blockchain is, right? It is a chain of blocks. Every new block is a cryptographically consistent continuation of the previous blocks. In that way, an attacker who would want to change a transaction say 3 blocks deep, would need to possess computational power to replace those 3 blocks with new (his own, fake) 3 blocks, but in a cryptographically consistent way. It is very hard and requires unbelievable computing power (all the computing power that is currently devoted in the whole world to finding new blocks can find ONE block in 10 minutes on average).

Hard fork is when the protocol is changed in such a way that new blocks don't follow the previous specification and would be normally rejected by the network. It requires that everybody changes their sofware (miners, wallets etc.) to follow the new protocol and be able to recognize new block format.

But sometimes some network participants say "hey, I don't want to follow new protocol". They don't upgrade their software and continue mining the previous format of blocks. In that way a hard fork is a reason for two separate blockchains to exist from that moment on. Usually one of the blockchains is discontinued because economically it doesn't make sense to mine it anymore.

But sometimes after a hard fork two coins coexist - an old coin on an old blockchain and a new coin on a new blockchain. It was the case with Ethereum Classic (old coin) and hard-forked Ethereum (new coin), with Bitcoin Cash (new coin) and Bitcoin (old coin) etc.

I don't know if it was clear. If not - ask. The topic is quite complex and there is nowhere to start explaining - it is either too in-depth or too shallow. I hope I was in the middle somewhere and that it was helpful.

No they will not reject it, I doubt it. They want their share, that is that. Definitely they will want to follow the US example with its IRS requesting customers list from exchanges to get capital gain tax on it and income tax (depending on how you received your bitcoins, whether by buying or working for them). Also, probably they will want to get their share in VAT by adding it over any transaction that happens with bitcoin.

We'll see, but I am not very optimistic.

You wouldn't want to move there mate. Do you know anything about Belarus other that they plan not to tax bitcoins? Well, I can tell you, they don't follow human rights, they have unbelivable bribe rates and their president is a dictator. They have a history of arresting oponents and holding them indefinitely.

well your argument is at least strange. You are saying that Ripple went from 0,006$ to 3$ (500x) and bitcoin went from 150$ to 10000$ (66x) and that it proves Ripple cannot do better than bitcoin. I am not buying it.

While some people expect bitcoin to grow as much as 100x more in a few years time (Kaspersky predicts it to be a million in 2020), I think the same is doable by any other crypto. So maybe Ripple will not go up to 10,000; but it theoretically could go up to 100-300$ in a few years.

Hi,

a few months ago I read on coindesk about Mimble Wimble (wow, it is a tongue breaker ... and finger breaker when you try to type it) and instantly I thought YES! It was a great idea. Then once or twice some more news surfaced. But that is it.

Do you guys know any news, any new dates or announcement?

I can't seem to be able to even google their homepage.

It would suck if such a brilliant idea just died....

moreover, while gold and silver lost its function as a currency, it retains its function as an asset because it has a history of thousands of yars of being there around people, and it has some other uses, mainly it is used for jewelry craftmanship (and in electronics).

The same cannot be said of bitcoin. It has no other uses and no history. So if bitcoin fails to be a currency, it will shortly stop being an asset, too.

So while I agree that objectives of bitcoin went sideways long ago, I think we can only hope for that they come back. Lightning Network gives such hopes for instance.

You know, your friend using it is hardly the argument that it is safe. People rarely behave rationally and almost never securely.

It is anybody's own decision. But as I said in my earlier post, as a minimum I recommend using a separate device for 2FA (in case your phone gets hacked) and ideally I would use a hardware wallet to serve as a wallet-on-a-go, it is as portable as a phone and much more secure.

I agree. Moreover, the only thing that can build bitcoin value long term is mass adoption. Only then the finite quantity of bitcoin matched with growing demand will make its price go up long term. For bitcoin, to be massively adopted, it needs to serve those people as currency: one must be able to buy petrol and bread and butter with it.

Summing up, for bitcoin to be a store of value long term, it needs to be used as a currency. If it fails as a currency, the day will come it stops being the store of value too.

I can't find it now, but I have read a bitcointalk thread created by the user, who lost his bitcoin in the online wallet because his phone was hacked. He used the phone for 2FA and he had also the relevant wallet webpage address stored in the phone as well. The hackers only needed access his phone and they had access to both: the webpage and the 2FA text message.

Please observe, that if you have your wallet app on the phone and you use THE SAME phone for 2FA, it makes you vulnerable to the similar attack that happened to this other user.

I strongly advice using some other device for 2FA

I am sorry to hear that. I reopened your thread because as I promissed I had a look at the website and I checked that they enable you to contact them after you fill out a series of webforms confirming you are aware they don't control bitcoin in any way. As I can see, it is to no avail now.

I also think that the most reasonable webpage to have a wallet at that time in the past was blockchain.info. I encourage you to contact them again.

sure nobody expected them to be a bitcoin representative. LOL how dumb it would be. But: they are offerring wallet services. It is currently an app, and it used to be online web service in the past. Sure there must be a way to contact them about the service they provide. When I have a free moment I'll have a look myself.

yes it would be true in relation to every currency that can be used to pay for everyday services. But unfortunately it is no longer the case with bitcoin. Something needs to be done to reverse the trend to use bitcoin as store of value only. For one thing, I have great hopes in relation to LN. If it delivers on its promises, than yes - the wider the use, the higher the price.

If bitcoin much longer stays as store of value only, we may all be surprise how quickly it will sink towards 0.

I opened the bitcoin.com webpage. They don't seem to have a log-in, all right, but they do provide a wallet via some app. What you can do is contact them and tell them you had an online wallet with them and ask them where it did go (when they discontinued the service). After they reply, your next steps would vary depending on what they reply but I think you should have the list of all your possible emails ready. Also, do you have like standard passwords you use? If so, you can list them down too. Then maybe you will need to try every email with every password.... As I said, it depends on what they reply.

i agree with mostly all you are saying and definitely with the part that a lot of work needs to be done yet. My point was only that if you read a key in any of those formats having 32, 37, 38 bytes or a minikey too, especially the ones with built in sanity control (37, 38 byte, minikey), they are all universally recognized and ready AS IS to sweep the FLAMEN bitcoins. No NEXT steps are needed here.

no, no additional instructions are necessary, at least when compared with a random private key setup.

You could, for instance,
1. have the following constraint for the private key: every second bit follows the pattern 011.
2. Then, you could have a constraint for the public address: it starts with 1FLAMEN6
3. (any other constraints we are not aware of at present too)

4. then, you generate matching pair of public address and private key.
5. then, you publicly disclose the address and encode the private key in the flames or generally in the picture

6. And you public the picture as a puzzle.

Observe, that this scheme needs no additional instructions over the scheme with a random private key.

EDIT: you see, the pattern in the flames discloses the order on how to read flames, so maybe it was important for the creators to have this constraint and beneficial over random private key. I mean, it is a random private key which would require additional instructions on how to order segments.

No, you are mistaken, at least partly. You would have known that if you took the pain to read through the whole thread. As far as I know no commercial or publicly available software allows for creating vanity addresses with vanity private keys, but crax0r showed us (with examples) that you can implement it yourself and fix parts of both the public address and private key and successfuly generate matching pairs of private key and address.

my post was not intended as any guidelines but rather as providing the past example of what may happen. I stand by what I wrote - that is a personal choice of anybody how resilient they are and what risk levels they accept. Van Tharpe recommended to have a top loss for every trade you make. You see, I was lucky because it stayed at 200 long, but then came back up to 20k. Equally possible was the other scenario: that it would hover around 200 indefinitely.

I am not quite seeing a connection here. You see, in order for btc to be massively adopted when the original currency crashes, btc would need to serve as ... well... as currency. That is, you would need to be able to buy petrol on a gas station and bread in your local supermarket. I really doubt it would be possible in Venesuela after the currency crash and even if it were, the fees would kill the idea.