Extremely helpful, especially in terms of clarifying what has now become so obvious to me but previously not understood - that every set up I can access, I can be forced to access by an attacker.

Thanks a lot, o_e_l_e_o!

Dear LoyceV,

Your arguments are very strong and highly appreciated.

I started changing my point of view while you described the reasonable "5 dollar wrench attack" outcome, and you finally convinced me not to TimeLock with the argument of not to delete the wallet (in addition to the potential "sending the funds to deleted wallet" reason, I personally stick to that point because it keeps a proof of historical possession in case of a taxation event or any other not-known for now cases, but forgot it when developing the scheme. There are likely other reasons which I am not aware of).

I agree with you that not telling anyone about your cold storage is the best practice, but it is so happened that I am involved in a public bitcoin educating and can easily become an attack target. So for now I haven't been able to figure out robbery-safe vault setup, except for the 2-of-3 MultiSig with one key kept on my PC and backed up at home, the second - at geographically distant friend's place and the third - in a safe deposit box in a bank. But this setup is also prone to robbery as the attacker will just have to force me to call a friend to co-sign the transaction.

If you have any additional setups or best practices to share - it would be very appreciated.

To safeguard at least one part of my bitcoin vault I have decided to sign a postdated transaction, e.g. three months from now, made with Electrum, addressed to my "hot" Electrum wallet address.

As another security measure I have decided to sign another similar transaction dated a little earlier, addressed to my cold storage address, to prevent spending in case of a potential "5 dollar wrench attack" makes me disclose the original transaction's hash and the "hot" wallet keys to an attacker.

After that being done - to delete the signing wallet file and the seed and make several backups of the transaction's hash including an online encrypted backup, risking some privacy to ensure the transaction's hash is available.

Is there any pitfalls in such a scheme?

Thank you!

P.S.: I think that the "Insufficient Transaction Cost" issue is addressed by the ability to use the "Child Pays For Parent" function in Electrum.
The "Network will change a lot by the time of unlocking" issue is addressed by relatively short period of locking.
The "Necessity to spend some funds" issue is addressed by locking only 1/3 or 1/2 of a vault in such a scheme.
Please correct me if I am wrong.

In an effort to manage Bitcoin volatility for my personal financial needs I have decided to put some (about 30%) of my savings in physical gold by means of ETFs at the moment.

While other asset classes like stocks and bonds are currently in the recession phase, gold lets me make regular cash-outs not taking it from Bitcoin part, also hedging against inflation.

In an effort to safeguard this part of savings by avoiding dependence on a broker I am now figuring out a possibility of putting it in Paxos ERC20 gold token (I am not paid for advertising it and not holding currently any of it).
It seems to be a reliable as:

• I trust Interactive Brokers which partnered with Paxos for facilitating crypto trading, making it a "web of trust" case.
• it has a largest market cap among tokenized gold tokens and I hope that at least some institutional-size owners made a due diligence on it (poor argument with no direct causation, but still).

The main issue for me is with the blockchain on which the token is based - Ethereum blockchain (the token is also seen in BNB Smart Chain and Solana, but they seem to me even less reliable than Ethereum).

As per my current research, there are several issues with it (please correct me if I am wrong):

1. Ethereum Full Nodes seem to be not actually full. Despite the fact there is information on the internet that Ethereum Archive Node containing all the historical states can be derived from Ethereum Full Node, making the Full node a reliable one, there is a following statement on Ethereum official web-page:
"All states can be derived from a full node (although very old states are reconstructed from requests made to archive nodes)."
source: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/#full-node

I see a fundamental flaw in it - the first part tells us about "all states" and the second part tells us about "not the all states".

2. Newly adopted Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is making the network much less secure as it is much easier to concentrate the voting power in hands of a coordinated group of people.

So based on these two points I have concluded that for now it is more safe to hold rights for physical gold in the traditional financial system by means of a broker and an exchange traded fund.

Could you share your opinion on whether the above write-up contains flaws? Is it relatively safe to keep some portion of your assets in ERC-20 token? Does the traditional financial system with brokers and exchange traded funds provide more reliable infrastructure for holding rights for physical gold?

Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone,

Let me shortly describe the idea that have just came into my mind and let's discuss, criticize and develop it:

Thesis: Lending boosts an economy (if it is used to increase productivity but not to stimulate the consumption). It creates an additional cash flow. It helps funds to be distributed from those who possess more than he actually needs for living to those who knows how multiply the capital, who is in need for it. And this is a win-win game for both.

Objective reality: blockchain ecosystem does not have a developed lending system (as it main competitor, fiat financial system does). I don't take into consideration minor projects which are not influencing the blockchain community.

Action required: to develop such P2P lending system and make it reliable, simple and widely used.

Problems on the way: the risks of lending in crypto are too high to make the model robust now. Peers like you and I do not possess bank's instruments to collect debts (frankly speaking no one even wants to).

Possible way to solve: to make loans guaranteed and secured. To transfer proprietary rights via a smart contract if the loan obligation has been broken.

Example: I want my startup to grow faster. But I don't want to spend time becoming a fundraiser, making presentations, whitepapers, etc. I am a businessman and I just want to do my thing. I also possess a car, the proprietary rights for which are stated in Ethereum Blockchain. I go to a lending platform where I take a loan committing to pay 25% annually to a lender. If I break my obligations - the ownership of the car would be transferred to the lender.

So, finally, The Concept:

• to make ownership rights blockchain-based
• to make ownership rights transferable via smart-contracts
• to develop a lending platform with guaranteed loans

I would really appreciate if you share you opinion on the idea.

Thanks!

Yours,
Adamar