I assume you meant to spend more "on" a cold wallet but also you meant a hardware wallet.
A cold wallet simply means storing bitcoins offline with no accessible private keys, so you can make your own cold wallet with ease without $200 for a ledger or trezor.

That being said, are you really comfortable with launching such a  campaign in a community, telling people they could send whatever little they have to invest to a centralized exchange that might flop tomorrow? I would not take the risks, I would spend more effort to teach them how to make and manage their own wallets rather than having to deal with an angry mob that has lost thousands of dollars because I told them funds are #SAFU.

Of course, but that's why I was saying you need a mining pool, you can only claim you can accelerate that for sure if you have the means to actually got it confirmed.

What most of those guys who pray on newbies tipping them for the "accelerating" do is exactly that, go to ViaBtc and try to get into the free slots every hour, they are basically doing just what the user could have also but even so nobody can guarantee they would be able to submit even one each hour when there are a hundred doing so.
Lucius was doing this for free for a while, but he was open about what he was doing not claiming like others he has some hidden methods.

 

Has, at is has already implemented not that it plans to do so.
And even if you would consider future plans as making the requirement, two is obviously not the "many" you have claimed, not even mentioning the fact that you said change:


Adopting another currency is not changing the one they use, they are just exploring another system, not dropping the US, and neither will Panama if they do make BTC


This is nowhere near completely replacing a monetary system with another one.
I can understand optimism on future possibilities but one does live in the present, just because we're back on track and we're no longer watching red candles day after day doesn't mean everything has changed in the world also.

There is no such thing as a transaction accelerator unless you have your own mining pool.
As for the TX you mentioned, it was mined in block 762319 and it had a fee rate of 19.9 sat/vB .
This transaction:
https://mempool.space/tx/47481a61031dba23ab99cd6f87f0eedd4c50735543410c4b570d9c8589ff0d1d
was confirmed in the same block and it paid 17.0 sat/vB.

So the tx didn't get confirmed by some accelerator, it got confirmed simply because the fee was enough to be included in the next block and just six blocks down the road in 762325 transactions with 1sat/b got confirmed.

This doesn't make sense!
Somebody who can't shop with a debit card or isn't able to implement a debit card payment for his shop will definitely not be able to pay or receive bitcoins either, common, it's not like it gets any easier than using a debit card nowadays. If one can't master that bitcoin is on a completely new level!
It's like telling a person who can't remember his pin number how to enroll his card in Gpay and use his phone at a terminal, what do you think the rate of success is? Besides, if there are enough merchants tech savvy to allow people to convert their cash or their debit funds to cryptocurrencies through portable PoS, why aren't merchants implementing card payments directly? I agree that some will explore alternatives to avoid wasting time there but I don't think the conversion rates from fiat to BTC would be anything spectacular.


Nobody reads the manual on anything, it's not a Nigerian thing. I'm not reading the manual of any device unless it takes me an hour and I'm still not able to open the lid on some multicooker or wafflemaker I just brought.
But the danger with Bitcoin is a bit different, I don't see somebody who is unable to figure out how to make a simple online transfer being at the same time savvy enough to keep his coins secure and not getting scammed or hacked.

I wasn't sure of NY, that's why I said some, but as I learned in my brief contacts with the US system, you want something weird go to California
I don't know if it's because I only see the bad things making it into the news but I have a feeling the banking and payment system there sucks, I never understood how you guys still work with checks, the whole no PIN cards, or giving your card to the waiter!

Also, why would a government institution not be able to deal with some measly fees for payments when a damn coffee shop can!


Isn't the DMV that thing where you enter while you have a kid in elementary school and by the time you exit he has finished college and you're already in a retirement home?  I'm willing to bet they will force BitPay to do also a check-up before they allow you to open an account and go at least through Proof of Funds, just to have you deal with some papers.

We will see about the fees, but I have a feeling it's not going to be completely free or if there are no direct fees they will be hidden in the exchange rates. Companies like Bitpay has to make money somehow even if agencies don't and I doubt they will pay the 3rd party a fixed sum to have them accept crypto.

And where is the manipulation?
If your government decides on the 17th that it will cut 100k jobs and needs to devaluate the currency is it manipulation of the market or is it simple action taken to ensure the boat doesn't sink? That's one of the roles of the FED, of conducting national monetary policy, that's what it was designed for and this is how it acts when needed, of course it will influence the markets with such decisions because it was supposed to do so!

Too many see that one decision influences the market and think it's some kind of manipulation behind the scene when in fact it's quite clear how they do it why they do it. The market reacts so because just with every trade they are gambling on future prices, and a high increase in rates would normally slow down growth, but here we have optimism that even the increased rate is going up by less than it could and that it's nearing peak so the opposite happens.

Impairment loss!
Every company that bought into Bitcoin before the start of the year had an impairment loss in 2022:

Jack Dorsey's Block Reports $36M Impairment Loss on Bitcoin Holdings
MicroStrategy Logged A $170M Impairment Loss From Its Bitcoin Holdings in Q1 2022

It's not just Tesla, but yeah, I can understand why some around here would want only them to lose money.

But that's just like FDIC insurance, you have to first forfeit control over your coins, just as you do with your money and I'm not sure any kind of insurance or crypto bank will cover your losses if you have willing sent your coins from your account to a scammer.

I feel like this is more like a  situation of having the cake and eating it, you want to have complete control over something and you still want insurance because you know you might screw up, take advantage of the growth, take advantage of having your money out of anybody else control but at the same time demand payments if you make a mistake. On the other hand, the one doing this for you will have to take all the risks for a fee which of course you would want to be as low as possible.


Lol, survive, banks are making millions in fees right now from everybody buying and selling coins and using banks wires, credit cards and funding their paxum paypal or another wallet with bank money to buy and sell coins. I have a feeling that if we do the math they have gained a ton of money compared to the measly few thousand of transaction fees they've lost.

I really wonder how this could work, with most assets it's pretty easy to see those are lost or destroyed, with crypto how can you claim you have lost them, all you need is the key, so if those move in ten years you can still claim that finally, someone managed to get ahold of your lost USB that had a copy of the said keys. I can see that working for coins that were in a 3rd party custody as there will be a legal process on how those were lost and with proof of them moving with you having no control over it, but this is like insurance for the cash you have in your pocket.


It depends on from case to case, for example with my car insurance I'm at a total loss since I haven't had an accident in 5 years and one that was more than a bump or my fault in a decade at least as I don't even remember. One of my co-workers on the other hand has a record of destruction, he actually hit four cars one night, and managed to hit two in our company parking lot with such precision I don't know how it's even possible to scratch two cars in parallel on every single piece of metal on both of them, door, front and back panel. And he still pays like 1000 euros a year for insurance while he has for sure destroyed things close to a few hundred thousand.
As a relative said, insurance is a waste of money till you break something.

Let me be the one with a different opinion here.
There are way too many veterans who scream FUD even when a fact is as blue as the sky, it is certain beyond any doubt and they still scream it's not true just because they don't like it and it will hurt the price. There were hundreds who screamed MtGox collapsing was FUD, there were thousands screaming China ban is FUD, LUNA was FUD, FTX going down is FUD!

FUD has become the perfect reply, you don't like it scream FUD! It has become the perfect excuse also, just recently I've read in one topic of an exchange closing and this was their take on it:


Blame everything on FUD, the great crusade against FUD, FUD  the enemy of mankind!

And I'm going to be perfectly honest with this, whenever I see bad news and the first two or three comments are saying this is FUD, if I go deeper and check their history and I see more FUD being mentioned left and right I take a memo of not ever trusting those people judgment, as it's clear they are not doing any of it.

it looks like:



This is the same thing that was tried a lot of times, it covered the news the same way and it didn't lead to anything because the major problem that the $ trade caused did not disappear when they started trading shitcoins. Why do some countries in the EU want their currency back? Because they want back the ability to devalue the currency, of printing money, of doing the same things that, well, they wouldn't be able to do with Bitcoin either for example.

If I want to sell one of my products I look at the price It cost me to manufacture add the profit margin, arrive at 100 units of it, change that to $, and ask you the amount in $, what would change if I were to directly ask you 97 pesos?
All this dedollarisation is a witchhunt started by the counties who see their economies in shamble because they can't prop their currency anymore, why do some still trade in $ when they are neighbors and they have their own depends on currencies and so on? Because they don't trust the other, that's why.

And who is going to trust:
- a common currency with one of the players being Inlfagentina or Defaultina?
- a common currency of two countries where you're not allowed to trade in other currencies, where your $ is automatically converted to ruble and the other is one experiencing a 50% inflation and a devaluation of its own currency of nearly 10x in five years?

Would you do business in this?


I find it really amusing, here we are on bitcointalk, and we are discussing on how some countries are planning to overthrow the $ by, creating their own shitcoins they can manipulate with ease! 
Out of pure curiosity, how would those plans go along with the rest of the world adopting Bitcoin as Salvador did?

OP, you're a little bit late to the party, the currencies have already peaked and are settling down to the normal 5yo average path, the sudden inflow that triggered that was later erased by some converting the same currency to us dollars as short-term inflation took the bite with the huge increase in demand of everything. Rent prices were going insane in some of those, especially in the big cities.
Here is one example
https://jam-news.net/how-the-war-in-ukraine-affects-the-real-estate-market-in-georgia/
The gain temporarily helped prices of imported goods, then it was offset completely long term as demand boomed and so did the purchasing power thanks to the inflow.


This is now about the growth of GDP, it's about the currency pair, the economy of Switzerland didn't grow extraordinarily during the crisis but the franc still appreciated 20% versus the USD.

You can look at both the three currencies mentioned and see the same bump happening at the start of the war:
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=AMD
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=GEL
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=KZT

Then you can go and check some of the currencies of countries that were not involved but still had a good year, like Vietnam or any other Asian country, and see that the pattern is not there.


I'm sure the FSB would love that!

BTTC is a future derivatives exchange, not a spot exchange.

I seriously can't believe what I'm defending here since I was one of the biggest haters of the former OKChina (now BTTC) and the gang like Huobi but just because the average Joe isn't using it it doesn't mean there is no usage. How many topics and how many users of CME you've seen a round? Does this make them irrelevant?

If you're looking to trade BTC against Shiba of course BTTC is not the choice, if you want to push your luck and do a 150x leverage, yeah, 150x!!! then there are very few choices that have been around and still have some kind of reputation comparable to BTTC.


If you're looking for a hold, then you don't need an exchange at all, you need a cold wallet, storing your coins on an exchange is a big no!
If you look for simple buy/sell options or sending coins to some partners then BTTC is not the best choice at all, as I said it's for pure mad leverage trading if you're not into this stick with the big spot exchanges!

Hmm, how do we call this thing, being lucky or truly unlucky that a pack is so cheap? It's usually around 5-7 for a pack here depending on the blend. I'm usually against taxation but making things like alcohol and tobacco cheap for countries with low income shouldn't be a thing, normally one should think of making them even more prohibitive than in rich countries where they can afford this, but it seems like every politician wants to keep those cheap
Panem et circenses to keep the masses happy.


Yeah, you have low costs with gas and probably bike transport, low wages, if that is applied to a high-density populated area you can bring those fees down, anyhow I have zero delivery fees here for some only shops but it still can't beat in store prices, at most it'ss the same prices but you will never get a better deal online alone for groceries, most real good deals are of limited availability and not even feature in the app as they are sold out in hours.
Second, most of the chain stores have a 20-50% discount on products near the expiring date, those are only for in person so somebody in desperate need of savings will still go to a physical store.

I still think that the best way to save is by what you buy not really what method of shopping you use.

Are they even able to enforce such a thing?
We're not talking here about accepting a payment method in a legal tender but a completely different type of payment.


They are already using that for taking debit and credit card payments, the middleman is already there, for them to process a debt card or a payment made via a thrid party to the same bank account is not a real difference, plus they will always have the option of making the client pay for that, I was actually amazed that till recently a lot of those agencies were charging you extra to pay with a card, so one can expect some extra fees of 1-3% with a crypto payment.

Even if it's obviously going to be far more than ideal, it's still better than what we have currently, which is nothing! 


Since in some states the DMV still charges like 1.99% for CC, pretty obvious they will do the same thing, I don't see any organization being that generous unless the cost will be directly funded by the state.

I really don't understand how KYC would have been of any help, first, those IDs would have to be real which you have no way of checking,  then you would have to actually go and take action in court for $200, and common, nobody is going to do so, and to actually make this whole thing even crazier I some countries you're not even allowed to request it nor to store it and you would have to be a registered business to do such a thing, the fines for this would totally eclipse the $200.

Anyhow, it was basically a no-collateral loan, and the "newbie" defaulted, somebody took a gamble on a 6/4 bet on the trust you can put in strangers and lost.


Do you really think stake is going to take action based on a screenshot of an account and get involved in this mess? No way!

This looks like a mess, they will only need to meet those requirements if they are presenting themselves or are perceived as professionals., it would be peanuts to avoid such things and easy to win in court if they are ever charged.

The SEC has been doing it far easier, you promote something and you don't disclose you're getting paid by it:

We all know how it ended with Kim, 1.2 million fine for takign 250k and three years to stay out of promoting crypto.

As for advice in general and not shilling, it's pretty hard to quantify those, there might be guys who nailed every price change last year and now they are not sure what day is tomorrow, even if one has the trading background if he sucks completely how do you deal with this?

More like inherently deflationary.
The circulating supply of Bitcoins still grows, the fact that there is a cap on the amount that is ever produced doesn't mean that right now it isn't inflating the number of coins in circulation.
If the FED would declare that they set up a limit of 100 tredecillion of dollars to be printed all 2100 with just a few trillion a minute till that date would that make the $ deflanatory since it will have a fixed limited maximum supply?

Right now the amount of coins available on the market does increase, every day 900 more are printed each day, it's for everyone to see!


Can you name one country besides Salvador (which btw did so before the war) that has done such a thing?
Furthermore, Salvador still uses the $ and with the latest polls coming from there, even the population does so more than Bitcoin.

Should have mentioned, he is in Spain so I don't know if they have a deduction scheme on pair as in the US or if they have one at all, and second, now that I re-read the discussion, he said he bought, maybe because he bought them prior the prices were better and there was no such discount on the 100T machines? I remember bitmain slashed the prices a few months ago but not that far...

Anyhow, obviously at those prices now it makes no sense, as phil said if you have expensive energy (cough!  ) you simply stop mining, you don't go for gear that earns you pennies.


Hmm, more than 3 days and the pace is still quite low, this reminds me of the diff adjustment in December, it started just like this and almost all of us said it was an anomaly it will get corrected but it kept going till we had a - 7.32 %. This is how that looked three days into it:

Current Pace:   90.8982%  (483 / 531.36 expected, 48.36 behind)

But right now I see no reason for the scaling down, in November the price was really getting hammered, now optimism is all over the place.