Thank you Madz. It was a real pleasure working with you, and despite all the ups and downs, I always knew that this was the right campaign to be in. I am looking forward to working with you in the future again. All the best to the IOST team and their project as well.

There are people who root for the downfall of bitcoin, claiming that their favorite coin will take the leadership position. What they fail to realize is the following: should this hypothetical situation ever happen, that would be the end of the entire crypto ecosystem. The other coins are just pale copies of bitcoin and have never been thoroughly tested the way bitcoin has been tested. The other coins have inferior characteristic in terms of security features, quality of their developer teams, and other features in general. It should suffice to say that Ethereum, the closest crypto-currency competitor in terms of marketcap has been hacked in the past, whereas Bitcoin has managed to stay intact all these years. So, no, I don't see that it could ever happen that bitcoin could lose its number 1 place. The other coins can only fight for the runner-up spot.

 

I don't know specifically about MasterNode (MN) coins, but in general, I think their wallets look very much the same because they copy the same original code.

You can clone a coin with some basic knowledge about compiling and linking (in Windows and Linux) and by performing a lot of  "copy/paste" operations on the source code (to adjust it to your needs).

For example, the instructions in the articles linked below will give you an overview of what it takes to clone Litecoin (scrypt algo):

http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=scrypt_altcoin_cloning_guide&rev=1391981820

https://vcoin-project.github.io/cloning-litecoin/

If you want to clone a MN coin you would probably have to find a suitable source code (maybe the source code of DASH?) to clone.

I don't think that fiat money could be totally replaced by crypto-currencies any time soon. But in the long run, sure, why wouldn't it be possible. And in the meantime, they could happily coexists together.

In a broader sense (not in the context of crypto-currency) using Blockchain technology can revolutionize many aspects of our society, including healthcare, digital records, the copyright sphere, storage, an other areas. But I would like to see the blockchain technology implemented and used in the election system. It could provide transparency and totally eliminate fraud. Voting on the blockchain could help prevent government manipulation, which often happens even if the society is perceived or declared as democratic. And as an additional benefit, the voters could vote remotely. IMO, voting is something that determines our lives to a great extent, and there shouldn't be even a shred of doubt that it hasn't been fair or transparent.

I didn't know Electrum Personal Server existed. It would require running a full node, which is not yet something I'm willing to do, but I'm planing to in the near future. It would be a great combination, as I like Electrum's features and its user interface and running a full node will definitely make Electrum more private and secure. Thank you very much for the hint.

Not only is this type of malware attack old, but people can relatively easily protect themselves from it.
All it takes is to double check the first 2 or 3 digits of the bitcoin address as well as the last 2 or 3 digits after pasting.
It doesn't require any technical skills, just common sense and elementary logic.


Still, if the amount of stolen bitcoins is so large, I wonder what does this say about the average bitcoin user? Or maybe they are
just feeling overly confident about the security of their operating system that they just click the Send button without double checking.

Well now if they use Bloom Filters to query the blockchain from their servers, the question still remains is the privacy compromised between the local copy of Electrum I have installed and their servers? Or you want to say that these filters are used right from my local Electrum?

Exactly. Thanks for providing this information. Strangely enough, I was under the impression the there should be some privacy still present while using electrum. So their servers may choose to keep my data if they wanted, or they may choose to delete it. No, that it matters too much to me personally, but in any case it's good to know.

Obviously, if I run a full node, I can query the copy of the public ledger locally, and my privacy is very strong. Nobody but myself is able to see what addresses I'm interested in.

On the other end of the spectrum, if I let some centralized system (web wallet) hold my keys, then obviously I have given up my privacy.

But what about if I run a SPV client (wallet)? Then the client has to rely on other full nodes in the system to query for addresses. And let's suppose that the nearby nodes are honest and that I'm not concerned with security. But what about privacy? Can it potentially be compromised by say some third party intercepting my queries and collecting a list of my addresses?

In particular, Electrum, as far as I know, is SPV wallet. How strong my privacy is with Electrum?

I see. So the smaller exchanges are not immune to these patterns as well. While it is easy to spot the Bart Patterns in hindsight, the main problem is how to predict their creation in advance. Then you can even take advantage of them.

And the other question related to this one is how to protect yourself from being manipulated in this way. If I understood the article correctly, the solution could be not to set stop losses triggers (or rather not to set them at obvious targets) and actively watch the price action.

For example, if you have a stop loss at an obvious target, say, below a support line, when the support is being broken, big traders will buy your stop loss and then go long. And big traders may even deliberately drive the market down to collect from this liquidity pool, even if their intention is to go long.

Now if you didn't have stops triggers at obvious targets, you could be safer. You could see that the support is being broken, but soon afterwards the opposite trend will appear and you will be fine.

Thanks for the link. I see that your tutorial has touched upon many facets of Electrum. As far as creating watch-only wallet is concerned, it contains more or less the same information as in this post, only in a very condensed form. For experienced users, that's more than enough, but beginners would certainly appreciate a more detailed explanation.


I'll have to look into it. The images in this guide are edited in the good old Photoshop.

Thanks for that. I figured it could be useful to make a guide with images because it is not always clear what key to export, and then, where and how to import it. 


Wow. It has never occurred to me that watch-only wallets can be used that way, to scam people. It's scary how creative these scumbags can be. So, the victim is happy believing they have obtained some BTC, until the moment comes they decide to spend their funds. Since they don't possess the private keys, they cannot spend the coins. And the thief may decide to keep these unspent transaction outputs intact indefinitely, fueling the illusion of the victim. People really need to educate themselves to be able to avoid frauds of this kind.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've never tried that before, but I think if you just paste your bitcoin address, the watch-only wallet will be just for that single address. With the described method above [using the master public key (MPK)], you can get a watch-only wallet for all the addresses in the Electrum HD wallet because they are all derived from this one MPK.

I don't know how accurate the above statement is. Wikipedia has a similar sentence describing PoW, which I find weird. IMO, proof of work doesn't have as its main goal to deter DDoS attacks. Proof of Work secures the network against double spending and makes the public ledger immutable, but I'm not sure PoW has anything to do with DDoS attacks. DDoS can prevent a node from functioning by deliberately flooding it with data, like fake transactions. An attacker with enough resources could probably temporarily disable a full node with DDoS, but the network has countermeasures to protect itself, and PoW is certainly not one of these measures. Hopefully some of the more experienced members of this forum can clarify this. Thanks.

I'll second that, and I'll add that it is especially BS when asked at the end of the campaign, which happens from time to time. It's fine though if they CLEARLY and OPENLY state that KYC is required at the beginning of the campaign. Than we can choose to opt out and no harm is done.

That's a good question. I guess you are asking about GPU mining. It could be profitable, depending on the country you live in, of course. But you have to factor in the price of the hardware, in case you don't already own some GPUs ready for mining. If you have to buy the hardware, you won't have any revenue until your mining profit has covered the price of your GPUs. It could be months or even a whole year to start making some revenue. And who knows what will happen with mining in one year's time. All in all, if you just want to get a feel about what mining means, start with a low investment in hardware and learn how things work. Then you may decide to scale, but you will have already figured out this business.   

Exactly. The hedge fund in question has a vested interest in ETH and EOS obviously and that's the reason
why they are bullish on these platforms. It is outrageous that they predict ETH to be the top runner in 10
years time. In my opinion, ETH may not even exist in 10 years time.

As for LTC, they may be partly right stating that it is a clone of BTC and that it serves as a test playground
for BTC. Still, with its low transaction fees, LTC may serve its purpose and I don't give merits to their claim
that it has no reason to exist.

As for XRP, they are right IMO. XRP is very close to be labeled as a security, which it is, and therein lies
the possible problem for investors.

Are you using TOR to connect? If yes, that may be the reason for the error. Check this post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1771866.0

Oh man, that sucks. They looked legit, at least to me, and I was considering joining a part of their campaign. I don't know why I didn't, but it wasn't because I they looked suspicious. What a waste of time and energy. If the campaign manager knew about it and kept silent, than you are right. Hard to prove though. I can't help but ask myself now how many of the current bounty campaigns are scam too.

Watch-only wallet is a great way to safely "watch" the status of your wallet and the history of your transactions from your "ordinary" computer connected to the internet. At the same time, your private keys remain hidden in an off-line, air gapped computer (cold storage).

This post is a guide how to create a watch-only wallet for the current version of Electrum (3.1.3).

We will assume that you already have an air gapped computer with your Electrum wallet on it. If you don't, check out this post about what it means to create an air gap and then install a new Electrum installation on it, making sure you have the genuine Electrum software.

1. Go to the air gapped computer. The only thing you have to do there is exporting your master public key. Knowing the master public key is enough to reproduce all Bitcoin addresses associated with your wallet.  Click on Wallet --> Information like this:



and then copy the provided Master Public Key that starts with xpub...:



Copy it onto a USB flash to be transferred to your online computer.

2. Go to the online computer. You should have another Electrum installation there. Click on File --> New/Restore:



3. Give a name to your new watch-only wallet.



4. Choose Standard Wallet:



5. Choose Use a master key:



6. Paste the previously exported master public key:



7. You may choose a password to encrypt this wallet:



8. And now there's a message telling you that this wallet you've created is watch only:



As it says, you won't be able to spend bitcoins with it, but you will be able to monitor your funds and transactions.

For example, if you expect a payment, you will see it there, and you won't have to start up the air gapped computer for that.

Moreover, you will be able to prepare transactions and save them on a file to be signed by your air gapped wallet. Then the signed transactions can be brought back to your watch only wallet to be broadcast to the Bitcoin network. This is very useful, because you never put your air gapped computer in danger by connecting it to the internet. But we won't go into that in this guide.

Note: Your master public key should always be kept hidden. If an attacker steals it, they will know all your public keys associated with all your addresses. While they won't be able to steal your bitcoins, your privacy will be compromised.

Useful Link:

http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/coldstorage.html