I prefer livecoinwatch over both blockpolio and coinmarketcap. 



Some of the features of this site that I enjoy are:

• I like its sleek design,
• it has a superior interface,
• the prices are updated in real time and automatically displayed on the screen.

As a result, you can follow your returns in real time.

As of today, I've managed to count 1913 currencies.

Exactly. Just look at the trading pairs at (almost) all exchanges. You will mostly find BTC/altcoin pairs, and much fewer LTC/altcoin or USDT/altcoin pairs. So, if everything else is being traded vs BTC, no wonder there's strong correlation. Hence, BTC is the center of crypto-economy and chances are it will remain so for a long time.

The correlation between BTC and the other coins may be broken on occasions, for example, when a certain alcoin becomes attractive for whatever reason, but on average, all cryptocurrencies follow the movement of bitcoin. From time to time I try to locate pairs without a strong correlation (they might be better for the purpose of speculation), but so far I haven't had much success.

Forgive me, but I don't see what good regulating Bitcoin would bring. The way Bitcoin is conceived from the very beginning is to be censorship and regulation resistant. That's one of its greatest feature. There's nothing a centralized government can do to regulate a decentralized system such as Bitcoin. Probably they can try to regulate the users of Bitcoin (by taxing, for example), which is exactly what's happening right now. But not much more than that.

Now, as far as the ICOs and other crypto-assets are concerned, I believe there should be some regulation. I mean, some of them are nothing but pure scam.

You can increase your safety if you just switch from Windows to Linux. I know it could be a huge trouble if you have never worked with it, but with today's user friendly distributions (Ubuntu) you can install it easily.

Then you can continue using the same methods of protection as before (paper wallet, hardware wallet, cold storage) just in a much safer environment. 

Or if you want to take security to an even higher level, you can choose specialized Linux distributions that substantially increase the security, like tails or bitkey.

If I understood the article correctly, he asks these 13 major exchanges to send him a report about their activities, all under the pretence of protecting NY citizens. I see no obligation there to comply. In addition, for the exchanges outside of NY, I don't think they have the authority to ask for this info.

Only Gemini is based in NY, check out this article and the embedded google map for an overview of how the exchanges are distributed throughout the world.

Mining bitcoin and mining most of the altcoins are two different stories. I have no idea exactly what side of mining you are interested in, but here are some hints:

For bitcoin, you would need specialized (read, expensive) equipment (ASIC). The time for mining bitcoin using "normal" hardware found in an average PC is long gone. Check out, for example, this thread to get an idea what I'm talking about. (Hint: there are linked images, follow them to see exactly what kind of setup is required).

For most of the altcoins, (depending on the coin and their hashing algorithm) you can still use PC hardware. Primarily I am talking about high-end graphic cards (GPUs). Ideally, you would need several GPUs in a rig (the more you can afford the better). Check this thread for more information. Even just one high-end NVidia or AMD graphic card can be enough for some coins, but in that case the profitability can be rather questionable. Note: "Some altcoins require ASIC as well, for example LTC or scrypt-based coins".

In either case, you would have to join a so called "mining pool" and try to mine coins together with other participants in the pool (and share the profit), because nowadays it is virtually impossible to solo mine any coin (or should I say any coin that means anything).

I would like to participate if there are free slots.

Bitcointalk Username: butka
Rank: Jr. Member
Current Post Count: 81+1
BTC Address: 1mzECjomy8kxTQhPsbLbjt8ZQmbiELFM2
ETH Address: 0xc8C08CC7486E48030e45cf2ab8235B8f89300951
Wearing Avatar and Personal Message: Not applicable, Yes

Thank you very much for your consideration.

How do you think people who find it difficult to set up a wallet will know what to do with the public key printed on their card? Or do you mean their address will be printed on the card?
Are they supposed to trust you with their private key? How will you ensure the security of their private key?

This is not necessarily true. The block can be hashed even when empty or nearly empty.
Miners immediately start to search for a valid hash, even before the block has any transactions. (I guess, the incentive to mine a new block is much larger than to collect the transaction fees!!)
This was puzzling me too, but then I understood somewhat more, thanks to @DannyHamilton.

Interesting read. Thanks for the link. No, the math is perfectly solid and unshakable, and, yes, Bitcoin's network is perfectly secure. And there's nothing to be afraid as long as you generate your private keys the way they are supposed to. But then again, people seem to do all sorts of crazy things, everywhere, not only with regard to cryptocurrencies.

In fact, on second thought, what if someone generated a private key in a totally insecure fashion.

For example, let's choose a simple passphrase "test" and perform the SHA-256 hash function it to generate a totally insecure private key.

We can do that online on this website (just enter "test"):

https://passwordsgenerator.net/sha256-hash-generator/

The result is a totally valid but insecure Private Key:

9F86D081884C7D659A2FEAA0C55AD015A3BF4F1B2B0B822CD15D6C15B0F00A08

and it looks random.

Now we import this private key on bitaddress.org --> (Click on "Wallet Details" and enter the above private key)

https://www.bitaddress.org

We have now obtained the corresponding Bitcoin address, which is:

1HKqKTMpBTZZ8H5zcqYEWYBaaWELrDEXeE

If we take this address to blockexplorer:

https://blockexplorer.com/address/1HKqKTMpBTZZ8H5zcqYEWYBaaWELrDEXeE

we can see that this address indeed contained some funds in the past, exactly 0.05634513 BTC (not any more).

What do you think, how likely is it to find some forgotten, unspent bitcoins in this totally crazy way?

One could extend this by searching passphrases that are more complicated.

The main assumption, of course, is that people generated private keys like this, just for fun, and then indeed sent some coins to them, which is not very likely.

If I understand correctly you are trying to find a collision address.

I think if you had the processing power necessary to brute force in this manner and find a collision, it would be many many times more profitable for you to mine bitcoins than to try to hack it.

You might want to check this post with more or less the same subject.

The thread is several months old, but nevertheless, from what I can tell, there are some pretty useful replies.

A comprehensive list of Abbreviations and crypto-related Terminology:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=126798.msg1346100#msg1346100

Thanks a lot! As for sMerits, to tell you the truth, I only realized that I had them 2 days ago. It won't be long before I start using them.

Thanks for the kind words.

Thank you so much Joe. I'm so glad I found your competition in the first place. I have to say, I've learned so much since I started this challenge. If nothing else, your challenge gives structure to my posts, by the simple fact that I know they are not going to be unnoticed. What I've learned the most is how little I understand Bitcoin. You've correctly noticed that I have a problem finding the correct boards to post in. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try with the two boards you indicated. I might skip next week due to personal reasons, but I'm here to stay in the long run.

I get it. This cannot be 1-to-1 mapping. It has to be many-to-1 mapping due to fact that the size of the first domain, by definition, is much larger than the size of second domain.

Thanks, I never thought of that. So using Hash functions as checksums is more important in this context. Even if there is no bad intention from any party involved in the process, computer bugs, corrupt data, or similar problems can always occur. Therefore it is important to check the integrity of the data.

I see, that makes a lot of sense. So the entities that actually mine the majority of the blocks have an additional advantage of being connected with fast connections, increasing their advantage (if only by a couple of seconds) over the rest of the network.

These are all pretty reassuring facts. Thanks for taking the time to clear these things up.