That depends.

What you're basically asking is if you can have a pet snake and never be bitten. The best way to guarantee that is don't have the snake. Generally speaking, no, you wouldn't worry simply connecting to the Internet. Absent local machine access a hacker needs a machine to "answer" instructions in some way which can be exploited. This might be a daemon running like telnet or a web server etc. There is also software like PC anywhere which allows remote computer control. Modern Windows computers often reach out remotely for "automatic updates" unless disabled. Throw the NSA into the mix and who knows when your computer is being remotely controlled. However, if your machine isn't set up in anyway to respond to network connections, you do nothing via web browser, and nobody inadvertently turns on or installs exploitable software directly your machine should be okay. The uncertainty is knowing no doors exist over time.

That won't help. He wants to use a computer to store coins which is allowed to connect to the Internet at various times. If your computer is compromised it only takes milliseconds to transfer sensitive information somewhere else once a connection is given. That's why the strongest options are use something like Armory with an offline computer, a completely offline paper wallet, or the Trezor.

^ Yes, I expressed similar sentiments in a past post.

If you want to protect yourself from hackers see my above post. If you want to protect yourself from the NSA you need to start migrating to open source software.

Be sure you encrypt your wallet with a strong password and you should be fine.

However, for very large amounts I'd look into a trezor, cold storage etc.

The problem is a computer is a multi-purpose device. It's meant to run programs; and there are very many ways for external programs to eventually execute on your computer, not all of them benign. This is why very many computer users do experience malware at some point. Could you be sure nobody did any Internet browsing or inserted arbitrary flash drives on your computer over an extended time? For substantial amounts you might be stressed ever leaving your computer unattended.

If you're intent on this route, however, you can button down your computer as well as you can. Don't install anything and turn off absolutely everything, javascript, flash, browser plug-ins, everything. Also, as LiteCoinGuy points out be sure you have backups to the wallet which exist, ideally on printout as well as USB. Also remember it's not a good idea to keep every single coin you have at one single point of failure.

Interestingly the word coin itself can be both plural and singular: I dropped my coins. He inherits a lot of coin in the will.

While Merriam Webster doesn't show the plural use case and Oxford does, I believe those sentences are grammatically correct in both American and British English.

So I'd say as with much related to Bitcoin: do what you like  

Isn't it a conflict of interest purporting to be a news site, but openly pushing coin investment advice? From your About page:


Bold emphasis mine.

Think I'll stick with CoinDesk

Interesting thread. D&T you're both wrong and right

It's true that in American English we often add 's' to denote plurality but it's also true our language comes from Europe where the 's' isn't always included for plurality, as in 50 euro.

This is a reason they say English is one of the hardest languages to learn. It's f-ed up and not always consistent.

This may be difficult or inconvenient, but not impossible. For anyone serious about complete anonymity some usability tradeoffs might be tolerable.


Yes, so when making an effort to be truly anonymous it's probably a good idea to use different wallets for different types of activity and keep them technically separate...

The way Bitcoin works all address balances are public. This is inherently necessary because Bitcoin is trust-less and decentralized. There has to be a way for everyone to verify who has what.

This is where a lot of confusion about Bitcoin anonymity comes into play. Reading the above doesn't sound very anonymous, and it's not usually. For someone willing to do the work a lot of information can be gleaned, guessed at and inferred from analysis of the block chain.

The reason Bitcoin can be completely anonymous is because address ownership is not always tied to real world identities. With Bitcoin you only need to (mathematically) show the network you have the private key to move coins, no identity required. Therefore, if you can disassociate all of your real world identity from your virtual coin ownership you can use Bitcoin anonymously. It's possible to do this if you understand how the Internet and computers work on a technical level. There are many techniques which can be effective, and tools like Tor and coin mixing services make it fairly easy for the technically astute. Otherwise, only "pseudo" anonymity exists by default (non-obvious identity relationships).

Proving he controls the private key proves nothing. As gmaxwell said there is no reason to doubt he owns the address. He could also be trolling us all, having knowingly used the address in the past. Since we're talking about the likelihood of explanations that is yet another one more likely than a collision and also a bad PRNG in Bitcoin-qt I'd say. No offense to the OP of course. Just an objective observation.

Many exchanges have an API. You then can connect from a server using the language of your choice. For example here is the page for BTC-e:

https://btc-e.com/api/documentation

Agreed. He even hit Wanya's high notes toward the end of the song 

I didn't compare the US to Egypt. I compared armies which are made up of people.

The U.S. debt has ballooned from about 8 to over 16 trillion dollars in only 6 years. You might want to view what just 1 trillion dollars looks like.

Giant armies are made up of ordinary people who may not always follow top down orders as we saw with Mubarak/Morsi in Egypt. If a giant army mandates Easter confetti have value will that confetti always have value? Also, there is no European army backing the euro, which instead is made up of several member states.

I know they charged for Seller accounts, about $100 I think (may have varied), as a way to filter for serious sellers. They probably also had some kind of Buyer/Seller payment escrow of which they could take a percentage.  But they could also charge for other things, like featured placement/advertising etc. There was no shortage of ways to make money. That's capitalism at work. There was so much pent up demand for such a marketplace that it was easily a financial success. That's why there are already at least two more underground marketplaces I've seen already looking to fill the void, with more planned.

That's why I said "much" not all. The vital piece of information for me is the bank account wire. I can't see that being easy to fabricate. I'm not saying impossible, but certainly not easy. For any fabrication a government makes the risk must be weighed for the possibility of being caught, and if so the ramifications of that. In this case the assassination story IMO leans more on the side of truthfulness of the feds this time.

Hmm, looks like I have to withdraw much of my skepticism about the assassination text allegedly found on DPR's server:


Such a wire from a bank account in Australia should be easy to verify but harder to fake.

That's what I'm saying people should not be so quick to believe.

Think of it this way. SR had posted rules for behavior. It wasn't an anything goes Wild West environment. That doesn't sound like the kind of site an immoral ruthless, technically skilled by the way, person would set things up. If SR operated exclusively in Amsterdam, for example, where many drugs are legal then it would be hard to say DPR should have been charged with anything other than operating a professional business. It's only the fact that the site clearly challenges the way things are done in the US that is the problem. Isn't it convenient we now find out DPR was such an immoral a-hole? Good thing the feds found his servers before more people got "hit".

I'm saying we only have one side of the story here, that of the feds.

EDIT: that should say some drugs are "tolerated", but not legal in Amsterdam.

Guys don't believe the assassination story so quickly. According to the official documents nobody seems to have actually been killed or even exist by the alleged names recovered from Silk Road servers, which have been in FBI custody...

That kind of personality seems totally out of character for DPR. I don't know him but his postings show clear thoughtfulness, like his response to the closing of Atlantis, or his posted rules for SR instead of letting it be an "I don't care what you do, just pay me bitcoins" environment. Hardly seems the type to be ruthless about murder. On the other hand the Feds would look good framed that way, like the heroes who shut down this site with illegal (according to US law) drugs from this clearly evil person.

Before you convict DPR keep in mind the assassination target seems not to exist.