Obama's speech was directed at the current situation between the FBI and Apple, where the FBI wants/wanted Apple to decrypt a terrorist's phone.

I do think it can also be applied to Bitcoin (although that likely was not on his mind during the speech).

If people have issues in seeing someone store their own money by their own means in a secure way, then that's jealousy or greed. Either that or you work for the financial system

If the Pandora Box is open, you can kiss goodbye to your privacy. It only takes one example to set a bad precedent in this case. I am glad Apple said no to the FBI's demand. This is what terrorists do: make governments break their own laws and principles through the fear they spread and their actions.

If encryption is cracked by governments you can even say goodbye to the internet. We cannot let this happen. If somehow governments find a way to attack Bitcoin we must immediately discover new ways to protect ourselves and our funds. But that's pretty hard to happen, at least for now

1. It's probably not connecting anywhere. If you have a old version you should probably update. Do you have a green icon on bottom right?
2. Yes, you can. If you used a portable version or just the executable you can just delete Electrum folder.

Transactions are listen on their own section, with info about them.
Creation of new wallets... Yes, that's something I agree that it can be simplified For addresses, you can generate new ones right on the GUI.
Regular payments are on the transactions section, one just has to label them correctly.
Fees can be automatically processed while the user instructs himself on how to properly set fees (if he wants to do so, which he should)
Connections are mentioned on the bottom of the GUI.

As you say, all these are there... And there's no need for command line usage to check on them.

It's like when you teach a kid to use an OS... There's always some things he needs help with, even if the GUI is the best one in the world.


You can point your client to a wallet.dat wherever you like. But yes, that's definitely not user friendly

Never heard of your organization either, good to see you accepting Bitcoin donations! You'll definitely have success with it. And good to see computers being reused for a greater cause

It's spelled Electrum. You should really read on both and try them. They're both safe, it just comes down to user preference and what you like to use more. I've tried both and I prefer Electrum. It's feature rich enough and I find it more simple to use. MultiBit is also very good, but I don't like the GUI as much as Electrum (personal preference, again).

Bitcoin Core GUI is really, really simple. I take it the person who spoke to you doesn't really understand much about computers or any tech at all... One things is being a Bitcoin beginner, the other thing is finding Bitcoin Core confusing. I wonder what he would think if he looked at Electrum or even Armory

Speaking more seriously, the current GUI is very adequate for beginners. It has recent transactions, your balance and a menu to send them with simple fields where you put an address, the amount, and you even have help to input fees (you can even leave it and Core defines fees automatically). If the guy has suggestions in order to improve the GUI, he can sign up here and speak his mind.

Yes, it did influence and similar things still influence Bitcoin. It's because of these banking issues that Bitcoin was created.

Yes, anything is possible. A password can be brute forced, or guessed. But if you have a strong password, you reduce the possibility of being stolen if you're hacked.

You should store the majority of your coins offline.

Always good when new commerce sites accept Bitcoin, especially websites with so many items

They went bankrupt a while ago and there was quite a scandal with the "millionaire" wages they paid some of their employees. They still exist and they were apparently restructuring and had a new roadmap. Let's see what they come up with, I highly doubt that it will be anything worthwhile after all the troubles they had.

Core is not rubbish. It has had performance bumps throughout releases... Just choose a wallet that fits you better.

I guess they're putting their own money in for the first few cards... If they didn't do that, the money would probably go to advertising. Way better way to spend the money this way.

Bitcoin will never be out of Beta. The concept and the network will always be developed further. There is a huge responsibility in releasing Bitcoin Core 1.0. People will find this to be a final version and demand developers to fix everything that might be wrong or less good ASAP. 1.0 implies the responsibility of releasing a final product, something that devs cannot deliver.

This has been happening for quite some time (maybe a year, or a bit more, I'd say), and admins/mods do a great job and are constantly on top of it. Some accounts went as far as copying from non-bot members and posting in the exact same thread... When you see something odd, just report, I do so quite often.

Things are being done. Read Core and Classic roadmap in case you're wondering what's being done. We already have two proposals going. You are in the right of supporting bigger blocks, but adding videos and gifs is just ridiculous. Each thing in its place, and the blockchain is no place for funny videos, you can check YouTube for that. If you lose your investment, that's your issue, not anyone else's. I also find it odd that someone worried with its investment wants to bloat the blockchain further with things that do not contribute to Bitcoin in any way...

Trezor keeps the keys in itself separated from the online environment to which it is connected to. Transactions are signed on the device and sent to the online computer. Exactly the same as Cold Storage, but with the convenience of being able to be online.

For info on how it does it you'd probably have to review its code


Most likely in a similar way Trezor communicates with MyTrezor. There's a plugin for Electrum that allows you to control your Trezor.

When MyTrezor is offline you just use another client to manage your funds. And no, the point isn't being offline. The point of Trezor is exactly the opposite: be online, but having your coins secure just like having the keys offline.

When you upgrade, SSD should be your priority in order to run Core faster, as far as I can see from syncing speed feedbacks.

Do you have any settings on your Bitcoin Core shortcut pointing to a different datadir?

The transaction was definitely broadcasted, otherwise it wouldn't appear on blockchain.info, it just didn't have any confirmation yet. Deleting the wallet won't help, the transaction will either go through eventually or it will be dropped from the mempools, at which point you can rebroadcast it again (maybe with a bigger fee, to help it go through faster).