With a bible, you can modify the procedure so that each word is from a particular bible verse. You could give each book an index number, then use the xth word in nth chapter of the book.

You still need the right translation, but there is less variety among editions, and translations don’t regularly change

A more elegant solution would be to make this a brain wallet. Either via a "traditional" brainwallet, or by converting the 12 words to a xprivkey in a non-standard (nor BIP39 compliant) way.

This will allow you to generate the words in a way that is actually random. Even if you were to use software that uses flawed RNG, it will not be as big of a problem because you are using a book that your device will never know about.

This particular solution has issues similar to that of using a brain wallet. For example, if the specific book is not written down anywhere, you may forget which book you are using, or your next of kin will have no way of recovering your coin when you die.

You can mitigate your chances of losing access to the particular version of the book by choosing a book that will likely continue being published, like the bible.

They are making an argument against keeping their wallet software open source. I am not sure if I agree with their argument, and I know that other wallet software has had similar problems with malicious clones. Electrum is one example. Unlike electrum, I understand that Trust Wallet is a mobile wallet, that must be downloaded via an app store. It is much more difficult for someone to find the "correct" version of an app on the iTunes/google app store than it is to find the correct/official website for bitcoin core or for electrum.

The fact that binance manages the wallet software certainly gives me pause. However, I think that the "open source" claim is being confused. I don't see the claim on the download page in either the iTunes nor google play app stores. I do however see that people can "submit" DApp's that can run "on top of" Trust wallet.

This is probably a better venue than the forum. There may from time to time be threads about wallets that contain malware, or are otherwise malicious, and there will be some people giving warnings, but for a newer user, it is often difficult to judge if these warnings should be heeded to or not.

bitcoin.org does not have discourse, and as such, there are no potential scammers promoting malicious wallet software.

I would tend to agree with this. Snowden has more or less been loyal to Russia for a long time. Part of this is likely due to his own self-perservation (without said loyalty, he would likely face the death penalty).

It is unfortunately likely that Russia has seen sensitive documents belonging to the US that have nothing to do with his whistleblowing activities. One can argue is this outweighs the benefits of him making public the abuses by the US intelligence agencies against its own citizens....

To answer the OP's question: the forum DB is not indexed on the columns that contain the text of posts. This means when you try to search for a posts containing a particular text/phrase, the forum will have to search through all posts (that the person performing the search has access to) in order to provide results.

To index a column means that the data is stored in a particular order, and this takes additional scarce resources. With there being many alternatives to searching on the forum (such as google, plus multiple forum members have their own searchable database of forum posts), there is little need to invest resources into the forum's search functionality.

I have to disagree with you on this point.

With LN, it is possible to redeem your coin from LN and claim your coin on-chain. The LN protocol makes it unnecessary for users to do this on a regular basis, and as such they will not redeem their coin via an on-chain transaction on a regular basis.

If an individual wants to redeem the coin they have on LN, they can do so. This does not mean that every individual needs to be able to transfer between LN and on-chain every day.

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In terms of scalability, I don't think it is possible to increase the number of transactions in a block by one without increasing the total block size by some constant. In other words, the total time incremented block size will be at best O(1) in relation to the number of users who have at least one on-chain transaction during that time increment.

It is possible that Mashinsky was being questioned about decisions he made and in lieu of answering the questions, he decided to resign. At least one regulator is saying that Celsius had multiple financial setbacks over the years. Celsius was a bank, and the business models for banks really do not allow for you to even be in a position to possibly have major setbacks.

I understand the operating losses, as they are likely the result of mispricing and/or a mismatch of deposit/lending volume. Having "one time" events is really more concerning to me.

What gives you the right to tell people how to manage their money?

I can tell people I think they are making a bad decision, and I can tell people how I would manage specific situations when asked, but I have no authority over anyone to tell them they have to do something a certain way. I don't think you do either.

True, but the point I was trying to make is that a person can make a temporary back they intend to immediately destroy after verifying they have made a backup, and there would never be a warning against not having a backup. If having a backup is not required, it is unlikely that someone will create a temporary backup, so someone intent on not creating a prominent backup will choose the "skip backup" option, and receive appropriate warnings.

Yea, that was a typo. I fixed it.

Yes, checks are still used, but are becoming less frequently used.

I think the most common error when a merchant takes out the incorrect amount would be when the customer calls the merchant, and a representative accepts payment via phone and the agent keys in an incorrect amount. These will typically be isolated incidents, and the merchant will have both records of the call itself, and the fact that the payment would be illogical according to the the status of the account. Problems with "auto pay" are very rare, and most commonly, merchants will provide a statement (usually electronically) to the customer advising of the amount to be withdrawn, so the customer can address issues and/or suspend auto pay if they are being billed for an incorrect amount.

Another similar option (with similar benefits) would be to allow people to purchase merit from the forum in order to rank up. I think a lot of people would probably be interested in buying Lamborghini memberships, but some may also be close to Legendary but are struggling to get enough merit to rank up, and may want to pay to get the ranking.

I disagree. In my experience, theymos is open to listening to arguments in favor of changing policy, and will do so if a sufficiently strong argument is made.

It seems that theymos already seems to be open to long-term deals, as he said that he will accept private offers to advertise. I think long-term deals are more of an issue for advertisers because there are many unknown variables, such as how effective an ad is, forum traffic in the future, how profitable a business will be in the future, etc.

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Theymos mentioned that he thought the process of buying ad space has a lot of friction. This could be addressed by automating the process of which advertisers purchase advertising. The initial vetting/setup is probably something that shouldn't be automated. Someone could potentially create an automated ad buying software that advertisers could buy ads on. I am not sure if the cost of creating these software would be worth the potentially higher revenue for the forum, especially if it needs to be integrated with the existing SMF software.

I disagree.

People should have the choice to be able to make bad decisions.

I would also note that removing the "skip backup" button does not actually force someone to make a proper backup. If someone is intent on making bad decisions, they could create a text file with their seed on their computer, or they could write down their seed, and immediately throw it away. The "skip backup" button at least allows for the opportunity to warn the user of the dangers of not having backups.

If you authorize xyz company to withdraw $100 from your bank account, but they take $1000 instead, they have initiated an unauthorized transaction, and are liable for any fees you incur as a result. Often, your bank will waive/reverse any overdraft fees that resulted, but if they don't xyz company would need to reimburse you for said fees, and any other expenses you incurred as a result. Obviously, in the intrum, you will be without access to your money, which is an issue.

I can assure you that the government of Iran has no interest in giving its people any kind of freedom.

The transaction in question was intended to allow Iran to not have to use US and western financial systems. It was to evade sanctions against Iran imposed by the US. I don't think this is good for bitcoin or for crypto, as this shines a negative light.

The forum is not a charity. The forum is run in order to improve the chances of bitcoin succeeding over the long term, along with furthering the forums stated mission that loyce quoted above.

I am not surprised that forum suspended ad auctions. Given the obvious process of having to manually vet each new potential advertiser, and the low auction price in recent months, selling ads was likely not worth Theymos’ time for a long time.

I think part of the reason for the low ad prices is strict requirements to advertise, and the long list of things that Theymos won’t advertise. Plus, the forum doesn’t offer any kind of targeted advertising, which is something that advertisers are offered almost universally. The lack of targeting means more privacy for forum users, and that is the price the forum is clearly willing to pay in order to offer privacy.

Electrum only downloads the block headers compared to bitcoin core downloading and verifying every block since the genius block. This makes it slightly less difficult to subject you to a sybil attack in order to make you believe you have received a transaction that you haven't. In practice, the risk of a sybil attack using both bitcoin core and electrum is near zero.

In the past, malicious servers have been able to use mass social engineering to trick electrum users into downloading a malicious version of electrum that would be malware. The ability to do this has largely been curtailed.

Using Electrum is a lot less resource intensive than running a full node in exchange for only a small reduction in privacy. The reduction in security when using Electrum is close to zero (in my opinion).

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As you may have noticed with my two posts in your thread, you have to consider various tradeoffs when considering how to transact, and what via which means your private keys are stored. You will need to consider how much privacy you need, how much security you need, and how important 'ease of use' and how many resources you want to dedicate to using bitcoin.

I would suggest using a hardware wallet. Using a trezor or ledger is not quite the same as using cold storage, but the security is up there. There ease of use/security tradeoffs make using a HW wallet ideal.

You can use most HW wallets with most major wallet software, although I don't think many (any?) are compatible with bitcoin core.

Although you did not specify, I got the feeling after reading your post that you were considering using a "hot" wallet using bitcoin core as your first choice.

China often imposes a "house arrest" on political dissidents. This is a way to make it appear the person is not being imprisoned, while still restricting their freedoms, and being able to monitor their communications with others (so these people can be "kept in line").

I don't think there is any kind of Coup going on in China right now, as this is not being reported by any reputable news sources. However, if this were happening, I think Xi being under "house arrest" would likely be a first step.

I also know that Xi has a very tight grip on the CCP and the Chinese government. His loyalists are in positions of authority.

There are some "power users" of the forum who are very active, very insightful, and very helpful, all of which tend to result in people getting merit.

Most people who ever get any merit receive very little (the overwhelming majority of "users" never receive any merit). The few that do get merit tend to get a LOT. I can also say from personal experience that right before I reached various milestones, I would get a sudden surge in merit received, and that surge would continue for a while after I reached said milestone. I am not sure if this was because I was motivated by the milestone, or if people wanted to help reach the milestone, and once it was reached, my other posts were noticed.