For second layers, a consensus is not needed -- as long as the second layer is compatible with the rules, a second layer is possible, even if no one agrees with the implementation of the second layer.

I think franky1 has his own way of thinking about how to approach problems. This is likely different than many other people's ways to approach problems. I think it is franky1's goal to change people's minds via his posts. I cannot say that franky1 changed my mind, but I can say that I thought about things I might not have necessarily thought about had I not read his posts.

The situation may or may not be affecting the price of bitcoin. However, it is very likely to be affecting the hashrate. The internet was cut off in Kazakhstan in response to the violence in the streets.

After China banned bitcoin mining in its country, many miners who were previously mining in China, moved their equipment to Kazakhstan, and without internet access, the miners have no way to broadcast their found blocks. So the internet blackout has rendered their mining equipment useless, at least for the time being.

If you donate under whatever bitpay's threshold is ($3000?), you do not have to disclose your identity (you have to provide your name, but it is in no way verified), nor create an account.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to expect to be able to donate 3 separate times, amounts near BitPay's limit before they make you verify your identity in order to donate. If you have that kind of money to donate, it is reasonable to expect the person is in a high tax bracket. So before you have been forced to verify your identity, you will have already given up thousands of dollars in reduced tax liability.

The cost of a VPN is generally in the range of $20-$40 per year. The annual cost of most other privacy measures is similarly nominal.

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I don't think every donor that disclosed their identity for tax purposes is listed on that website. I would presume people have the option to not make their identity public, but still receive a receipt for their donation so they can receive a deduction for the donation.

Right. franky1, from what I can tell, is an OG bitcoiner. I think he probably wants to see bitcoin succeed.

franky1 has a particular opinion. This opinion is true for all threads that relate to the subject his opinion is about. There is no reason for franky1 to keep his opinion limited to a certain number of threads just because he disagrees with other forum members.

People disagreeing with you is a part of life. The fact that franky1 disagrees with you, is not a microaggression. You can try to change his mind if you wish.

If you want to send some type of group text, you have somewhat of a point, as not everyone will necessarily use the same platforms. However, if you are trying to communicate with an individual, it is trivial to know if they are on a particular platform.

If you are going to communicate with anyone while overseas, you more or less will need some kind of internet package.

After a number of years of reading franky1's posts, I have come to the conclusion that he believes what he writes. I have posted previously that I do not agree with very much of what Franky says, and I probably would not agree with most of his interpretation of facts, however, I don't think he is posting in bad faith.

If you disagree with what franky1 is saying, I would encourage you to engage in a fact-based discussion with him to try to change his mind. In doing so, you should also be open to having your mind be changed, if a sufficient fact pattern were to emerge.

As a result of the above, I would strongly oppose banning franky1.

Why would someone pay for this when there are so many free alternatives? There is iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal to name a few that can all send the equivalent of a text message to a person's phone number (who is also using a similar app), just to name a few. All are free and feature end-to-end encryption, which ensures the app maker cannot see your message (which is not the case for this service).

If you are traveling abroad, you probably need some kind of data plan from a carrier, either your US-based carrier or a carrier in the country you are traveling to (or the carrier of another country). This service does not get around that.

Again, if you don't disclose your KYC information, you are giving up what could amount to ~50% of the value of your donation in the form of a tax deduction. So if there was a way to donate to them without disclosing your KYC information, doing so would effectively mean you are paying 50% of your donation in the name of "privacy".

To be frank, if you are complaining about the entity that you disclose your KYC information, in order to claim a tax deduction, or if you are wanting to not disclose your KYC information (which will result in you not receiving 50% of your donation back), you are just being stubborn.

BTW, I would also be hesitant to support the tor project in general, as IMO, it really just gives people a false sense of privacy.

Some printers have features that do not work well with printing confidential information. For example, some printers will save the last n pages it has printed so the user can easily reprint something they spilled coffee on. Sure, you can probably disable this feature, but it is one more thing you need to worry about.

The thing about paper wallets is that it really never makes logical sense to use one. In all cases, the potential risks involved in using a paper wallet include all risks involved in using a wallet stored in digital format and include additional risks not involved in storing a wallet in digital format.

For example, when you generate your private keys, you must rely upon the RNG of your OS. This is true regardless of whether you are creating a paper wallet or a wallet that will be stored on a USB drive. If you are creating a paper wallet, you must expose your private key to any "eyes" (including cameras) that can see in the room you are in. If you are creating a wallet that will be stored on a USB drive, you never need to expose the private keys to "eyes looking in the room".

While you are storing your paper wallet, if someone is able to access your paper wallet, they can ~instantly make a copy of the paper wallet with a camera (they can also take the actual paper wallet, however there may be some situations in which an adversary can see the paper wallet, but cannot remove it). With a wallet stored on a USB drive, an adversary would need to connect the USB drive to a computer, or other equipment in order to make a copy (or they can remove it, if possible). If there is any encryption applied to a paper wallet, the exact same encryption can be applied to a wallet being stored on a USB drive.

When you spend any coin stored on a paper wallet, you again will need to expose the private keys to the "eyes looking in the room", and again this is not the case for a wallet being stored on a USB drive.

If you were to replace "USB drive" with "Hardware Wallet" above, you would have incrementally greater security because HW wallets generally have a "cool-down" period in between unsuccessful attempts to use the HW wallet.

Using a paper wallet increases the scope in which your private key can potentially be compromised compared to a hardware wallet or an encrypted wallet on a hard drive. This is true for both when you are creating a paper wallet, and when you are spending coin that you have stored on a paper wallet.

I don't think it is Cyrus. I am fairly confident the person in the video is someone who is not an admin, nor a global moderator but is a moderator/patroller. Although, if an admin or global mod has an alt that is also a patroller, it could be that person.

It appears the OP is dealing with possibly a hundred dollars worth of coin. The cost of a hardware wallet alone is likely going to exceed the value of his old coin.

Donations to Mozilla are tax-deductible. In order to claim a deduction on your tax return, you will generally need to give identifying information to the entity you are donating to (or their agent), so they can produce the documentation you need to support the donation in the event you are audited. I doubt many people, privacy-conscious or otherwise, are going to forgo a tax deduction so they can incrementally improve their privacy.

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This is also not new, nor is it news. According to their FAQ, they have been accepting bitcoin since November 2019.

I don't think it would be possible to know. I know that airlines will generally sell 10x% (100% + x) of seats based on the assumption that some ticket holders will not show up.

The posts you quoted were specifically regarding why a NFT is superior to a back-end database with regards to trusting the entity issuing the NFT. I would expect that cost to transfer a NFT to generally be cheaper than using a back-end database, given that a back-end database will typically involve third-party intermediaries (such as StubHub), which will charge their own fees (which are very substantial).

There is also the issue of price transparency on the secondary market. It is not easy to know with certainty what others are paying for similar seats when using a back-end database.

There is also a very low barrier to entry into the NFT marketplace. This makes it easier for people to offer competing marketplaces that charge lower fees.

I am curious as to who their target market is. I kinda get the vibe that this person is running this website as a school project and/or a POC, rather than trying to run at scale and profit from his service.

They obviously have the ability to read the content of your message. I would presume that the average customer would probably say who is sending the message in the body of the message, so I am not sure how much additional privacy is gained from using tor.

I agree. I am struggling to think of a use case for this type of service. My first thought is that a business might need to communicate with customers, however I think it is pretty unusual for someone to need to buy the ability to send one message.

A state-level actor could possibly execute a timing attack against a tor user. Also, if a single entity is running enough tor nodes, they will be able to serve as all three nodes in your circuit at least some of the time, and would know who you are (to an extent), and what you are doing.

I guess this shows that the concept of using multisig for treasurers works. I am curious to know what lead to the change.

I don't think the lack of being able to prove their expenses is evidence of wrongdoing. They did not agree to prove their expenses and continued operating for years without proving their expenses, but did receive additional donations after their level of documentation was well known.

Someone asking questions is not evidence of guilt.

As a charity, their intention is obviously to spend their donations on charitable causes. The only way to spend donations is to distribute money to those able to spend money on causes the charity wants to help.

I would argue that Bitmain charging what the market will bear, and charging a price in accordance with what I describe in my above post are one and the same.

Any rational buyer will perform the above analysis before buying a miner, so it would be sensible for a rational seller (Bitmain) to perform the above analysis to know what a rational buyer would be willing to pay.

Obviously, the difficulty is unknown. The semiconductor shortage has resulted in the EV of miners increasing because the difficulty has not increased at the rate that one might expect it to increase prior to the shortage.

I am not aware of any instance in which any action was taken against nutildah for what any reasonable person would perceive as arbitrary or unfair.

The only way for something to not be arbitrary when a reasonable person might perceive the action to be arbitrary is when confidential information is used to make the decision, and the information is kept confidential after the action is taken. It would be very rare for something like this to happen. The only time in which I can potentially see something like this happening would be when someone is banned for ban evasion. However, it is very rare for ban evasion cases to be prosecuted, even when the evidence is in plain sight (the person generally needs to be actively causing problems for this rule to be enforced), and if the person is banned for ban evasion, they will know if they were evading a ban.

Bitmain sells its miners at a high price. The price Bitmain sells its miners for is the expected value of mining revenue, based on anticipated future growth in difficulty, and estimated costs associated with running the miner (electricity, and repairs), and the price of bitcoin, minus some discount rate to account for the possibility that difficulty will rise faster than anticipated, or that the price of bitcoin will be lower than anticipated.

So in essence, Bitmain is removing the risk of high difficulty growth from their balance sheet and allowing their customers to assume this risk. As Phil alluded to, this also happens to help them finance their manufacturing operation.