I won't use DeFi services as I don't see a reason to do that.

If this is what they plan to do then it is a scam by itself. What is DeFi doing is asking us to stake as collateral some useless tokens and earn passive income as others will borrow these coins. First of all why would someone borrow any token? They give back some tokens to borrowers like Comp, UNI and they sell for profit.
Really this is how DeFi creates value?

DeFi is Bitconnect 2.0.

The hacks or better call them exploits of the code and exit scams are just taking this to another level of scam.

PoW adds production cost to a coin. PoS means less production cost so prices will tend to be lower.
PoW: Fixed Cost (Hardware, air cooling,etc) + variable Cost (Electricity)
PoS: Investment and small cost of electricity to run a node

Electricity consumption with PoS is very low. It is an ecological version of mining and validating transactions.

In my opinion PoS makes prices lower as stakers will earn profit in lower prices from having to mine using PoW. We will see with Ethereum what will happen as right now prices are very high because of the 32ETH masternode required for staking.

I don't think that the PoW system has major weaknesses it is how crypto was working but it tends to be abandoned by coins that were useless anyway.

The blockchain keeps track of IP addresses? I ask this because I never heard something like that unless you are saying that a centralized exchange server is holding this data and can provide it, or leak information after a hack. If you don't use exchanges or centralized services there is no IP recorded, or is there with the use of wallets?

If this information checks out then we will probably be talking about the end of the two year long Plustoken Ponzi FUD.
Also it will mean that if these coins were sold already, then the market is super bullish as it absorbed billions and it keeps rising to new all time highs.

Children in schools and adults in universities should have a chance to learn about Bitcoin. I remember my teacher years ago before Bitcoin having discussed to the class about all forms of money that existed and remember saying something about cypherpunks and how they were looking into ways to create internet money. I clearly remember this because it was probably the first time I heard of the cypherpunk term. It was very futuristic and something that was engraved in my memory.

This might be possible in a ship on international waters. I don't think that any government will ever accept Bitcoin without taxation or restrictions. Taxation is also important for the infrastructure of each country.
I'm not totally against regulations as they have importance, I am against a blanket ban of Bitcoin.

I lost all my interest in USDT upon learning about the freezing of tokens in Ethereum wallets. I have read about this and there is code in Solidity allowing ERC20 tokens to freeze. Tether also runs on other blockchains and I have no idea about Omni but it is 100% certain they can do the same with Tron Network and their TRC token as Tron also uses the Ethereum Solidity language for smart contracts.
I would prefer DAI over any centralized stable coin but perhaps this one line of code that allows freezing of tokens is what the banks and governments will be more interested in.

It is not controversial, I agree we don't need to force our views on anyone and I understand that some people only see this as investment and trust more centralized services like PayPal and Grayscale from themselves. I have listened to an interview from Chamath Palihapitiya earlier this summer and he explained that he couldn't own the Bitcoins he wanted to buy in custodial wallets but he believed in Bitcoin as an asset so he used Grayscale to buy. It is understood completely to have somebody else hold your investments for a 2% fee for security reasons and I don't disagree with this.

With Paypal though I'm afraid people will find Bitcoin the wrong way and perhaps will be disappointed. It looks like a dumped down version and perhaps I am in a dumped down version too as I never downloaded the Bitcoin software, never mined and barely used Bitcoin for anything except from investing,trading and a couple of transactions made.

I think though that the core essence of Bitcoin is removed when PayPal allows buying something that may be Bitcoin or may be just digits without represantation on the blockchain. As I understand this, there isn't any public address shown either.

I think the CME futures are settled in cash so there is no actual investment but betting.
There is definitely some institutional fomo going on. It is a good sign for the price as retail will come later so anything goes.

I'd like to read these track records too and I will try to find if I have time. You could spare an hour of search from many of us if you give a link.

Paypal has recently announced the offer of Bitcoin in their platform but in a very restrictive way.
Recently a friend informed me that he bought Bitcoin in PayPal and I was glad about it, but what was the impression of a beginner about Bitcoin? He told me he sold it after making a profit and didn't need it.

I tried to explain what he should be doing. I told him to buy a hardware wallet and transfer the Bitcoin there and tried to explain about private keys, public addresses, and passphrase, how Bitcoin is giving him financial freedom and why it is important to own the private key.

He was confused with that and told me that Bitcoin bought inside Paypal, only exists in Paypal and he can buy or sell and make some profit from trading. The only thing he could do except buying or selling is to use the Bitcoin bought in the Paypals merchant network which he could do with dollars and didn't need to switch to Bitcoin.
His first impression was that Bitcoin wasn't even needed at all. And he is right. It doesn't have a use case if it is trapped inside an app and you can't move it.

The essence of Bitcoin is removed this way as Bitcoin doesn't belong to the user but to Paypal. Paypal can even give you a token instead of Bitcoin and tell you that it is Bitcoin.

This is not Bitcoin that Paypal is offering but perhaps it is something similar to Grayscale Bitcoin Trust stock. It should be classified as such, a share of Bitcoin with restrictions.

Beginners are always fascinated with Satoshi and so was I. He is a hero for some and a conspiracy for others. It is intriguing but it has been so many years and as I understand it before he left he executed a full wipe of any evidence leading to him, as well as probably destroying all access to the Bitcoin he had mined. Satoshi wants privacy and he didn't ask for anything else until this point, this is if he is still alive. So there is no reason to trying to dig for more evidence. He didn't do anything wrong for anyone to be looking.

Get out of paypal and don't use them again.

Imagine someone that knows your passion for Bitcoin finds Bitcoin in paypal, buys it and then what would he understand about it.
That he can buy and sell and use to pay they paypal connected shops. Just great and completely useless to even care about it.

This is not Bitcoin it is Paypal Bitcoin.

Thanks for the news, it seems that the issue of this trader was solved but it is another example why we shouldn't even consider using Paypal.

I think you should read about this scam here first of all:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2056317.2320

and this:

https://www.coindesk.com/doj-indicts-founder-of-anti-money-laundering-bitcoin-project-for-money-laundering

You seem to not understand anything if you blame bounty hunters for this. If the project really wanted to have better marketing they would have paid the bounty hunters in Ethereum and not risk this happen.
But as every shitcoin out there they wanted to pay McAfee to have them promoted, sell as much possible in a presale and have a coin listed in the worst exchanges without any support for price.

Instead of blaming bounty hunters blame the project for incompetence, bad marketing and terrible business plan. Or blame them for scamming their investors as 99% of ICOs did so far.

Are you worried with your paper fiat being anonymous too? Aren't you worried that all exchange names and addresses have been leaked and every scammer can know your addresses?

Grayscale is a custodian for clients that are institutions and serious investors. It acts something like an exchange outside of the crypto world offering shares of Trusts and these shares are later traded by these investors if they want to in OTC exchange where trillions are traded.
Any amount of BTC stockpilled does not make a difference to the network. The worst that can happen is Grayscale to get hacked somehow and the wallets to be compromised but I'm sure there would only be cold wallets so it will have to be an inside job. Meaning there probably won't be any chance of these Bitcoins to be lost or stolen. So a repeat of MtGox or any other danger has close to 0% chance as I see that there would be complete security.

I would be interested to know if there is another danger for this operation, except that the investors don't actually own the Bitcoins but a represantation of them in stock form.

They wouldn't accept any transfer inside or outside their wallet for security reasons. They treat it as investment but also purchaces using Bitcoin can be made from their network of merchants who are connected to paypal.
With this limitation of not allowing withdrawals it makes Bitcoin unusable as far as I'm concerned. Probably an attempt to tame it.

It means nothing to me to buy Bitcoin using Paypal. Paypal will always be a payments processor for fiat and as you don't even own this fiat as it can be taken away anytime Paypal wants. They did the same with Bitcoin and those that buy using paypal will not actually own any Bitcoin.

From the few things I am reading it seems that it is an excuse governments use that criminals use Bitcoin. It is a very small part of Bitcoin transactions used for illegal activities and it is also that some of these illegal activities like drugs can become legal or are legal in some countries already. Most are about drug money and this was a big problem for decades before Bitcoin. Saying that Bitcoin is the problem is a bad excuse and a way to ignore the real problems. Also governments and politicians are commonly known for distorting the truth so I would trust Bitcoin instead of any government.

Binance will soon delist this, whatever it was. Po.et is over. Another altcoin that didn't do anything else than make investors leave the crypto market.
I only feel bad for the people invested in this three years ago when the market was booming. This was one of the shitcoins.

https://twitter.com/binance/status/1324342919655030785

It is very sad to see that I took part in many airdrops and none of them have been distributed. I fear about the bounties too that they will be the same and these that I took part in I get nothing. My ETH wallet is empty and I am one year now trying to do all airdrops and some bounties. Maybe I picked the wrong ones but I will have some more patience for the bounties.