I'm trying to sign a message from a paper wallet that I have, is that possible using Mycelium? I don't want to import or transfer the funds to my phone wallet, simply sign a message using the address that I wish to from the QR code.
I think signing a message requires access to the private key for the address. So you would have to "import the funds" (actually, import the private key) to the phone. There's probably a way to do offline signing, similar to offline transactions, but I don't know of a way to do that with Mycelium. I hope somebody who knows more about this than I do will chime in. Fundamentally it does not make much of a difference. If you scan the private key into the phone, you temporarily lose the security of the paper wallet. Mycelium ostensibly does its best to keep the private key secure when using the cold storage spending function, but it can only do so much. Ultimately a Trojan could obtain the key during such operations. Importing the private key by importing the funds is somewhat less secure than cold storage spending, but it is fundamentally the same. I would not do it if the paper wallet carried a large sum, like several month's income. For even larger amounts I would not use a paper wallet at all. I would use a Trezor. |
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The real question is, how big is the risk that your bitcoins get stolen from your Android wallet, regardless of whether you transfer them or not.
The other question is, what do you consider "big sums"?
I would say, it is OK to keep or send less than one month's salary through Mycelium. If you keep your phone very safe and only install apps with a very high reputation, then I would agree to the salary of three months.
Beyond that I would use a paper wallet and Mycelium's cold storage function. There are a few things to be said about how to create a paper wallet safely, but I don't want to go into this right here.
Beyond a year's salary I would buy a Trezor, which can be used very nicely with Mycelium and remains completely safe, even if your Android phone is completely infested with malware. There is just no way for anything to get at the private keys that are stored inside the Trezor, except you when you read the Trezor's screen and push the Trezor's keys.
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Yes, I keep falling back into the bookkeeper's way of thinking, where accounts are totalled.
I think I understand it better now, but I still have some learning to do.
Anyway, the remaining method to consolidate dust wallets is still to try a collecting transaction with a low fee and hope for the best.
What I absolutely don't know is how effective the 72 hour setting to auto-cancel transactions is. Apparently a transaction should be cancelled automatically, but when it is re-broadcasted, it could linger on forever. I don't know how often the auto-cancel works and how often it fails. Any good information on that one?
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Or collect dust into an old-fashioned single-address wallet or perhaps into a paper wallet. Would that work better? Makes no difference fee-wise. When you collect on a single address, you just have worse privacy until you spend. Oh oh, I still don't understand that part of Bitcoin well enough. I am learning. |
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Moral of the story: DON'T collect dust. Or collect dust into an old-fashioned single-address wallet or perhaps into a paper wallet. Would that work better? If so, then the moral could be amended to, "Don't collect dust into a HD wallet." I can only amplify what you already wrote---if you have a dust-filled HD wallet, i.e. many addresses with a tiny amount each, then check this web page: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1w for your chance to get a dust-consolidating transaction confirmed with a very low fee, like 20 satoshi/byte. Then send the transaction and wait, perhaps for up to 3 days, when, in most cases, the transaction will be auto-cancelled. Then you can try again, until you succeed. Weekends often provide a better chance. |
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Are there any plans for the Lightning Network?
One thought is that using Lightning is quite similar to using a debit card. Both have to be charged up before use. So the user interface could build on that familiarity.
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I think there should be an additional setting, "Risky, may never confirm". Since four choices are too many, I think the lowest-fee setting should be repurposed for "Risky".
But actually I think an even better solution would be to show the confirmation time ranges or at least confirmation time averages that a certain fee would have achieved during the last 7 days, along with a warning that the future is unpredictable. That could be a slider with markings for satoshi/byte. The slider could have a red, a yellow, and a green range for risky, slow, and fast settings.
Your customers are your best designers. (:-)
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… I remember reading somewhere that with fees as they are 30-40% of balances are now unspendable. I can well believe it. That is misleading, because these are only an ultra-tiny, negligible fraction of the total market capitalization. Those are "dust" wallets. Even so, they can be consolidated, i.e. gathered from many dust addresses into one new address, during times when fees are near zero, like during much of the last week. Transactions with fees below 10 satoshi/byte were accepted and confirmed. Check https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/2w.html to see the fees during the last two weeks. They are color-coded. For this, however, you have to be able to set a very low fee. Mycelium, unfortunately, cannot do it. |
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I have a wish for improvement. It is based on the recent rise and subsequent fall of the transaction fees. At the time of this writing extremely low fees were sufficient for confirmation for much of the past 7 days, but Mycelium still recommends quite high fees. I understand that Mycelium wants to stay very much on the safe side, but there are circumstances when only a low fee will do, for example, dust consolidation or a low-value payment that is neither important nor urgent. I have two proposals, each of which would solve this problem. - Add a fee choice, or change the current lowest fee choice, label it "Risky", and perhaps add a warning that such a low fee entails a considerable risk of being delayed or not accepted at all. Automatically choose a fee that would have been sufficient at some time during the last 3 days and double or triple it as a compromise.
- Alternatively, allow the user to enter the fee in satoshi/byte, along with a warning that it is only for advanced users and perhaps an extra warning if the user sets a fee that is lower than the lowest automatically recommended fee.
For certain low-priority transactions it just makes no sense to pay a 30 cent fee when 1 cent would have done, like during the whole past week. |
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Actually there is a very good reason for Bitcoin-backed banks to exist, issuing their own digital cash currency, redeemable for bitcoins. Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world be broadcast to everyone and included in the block chain. There needs to be a secondary level of payment systems which is lighter weight and more efficient. Likewise, the time needed for Bitcoin transactions to finalize will be impractical for medium to large value purchases.
Bitcoin backed banks will solve these problems. They can work like banks did before nationalization of currency. Different banks can have different policies, some more aggressive, some more conservative. Some would be fractional reserve while others may be 100% Bitcoin backed. Interest rates may vary. Cash from some banks may trade at a discount to that from others.
George Selgin has worked out the theory of competitive free banking in detail, and he argues that such a system would be stable, inflation resistant and self-regulating.
I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. Most Bitcoin transactions will occur between banks, to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be as rare as... well, as Bitcoin based purchases are today.
May I remark that this posting, made over 5 years ago, was incredibly far-sighted. He describes what we are hoping and working for today. He did not foresee that second-layer payment systems could still be done in decentralized and anonymous fashion, as in Lightning Network or TumbleBit, but who knows, perhaps even that part of his message will come true if centralized systems that require trust turn out to be trustworthy and reliable enough and cheaper. Perhaps we already have those, like Coinbase or BitPay. I will be happy either way. |
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It's actually very simple. You only have to buy low and sell high.  |
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A solution to the inflation under zero / lost coins in the distant future is just to add some rule in the consensus where, if coins are not moved every 20 or 200 years (full nodes consensus is implied, maybe it should be configurable by the node operators) miners can just take a part of them (maybe starting with the smaller balances).
Maybe, if the mean fee is x, everything lower than x/2 can be taken after 20 years it stops moving.
It would be like:
if there are $ 0.02 left there for a century, can we take them?
Nodes: Yes. not a problem.
If there are $ 200 left there for one year can we take them?
Nodes: No!!!
Good idea. But the simpler solution is to keep producing new coins at a moderate rate. I think some altcoins do this already. |
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You also forgot to mention that at some point, when the 21M coins have been mined, the inflation rate will become 0%, or even a minus, as some people lose the access to their coins, and new coins are not being produced, that makes us at a decrease in the amount of access able bitcoins.
It is going to be hard for miners to keep mining when the block reward is basically zero, as fees will be the only pay they get. I don't think 20 years ahead, because that is rarely sensible these days. Not sure whether bitcoin will still be the leading non-governmental currency in 20 years. But before that, it could be interesting to see the miner rewards in dollar or gold terms. Let us not forget that, while the reward in bitcoin sinks, the value of bitcoin rises. Miners have perhaps roughly constant rewards in terms of purchasing power, or even growing rewards. |
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but i think it is already a problem for the government. because government have to turn bitcoin as legal currency first, and after that they can impost tax on bitcoin, because there is not tax on illegal thing. so if government want to impost tax on bitcoin they have to turn bitcoin as legal currency.
There are other ways. Germany, for example, considers bitcoin to be something akin to shares or other things that you can trade, not as a currency. When you buy and sell bitcoin within less than a year and make a gain, this gain is taxed in Germany. If you make a loss, you also have to declare that, but you can count the loss against future gains. If, for example, you lose €100 in one year and gain €150 in the next, you only pay tax on the €50 total gain. This is how Germany handles it. I don't know about other countries. Of course, some people will try to keep their ownership of bitcoins secret, but the choke point is the bitcoin exchange. All exchanges I know are reached by the OECD AEoI/CRS regulation and have to report account information to the home taxman of each customer. Some exchanges may not do that yet, but then they are breaking their own country's law. This leaves trading on LocalBitcoins.com and on the Mycelium Local Trader, but that is slow, inconvenient, and often costly, not to mention certain risks. I think it is a good idea to fulfill your tax obligations within reason. The bitcoin hodlers are not affected in Germany, because gains from selling after more than one year are entirely tax-free. |
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Never say never.
Anyway, governments could hinder bitcoin use, and some do that already. It would lead to less use than in a neutral or supportive environment and would therefore also lower the price of bitcoin. How far is difficult to foresee.
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Mycelium Local Trader. LocalBitcoins.com
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Please remind me, where do these "$560k" come from?
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Isn't that a start of rise after Bear Trap in standard speculation buble ?
I keep asking myself whether you can call a price spike a bubble if the price later goes even higher. In that case, was it a bubble or was it perhaps early, correct prediction by the speculators? |
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… Reckon we are due for a correction - possible retest the 780-800 that we bounced off in june and then broke through in october. … The shakeout to ~800 will be an epic beartrap imho. The spartans will of course HODL  That was prescient! Perhaps we should just forget the last 24 days, because if you take them out, everything looks nice again. The price gently rises.  |
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It will link them. What does "link" even mean? |
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