If you are running the GUI you can see the peers under Window -> peers
If you are running the cli then use bitcoin-cli getpeerinfo

That will show you the connected nodes.

I don't know if it's still current / 100% accurate but I used to point people here:
https://medium.com/@peterjd42/basic-commands-to-interact-with-the-bitcoin-core-rpc-console-180da2c2dc45

For a bit of command info. There are other guides but that one was good a couple of years ago.

-Dave

Core just sits there and talks to other nodes taking in and rebroadcasting valid transactions. 


Yes you will need to install a few other things but:
https://github.com/mempool/mempool

You can also run this explorer https://github.com/janoside/btc-rpc-explorer
It's slower with less features, but needs a lot less on the back end to run it.

Or you can just use calls direct to core using bitcoin-cli see here: https://developer.bitcoin.org/reference/


Take a look at the pre-configured nodes in a box like umbrel or raspiblitz. See what they can do and the features they have.

-Dave

So then we could call it the Amazon coin. Since they have datacenters filled with servers just sitting there waiting for there to be a need for them during periods of high use.
They could just kick them on to mine your PoS RAM coin.

There is no need to change the way things work now. You buy a miner and you mine. If you can't buy a miner you buy coins. If you change the algo from SHA256 to something else it's just a matter of time  until someone starts building purpose built miners and the people who can afford them get them and those that can't are back where they started. Possibly even worse off if they invested in something that is now obsolete.

-Dave

Sounds like marketing speak.

I guess for people that don't want to use some of the off the shelf PHP coding to send coins to their own wallets it's probably no better or worse then any of the other services out there.

Their website has a bunch of grammar & contextual errors. Things like that just make me wonder if they don't keep their front end clean how does the back end look.

And the 1 thing that drives me personally nuts is the lack of BTC <-> fiat rates on the front page. As I have said giving me a really good rate on the transaction is fine but if BTC is at $28,000 and you are quoting a rate of $27,500 I am not going to sell anything as soon as people check the rates.

-Dave

Be aware that there are 2 exploits in the wild now for iPhones / iPads that are being actively exploited that give the hacker they are both a sandbox escape and a privilege escalation so make sure you are running the latest updates that Apple just pushed out over the last day or so:

https://www.securityweek.com/apple-ships-urgent-ios-patch-for-newly-exploited-zero-days/

Phones / anything connected to the internet is NOT secure. And you should only store money that you can afford to lose in a phone. Since they keep finding vulnerabilities.

PCs are not better, and I don't care what OS you use.

Cold storage only for any real funds.

-Dave

Didn't know that, the last one I saw (which was back in the 1980s) just boiled the water off, collected and condensed the steam back to water and that was it. Guess things change in 40+ years :-)

Since you and jstefanop build these for a living I'll take you at your word that it's doable. I just think doing all of this to do something with the waste heat other then general heat the office / home / whatever is going to be more difficult then it's really worth. More plumbing, more things to go wrong and so on. A fan either works or does not and it's quick and simple to replace.

-Dave

None of of streaming / sharing apps since I don't believe in running anything not BTC related on a device holding funds. But outside of that, yes I am running 2 explorers, electrum server, all the LN things and btcpay with no issues. It's s 4b.


You would have to tweak umbrel to use the drives that are not attached to the RPi, and then you still have to have the LN stuff raided too.

No argument that it's going to need a lot more power then an SBC but everything like this is going to be a bit of a tradeoff.
Need more RAM for something with an SBC there is nothing you can do, with one of these micro PCs just buy another stick.

There is also a bit of time = money involved. The micro PCs are going to be faster to handle certain things just due to raw speed and power.
Don't get me wrong I love the SBC nodes: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5364113   I just have found at times their limitations to be a bit annoying.
-Dave

Yes, but remember desalination requires the water to boil, so you are still probably going to still have to add some more energy to get the water that hot.
And, side note, most modern desalinization plants use filters instead.

Back to this.

Getting miners to run hotter would start to limit a lot of things.
Right now, you can repurpose older data centers for mining and when you are done still use them as regular data centers.
Or you can put a bunch of miners in a large enough warehouse so long as you can cool them.
And so on.

If you start setting them up where they REQUIRE all this extra cooling because of running at such high temperatures, you are going to be forcing people into only specific builds for the equipment.
That could kill a lot of business plans, since the question would be asked, what do we do with the building after....

-Dave

In an ideal world (yeah right) neither the person buying things or the seller should care about the security of the gateway.
There should be no way for the gateway to have any information about the sale.

I go to an online store and put something in my cart and check out. The only thing the store should transmit to the payment provider is the amount of the sale and a token that links back to that invoice.
The gateway should then pop up a crypto address and amount once it gets the coins the payment processor then sends the 'yes he paid' data back to the merchant. The payment gateway / provider should never know who I am or what I bought.

Past that the only thing the merchant should care about is getting their crypto / fiat. But that should also be 100% separate from the payment processing. If there is any link between the money in and money out systems you are doing it wrong in terms of security.

-Dave

Not without a fork. But, as has been said the odds of needing it without a lot of things changing are fairly small.
And it's probably so far in the future none of us are going to be alive to care about it.

The other issue of needing amounts that small is still going to be altcoins.
For some reason people like using them. Not going to get into a debate about it here, but if you really need to send an amount that small the you are and the other person probably have some LTC or DOGE or whatever.

-Dave

Yes, you can do everything like that on Umbrel on a RPi4. I am doing it now.

IMO, you are better off getting something like this. [Not that actual one but a micro PC along those lines]

https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-SEI10-i3-10110U-Computer-Performance/dp/B0BPBWTCQX?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1

Running Debain along with mirrored drives. IF you are running your own LN node you don't want to have to deal with the recovery and everything else if 1 of the drives dies.
Yes, I am running with no raid, BUT I know the risks and the cost of a 2nd drive is more then I have in my LN node so.....

Not to mention, as software gets more bloaty the faster machine will just keep up better.

AND it's got more power (not computing power just raw electrical power) so if you do want to plug in a bunch of USB devices for some reason you are not going to be getting the under volt warnings.

If you want it to just work, Umbrel is nice in the fact that it just works.


-Dave

Not always, I have seen some come in as non trivial amounts, which is still pennies but if you get enough of them you can....still do nothing with it until BTC hits some really high number vs fiat. Even now if BTC goes up 10x from where it is now it's still under $1.00

What I think is odd, is the fact that I have some coins in cold storage that only have inbound tx and nothing else. And those have at times gotten dusted. So it's not like it's hard to trace, it's only one input you would have to follow.

Sometimes there are advertising or messages tagged to it, https://www.walletexplorer.com/txid/5bc44f106ae6bb52b87cdb61d8982fdf9076a29e952a49d4c86217483aba21c2

-Dave

Yes, you can put anything you want more or less in your signature. BUT, you (and they) may get a lot of backlash. As to what they are hiding, and why they don't want to have a discussion here. And so on.
The best that I can say is that it would look 'off' if it's crypto related. Even if it's just a small announce thread with some info.

However, if you are selling something like coffee cups and not taking crypto, nobody is going to think anything about the fact that you are not discussing / having an announcement here.
But, then why would you be advertising here. Look at it from that point of view.

The other side of it is that it might actually be good for a non crypto project. Just something different may actually get more eyes on it since it is different.

So, nothing wrong, but without more info can't say it's 'right' either.

-Dave

The cost would probably be AT LEAST what I posted in your other thread.
ON AVERAGE a miner is taking in about BTC.2 per block in fees
You will need about 450 blocks to push out 1 million TX so figure the miner to push out 1 million transactions with 0 fee is asking them to give up between 85BTC to 90BTC
So they would probably charge you at least that much.

Now for the other side, the mempool is full at the moment so that is where I get the .2 per block. If it empties you could possibly get it for 1/10 that much. But it might take a while since as the mempool fills up they would want to send out the transactions with a higher fee.

You would probably be better off paying the 1 sat/vb fee sending them out as regular transactions and being done.

-Dave

I'm guessing you don't know how to do math.
There are about 325000 confirmed transactions a day so you want enough hash rate for more then 3 full days of blocks.
There are 90 days in 3 months so to do what you want would need over 3% of the global mining hashrate. The current hashrate is well over 325. EH/s
On average there are 144 blocks per day. The average fee is about BTC0.2 per block so 144*3*.2 = 86.4BTC

So unless you have a few million USD to throw around it's never going to happen.

-Dave

There have been Easter Eggs in Apple things forever.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57527/16-easter-eggs-hidden-apple-products
Also in Windows, and Android and just about every other OS known.

Just because it's BTC do we care here.

The real question is, did Apple know about it, and if not why not? How could something like that get though what is supposed to be layers of verification of software without someone catching it. And, if nobody did catch it, what else is lurking in their OS?

-Dave

There is no way to estimate anything without knowing the miners hashrate.
If you have 100th (a single S19j Pro) its going to take on average about 60 years to find a block. Assuming no difficulty increases, which we know is not a valid assumption.

In the end it's all random, you could plug it in and configure it and have it find a block in 5 minutes, or it could take 100 years.

As has been said, it's a lottery. Some people win, most don't.

-Dave

This just popped up in my newsfeed:

https://beincrypto.com/texas-lawmakers-pass-bill-limiting-bitcoin-mining/

Don't know if it will pass and if it does if it will matter to you but it's something to think about.
If you live there and were setting up the mining farm because of that it's one thing.

If you live elsewhere and were setting it up there because TX is giving miners good deals, keep in mind that might not be the case soon.

-Dave

Or not.....
https://beincrypto.com/texas-lawmakers-pass-bill-limiting-bitcoin-mining/

This is going to be interesting if it passes, a lot of places moved to TX since they are giving them a good deal.
If this passes and that goes away I can see them moving to more friendly states again.

They moved there, they can just as easily move out when someplace else gives them a deal.

-Dave

On that particular topic, no. In general yes.
That is why you can start self moderated posts.

At times I will start something to discuss 'A'. If it moves and grows to 'A¹' and 'A²' and 'A³' that is fine.
But if you want to make sure that it never gets to 'B' or 'B¹' you really need to self mod.

It's also too much of an opinion question.  There is a topic going on about the situation with the General Bytes ATM hack
 [ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5410704 if you care]

I was going to do a much longer comment then the last one I made on the 27th about security in general and a better way of securing the machines and servers and OS and so on. However, I did not do it since it was more related in only general terms to the hack. COULD someone have reported it as OT and been correct? YES. Would someone have done it? Possibly. Would the mods have removed it? Who knows, because even though I am saying it did drive OT, you could also see a justification in that it was discussing the hack and ways to prevent another one in general.

-Dave