A "red flag" is a warning sign - an indication that there may be a problem.

...none of which has anything to do with you copying the original, copyrighted, text verbatim. If you're intending to change it, change it before putting it online.

However, since you mention the license, Carbon Wallet is licensed (https://github.com/carbonwallet/carbonwallet.github.io/blob/master/README.md) using CDDL 1.0 (http://opensource.org/licenses/CDDL-1.0) which requires attribution - you need to fix that pronto.


You'd probably find it easier to reinstate the link to GitHub (https://github.com/newtimes/wallet) rather than mess around with a downloadable zip which is out of sync with the source code (and, again, raises a red flag - whatever your motivation, it looks like you're trying to obfuscate the link to GitHub and hence to the original app).

I'm also unclear how your fork is expected to function as an offline wallet: Carbon Wallet uses static HTML files; yours uses PHP scripts. In order to run your fork offline I'd need to be running an app server (like Apache). This isn't impossible, but it raises the barrier to entry significantly - with Carbon Wallet and other offline wallets I can simply "run" the (static) HTML and Javascript in my browser - no server needed.

yes, I understand that you forked it - that's fine, and that's why I differentiated between the fork of the app, and the website (you'll recall that I mentioned that the website was copyrighted). It's the website you've copied verbatim:

http://carbonwallet.com/
https://kryptowallet.org/

Your website still seems to be a more-or-less direct copy ("Why should I use CarbonWallet ?" has been changed to "Why should You use KryptoWallet ?", etc) of Carbon Wallet's (copyrighted) website: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=504342.msg5565839#msg5565839. I have to be honest, I totally understand that your fork can be run offline, and I've also had a quick look at the source code and I'm not seeing any obvious red-flags - but copying someone's copyrighted website word for word is itself a red-flag - the moreso because the website you've copied is the website for the original app you've forked.

Hypothetically, if I wanted to sell a large amount of BTC, I'd take a look at the exchanges (and other methods) available to me, I'd research them to see if people seemed to be having positive or negative experiences (ruling out any with obvious "red flags"), I'd sell a small amount of BTC on each exchange (ruling out any exchange where there were problems), and then I'd split the remaining BTC between the remaining exchanges, sell fast, and withdraw my fiat as quickly as possible.

Obviously this needs to be adapted to the circumstances - if I wanted to sell BTC for GBP my options would be very limited. And for a small amount of BTC I'd obviously be less concerned (but I'd still do some research). Basically, my goal is always to minimise exposure to risk - research, spread risk, and keep exposure time to a minimum. And trust your hunches - if it seems too good to be true, run away fast. If you're not sure if it's a scam, don't risk more than you can comfortably afford to lose (that's good advice for investing anyway).

True (in the UK the HMRC - tax authority - is pretty Bitcoin-friendly, it's the banks which remain hostile). However... retail banking and investment banking are distinct, and I bet Wall Street and the City of London have a good few Bitcoin fans. Although that's pure speculation!

Exchanges are not the same as BTC. Exchanges are not the same as Bitcoin.

Exchanges really should be viewed as places to trade BTC (or buy, and then withdraw BTC. Or deposit BTC right before a sale).

There are plenty of other places to do other stuff with BTC - including buying and selling it (OTC platforms like Localbitcoins, or even Bitcointalk - the first time I sold BTC it was here).

You're right about MtGox looking like a two-man band - that's my view too, and whether we're correct or not that's the impression most people will have. We need to make sure that they understand that a crappy exchange doesn't reflect on the Bitcoin protocol, any more than an insolvent bank reflects on the local fiat currency. (A better example, as exchanges aren't banks, might be an FX exchange or broker, but I'm sure you get the idea!)

On the subject of responsibility - people need to take responsibility for their finances! That's the beauty of Bitcoin, it allows us to take responsibility in a way we've never been able to do before. Unfortunately, taking responsibility sometimes means hard work - educating ourselves, and taking steps to minimise risk.

It's all relative! I mined my first block in late 2010, it took me four days (with my CPU!) and when I checked what I could do with my 50BTC all I could find was one exchange (MtGox) which was based in the US (this was before the sale, and the move to Japan) and only handled USD. And 1BTC was 5 cents or something. I suppose I wished I'd got into mining earlier... but to be honest I just thought it was an interesting experiment, and I lost interest.

Fast forward to 2011, and 1BTC was - incredibly - worth more than the dollar. My poor CPU obviously wouldn't be up to the task, but I did some sums and invested in a GPU. I mined solo at first then, as difficulty rose, I mined in pools. I kept mining until GPUs became obsolete (this was long before altcoins) and then took the decision to stop mining - I could justify GPUs because I could sell them when I'd finished with them. At this point I definitely wished I'd got into mining earlier...!

At this point - right now - I wish I'd invested in FPGAs and then ASICs. If I did it now it'd be a huge investment for me, with a whole bunch of risk; if I'd simply kept mining then the cost and risk would have come in manageable chunks.

I guess my answer is - it probably isn't too late! But it will heavily depend on your circumstances - how much you have to invest, how much you can afford to lose. And as long as I can remember, people have been advising potential miners that you'll get the best ROI by simply buying BTC. That's probably true, but it's not nearly as much fun (and isn't always possible, anyway: when I started mining you could buy BTC relatively easily - if you lived in the US. There are plenty of countries where there's still no easy way to buy BTC). Whatever you decide - good luck!

Edit: iamahappyminer makes a good point with altcoins - you can always exchange altcoins for BTC if BTC is your goal.

If a bank creates a BTC fund they make money every time someone buys or sells a stake in that fund. If people want an easy way to buy or sell BTC (and I suspect they do), then the banks will want to profit from that need.

...and it's also possible they want their own positions; I assume if that's the case they're already buying (and I haven't looked for evidence of that).

JP Morgan - at least - have subsidiaries in Luxembourg and elsewhere. Could they not simply run their BTC through Luxembourg? (Serious question: I'm not US-resident and don't know how much access US residents are permitted to "foreign" stuff).

(My understanding was that they chose Luxembourg due to fairly minimal regulatory requirements, but I don't honestly know what Luxembourg thinks of Bitcoin).

A hacker is someone - in IT - who "hacks" (creates and modifies) code (as opposed to a "cracker", who breaks into IT systems). Regardless, this is about perceptions - not necessarily our perceptions, but the perceptions of people not yet using Bitcoin. Jargon is off-putting. Foolish, even.

To be honest, I think if Bitcoin had used arbitrary words I probably would have walked away without digging deeper - "the rest of the (finance) world copes just fine with thousands and 0.001, why should I have to learn some hacker jargon in order to use Bitcoin?" (Obviously some learning is necessary, but we should aim to reduce it to what's necessary, not what's cute or what we think is easy to understand).

Well, it's good with simple patterns - like 1, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001 etc. I suspect it'd be harder if the pattern was something like...

• Arbitrary word chosen by members of an online forum #1
• Arbitrary word chosen by members of an online forum #2
• Arbitrary word chosen by members of an online forum #3
• ...etc...

Oh definitely. And obviously if someone is trading regularly they need to - and it's appropriate to - keep some coins on an exchange (or, ideally, spread their risk across multiple exchanges). But for non-traders an exchange may be convenient but it's a bad place to hold all (or most) of their coins, for all the reasons we've seen with MtGox over the past few years, and other exchanges over the past week.

I suspect the OP meant "exchanges", not banks, but it's a common misconception: people seem to feel a need to keep their BTC "somewhere", even if that somewhere is completely inappropriate. Bitcoin gives me the ability to be my own bank, but it does require I make some effort. "Banking" at an exchange is much easier, with the obvious caveat that it's no longer my BTC - I've effectively donated it to a third-party and hopefully I'll be able to regain control at some point.

I didn't realise they were part of Tibanne 

Market prices are working again for me now (after about 16 hours down). Charts are semi-working - I can get the charts to display if I unselect some technical indicators (RSI and CCI seems to "break" images - but not all the time. My guess is that behind the scenes there's an RRD - a round-robin database - with several hours' missing data).

Wow. I hope I'm allowed to sell my BTC without people confronting me directly.

Seriously, it does terrify me that "people" might go to Dorian's house (I'm presuming you're talking about Dorian, as Dorian's been "revealed", and not the Satoshi who posted on Satoshi's P2P Foundation profile saying that they weren't Dorian?) for several reasons:

• Bitcoin, as I see it, was designed to give us more control over our property - taking control away from banks, governments, and angry mobs with pitchforks whining because someone - in their opinion - "sank the market"
• Dorian might not be Satoshi
• Satoshi might no longer be in control of "his" private keys (he might have destroyed them, passed control of them to someone else, etc)

But we've "always" known about Satoshi's BTC, and we've always had the blockchain. It's not clear to me what you believe has changed?

But we know he used Tor from the start. Look at what he created, and how he created it - he knew the stakes.

This isn't exactly what you're after (apart from anything else it includes the alt coins) but might be useful? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=504367.msg5556119#msg5556119