While I’m all about increasing the usage of Bitcoin as a currency to be used for micro-transactions, I don’t believe that LN is the solution, unless large trusted organizations open up their own payment channels. As it currently stands, the only organizations that have enough of a bankroll to open up channels are banks and exchanges. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust an exchange like Coinbase to properly vouch and handle my exchange for the duration of their channel, especially when they’re known to close their own service (due to maintenance or whatever ) when the price of Bitcoin jumps.

I will fully support LN, however, if retailers such as Amazon decide to accept Bitcoin and open up their own payment layer to support micro transactions on their site.

The whole concept is a double-edged sword to me,  it the way that it is currently presented leaves more doubt in my mind than security. Yes, it’s more centralized than the current transaction structure, but that doubt could be eliminated if trusted organizations run their own channels to support LN. Given that they barely understand blockchain technology currently as it is, it’s doubtful that any of them will use LN...

You’re blaming the wrong people, OP. Chances are that if you’re on this forum, you’re genuinely interested in Bitcoin (sans the percentage of users that are here solely to make money from bounties...).

If you look at the last three years, you’ll see a common trend in mid January where the price dips. I personally think that this is due to everyone panic-selling after the holidays, coupled with the news from Asia. I’m actually glad that this shakeout happened. Just the fact that the price is still holding above 10k is great news for me. Much higher than what the prices were last year!

Don’t blame us people though. We’re generally owners of Bitcoin for the right reasons. Just sayin’

Use Authy for 2FA instead: https://authy.com

Authenticator is perfectly safe to use, but your seeds are not backed up, nor is your authenticator account able to be used across multiple devices. This means that if you lose your device, you will no longer have access to any of your protected accounts, and you will not be able to restore the data from your next device, even if you use a full backup to restore.

Authy can be used anywhere that Authenticator is suggested to be used, and you can retrieve a backup if you ever lose your device.

You’re proving a double standard, OP. because we are free to do with crypto as we please, we can use it freely for whatever we want. It’s not just meant for holding. It’s not just meant for trading. It’s not just meant for exchanging into your preferred fiat. It’s meant to do whatever you want. That’s the true nature of why Bitcoin was invented. Part of having control over your money is also having control to do with it as you please. And if people choose to make a profit on crypto, then so be it. There’s no sense in criticizing people for fighting over it, as that’s just the nature of any currency in general.

Because it doesn’t matter whether your country supports it or not. They can never gain access to your coins like they can your fiat currency accounts. Bitcoin and crypto are decentralized, so it’s not like they can just go to the core devs and tell them to give up your coins or sieve your accounts.

It would become difficult to purchase bitcoins directly using your bank account, but the beauty of crypto is that there are so many ways to acquire it without having to use your bank.


What are you trying to say? GTFO

Are you talking about imported addresses, or Blockchain.info as a hot wallet provider? If it’s the latter, I hope you realize that any site or service that controls your private key potentially puts you at risk of not being able to retrieve your crypto when shit goes down. It’s not just a matter of how safe you think Blockchain.info is because any site can potentially be susceptible to hacks. I’m not an early adopter of Bitcoin, so I didn’t have a cold wallet for years... I also used blockchain.info as a wallet service with imported addresses. My problem was simply that I wanted to help the scaling issues and use a segwit wallet. I have made the jump to GreenAddress, and I’m amazed at the difference, especially when it comes to fees. Blockchain.info’s method of handling fees is extremely inefficient and inaccurate. There would be times where I would let them choose my fee based on a high priority, and was surprised to see a transaction with well under recommended fees... I’m talking at least HALF of what should have been paid in order to get my transaction confirmed within 2 blocks like Blockchain.info stated when initiating the transaction.

Either way, I don’t think your coins are “perfectly safe” on any hot wallet provider, as you state, even with all those security measures. Because, as I stated before, all it takes is one hacking incident for you to lose your coins.

As far as charitable giving in the crypto space, there’s the Pineapple Fund, but he has disabled new applications at the moment. www.pineapplefund.org. It’s good to see that someone is donating massive amounts of Bitcoin to charities, and I’d like to see more acts like this.

There are also several altcoins that were solely created for charitable giving, such as CoExistCoin and KrossCoin. I’m sure there are a few others.

I think the major problem with charities, not just ones who would potentially accept crypto, is the lack of transparency. I, myself, will never again donate to Red Cross because of it.

Not a plug, but I am on the board of a non-profit in the third world country that I live in, and we publish financial statements every single quarter and every single year. I’m currently in the process of creating and integrating crypto wallets into the website, and hope to use blockchain technology and historical data to be able to provide transparency for every crypto donation, as well as every time the crypto is exchanged to fiat in order to use for the charity. There are some tax implications that is slowing the process down, but I want to ensure that we are by the book, so until the day comes when we can legally accept crypto, I won’t be sharing any addresses for donations.

I really do wish more charities will step up, but if I may be honest, I feel that if charities are savvy enough to accept crypto donations, then they are probably inclined to pay for the web developer’s services for including crypto donation options as a method of receiving funds. Just another unnecessary expense, in my opinion, that detracts from using funds for their intended purpose of the charity’s mission.

OP, please let me know what you discover. I’m looking for a charity (besides my own) to give back to for 2018, and am interested to see what you come up with!

Welcome back to the forums. But I’m not sure you understand how the ranking system works. Just because you have a three year old account doesn’t mean you’d be a Hero/Legendary Member by now. You would have still had to post within every two-week period up to 14 posts per period. Read more about it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178608.0

With that said, if your email was stolen, why didn’t you just create a new account three years ago? I’m assuming it was at that time or you wouldn’t have indicated that your account “should have been somewhat Legendary or HEro”.

Either way, I really hope you’re not some user that got banned for shitposting that created a new account for the sole purpose of breeding for bounties. But good luck and have fun blogging and reading interesting topics here.

Why not just add a notice bar at the top of the page (for clearnet users) that lets visitors know that ChipMixer is only available via the .com domain? This seems to be the popular method amongst other crypto service websites like binance and kucoin. You could utilize the same method for the darknet onion site.

Example:

From my understanding, a transaction counts as a segwit transaction as long as it is sent by a segwit-enabled address. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I am under the impression that a segwit-to-legacy address and a segwit-to-segwit address costs the same. Receiving address shouldn’t matter, as I thought it was only the minimization or inputs that was responsible for reducing the transaction size. Doesn’t this mean that it doesn’t matter whether sending to segwit or legacy address?

I guess what has thrown me off has been the recommended fee on earn.com. One would think that they would reflect more accurate fee recommendations based on the data from the previous 3 blocks, but now I’m beginning to wonder if their data is actually accurate.

Either way, I’m fairly new to segwit, so I’m grateful for all of you who have responded here. I’m learning more and more about it, and the knowledge shared here has been phenomenal.  Keep it coming. Maybe someone can post about the common misconceptions about segwit?

Well, rain on my parade why don't you?! 100K+ transactions in the mempool is still pretty high, if you ask me. What about some other transactions using a much-lower fee than what was recommended when the mempool was much more congested? Like https://blockchain.info/tx/2319238e88e2ccf005b4fc5eb92413e63ef99e7a4ccd2b8968066776526e8460

And here I was thinking that SegWit was the reason why this was happening. I'm wondering if I could achieve the same using a legacy transaction with the same fee at this moment... Either way, it could mean that Bitcoin is finally losing popularity again with the new influx during the last pump? I'm okay with that, as well. Whatever helps to decrease fees, I'm okay with.

Question for you, and feel free to be cryptic with your response, or feel free to reply within my inbox, but here goes:

Theoretically, what would happen if a user decided to upload, let's say, copyrighted materials to your site? Would their content have to adhere to DMCA standards? I'm obviously asking for a friend.

Call me a shiller, but THIS is what SegWit-enabled transactions are all about.

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Received Time: 2018-01-21 05:19:55
Included In Blocks: 505296 (2018-01-21 05:23:32 + 4 minutes)

Transaction ID: https://blockchain.info/tx/e00079e38f8b038ac7d4a8afc4c2d01a7e440f332f1a529f001ba8ffd3bcd485

---

I decided to see how functional a SegWit enabled transaction was in a practical sense. I've made several transactions in the past at 125-150sat/bytes, which was always well under the recommended fees via https://bitcoinfees.earn.com, which provides an average fee based on the last 3 hours of transactional data, which cross-referenced to transactions that are currently in the mempool. Those previous transactions usually had it's first confirmation within the next block.

This time, I really wanted to try something new, so I decided to send myself a couple hundred bucks worth of Bitcoin with a super low fee of 64sat/byte. Unheard of, and risky, right? I expected that I would have to pay to accelerate my transaction in a couple days. I copied the transaction ID, closed my wallet, and pinned the tab of my transaction to my browser window so I could check on it periodically.

In no way, shape or form did I expect what happened next. My transaction was included in the next block. My low-fee transaction received its first confirmation within minutes.  

So with that, I encourage you to start adopting SegWit-enabled wallets. Start SegWit transactions. Your transaction does not have to be from a SegWit-enabled address to another one to be a SegWit transaction. As long as the sender has a SegWit-enabled address, the transaction is valid as a SW one. But please note that a legacy address sending to a SW-enabled one does not qualify the transaction as a SW one.

So please, start using a SegWit enabled wallet so you can help contribute to providing a solution to the current scaling issues. I'm not recommending that you use fees as low as I did, but I will confirm that EVERY single one of my transactions that I've used using my SW wallet has been less than half of the recommended fees, and every single one of those transactions have confirmed within the first couple of blocks.

I use GreenAddress as my SegWit-enabled wallet, so start there if you're new to SW: https://greenaddress.it/en/

I encourage you to share your experiences and technical knowledge (in layman's terms, please) in this thread if you truly want to take part in increasing user adoption of SegWit. Let's at least try to get members of this forum to make the switch!

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Are you providing accounts to these services? Or are you delivering individual photos based on the buyer’s requests? Either way, what risk is there for our accounts to get banned using your service? I’m hoping that you’re somehow legitimately providing this service, but chances are that you’re using stolen credit cards in order to do so. Please correct me if I’m wrong I’d like to buy some photos, but don’t want to contribute to any form of illegal activities to do so. Cheers.

wrong section bud. This belongs in the Exchanges board, not Currency exchange.

But don’t sweat it. All of the major exchanges are being inundated with millions of new user signups from newbies just like yourself asking questions or encountering some sort of issues. While Poloniex has a pretty large support team, it takes time for them to get to your support ticket. Be patient, and they will eventually answer you. I’ve had to deal with their support on several occasions, and the latest took around 5 days.

Just be glad that you’re not having issues on sites with even worse customer support such as YoBit or C-cex. Now THEY have the “whorst support service”!

1. Many exchanges do not allow US citizens to purchase Bitcoin, but there are some major players that do, such as Coinbase, GDAX, Coinmama, Bitstamp, Kraken and LocalBitcoins. These are all as reputable as you’ll find in the crypto industry. Check out this list for more options: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/united-states/

2. I’m not familiar with a “new” tax plan that was passed related to crypto currency, but the IRS views crypto as a property (not a currency), which means that you would have to pay capital gains taxes on the value of your crypto transfers, every time you sell or exchange your crypto into fiat. Think of it as real estate when it comes to reporting your crypto sales..

3. Each of the major exchanges have their own advantages. For example, Coinbase has the best rates if you use your bank account directly to purchase crypto. But this requires allowing them to access your bank account, by way of logging into your bank’s online portal via Coinbase. As for as short trading, your options are much better on other TRADING exchanges, such as bitfinex, binance, bittrex, poloniex, etc. as they support much more altcoin options for trading. Each has their own restrictions, and most of their support teams are overwhelmed at the moment, so if you encounter any issues, you’ll unfortunately be stuck with that issue for much longer than you’ll anticipate. They also require verification, for the most part, so anonymity is out of the question as an American. It doesn’t sound like you’re worried about anonymity, though.

4. Yes. Worry about it. Google “Mt Gox” to see what’s happened in the past with millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. There is always a risk of an exchange shutting down at any moment, regardless of how reputable they have been in the past. Cold storage is among the safest options for storing your crypto. I personally never leave anymore value in any exchanges more than I’m willing to lose in case something goes awry.

5. You’ll learn on your own, as you continue playing around and short trading. Coinmarketcap.com will become your homepage. You’ll find a lot of articles about the best way short the markets, but one thing I hope you take away from my post is this: DO NOT EVER JOIN AUTOTRADING SERVICES or buy any “bots” that auto trade. They claim to be able to read signals and use your own stop orders to guarantee a return, but these are all ponzis. They rely on new customer sales to support and payback the “promise of return”. In fact, stay away from ANY site that guarantees any form of ROI. If their services were legitimately profitable, they wouldn’t have to rely on newbies in order to make money.

Welcome to crypto, and hope you enjoy it!

First of all, banks operate using private ledgers. They will always claim that is due to the privacy of their customers, which has some validity. However, banks rely on issuing loans in order to gain profits and revenue, and they use their customers’ money pool to back those loans, which I believe to be the main reason they keep a private ledger vs. a blockchain public ledger.

If they were to create their own blockchain, I don’t believe it would be their sole method of conducting business. It would probably be used to be able to track customers’ funds, and provide transparency for those who opt in to have their balances available for display publicly at any given time. I don’t believe it will be successful for them to create their own digital currency, as they’ll have less access to create loans publicly using the pooled funds, as the blockchain wouldn’t allow them to use their customers’ funds without their initiation of transactions to back a loan.

Banks are all about profits, and most of them probably realize that there are no profits in crypto currency for their type of business model. Besides, if they did create their own crypto, there won’t be much of an effect on existing values of the major cryptos... it would be no different than a random ICO or shitcoin launch by a random Joe Blow developer.

This. All of my clients hate having to deal with OTAs because of this very reason. The fees are exorbitant, and when trying to run certain internal promos to try and increase direct bookings, they send emails and notices about rate parity issues and how that is a violation of the terms agreed upon to be listed on their sites... it’s ridiculous and puts the hotels and resorts in a hostage situation. While your idea is great for b2b, I am hoping that you’ll find a huge customer base. Maybe you can make this app/service and accept fiat with the option of crypto payments, instead of focusing solely on crypto? Just to appease to the masses instead of instantly isolating your target audience?