Easy solution: don't open a channel using the max amount.

Right. If there was a "verified" badge for users, and a "confirmed authentic" badge per message, that might be a good enough incentive to drive adoption.

Completely wrong, actually. Bi-directional channels. That means you can open a channel with 1 node, and receive payments with anyone else that's indirectly connected to that node.



No, you misunderstood.

The only issue is that some nodes (probably most of them still) have a max channel size (0.16777 BTC). But there's an option to ignore that limit too, as long as both nodes agree as a part of opening the channel to begin with.

Dual funding just allows a channel to be more balanced when it opens, nothing at all to do with receiving payments.

Nope.

You need a channel. Just one. That node needs to have at least 2 channels (1 with you,  1 more with someone else). That node needs to have at least 2 channels.... etc. Repeat until you have a complete route to who you're actually paying. It's a network.

The clue is in the name (i.e. "network")

The website does not need to open a channel to send funds to it's users. All that's needed is a series of channels that are linked through more than one lightning node.


Website -> A -> B -> ... -> darosior


As long as A, B and all other nodes in between have enough money to fund the payment, then the payment route is viable and you receive your withdrawal.

That's interesting. So now I'm pretty enthusiastic about the Epochtalk migration.

Any account would be more secure if it had a 2nd factor to authenticate it. Why not make it mandatory to be eligible for the higher ranks? Why not promote using cryptography standards that have other benefits too? If we design a system to make it secure by default, then the value will increase. Right now, I have email alerts turned off, because they get sent to me unencrypted.

No

Saying that sort of thing with no hope of proving it is just going to make the arguments worse, Jet Cash. You wouldn't want to inflame the arguments about Venezuela further, would you?

I'm gonna repeat myself again then: there's no reason why Bitcoin addresses can't be used to recover accounts, PGP is just useful for different reasons as well as that

Sure, but email clients don't have plugins to decrypt messages encrypted using Bitcoin keys. And the software to sign and decrypt messages in a browser via PGP keys exists, and is mature. No such thing exists for Bitcoin, namely because Bitcoin keys aren't intended for the that purpose.

There's no good reason to be sending unencrypted email in 1999, let alone 2019. Especially a forum concerning leading cryptography tools.



Ok, but it's not yet accepted. We at least need to wait for that, then we have to wait for the majority of Bitcoin wallets to roll that standard out. Meanwhile, all PGP clients can already do the job in a standard way, all that's needed is to avoid relying on fingerprints (which is not so hard). And PGP has interfaces with alot of other types of software.

It's neither, but both aren't easy for different reasons



My thinking is that high rank accounts are actually becoming a little more valuable now that it's more difficult to rank up. You need to put in some real work to do it, people would happily hack an account to cut that out. Imagine if a great poster had their Hero account's password hacked, and they couldn't recover their account because admin wasn't convinced their email wasn't hacked too?

Maybe a better idea is only to make keys part of high rank requirements, not to lock existing high rankers out of their accounts or something like that. To rank up, you need to register a key (PGP or Bitcoin), and you drop ranks until you do for existing high ranks.

Difficult, not impossible

1. There's no standard to sign messages using segwit. Bitcointalk software would need to implement different ways of verifying messages for different wallet software
2. People would have to figure out how to switch their wallet to generate legacy addresses, which is different in different wallet software


PGP is better for those config/standardisation reasons, but Bitcoin's cryptography is arguably more secure. Awkward situation.

Using Bitcoin keys is more difficult, you need to get people to use legacy addresses, as there's no message signing standard using segwit addresses. Awkward situation.

Re: SHA-1 fingerprints

does this matter for the current PGP use-case on Bitcointalk? The fingerprint need not (and AFAIU is not) be used for account recovery.

hmmm, that means spoofing fingerprints is fairly trivial. Awkward.

Maybe start out saying Legendaries must register PGP keys within a timeout that starts after their most recent login? Then move that requirement down the ranks slowly.


It seems like PGP usage is sort of encouraged, but then again there is also a field in Profile Settings for MSN and Skype handles If PGP is needed to recover accounts, why not actually make it a part of the forum? Given that Bitcoin is really a part of a wider push towards personal cryptography as a whole, I'm slightly surprised we're still at the "post your public key in this thread" stage

No, I think it's more that he understands that fiat disproportionately benefits big market market players like himself. Companies he has stakes in received bailout money in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and I expect those same companies as well as his own hedge fund had access to the vast amounts of almost-zero-percent lending that the US central bank has been handing out ever since.

If you were the beneficiary of a bank that prints vast amounts of money, then lends it exclusively to big companies while everyone else carries on using the currency those loans are made out in, you'd naturally be against a competitor currency like bitcoin.

Big companies spending zero-interest dollar loans on asset booms takes away purchasing power from everyone else. Bitcoin gives everyone that type of opportunity, and undermines the credibility of the central bank currencies that create the asset booms in the first place.

But if there's change, then that means it's not someone shuffling money around from one pocket to another, that proves they're paying someone, right?

Well, no. It's a well known fact that people try to simulate real commerce by "splitting": sending 1 or more outputs to 2 addresses they control, in order to appear as though someone spent some money and received some change, and so now 2 people own the money that was used as the input to that transaction. There are techniques to analyse this kind of behaviour, but it's all probabilistic stuff. And there are various way to defeat that kind of analysis anyway.

So second guessing how the money is being used carries no certainty, as people are already camouflaging 1 form of behaviour as another on the blockchain. Here's a certainty; whatever the reason for the movement, this article claims 1.3 trillion was moved in 2018. And everyone who moved that BTC wanted to pay the fees to move it.

But there's an inescapable counter-balance to price volatility; it attracts traders. Which consequently increases market liquidity. Which attracts investors... which causes price volatility. So as you said, Bitcoin is more attractive as an investment asset than a medium of exchange for the majority of users, but only until the market matures.

But that's not stopping trade using Bitcoin; there's no reason not to sell as much of your regular fiat income as you can for BTC, then buy as much of your regular purchases using bitcoin. That supports the bitcoin economy, supports market liquidity, and proves these kind of claims from bitcoin's competitors wrong.

all cryptocurrencies need keys, wallets and nodes. It's inaccurate to call those "limitations", more like "requirements"