Whenever a country moves in the direction of freedom it is a good thing, Bitcoin is financial freedom for everyone.

Bitcoin has not failed in El Salvador, there are some people using it.
What is highly needed is to educate the people, people in El Salvador confuse the Chivo Wallet with Bitcoin.

This that work in El Salvador in regards Bitcoin:
The ATM machines use standard Bitcoin QR codes and work with any Bitcoin Wallet, max daily limit $1000 USD in multiples of $20.

What does not work, the Chivo Wallet personal and the Point of Sale:
The point of Sale when I was in El Salvador in Nov 2021 it was completely broken, Bitcoin payments would vanish, it would only work reliably for the Chivo wallet at the time.
This made payments at major stores like Walmart not possible with a non Chivo Wallet.

The Chivo personal wallet, it works but has serious design flaws, for example Bitcoin in El Salvador is used mostly for small transactions as such you would expect the Bitcoin lightning to be the QR code by default, but no it is the hardest one to access furthest away in the menu, the default QR code is the one provided by Chivo which is only readable by Chivo Wallets, standard Bitcoin and Bitcoin Lightning wallets can not read the QR code from a Chivo Wallet as such you need to request another QR code which only very small bussiness are willing to do. From my experience the personal Chivo Wallet does work in Bitcoin and Lightning mode but it is not a QR code provided by default which causes a lot problems like not being able to pay in places like Walmart.

The point of sale had many catastrophic bugs which hopefully they have been fixed by now.

The good thing of the Chivo wallet is that its QR codes are easy to recognize just by looking at them, at the center if there is a $ sign it is a Chivo code, a yellow B a Bitcoin QR code, a yellow lightning then it is a lightning QR code. So as a tourist as soon as I saw the $ in the QR code I knew it would not work and requested a lightning or Bitcoin QR code which sometimes they were not willing to provide and the transaction could not take place. My experience was that few places would generate the proper QR code and that was because they were willing to learn, the lightning QR code was kind on hidden in the menu which is a terrible design.

My recommendation to the people of El Salvador, is to modify Chivo to provide a standard Bitcoin lightning QR code by default not hidden far away in the menu that way tourists can use Bitcoin to make Bitcoin purchases.

The people that created the ATMs did a fairly good job, I only found one issue with the ATMs but overall once you know how they work they are very reliable. The only issue I found with them is when selling Bitcoin you need to let the ATM know you are done paying it is not automatic, otherwise a timer kicks in and resets the ATM without a warning causing you to lose the funds (you get the funds back by opening a case but it is a lengthy process).

This is my recommendation for security, do not store the seed directly on trezor password manager if you have lots of funds.

A better method is to store the seed encrypted locally on a secure physical location that you control, and on the trezor password manager store the password for the encryption.
That way if the trezor password manager has a vulnerability which could happen, your seed is not compromised, only the password to the encrypted file is compromised, however since they do not have access to the encrypted file you are still safe and now have time to create a new encrypted file with a new password.

Extra work, however you have an additional layer of security which is needed, in addition on the trezor use a passphrase which is critical, since Trezor has be psychically hacked, however the passphrase is not stored on the trezor which is a needed level of security for physical theft.

I personally like the Trezor T a lot, but I also use the Trezor one since sometimes I had trouble with trezor T which I never had with Trezor one when dealing with u2f.

My approach for security is to have several secure wallets, trezor ledger and coldcard, being coldcard the most secure, and Trezor the most user friendly.

The coldcard has a method to encrypt the seed into a file which is great, then store the 12 word passphrase to decrypt the file on trezor password manager, and do not use a computer to handle the encrypted file since you could have a virus especially in windows, use the coldcard to handle the file, and the seed can also be used on trezor or ledger.

Many of my hardware wallets where on a safe on Mexico and they were stolen by the Mexican police and military, however I had backups so I am safe, and they completely failed at hacking them, luckily for me I was not there when the theft took place, it was 15 guys army and police in mexico armed with machine guns.
That shows that hardware wallets are very safe.

I am not familiar with cobo vault pro.

Trezor T is very secure and one of the hardware wallets that is easiest to use, however potentially vulnerable if lost unless you use a passphrase.
It is fully open source, this is the perfect wallet for the average person.
Online security is excellent.
Very good wallet.

Leger nano X, close source, however it is very secure, however if you enter the pin wrong 3 times it self reset which makes no sense, other hardware wallets it is like 15 times, it has bluetooth which make it easier to use with a cell phone.
Very good wallet.

Keepkey, it is based on the trezor one code but not as updated. using it with shapeshift is buggy, however you can use it with the original keepkey chrome client, or electrum, mycelium, and maybe wasabi.
For the price you can not go wrong it is by far the cheapest of all hardware wallets, however it is less secure than trezor or ledger, I do recommend this wallet for low amounts of money since it is more secure than any software based wallet, but I would not recommend this wallet for large sums of money.
Keepkey other than large screen useful for older people, and low price, has no advantage from either from ease of use or security.
moderate security, very low price.

The most secure hardware wallet seems to be the coldcard mk3, it has a lot of security features that the other wallets do not have, the trade off it is highly technical not for newbies, and bitcoin only.

I personally prefer to have multiple hardware wallets for different purposes.
For ultimate security coldcard mk3.
For an online password manager trezor T
for u2f ledger X, and then trezor T, since ledger X makes it easy on cellphones due to bluetooth.
for making up my seedfile coldcard mk3.
to play around with small amounts: keepkey

Even if a hardware wallet is lost or stolen even though most are vulnerable to physical attacks, the attacks are difficult and most thieves would have no clue on what to due.

Since she is not technical leave out coldcard (advance wallet), and keepkey since she would most likely use shapeshift encounter bugs and get a bad bitcoin experience, my recommendation is Trezor T since it is the easiest to use while being secure at the same time, it uses a web gui for a bitcoin client, the only thing you will need to tell her is to never provide the seed to anyone plus you get a password manager with it.

It makes perfect sense since it adds a level of security, if your seed is compromised your funds are gone unless you use a passphrase, the passphrase for the backup is not your seed it is to decrypt the backup which has your seed, if the attacker gets access to your backup passphrase but not to the backup itself you are still safe. Of course you would never have the backup and the passphrase for the backup in the same location.

You understood correctly, but in this case the passphrase to restore the backup it is 12 words, the backup I believe it also includes the pin, duress pin, and brick pin.

The only thing that is missing is a timer lockdown to view the seed, it should only show the seed after a given period of time set by the user, this way if you are not very careful with the wallet while using it on a public place you are still safe.

The seed has to be backed up somewhere, having it on a piece of paper has a higher risk than storing it on an encrypted file, and a hardware wallet is the perfect device for doing the encryption.
 

I used this script for many years with some modifications, and it worked quite well for selling voip cards using btcvoip.com now dead due to market reasons, I still had this script on my server but it was stolen by Mexican police, when they into my place broke and did massive destruction.

Thanks for the script it really helped and overall it works well, one of the things I had to change was session timeout which was too low, especially now that bitcoin transactions take a long time, and some very minor changes.

could someone post instructions on how to get an skyhook to work with the new blockchain api.
The skyhook was working well under the old api v1.
I have managed to compile some versions of  blockchain-wallet-service successfully.

I did change a line in  blockchain.php

changed from:
private static $URL = "https://blockchain.info/merchant/";
to:
private static $URL = "http://localhost:3000/merchant/";

however I always get an error from the service:
root@skyhook:~#  LOGLEVEL=debug blockchain-wallet-service start --port 3000
1528030391618 - info: blockchain.info wallet service v0.22.0 running on http://127.0.0.1:3000
1528030446244 - debug: Logging in
1528030448753 - error: ERR_ADDRESS

or using newer versions of the new api v2
1528033758642 - debug: Recording smwv3 event name=heartbeat_10m
1528033943863 - debug: Logging in
1528033968086 - error: ERR_ADDRESS

it is possible that some more changes are needed to the code, any help will be greatly appreciated.
I have been struggling weeks trying to get the skyhook working again.
I someone could post a working blockchain.php file it will be greatly appreciated.

Political sabotage is taking place without a doubt.

Banks are Governments are doing their best at trying to destroy Bitcoin.

But Bitcoin is your financial freedom, and so far it has survived all attacks.

Banks and Governments are on that attack phase, in a few years they will join the Bitcoin revolution since they will have no other choice.

My recommendation to everyone is to hold "HODL"  bitcoin will reach new all time highs this year for sure.

Everyday I hear on the news FUD and attacks from Banks.

Bitcoin will not die, buy and hold, do not listen to fud, get a hardware wallet, and learn on how to use decentralized exchanges, ultimately we will win.

I have not actually used bisq in production, only configured it and set up the private key.

It looks like a very good idea, if people value their freedom this is a good exchange, but do the the decentralized nature of it using the scrow service that is built in it is a must.

I did like it, however I did not see an option to use checks, checks are very safe if used properly. That is you walk in the bank that issues the check and request the cash, it either goes though or not.

I will personally be using this exchange in the near future, but I will need to study all the payment options for fiat.

Also it would be nice if a rating option was added to the exchange to rate the sellers and buyers from possible scams.

This will fix the problem:
1. Flash to lastest firmware
2. Set the fan speed to 100%
3. Set the frequency to 419

The above settings work for me and made the miner stable

Web wallets are fine as long as you control your private keys, if you use a web wallet in combination with a hardware wallet like trezor or ledger nano s you will be very safe.

Web wallets are extremely dangerous when they hold the private keys for you.

In the case of myetherwallet when using it with a seed file password, and a trezor or a ledger nano s it is a very secure environment.

Thanks, just recently I got mine.

Has the airdrop taken place or not yet?
Is there anything that needs to be done if the coins where linked in the previous air drop.?

Bitmain is becoming an scam business, they were selling defective R4 which have been discontinued most likely for that reason.

They agreed to replace the R4 for T9 if I paid the hashing difference in hash rate, since the R4 failed with in a few days of running. I did pay for the difference in hashing rate in Bitcoins.

They have both of my T9 miners for about 6 weeks (6 weeks after being received)  and are failing to ship, 3 weeks ago they promised they would ship within 5 days and failed.

Avoid this crooks they will not honor the guarantee as they should.

Most likely they are mining with my hardware.

I initially suggested just sending them the bad parts and they refused, they said I had to ship the whole miner. They are crooks there is no reason to hold my miner with them for such a long time, they are becoming like KNC, Butterflylabs and the rest of the crooks.

who knows if they will even ship my T9 miners.

Segwit is good for all the independent miners.

The bitmain miners that we have may have asicboost on the hardware but not on the firmware that is sold to us, we get no benefit of asicboost.

Asicboot is patented technology which goes against the spirit of Bitcoin, and the GPL, we should not allow any patented technoly on the Bitcoin network, unless if it is an invalid patent like someone patenting the blockchain or Bitcoin itself, then the patent should be ignore since it is not legit.

I been mining on slushdot and I get the advertised hash rates without the use of asicboost.

Support Segwit it is the way to go, use mining pools that support Segwit.

liteguardian is no longer paying, the payout stopped working about 3 weeks ago.
I got a few litecoins stuck there and the payouts are not working.

AVOID!!! using Liteguardian it is now an scam site or the site is broken and not being maintained.

I recommend  using Linux for any PC running a  full node, Linux is much more secure than windows.

The safe way of doing this is to create a special account for the node, and make sure that wallet.dat can only be read by the owner, not others, not the group, only the owner of the account.

Then create a separate account for your regular usage, that way in the event that you do get a virus, the virus would run under the ownership of the account that got the virus, and not under the ownership of the account that runs the full node, this way your bitcoins, litecoins, dash, etc they will be safe.

For extra security Trezor and Ledger Nano S are the best.

Both are great hardware wallets, and both have features that are missing on the other wallet, trezor has support for a password manager, and ledger has support for litecoins.

I recommend to have both, for traveling by plane the Ledger has the advantage that looks like a usb stick.

Very true, but you miss one very important point. The petrodollar is backed by the USA military, it is not a currency based on democracy or free choice. It will not be doomed for the lack of buying petrol, since it is backed by force, it is doomed becaused it is being challanged by other superpowers like Russia and the Bricks bank, and the only reason it gets away with the massive debt, it is because the debt it is distributed worldwise against others will, but once some countries get out of the petrodollar which it is happening now a domino effect will take place, and the military backing will not work against countries like Russia, no one wants a third world war, that would be complete insanity, however its military backing could work against third world countries therefore it wont collapse completely but most likely will go though a severe financial crisis.

A quiet S7 would be a great thing.

the problem is now that there is no competition, the S7 is sold at a price of $1823 USD or 7.5 BTC, the real price if BTC goes up is in BTC, and if BTC goes down it is in dollars.

If BTC goes over $300 dollars, the $1823 will go up, most likely over $2000, and if BTC goes down then the $1823 stays, unless if it goes down a lot, the miner price will not proportionally goes down.

The pricing scheme seems to be calculated at an amount you will never ROI.

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator
This calculator takes into consideration difficulty increases.

at a 10% difficulty increase ( 20% is the default) and free electricity you will not ROI in over 530 days, and will end up 1.7 BTC short or ROI.

at a 5% difficulty increase and free electricity, it takes 296 days to break even.

Let compute the fair price of an S7, using difficulty increase of 10%, and 15cents per kilowatt, and a ROI of 3 months:

you will make 1.2 BTC, loss of 6.3 BTC.

lets use difficulty of 5%, and 10cents the killowat, for 6 monts:
3.5 BTC made, 7.5 expended, loss of 4 BTC.

Using this calculations it can be seen that the S7 will never ROI, and it is extremely overpriced, more than double what it should cost.

from a hardware point of view it is nice, but it does not help if it will never ROI, I would personally buy a few if it was priced at a price in which I could ROI, or even break even in 6 month, but the fact is that I will not even break even at 2 years.

Do not believe me? use the calculator yourself and plug in the numbers, even with free electricity you will not ROI.

Most likely price will go down, since few are buying, the item has not sold out in many days, but Bitmain has to seriously stop being greedy and lower the price by at least 60% if we are expected to have the opportunity of at least reaching ROI.

I am hoping that BTC doubles in price, but that will not help, since if BTC doubles in price, Bitmain will double the price of the miner.

The real price drop will be soon, and that is when the block halves, there will be a huge market of used bitcoin mining equipment, that will make all prices new or used hardware  to drop, I am personally waiting for that day, or the day in which I can get hardware that will ROI in about 4 to 6 months at most.

Bitcoin as it is works fine and it can scale globally as it is, the proper way to see things is to think that bitcoin simulates gold with the added property of being portable.

you would not buy a soft drink using gold or a $100 dollar bill, for that reason alt coins like litecoin o dash have a purpose, we do not need 500 alt coins, but maybe a few are needed.

Moore's law does not hold on the long term, only on the short them, and something that must never be sacrificed is the fact that Bitcoin is decentralized, increasing the block size centralizes Bitcoin that it is very bad and should not be allowed.

As of now the Bitcoin DB is over 50GB with a 1MB block, on the long term if the block where to be x times bigger the DB would be x times bigger, as of now the DB is too big to be on cell phones, and on an average laptop, lets keep the 1 MB limit to prevent centralization.

If we think of bitcoin as gold and litecoin or dash as silver combined we can cover both large transactions and small ones.

Another thing to consider, The code-base for Bitcoin must be 100% bug free for security reasons, ask any developer and they will tell you that is something very difficult to achieve, but since Bitcoin is a currency security must take the biggest priority, in general small computer programs can be made very secure and 100% bug free, but as the size of code increases security goes down,  take for example an operating system. Do we have a 100% bug free OS? We do not and that's because the amount of code is very large, and some of that code is complex. The same applies for Bitcoin, if we end up with a very large and complex code it will be very difficult to keep it 100% secure, the ideal codebase is lean and mean, meaning keeping as simple as possible that keeps the code secure.

Forks are a bad thing specially in a digital currency, now that it can be seen that the fork is failing bitcoin has started to go up in price.

For Bitcoin to succeed certain things must be assured not to change ever:
for example the 21 million limit must not change.
decentralization
the ability to pay anyone directly with the need of a third party.
All coins have equal value, opposite of colored coins.
Consensus has to be respected.

As of now 1MB block limit is fine, and it helps to prevent spam, you raise that limit and then the blockchain will get full of spam that the people that run full nodes will have to pay for, and for that reason large blocks creates a big security risk.

Of course if the day comes that a cell phone has 1 TB of data storage, and the bitcoin user base is 100 times larger, then and only then by consensus with a very careful study done not to break with the security model, could the block size be increased. But what Bitcoin-XT had done was recklessness, a total disrespect to the security model and the principals of decentralization, and for what bitcoin stands.