Damn, that database looks way larger than I imagined.. Well, all we can hope for right now is that no physical attacks will happen at those leaked places..

Honestly, I really think exchanges (especially those based in the USA and Europe) have been sharing customer information with agencies & governments for a long time now. It's just that now it's a publicly available information.

I personally wouldn't trust an exchange if they told me they only report txs from $3k and up. If the government is suddenly interested to find some new tax evaders or money launderers, it's pretty easy for them to gather their info.

Hmm, I have mixed feelings about this. The price certainly is too large for a book out of which there is probably no original content coming from Mill Hill Books themselves, but what I do like is that this is preserving history the way it used to be preserved a long time ago. I'd honestly purchase such a book just to have my own reserve of everything coming from Satoshi. You never know how and when information may be lost.

On one hand I do get what you mean, but on the other hand there are some books quite similar to what Mill Hill Books has done, such as historical letters from Caesar. These kind of books are available in pretty much any library. I guess he wasn't asked whether he'd like those to be made public either - and it's even worse because these are supposed to be private letters.

I honestly don't think it'll come to nothing. They're testing the waters in a subtle attempt to find out whether there'll be a strong rejection of their idea from the community or not. In the end, they'll probably just keep on coming up with more and more regulations until we can't have it anymore and the community starts to strongly oppose them.

Be it enforcing KYC for all addresses one person owns or forcing exchanges to accept deposits from and withdrawals to only 1 single address, it's bad in both cases and it makes me believe they're looking forward to coming up with even more absurd regulations. They have a big advantage, and that is the fact that most people just don't care. The amount of people actually interested in keeping Bitcoin's fundamental ideas strong and going is way too small for them to care. When most of the Bitcoin users are profit-seekers, it's pretty much a lost battle for us.

Guess it's all about time before a lawsuit begins over this. Ledger should've handled their customer database with extreme precaution and overwhelming security and this wouldn't have happened. In fact, Ledger should've removed the details of customers if no order has been placed under their information for a certain amount of days.

But again, I suspect Ledger sold this information way before the hack anyway. I doubt there's no government out there who wanted to pay them some large sums for this kind of info. For everyone affected of this problem, just get over it and start using fake information and disposable accounts for future purchases.

I guess it would be both a success and a failure on the government's side. While this can clearly not be imposed for everyone, it would make it a pain in the arse to use cryptocurrencies in the USA which would certainly slow down the adoption and crash the price for a while. But I care more about the adoption and potential highly negative effects this would have over BTC than the price crashing.

It may be hard to impose it for all USA citizens using Bitcoin, but would you risk getting caught? Who would?

You cannot compare something you could purchase in a completely anonymous way to something that has a permanent, irreversible ledger and does not forgive you for any little mistake.

You're talking about the cost to enforce this as if everyone around the world is using Bitcoin at this point. The number of people actually supporting Bitcoin and not just its price bumps is very, very small. Bitcoin regulation would not make a big fuss right now, because the number of people using it is just too small for their voices to matter.

Anyone can download a wallet and accept Bitcoin outside the system, yet you're doing it through the Internet that your gov is permanently monitoring. You could argue Tor is a solution to that - well, trust me, it's quite hard to do everything the right way. And if everyone used it through Tor and mixers/CoinJoin, you would see an immediate opposition from the governments. The only reason they have stopped the Bitcoin oppression is that they found a way to monitor probably more than half of the blockchain events. People aren't using it the right way, so they can easily link events to identities. A heaven of control and surveillance for the govs.

I'm curious to find out how Bitcoin would work in a world where Internet is decentralized and the massive businesses of Internet providers give away their power to the people, because that's what it takes if we wanted Bitcoin not to be regulated or banned. Not gonna happen. Even if it will, it won't take too long before someone else takes the lead. If politics fall, mainstream media may take the control handle because it already has a significant influence over people's behavior and thoughts. Decentralize everything and just wait until someone calls out "the significant increase in crimes". The average person would listen to that rather than supporting a digital currency they don't even understand.

The world's largest powers will never let a decentralized currency take over their controlled fiat currency.. hence why CBDCs are gonna be a thing soon. The average person will more than likely jump straight into the CBDCs boat, which will obviously be so much easier to understand and use than cryptocurrencies. The digital Euro or USD will probably have a very fancy and intuitive UI as well.

Monero has faced a huge oppression from governments and online platforms. Yet, no rioting and no big voices complained about it. If the government found it's quite hard to monitor what happens through it, they decided to slowly cut the thread and let only non-private blockchains function the way they're supposed to function.

Well, here you just express your hate against the system we're living in. I hate it as well, it's a common point of ours, but it isn't really what we were talking about. I know politics are pretty much a scam, so is the fiat system, yet we realistically cannot have a decentralized governance. Even if Bitcoin has made open-source and decentralization more prominent, governments are still implanting backdoors everywhere. Even if the COVID tracking apps are supposedly anonymous, it's actually quite easy to find one's identity through them.

Having no governance would make this world a mess. If you're really thinking that one day this is gonna be a real thing, I hope you're not wrong but I don't think it could work out. The human nature wouldn't allow it.

It may be here, but are you 100% sure you'd still be able to use it in the event of a crypto ban in your country, without getting caught? It may put the financial power in the people's hands rather than the government's, but as I said, it cannot make a change alone. We would first need to decentralize everything. CBDCs are way closer to our reality than Bitcoin taking over the control handle.

Supporting Bitcoin doesn't mean pretending there aren't negative sides of it, nor does it mean that I have to truly support fairy tales. I'm just being realistic.

As far as I read, Samourai isn't the best privacy-enhancing tool out there. And using CoinJoin/Whirlpooling/Mixer is useless if you do not study these things beforehand. You should take care of the resulting change, you should take care of your fingerprints, of coin control and so on. The average person does not have the right education and knowledge to know all this, so in the end it's not being used the right way by the majority of people. That is why Bitcoin is still alive as a legal cryptocurrency.

No, CoinJoin does not make you anonymous by default.. nor does Monero. Back to the comparison you made between drugs and BTC, it's not as easy to achieve privacy with BTC as it is with drugs, the latter requiring pretty much just common sense.

Yet, it's still here years later. It still exists, and it's even more widespread than it used to be. Regulations are real, and skipping them is a legal risk.

There is no cost for regulations when you have the vast majority accepting them. If we were to take a survey, the largest % of people more than likely see Bitcoin as a get-rich-quick scheme rather than a way to avoid financial enslavement our actual system brings us into every day.

We can't have a decentralized governance. That's just not how it works. How will there be decentralized police? Who replaces the attributed functions IRS has? How do you make it so that everyone lives equally, without seeking more power - when greed and thirst for power is basically part of the human nature? Who decides what's truly right and wrong? Who would really fight against Bitcoin regulations? Have we seen any riots against KYC? Why not?

Bitcoin as one global economy is just a dream and nothing more at this point. You see a "revolution" because it's brought up on the internet by people who share common interests with you - for the average Joe, BTC is just a sweet USD profit.

Don't think Bitcoin makes you completely free. It doesn't provide complete freedom and anonymity. If the government bans BTC in your country tomorrow, good luck using it without leaking information good enough for authorities to catch you. Bitcoin does bring something new to the game, but it cannot fix wealth inequality and the world's problems on its own.

First of all, I'd advise to stay away from altcoins, especially as a beginner. If you are interested in them, my advice is to start slowly studying them while building your BTC investment.

Dollar Cost Average, which was suggested in the replies above as well, is the strategy I support too. One particular thing I wanted to warn is to be careful about the platform you choose to purchase BTC through and where you want to hold your coins. Revolut, PayPal and other large business names are sometimes not so happy to support their cryptocurrency-investing/trading customers, blocking/freezing their funds for some potentially absurd reasons. As long as you're holding your money on their platform, they pretty much have more power over your coins than you do.

Before anything, just read the Terms and Conditions of the platform you want to start investing on. Be it Binance, PayPal or whatever else, find out if you agree with their terms and if you do, then proceed. Otherwise, find some other company instead - or be your own bank using Electrum as the wallet and HodlHodl or Bisq as the platform to purchase/sell your coins.

I'm going to say it again: if we're talking about a worldwide (or even country-wide) internet/computer shutdown or EMP attack, we're talking about issues way worse than just not being able to access Bitcoin. Both of these would likely lead to very violent events because the most important industries (including food and other products and services considered a need for survival) would be affected as well. Just imagine how your life would've looked this week if there was no digital life for all your actions.

During times where this becomes an issue, gold hoarders would be those who today are already rich. But after all, the average person would likely exchange food for food rather than food for gold or BTC.

And then, let's talk about portability. According to Business Insider, "The average American family has $40,000 in liquid savings, across savings and checking accounts" (this is information from a 2016 survey, but whatever). Add 1/2 more of $40k and you'd have to carry 1kg of gold with you if you wanted to hold your savings in an offline asset you can transact with. Now double the total savings and good luck not being the target of thieves and other criminals, because the more you hold in gold.. the more you'll have to carry, obviously.

Now back to BTC, you can literally hold the value of the entire Gold supply in the world on a piece of paper - or even carved in a tree branch. Under hard times such as internet/computer shutdowns, transacting with gold and assuring it's not fake is a huge headache from start to end - especially when you have no previous knowledge about precious metals.

Bitcoin is not gold. And they share one, strong common point: none of them are perfect.

Electrum. After you set up your wallet, you have the "View" option in the top bar of the app and you can enable "Coins" from there. Then, switch to the Coins tab and you'll be able to freeze/unfreeze any output and/or address you want by right-clicking them and choosing the option you want.

We cannot make that an "agreement". What happens if RedCross loses ownership over the address within an year?

There are charities some people wouldn't want to send their money to. The point of BTC is providing the freedom of choice and being neutral and non-dependent; making some sort of agreement that everyone sends it to a specific organization is not very different to agreeing that Bitcoiners should all support the CCP.

Sending a few hundred satoshis to charity would do more bad than good. If they ever want to send a tx they'd want to be confirmed quickly and your dust is one of the inputs, they'll likely have to spend more on the fees for your input than the amount they received from you.

It's gonna be a long, never-ending debate. Gold has its own advantages, Bitcoin has its own. Comparing them is useless. BTC simply isn't gold and that's it. It's something we've never had before and I know that humans like to compare new stuff to the older, but in the end crypto is simply a new niche and we have to accept that.

Changing the supply limit would be very counterproductive. Best thing we can do is change the denomination once Bitcoin becomes worth more than $100,000-1,000,000, because 1 satoshi would then be worth $0.001 and fees could become too expensive.

Adding another zero after the "." might therefore be a better plan instead. The supply would still be the same (21M coins), but we'd be able to spend a 10th or a 100th of 1 sat.

I honestly doubt it, but make sure to PM me the link if you find the information (or edit the post I've quoted and add it), as we'd go off-topic otherwise.

I've missed this piece of news, honestly. Well, it might actually not be a coincidence considering the massive amount of users PH has. If this is what caused the ATH, then I find it funny for two reasons:
 1. I'd imagine a lot of people have desperately looked up ways to purchase BTC in order to make sure they'll have subscription renewals on time
 2. Just think of how many people have told their SO in the past 2 days that they've decided to "invest in BTC", lol.

But seriously now - if it's due to PH, then I expect some bull run in the next 25-30 days until people get used to purchasing BTC for their PH subscriptions.

The prize has already been claimed. If you check the block explorer, you'd notice the address of the puzzle is empty.

I guess it's fair but not so fair at the same time to have a megathread for a specific puzzle, especially when it implies a big reward. Imagine you've been working on the puzzle for years and throwing your findings here and there, and some stranger seeing the thread for the first time ever is able to make use of all that to claim the prize you should've been paid at least partially for as well.

On the other hand, I'd imagine 3-4 BTC are going to be worth a ton of money within a decade or so. It's already worth a ton of money now, compared to what it would've been in 2012-2013.

We do not currently have any "burning" option. One thing you can do is send your coins to an address nobody owns (create an empty wallet and send your dust there) or send it to the address from the first (Genesis) block (12c6DSiU4Rq3P4ZxziKxzrL5LmMBrzjrJX).

EDIT: sending multiple dust to an unused or rarely used address could be a good hint that you're the owner of the said address! If that's a concern for you, send it to more-often used ones.

Also, sending the dust from different addresses at approximately the same time (or even within the same day) could also be a hint that you're the owner of the addresses. If you take a look at the recent history of the first address @ranochigo has given, you will notice that this is when the last 3 txs were received:
 - 12.05.2020
 - 11.11.2020
 - 10.04.2020

If you send multiple transactions to this address within the same day, someone will likely think it's the same owner who sent them. If you have Electrum, you could simply label them as "Dust" and freeze the coins&addresses instead. Sometimes it's better to just leave it.

Other than that, if the dust is worth more than a few thousand satoshis, you could consider supporting some Bitcoin devs or sending them to a charity.

Daca a avut loc o tranzactie intre tine si @Razvan_BTC cu succes, sugerez sa ii lasi un feedback pozitiv aici. Il va ajuta pe viitor atat pe el, cat si pe ceilalti care vor dori sa tranzactioneze cu el.

Damn. Feels good to see that price - now you guys know why $20k was a psychological level. We can now literally say that nobody who's been holding on to their Bitcoins is on a loss. What I now wonder is whether this is just a beginning of the new bullish cycle or it's gonna sit around $20k 'till 2021.

No, PayPal isn't purchasing Bitcoin. Their customers probably aren't either, since you never really know whether what they're selling is truly BTC or not.

Send it through CoinJoin, ChipMixer or JoinMarket. Keep in mind that CoinJoin requires ~0.1 BTC to be used while ChipMixer requires at least 0.001 BTC and JoinMarket (which is a bit more advanced) has basically no minimum requirement although it is easier to find a match from 0.01 BTC on.

If you're looking for anonymity through crypto, you could look into Monero as well. You could use Bisq/HodlHodl to exchange BTC to XMR in a decentralized way (I personally prefer Bisq). Maybe it fits your needs better than Bitcoin does - and considering Monero is privacy-oriented, it has a future as great as Bitcoin does imo.

Even that falls short because the conspiracy basically says we're going to be injected with some nanoparticles that are supposedly inside the substance itself. Those who are against the vaccine will likely not want to be vaccinated whether it's from the dark market or not.

Like, if you are suspicious about the COVID vaccine then why the hell would you purchase one off the black markets, lol, at least the legit one has a label..

As for "paying in Bitcoins for fake vaccines", well, dark markets are likely never going to accept PayPal or VISA since they have a damn decentralized alternative. My gov has announced that the vaccine will be free to whoever wants it, so why even pay for it..