Purchasing alts only to turn them back into BTC is a complicated, unnecessary waste of money. Just purchase BTC instead, you're going to be better off. You can purchase as much as you like; purchasing an entire coin isn't required.

So I'll come out in a neutral position to express my opinion, especially since I've merited the accused topic. I'm a non-native English speaker, so I have to often confront translation issues myself. Thought it would be nice to give an answer to this thread.

To answer your first question, I honestly never contemplated whether it was Ratimov who wrote the introduction or it was taken from one of the sources mentioned below. To be fair, the fact that the thread starts with "In this article I would like to touch upon" does make it seem like Ratimov was the one to write and compile the topic from zero but I, at least personally, do not necessarily feel offended by it.

Now for the second question of yours, I have mixed feelings. If Ratimov wanted to hide the fact that the original article was not written by him, he could've used his own words and do a complete translation and rewrite of the text. And had he done that, we all would've accused him for text spinning and plagiarism. Would you feel less "cheated" on by Ratimov if the translation wasn't a "lazy" one but a complete rewrite of the original article instead?

Having seen a lot of threads throughout my BTCTalk experience, I thought Ratimov's thread deserved a merit especially since it's well organized and the information he's provided is interesting, not that easy to discover and different to what you usually see around here. I often see threads that are either completely uninteresting or have a very bad layout. I often struggle organizing my own threads and find myself not being able to make it pleasant to the eye even after hours of editing, so I always appreciate well-written posts.

I also know what it takes to write a thread well enough to be appreciated by others over here. From what I've seen, most of the CM participants have a long history of high quality posts and so I don't really feel like checking their posts for plagiarism. And while I do kinda feel like he's "cheated" since I spend hours and hours on a post written from zero to earn the same/less merit than Ratimov does for a copied one, I do not consider I have the right to complain in this situation since I have not bothered to check the sources beforehand (and even if I did, the key source is in an unknown language to me anyway).

As far as I've seen, copied posts are allowed on the forum as soon as you mention the sources in the footer. Ratimov's threads do have the sources mentioned, so I think having an issue about Ratimov not mentioning the author's name is a bit far-fetched since I don't think I've seen someone else do that when quoting/copying information from a source.

But on the other hand, I don't agree with Ratimov's POV either ("Chipmixer pays for 50 posts, that is, I write about 20 posts for free"). While the maximum amount of paid posts is 50 and you exceed it by 20 more, you cannot ignore that a part of your recent merit comes from these "free" posts that you copy from other websites when you know that the high amount of appreciation is one of the probable reasons DS accepted you (and is still keeping you) in the campaign he manages.

As I said, I am neutral in this situation though. I do not feel like being necessarily cheated for giving the merit, and if that thread does not deserve it then I'm sure there are many others written by Ratimov which do - so if that's the case, then take it as if I have given him a merit for all his work on the forum so far. I take it as plagiarism when there's no source mentioned - and Ratimov did mention the exact sources, which should go in tandem with the forum rules. The fact that the official definition of plagiarism does not fit the forum's is a different thing.

Hopefully my reply comes in as a helpful one for the accusation - and, hopefully, no hard feelings to whoever reads this.

Then forbid me from using banknotes outside my bank account as well. I might use that $5 banknote to pay a hitman - who knows.

Sad. It's possible, but if this happens then the Orwellian state is only a few steps away from becoming a reality.

I do not think that they are trying to scam you, but it is generally better to use non-custodial wallets that are open-source and decentralized instead. Be your own bank - with cryptocurrencies, you are allowed to.

The e-mail you have received from their support team has the information you need. As far as I can see from your screenshot, the problem with your transaction is that you do not have enough money to pay fees. Here's why:

CRO is an Ethereum (ERC-20) token. Tokens that are on Ethereum's chain require ETH to pay fees. Although you have purchased CRO worth $13, you will still need ETH to spend it, because fees are paid in ETH and not in CRO.

As you can see in the screenshot you have posted, the error message is "You should have 0.003973022 ETH to pay network fee". Therefore, the solution to your problem is purchasing some ETH in order to be able to spend your CRO. The transaction should go through no matter if you choose high or low fees. The lower the fees are, the longer it takes for your transaction to be confirmed.

I'd say this is the main reason. I mean, >$20k means going past the ATH. And not only that, but moving from $1XXXX to $2XXXX makes a quite substantial difference visually. If that happens, things will likely go wild again. But besides it being the ATH, there are lots of people who've purchased around the ATH and have been waiting for years to sell their coins on profit.

I still think it's a bad practice to import private keys and only spend them partially, especially for a newbie. Until a new user gets the hang of how wallets and coin control work, it's safer imo to transfer the entire balance instead.

The USA will release a digital currency of its own soon enough, so will Europe and Russia. It's a dream come true for a totalitarian lover, and what makes it worse is that people will love the new, way more convenient currency they're coming up with. A digital currency has been worked on for many years in different parts of the world, and all those digital fiat coins will be just as centralized as China's.

There will never be a single world currency unless it can somehow be fragmented so that China, USA and all the other large powers will be able to choose their own rules. Unless that happens, China will never allow an American CBDC to dominate the world and vice-versa. They either all have the control handle or the party crashes.

This is one of the reasons Bitcoin won't be a global success. Some leaders don't like not having control over supply and finance (for some good and bad reasons) and they'll never substitute their centralized currency with something they can't control.

They can't buy up the whole Bitcoin supply and they can't crash it to zero. If they want to crash it, they have to sell it. And if they sell it, others (non-governmental people) will have to buy it. Hence, the entire sell will turn into a very bullish thing for BTC as the supply is once again distributed back to the people.

I agree that institutional investors accumulating a truckload of Bitcoin isn't a good thing though, and there has to be something going on behind the scenes. But that doesn't mean Bitcoin is forever and fully defeated. If it ever crashes close to zero, I'm going to be the one purchasing it.

Thanks for the replies. I'll test a combination of the suggested methods. I might use the whiskers, let it dry out and then burn the remaining paste.

Meanwhile, I'll go get some wire-mesh and give paper recycling a try. Why burn/throw it away when I can re-use it, right?

From Bill Gates' article, "What you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine" - I will bold the parts I'm specifically intrigued about:

The main points I'm trying to make are:

• Gates' words still apply today, as we still have a very new vaccine and we have no idea about the potential serious long-term side-effects. No matter how robust the studies and experiments are, you and nobody else could guarantee that I will get protection from COVID, let alone that within 10 years I will not friggin' go blind!
• The elderly have the most vulnerable immunity system, yet we're giving them extra doses of an untested vaccine if one dose isn't enough for their protection. Now remember that with every dose, there are potential less-or-more serious side effects. And let me remind you that they're the most vulnerable.
• The vaccine may only protect us for a short time. With that being said, multiple doses = higher chances of getting a less-or-more serious side effect. As COVID is a mutating virus, the vaccine may be needed every few weeks/months as new strains appear.
• Through the PREP Act, vaccine manufacturers and those who inject (can't find the proper word right now) it into the body of US citizens have protection from liability. Lately, on Romanian news, the debate of offering them protection from liability in our country as well has been a quite hot subject.

So now, I have one legit question: why should I take the vaccine if:
  1. It does NOT guarantee lifetime protection from COVID
  2. It does NOT guarantee there will be no serious long-term side effects from it
  3. It may actually NOT even be a successful vaccine at all...

It's confusing even for me today to use bits, millibits and all those other denominations. I think BTC is still the way to go and, as @o_e_l_e_o suggested, sats could be used for amounts under 10k sats. Bitcoin and Satoshis should be the most widely used ones, because otherwise it gets confusing. It already is quite confusing for newbies to understand the concept of Bitcoin and all that - we shouldn't make it worse by switching to another denomination now.

I have never used any denomination other than sats and BTC, and it's been going great for me. I have to admit that it is sometimes annoying that I have to count how many zeroes there are after the "." though, because 0.0005 BTC and 0.00005 BTC are obviously two different values. If we were to use sats instead, "50k sats" and "5k sats" would be way more clever.

Back when gold was made illegal, people used to own it in their homes or buried underground which was quite easy to find using metal detectors. Welcome to the beauty of Bitcoin, where you can literally write down on a small piece of paper the seed containing billions of dollars.

If BTC becomes illegal, people with a substantial amount of coins in their wallets will just flee the country. I don't think it's very hard to hide a very small piece of paper containing the seed on it, so it's easy to flee with as much money as you like basically. It can't be banned everywhere - there'll always be an alternative.

The govs will only collect more and more information from all of us from now on. Ever since they got the taste of control, they're only pushing for more and more - it's like an addiction of power. And since everyone really believes it's to their own good, it's gonna work. Yeah, the general "Bitcoin is anonymous" mindset should change and Bitcoin should (imo) have a privacy option. At least something in between BTC and XMR, so that at least the basic and most commonly exposed fingerprints are hidden.

Interesting times ahead, but I sincerely doubt BTC will be banned unless it becomes hard for governments to track txs. They probably already know a large part of the population owning Bitcoin and their approximate balances.

Well, I had an account over there and I'd rather not get back my shitcoins (can't even remember what exactly I was holding there) than fulfill their required information. I do not get the point of sharing personal information now for some holdings I have never given personal information for. How does that make sense? How does my ID/address/etc prove it was me who had those coins back then?..

This doesn't make it any better for anyone though, be it crypto or non-crypto people. Through little steps, they've reached the point where outlawing non-verified addresses becomes a legit contemplation of politicians. If we keep going the "we're being tracked anyway" route, things will get very bad in a matter of years.

If they want to find out who I am as a customer and where my money comes from, let them do it. Maybe there are some criminals among the customers of a shop. But it's a very, very bad idea to monitor everyone. This is exactly as if we're all potential criminals from point zero.

Let's take fiat as an example; I think it is already enough that we're giving away our data to so many stores for online orders we make. I would not want to register the USD banknotes I own to my ID to legally use them. It's creepy. Imagine the government knew where every single bill from every single US citizen's wallet goes. You may argue that is exactly the case of debit cards - yeah, except they're still a personal option, not mandatory.

If there's something I am glad about, it's that Bitcoin is starting not to be seen as the "criminal's paradise" currency anymore. Despite the entire attempt to artificially centralize and regulate something that is open-source and cannot really be centralized/restricted, the way people are starting to see BTC is a very positive side we shouldn't miss. The old days where everyone saw Bitcoin as a criminal currency will soon probably be long gone.

The sad thing is how people change their minds just because PayPal or other corporations adopt Bitcoin. It's almost like the vast majority of people blindly trust corporations just because they earned a spot in the global charts.. Sad.

Illegal means Bitcoin usage is prohibited while restrictions mean you can only use BTC in certain ways. During the pandemic we have social restrictions, not the illegality/prohibition of social interactions. You're restricted to meeting a certain maximum number of people only with masks on, etc.

That is because Bitcoin uses change addresses. For privacy purposes, when you spend only part of your balance, the rest of it (the change) goes to another unused address. So if you have 1 BTC on a paper wallet and spend only 0.25 BTC, the change (0.75 BTC) goes to a newly generated, unused address.

Paper wallets have private keys written on them, not seeds. When you're sweeping a paper wallet, you're swiping the balance off a privkey. Private keys allow access to only one address, while seeds generate multiple addresses.

With that being said, if private keys allow access to only one address but when you make a transaction the change goes into another one... where will the change go? Into an address you do not have ownership over.

This could be avoided by using coin control. But as you don't know much about this process yet, I would advise against this method because you probably do not want to mess up.

Send everything.

Oh, well, if Mnuchin's plan succeeds, things would get only worse than they've ever been. Their plan is to basically outlaw any address that is not verified with your identity. As in, you would only be able to use your address in the USA if you officially and legally register it to your personally identifiable information. Any address that is not registered to an ID would be outlawed.

You cannot store the same cryptocurrencies on two different seeds. One seed contains specific addresses derived from it, so each seed derives different addresses for you to use.

In order to have the exact same coins and addresses on both Ledgers, you have to use the exact same seed on both of them.