I see; thanks for the information. Will look into the concept.

I've read all your posts here multiple times but I don't think I can get to understand something: if SPVs are useless for security but properly implemented SPVs are not prone to attacks, then how are full nodes helping secure the blockchain more than SPVs are? Like, if the latter is not that hard to attack, then (putting privacy to the side) why should one choose full node over SPV?

Strike Windows, Apple and other non-free Operating Systems off your list.

Especially since you're willing to run the full node through Tor, moving from Windows or Apple to Linux is an awesome move towards privacy. From all the distros I've tried, I'd personally go for Debian. Feels great, looks nice and I consider it to be quite newbie-friendly. I consider that using Tor makes no sense if you're using an Operating System filled up with bloatware and spying stuff. You either move to the more privacy-oriented zone or you don't at all (personal opinion tho).

As @ranochigo said above, the rest depends on what your purpose of running a full node is. I'm way more paranoid about security and surveillance than the average Joe, so this is what I would do if I were you: I'd get a cheap PC (I'd personally get at least 4GB RAM tho) with sufficient disk space (at least 500GB) to run a full (non-pruned) Bitcoin node through Tor and use it solely for cryptocurrency purposes. Having a PC dedicated for crypto activity lowers the chances of getting a virus to do malicious stuff, a virus that you'd get from regular browsing and activities on your PC.

Why 1TB though, I wonder? Like, isn't the current blockchain size around (or less than) 350GB? Is that just to avoid spending yet another sum of money on more storage on the long run?

Only if I had a penny every time someone called Bitcoin expensive, yet here we are so close to yet another ATH..

Personal opinion: Bitcoin is very cheap now, compared to what one BTC will be worth in 5-10 years.

Although I did purchase BTC directly back when one Bitcoin was worth less than $500, I have never accumulated a lot through direct purchases. Instead, most of it has been earned various ways along the years. In fact, the total amount of BTC I've purchased ever since I got interested in BTC probably doesn't even exceed $500.

It always at least felt like purchasing BTC directly makes accumulation harder than earning it online. Gambling, trading, offering services etc have always been a bigger success for me.

Most of the security comes AFAIK when you become a full node yourself. Full nodes cannot be fooled into accepting txs that are not alright, unlike light (SPV) wallets through which you have to blindly trust the information they're giving you..

It's not that we need more full nodes to make Bitcoin more secure, it's just that the more people we have running their own full nodes rather than blindly trusting servers, so the less we have to use trust, the better.

Are you that sure it's "totally anonymous"? Did your deposit to the casino come from a source that cannot be linked to your identity?

If you purchased Bitcoin from somewhere using your personal information (or even from ATMs without KYC) and then deposited on the exchange without trying to break the link between your coins and your identity (through CoinJoin or mixers), then you might not be as anonymous as you think. Your IP, the address your $100 came from etc all help with your identification unless you've taken maximum precaution.

If I were you, I'd either hide it all or tell the truth. Declaring the winnings through false statements could get you into an even bigger issue than not declaring anything at all.

Talk to a CPA. From my personal knowledge, capital gains are only paid when you either sell your cryptocurrencies for fiat or purchase goods/services using it. So if I'm right, if you ever sell your BTC for any fiat or purchase anything using it directly, you should pay taxes.

I don't think there's a problem as long as what you declare is the truth. But talk to an expert who also knows stuff about cryptocurrency earnings and see what their opinion is. Especially as you said you have massive gains, it may not be worth it to act based on some strangers off the internet when you could just spare a few dozen/hundred bucks to find a 100% legal way to do it.

Or don't give such advice when you don't have any idea what you're talking about. If OP wants to use Bitcoin in an area which prohibits its usage, then refrain from giving advice because it may turn into a serious situation. Which crypto platform gives you the opportunity to become anonymous?

User reported: beloyi2244

Plagiarized thread*:
* They even added a link to some probably scammy Chrome app

Plagiarized from Reddit:

The entire internet needs quantum protection, it's not like Bitcoin is the only one "we should fear" for. In fact, an online bank is probably easier to break than the entire Bitcoin blockchain.

But again, QCs are not going to be mainstream soon enough to represent an issue for us. Meanwhile, the proper precaution will likely be taken by the devs and we will have a quantum resistance as well. If you're this concerned about publicly exposed information about computer developments, then just imagine what 3-letter agencies were secretly able to create.. tech we have no idea about yet.

I have lots of residue paper from old wallets of mine. Seeds, printed wallets and QR codes, privkeys etc. I want to get rid of those in the safest way possible, without having to fear the possibility of some bad actor finding those papers and linking them somehow to my identity/location.

I've looked into different ways of destroying docs but unfortunately I cannot really find something viable for a large number of papers. I'd rather destroy any paper I don't need than have all of my banking statements, old wallets etc stay intact in plastic bags ready for anyone to check them out. The paper shredding machines I found that offer an at least decent protection are too expensive to consider them an option.

So far, the best/easiest one I found is placing the papers in a bucket of water and letting it sit there for as long as possible, and messing up the papers using my hands every now and then. Fire isn't an option right now - and I found burnt papers before that gave me absolutely no difficulty to read.. Is there a better way to get rid of those that I may have missed?

I don't think I'm a criminal/scammer/deceiver and I feel very threatened by these "updates". The worst part is, now that these KYC-like things come to even some of the top platforms in the world such as YouTube, it basically forces me to look for alternatives.

Spyware made me move to burner phones; proprietary software/hardware made me move to RYF-certified devices (although not 100% free as in freedom either); bank surveillance and control made me move to Bitcoin; ISP activity tracing made me move to Tor; etc.

In other words, the further they move on with these new laws and regulations, the more I have to look like a weirdo/"hacker"/"criminal" in order to stick to my old ways of peacefully surfing the web without having to be controlled/supervised.

Could be any type of news tbh. Could be them simply moving to another, better secured cold wallet.Even if they're planning to sell, it is more like positive news to me because I'd rather have all this huge number of coins split up and distributed to multiple owners than be in the hands of one single entity.

And then, I just doubt they'd sell within a short timeframe. I doubt they'd sell even within a week because that amount requires so much liquidity and selling on the spot means pulling down the prices (so their earnings as well).

Definitely interesting to see how most of those wishes of the manifestos' creators turned partially into reality. I'm glad to now be among those who are looking for the freedom we don't really have anymore in our daily lives thanks to corporations and thirsty governments. As far as I've seen, most opposition to internet-related freedom comes from people who see privacy as inconvenience.

It is more inconvenient: finding out why your fees are large with BTC is harder than calling your bank to ask the same question about a fiat transaction; using an pseudonym and random identities for orders is harder than having a single account where all your personal information is ready to be auto-completed upon order placements; using Tor with NoScript makes browsing less easier than regular browsing etc.

However, I think we've reached the point where we all have to look for our own privacy and digital security. If a decade ago things such as "fingerprint mobile unlocking" were sci-fi to many, today a significant percentage of mobile users are using their irrevocable fingerprints as an almost-instant way of accessing a mobile phone without acknowledging the security issues behind those. Just think of how many "discount apps" for shops have launched in the past few years, collecting everything about your shopping preferences, spending habits, budget etc.

Technology, the Internet.. everything tech-related is turning into a personal information collecting thing, automatically intruding your personal life. That shouldn't be happening imo. Personal information should never have to be given up for convenience. We can have Alexa-like AI that are open-source and privacy-focused, we can have PCs without the need of having proprietary software/hardware, we can have everything we currently have without having the need to give up our personal stuff for it.

Hopefully, all these manifestos will not be out there in vain. I hope Bitcoin is just the beginning of the real opposition for mass surveillance and control-thirsty governance.

The sad part is, most of these trolls' words gather more interest and audience than the facts do - moreover, they don't even realize that through trolling they may not affect only part of the community but the entire one. If the USA is contemplating banning unverified addresses, it wouldn't be a surprise if they banned anonymous nodes/mining as well. Trolls are basically giving them shitty ideas the government is stupid enough to turn them into reality at some point.

If you consider risk a gambling thing, then about anything out there should be considered gambling as well. Bitcoin isn't like gambling at all for me, although I do get why people say they're similar. When you have no clue what Bitcoin can do for you, you only see the very basic stuff of it that has been heavily promoted around mainstream media, such as volatility and supposed crimes.

I agree with the last opinion of yours tho. Bitcoin has very small, almost null chances to succeed as a currency that's supported around the world (specifically, in the larger states). It does have incrementally higher chances the more three-letter agencies get to analyze and the easier it becomes for them to monitor everyone through BTC.

Well, I think a pretty significant part of this is luck to be honest. I mean, you cannot have adoption from the start which means the said coin could end up with a quite high level of adoption, could struggle with it or the devs & community could simply give up after a while - basically killing the coin.

As you said, there should be something new in the space. Something like what Mimblewimble came up with - and even mw kinda struggles.

If the Bitcoin markets seem like they're starting to mature a very little bit, altcoins are still very immature at this point. I'd bet anything that once the Bitcoin bull run begins, no alt (I'm talking about those with high trading volume and liquidity) will surpass it percent-wise. People move from trend to trend and tend to forget about the purposes of various coins.

Once a new idea pops up, it's kinda hard to be among the first to find it and, at the same time, it's quite hard to know whether people will stick to it or leave it. Luck is part of the game and you have to accept it.

I have personally tested lots of alt investments in various niches but found out that the only coins that I am interested in and using properly are privacy-oriented ones. All the other coins serving so many other purposes are useless to me, so I've backed off and focused on privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies instead. And even with these, it's hard to find ones that actually bring something new and useful in the game - and even the new stuff may sometimes come with the compromise of security, which is vital for coins that are supposedly protecting your real identity.

You can't figure out which is more important because you're probably after the same mindset I have: I personally think adoption and application are factors that should go in tandem. There shouldn't be a predominant one, although I do think application is the first one you should be looking after.

A coin can't survive unless it has a purpose and proper usage. If one alt can find its own niche and prove to be demanded, it may be a successful investment for whoever invests early in it.

The thing is, it's quite hard to find an alt that has a real, devoted team because most of the times the project workings are left alone after a while (usually when they realize there isn't as much demand as they wished there would be). If I were you, I'd be looking for an alt that checks both 1A and 1B but also be focused on other aspects (is the development real or is it all fiction? where are they right now from a development perspective, compared to the roadmap they publicly showed? etc).

I cannot help but vote for:

Amazing interview, loved it. Thank you, BestChange for the sponsorship. Great idea indeed!

There are a lot of issues preventing the existence of one that would have success. For one, JoinMarket requires only BTC which is easier to work with than cross-chain. You have to find people who want to change BTC for another coin at the same rate at the same time - and it's usually greedy people with exaggerated rates who are joining those markets.

Then, the setup itself is a quite big headache for the average user. We need something that is user-friendly and Komodo's is the closest one, although the KYC thing was a very big disappointment for me.

I'm quite surprised there is no fully working product for Monero and Bitcoin, honestly. It seems to me like that would be a huge hit.

I don't think all of the current implementations require centralized infrastructures. If I'm not wrong, Blocknet currently does not have any centralized infrastructure but I've never used it to know whether there's liquidity over there or not (although I do not think so). AFAIK, it's p2p. BEAM's atomic swap doesn't seem to have a centralized infrastructure either, but I may be very well wrong of course.

I know this is a quite old post I'm replying to, but I completely missed your reply.

It doesn't really. I don't think a possible security flaw becomes less important when you do legal stuff on the internet than it does when you do illegal stuff. It should be equally bad either way, and if you truly care about the existence of these flaws, then all you have to do is avoid them.

Tor browsing is often confused for illegality. I use Tor whenever I can - in fact, I use it more often than clearnet. In my honest opinion, the world would look much better if everyone took care of their own privacy and the govs didn't want to control and monitor everyone like the CCP does, but in a camouflaged way.

I bet you not even 1% of the Tor users are affiliated with CP in any way. In fact, most of the Tor users are not even using Tor properly so most of the CP addicts are being caught in the act quite easily if the authorities are willing to look after them. Your arguments remind me of the "I have nothing to hide" argument very often used nowadays, for which you may find this Wikipedia page an interesting read.