Replacing YouTube with something else is very difficult because a lot of people have specific channels they watch all the time on YT. Unless most of them move to a competitor, this likely won't happen. Google has been smart enough to ensure themselves that any competitor has a very rough time to go through in order to get past YT. Hence, they'll likely live even with this identity thing. Most people will say, "it's just my ID, and Google wouldn't do anything bad with it".

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm not sure if it's only a placebo effect or something but it feels like DuckDuckGo's search algorithm has been significantly changed in the past few weeks - I don't have the issue with getting wrong results at all anymore. I'll give Ecosia a try though for sure.

I'm not really sure if I'm the idiot for waiting for someone to show me some real study on how 5G is not producing any kind of damage to the human body/brain before actually supporting it or you're the idiot for believing plain words without any kind of scientific backing behind it.

It's kinda funny how I'm being insulted for my skepticism over a certain vaccine/technology when all I'm really looking for is some evidence that 5G rollouts or the said vaccine is not harmful in any way, today and in the long term. It's like I'm being told to shut my mouth for simply asking for evidence. Funny times.

There are enough scientists out there who are concerned about the 5G rollout and I think it's more logical to doubt something that never existed before than taking it for granted just because it's faster than what we've had. But yeah, wait, what the mainstream media says is the exact truth and there's obviously nothing to fear if everyone likes faster speeds. Why use your brain when you're already being told what to think and believe ayway

The way Bitcoin works simply doesn't allow it to be stable. If you're looking for something stable, Bitcoin just isn't it and the past shows it quite well. And tbh, I think a lot of people would lose interest in BTC if it became stable. It's one of the most fascinating things about it.

Fees can't be "normalized" if more places start accepting Bitcoin. When demand/number of txs increases, the mempool clogs up. This is one of the reasons it is still largely considered an investment rather than a currency.

Well, I think this is double-edged honestly. While there are some users out there who are using it more as a currency than an investment, we have to think of potential consequences of it becoming more of a mean of exchange than anything else. I don't think we have any fiat currency today that is volatile, so paying for stuff isn't a mess in our daily lives. But Bitcoin is the opposite - imagine paying for an online order worth $1k while Bitcoin's price increases substantially. Before your tx gets confirmed, you'll want to use RBF to get back your money as you now basically have a pending payment worth way more than $1k.

I'd invest in it at any price, honestly. I just know that it gets harder and harder to mine coins, which means the only way price should theoretically move is upwards. The fact that Bitcoin is not linked in any way to our current financial system makes it 100x better.

When people seek for a refuge, they'll become interested in cryptocurrencies. They're just "standalone", uncontrolled. Then, last but not least, privacy is lately fading out and people will want something to get their privacy back. Bitcoin is here for that, although unfortunately a lot of people do not use it the right way and expose their fingerprints and identities everywhere around.

I'd buy at any price because, as @mk4 said above, I personally consider it to be cheap today compared to what I'm personally predicting. It's likely all about time before the next insane bull run begins.

The 12 words you create are the seed for your wallet. If you lose them, you lose all these Bitcoin addresses you want to copy. The only thing you should ever give someone is the Bitcoin address. Not the private keys, not the seeds. These two should only be known and seen by you. Think of the seed and private keys as the key to your house.

Remember that once you give someone an already used Bitcoin address, they will be able to verify your balance and past transactions. That means, they'll know that the address should be yours. They will only be able to watch your Bitcoin address though. To use it in actions such as message signing and spending coins, they'll need the seed and/or private key(s).

If you want to follow the replies before me and go after an airgapped wallet, then remember that the "text address" you were talking in the third row I quoted from your message is the same address you should insert into the "watch-only" wallet. But I repeat, your Bitcoin address, not the privkey or seed.

One thing I would suggest is that you use USB sticks and microSD cards between devices as least as possible. USBs are one of the easiest ways you could get a device that contains your Bitcoin wallet infected, and plugging an infected USB into your airgapped device to only plug it back into an unsafe PC is a risk. Rather than using an USB to copy addresses, you could just use QR codes with Electrum and a webcam instead.

Personally, I would first transfer only a few bucks and make sure they're going to the right place before moving all my funds to the airgapped device. Better be safe than sorry.

Honestly, hearing about a president getting into cryptocurrencies would be the most sketchy thing I'd ever hear about. I'd think twice about the possibility of these news to be positive rather than negative. I'm not sure when was the last time I heard about the state supporting something they cannot keep their hand on, because it seems like control is the only way they're heading.

LN seems to be an okay approach for this issue, but only considering today's needed scalability. If we take into account even larger number of txs to be needed than LN supports today, we may need another approach.

I personally don't think it's logical for an investor to be turned off by these issues. The mempool has been clogged many, many times in the past few years and if one does proper research, they'll already know about it before investing any money. If they have no idea about some of the most prominent issues Bitcoin has, then I consider them bad, bad investors.

A strong push against Bitcoin by top world powers such as the US. This would heavily impact the price and I think it's the most likely thing to happen.

Things such as Quantum Computers are repairable. I'd have to guess if QCs turned out to be a real danger, we'd just fork off Bitcoin to a QC-resistant fork. There are ways to go around it, even if the impact's already been done. Same goes for software bugs: they existed before and were fixed very quick. Solar flares really do create way larger issues than Bitcoin though, although the article says this shouldn't be the right way to think. Like, I'm sorry but I think the world would immediately go absolutely crazy if all communication was suddenly cut by such an event. It's similar to EMP attack scenarios - I would care more about my safety and life than about all those devices that'll be affected by it.

It's not something that cannot be solved though. Bitcoin does not necessarily need an active internet connection, there are several workarounds for that. There are quite a few people who've worked on keeping Bitcoin active even in the event of EMPs or full internet shutdowns. The main issue with this is, you'd need special equipment.

For areas or population without internet access, there are some other larger issues they'll have to confront soon such as the slow disappearance of cash. At one point, they'll have to go digital anyway. It's the dream of our current world's governments. The more digital, the more control so the happier they are.

Thanks, I'll look into those as well although there are some other options AFAIK such as installing Debian without the non-free packages. The main issue, as I mentioned earlier, is that it's all fun until I get to issues such as a certain device not being recognized. That's where I always give up after hours of research by adding non-free repos and installing non-free stuff.

Yeah, I used to play with Tails until I found out Whonix is supposedly more secure than it. AFAIK, it protects your IP way better than Tails does.

Qubes surely is very secure and feels safe, I have it on my primary disk on my PC and I love it. It's not that hard to use if you get the basic stuff, to be honest. Took probably only an hour or two for me to get the hang of it, and the thought that you can basically have isolated offline and online VMs running simultaneously in the same PC is amazing. While it says it's a very heavy distro, I never had an issue running even 5-6 VMs at the same time. That's kinda weird, considering I have a quite old PC I'm running Qubes on.

ParrotSec is a great distro if you want to run Tor on a system-wide level (or to make use of hacking/security tools). AnonSurf is the main reason I've been using it.

To be honest, I would not trust any bank at all. While some of them seem to be friendly, I would never hold any crypto funds on there. Crypto hodlers are considered suspects in way too many cases and that makes me wonder why I wouldn't be one if I ever wanted to hold crypto in my bank account.

And then, considering that harsh limits are right now being rolled around the world with cash txs, I suppose the situation with crypto txs will get much worse soon. I'd avoid linking any kind of crypto activity with my banks. I'd rather be my own bank instead.

I'm sorry, but this is a quite poorly written list of things about Bitcoin that should supposedly make you interested in it. I would not consider Bitcoin investments a simple thing to do and it will not "boost" your bank account balance. It's not like BTC is a magical world where you become rich out of nowhere and the market's past does not make for a better future.

Big, big difference between consciously and wittingly handing out very accurate information about you and them trying to find out where you live, what your hobbies are and what you're interested in or who you are. Handing out KYC data is just like telling Google where you live. It's you giving the information yourself.

This website is a great one for privacy newbies. I personally don't like Manjaro, but to be honest, any Linux distro is substantially better than Windows.

While you are right, DuckDuckGo is turning dark as well imo. The fact that they removed OpenStreetMaps and now the only option you have for Maps is Apple's, it turned into a big red flag that I should be seeking other search engines.

Honestly, I'm not sure what other alternatives there are. Whonix suggests YaCy, Qwant, ecosia, MetaGer and Peekier but I'm not sure whether they're better alternatives or it's just a marketing gimmick.

I think I remember we talked about e-mail platforms; I personally don't trust any e-mail platform because they're all centralized. But honestly, I'd use and support anything but Google's/Facebook's/Apple's stuff.

What I find funny is that a lot of people think CBDCs will actually grow in price like Bitcoin does. They won't - they'll be stable, just like Tether and all those other stablecoins. CBDCs will not be rare and will never have halvings.

Decentralized governance will always find its way. It just can't go away unless everyone likes control, and trust me: a lot of people don't and never will. Just think about it: today authorities barely care about printing trillions of USD (although it's mostly virtual USD, not physically printed money). Just imagine how much money they'd be able to steal and create when these systems are ready, lol. New money is going to be a codeline/button away.

Bitcoin doesn't need to "become" legal. It already is in a lot of states. When national digital currencies will pop up, I honestly believe people will first sell and go bearish on BTC for a while - until they realize what a mistake they've made by supporting national digital currencies.

It will become more obvious that Bitcoin is something we need when people'll start realizing we will have idiotic limits and rules with national digital currencies. It's going to be you under complete financial surveillance and control.

Bitcoin will always be necessary, no matter what the states are going to develop. Whatever a centralized governance is going to develop, be sure that it's going to be centralized as well. Bitcoin won't be, so it'll be the opposite of what governments will actually create.

I feel like the market will move, but it's more like gambling or risky trading. If you want to accept the idea that you may win or lose part of your money, do it. I would personally not act based on the US votes, although it does influence the future of the world for sure and, at the same time, the potential future of cryptocurrencies if we consider regulations.

What I'd buy Bitcoin for is to isolate my finances from the system of enslavement humanity is currently stuck into. Purchase it to secure your finances from a state that wants to take control over your personal life, or purchase it if you want to have something nobody has an unlimited coin printing machine for - or if you want to make sure that no matter which national currency fails, you will have something to serve as an alternative option.

In a world where private life becomes less private than ever before, with an ATH of worldwide debt, with the worst economical situation the world has had in a century and in the middle of a pandemic where we literally have no idea whether one week from today we'll still be allowed to legally exit our homes or not while everything moves to the digital, I believe Bitcoin comes as a solution for those who're looking for a safehouse. These all make for solid reasons for me to purchase Bitcoin, not the US election. That's just a drop of water in the cup.

Thanks. Free Linux distros are something I'd definitely go after, but I find myself getting stuck with various errors due to missing hardware kernels/drivers. It's some kind of maze I can't seem to figure out yet, and Tails/Qubes/ParrotSec seems to fix them all although I'm quite sure a lot of the fixes involve non-free packages. I might give it a try this time though. I'm not in a hurry, so I have plenty of time to experiment before actually moving my funds there.

Thanks @o_e_l_e_o for the last reply. Will keep everything you mentioned in mind.

I agree. It's increasingly difficult to preserve your anonymity and keep everything under control nowadays, and while Bitcoin is an amazing tool we can use to improve the financial freedom and control, the fact that it's a public ledger only makes it even worse in some situations.

A few members of this forum made me focus a lot on privacy issues that come with the average person's usage of Bitcoin, especially as I found myself to be among those who were using it the wrong way - and looking at how things change on a daily basis, I get a general negative sentiment about our digital future. Hence, I see protecting our coins in a private way as an essential thing.. although I may seem to be going a bit towards the extremes lately.

You're being realistic. It's the unfortunate truth people do not want to hear and acknowledge. It's sometimes easier to accept and live in a false reality, where you're being told what to think rather than thinking on your own.

@Karartma1 is probably talking about websites collecting your fingerprint & digital behavior and scrapping as much data as possible.

So what happens if my kid steals my credit card or ID to falsely prove that he is over 18? If kids are curious to find out about adult stuff, it's their parents' fault for being let so free on the Internet and I should not be forced to provide personal data to access it. There are enough ways out there to keep your kids away from adult-oriented things on the web.

TV channels are one of the easiest ways for children to access adult/mature oriented content, yet ever since the existence of TVs, nobody's ever asked me or anyone else around the world for an ID to access news and explicit content that appears on a daily basis on music channels.

I think having phone number verification and IP tracing is more than enough personal information to create an account. I should not be forced to prove my identity to access something that is supposed to be free. My personal documents and information are the alternative currency these platforms lately use to their own gain. If I have to access adult-oriented videos on YouTube only if I provide my ID or CC, I think it's getting into a serious privacy threat that really disturbs me.

Now about porn, that would be even more concerning than the YouTube situation. Linking my porn history with my real identity and being able to create a perfect analysis of my preferences over sexual content is something I really don't want someone to be able to do, and I'm sure a lot of other people think the same.