If you're properly verified your Electrum download (follow @BitMaxz's post above) and installed it, a guide dedicated to beginners in order to understand how Electrum works might come in handy: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3456040.0

Also, make sure you do not store your seed somewhere online and remember that nobody will ever ask for your seed or private keys unless they want to steal your coins. Try to keep it as isolated and safe as possible, as it's the only way you can gain access back to your wallet.

No offense, but if having to choose between BTC and artificial USD for a cryptocurrency investment is your question then I strongly recommend doing some research before investing in any of them.

Stablecoins are not volatile because they are pegged to a fiat currency. BTC is decentralized, transparent and has a precise inflation rate. In the cryptocurrency world, any coin is volatile. If you're looking for something like USD stablecoins then you will be way better off purchasing the real currency instead. It's safer.

As you are a newbie, I would suggest you do some research for at least a matter of days and then start off with BTC. By investing in a less known coin, you may get stuck at one point as you don't have many options with them besides selling and buying. Hell, a lot of these altcoins don't even have properly working wallets on exchanges.

Study, buy BTC and start your path from there.

Actually, there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we do not have any idea about.

Just think of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Our information is used by them in order to improve their AI, have an even more complex database and portfolio of all their customers.

But the main issue isn't that they may or may not use the information they collect from us against us. The point zero of this issue begins with the fact that they are collecting it all and using it in the first place, while giving us the false feeling of freedom and comfort.

I woke up this morning trying to think of how much complete strangers really get to know about us through technology. The devices we use on a daily basis are so convenient and technologically advanced it's almost as if we're truly willing to give up everything we know about ourselves - and even stuff we don't even know precisely.

Here's how much information we risk giving up on a daily basis:
 - Fitness bands: health rate, daily steps count and body activity, your sleep and more..
 - Robot lawn mower: your garden's size, shape, structure
 - Robot vacuum: scans your house with a camera; creates a 2D/3D model of your home floor; knows any new change in your home decoration
 - Baby monitor: audio and video data of your own baby growing up and speaking
 - Wireless surveillance cams: now that wireless, cloud-enabled cameras are more convenient, a lot of people put their own home security at risk by leaving audio and video information from your house's interior/exterior on the web
 - VR headsets: Windows Mixed Reality headsets 3D-scan your room in order to let you play without having to install external sensors for the headset/controllers
 - Alexa: she knows your To-Do list, what kind of music you like, the way you talk, listens continuously to your conversations with your family and friends.. and more
 - Zoom: your in-class behavior, way of thinking and facial expressions in different situations are recorded and exposed for potential bad actors to make use of them.

And then comes the worst one: your phone:
 - With or without SIM cards or any kind of modification, your phone can be tracked at any time. Google knows where you are constantly, probably knows where you live, where your school/work is, which houses and stores you frequently visit, the stuff you're interested in, who you've added to your contacts, which kind of videos you like and more.
 - WhatsApp knows the patterns you're using when talking, who you mostly chat with, for how long and about what. Instagram and Facebook enters your private life even further, most people filling in private details about themselves
 - Facial recognition or fingerprint unlock: your physical fingerprint copy and facial structure sits inside your phone.
 - Android Auto and CarPlay: well done! Google now knows what kind of car you own as well.

---

Placing all the above on a list leads to a horrible result. In the end, with the advancememt of tech, we have reached the unfortunate point where we lose privacy in favor of convenience by transferring all our personal life into the digital world.

The problem here is however not necessarily that we're advancing with the technology. Don't get me wrong - fingerprint unlocking, fitness bands and Android Auto cars are amazing. But we're not using all this technology the decentralized and private way. We are actively sharing information with all of those apps we need in order to properly use the tech we purchase ourselves. We sacrifice privacy in order to be able to use the products we pay for.

In other words, at this point, a few corporations own highly-detailed, priceless information about every single day of yours. This now becomes an issue, a big concern. It's that the more technology advances, the less privacy we have and the higher the risk is of being a victim of identity theft or unpleasant hacks.

So, as the title says, there's one question that is beginning to concern me.. when will privacy actually be something we consider important in our lives? If tech advances this fast and we continue only supporting privacy-intruding software and products, will privacy not become a thing of the past?

Pacat ca avem comunitatea de romani pe BTCTalk prea mica sa se reuseasca o intalnire a la carte. Inca am speranta ca o sa existe ceva minune in viitor care sa o mai invie. Daca reusiti intalnirea aceasta, timp fain sa aveti! Din pacate, eu nu voi fi in zona in acea perioada.

Sounds nice in theory, and could've been an option years ago. However, today our options of purchasing BTC are way more restricted. In Romania we had ZebraPay that once allowed you to purchase BTC worth a minimum of 1 RON (~$0.25). Many months later, they rose the minimum purchase amount from 1 to 50, to 100 and then to 400 RON IIRC. Anyway, the minimum amount became a bit too high at one point for smaller purchases to be possible. Today, ZebraPay does not sell BTC anymore - it was great when they did, because we have their kiosks nearby no matter where you live in larger cities.

The amazing thing about this slow-paced and minimum investment plan is that you literally just pretend you're buying one more coffee per day and put that money in BTC instead. If it's going to keep the same pattern it did for the past few years, a similar profit as in the OP could be realized. Just imagine turning 3 coffees a day into a sum large enough to purchase a nice European apartment or house within 5 years!

I think there's a larger issue surrounded by internet shutdown than corporate marketing and businesses. It's the society itself. We're relying on the internet on a daily basis so much that shutting it off means cutting off so many ways of communicating, learning, researching etc. And while third-world countries are not as developed from this perspective as first-world ones, I am quite sure a level of tech/internet addiction has been touched in third-world ones as well.

I can't even comprehend what 3 days of internet outage in a country such as USA could have as a result. Nowadays it's not only teens that are addicted to phones and the internet, but also adults and even older groups of age.

Here in Romania, I don't even want to imagine how easily an internet outage could bring down like over half of the services we currently use. The majority of teens probably wouldn't even be able to go through an usual day properly. Internet shutdowns affect us from all sides, so combine that with lockdowns and the looming recession and there you have the image of a monster waiting to attack.

Once a coin scams or has a bad history, it's gonna be extremely hard to get it back up. SushiSwap, BSV, BCH .. there are enough examples out there. Having low tx fees doesn't really mean much to be honest, it doesn't make a coin necessarily better in any way. Otherwise, had this been a significant characteristic, Bitcoin would have lost its spot long time ago.

We're no crystal balls to say which coin will boom 'till the end of the year though. That should be your own vision, not a complete stranger's. Seek for coins that actually bring in value (as in new stuff) to the blockchain sphere, they'll be worth the investment over the long term.

Not an expert, I only have a few years of trading. I usually use altcoin pairs instead of DCA. After many years of DCA trading, I found out that while I did end up with more USD value in my portfolio, I ended up with approximately the same BTC amount I initially started with (+/- 10%).

DCA is very easily influenced by Bitcoin rises and dumps. Playing alts against USD for me was approximately the same, percent-wise, as if I had played BTC against USD all that time. I find it easier to play against BTC instead - and BTC pairs are easier to recover from in case of losses.

I am going to stay away from DeFi until hype goes away. The crypto space will fill up with DeFi scams, the bubble will burst and only then I might start researching some projects to see what's going on. Until then, it's a hit-or-miss thing.

It's never a good idea to join a hype. It's just that you never know when the bubble bursts - it's not like we have achieved anything revolutionary yet through it anyway. Bitcoin will still be in the center of the focus no matter how many other projects come out. How many coins do we really need?

China's quickly moving ahead of the game no matter what domain we're talking about. Might be an attempt to dominate these markets as well by patenting everything they can related to blockchain - don't you have to request approval and pay a percentage for using someone's patent? Alibaba and AliExpress have made a massive fortune, so I guess this is a well-thought strategy to earn even more profit.

None. Makes no sense to create a method to return lost coins. And first of all, who and how do you decide whether a coin is dormant in a hodler's account or lost.. and who receives them?

Lost coins are going to be just gone forever. The scarcer the supply, the rarer the Bitcoins. In the end, it's good for all of us. "Consider it a donation to everyone", as Satoshi himself once said.

Many of the big guys are working off grid with corrupted governments anyway, so we, the lower classes, end up being treated the crappiest way although the vast majority of us are the most compliant. Tax laws are there for the poor to pay, as large companies and multi-millionaires afford having off-shore accounts and various ways to legally minimize taxes while we pay ours under fear.

This is exactly why we should never look past privacy as if it shouldn't be there. If it goes away, the big ones are going to be private while we'll have to comply with pathetic regulations and restrictions, sharing every little detail of our private life under the "fight against criminal activity". Privacy should be part of our lives, one of our main rights and something you shouldn't feel like it's shrinking on a daily basis. Presumption of innocence should mean that we should not have to fear being tagged as criminals for willing to be the only persons knowing where one of our assets go, how many we hold and what we're doing with them.

Using mixers is basically the same thing as cashing out your bank account balance and hiding it in some well-hidden safe in your house: nobody knows how much you have left, if there are other stacks of cash inside the vault, if anyone else holds any of your just cashed out sum and so on. Guess that's one of the main reasons why they desperately want to push the cashless society to the front. All anyone knows besides you is how much you've cashed out. Keep that money in a "transparent ledger" (transparent for the banks and authorities, not for everyone unlike Bitcoin) and they'll know the course of every single penny you hold.

If there's one interesting thing I have noticed, it's that constantly banning various services, use cases and opportunities you have with BTC (introducing KYC restrictions on exchanges, having almost no more anonymous ATMs around, Binance freezing accounts for using mixers etc) only makes me want to go even more off the grid and find even better ways to hide under a cloud of privacy.

Those who don't do any kind of research and simply listen to what banks and authorities have to say about Bitcoin illegal activity are just ignorant. Doesn't take too long to find out and understand that there are way larger issues surrounding us than some hackers looking for website exploits to scam and people trying to launder money through XMR. The argument about BTC or other cryptos being used in "way too much criminal activity" falls short very quickly, but you obviously cannot share your own opinion when the MSM is airing manipulative news.

I first of all avoid any ICOs and launch schemes that have been hyped up and turned into scams before. Then, it's quite simple. All I do is just look on a weekly basis whether there are any kind of updates towards their whitepaper-mentioned goals or everything is nothing but words on a digital paper. Check if there's any premine as well and whether the team's description matches reality or not.

By "updates", I mean seeing something unique compared to other projects. Not talking about wallets, websites and block explorers. Theae are nothing but necessary stuff to promote and properly use a cryptocurrency. Komodo's come with Atomic DEX - that is something that shows they truly are working on their goals.

This is what I mainly do to find out whether a project is worthy or not.

Well, I mean cold storage isn't perfect either. There's no perfect way to store your coins, but I have to hear yet about malicious wallets that fool Ledgers. Has there been any before?

Paper wallets are definitely not how I'd suggest a newbie to store their coins. I just import them using Electrum, but there are lots of ways you can mess up. The point I was trying to make was that I only rarely use them and most often my Ledger, and until today I had zero issues with the HW.

The economical repercussions are just way too harsh for another lockdown. I am quite afraid of what's to come from an economical perspective. This is basically deciding between having to "fight against the virus" without lockdowns and fighting against it by increasing the power of the incoming economical crisis (through locking down countries again). I'd rather continue with the existing measures for a few more months than make a lot of people starve and lose jobs within a matter of months/years. I'm afraid the option of having new waves of lockdowns would end up way worse than continuing the current measures.

Craigslist exists (and Romania has OLX), and it's not illegal. Why would a BTC marketplace be? OpenBazaar has been out there for a while and I don't reckon having read about someone who's got a problem with it yet. It's a peer-to-peer market, there's nothing illegal in it.

Bitcoin is mostly traceable because most people use it without caring about their identity being possibly exposed on the ledger. Being a transparent and public ledger, any little leak stays forever stored in an immutable record. When you make transactions through Bitcoin, you actually leave traces. One of them could be your IP address, which is sometimes more than enough for a bad actor to identify you or other addresses you own.

As a little update (the article seems to be a bit old), there currently are around 18.5M Bitcoins in existence - not 16M. I'd argue that the fact that 18.5M coins exist doesn't mean they're in circulation - in fact, a ton of these coins are dormant or lost.

I mean, theoretically, it can be. India did it and so did other countries. You can still use the network even if the government says you shouldn't, but you can also purchase drugs and guns illegally, can't you? Who'd risk having the FBI or some cops knock at their door for using BTC in an illegal country tho?

This has unfortunately changed and it's now a bit more expensive to use Bitcoin than some people could afford. This actually helps create Bitcoin a safe haven asset though, as it is quite costly to pay miner fees for everyday transactions - especially if you want them to be quickly confirmed.

Oh no, not again! I'd bet $100 on the fact that over half of those willing to scam people or commit crimes going for this "my details are hidden" principle mess up and actually leak significant details about themselves but either the victim didn't want the authorities to know they're using BTC or the scam was just way too low for the authorities to make a case out of it at all. We have usernames here as well, and that does not necessarily give us privacy from other members.

Just imagine how much energy is wasted by most people at least twice a day to charge their smartphones only to double tap Instagram posts and watch porn all day long. Imagine how much waste the governments create by testing out underground or underwater nuclear bombs. If we're talking about energy waste and environmental damages, there are way more significant ones we could reconsider.

Over 7,000 shitcoins on CoinMarketCap and counting. That's insane.

While maintaining large funds on an airgapped device and the rest on a HW is a good option as well, why would holding everything on the HW be a potential problem? I think the level of knowledge necessary in order to use both at the same time is much higher than simply using a HW, especially as they're much easier to use through the Ledger/Trezor interface. The chances of messing up with an airgapped Electrum are higher imo as soon as you don't have that much of an idea what you're really doing. I've been personally using my Ledger mostly and some paper wallets every now and then, but I trust my Ledger more than any other method of storage and never made even one little mistake through it.

Or just purchase it from the official store or authorized resellers instead and do not accept a parcel that's been tampered with.

The brand matters in my opinion, as Ledger and Trezor are the most tested and used ones with a long positive history. Price is not only different due to design but every HW has different features and supported coins so, unless you're a BTC-only guy, brand and model might actually matter a lot