I usually notice that the guides and rating websites deviate from the real agenda. They promote sponsored websites over and above the deserving ones and fail to remain unbiased for long. But the case is entirely different with btcgosu. I am observing Gosu from Day 1 (still remember when you told us about Gosu for the very first time in SwC chat in one of the poker game). I can proudly say that efialtis has done outstanding work in developing Gosu as the current best guide on crypto casinos. I am happy to contribute whatever I was able to so far and will continue to help @efi in making Gosu - 'The Invincible Crypto Casino Guide'. Soon, Gosu gonna rule the search engines.

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Following the vision of @efi to make GOSU more insightful about casinos, I am trying to develop a tool which will help gamblers to pick best casinos using much more insights and information which were never available before. I'm hopeful that I will have something concrete to present by the end of January, stay tuned. : )


HAPPY NEW YEAR

Liquidity is not depleting due to high price or reducing number of buyers. It is becoming difficult to buy because the volume of BTC available on market is reducing with the increasing price. Most of the current traders are very positive about the future price so they are holding the supply which is making BTC scarce on ready market. On top of that, big institutions are staking high number of BTC making the market supply even lower.

However, the use of term 'Liquidity Crisis' in the article is misleading. Liquidity like mentioned in OP is the ease with which an asset can be converted in cash. Bitcoin infact has become much more liquid these days than earlier. More and more buyers are interested in owning bitcoin and demand is increasing, hence more buy orders and higher liquidity.

The whole purpose of ITC is to avoid the double counting problem. The process makes sure that the tax is only levied on the value-addition at each step of production. But it would be insanity to apply the same system on economic activities like trading. Unlike the normal production of goods and services, trading doesn't have fixed production cycle. The supply goes on and on from one trader to another continuously. No new value will be added in most of the transactions. If the average price of bitcoin remains constant throughout the year, the government will end up with nothing but Avg. Price of Bitcoin * No. of bitcoins on Indian Exchanges * 18% less ITC Liability remaining with buyers which I think would be much-much less than Rs. 7200cr.

And what if I inject new supply to the Exchange? Unlike stocks, cryptocurrencies can be easily traded P2P. If I just buy bitcoin off-exchange, deposit it to exchange, sell it on exchange, buyer pays the GST and claims ITC, I am out without any GST implications and government ends with zero revenue (lol). It would be much simpler to ask trader to simply deposit periodical GST on the profits made as per profit report provided by the Exchange rather than having thousands (or even millions) of buy/sell transactions to be reported on portal regularly (that would be hell of the reporting), when both systems would result in roughly same GST collection for the government.

On the side note, imagine if government failed to apply GST on trading of stocks and shares (which are very well traded on official platforms), how in the world it thought that it would be nice idea to collect GST on cryptocurrency trading, lol.

Nicely explained! Even I was shocked when I read the news earlier today. It really doesn't make sense to charge indirect tax on trading.


As per the report, they are suggesting to levy GST on margin made in trading. But at the same time, they are saying that GST will be levied on all transactions. So it doesn't make sense. Are they saying that only those transactions are subject to GST on which trader has made profits? How will they determine buy price if I bought bitcoins 'n' number of times before selling? I think they are misunderstanding how bitcoin or trading works.

If they wanna charge GST, it would be much better that every trader files periodical return by depositing GST on net profit made during the period. And GST rate should be lesser (5% maximum).

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I don't think ITC can be applied here. Since, the proposal is about charging the GST on profits, the buyer won't know how much GST is to be charged on the trade. So, the logical step would be that the seller bears the burden of GST by paying off the percentage of GST from his earned margin.  

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Third-party collecting and depositing GST on the taxable supply made by one party to another, that would quite an exception to add in GST Law. Good luck future CA students.

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I am still wondering how Bureau came up with that figure. As per Times of India article, Rs. 40K crore is the estimated annual bitcoin transactions value. It doesn't make sense to levy GST on transactions. Or is this total trade volume, then again it doesn't make sense to levy GST on total volume.

There are several reasons why Binance stands out among major exchanges right now. It has lowest maker/taker fees for starters (just 0.10%) which could be further reduced to 0.075% by using native Binance currency i.e. BNB for fees. Kraken and Bitstamp have relatively higher fees. Although these percentages may look minute but can become important factor when doing margin trading. Apart from that, the volume on Binance is higher than the counterparts which means lesser spread between buy & sell orders. It also means faster order filling.

By the way, I don't think Kraken/Bitstamp have better rates than Binance. In fact, Binance's prices are more close to actual price due to larger volume. However, all these Exchanges are reputable and you can choose any depending upon which deems best for your needs.

Well, there are three things related to Bitcoin which change frequently:

1. Price and Market - This is the most cheerful of three if you are back after 6 months. You left bitcoin at $10-12K range and it's up by almost 2.5x. Market looks much more mature this time and bitcoin is finally coming out as the mainstream investment for traders.

2. News and Economics - @mk4 already listed notable events happened in past 6 months. If I say in brief, corporate and big institutions have become more interested in bitcoin.

3. Source Code - If you are interested in Bitcoin's source code and updates then there's a PR Review Club - https://bitcoincore.reviews/. You can join meeting @5PM GMT every Wednesday. It's the best way to remain closest to source code developments. Last meeting (Christmas special) was about testing the Release Candidates for recent version.

It's good to see that you are trying to create a utility tool but it doesn't make sense if user himself has to input the bitcoin price. If a user first has to look for the price of a particular date from the past, he can very well search for the inflation rate too, isn't it? After that it's just a simple division.

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Like you said that the tool is for learning purpose and you wish to create something useful for the crypto community, here is my suggestion for you to create something worthwhile:

Ask the user for two inputs - date and country. Then fetch the bitcoin price of the provided country for the provided date (you can look for local exchanges for the currency-specific price API). Then return the result something like this-

Nominal Profit/Loss of the User = [ (Current Price - Buy Price) / Buy Price ] * 100
Real Profit/Loss of the User (Inflated return) = [ (Current Price - Buy Price) / Buy Price ] * 100 * Inflation Adjustment Index

This will give user the stats whether his investment is yielding any inflation-adjusted profits or not which may be useful tool for some users. And most important of all, do make web app for the tool. Not everyone knows how to run Python script so web app is much more handy.

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This won't work. Coindesk or Coinmarketcap APIs only calculate prices in USD. Then they convert the price to other currencies using forex API. So, the same problem will sustain. Suppose the price of bitcoin is $25,000. But it is selling at the premium of 10% in Indian Market. CMC API will simply convert $25000 into current rate of INR/USD (suppose INR 70/$) which is Rs. 1,750,000. But in actual the price is Rs. 1,925,000 in Indian Market.

So it is best to use APIs provided by the local exchanges or any other local pricing service.

Okay, now I may act like I am an expert who used some deep analysis to pick 3-1 for Arsenal. But in truth, I merely used gut feeling to make that pick. This week I didn't spend much time thinking about the fixtures and picked all results in like 40 seconds. However, it wasn't bluff or risky pick, I genuinely thought Arsenal will win this one with higher margin.

So, on whole it looks like a good round opening for me. I am in top 30 for the first time. Hope that my rank will improve as the league progresses. ManU high scoring draw was shocker though.

You are seriously understating the magnitude of data size we have here. Even with the most advance devices having greatest of the computational power, you will most probably fail to brute-force even a single used private key created with strong RNG script in your lifetime. If someone's funds got stolen, it's either his own mistake or RNG used by his wallet to create private key is pretty weak.

No security system is unique by design, read this post:

Yeah! It is always nice to learn about encryption and encoding functions and how these functions add the layers of security to any protocol or application. Step 2 is all about Elliptic Curve Cryptography which creates public key from private key.
I have dedicated thread about ECC here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5232734.0
NotATether summarized more info about ECC nicely here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5235482.0
Then of-course, you have Google and YouTube.

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The 64-characters are actually the representation of hexadecimal number. So yes, if you randomly type characters between 0-9 and A-F then it's a valid private key, provided that the value of such hexadecimal number is lower than:

But it is highly inadvisable to create private key manually. It is always better to use pseudo-random number generator algorithms and libraries which most of the bitcoin wallets use.

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Yes! There's a probability that you may hit a private key which is already being used. But that probability is so-so low that it doesn't worth an effort. Let me quote a post from o_e_l_e_o stating the magnitude of the difficulty to find a used address:

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Yep! You can sweep that key, it's a valid private key as it is within the range of 1 to (approx.) 1.15*10^77. But you mustn't. Attackers can easily brute-force such private keys. In-fact, any manually written private key isn't safe because humans are worst random generator. They are always tend to go for patterns which make the keys predictable.

File extension has no relevance in bitcoin wallets. It can be any format. It's just a file which stores details like private key, public key etc. As a wallet developer, I can store keys and data in any format. It basically depend upon the security level and more on how my application is made and how it fetches the data for signing and verifying transactions.

Excellent initiative! I also had this long-standing thought of developing a community for Indians where once a week everyone can ask their doubts related to bitcoin and group of more-knowledgeable members can host the discussion. This process of knowledge sharing can continue for years and once newbie members can become host in future discussions. Then occasionally, crypto industry leaders from India like CEOs of big Exchanges, founders of leading Indian altcoin projects can come as guest host and conduct AMA sessions. This will stir the entrepreneurship spirit in the Indian bitcoiners (something at which we Indians really suck). It's nice to see that you are trying to achieve the exact same vision and I will try my best to contribute for the cause.

It's actually good idea to club two communities. I never used Reddit before but joining now and see if I can come up with some ideas to increase the engagements on both platform and attract more Indians toward bitcoin. 

PS: Out of merits, will see if some left on alt account.

Okay! Here's a relatively simpler explanation then. But note: to make it easier to understand, I will be using simple words which maybe not be 100% technically correct. Also, I will give few links to the online tools which you can use to understand the process. However, I don't personally endorse those tools and won't recommend you to use them for creating addresses for real-use.

Now let's start:

Step 1: The first step involves generating a private key. Like @ranochigo said above, private key can be anything between 1 to (approx.) 1.15*10^77 which is then converted to hexadecimal. But since Bitcoin uses secp256k1 parameter of Elliptic Curve Cryptography to generate public key, private key needs to be 256-bits long. So suppose you pick 3 as your private key (which is a 2-bit number) then you need to add empty bits to make the length of private key equals to 256 bits. So your private key will look like this:
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003 (every hexadecimal character represents 4-bits so the length will be 64)

Step 2: Once you have private key, you then need to create public key from it. This is achieved by using Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Without going into much detail, ECC is a cryptography approach which gives you point on a curve based upon a private key provided. If you remember then we were taught in schools about graphs. A point on graph is plotted like this: (2,4) where 2 represents its X-value and 4 represents its Y-value. ECC will also give you a point (A,B) which is your public key.

Step 3: Now we need to create bitcoin address from the public key. Using 'compressed public key' for address generation has become the standard. Compressed means that we only take X-value of public key. Then we add 02 or 03 in-front of X-value depending upon whether Y is even or odd number. So if our public key is (A,B) and B is odd number then we take 03+A for further calculation.

Step 4: The next step involves creating SHA-256 hash of 03+A. In easy words, SHA-256 is a digital fingerprint of a message. Every message has a unique fingerprint of a fixed size (which is 64 in hexadecimal).

Step 5: Now we will create RIPEMD-160 hash of the hash obtained in previous step. RIPEMD-160 is another hashing function like SHA-256. It is primarily used in address generation to shorten the length of hash. SHA-256 produces hash which is of 32 bytes (1 byte = 8 bits). RIPEMD-160 then reduces it to 20 bytes (40 in hexadecimal).

Step 6: Then we add 00 in front of hash obtained in step 5. This 00 signifies that we are going to use this address on the main Bitcoin network.

Step 7: Okay, so far we have a value which is equal to = 00 + RIPEMD-160 hash of [SHA-256 hash of ( 03 + X-value of public key )]. Keep this value aside and let's generate checksum.

Step 8: The purpose of using checksum is to avoid the mistake in copying bitcoin address. If a user misses a character while copying or types wrong character in address then wallet will show it as invalid address because checksum won't match. To generate checksum, perform SHA-256 hashing on the value obtained in Step 7. Then perform SHA-256 hashing again on the hash received.

Step 9: The length of checksum is 4-bytes. Since, the length of SHA-256 is 32 bytes (64 in hexadecimal), we will only need first 4 bytes or 8 hexadecimal digits of the hash.

Step 10: Now add the checksum obtained in step 9 at the end of the value obtained in Step 7. So, now we have a value which is equal to = 00 + RIPEMD-160 hash of [SHA-256 hash of ( 03 + X-value of public key )] + checksum.

Step 11: Final step is to convert the value from Step 10 into Base58 string. Base58 is encoding format with 58 characters. It is used to shorten the length of address as much as possible by just using alpha-numeric characters after removing few characters to avoid confusion.

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EXAMPLE:

Step 1: Let's start by picking 256-bit number as private key. You can use -  This Tool, select 256-bit from menu, tick 'hex' checkbox. I generated one - 6D2FD98D6EBAA0D1A96A0B5B2482FCC813A855242CFF93D76B67C09FE0122E66 (you can use this one for further steps).

Step 2: Now let's generate public key from private key. I didn't find any tool for this online so I created one real fast - https://webtricks.website/secp256k1/. By filling the above private key, we get:
[870dac978a24321b6a7dffe26bb19270d8c9bd4f074c510b80a115ce050eb652 , 959e77411b6ea35833d2006ddbd8a90aa9c8c1a3b310bf607ba6352e5b80e144] which is our public key.

Step 3: Now let's first take Y-value i.e. 959e77411b6ea35833d2006ddbd8a90aa9c8c1a3b310bf607ba6352e5b80e144 and determine whether it's even or odd value. You can use - This Tool to convert from hexadecimal to decimal. In decimals, the number is 67674599338242423768515926925083934807011987438106446435693057967227469357380 which is even number so we will add 02 in front of X-value. Hence, we will take 02870dac978a24321b6a7dffe26bb19270d8c9bd4f074c510b80a115ce050eb652 for further calculation.

Step 4: Use - This Tool to generate SHA-256 of the value from Step 3. Don't forget to check 'input type' as 'hex' on the page. SHA-256 of above value is def9edc5650c3e791c2de616ff81a671966fe60609b45598589853e13a1551ac.

Step 5: Use - https://webtricks.website/ripemd160/ to calculate RIPEMD-160 hash of SHA-256 hash obtained in 4th step. The result is - 6ce830ddca6af06a6c8b3e7b351a25ab8ee94751.

Step 6: Adding 00 in front. The value becomes - 006ce830ddca6af06a6c8b3e7b351a25ab8ee94751.

Step 8: To generate checksum, we will generate SHA-256 of 006ce830ddca6af06a6c8b3e7b351a25ab8ee94751 using same tool from Step 4. The result is e90a5fa47b270435fea4251fc732838ae1ae77a16c90c776a2a2156aee93cd64. Then we will again generate hash of e90a5fa47b270435fea4251fc732838ae1ae77a16c90c776a2a2156aee93cd64 which is 646219ed043d40606c70f4cc9950264795faf81b8b171928caae82b066628050.

Step 9: Since checksum is only 4-byte, we will take first 8-digits of the hash generated in step 8 i.e. 646219ed.

Step 10: Adding the checksum at the end of value obtained in step 6 - 006ce830ddca6af06a6c8b3e7b351a25ab8ee94751646219ed

Step 11: Use This Tool for creating Base58 string of the value obtained in Step 10. Don't forget to change 'Treat Input As' to 'HEX' on the page. The result will be 1Avr8d9HWAV86QtHmqBhco3W67DiKNA9Gp which is our bitcoin address.

You can verify that the address is correct by going to BitAddress.org and entering the private key from Step 1 on Wallet Details page.

You are right! But those are just 2 merits. At most that user will be able to attain Jr. Member rank and join some shitty altcoin bounties with minimum rank requirement. I don't see any other significant abuse. At least he's in the radar now because I suspect him as an alt account so it will be easy to locate if he abuses a campaign with multi-accounting in future.

But most important of all - it's Holidays week man! And as the title of this thread says - 'Positivity', let's try to be. Last year Theymos distributed tons of merits to newbies in art contest. That's the spirit of festival and celebrations.

Nice catch! I doubt if it's a mistake. I think Freebitco.in intentionally left that range to significantly increase the house edge. In worst case scenario, the minimum house edge for this event is 9.12% (assuming all bets are made at current odds) or 4.56% (assuming odds are uniformly adjusted with increasing bets). But by removing one range which is closer to the expected price, the house edge further increases. I tried applying Binomial Model and Risk Neutral Method to ascertain the exact edge after accounting the missing range but looks like it isn't possible in case of bitcoin due to unavailability of relevant risk-free rate.

Anyhow, these events must be very lucrative for Freebitco.in.

Your definition of economic growth is very much different from what me and most of the bitcoiners think. A self-sufficient individual who can spend his money with complete autonomy, can put complete trust in the money and transaction he made or received, no fear of confiscation or ban - for me this is the definition of Utopian Economy and bitcoin helping it achieve. Government and politicians are demeaning bitcoin only for their personal gains.

Fun Fact: Only 2.5% of the Indian population pay income tax and they taunt bitcoin for tax evasion. 

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Remove cryptocurrency and what are we left with? Government have to understand that blockchain is only meant for finance. Storing medical records, government tenders, etc etc - those all bullshit serve no real purpose. The prime reason behind the success of bitcoin is the financial motive attach with it. People got a foolproof system in their hands which is controlled by no one, very-very difficult to mutate but still can be verified and trusted by anyone; these factors have created impeccable valuable intangible asset which no tangible asset could match.

All those who say standalone blockchain (without cryptocurrency) can change the world, bla bla - they actually have no idea how blockchain works. Blockchain is more than just adding data in chunks to a database.

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It's not about creating a formalized structure, it's about creating a formalized structure for Bitcoin. Otherwise, let alone biggest brains, even I can create a cryptocurrency with ecosystem which can only be traded on a single market, every transaction made will be recorded with complete details of sender and receiver, tax will automatically be calculated and deducted from user's wallet. But will the people adopt such cryptocurrency? I bet they won't! Bitcoin by its very nature is pseudo-anonymous and peer-to-peer. You don't even have to use Exchange, just create a transaction on your system, sign it with valid signature and broadcast it to the network. No matter how much anyone tries, you can't account for every transaction and create a so-called formal structure.

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I disagree. When you are using the word 'cryptocurrencies', you have brought the old players like Monero (XMR) into the talk as well. Unlike bitcoin, Monero provides insanely high level of privacy and anonymity by obfuscating the sender, amount and receiver. Even bitcoin is highly anonymous but requires higher technical know-how to maintain the privacy. And if anyone is able to trace someone through blockchain then bitcoin wallets are to be blamed which mix together various UTXOs of the user without user even realizing. If a user is concerned about his privacy, he should first learn the concept of UTXO and how bitcoin transaction works. Then, he should use a wallet which provides greater control over UTXOs and option to the user to manually select the UTXOs to be spent!

I had created a thread about this few months ago - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5223167.0. The thread covers in-detailed explanation for creating private key, deriving public key from it, generating bitcoin address and WIF. It only covers the process for P2PKH address (Legacy) but since you are looking for Bitaddress.org substitute (which also only provides legacy address creation), the above thread will cater your need.

I have also included minimal Javascript (Node.js) code so if you are proficient in this language, you can easily understand the code; no need to spend time studying bitaddress.org source code.

And if you have any doubt, you can ask in this thread or in the above thread.

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If addresses are empty then most probably no one else has used those addresses. RNG of Bitddress.org is quite strong and it's highly unlikely that bitaddress will generate same private key for two different users.

Visit this page and follow instructions: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote
More about Copper Membership here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2385104.msg24371150#msg24371150

You missed the best performance from Barca so far this season, bad game to miss especially if you are core Barca fan. Yes, Alba played on the left of the 4-men midfield.

Yesterday I realized, Barcelona is all about Messi and his commitment. Without doubt, he's the best player on-ball but his off-ball movements weren't impressive this season which isn't expected from the captain. You don't want your captain to literally walk on the field when you are 0-2 down. However, tomorrow he had changed the entire narrative. He was running with fire towards goalkeeper, forcing him into hasty clearance, leading the press, forcing defenders to give bad passes and the most special off-ball moment was the clean tackle from behind (it's been ages). When captain inspires from the front, whole team responds. Special mentions to Pedri, Pjanic, Dest, Braithwaite and Stegen - they played like prime Barca yesterday and that too away from home (nice!!).

Messi's shots were much more convincing than his past performances. He had hit 42 shots in last 5 matches! But most of those lacked 'Messi-quality'. However, yesterday conviction could be felt in those shots. If someone thinks I'm over-exaggerating and scoreline of 0-3 doesn't look good enough then for record, Barca hit woodwork thrice in the game!

By the way, anyone else noticed an extra-ordinary connection developing between these two?



Puig could have completed the frame like Messi-Xavi-Inesta trio only if Koeman can keep his ego aside and let him play. 

Just when I thought we have seen everything from Koeman, he came up with yet another weird lineup. His early attempt to replace traditional 4-3-3 Barca style with 4-2-3-1 with double pivot didn't work out.

So, today's Koeman special is:



3-1-4-2 !! Weird but may work out. Not much attacking prowess in the team but good thing is with three centre backs, both full-backs won't have to trackback much. If I consider last few matches, full-backs are the second most important element in Koeman's attack after Messi. So, more forward freedom to Alba and Dest may help Barca to get few goals. Puig still not in the team though.