I don't think phone / email verification / association is possible without some form of centralized oracle.

Both phone numbers and SMS gateways are centrally controlled, so there's no way to decentralize phone verification in an automated manner (similar to how converting crypto- to fiat-currencies requires cooperation with the classical banking system).

Decentralized email verification should be possible in theory, as anyone can run an email server; but good luck reaching any inboxes without being whitelisted by major providers.

I guess one could create a decentralized public-key cryptography based messenger system, similar to BitMessage, but without needing the private key for deriving the recipient's address? Ie. some form of decentralized storage for messages encrypted using public keys associated with Bitcoin addresses. I'm not sure if that would be all that useful though, at least for the use case as described by OP.

Well I'll be damned.

@OP keep us posted whether this solved your issue, the solution provided by Robot1982 is far simpler and preferable to what I suggested above.

13 word seed phrases where the standard for Electrum 2.0 - 2.6.4:

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/frequently-asked-questions/#why-wont-electrum-accept-my-seed-when-i-attempt-to-restore-my-wallet-from-it

They switched to 12 word seed phrases with 2.7.0.


You should be able to restore your wallet with the 13 seed words by downloading one of the older Electrum versions from the official archives:

https://download.electrum.org/


2.6.4 should do the job:

https://download.electrum.org/2.6.4/


Once you've successfully recovered your old wallet you'll want to send your coins to a new wallet, generated using the latest version of Electrum, as there are some known issues / exploits with the older versions. Don't forget to backup the seed words of the new wallet (should be 12 words) before sending your coins there!

Assuming you haven't moved those coins since before the Bitcoin hard forks (August 2017) you'll also have some forked coins to claim. There are plenty of threads that should help with that, but if anything be extra careful with fork wallets because there have been many cases of malware surrounding those (ie. clear out your Bitcoins before trying to claim fork coins and don't install any fork coin wallets on your main PC -- use a VM or an old laptop that you aren't using anymore).

Also actual usage of any such exploit would have been fairly obvious to an outside observer. It's not like anyone could have covertly inflated the coin supply.

Critical bug? Sure. Swept under the rug? Hardly. The exploit was widely publicized with information readily available to anyone keeping track of crypto.

It's pretty much a miracle that a passphrase like this went untouched for nearly 4 years.

Looking at how both the BTC and the BCH transaction where made in parallel within minutes, forwarding the coins to identical addresses on both chains, I get a feeling that automation may have been in play though -- the kind of automation that scans for brainwallets and steals them, unfortunately.

Of course not, and no one ever said that. But if applied correctly they make coins lose your taint (note: taint in the neutral sense of tracked coins, not in a criminal sense). And that's the one you want to get rid of.

Tumblers and coinjoins are important for both fungibility and privacy because they make the concept of taint pretty much useless. And you want the concept of taint to be pretty much useless, because otherwise you couldn't accept Bitcoin payments for fear of receiving tainted coins -- even if coins would look untainted to you, they could still look tainted to someone else. And a currency you can't accept is a currency you can't spend is a useless currency.

@All: Sorry for having derailed the thread, I hope you enjoy the show.

To be more precise, the transaction fee is implicitly stated -- it's the difference between the sum of all inputs and the sum of all outputs Still easy to mess up though

Good point about using Electrum's preview window!




Is Antpool's accelerator free though? The only free transaction accelerator I'm aware of that actually is working is the one from ViaBTC and that one requires a minimum transaction fee.

Do not manually create or manipulate Bitcoin transactions unless you absolutely know what you are doing (and think twice even then).

You don't want to end up as the guy spending 10 BTC in mining fees on a zero BTC transaction...

Not using an exchange that is trigger happy in freezing accounts beyond what is legally required of them is a solution however.

There's plenty of alternatives that are not quite as restrictive while still sticking to global and local regulations -- even amongst centralized exchanges. Additionally using a centralized service as wallet is leading the concept of cryptocurrencies ad absurdum anyway.

I absolutely respect if an exchange freezes an account because they are subpoenaed to do so based on concrete suspicions by law enforcement. But if Coinbase starts getting PayPal on people's asses it's time to move out.



So does this make you a drug dealer, money launderer or thieve? It doesn't. And neither does wanting some privacy on public blockchains.



0.15% of 1 BTC is 0.0015 BTC

Most Bitcoin ATMs and Local Bitcoin sellers charge around 2% - 5%. Even Coinbase charges 1.49% [1] which is literally an order of magnitude more expensive.

[1] https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1826294-how-are-fees-applied-when-i-buy-or-sell-digital-currency-



As long as it's not their own "tainted" coins their privacy is prevailed. You can't be held accountable for crimes you didn't commit.

If you're worried about using privacy enhancing methods because it may make you look suspious, you might be already be living in an oppressive regime. The only antidote against privacy enhancing methods becoming suspicious, is privacy enhancing tools becoming the norm.

Keep in mind, only a couple decades back, secure internet connections where deemed technology that should not be available to the regular citizen -- because what would they have to hide? Nowadays a world without HTTPS would be unthinkable, with ecommerce and ebanking being an impossibility.

---

Anyway, it's hard to objectively discuss something that is mostly a matter of personal philosophy. Luckily Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies offer possibilities to be as private or as transparent as personally preferred. Just remember that equating "privacy" with "crime" is not a slippery slope, but the ditch at the end of it.

I wouldn't recommend any wallet where you need to be registered (ie. any online wallet). Some of these services may not even give you full access to your coins, potentially even freezing or confiscating your coins at their whim.

For most cases Electrum (electrum.org) should be fine. For more secure storage, purchase a Trezor (trezor.io) or Ledger (ledger.com) hardware wallet. For a more detailed overview, follow the links posted by LoyceV above.

One more reason to not use Coinbase then. Any exchange that goes beyond the necessities of KYC / AML should be avoided like the plague. If you get your account frozen on the likes of Coinbase you should have stuck with PayPal. Same difference, but without the extra steps of going through crypto.



Would you, personally, post your bank statements publicly on the internet?



Wasabi Wallet charges 0.003% per anonymity set which apparently comes down to 0.15% per transaction [1]. ChipMixer relies on donations and can thus be used to mix for free, but will keep any amount smaller than 0.001 BTC as donation [2]. Other options likely fall within similar fee ranges.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/9sziy5/privacy_wasabi_wallet_10_is_finally_released/e90mlvu/
[2] https://chipmixer.com/faq



Not being able to keep private from governments is a threat to democracy. Heck, to any free society that relies on a centralized, hierarchical government.

As is the thinking that only "people with something to hide" want privacy.

Remember East Germany. I don't even want to imagine what a modern day Stasi could do with modern technology and data at hand.

Regarding Bitcoin (blockchain) hard forks, there's a comprehensive family tree over here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2597083.0

Apart from that the mapofcoins as posted by AdolfinWolf should provide you with a good overview. While not quite up-to-date I don't think any relevant alt directly forked off the Bitcoin codebase after 2017 anyway (apart from the blockchain hard forks), with many recent alts being built upon different codebases.

Using an airgapped linux laptop with an encrypted hard drive is just as fine, IMO. Convenience and ease of use is a big factor though, especially as securing a linux system from attacks involving physical access is not that trivial either.

In my opinion, the easier something can be securely used without messing things up, the better. The harder using something securely becomes, the less hardware / software security starts to matter and the more of a liability the human factor becomes. And the human factor is a huge liability.

I guess in the end it's mostly a matter of personal philosophy and preference though.




I feel the same. The exploit used to circumvent Ledger's firmware check is not quite instilling confidence in their software security (contrasted to the 3 months of hardware glitching necessary for the Trezor exploit). That Ledger's security appears to partially depend on security through obscurity is also slightly worrying. In general they nonetheless appear to do good work though, otherwise they wouldn't have gotten off that easily.

Unless you mined your coins yourself you likely already hold coins that are tainted in one way or another. Merely holding a couple of sats that are linked to illicit businesses won't implicate you in any crime unless law enforcement has additional reason to believe in your involvement. Same goes for using TOR, prepaid phones and other means of anonymization. Using these tools do not make you a criminal and do not build a case against you (unless you're involved in an illicit business to begin with, obviously).

In principal I get why tumblers have a bit of a bad rep, but in general I guess you could also see them as a bit of a workaround to "fix" Bitcoin's transparency. Bank account balances are not publicly accessible either, so why should Bitcoin balances be?

While coinjoins and tumblers are more work and require higher fees than regular Bitcoin transactions I wouldn't call them expensive either. Most Bitcoin ATMs and Localbitcoin traders charge higher fees than what coinjoins and tumblers entail.

That being said I fully agree that only few people are willing to pay for keeping their privacy. Heck, most people don't even bother rejecting 3rd party cookies when being presented with a GDPR prompt. That shouldn't prevent anyone from making privacy tools easily accessible though.

Indeed. It seems like we can also expect a Trezor fix by the end of January:

https://twitter.com/pavolrusnak/status/1078568510182309889?s=21

Turns out the researchers didn't follow customary responsible disclosure procedures, which is slightly disappointing. I guess both Ledger and SatoshiLabs would have appreciated a bit of a headstart, especially given the fact that both companies have a great track record of cooperating with security researchers and fixing found vulnerabilities in a timely manner (something which unfortunately is not quite as common as one may hope). Nonetheless it's good to know that researchers like them are out there, as findings of this kind help hardening hardware wallets.

The problem is less with being able to flash the Nano S with custom firmware, but rather with flashing the Nano S with custom firmware without the device noticing and warning the user. In this regard I have to tip my hat to SatoshiLabs that at least their firmware check was solid enough as to force these researchers to resort to a rather sophisticated attack on the hardware level (for what little good it brought, in the end). So at least in SatoshiLabs' case the scenario of hacking the update server and deploying malicious firmware appears to be non-viable.

Still, rather worrying, especially given the fact that for the Ledger Nano S an attack on the software level was sufficient. I think the Ledger vulnerabilities should be fairly straightforward to fix, about the Trezor One I'm not so sure, given the complexity of the issue. Worse still I wouldn't be surprised if one could mount a similar hardware-level attack on Ledger devices.

Regardless of would-be attackers requiring physical access to the device I still wouldn't shrug it off as a practical non-threat. Obviously once an attacker is able to attain physical access to your hardware wallet you'll likely have more acute problems than firmware integrity (ie. getting a "memory dump" from you, as a person, is likely more trivial than getting one from your hardware wallet). However at least to me personally results like these mostly serve as a stark reminder of how hard it is to get security right (ie. if it's possible to break the most popular, trusted and peer-reviewed hardware wallets, I don't even want to think about the rest of the market).



I guess that depends on the attack vector. If the firmware itself is compromised, the 25th password is likely to get compromised as well. It definitely protects against memory dumps as described in the Trezor One attack though -- or at least it should buy enough time to move your coins before the attacker can access them.


---


Come to think of it, I'm now really worried about Ledger's update server getting compromised. I don't think compromising Ledger's update servers would be easy, especially unnoticed, but as long as their wallet's bootloader can be tricked an attack scenario as described by Lucius would allow for remotely compromising Ledger hardware wallets without direct physical access O.o

A couple of security researchers just presented a talk at the 35C3 regarding a couple of security vulnerabilities in common hardware wallets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1OBIGslgGM


Most notably they found the following vulnerabilities:

1) Flashing the Ledger Nano S with custom firmware without the device noticing (starting @ 17:00)

2) A sidechannel attack allowing to remotely read the PIN entered into Ledger Blue devices (@ 28:30)

3) Extracting the menomic seed phrase and PIN from Trezor One devices (@ 35:00)


1) and 3) require direct physical access to the device while 2) require an attacker to be rather close by, so obviously the security level is still way beyond regular software wallets.


Keep in mind that vulnerabilities found in these devices do not imply that other hardware wallets are more secure. As mentioned in the last few minutes of the talk, the researchers found other vulnerabilities in other wallets as well, the ones they presented are merely a collection of the most interesting ones. Still it will be interesting to see if and when these vulnerabilities will be fixed (responsible disclosure appears to have been made, with the Trezor CTO participating in the Q&A towards the end of the video).

The aspect of regaining control over what's yours seems to be rather important as well though:


IMHO introducing newcomers to the concept of securing their own coins is more important in the long run than ensuring that all these exchanges are solvent. By now I'm less worried about insolvent exchanges than about users getting complacent with centralized custodial services. It's the mindset of trustlessness that people need to be reminded of.

It seems like some people that are feeling like they "missed out" on Bitcoin in the past, are now trying to compensate this by finding "the new Bitcoin". Sometimes even falling back on centralized solutions such as Ripple, while completely forgetting the principles of permissionlessness and trustlessness that made cryptocurrencies big to begin with.

Don't fall for the cargo cult that is "blockchain the technology" or "distributed ledger technology". Try to see what value propositions lie at the core of cryptocurrencies and which cryptocurrencies represent these values. Without understanding these principles, you're more likely to get burned than not. Be careful in your assumption of what's "the next big thing". It might very well be that Bitcoin is the new Bitcoin.

I've been thinking the same, but recently I'm not so sure anymore.

Right now it seems as if stocks are about to turn into a bear market for good while the Bitcoin market appears to finally capitulate and by consequence stabilize (even if that stabilization happens at the mid 2000s). It's still too early to tell of course, but given the recent stock market action it seems like Bitcoin's market cycles may be largely decoupled from the classical markets after all. Add to that the lack of attractive alternatives (bonds are still rather fucked and real estate appears to have been overbought on a global scale in the last decade) and we might just see the beginning of a perfect storm brewing.