No mention of Jews, PMs, the Kalergi Plan, or Exter's Pyramid? Not even a ref. to The Daily Stormer? Naaah, it's not him.

I have a cousin, same age as me (in his 40s), who's eating more or less like Tash describes. He is totally against conventional medicine and into natural remedies, herbs, etc. He's also a vegetarian.

-- Half his teeth have fallen off. Even most of the front ones, but he refuses to go to the dentist (he's against doctors).
-- His Hematocrit (blood HCT) is below normal (around 30~35%).
-- Although he is very fit (he exercises a lot), he looks malnourished and unhealthy.

Several years ago, I was suffering from a serious, life-threatening condition, that required taking some nasty, very strong chemicals. My cousin strongly advised me against it, and recommended some special herbs. After researching all of my options, I went ahead with the medical treatment as advised by my doctor, and I'm now in perfect health. Had I followed my cousin's advice, I would probably not be alive today.

Just a word of caution, don't experiment with your health based on what someone has told you, or what you've heard, or read on the net, without hard, scientific evidence. Eat what you like, enjoy your food (your body itself will tell you what is good for you), just don't overdo it, as with most things. Most importantly, don't listen to anyone claiming he has the solution to all your health problems, without researching it thoroughly by yourself.

One last thing. Apply the "follow the money" principle. Just check to see if there's money involved and whether or not the person giving you advice has some monetary gain from persuading you to follow his methods. Steer clear from cases where you need to buy some "magic supplement" that will make you healthy, or otherwise having to pay someone for health services that are not scientifically proven.

@mindrust: I'll say this, with good intentions:

I fear that you're going to feel really bad soon... To the point of going insane. Just try to prepare yourself psychologically for this eventuality.

It's projects like Bitcoin and cryptography, that can make one stand rapt in awe (misquoting Einstein here) at the thought of the size of the search spaces involved. In fact, in Bitcoin/cryptography, privacy and ownership is solely achieved by the near-infinite size of the search spaces involved. There are no other mechanisms (e.g., a centralized verification algorithm/server) that can protect ownership of a key by kicking you out or banning you when "trying more than 3 times", or whatever other criteria. Given enough time, I can get hold of Satoshi's coins, or your coins, just like a chimpanzee can type Shakespeare on a typewriter. Privacy/ownership is achieved by making that time practically infinite. It's like the system is replying back to you, saying "come and get it!" To the best of my knowledge, so far there's no one lucky enough to have managed to stumble upon someone else's non-empty wallet upon setting up their Trezor. I'd love to hear if anyone knows of such a case.

The above directly relates to the phrase "Of course, all these wallets will be empty when you visit them (well, not necessarily, but that's another discussion)." in my post, which I would hope someone would pick up and comment on.

Great discussion!

Thanks cAPSLOCK, glad you guys liked my post, this subject fascinates me, and I enjoy talking about it.

About your comment regarding "infinite", I see what you're trying to say, but still, it's OK to use the word "infinite", as explained below:

Suppose you assign each one of all wallets in existence a unique, non-negative integer ID.

Let's say I have access to the wallets with IDs: 0, 2, 4, ... Inf.
You have access to the wallets with IDs: 1, 3, 5, ... Inf.

You have access to infinite wallets. I also have access to infinite wallets. But none of my wallets have the same ID as any of yours. What this means is that there can be infinite sets that do not share common elements (like the sets of even and odd numbers, as illustrated above).

The word "infinite", as I used it in my Plausible Deniability post, is indeed not accurate, but for a different reason. In reality, the keys belong to a finite (albeit extremely large) set, so the number of wallets in existence is not really infinite. But it's so large that it's "practically infinite".

I wish!

Glad my post helped, Karartma1, it ended up much longer than I expected. Got carried away...

Yes, by all means, try it with s/w wallets, and also with Trezors, Ledgers, etc. You don't have to transfer funds, just enter various "25th" passphrases and observe all those wallets that belong to you and most users don't know they exist. Be absolutely sure you are comfortable with the entire process, and fully understand it, before transferring any coins. Once you get the hang of it, it will be very easy to manage. It's more or less "set and forget", with the occasional visit to your wallets every so often, so that your brain's neurons keep firing up and don't forget the passphrases.

Hi, I would point you to Wikipedia, but I just checked it and it's too general, too long (as if this isn't...), not an easy read.

Plausible deniability, as it applies here, is the ability to plausibly deny ownership of your Bitcoin when required to reveal your stash (legally, or by force).

Case 1 (legally): You cross the border to another country, and, upon inspection, customs find your Trezor in your briefcase, or find a wallet s/w on your phone. They may force you to reveal information about your stash. In fact, there are laws that make it a punishable crime not to reveal your passwords in such cases, and if you don't, you may be arrested and detained. What do you do? Can you just say "guys, it's empty!"? They will say "OK, show us!" How can you circumvent this?

Case 2 (by force): You are a coiner. You tell about your coins to friends and relatives. All in good faith. They are impressed by your newfound wealth. They are so excited that they tell their friends about you and how smart you are. Word spreads. You end up being kidnapped and forced (by torture) to reveal your stash. Can you just say "guys, it's empty!"? I don't think so. How can you circumvent this?

Deniability won't help you in such cases, unless it's paired with plausibility. With Trezor (and Ledger, etc.), in addition to the 24 words that make up your seed, you are allowed to enter another (25th) passphrase (word, sentence, any alphanumeric string). This will result in a wallet (key) that is totally different to the one without the 25th passphrase. In fact, when you connect your Trezor and are asked for the 25th passphrase, you can type anything you want, and it will lead to different valid wallets, depending on what you typed. In this way, you can have (in fact, you already have) an infinite number of wallets, all of which have your seed in common, but are cryptographically unrelated, in the sense that access to one such wallet is completely isolated from any other wallet.

The central idea that you must understand, is that you already have all these wallets, whether you want them or not. There is no switch that you can use to enable or disable a wallet. It's already there. Think of this as driving on the highway, and there are infinite number of exits. Your 24-word seed is the highway, and the 25th passphrase determines the exit you want to take. The exits are all there, an infinite number of them, and they all lead to valid wallets. Of course, all these wallets will be empty when you visit them (well, not necessarily, but that's another discussion). The highway itself is also a wallet (no passphrase entered). This is why it's not advisable to use a seed without a 25th passphrase. Because, in this case, if someone finds your seed, he can enter your highway, and if your coins are on that highway, he can steal them from you. But if you use a 25th passphrase, the highway will be empty, and containing an infinite number of exits. Which exit to take? He needs to know the 25th passphrase, which he won't. Your coins are safe.

How is all this related to plausible deniability? You can use the 25th passphrase to plausibly deny ownership of your coins. You set up your Trezor as normal, writing down and backing up your 24 seed words. What you then do, is transfer a very small amount of Bitcoin (say, 0.1 BTC) to the wallet without a 25th passphrase (the highway). You put that 0.1 BTC there. Then, you reconnect your Trezor, but this time you enter a 25th passphrase, let's call it {normal_pass}. You end up on a different, empty wallet. In there, you transfer a bigger amount of Bitcoin, large enough to persuade someone that it's everything you've got, let's say, 10 BTC. You don't transfer all your stash there, just that 10 BTC. You then reconnect your Trezor, but this time you enter a very strong 25th passphrase, let's call it {really_strong_pass}. You end up on yet another empty wallet. In that wallet you transfer the remaining of your stash, say, 100 BTC.

What have you achieved by doing the above? With just one seed (written on paper and backed up) and 2 passphrases in your head, you have spread your stash in the following three different, cryptographically unrelated wallets (i.e., having access to one of the wallets does not grant access to any of the other wallets, and does not prove that you are using any other wallet):

No passphrase: 0.1 BTC
{normal_pass}: 10 BTC
{really_strong_pass}: 100 BTC

Case 1: "Sir, can you please unlock your wallet for us?" -- "Why?" -- "We want to see how many coins you have." -- "But, isn't this private information?" -- "Yes, but Law XYZ, that was passed after 9/11, to combat terrorist activities, gives us authority to do whatever we want!" -- "Oh, hmmm, I'm not comfortable with this..." You play difficult, you ask to see the law, trying to stall them. After a while, and when the pressure on you becomes too much, you say "OK, I don't like this at all, but here you are." You connect your Trezor to your laptop, and just enter the PIN (no 25th passphrase). You have just entered the "highway" wallet, which contains 0.1 BTC. "There you go, motherfuckers! Fuck you!", you scream! They say, "Sir, I'm afraid we'll have to confiscate your wallet and the coins." -- "Sure," you reply, "take it and stick it up your bum, you fucks!" You hand them your Trezor and they let you pass. When you arrive safely at your destination, you simply enter your seed to any wallet you want (Trezor, Ledger, Mycelium), and you log-in with the two "25th" passphrases, confirming what mathematics have guaranteed for you, which is that your 110 BTC are there, untouched, waiting for you.

Case 2: You are tied to a chair, and a big guy asks you for your Trezor PIN, "or else I'm going to cut your fingers one by one!" You try to resist at first, but quickly reveal the PIN. They see the 0.1 BTC. But they're smart. They know you have more! They begin to torture you, at which point you have to be prepared to take some beating and even lose a finger! You have to resist as much as you can. When you can't take it anymore, and you're screaming and crying like a little girl, all humiliated and seemingly completely wrecked, you reveal {normal_pass} to them. They enter the 25th passphrase and see your shiny 10 BTC in there. "Gotcha!" they shout! They transfer the funds, destroy (or take with them) your Trezor, and leave. The next day, you enter your seed in another wallet, enter {really_strong_pass} and confirm that your 100 BTC are there, untouched, waiting for you.

The above are idealized scenarios. You can be sure that, if you go out and about boasting to colleagues, friends and family that you own 100+ BTC, the thieves will cut your fingers, arms, legs, and even your dick (if you have one), before they get your entire stash! Plausible deniability is a great tool to protect us and our Bitcoin, but we also need to exercise common sense and maximise our opsec. No need to go out boasting about how much Bitcoin we have. A fool and his BTC are soon parted. Don't be a fool.

That's the best way I can describe plausible deniability, while keeping my typing and word count to reasonable levels. I think I can compete with JJG on this one! Anyway, I hope it helps you, Karartma1, or anyone else out there.

Stay safe!

Edit: Corrected some typos.

They won't know your seed, it never leaves the device.

It's like when you buy a safe. The company that makes the safe won't know the combination you chose in the privacy of your own home. They just know how the safe works, but not what combination you set. And with the Trezor code being open-source, any backdoor would be exposed before a hacker could organize an attack. When it comes to cryptography, open-source is the only way to go, otherwise, you'll never know what deal the company that make the s/w have made with the NSA...

Unless you mean the case where Trezor's servers get hacked, and a compromised firmware update gets released, which, combined with a compromised version of Trezor Bridge on the PC (hacked by the same hacker), somehow manages to upload the keys to the hacker's server. I guess that theoretically this could happen, but I think it would be extremely difficult for a hacker to be able to pull this through.

Regardless of the practicalities, the one-to-one seed --> key mathematical mapping holds true. So, seed = key,  and we should treat it as such, protecting it from leaking on the net, not showing to anyone, backing it up, etc.

I'd think a paper wallet would be more at risk from common thieves stealing it from you, or degradation (always keep backups, even just photocopies).

In the end, whatever we choose, we've got to be extra careful with our security practices. The word "obvious" is very dangerous when it comes to Bitcoin and cryptography in general.

Two tips:

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Plausible deniability -- A $5 wrench is too damn cheap.

There's no bank in this case. It's just you, the seed, and mathematics. No 3rd party to trust.

I think you got what I wanted to say.

The "not your keys, not your coins" motto applies to the cases where the keys (raw keys, seed, whatever) are not held and managed by you, but by a 3rd party (exchange, etc.). If you have your 24-word seed, you have your keys. And if you haven't given the seed to anyone, you, and only you, have the seed (hence the keys).

One could argue that a paper wallet's QR code is not a real key. You still need a camera and s/w to decode the QR code, right? You see what I mean? The 24-word seed is just a smarter way to encode keys, just like a paper wallet's QR code (or alphanumeric code) encodes a key.

What's important is not the encoding itself (seed, QR code, alphanumeric string, whatever), but WHO HOLDS those keys... If it's you, and only you, who holds the keys, then those coins are yours and nobody can touch them. Seed or QR code makes no difference.

What I'm saying is that you can write your 24 seed words on a piece of paper and completely destroy the h/w wallet and anything related to the process of generating the seed. The seed alone is a map to get to your keys. No need to access any server or anything on the internet. You just need that little piece of paper. There is a mathematical one-to-one relationship between your seed and your keys. Nothing else is needed.

I fully agree with everything you've said, except the above.

If you can go from your seed to your keys in a deterministic, well-defined and publicly known way, then the two are equivalent. Seeds are keys.

It's exactly like the difference between a key in QR code form and in alphanumeric form. They are the same, just expressed differently. As long as I have my seed, you can take my Trezor and crush it to little pieces. I still have my keys (encoded in the seed) and can use several methods (a new Trezor/Ledger or any other h/w wallet, Mycelium or any other s/w wallet, I can even do the calculations myself) to gain access to my coins. And no one has to (and should ever) know my seed, except me. The entire process can be done completely offline.

Having said all the above, I do believe it's good advice to use paper wallets, especially for the non-technically literate coiners among us, who can easily fuck things up by doing something stupid with the 'puter, just like a kid can be injured by playing with a sharp knife (not the knife's fault).

For the record, re. mindrust: I treat the "mindrust incident" as both educational and fun/meme material. It's all done in the positive vibes and spirit of the WO thread. Absolutely no intention to offend him. Not at all. If anything, I hope that mentioning his story, in textual, poetic, or meme form, can serve as a lesson to him, and to all of us really, to never let our emotions guide our actions, not in financial/investment matters anyway. Got to keep our cool and be guided by knowledge and logic.

Hopefully, all this will help him see that he must buy back, even at a much higher price than he sold. The thought of having sold at under $4k when 1 BTC reaches and exceeds $50~100k would be too much to bear, at least for me.

We're getting the Artec Space Spider + Turntable + Software.

Noted.

It seems that each brand has certain pros and cons in different fields. We are currently in the process of purchasing a 3D scanner (cost is around $25,000) and the manufacturer insists on using Intel CPUs on the PC. They are against AMD for some reason.

ARM? Wow! I wasn't aware that Apple are going back to ARM. Hell, I wasn't even aware that they were using ARM in the first place. It's a great processor, virtually all mobile phones, tablets, and many embedded systems use it. But not so common for desktop/workstation PC use. Will be interesting to see a new architecture in an x86-64-dominated space...



I remember at that time it was just about cost. Everybody wanted Intel, but many couldn't afford it, so AMD became popular as a "poor man's CPU". You'd get comparable performance at a lower cost. Sure, it would run hotter, and with a larger heat sink, but at that time overclocking and heat dissipation issues were not so important. Everyone was just using the stock coolers.

About Meltdown/Spectre, it was a blow to Intel's image and dominance. I felt angry when I learned that my sparkling new i7-8700 would have to run at slightly reduced speed due to microcode patches. Will re-evaluate the status quo in 5 years' time when I upgrade. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper series looks tempting.

I remember a long time ago it was all about heat generation and how AMD CPUs were much hotter than Intel. I guess this doesn't apply nowadays. Long-time Intel fan (no pun intended), but thinking of switching to AMD on my next build (which will be in at least 5 years from now, as I recently upgraded to an 8-th generation Intel).

Cheesy comment, but here goes...

When I was a schoolboy, my father (who was a very wise man) told me, "son, if you want to enjoy school, just choose one of the two options: 1) study hard and be a really good student, 2) don't study at all, be the worst student in class and just have fun. Either way, you won't be very stressed and will enjoy yourself (for different reasons). Just try to avoid being average. Being average will cause you the most stress and anxiety, you'll miss the fun part, and will never be really good at something."

I guess it's more or less the same with Bitcoin. If you're a good student (you know how Bitcoin works), you'll never be stressed when it dips, because you know that it's just a temporary, transient state, on a long trend that's almost guaranteed to be upward. OTOH, if you're a really bad student (you don't know anything about how Bitcoin works and even suspect it's a scam), you'll never be a coiner, you'll just keep your distance. Nothing to gain, nothing to lose, business as usual.

But if you're an average student (have heard about Bitcoin and how it can make you rich, but don't really understand how it works), you'll end up buying some corn, and being constantly stressed by the volatility, believing every article, post or rumour, and ending up doing a full mindrust and losing it all at the click of a button.

Knowledge is power.
Be a good student.
Buy Bitcoin.

HoDL.