BitcoinTalk Newbie of the Year 2021[Voting]

[SatoPrincess]

It's the time of the year we all get to reflect on how we spent the year that's about to end. Did we do good, bad or awesome 😎
Yeah, this got me thinking about our forum, and I want to do something fun for newbies/new era members. So I want to have a competition to select and honour the new guys that are here to participate in and contribute to our community. I will need the help of more established members to select the nominees.  One of the reasons I want to do this is to encourage other newbies who are trying to make good their time here.
This thread will be for nominations, I'll accept nominations till 2nd January, 2022.  Nominations end on 2nd January 11:30pm GMT.  Voting starts immediately.  You can vote for you favourite nominees by posting their username on the thread. You have 1 vote per nominee. The votes will be counted and  the nominee with the most votes will be selected as 2021's Newbie of the Year.  The voting thread will be open for voting for a week.  
What is the prize?  I don't have the merits to replicate The Bitcointalk Urban Achievers Merit Scholarship Program although I'd like that. I indulge merit sources and established members with smerits to spare to please be a part of this contest. And to the nominees do not be discouraged, the recognition is more than enough and may possibly lead to earning some merits in the future  

Rules:
1. Don't nominate your own alts. Only accounts created on/after 01/01/2021 can be nominated.
2. You must be a Full Member or higher to nominate/Vote
3. Nominating yourself is not allowed.
4.  Post the username and profile link of the nominee.
5. Include a quote of one of the nominee's "meritable" posts and a short explanation why he deserves the nomination.
6. The nominee must have been a newbie on or after Jan 01, 2021.
7. Voters can vote by posting the names of their favorite nominee on the thread.
Nominees
1. n0nce 1vote
2. nullama 0 vote
3. SatoPrincess 1 vote
4. KingsDen  0 votes
5. mynonce 0 votes

[LoyceV]

Have you seen The future of Bitcointalk: Low Ranking Top Merit earners in the past 30 days?

Based on Merit earned and post quality, n0nce did quite good this year.

2. You must be a Full Member or higher to ~ Vote

You can't enforce this in a poll.

5. Include a quote of one of the nominee's "meritable" posts and a short explanation why he deserves the nomination.

Short explanation: his posts are useful.

Sample:

n0nce's Steel Washer Backup jig


     Very nicely readable 6mm letters (tape holds washer in place) | Prototypes & final version. Improved letter spacing & tolerances.



This is pretty much how it works

Backup pure material cost: 4€
Requirements: stamps ~20€, jig ~10€
Go big or go home! 30x10.5mm washers!
6mm tall letters
PM or comment if interested Any custom size is possible!

The idea is inspired from econoalchemist's blog post Securing a Bitcoin seed phrase in stainless-steel washers. and it's very great:

• Materials cost under 5 bucks (€, $, £, it's always the same ballpark). I paid around 3€ for 32 washers and maybe 1€ for the screw and nut.
• No shipping cost since everyone has a hardware store nearby.
• Anonymous since nobody knows what you use basic metal hardware for.
• All stainless steel, quite durable, on par with commercial Bitcoin backup products.
• Greater thickness than some commercial products

Backstory:
After reading the aforementioned blog post, I went to download the file for the jig from blockmic. It can be found in their Thingiverse and they wrote a very good article about it.

But: For one, I wanted to use larger washers. In fact, I think I got the largest that I could find in the first hardware store I walked into. A reason for this is that larger washers are usually also thicker and thus more durable, and the other reason is simply because the stamps I already had were too large for such small washers.

I have 6mm high letters and the stamps are 9x9mm in size.

So I did the natural thing: create a new 3D design from scratch, which is completely parametrized. This allows me to adapt it for anyone with different sized washers and / or stamps! Then did a few iterations, as shown here, and now it's ready to rock!

It's really the most pleasent stamping experience (only did plates without any jig so far), since the stamp is held in place very well, while still being able to slide and of course it's perfectly square. The inner and outer parts are also designed such that there is not much friction when assembling them, but there is no wobble when stamping. So you can actually go back and re-stamp a letter if it didn't come out perfect for example!



PSA: I can achieve much better print quality than what you see in the images, but I am finishing up some old rolls which have taken a lot of humidity so the results don't look as good. Also, I used more perimeters than CryptoCloaks since it makes things more sturdy. Finally, the darker colour you use, the more print lines show (especially when photographed)


An idea to achieve tamper evidence and protection (though we had the discussion if it's even a good idea or not): weld on the nut.
Protection: Not everyone just has an angle grinder.
Evidence: Someone would need to weld it back on which is visible, or redo the backup identically, thus needing a welder AND a 3D printer and all the same supplies that you used. Otherwise the letter size would be different for example.

[SatoPrincess]

2. You must be a Full Member or higher to ~ Vote

You can't enforce this in a poll.

What do you suggest?

Based on Merit earned and post quality, n0nce did quite good this year.

Noted.

[LoyceV]

2. You must be a Full Member or higher to ~ Vote

You can't enforce this in a poll.

What do you suggest?

For anonymous voting: no restrictions to the poll, anyone can vote (and abuse by using alts).
For Members and up voting: ask users to post their choice publicly in the thread.

[Little Mouse]

Though I believe, a nomination would require someone to be contributed to the forum heavily, and thus, someone with lots of helpful posts and a lot of merits must be nominated, I would still go with EZ0010 because of his honesty. It doesn't happen every now and then what he did. He proved bitcointalk has honest members too, not only a lot of scammers. There are not a lot of his posts. I will simply quote his post where he got most of his merits.
By the way, his profile address of vanity address at least says he is somewhat knowledgeable and a genuine user.

I know how it feel to lose some Bitcoin either by human error or getting scammed as I experienced both and dont want someone to get same feelings.

Happy to see you got your money back. And many thanks to theymos

[_BlackStar]

My preferred user nominations: nullama

I think nullama can also be nominated for the best newbie of the year based on the history of the quality of his posts and also the number of merit he gets. Of course I don't know this man/woman, but I think he deserves a newbie lineup that deserves to be nominated.

It seems that nullama is quite concerned with the growth of bitcoin adoption, he knows what bitcoin is and he can explain to us well that bitcoin has real uses as a currency or means of payment in various countries. Here's the quote.

Elektra supermarket in Mexico recently started accepting Bitcoin payments and is encouraging their clients to do so, as they offer a 20% discount when paying with it (until end of the year).

Here's the promo banner (in Spanish):



Now people in Mexico are able to buy groceries, and retail in general using Bitcoin directly.

An interesting thing to consider is that the parent company, Grupo Elektra, has operations in these countries: Mexico, US, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Panama, and El Salvador.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grupo_Elektra

That means that they already accept Bitcoin directly from at least 2 countries: Mexico, and El Salvador. Some of the other countries in that list could potentially be the next one.

[BITCOIN4X]

May I recommend you in this thread, looks like you also deserve one of the nomination of the year based on the thread idea you created. I didn't check your post history but when you get more than 140 merit in just 3 months, I think you are one of the good posters too.

Username: SatoPrincess

Your phenomenal post on this years.

Yesterday, I attended a crypto seminar in my city.  I knew I had to be there to increase my knowledge about cryptocurrency. There were popular crypto traders present as speakers, there was an interactive section where we were given the opportunity to ask questions. Afterwards we had dinner with the speakers. I got the opportunity to have a close look on what it means to be a crypto trader or investor. I won $200 for being the most interactive person in the room. These are some of the points I went home with
1.Identify with a community: I am glad I have bitcointalk forum.  I would not know this things I do now without the forum. We live in an age of Google, YouTube videos and tiktok where everyone is a professional. I guarantee you the quality of information dispensed here on a daily is incredible. When you come to a community such as this. You don’t have to ask stupid questions the first thing is to carefully read through the threads. Understand the subject being discussed before asking questions. Every community has its rules, try and be conversant with those rules so you don’t get kicked out. I'm happy to be here I would not have made that $200 if I wasn't a member of this community.
2. Learning before earning: This is one point that stuck. Making money has always been the goal. It is very convenient to forget that there is a process to achieving  that goal. You have to be aware of activities happening in the crypto industry.
3. Mentorship is important: There is a old saying where I am from "if you have a father you will fly farther" that means you will fly on their wings. Mentorship is essential for you to learn crypto trading. A mentor gives you experience. I know we are in a digital era where you can learn trading courses online and read books about cryptocurrency. That alone cannot gauarantee success. Mentorship is the shortest cut to success you need to differentiate the hype from the value. You have to aware of activities in the crypto space. Know the real from the fake. This is something you learn from experience. You must learn to differentiate the value from the hype. There are lots of so called successful traders online and offline. You will be shocked to find they have nothing to offer.
4. Consistency:There are days crypto will slap you in the face. The First three letters of crypto are “CRY”...that was meant to be funny   There is so much in the crypto industry defi, Nft, blockchain technology, investments, blogging. You have to choose an area to focus on and be the best in that field. Consistency is very important you can’t be a crypto investor by day and pessimist by night. Believe in yourself and what you do

[lovesmayfamilis]

Have you seen The future of Bitcointalk: Low Ranking Top Merit earners in the past 30 days?

LoyceV keeps very good statistics on newbies. I think you OP should take a closer look at it. Besides the three users you mentioned, I am convinced that there are many more candidates. And they are also noteworthy as their merit rises every month. You can imagine who and how he will define himself in the future.
I would just list all the newcomers on that list and congratulate the forum with people who sincerely come here and contribute a lot of useful information.
This is a very positive trend. We hope to see more posters like these next year.

[dkbit98]

I noticed member n0nce is making very good posts, and I talked with him several times related with various topics of hardware wallets and bitcoin nodes.
He registered in end of August but he is already a Full Member and he collected 680 merits so far.
Important thing is that he accomplished all that without any paid signature advertisement on his profile.

Everyone should have the opportunity to run a node.

I strongly believe that it's one of Bitcoin's core values to have as many full nodes (and preferably also miners, but that's another story ) as possible, distributed in as many households as possible.

While cool node boxes, composed of all-new hardware with SSDs and sexy metal cases can be built for between 200€ and 300€ (or dollars!), that might still be too much for many people. Especially in countries where wages are lower, I understand that this can be an infeasibly large sum of money.

MyNode and Argon One m.2 enclosures, full setup ~250€

The good news: it can be achieved much cheaper than the above mentioned figures! In fact, it can even be free if you have old hardware lying around.
The fact of the matter is, Bitcoin Core doesn't need a whole lot of resources and a 10-year-old, decommissioned laptop or Desktop PC might have enough power to run it.

So I would like to encourage everybody that's not running a node yet, to reconsider it if price for the device itself or an SSD was the main deterring factor.

Hardware selection
Almost any kind of desktop PC, laptop, NUC-type device of the last 10 years should suffice.

Make sure you can swap the drive (they are usually dead after such a long time) and you have a working PSU for it.
Anything else - screen, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, it can all be broken. You will SSH into the machine anyway and you can connect to a HDMI screen + USB keyboard during setup.
This kind of hardware is very often given away for free if you ask around friends and family, or got cheaply (or free) on craigslist.

Recommendations
RAM: 4GB - 8GB (Even as little as 1GB can suffice! If you have more, it's better of course See my graph down below about sync time with 4 vs 8GB)
Drive: 500GB - 1TB (HDD is fine, but SSD will help for faster initial sync. 500 will not last long and not suffice for Lightning and Electrum server - 1TB would be advised!)
CPU: Intel Core i3 (2nd generation or up tested and working just fine) or better - dual core is advised by me

If the machine you acquired, doesn't meet those specs, you can in many cases just add more RAM or swap the hard drive.
I would stay away from Chromebooks with non-replaceable drives and RAM since they're usually too small and USB drives aren't convenient.

Price
Of course, this low price is mainly made possible by relying on free and cheap old & used stuff.
The final price will depend a lot on how many things you can find for free, but it's possible to build a node from scratch for around $50.
I personally built one of my nodes off a gifted laptop that had no charger, so the person wanted to throw it away. I just bought the PSU for ~20€ and added an existing 500GB USB HDD for the bitcoin directory. So that node cost me just 20€. Here's a setup if you really can't find anything for free.

Example setup for $58:^{[JUST QUICKLY CHECKED EBAY!]}
Laptop without RAM and charger for $29:


4GB RAM for $10:


Laptop charger for $10:


500GB HDD for $9:


Of course, shipping adds up and I actually surpassed my $50 limit already. But I just checked eBay 'buy now' section very quickly! If you search locally, ask around, you will easily find someone who will give you an old laptop that doesn't turn on anymore (often broken charger and / or battery) or with cracked screen etc. for free.
Then you just source the charger and a new HDD for a total of $20!

If you actually have a working (but old) laptop already, with charger and everything, maybe invest the full $50 into a new SSD for better performance and longevity!

TL;DR
Get as much free and cheap used, old stuff as possible and slap it together!
I know it's not the 'deepest' topic that exists, but it's mainly to explain and show figuratively that running a node can be done very, very cheap and storage size is not an issue either, since HDDs are so damn cheap and can easily be swapped out.

PS
Nominating yourself for Newbie of the Year is not cool at all  

[Poker Player]

PS
Nominating yourself for Newbie of the Year is not cool at all  

She is not nominating herself, she is editing the OP noting the names people say in replies, if you see the 4 names are names that forum members have mentioned.

Going to the point, if it were on merit I would say n0nce, but I doubt if he is not someone who was on the forum before. If not, SatoPrincess.

[ShowOff]

-snip-
Important thing is that he accomplished all that without any paid signature advertisement on his profile.

Maybe he's not interested in getting bitcoin from signature campaign because maybe he can earn more from his other businesses. In addition, reaching a certain number of posts as a condition of receiving payment is also a consideration why sometimes users like n0nce don't participate in signature campaign.

PS
Nominating yourself for Newbie of the Year is not cool at all 

He was nominated by another user "BITCOIN4X", so maybe that's different from nominating himself. After all, we definitely have a number of newbie worthy of nomination if I were to review LoyceV's full list. I don't know who I deserve to be nominated other than the best poster even though it doesn't reach hundreds of merit. So I will review that list to get 1 decent user before the thread closes.

[DdmrDdmr]

If anyone wants to go over a list of all accounts created during 2021, sorted by merits (descending), as an entry point indicator to start looking through profiles, the data is available here:

https://public.tableau.com/shared/XT27NJPMK?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

Data is as of last Friday, and I’ve pre-filtered the list to those non-banned with 50 merits and above. If you click on a name, a popup screen should appear, with the option to go to the User Profile on Bitcointalk.

[noormcs5]

Though I believe, a nomination would require someone to be contributed to the forum heavily, and thus, someone with lots of helpful posts and a lot of merits must be nominated, I would still go with EZ0010 because of his honesty. It doesn't happen every now and then what he did. He proved bitcointalk has honest members too, not only a lot of scammers. There are not a lot of his posts. I will simply quote his post where he got most of his merits.
By the way, his profile address of vanity address at least says he is somewhat knowledgeable and a genuine user.

I know how it feel to lose some Bitcoin either by human error or getting scammed as I experienced both and dont want someone to get same feelings.

Happy to see you got your money back. And many thanks to theymos

To be very honest, i will also nominate EZ0010 and there are two reasons for this. One is that i saw that thread where he returned the money and secondly i have no idea what other three newbies mentioned in the OP did for which they are nominated.

It will be helpful if the nominees achievements are also highlighted in the OP thread.

[LoyceV]

i will also nominate EZ0010

I thought about that user, but decided not to nominate him. The good thing he did was only a week ago, and that's why several people remember him. If this nomination would have been half a year later, chances are he wouldn't be the first one to think of.

[Shamm]

Both nominees are good they have different ways of earning merits we all know that EZ0010 earns many merits because of his honesty. And I do believe that we are all humans and we have that attitude too and we used that since we are a child and that is his choice he gives back the money.
But in this case, ill choose this user n0nce  cause he did a lot of things here in the forum he share his knowledge with everyone here. Here's some of his threads.

Why?
As the topic title implies, I'd like to collect different ways to unlink coins that people bought through KYC on-ramps without getting into trouble later down the road.
The goal is to hold Bitcoin without losing privacy, but still complying with the law. We're not trying to evade taxes, just to improve privacy.
This is not about evading taxes while trading! The idea is just to keep your privacy while still being on the safe side in, say, 10 or 20 years time, when you'll want to cash out your holdings (or buy something with them which is usually seen as the same thing). Also governments, laws, everything, might look a whole lot different from today. So if your country doesn't collect wealth tax, thus not requiring you to inform anyone about your holdings, you won't be subjected to potential confiscation or $5 wrench method.

If you're further wondering why 'no KYC', consider giving this a read:
https://bitcoinqna.github.io/noKYConly/

Within the Bitcoin space, ‘creeping KYC’ is a disease that is slowly spreading. If you purchase through one of these regulated entities, you essentially tag your bitcoin addresses to your personal identity. This makes it trivial for chain surveillance firms, the companies they work with, or worse, governments, to potentially…

• Track your spending habits
• Prevent you from using other regulated services
• Confiscate your bitcoin
• Come after you for tax liabilities
• Generally know more about you than they should

3 Possible Methods:
I personally like to always recommend buying through https://bisq.network/, but the reality is that many already have some amount of coin (or everything) bought from exchanges. I'm not a fan of 'having 2 stashes', as there's the risk to interconnect them through future (multi-input) transactions if you don't have separate devices / wallets.

To 'leave KYC for good', I came up with 3 options so far. As an end result, these methods all provide a wallet that has no links to your identity and contains the same amount of Bitcoin funds.

Option 1: Provably sell Bitcoin on KYC exchange again, then 'start fresh' by buying non-KYC Bitcoin and send to a new address / wallet.
+: Nobody can prove you own Bitcoin, not a company (exchange), not anyone they're selling your information to, and not anyone who goes asking like government.
-: Selling is usually (more info later) a taxable event and you will have to declare it.

For option 1, keep in mind: Also the non-KYC coin you will acquire need to be declared if your country collects wealth tax. Since they just want a fiat valuation and no public keys, you don't lose your privacy since your identity won't be linked to your addresses, unlike when owning 'KYC Bitcoin'.

Option 2: Mix the KYC Bitcoin through https://chipmixer.com/ or https://coinjoin.io/en and send to a new address / wallet.
+: No taxes to be paid, since Bitcoin is not sold.
-: The exchange will still know you hold X amount of Bitcoin and authorities can get that information very easily. You will still have your privacy since they won't know which address belongs to you, so they can't trace your purchases. In case your country collects wealth tax, you will also have to disclose your holdings anyway, but at least when disclosing non-KYC holdings, there won't be a potentially scammy exchange company also having this data and potentially selling it.

For option 2, keep in mind: Also the non-KYC coin you will own after mixing need to be declared if your country collects wealth tax. Since they just want a fiat valuation and no public keys, you don't lose your privacy since your identity won't be linked to your addresses, unlike when owning 'KYC Bitcoin'.

Option 3: Provably buy something with Bitcoin you would have bought anyway (e.g. a car) and spend the cash you would have spent on that object on new non-KYC coin.
+: If your country accepts that this is an object-object trade, there will be no taxes and your identity will own no Bitcoin afterwards (keep a receipt to prove the trade).
-: Most countries don't see a trade with Bitcoin as a trade of goods, instead treat it as a 'sell' of your Bitcoin and you need to declare the sell & pay the tax. So it doesn't really bear any benefit over option 1 in these countries.

In my eyes, Option 1 is the safest. Let's say in the future, wherever you live, laws will be passed e.g. to confiscate or heavily tax Bitcoin gains or anything of that kind, you will be able to prove that you sold the BTC and don't own any. This doesn't work in countries with wealth tax though, since you need to declare holdings value annually.
Also keep in mind, in some countries you pay less capital gains tax when hodling coins longer, like Germany. According to https://dejure.org/gesetze/EStG/23.html Bitcoin gains are tax-free as long as you held for 1+ years. So in that case I'd make sure funds didn't move for +1 year, then sell at exchange and buy again via an anonymous exchange.

Option 2 will be easier to do (less steps) and tax-free short term (since you're not selling anything), but you might get into trouble in the future in case government wants to e.g. confiscate Bitcoin holdings or something like that, since they'll be able to prove you bought amount X of Bitcoin. The information that person A owns X amount of Bitcoin may also be sold by the exchange (or 'lost' in a 'hack') and used to try to scam you or stuff like that.

The last option is more a niche thing since you'd need to live in a country where Bitcoin is widely accepted but it will allow you to prove you spent the coin (e.g. on-chain transaction including hash of the invoice) and there shouldn't be any tax issues you need to make sure your country counts this as a trade of goods and not a Bitcoin sell.
General recommendations:
1) Don't hide your Bitcoin from taxman if your country requires to show your possession at end of year.
2) Keep secret keys forever to prove you had a certain amount of Bitcoin at the time that you state you bought the coin at. Preferably also keep a paper trail up until a current-day wallet that you have, and if you mixed in between for anonymity, keep a receipt of the mixing.

It seems, it doesn't even make so much sense to go from KYC coin to non-KYC coin if just holding. If you want to hold it anonymously, you can mix them, then if you'll spend a little part of it, you'll be more anonymous. But you'll have a proof of buy time through the exchange and the mixer receipt which shows how they ended up in your current wallet.

I see no issue in buying non-KYC Bitcoin but keeping the keys where those coins arrived and maybe screenshots of the trades (e.g. of Bisq user interface). This will be needed to prove you actually bought them as early as you state you did and that you were able to afford them at that point in time.

Declaring your BTC correctly - it depends a lot on where you live (who would have guessed ).
Some information I gathered so far: ^{!!!CORRECT ME IF SOMETHING'S WRONG!!!}
* IT: Need to disclose your holdings end of year, but pay taxes on gains when selling a sum of over 51,000€. ^[1]
* FR: You pay taxes on the gains when selling, no need to disclose holdings earlier. ^[2]
* NL: You pay taxes on your holdings on 1st of January. Need to disclose your holdings end of year. ^[3]
* CH: You pay taxes on holdings, gains, or none at all depending on canton. ^[4]
* DE: You pay taxes on the gains when selling, if you held for <1 year. No need to disclose holdings earlier. (trading BTC for a material object or other coin is considered a 'sell', gains considered income & up to 600€ in gains from all of your appreciating assets together are tax free.) ^[5]
* AT: You pay taxes on the gains when selling, if you held for <1 year. No need to disclose holdings earlier. (trading BTC for a material object or other coin is considered a 'sell', no tax-free limit)^[6]
* FI: You pay taxes on the gains when selling. No need to disclose holdings earlier. (trading BTC for a material object or other coin is considered a 'sell', no tax-free limit)^[7]
* USA: Pretty good FAQ can be found on IRS webpage ^[8]

For all countries where I mentioned 'no need to disclose holdings earlier', I'm pretty confident it's fine to buy Bitcoin without KYC, not tell anyone, then when you'll sell or pay with the Bitcoin, you'll write down when you bought the Bitcoin and for how much fiat. If they don't trust you, you can use the private keys that you received the funds on (like Bisq private keys) to sign a message for them and prove you did buy when you say you did.

Also keep in mind I'd not recommend trading into and out of XMR over mixing, because trading is taxed in most countries, so you'll have to keep records of those trades as well, and pay taxes on them, so it's really unnecessary instead just mix them or submarine-swap them into a Lightning wallet and out of it again. Keep in mind it will not be easy to transfer full coins over LN due to usually smaller channels.

An interesting point for EU in general:

The exchange of legal tender (e.g. Euros) for bitcoins or vice versa, is exempted from VAT according to the case law of the CJEU  (see CJEU  22/10/2015, Case C-264/14, Hedqvist; UStR 2000 m.no.  759).

^[1] https://www.ilsussidiario.net/news/bitcoin-come-pagare-tasse-in-italia-normativa-criptovalute-e-dichiarazione-redditi/2161267/
^[2]https://cms.law/en/fra/publication/bitcoin-taxation-in-france
^[3] https://blog.blockpit.io/en/crypto-taxation-regulations-netherlands
^[4] https://blockpit.io/en/kryptowaehrungen-steuern/schweiz
^[5] https://www.winheller.com/en/banking-finance-and-insurance-law/bitcoin-trading/bitcoin-and-tax.html
^[6] https://www.bmf.gv.at/en/topics/taxation/Tax-treatment-of-crypto-assets.html
^[7] https://www.vero.fi/en/detailed-guidance/guidance/48411/taxation-of-virtual-currencies3/
^[8] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/frequently-asked-questions-on-virtual-currency-transactions

Finally, 2 Disclaimers:
Mining and even frequent trading are in part handled widely differently from buying & holding, all above mainly refers to HODLers!
This is obviously no financial advice, just collecting information - if anything's wrong, let me know I'll update the info!

[UmerIdrees]

i will also nominate EZ0010

I thought about that user, but decided not to nominate him. The good thing he did was only a week ago, and that's why several people remember him. If this nomination would have been half a year later, chances are he wouldn't be the first one to think of.

You can take in this way that he did something too good which make us forget the other nice things being done by the others. He may stand out even after 6 months or year.
I think he is special because he had nothing to lose except a newbie account if he has decided not to return the money, but he chooses the act which has made him legendary.

[Little Mouse]

i will also nominate EZ0010

I thought about that user, but decided not to nominate him. The good thing he did was only a week ago, and that's why several people remember him. If this nomination would have been half a year later, chances are he wouldn't be the first one to think of.

Maybe you are right but it is also right that things like this barely happen in the real world even, forgot about bitcointalk or any other online platform. So, this is something special and people usually don't forget someone like this easily.

[Coyster]

But in this case, ill choose this user n0nce  cause he did a lot of things here in the forum he share his knowledge with everyone here. Here's

This user has already been nominated more than once, in my opinion, there's no need to nominate a user more than once, if your favorite candidate has been nominated already, then you can either just wait till when the voting commences to vote for that very user, or go ahead and nominate another user to make things more competitive and interesting.

[NeuroticFish]

I'll also nominate n0nce ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3373858 )
The reason is that he has quite a number of good posts in the technical area of the forum, which imho is more important than the rest.
Since an example is needed and some of the best ones are already taken, here you are:

According to the error message, I looked at the code and found this:

Code: (https://github.com/bitcoinj/bitcoinj/blob/31c7e5fbceb9884cb02d2dabc755009caa2d613e/core/src/main/java/org/bitcoinj/core/DumpedPrivateKey.java#L100)

public ECKey getKey() {
    return ECKey.fromPrivate(Arrays.copyOf(bytes, 32), isPubKeyCompressed());
}

So, you're calling getKey() just fine, but something breaks when this method calls ECKey.fromPrivate(...).
It seems to me that there's something wrong with bytes, so probably your initialization of dumpedPrivateKey is wrong. Might want to look into that a bit more.

Thanks to @larry_vw_1955, I think I got it.

that addresses corresponds to hex private key of 0x1.

We can see in the Java code that it doesn't permit private keys zero or one exactly because they're not allowed to be used:

Code: (https://github.com/bitcoinj/bitcoinj/blob/31c7e5fbceb9884cb02d2dabc755009caa2d613e/core/src/main/java/org/bitcoinj/core/ECKey.java#L193)

checkArgument(!priv.equals(BigInteger.ZERO));
checkArgument(!priv.equals(BigInteger.ONE));

[SatoPrincess]

But in this case, ill choose this user n0nce  cause he did a lot of things here in the forum he share his knowledge with everyone here. Here's

This user has already been nominated more than once, in my opinion, there's no need to nominate a user more than once, if your favorite candidate has been nominated already, then you can either just wait till when the voting commences to vote for that very user, or go ahead and nominate another user to make things more competitive and interesting.

I agree with Coyster. n0nce has been nominated already. By virtue of nominations Nonce has 4 votes. It's a good sign that the votes are coming early. But let's be patient till voting starts