Vision Statement

A common sentiment is brewing online; a shared desire for the internet that might have been. After decades of corporate encroachment, you don't need to be a power user to realize that something has gone very wrong.
In the early days of the internet, the future was bright. In that future, when you sent an instant message, it traveled directly to the recipient. When you needed to pay a friend, you announced a transfer of value to their public key. When an app was missing a feature you wanted, you opened up the source code and implemented it. When you took a picture on your phone, it was immediately encrypted and backed up to storage that you controlled. In that future, people would laugh at the idea of having to authenticate themselves to some corporation before doing these things.
What did we get instead? Rather than a network of human-sized communities, we have a handful of enormous commons, each controlled by a faceless corporate entity. Hey user, want to send a message? You can, but we'll store a copy of it indefinitely, unencrypted, for our preference-learning algorithms to pore over; how else could we slap targeted ads on every piece of content you see? Want to pay a friend? You can—in our Monopoly money. Want a new feature? Submit a request to our Support Center and we'll totally maybe think about it. Want to backup a photo? You can—inside our walled garden, which only we (and the NSA, of course) can access. Just be careful what you share, because merely locking you out of your account and deleting all your data is far from the worst thing we could do.
You rationalize this: "MEGACORP would never do such a thing; it would be bad for business." But we all know, at some level, that this state of affairs, this inversion of power, is not merely "unfortunate" or "suboptimal" – No. It is degrading. Even if MEGACORP were purely benevolent, it is degrading that we must ask its permission to talk to our friends; that we must rely on it to safeguard our treasured memories; that our digital lives are completely beholden to those who seek only to extract value from us.
At the root of this issue is the centralization of data. MEGACORP can surveil you—because your emails and video chats flow through their servers. And MEGACORP can control you—because they hold your data hostage. But centralization is a solution to a technical problem: How can we make the user's data accessible from anywhere in the world, on any device? For a long time, no alternative solution to this problem was forthcoming.
Today, thanks to a confluence of established techniques and recent innovations, we have solved the accessibility problem without resorting to centralization. Hashing, encryption, and erasure encoding got us most of the way, but one barrier remained: incentives. How do you incentivize an anonymous stranger to store your data? Earlier protocols like BitTorrent worked around this limitation by relying on altruism, tit-for-tat requirements, or "points" – in other words, nothing you could pay your electric bill with. Finally, in 2009, a solution appeared: Bitcoin. Not long after, Sia was born.
Cryptography has unleashed the latent power of the internet by enabling interactions between mutually-distrustful parties. Sia harnesses this power to turn the cloud storage market into a proper marketplace, where buyers and sellers can transact directly, with no intermediaries, anywhere in the world. No more silos or walled gardens: your data is encrypted, so it can't be spied on, and it's stored on many servers, so no single entity can hold it hostage. Thanks to projects like Sia, the internet is being re-decentralized.
Sia began its life as a startup, which means it has always been subjected to two competing forces: the ideals of its founders, and the profit motive inherent to all businesses. Its founders have taken great pains to never compromise on the former, but this often threatened the company's financial viability. With the establishment of the Sia Foundation, this tension is resolved. The Foundation, freed of the obligation to generate profit, is a pure embodiment of the ideals from which Sia originally sprung.
The goals and responsibilities of the Foundation are numerous: to maintain core Sia protocols and consensus code; to support developers building on top of Sia and its protocols; to promote Sia and facilitate partnerships in other spheres and communities; to ensure that users can easily acquire and safely store siacoins; to develop network scalability solutions; to implement hardforks and lead the community through them; and much more. In a broader sense, its mission is to commoditize data storage, making it cheap, ubiquitous, and accessible to all, without compromising privacy or performance.
Sia is a perfect example of how we can achieve better living through cryptography. We now begin a new chapter in Sia's history. May our stewardship lead it into a bright future.

Overview

Today, we are proposing the creation of the Sia Foundation: a new non-profit entity that builds and supports distributed cloud storage infrastructure, with a specific focus on the Sia storage platform. What follows is an informal overview of the Sia Foundation, covering two major topics: how the Foundation will be funded, and what its funds will be used for.

Organizational Structure

The Sia Foundation will be structured as a non-profit entity incorporated in the United States, likely a 501(c)(3) organization or similar. The actions of the Foundation will be constrained by its charter, which formalizes the specific obligations and overall mission outlined in this document. The charter will be updated on an annual basis to reflect the current goals of the Sia community.
The organization will be operated by a board of directors, initially comprising Luke Champine as President and Eddie Wang as Chairman. Luke Champine will be leaving his position at Nebulous to work at the Foundation full-time, and will seek to divest his shares of Nebulous stock along with other potential conflicts of interest. Neither Luke nor Eddie personally own any siafunds or significant quantities of siacoin.

Funding

The primary source of funding for the Foundation will come from a new block subsidy. Following a hardfork, 30 KS per block will be allocated to the "Foundation Fund," continuing in perpetuity. The existing 30 KS per block miner reward is not affected. Additionally, one year's worth of block subsidies (approximately 1.57 GS) will be allocated to the Fund immediately upon activation of the hardfork.
As detailed below, the Foundation will provably burn any coins that it cannot meaningfully spend. As such, the 30 KS subsidy should be viewed as a maximum. This allows the Foundation to grow alongside Sia without requiring additional hardforks.
The Foundation will not be funded to any degree by the possession or sale of siafunds. Siafunds were originally introduced as a means of incentivizing growth, and we still believe in their effectiveness: a siafund holder wants to increase the amount of storage on Sia as much as possible. While the Foundation obviously wants Sia to succeed, its driving force should be its charter. Deriving significant revenue from siafunds would jeopardize the Foundation's impartiality and focus. Ultimately, we want the Foundation to act in the best interests of Sia, not in growing its own budget.

Responsibilities

The Foundation inherits a great number of responsibilities from Nebulous. Each quarter, the Foundation will publish the progress it has made over the past quarter, and list the responsibilities it intends to prioritize over the coming quarter. This will be accompanied by a financial report, detailing each area of expenditure over the past quarter, and forecasting expenditures for the coming quarter. Below, we summarize some of the myriad responsibilities towards which the Foundation is expected to allocate its resources.

Maintain and enhance core Sia software

Arguably, this is the most important responsibility of the Foundation. At the heart of Sia is its consensus algorithm: regardless of other differences, all Sia software must agree upon the content and rules of the blockchain. It is therefore crucial that the algorithm be stewarded by an entity that is accountable to the community, transparent in its decision-making, and has no profit motive or other conflicts of interest.
Accordingly, Sia’s consensus functionality will no longer be directly maintained by Nebulous. Instead, the Foundation will release and maintain an implementation of a "minimal Sia full node," comprising the Sia consensus algorithm and P2P networking code. The source code will be available in a public repository, and signed binaries will be published for each release.
Other parties may use this code to provide alternative full node software. For example, Nebulous may extend the minimal full node with wallet, renter, and host functionality. The source code of any such implementation may be submitted to the Foundation for review. If the code passes review, the Foundation will provide "endorsement signatures" for the commit hash used and for binaries compiled internally by the Foundation. Specifically, these signatures assert that the Foundation believes the software contains no consensus-breaking changes or other modifications to imported Foundation code. Endorsement signatures and Foundation-compiled binaries may be displayed and distributed by the receiving party, along with an appropriate disclaimer.
A minimal full node is not terribly useful on its own; the wallet, renter, host, and other extensions are what make Sia a proper developer platform. Currently, the only implementations of these extensions are maintained by Nebulous. The Foundation will contract Nebulous to ensure that these extensions continue to receive updates and enhancements. Later on, the Foundation intends to develop its own implementations of these extensions and others. As with the minimal node software, these extensions will be open source and available in public repositories for use by any Sia node software.
With the consensus code now managed by the Foundation, the task of implementing and orchestrating hardforks becomes its responsibility as well. When the Foundation determines that a hardfork is necessary (whether through internal discussion or via community petition), a formal proposal will be drafted and submitted for public review, during which arguments for and against the proposal may be submitted to a public repository. During this time, the hardfork code will be implemented, either by Foundation employees or by external contributors working closely with the Foundation. Once the implementation is finished, final arguments will be heard. The Foundation board will then vote whether to accept or reject the proposal, and announce their decision along with appropriate justification. Assuming the proposal was accepted, the Foundation will announce the block height at which the hardfork will activate, and will subsequently release source code and signed binaries that incorporate the hardfork code.
Regardless of the Foundation's decision, it is the community that ultimately determines whether a fork is accepted or rejected – nothing can change that. Foundation node software will never automatically update, so all forks must be explicitly adopted by users. Furthermore, the Foundation will provide replay and wipeout protection for its hard forks, protecting other chains from unintended or malicious reorgs. Similarly, the Foundation will ensure that any file contracts formed prior to a fork activation will continue to be honored on both chains until they expire.
Finally, the Foundation also intends to pursue scalability solutions for the Sia blockchain. In particular, work has already begun on an implementation of Utreexo, which will greatly reduce the space requirements of fully-validating nodes (allowing a full node to be run on a smartphone) while increasing throughput and decreasing initial sync time. A hardfork implementing Utreexo will be submitted to the community as per the process detailed above.
As this is the most important responsibility of the Foundation, it will receive a significant portion of the Foundation’s budget, primarily in the form of developer salaries and contracting agreements.

Support community services

We intend to allocate 25% of the Foundation Fund towards the community. This allocation will be held and disbursed in the form of siacoins, and will pay for grants, bounties, hackathons, and other community-driven endeavours.
Any community-run service, such as a Skynet portal, explorer or web wallet, may apply to have its costs covered by the Foundation. Upon approval, the Foundation will reimburse expenses incurred by the service, subject to the exact terms agreed to. The intent of these grants is not to provide a source of income, but rather to make such services "break even" for their operators, so that members of the community can enrich the Sia ecosystem without worrying about the impact on their own finances.

Ensure easy acquisition and storage of siacoins

Most users will acquire their siacoins via an exchange. The Foundation will provide support to Sia-compatible exchanges, and pursue relevant integrations at its discretion, such as Coinbase's new Rosetta standard. The Foundation may also release DEX software that enables trading cryptocurrencies without the need for a third party. (The Foundation itself will never operate as a money transmitter.)
Increasingly, users are storing their cryptocurrency on hardware wallets. The Foundation will maintain the existing Ledger Nano S integration, and pursue further integrations at its discretion.
Of course, all hardware wallets must be paired with software running on a computer or smartphone, so the Foundation will also develop and/or maintain client-side wallet software, including both full-node wallets and "lite" wallets. Community-operated wallet services, i.e. web wallets, may be funded via grants.
Like core software maintenance, this responsibility will be funded in the form of developer salaries and contracting agreements.

Protect the ecosystem

When it comes to cryptocurrency security, patching software vulnerabilities is table stakes; there are significant legal and social threats that we must be mindful of as well. As such, the Foundation will earmark a portion of its fund to defend the community from legal action. The Foundation will also safeguard the network from 51% attacks and other threats to network security by implementing softforks and/or hardforks where necessary.
The Foundation also intends to assist in the development of a new FOSS software license, and to solicit legal memos on various Sia-related matters, such as hosting in the United States and the EU.
In a broader sense, the establishment of the Foundation makes the ecosystem more robust by transferring core development to a more neutral entity. Thanks to its funding structure, the Foundation will be immune to various forms of pressure that for-profit companies are susceptible to.

Drive adoption of Sia

Although the overriding goal of the Foundation is to make Sia the best platform it can be, all that work will be in vain if no one uses the platform. There are a number of ways the Foundation can promote Sia and get it into the hands of potential users and developers.
In-person conferences are understandably far less popular now, but the Foundation can sponsor and/or participate in virtual conferences. (In-person conferences may be held in the future, permitting circumstances.) Similarly, the Foundation will provide prizes for hackathons, which may be organized by community members, Nebulous, or the Foundation itself. Lastly, partnerships with other companies in the cryptocurrency space—or the cloud storage space—are a great way to increase awareness of Sia. To handle these responsibilities, one of the early priorities of the Foundation will be to hire a marketing director.

Fund Management

The Foundation Fund will be controlled by a multisig address. Each member of the Foundation's board will control one of the signing keys, with the signature threshold to be determined once the final composition of the board is known. (This threshold may also be increased or decreased if the number of board members changes.) Additionally, one timelocked signing key will be controlled by David Vorick. This key will act as a “dead man’s switch,” to be used in the event of an emergency that prevents Foundation board members from reaching the signature threshold. The timelock ensures that this key cannot be used unless the Foundation fails to sign a transaction for several months.
On the 1st of each month, the Foundation will use its keys to transfer all siacoins in the Fund to two new addresses. The first address will be controlled by a high-security hot wallet, and will receive approximately one month's worth of Foundation expenditures. The second address, receiving the remaining siacoins, will be a modified version of the source address: specifically, it will increase the timelock on David Vorick's signing key by one month. Any other changes to the set of signing keys, such as the arrival or departure of board members, will be incorporated into this address as well.
The Foundation Fund is allocated in SC, but many of the Foundation's expenditures must be paid in USD or other fiat currency. Accordingly, the Foundation will convert, at its discretion, a portion of its monthly withdrawals to fiat currency. We expect this conversion to be primarily facilitated by private "OTC" sales to accredited investors. The Foundation currently has no plans to speculate in cryptocurrency or other assets.
Finally, it is important that the Foundation adds value to the Sia platform well in excess of the inflation introduced by the block subsidy. For this reason, the Foundation intends to provably burn, on a quarterly basis, any coins that it cannot allocate towards any justifiable expense. In other words, coins will be burned whenever doing so provides greater value to the platform than any other use. Furthermore, the Foundation will cap its SC treasury at 5% of the total supply, and will cap its USD treasury at 4 years’ worth of predicted expenses.

Addendum: Hardfork Timeline
We would like to see this proposal finalized and accepted by the community no later than September 30th. A new version of siad, implementing the hardfork, will be released no later than October 15th. The hardfork will activate at block 293220, which is expected to occur around 12pm EST on January 1st, 2021.

Addendum: Inflation specifics
The total supply of siacoins as of January 1st, 2021 will be approximately 45.243 GS. The initial subsidy of 1.57 GS thus increases the supply by 3.47%, and the total annual inflation in 2021 will be at most 10.4% (if zero coins are burned). In 2022, total annual inflation will be at most 6.28%, and will steadily decrease in subsequent years.

Conclusion

We see the establishment of the Foundation as an important step in the maturation of the Sia project. It provides the ecosystem with a sustainable source of funding that can be exclusively directed towards achieving Sia's ambitious goals. Compared to other projects with far deeper pockets, Sia has always punched above its weight; once we're on equal footing, there's no telling what we'll be able to achieve.
Nevertheless, we do not propose this change lightly, and have taken pains to ensure that the Foundation will act in accordance with the ideals that this community shares. It will operate transparently, keep inflation to a minimum, and respect the user's fundamental role in decentralized systems. We hope that everyone in the community will consider this proposal carefully, and look forward to a productive discussion.

Technical: The Path to Taproot Activation

Taproot! Everybody wants to have it, somebody wants to make it, nobody knows how to get it!
(If you are asking why everybody wants it, see: Technical: Taproot: Why Activate?)
(Pedants: I mostly elide over lockin times)
Briefly, Taproot is that neat new thing that gets us:

Multisignatures (n-of-n, k-of-n) that are just 1 signature (1-of-1) in length!! (MuSig/Schnorr)
Better privacy!! If all contract participants can agree, just use a multisignature. If there is a dispute, show the contract publicly and have the Bitcoin network resolve it (Taproot/MAST).
Activation lets devs work get back to work on the even newer stuff like!!!
- Cross-input signature aggregation!! (transaction with multiple inputs can have a single signature for all inputs) --- needs Schnorr, but some more work needed to ensure that the interactions with SCRIPT are okay.
- Block validation - Schnorr signatures for all taproot spends in a block can be validated in a single operation instead of for each transaction!! Speed up validation and maybe we can actually afford to increase block sizes (maybe)!!
- SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT - you know, for Decker-Russell-Osuntokun ("eltoo") magic!!!
- OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY - vaulty vaults without requiring storing signatures, just transaction details!!

So yes, let's activate taproot!

The SegWit Wars

The biggest problem with activating Taproot is PTSD from the previous softfork, SegWit. Pieter Wuille, one of the authors of the current Taproot proposal, has consistently held the position that he will not discuss activation, and will accept whatever activation process is imposed on Taproot. Other developers have expressed similar opinions.
So what happened with SegWit activation that was so traumatic? SegWit used the BIP9 activation method. Let's dive into BIP9!

BIP9 Miner-Activated Soft Fork

Basically, BIP9 has a bunch of parameters:

bit - A field in the block header, the nVersion, has a number of bits. By setting a particular bit, the miner making the block indicates that it has upgraded its software to support a particular soft fork. The bit parameter for a BIP9 activation is which bit in this nVersion is used to indicate that the miner has upgraded software for a particular soft fork.
timeout - a time limit, expressed as an end date. If this timeout is reached without sufficient number of miners signaling that they upgraded, then the activation fails and Bitcoin Core goes back to the drawing board.

Now there are other parameters (name, starttime) but they are not anywhere near as important as the above two.
A number that is not a parameter, is 95%. Basically, activation of a BIP9 softfork is considered as actually succeeding if at least 95% of blocks in the last 2 weeks had the specified bit in the nVersion set. If less than 95% had this bit set before the timeout, then the upgrade fails and never goes into the network. This is not a parameter: it is a constant defined by BIP9, and developers using BIP9 activation cannot change this.
So, first some simple questions and their answers:

Why not just set a day when everyone starts imposing the new rules of the softfork?
- This was done classically (in the days when Satoshi was still among us). But this might argued to put too much power to developers, since there would be no way to reject an upgrade without possible bad consequences. For example, developers might package an upgrade that the users do not want, together with vital security bugfixes. Either you live without vital security bugfixes and hire some other developers to fix it for you (which can be difficult, presumably the best developers are already the ones working on the codebase) or you get the vital security bugfixes and implicitly support the upgrade you might not want.
- Sure, you could fork the code yourself (the ultimate threat in the FOSS world) and hire another set of developers who aren't assholes to do the dreary maintenance work of fixing security bugs, but Bitcoin needs strong bug-for-bug compatibility so everyone should really congregate around a single codebase.
- Basically: even the devs do not want this power, because they fear being coerced into putting "upgrades" that are detrimental to users. Satoshi got a pass because nobody knew who he was and how to coerce him.
Why 95%?
- Suppose the threshold were lower, like 51%. If so, after activation, somebody can disrupt the Bitcoin network by creating a transaction that is valid under the pre-softfork rules, but are invalid under the post-softfork rules. Upgraded nodes would reject it, but 49% of miners would accept it and include it in a block (which makes the block invalid) And then the same 49% would accept the invalid block and build on top of that, possibly creating a short chain of doomed invalid blocks that confirm an invalid spend. This can confuse SPV wallets, who might see multiple confirmations of a transaction and accept the funds, but later find that in fact it is invalid under the now-activated softfork rules.
- Thus, a very high threshold was imposed. 95% is considered safe. 50% is definitely not safe. Due to variance in the mining process, 80% could also be potentially unsafe (i.e. 80% of blocks signaling might have a good chance of coming from only 60% of miners), so a threshold of 95% was considered "safe enough for Bitcoin work".
Why have a timeout that disables the upgrade?
- Before BIP9, what was used was either flag day or BIP34. BIP34 had no flag day of activation or a bit, instead, it was just a 95% threshold to signal an nVersion value greater than a specific value. Actually, it was two thresholds: at 75%, blocks with the new nVersion would have the new softfork rules imposed, but at 95% blocks with the old nVersion would be rejected (and only the new blocks, with the new softfork rules, were accepted). For one, between 75% and 95%, there was a situation where the softfork was only "partially imposed", only blocks signaling the new rules would actually have those rules, but blocks with the old rules were still valid. This was fine for BIP34, which only added rules for miners with negligible use for non-miners.
- The same activation process for BIP34 was used for BIP66. After BIP66 reached 95%, however, a single miner mined an invalid-for-BIP66 block that still signalled BIP66 support. It turned out that of the 95% signaling BIP66 support, only about 50% were actually imposing the BIP66 new rules. The rest signalled support without upgrading their software to support new rules. This lead to many chainsplits and chaos with SPV nodes.
- The reasons miners signalled support was because they felt they were being pressured to signal support. So they signalled support, with plans to actually upgrade later, but because of the widespread signalling, the new BIP66 version locked in before upgrade plans were finished. Thus, the timeout that disables the upgrade was added in BIP9 to allow miners an escape hatch.

The Great Battles of the SegWit Wars

SegWit not only fixed transaction malleability, it also created a practical softforkable blocksize increase that also rebalanced weights so that the cost of spending a UTXO is about the same as the cost of creating UTXOs (and spending UTXOs is "better" since it limits the size of the UTXO set that every fullnode has to maintain).
So SegWit was written, the activation was decided to be BIP9, and then.... miner signalling stalled at below 75%.
Thus were the Great SegWit Wars started.

BIP9 Feature Hostage

If you are a miner with at least 5% global hashpower, you can hold a BIP9-activated softfork hostage.
You might even secretly want the softfork to actually push through. But you might want to extract concession from the users and the developers. Like removing the halvening. Or raising or even removing the block size caps (which helps larger miners more than smaller miners, making it easier to become a bigger fish that eats all the smaller fishes). Or whatever.
With BIP9, you can hold the softfork hostage. You just hold out and refuse to signal. You tell everyone you will signal, if and only if certain concessions are given to you.
This ability by miners to hold a feature hostage was enabled because of the miner-exit allowed by the timeout on BIP9. Prior to that, miners were considered little more than expendable security guards, paid for the risk they take to secure the network, but not special in the grand scheme of Bitcoin.

Covert ASICBoost

ASICBoost was a novel way of optimizing SHA256 mining, by taking advantage of the structure of the 80-byte header that is hashed in order to perform proof-of-work. The details of ASICBoost are out-of-scope here but you can read about it elsewhere
Here is a short summary of the two types of ASICBoost, relevant to the activation discussion.

Overt ASICBoost - Manipulates the unused bits in nVersion to reduce power consumption in mining.
Covert ASICBoost - Manipulates the order of transactions in the block to reduce power consumption in mining.

Now, "overt" means "obvious", while "covert" means hidden. Overt ASICBoost is obvious because nVersion bits that are not currently in use for BIP9 activations are usually 0 by default, so setting those bits to 1 makes it obvious that you are doing something weird (namely, Overt ASICBoost). Covert ASICBoost is non-obvious because the order of transactions in a block are up to the miner anyway, so the miner rearranging the transactions in order to get lower power consumption is not going to be detected.
Unfortunately, while Overt ASICBoost was compatible with SegWit, Covert ASICBoost was not. This is because, pre-SegWit, only the block header Merkle tree committed to the transaction ordering. However, with SegWit, another Merkle tree exists, which commits to transaction ordering as well. Covert ASICBoost would require more computation to manipulate two Merkle trees, obviating the power benefits of Covert ASICBoost anyway.
Now, miners want to use ASICBoost (indeed, about 60->70% of current miners probably use the Overt ASICBoost nowadays; if you have a Bitcoin fullnode running you will see the logs with lots of "60 of last 100 blocks had unexpected versions" which is exactly what you would see with the nVersion manipulation that Overt ASICBoost does). But remember: ASICBoost was, at around the time, a novel improvement. Not all miners had ASICBoost hardware. Those who did, did not want it known that they had ASICBoost hardware, and wanted to do Covert ASICBoost!
But Covert ASICBoost is incompatible with SegWit, because SegWit actually has two Merkle trees of transaction data, and Covert ASICBoost works by fudging around with transaction ordering in a block, and recomputing two Merkle Trees is more expensive than recomputing just one (and loses the ASICBoost advantage).
Of course, those miners that wanted Covert ASICBoost did not want to openly admit that they had ASICBoost hardware, they wanted to keep their advantage secret because miners are strongly competitive in a very tight market. And doing ASICBoost Covertly was just the ticket, but they could not work post-SegWit.
Fortunately, due to the BIP9 activation process, they could hold SegWit hostage while covertly taking advantage of Covert ASICBoost!

UASF: BIP148 and BIP8

When the incompatibility between Covert ASICBoost and SegWit was realized, still, activation of SegWit stalled, and miners were still not openly claiming that ASICBoost was related to non-activation of SegWit.
Eventually, a new proposal was created: BIP148. With this rule, 3 months before the end of the SegWit timeout, nodes would reject blocks that did not signal SegWit. Thus, 3 months before SegWit timeout, BIP148 would force activation of SegWit.
This proposal was not accepted by Bitcoin Core, due to the shortening of the timeout (it effectively times out 3 months before the initial SegWit timeout). Instead, a fork of Bitcoin Core was created which added the patch to comply with BIP148. This was claimed as a User Activated Soft Fork, UASF, since users could freely download the alternate fork rather than sticking with the developers of Bitcoin Core.
Now, BIP148 effectively is just a BIP9 activation, except at its (earlier) timeout, the new rules would be activated anyway (instead of the BIP9-mandated behavior that the upgrade is cancelled at the end of the timeout).
BIP148 was actually inspired by the BIP8 proposal (the link here is a historical version; BIP8 has been updated recently, precisely in preparation for Taproot activation). BIP8 is basically BIP9, but at the end of timeout, the softfork is activated anyway rather than cancelled.
This removed the ability of miners to hold the softfork hostage. At best, they can delay the activation, but not stop it entirely by holding out as in BIP9.
Of course, this implies risk that not all miners have upgraded before activation, leading to possible losses for SPV users, as well as again re-pressuring miners to signal activation, possibly without the miners actually upgrading their software to properly impose the new softfork rules.

BIP91, SegWit2X, and The Aftermath

BIP148 inspired countermeasures, possibly from the Covert ASiCBoost miners, possibly from concerned users who wanted to offer concessions to miners. To this day, the common name for BIP148 - UASF - remains an emotionally-charged rallying cry for parts of the Bitcoin community.
One of these was SegWit2X. This was brokered in a deal between some Bitcoin personalities at a conference in New York, and thus part of the so-called "New York Agreement" or NYA, another emotionally-charged acronym.
The text of the NYA was basically:

Set up a new activation threshold at 80% signalled at bit 4 (vs bit 1 for SegWit).
- When this 80% signalling was reached, miners would require that bit 1 for SegWit be signalled to achive the 95% activation needed for SegWit.
If the bit 4 signalling reached 80%, increase the block weight limit from the SegWit 4000000 to the SegWit2X 8000000, 6 months after bit 1 activation.

The first item above was coded in BIP91.
Unfortunately, if you read the BIP91, independently of NYA, you might come to the conclusion that BIP91 was only about lowering the threshold to 80%. In particular, BIP91 never mentions anything about the second point above, it never mentions that bit 4 80% threshold would also signal for a later hardfork increase in weight limit.
Because of this, even though there are claims that NYA (SegWit2X) reached 80% dominance, a close reading of BIP91 shows that the 80% dominance was only for SegWit activation, without necessarily a later 2x capacity hardfork (SegWit2X).
This ambiguity of bit 4 (NYA says it includes a 2x capacity hardfork, BIP91 says it does not) has continued to be a thorn in blocksize debates later. Economically speaking, Bitcoin futures between SegWit and SegWit2X showed strong economic dominance in favor of SegWit (SegWit2X futures were traded at a fraction in value of SegWit futures: I personally made a tidy but small amount of money betting against SegWit2X in the futures market), so suggesting that NYA achieved 80% dominance even in mining is laughable, but the NYA text that ties bit 4 to SegWit2X still exists.
Historically, BIP91 triggered which caused SegWit to activate before the BIP148 shorter timeout. BIP148 proponents continue to hold this day that it was the BIP148 shorter timeout and no-compromises-activate-on-August-1 that made miners flock to BIP91 as a face-saving tactic that actually removed the second clause of NYA. NYA supporters keep pointing to the bit 4 text in the NYA and the historical activation of BIP91 as a failed promise by Bitcoin developers.

Taproot Activation Proposals

There are two primary proposals I can see for Taproot activation:

BIP8.
Modern Softfork Activation.

We have discussed BIP8: roughly, it has bit and timeout, if 95% of miners signal bit it activates, at the end of timeout it activates. (EDIT: BIP8 has had recent updates: at the end of timeout it can now activate or fail. For the most part, in the below text "BIP8", means BIP8-and-activate-at-timeout, and "BIP9" means BIP8-and-fail-at-timeout)
So let's take a look at Modern Softfork Activation!

Modern Softfork Activation

This is a more complex activation method, composed of BIP9 and BIP8 as supcomponents.

First have a 12-month BIP9 (fail at timeout).
If the above fails to activate, have a 6-month discussion period during which users and developers and miners discuss whether to continue to step 3.
Have a 24-month BIP8 (activate at timeout).

The total above is 42 months, if you are counting: 3.5 years worst-case activation.
The logic here is that if there are no problems, BIP9 will work just fine anyway. And if there are problems, the 6-month period should weed it out. Finally, miners cannot hold the feature hostage since the 24-month BIP8 period will exist anyway.

PSA: Being Resilient to Upgrades

Software is very birttle.
Anyone who has been using software for a long time has experienced something like this:

You hear a new version of your favorite software has a nice new feature.
Excited, you install the new version.
You find that the new version has subtle incompatibilities with your current workflow.
You are sad and downgrade to the older version.
You find out that the new version has changed your files in incompatible ways that the old version cannot work with anymore.
You tearfully reinstall the newer version and figure out how to get your lost productivity now that you have to adapt to a new workflow

If you are a technically-competent user, you might codify your workflow into a bunch of programs. And then you upgrade one of the external pieces of software you are using, and find that it has a subtle incompatibility with your current workflow which is based on a bunch of simple programs you wrote yourself. And if those simple programs are used as the basis of some important production system, you hve just screwed up because you upgraded software on an important production system.
And well, one of the issues with new softfork activation is that if not enough people (users and miners) upgrade to the newest Bitcoin software, the security of the new softfork rules are at risk.
Upgrading software of any kind is always a risk, and the more software you build on top of the software-being-upgraded, the greater you risk your tower of software collapsing while you change its foundations.
So if you have some complex Bitcoin-manipulating system with Bitcoin somewhere at the foundations, consider running two Bitcoin nodes:

One is a "stable-version" Bitcoin node. Once it has synced, set it up to connect=x.x.x.x to the second node below (so that your ISP bandwidth is only spent on the second node). Use this node to run all your software: it's a stable version that you don't change for long periods of time. Enable txiindex, disable pruning, whatever your software needs.
The other is an "always-up-to-date" Bitcoin Node. Keep its stoarge down with pruning (initially sync it off the "stable-version" node). You can't use blocksonly if your "stable-version" node needs to send transactions, but otherwise this "always-up-to-date" Bitcoin node can be kept as a low-resource node, so you can run both nodes in the same machine.

When a new Bitcoin version comes up, you just upgrade the "always-up-to-date" Bitcoin node. This protects you if a future softfork activates, you will only receive valid Bitcoin blocks and transactions. Since this node has nothing running on top of it, it is just a special peer of the "stable-version" node, any software incompatibilities with your system software do not exist.
Your "stable-version" Bitcoin node remains the same version until you are ready to actually upgrade this node and are prepared to rewrite most of the software you have running on top of it due to version compatibility problems.
When upgrading the "always-up-to-date", you can bring it down safely and then start it later. Your "stable-version" wil keep running, disconnected from the network, but otherwise still available for whatever queries. You do need some system to stop the "always-up-to-date" node if for any reason the "stable-version" goes down (otherwisee if the "always-up-to-date" advances its pruning window past what your "stable-version" has, the "stable-version" cannot sync afterwards), but if you are technically competent enough that you need to do this, you are technically competent enough to write such a trivial monitor program (EDIT: gmax notes you can adjust the pruning window by RPC commands to help with this as well).
This recommendation is from gmaxwell on IRC, by the way.

Official ColossusXT Q3 2020 AMA

Complying to a scammer, but not quite the way he wanted me to!

(To any moderator, I have anonymitised everything and made sure that it is according to rules of this subreddit,I wanna share this story so please let me know should further editing be required ! please Consider this person has likely stolen thousands and thousands of innocent people so i wanna spread awareness!
So the other day (actually my birthday too :)) I found this account on IG, I saved him as Scumm in my phone but he claims to be an "Alex", hit him up if you wanna get rich it is a fiest. So i hit him up and be like:
[19:00, 23/09/2020] OP: Hello sir I am Tom, I read a lot of things about Forex and crypto and your page in particular and just inherited some money from a relative , I heard so many good things I thought you might help me invest some of that money so it is not lost?
Kindly
[19:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok
[19:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Welcome
[19:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Where are you from?
[19:09, 23/09/2020] OP: Germany
[19:09, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok Tom
[19:09, 23/09/2020] Scumm: We specialise on Stock And cryptocurrency trading, with the sole aim of making awesome profit from the rapid changes in price of the assets and currencies we trade. We are group of professional market analysts that studies the market picking the best assets to invest on, and as well the best cryptocurrency pairs to trade on. We have mastered risk management and as well best possible strategy to maximize our clients Profits
[19:10, 23/09/2020] Scumm: With the minimum investment of 1 BTC you can make 3.8BTC in a month
[19:11, 23/09/2020] Scumm: If I may ask do you have a Bitcoin Wallet address?
Now you can see how this is a scam and no one should ever follow such ludicrous claims! 380% in a month, if sb knew how, they wouldnt share that ,not in this world, not in this century... So i amlike:
[19:15, 23/09/2020] OP: I'd be willing to invest even 2 bitcoin but I would need your company credentials and iban to send money to
[19:19, 23/09/2020] Scumm: I can only provide you a US account to make payment
[19:19, 23/09/2020] Scumm: This if gonna be possible
[19:19, 23/09/2020] OP: Hmm I'll see maybe that works
[19:19, 23/09/2020] OP: Easiest would be IBAN
[19:19, 23/09/2020] OP: Your company does not have any European bank accounts?
[19:19, 23/09/2020] Scumm: IBAN
[19:20, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Mate I always follow procedures so I have not accept Transfer for deposit
[19:20, 23/09/2020] Scumm: But I will see to that ok
You see where this is going I want some info and make him believe he or one of his mules at least gets sweet sweet cash. NOT SO FAST
[20:49, 23/09/2020] Scumm: I’m waiting on my Colleague to forward details to me now
[20:49, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok so you are not sending today?
[20:49, 23/09/2020] OP: Thank u so much
[20:49, 23/09/2020] OP: I can try but I have to call bank
[20:49, 23/09/2020] OP: For over 1000
[20:50, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok ok mate
[20:50, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Good
[21:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: XXXXXX XXXXXXXX
XXX Bank
Account number: 8XXXXX0
Sort code: XXXX
IBAN: GBXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[21:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Are you there Mate?
[22:43, 23/09/2020] OP: Yes hi thank u so much
[22:43, 23/09/2020] OP: Let me chdck
[22:46, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate
[22:53, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Are you trying to send it now mate?
Spinning it furtherly: I just tell some yada yada about how it takes time and a signature since its such a large sum!
[11:46, 24/09/2020] OP: Do you have license
[11:46, 24/09/2020] Scumm: 25BTC too small for even my students 😂 /\SURE buddy! */*
[11:46, 24/09/2020] OP: NASAA 67?
[11:47, 24/09/2020] OP: For financial advisor
[11:50, 24/09/2020] OP: This
[11:50, 24/09/2020] OP: Sorry was upside down
[11:50, 24/09/2020] OP: ?
[11:51, 24/09/2020] Scumm: I’m an independent expert trader and portfolio management in crypto market
[11:52, 24/09/2020] Scumm: License only met to give out from head of Admin
[11:52, 24/09/2020] OP: Ah kk
[11:52, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Yes mate
[11:52, 24/09/2020] OP: But normally 67 and 68 is required
[11:52, 24/09/2020] OP: For normal managers?
[11:53, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Yes
[11:55, 24/09/2020] Scumm: have no worries mate
[11:55, 24/09/2020] Scumm: 100%
Now this is quite interesting NASAA 65 and 66 are licenses needed to be an account manager in the US so if he was he should know that i just made up 67 and 68!
[19:20, 24/09/2020] OP: Ill makethe first payment asap, but i cant make my bank go faster sorry
[19:21, 24/09/2020] OP: howeverone thing:
[19:21, 24/09/2020] OP: most of the moneyigotis still in USD isit possible u said invest and send to USbank too?
[19:21, 24/09/2020] OP: for 20kUSD and above
[19:22, 24/09/2020] OP: its hard for me topurhcase that much bitcoin on my own right now
[19:22, 24/09/2020] OP: but i see that i can trust you!
[19:22, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Mate ASAP you said you make payment today and you didn’t so I don’t know if you even sure about this yet
[19:23, 24/09/2020] Scumm: I don’t get you please
[19:23, 24/09/2020] Scumm: You mean you want your profit sent to a US bank?
[19:24, 24/09/2020] Scumm: You have no worries about that mate
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: I am
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: I signed the paper mate I am so happy
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: That's all they need I told u
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: To make payments international so large
[19:24, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Yeah you said that mate
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: I am beeing honest as well
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: So I sent it back by post Today
[19:24, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate
[19:25, 24/09/2020] OP: But I am not at my banks city so post takes 1-2 days and then they can release
[19:25, 24/09/2020] OP: Sorry to keep u waiting
[19:25, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate
[19:25, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Oh I see
[19:25, 24/09/2020] OP: No what I meant: if I wanna start with more can j invest 20k USD too? I know u usually don't do and j ask very weird questions but I meant
[19:25, 24/09/2020] OP: I am not always home have pc etc but I am in contact with u and my bank
[19:26, 24/09/2020] OP: So is it possible? Otherwise I have to convert USD to euro or GDP
[19:26, 24/09/2020] OP: 40k is sill in USD I have
[19:26, 24/09/2020] OP: That would be even crazier profits 🤑🤑🤑
[19:27, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Now I’m understanding
SO NOW HE IS UNDERSTANDING good good, and almost ready to screw one of his US mules too:
[21:00, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate
[21:04, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Can they send from US to the IBAN account?
[21:05, 24/09/2020] OGOP: Hm I don't know it's a bit tricky BC I'm no us citizen
[21:05, 24/09/2020] OGOP: I have one iban authorised to cash all out in euro
[21:05, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok ok mate
[21:06, 24/09/2020] OP: And US I think right now
[21:06, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate please hold
[21:10, 24/09/2020] OP Sure man
[21:11, 24/09/2020] OP: Uff such a huge step for me
[21:11, 24/09/2020] OP: I hope u do it real good 🤑🤑🤑
[21:12, 24/09/2020] OP Do you have customers in US too?
[21:12, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Bank name: Teachers Federal Credit Union
Bank address: XXXXXXX
Account holder: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Account Holders address:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXX
Routing Number: XXXXXXX
Account number:XXXXXXXXXX
[21:12, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Sure mate //SO HE CLAIMS TO HAVE SCAMMED US CITIZENS!
[21:12, 24/09/2020] OP: Nice
[21:12, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Please make sure you send confirmation immediately
So finally I did not send him payment proof,I sent him a spoofed link to fetch his IP with a link to "payment proof" and got his IP and location (cant showr a real link bc it has my IP in it...) And was like " oh hey how is the whether in Irele, Nigeria??"
Needless to say he blocked me straight away after I called him a disgraceful sc*m but hey..... I still called the corresponding banks, the UK Fraud Action and the FBI just to make sure and shared all of the details without any editting :)
Have fun "mate"! If they can freeze only 1 $ and return it to a likely victim, I am more then happy
Cheers dont get scammed!
TL/DR: Scammed a Nigerian scammer into sending me real accounts, names and details in UK and US (mules) to forward to the police and may or may not have donated 500 to charity.

Don't blindly follow a narrative, its bad for you and its bad for crypto in general

I mostly lurk around here but I see a pattern repeating over and over again here and in multiple communities so I have to post. I'm just posting this here because I appreciate the fact that this sub is a place of free speech and maybe something productive can come out from this post, while bitcoin is just fucking censorship, memes and moon/lambo posts. If you don't agree, write in the comments why, instead of downvoting. You don't have to upvote either, but when you downvote you are killing the opportunity to have discussion. If you downvote or comment that I'm wrong without providing any counterpoints you are no better than the BTC maxis you despise.
In various communities I see a narrative being used to bring people in and making them follow something without thinking for themselves. In crypto I see this mostly in BTC vs BCH tribalistic arguments:
- BTC community: "Everything that is not BTC is shitcoin." or more recently as stated by adam on twitter, "Everything that is not BTC is a ponzi scheme, even ETH.", "what is ETH supply?", and even that they are doing this for "altruistic" reasons, to "protect" the newcomers. Very convenient for them that they are protecting the newcomers by having them buy their bags
- BCH community: "BTC maxis are dumb", "just increase block size and you will have truly p2p electronic cash", "It is just that simple, there are no trade offs", "if you don't agree with me you are a BTC maxi", "BCH is satoshi's vision for p2p electronic cash"
It is not exclusive to crypto but also politics, and you see this over and over again on twitter and on reddit.
My point is, that narratives are created so people don't have to think, they just choose a narrative that is easy to follow and makes sense for them, and stick with it. And people keep repeating these narratives to bring other people in, maybe by ignorance, because they truly believe it without questioning, or maybe by self interest, because they want to shill you their bags.
Because this is BCH community, and because bitcoin is censored, so I can't post there about the problems in the BTC narrative (some of which are IMO correctly identified by BCH community), I will stick with the narrative I see in the BCH community.
The culprit of this post was firstly this post by user u/scotty321 "The BTC Paradox: “A 1 MB blocksize enables poor people to run their own node!” “Okay, then what?” “Poor people won’t be able to use the network!”". You will see many posts of this kind being made by u/Egon_1 also. Then you have also this comment in that thread by u/fuck_____________1 saying that people that want to run their own nodes are retarded and that there is no reason to want to do that. "Just trust block explorer websites". And the post and comment were highly upvoted. Really? You really think that there is no problem in having just a few nodes on the network? And that the only thing that secures the network are miners?
As stated by user u/co1nsurf3r in that thread:

While I don't think that everybody needs to run a node, a full node does publish blocks it considers valid to other nodes. This does not amount to much if you only consider a single node in the network, but many "honest" full nodes in the network will reduce the probability of a valid block being withheld from the network by a collusion of "hostile" node operators.

But surely this will not get attention here, and will be downvoted by those people that promote the narrative that there is no trade off in increasing the blocksize and the people that don't see it are retarded or are btc maxis.
The only narrative I stick to and have been for many years now is that cryptocurrency takes power from the government and gives power to the individual, so you are not restricted to your economy as you can participate in the global economy. There is also the narrative of banking the bankless, which I hope will come true, but it is not a use case we are seeing right now.
Some people would argue that removing power from gov's is a bad thing, but you can't deny the fact that gov's can't control crypto (at least we would want them not to).
But, if you really want the individuals to remain in control of their money and transact with anyone in the world, the network needs to be very resistant to any kind of attacks. How can you have p2p electronic cash if your network just has a handful couple of nodes and the chinese gov can locate them and just block communication to them? I'm not saying that this is BCH case, I'm just refuting the fact that there is no value in running your own node. If you are relying on block explorers, the gov can just block the communication to the block explorer websites. Then what? Who will you trust to get chain information? The nodes needs to be decentralized so if you take one node down, many more can appear so it is hard to censor and you don't have few points of failure.
Right now BTC is focusing on that use case of being difficult to censor. But with that comes the problem that is very expensive to transact on the network, which breaks the purpose of anyone being able to participate. Obviously I do think that is also a major problem, and lightning network is awful right now and probably still years away of being usable, if it ever will. The best solution is up for debate, but thinking that you just have to increase the blocksize and there is no trade off is just naive or misleading. BCH is doing a good thing in trying to come with a solution that is inclusive and promotes cheap and fast transactions, but also don't forget centralization is a major concern and nothing to just shrug off.
Saying that "a 1 MB blocksize enables poor people to run their own" and that because of that "Poor people won’t be able to use the network" is a misrepresentation designed to promote a narrative. Because 1MB is not to allow "poor" people to run their node, it is to facilitate as many people to run a node to promote decentralization and avoid censorship.
Also an elephant in the room that you will not see being discussed in either BTC or BCH communities is that mining pools are heavily centralized. And I'm not talking about miners being mostly in china, but also that big pools control a lot of hashing power both in BTC and BCH, and that is terrible for the purpose of crypto.
Other projects are trying to solve that. Will they be successful? I don't know, I hope so, because I don't buy into any narrative. There are many challenges and I want to see crypto succeed as a whole. As always guys, DYOR and always question if you are not blindly following a narrative. I'm sure I will be called BTC maxi but maybe some people will find value in this. Don't trust guys that are always posting silly "gocha's" against the other "tribe".
EDIT: User u/ShadowOfHarbringer has pointed me to some threads that this has been discussed in the past and I will just put my take on them here for visibility, as I will be using this thread as a reference in future discussions I engage:

When there was only 2 nodes in the network, adding a third node increased redundancy and resiliency of the network as a whole in a significant way. When there is thousands of nodes in the network, adding yet another node only marginally increase the redundancy and resiliency of the network. So the question then becomes a matter of personal judgement of how much that added redundancy and resiliency is worth. For the absolutist, it is absolutely worth it and everyone on this planet should do their part.

What is the magical number of nodes that makes it counterproductive to add new nodes? Did he do any math? Does BCH achieve this holy grail safe number of nodes? Guess what, nobody knows at what number of nodes is starts to be marginally irrelevant to add new nodes. Even BTC today could still not have enough nodes to be safe. If you can't know for sure that you are safe, it is better to try to be safer than sorry. Thousands of nodes is still not enough, as I said, it is much cheaper to run a full node as it is to mine. If it costs millions in hash power to do a 51% attack on the block generation it means nothing if it costs less than $10k to run more nodes than there are in total in the network and cause havoc and slowing people from using the network. Or using bot farms to DDoS the 1000s of nodes in the network. Not all attacks are monetarily motivated. When you have governments with billions of dollars at their disposal and something that could threat their power they could do anything they could to stop people from using it, and the cheapest it is to do so the better

You should run a full node if you're a big business with e.g. >$100k/month in volume, or if you run a service that requires high fraud resistance and validation certainty for payments sent your way (e.g. an exchange). For most other users of Bitcoin, there's no good reason to run a full node unless you reel like it.

Shouldn't individuals benefit from fraud resistance too? Why just businesses?

Personally, I think it's a good idea to make sure that people can easily run a full node because they feel like it, and that it's desirable to keep full node resource requirements reasonable for an enthusiast/hobbyist whenever possible. This might seem to be at odds with the concept of making a worldwide digital cash system in which all transactions are validated by everybody, but after having done the math and some of the code myself, I believe that we should be able to have our cake and eat it too.

This is recurrent argument, but also no math provided, "just trust me I did the math"

The biggest reason individuals may want to run their own node is to increase their privacy. SPV wallets rely on others (nodes or ElectronX servers) who may learn their addresses.

It is a reason and valid one but not the biggest reason

If you do it for fun and experimental it good. If you do it for extra privacy it's ok. If you do it to help the network don't. You are just slowing down miners and exchanges.

Yes it will slow down the network, but that shows how people just don't get the the trade off they are doing

I will just copy/paste what Satoshi Nakamoto said in his own words. "The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server."

Another "it is all or nothing argument" and quoting satoshi to try and prove their point. Just because every user doesn't need to be also a full node doesn't mean that there aren't serious risks for having few nodes

For this to have any importance in practice, all of the miners, all of the exchanges, all of the explorers and all of the economic nodes should go rogue all at once. Collude to change consensus. If you have a node you can detect this. It doesn't do much, because such a scenario is impossible in practice.

Not true because as I said, you can DDoS the current nodes or run more malicious nodes than that there currently are, because is cheap to do so

Non-mining nodes don't contribute to adding data to the blockchain ledger, but they do play a part in propagating transactions that aren't yet in blocks (the mempool). Bitcoin client implementations can have different validations for transactions they see outside of blocks and transactions they see inside of blocks; this allows for "soft forks" to add new types of transactions without completely breaking older clients (while a transaction is in the mempool, a node receiving a transaction that's a new/unknown type could drop it as not a valid transaction (not propagate it to its peers), but if that same transaction ends up in a block and that node receives the block, they accept the block (and the transaction in it) as valid (and therefore don't get left behind on the blockchain and become a fork). The participation in the mempool is a sort of "herd immunity" protection for the network, and it was a key talking point for the "User Activated Soft Fork" (UASF) around the time the Segregated Witness feature was trying to be added in. If a certain percentage of nodes updated their software to not propagate certain types of transactions (or not communicate with certain types of nodes), then they can control what gets into a block (someone wanting to get that sort of transaction into a block would need to communicate directly to a mining node, or communicate only through nodes that weren't blocking that sort of transaction) if a certain threshold of nodes adheres to those same validation rules. It's less specific than the influence on the blockchain data that mining nodes have, but it's definitely not nothing.

The first reasonable comment in that thread but is deep down there with only 1 upvote

The addition of non-mining nodes does not add to the efficiency of the network, but actually takes away from it because of the latency issue.

That is true and is actually a trade off you are making, sacrificing security to have scalability

The addition of non-mining nodes has little to no effect on security, since you only need to destroy mining ones to take down the network

It is true that if you destroy mining nodes you take down the network from producing new blocks (temporarily), even if you have a lot of non mining nodes. But, it still better than if you take down the mining nodes who are also the only full nodes. If the miners are not the only full nodes, at least you still have full nodes with the blockchain data so new miners can download it and join. If all the miners are also the full nodes and you take them down, where will you get all the past blockchain data to start mining again? Just pray that the miners that were taken down come back online at some point in the future?

The real limiting factor is ISP's: Imagine a situation where one service provider defrauds 4000 different nodes. Did the excessive amount of nodes help at all, when they have all been defrauded by the same service provider? If there are only 30 ISP's in the world, how many nodes do we REALLY need?

You cant defraud if the connection is encrypted. Use TOR for example, it is hard for ISP's to know what you are doing.

Satoshi specifically said in the white paper that after a certain point, number of nodes needed plateaus, meaning after a certain point, adding more nodes is actually counterintuitive, which we also demonstrated. (the latency issue). So, we have adequately demonstrated why running non-mining nodes does not add additional value or security to the network.

Again, what is the number of nodes that makes it counterproductive? Did he do any math?

There's also the matter of economically significant nodes and the role they play in consensus. Sure, nobody cares about your average joe's "full node" where he is "keeping his own ledger to keep the miners honest", as it has no significance to the economy and the miners couldn't give a damn about it. However, if say some major exchanges got together to protest a miner activated fork, they would have some protest power against that fork because many people use their service. Of course, there still needs to be miners running on said "protest fork" to keep the chain running, but miners do follow the money and if they got caught mining a fork that none of the major exchanges were trading, they could be coaxed over to said "protest fork".

In consensus, what matters about nodes is only the number, economical power of the node doesn't mean nothing, the protocol doesn't see the net worth of the individual or organization running that node.

Running a full node that is not mining and not involved is spending or receiving payments is of very little use. It helps to make sure network traffic is broadcast, and is another copy of the blockchain, but that is all (and is probably not needed in a healthy coin with many other nodes)

He gets it right (broadcasting transaction and keeping a copy of the blockchain) but he dismisses the importance of it

Complying to a scammer... until i dont!

[19:00, 23/09/2020] OP: Hello sir I am Tom, I read a lot of things about Forex and crypto and your page in particular and just inherited some money from a relative , I heard so many good things I thought you might help me invest some of that money so it is not lost?
Kindly
[19:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok
[19:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Welcome
[19:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Where are you from?
[19:09, 23/09/2020] OP: Germany
[19:09, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok Tom
[19:09, 23/09/2020] Scumm: We specialise on Stock And cryptocurrency trading, with the sole aim of making awesome profit from the rapid changes in price of the assets and currencies we trade. We are group of professional market analysts that studies the market picking the best assets to invest on, and as well the best cryptocurrency pairs to trade on. We have mastered risk management and as well best possible strategy to maximize our clients Profits
[19:10, 23/09/2020] Scumm: With the minimum investment of 1 BTC you can make 3.8BTC in a month
[19:11, 23/09/2020] Scumm: If I may ask do you have a Bitcoin Wallet address?

Now you can see how this is a scam and no one should ever follow such ludicrous claims! 380% in a month, if sb knew how, they wouldnt share that ,not in this world, not in this century... So i amlike:

[19:15, 23/09/2020] OP: I'd be willing to invest even 2 bitcoin but I would need your company credentials and iban to send money to
[19:19, 23/09/2020] Scumm: I can only provide you a US account to make payment
[19:19, 23/09/2020] Scumm: This if gonna be possible
[19:19, 23/09/2020] OP: Hmm I'll see maybe that works
[19:19, 23/09/2020] OP: Easiest would be IBAN
[19:19, 23/09/2020] OP: Your company does not have any European bank accounts?
[19:19, 23/09/2020] Scumm: IBAN
[19:20, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Mate I always follow procedures so I have not accept Transfer for deposit
[19:20, 23/09/2020] Scumm: But I will see to that ok
You see where this is going I want some info and make him believe he or one of his mules at least gets sweet sweet cash. NOT SO FAST
[20:49, 23/09/2020] Scumm: I’m waiting on my Colleague to forward details to me now
[20:49, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok so you are not sending today?
[20:49, 23/09/2020] OP: Thank u so much
[20:49, 23/09/2020] OP: I can try but I have to call bank
[20:49, 23/09/2020] OP: For over 1000
[20:50, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok ok mate
[20:50, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Good
[21:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: XXXXXX XXXXXXXX
XXX Bank
Account number: 8XXXXX0
Sort code: XXXX
IBAN: GBXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
[21:08, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Are you there Mate?
[22:43, 23/09/2020] OP: Yes hi thank u so much
[22:43, 23/09/2020] OP: Let me chdck
[22:46, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate
[22:53, 23/09/2020] Scumm: Are you trying to send it now mate?

Spinning it furtherly: I just tell some yada yada about how it takes time and a signature since its such a large sum!

[11:46, 24/09/2020] OP: Do you have license
[11:46, 24/09/2020] Scumm: 25BTC too small for even my students 😂 /\SURE buddy! */*
[11:46, 24/09/2020] OP: NASAA 67?
[11:47, 24/09/2020] OP: For financial advisor
[11:50, 24/09/2020] OP: This
[11:50, 24/09/2020] OP: Sorry was upside down
[11:50, 24/09/2020] OP: ?
[11:51, 24/09/2020] Scumm: I’m an independent expert trader and portfolio management in crypto market
[11:52, 24/09/2020] Scumm: License only met to give out from head of Admin
[11:52, 24/09/2020] OP: Ah kk
[11:52, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Yes mate
[11:52, 24/09/2020] OP: But normally 67 and 68 is required
[11:52, 24/09/2020] OP: For normal managers?
[11:53, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Yes
[11:55, 24/09/2020] Scumm: have no worries mate
[11:55, 24/09/2020] Scumm: 100%

Now this is quite interesting NASAA 65 and 66 are licenses needed to be an account manager in the US so if he was he should know that i just made up 67 and 68!

[19:20, 24/09/2020] OP: Ill makethe first payment asap, but i cant make my bank go faster sorry
[19:21, 24/09/2020] OP: howeverone thing:
[19:21, 24/09/2020] OP: most of the moneyigotis still in USD isit possible u said invest and send to USbank too?
[19:21, 24/09/2020] OP: for 20kUSD and above
[19:22, 24/09/2020] OP: its hard for me topurhcase that much bitcoin on my own right now
[19:22, 24/09/2020] OP: but i see that i can trust you!
[19:22, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Mate ASAP you said you make payment today and you didn’t so I don’t know if you even sure about this yet
[19:23, 24/09/2020] Scumm: I don’t get you please
[19:23, 24/09/2020] Scumm: You mean you want your profit sent to a US bank?
[19:24, 24/09/2020] Scumm: You have no worries about that mate
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: I am
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: I signed the paper mate I am so happy
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: That's all they need I told u
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: To make payments international so large
[19:24, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Yeah you said that mate
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: I am beeing honest as well
[19:24, 24/09/2020] OP: So I sent it back by post Today
[19:24, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate
[19:25, 24/09/2020] OP: But I am not at my banks city so post takes 1-2 days and then they can release
[19:25, 24/09/2020] OP: Sorry to keep u waiting
[19:25, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate
[19:25, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Oh I see
[19:25, 24/09/2020] OP: No what I meant: if I wanna start with more can j invest 20k USD too? I know u usually don't do and j ask very weird questions but I meant
[19:25, 24/09/2020] OP: I am not always home have pc etc but I am in contact with u and my bank
[19:26, 24/09/2020] OP: So is it possible? Otherwise I have to convert USD to euro or GDP
[19:26, 24/09/2020] OP: 40k is sill in USD I have
[19:26, 24/09/2020] OP: That would be even crazier profits 🤑🤑🤑
[19:27, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Now I’m understanding
SO NOW HE IS UNDERSTANDING good good, and almost ready to screw one of his US mules too:
[21:00, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate
[21:04, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Can they send from US to the IBAN account?
[21:05, 24/09/2020] OGOP: Hm I don't know it's a bit tricky BC I'm no us citizen
[21:05, 24/09/2020] OGOP: I have one iban authorised to cash all out in euro
[21:05, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok ok mate
[21:06, 24/09/2020] OP: And US I think right now
[21:06, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Ok mate please hold
[21:10, 24/09/2020] OP Sure man
[21:11, 24/09/2020] OP: Uff such a huge step for me
[21:11, 24/09/2020] OP: I hope u do it real good 🤑🤑🤑
[21:12, 24/09/2020] OP Do you have customers in US too?
[21:12, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Bank name: Teachers Federal Credit Union
Bank address: XXXXXXX
Account holder: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Account Holders address:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXX
Routing Number: XXXXXXX
Account number:XXXXXXXXXX
[21:12, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Sure mate //SO HE CLAIMS TO HAVE SCAMMED US CITIZENS!
[21:12, 24/09/2020] OP: Nice
[21:12, 24/09/2020] Scumm: Please make sure you send confirmation immediately

So finally I did not send him payment proof,I sent him a spoofed link to fetch his IP with a link to "payment proof" and got his IP and location (cant showr a real link bc it has my IP in it...) And was like " oh hey how is the whether in Irele, Nigeria??"
Needless to say he blocked me straight away after I called him a disgraceful sc*m but hey..... I still called the corresponding banks, the UK Fraud Action and the FBI just to make sure and shared all of the details without any editting :)
Have fun "mate"! If they can freeze only 1 $ and return it to a likely victim, I am more then happy
Cheers dont get scammed! Have a wonderful day!
TL/DR: Scammed a Nigerian scammer into sending me real accounts, names and details in UK and US (mules) to forward to the police and may or may not have donated 500 to charity.

How To End The Cryptocurrency Exchange "Wild West" Without Crippling Innovation

In case you haven't noticed the consultation paper, staff notice, and report on Quadriga, regulators are now clamping down on Canadian cryptocurrency exchanges. The OSC and other regulatory bodies are still interested in industry feedback. They have not put forward any official regulation yet. Below are some ideas/insights and a proposed framework.

This framework was developed through a study of 96 past exchange hack/scam/fraud events. It prevents all historic cases where funds were lost in cryptocurrency exchanges.
Typical securities frameworks will cost Canadians millions of dollars (ie Sarbanes-Oxley estimated at $5m USD/yr per firm). Implementation costs of this proposal are significantly cheaper.
Canadians can maintain a diverse set of exchanges, multiple viable business models are still fully supported, and innovation is encouraged while keeping Canadians safe.

Many of you have limited time to read the full proposal, so here are the highlights:

Offline Multi-Signature

Effective standards to prevent both internal and external theft. Exchange operators are trained and certified, and have a legal responsibility to users.

Regular Transparent Audits

Provides visibility to Canadians that their funds are fully backed on the exchange, while protecting privacy and sensitive platform information.

Insurance Requirements

Establishment of basic insurance standards/strategy, to expand over time. Removing risk to exchange users of any hot wallet theft.

Background and Justifications

Cold Storage Custody/Management
After reviewing close to 100 cases, all thefts tend to break down into more or less the same set of problems:
• Funds stored online or in a smart contract,
• Access controlled by one person or one system,
• 51% attacks (rare),
• Funds sent to the wrong address (also rare), or
• Some combination of the above.
For the first two cases, practical solutions exist and are widely implemented on exchanges already. Offline multi-signature solutions are already industry standard. No cases studied found an external theft or exit scam involving an offline multi-signature wallet implementation. Security can be further improved through minimum numbers of signatories, background checks, providing autonomy and legal protections to each signatory, establishing best practices, and a training/certification program.
The last two transaction risks occur more rarely, and have never resulted in a loss affecting the actual users of the exchange. In all cases to date where operators made the mistake, they've been fully covered by the exchange platforms.
• 51% attacks generally only occur on blockchains with less security. The most prominent cases have been Bitcoin Gold and Ethereum Classic. The simple solution is to enforce deposit limits and block delays such that a 51% attack is not cost-effective.
• The risk of transactions to incorrect addresses can be eliminated by a simple test transaction policy on large transactions. By sending a small amount of funds prior to any large withdrawals/transfers as a standard practice, the accuracy of the wallet address can be validated.
The proposal covers all loss cases and goes beyond, while avoiding significant additional costs, risks, and limitations which may be associated with other frameworks like SOC II.

On The Subject of Third Party Custodians
Many Canadian platforms are currently experimenting with third party custody. From the standpoint of the exchange operator, they can liberate themselves from some responsibility of custody, passing that off to someone else. For regulators, it puts crypto in similar categorization to oil, gold, and other commodities, with some common standards. Platform users would likely feel greater confidence if the custodian was a brand they recognized. If the custodian was knowledgeable and had a decent team that employed multi-sig, they could keep assets safe from internal theft. With the right protections in place, this could be a great solution for many exchanges, particularly those that lack the relevant experience or human resources for their own custody systems.
However, this system is vulnerable to anyone able to impersonate the exchange operators. You may have a situation where different employees who don't know each other that well are interacting between different companies (both the custodian and all their customers which presumably isn't just one exchange). A case study of what can go wrong in this type of environment might be Bitpay, where the CEO was tricked out of 5000 bitcoins over 3 separate payments by a series of emails sent legitimately from a breached computer of another company CEO. It's also still vulnerable to the platform being compromised, as in the really large $70M Bitfinex hack, where the third party Bitgo held one key in a multi-sig wallet. The hacker simply authorized the withdrawal using the same credentials as Bitfinex (requesting Bitgo to sign multiple withdrawal transactions). This succeeded even with the use of multi-sig and two heavily security-focused companies, due to the lack of human oversight (basically, hot wallet). Of course, you can learn from these cases and improve the security, but so can hackers improve their deception and at the end of the day, both of these would have been stopped by the much simpler solution of a qualified team who knew each other and employed multi-sig with properly protected keys. It's pretty hard to beat a human being who knows the business and the typical customer behaviour (or even knows their customers personally) at spotting fraud, and the proposed multi-sig means any hacker has to get through the scrutiny of 3 (or more) separate people, all of whom would have proper training including historical case studies.
There are strong arguments both for and against using use of third party custodians. The proposal sets mandatory minimum custody standards would apply regardless if the cold wallet signatories are exchange operators, independent custodians, or a mix of both.

On The Subject Of Insurance
ShakePay has taken the first steps into this new realm (congratulations). There is no question that crypto users could be better protected by the right insurance policies, and it certainly feels better to transact with insured platforms. The steps required to obtain insurance generally place attention in valuable security areas, and in this case included a review from CipherTrace. One of the key solutions in traditional finance comes from insurance from entities such as the CDIC.
However, historically, there wasn't found any actual insurance payout to any cryptocurrency exchange, and there are notable cases where insurance has not paid. With Bitpay, for example, the insurance agent refused because the issue happened to the third party CEO's computer instead of anything to do with Bitpay itself. With the Youbit exchange in South Korea, their insurance claim was denied, and the exchange ultimately ended up instead going bankrupt with all user's funds lost. To quote Matt Johnson in the original Lloyd's article: “You can create an insurance policy that protects no one – you know there are so many caveats to the policy that it’s not super protective.”
ShakePay's insurance was only reported to cover their cold storage, and “physical theft of the media where the private keys are held”. Physical theft has never, in the history of cryptocurrency exchange cases reviewed, been reported as the cause of loss. From the limited information of the article, ShakePay made it clear their funds are in the hands of a single US custodian, and at least part of their security strategy is to "decline[] to confirm the custodian’s name on the record". While this prevents scrutiny of the custodian, it's pretty silly to speculate that a reasonably competent hacking group couldn't determine who the custodian is. A far more common infiltration strategy historically would be social engineering, which has succeeded repeatedly. A hacker could trick their way into ShakePay's systems and request a fraudulent withdrawal, impersonate ShakePay and request the custodian to move funds, or socially engineer their way into the custodian to initiate the withdrawal of multiple accounts (a payout much larger than ShakePay) exploiting the standard procedures (for example, fraudulently initiating or override the wallet addresses of a real transfer). In each case, nothing was physically stolen and the loss is therefore not covered by insurance.
In order for any insurance to be effective, clear policies have to be established about what needs to be covered. Anything short of that gives Canadians false confidence that they are protected when they aren't in any meaningful way. At this time, the third party insurance market does not appear to provide adequate options or coverage, and effort is necessary to standardize custody standards, which is a likely first step in ultimately setting up an insurance framework.
A better solution compared to third party insurance providers might be for Canadian exchange operators to create their own collective insurance fund, or a specific federal organization similar to the CDIC. Such an organization would have a greater interest or obligation in paying out actual cases, and that would be it's purpose rather than maximizing it's own profit. This would be similar to the SAFU which Binance has launched, except it would cover multiple exchanges. There is little question whether the SAFU would pay out given a breach of Binance, and a similar argument could be made for a insurance fund managed by a collective of exchange operators or a government organization. While a third party insurance provider has the strong market incentive to provide the absolute minimum coverage and no market incentive to payout, an entity managed by exchange operators would have incentive to protect the reputation of exchange operators/the industry, and the government should have the interest of protecting Canadians.

On The Subject of Fractional Reserve
There is a long history of fractional reserve failures, from the first banks in ancient times, through the great depression (where hundreds of fractional reserve banks failed), right through to the 2008 banking collapse referenced in the first bitcoin block. The fractional reserve system allows banks to multiply the money supply far beyond the actual cash (or other assets) in existence, backed only by a system of debt obligations of others. Safely supporting a fractional reserve system is a topic of far greater complexity than can be addressed by a simple policy, and when it comes to cryptocurrency, there is presently no entity reasonably able to bail anyone out in the event of failure. Therefore, this framework is addressed around entities that aim to maintain 100% backing of funds.
There may be some firms that desire but have failed to maintain 100% backing. In this case, there are multiple solutions, including outside investment, merging with other exchanges, or enforcing a gradual restoration plan. All of these solutions are typically far better than shutting down the exchange, and there are multiple cases where they've been used successfully in the past.

Proof of Reserves/Transparency/Accountability
Canadians need to have visibility into the backing on an ongoing basis.
The best solution for crypto-assets is a Proof of Reserve. Such ideas go back all the way to 2013, before even Mt. Gox. However, no Canadian exchange has yet implemented such a system, and only a few international exchanges (CoinFloor in the UK being an example) have. Many firms like Kraken, BitBuy, and now ShakePay use the Proof of Reserve term to refer to lesser proofs which do not actually cryptographically prove the full backing of all user assets on the blockchain. In order for a Proof of Reserve to be effective, it must actually be a complete proof, and it needs to be understood by the public that is expected to use it. Many firms have expressed reservations about the level of transparency required in a complete Proof of Reserve (for example Kraken here). While a complete Proof of Reserves should be encouraged, and there are some solutions in the works (ie TxQuick), this is unlikely to be suitable universally for all exchange operators and users.
Given the limitations, and that firms also manage fiat assets, a more traditional audit process makes more sense. Some Canadian exchanges (CoinSquare, CoinBerry) have already subjected themselves to annual audits. However, these results are not presently shared publicly, and there is no guarantee over the process including all user assets or the integrity and independence of the auditor. The auditor has been typically not known, and in some cases, the identity of the auditor is protected by a NDA. Only in one case (BitBuy) was an actual report generated and publicly shared. There has been no attempt made to validate that user accounts provided during these audits have been complete or accurate. A fraudulent fractional exchange, or one which had suffered a breach they were unwilling to publicly accept (see CoinBene), could easily maintain a second set of books for auditors or simply exclude key accounts to pass an individual audit.
The proposed solution would see a reporting standard which includes at a minimum - percentage of backing for each asset relative to account balances and the nature of how those assets are stored, with ownership proven by the auditor. The auditor would also publicly provide a "hash list", which they independently generate from the accounts provided by the exchange. Every exchange user can then check their information against this public "hash list". A hash is a one-way form of encryption, which fully protects the private information, yet allows anyone who knows that information already to validate that it was included. Less experienced users can take advantage of public tools to calculate the hash from their information (provided by the exchange), and thus have certainty that the auditor received their full balance information. Easy instructions can be provided.
Auditors should be impartial, their identities and process public, and they should be rotated so that the same auditor is never used twice in a row. Balancing the cost of auditing against the needs for regular updates, a 6 month cycle likely makes the most sense.

Hot Wallet Management
The best solution for hot wallets is not to use them. CoinBerry reportedly uses multi-sig on all withdrawals, and Bitmex is an international example known for their structure devoid of hot wallets.
However, many platforms and customers desire fast withdrawal processes, and human validation has a cost of time and delay in this process.
A model of self-insurance or separate funds for hot wallets may be used in these cases. Under this model, a platform still has 100% of their client balance in cold storage and holds additional funds in hot wallets for quick withdrawal. Thus, the risk of those hot wallets is 100% on exchange operators and not affecting the exchange users. Since most platforms typically only have 1%-5% in hot wallets at any given time, it shouldn't be unreasonable to build/maintain these additional reserves over time using exchange fees or additional investment. Larger withdrawals would still be handled at regular intervals from the cold storage.
Hot wallet risks have historically posed a large risk and there is no established standard to guarantee secure hot wallets. When the government of South Korea dispatched security inspections to multiple exchanges, the results were still that 3 of them got hacked after the inspections. If standards develop such that an organization in the market is willing to insure the hot wallets, this could provide an acceptable alternative. Another option may be for multiple exchange operators to pool funds aside for a hot wallet insurance fund. Comprehensive coverage standards must be established and maintained for all hot wallet balances to make sure Canadians are adequately protected.

Current Draft Proposal

(1) Proper multi-signature cold wallet storage.
(a) Each private key is the personal and legal responsibility of one person - the “signatory”. Signatories have special rights and responsibilities to protect user assets. Signatories are trained and certified through a course covering (1) past hacking and fraud cases, (2) proper and secure key generation, and (3) proper safekeeping of private keys. All private keys must be generated and stored 100% offline by the signatory. If even one private keys is ever breached or suspected to be breached, the wallet must be regenerated and all funds relocated to a new wallet.
(b) All signatories must be separate background-checked individuals free of past criminal conviction. Canadians should have a right to know who holds their funds. All signing of transactions must take place with all signatories on Canadian soil or on the soil of a country with a solid legal system which agrees to uphold and support these rules (from an established white-list of countries which expands over time).
(c) 3-5 independent signatures are required for any withdrawal. There must be 1-3 spare signatories, and a maximum of 7 total signatories. The following are all valid combinations: 3of4, 3of5, 3of6, 4of5, 4of6, 4of7, 5of6, or 5of7.
(d) A security audit should be conducted to validate the cold wallet is set up correctly and provide any additional pertinent information. The primary purpose is to ensure that all signatories are acting independently and using best practices for private key storage. A report summarizing all steps taken and who did the audit will be made public. Canadians must be able to validate the right measures are in place to protect their funds.
(e) There is a simple approval process if signatories wish to visit any country outside Canada, with a potential whitelist of exempt countries. At most 2 signatories can be outside of aligned jurisdiction at any given time. All exchanges would be required to keep a compliant cold wallet for Canadian funds and have a Canadian office if they wish to serve Canadian customers.
(2) Regular and transparent solvency audits.
(a) An audit must be conducted at founding, after 3 months of operation, and at least once every 6 months to compare customer balances against all stored cryptocurrency and fiat balances. The auditor must be known, independent, and never the same twice in a row.
(b) An audit report will be published featuring the steps conducted in a readable format. This should be made available to all Canadians on the exchange website and on a government website. The report must include what percentage of each customer asset is backed on the exchange, and how those funds are stored.
(c) The auditor will independently produce a hash of each customer's identifying information and balance as they perform the audit. This will be made publicly available on the exchange and government website, along with simplified instructions that each customer can use to verify that their balance was included in the audit process.
(d) The audit needs to include a proof of ownership for any cryptocurrency wallets included. A satoshi test (spending a small amount) or partially signed transaction both qualify.
(e) Any platform without 100% reserves should be assessed on a regular basis by a government or industry watchdog. This entity should work to prevent any further drop, support any private investor to come in, or facilitate a merger so that 100% backing can be obtained as soon as possible.
(3) Protections for hot wallets and transactions.
(a) A standardized list of approved coins and procedures will be established to constitute valid cold storage wallets. Where a multi-sig process is not natively available, efforts will be undertaken to establish a suitable and stable smart contract standard. This list will be expanded and improved over time. Coins and procedures not on the list are considered hot wallets.
(b) Hot wallets can be backed by additional funds in cold storage or an acceptable third-party insurance provider with a comprehensive coverage policy.
(c) Exchanges are required to cover the full balance of all user funds as denominated in the same currency, or double the balance as denominated in bitcoin or CAD using an established trading rate. If the balance is ever insufficient due to market movements, the firm must rectify this within 24 hours by moving assets to cold storage or increasing insurance coverage.
(d) Any large transactions (above a set threshold) from cold storage to any new wallet addresses (not previously transacted with) must be tested with a smaller transaction first. Deposits of cryptocurrency must be limited to prevent economic 51% attacks. Any issues are to be covered by the exchange.
(e) Exchange platforms must provide suitable authentication for users, including making available approved forms of two-factor authentication. SMS-based authentication is not to be supported. Withdrawals must be blocked for 48 hours in the event of any account password change. Disputes on the negligence of exchanges should be governed by case law.

Steps Forward

Continued review of existing OSC feedback is still underway. More feedback and opinions on the framework and ideas as presented here are extremely valuable. The above is a draft and not finalized.
The process of further developing and bringing a suitable framework to protect Canadians will require the support of exchange operators, legal experts, and many others in the community. The costs of not doing such are tremendous. A large and convoluted framework, one based on flawed ideas or implementation, or one which fails to properly safeguard Canadians is not just extremely expensive and risky for all Canadians, severely limiting to the credibility and reputation of the industry, but an existential risk to many exchanges.
The responsibility falls to all of us to provide our insight and make our opinions heard on this critical matter. Please take the time to give your thoughts.

Official ColossusXT Q2 2020 AMA!

Amazing AMA from Douglas Horn

AMA Recap telos Foundation with Crypto Hunters
On August 02, 2020 at 12:00 WIB Indonesia Time / August 01 2020 at 10:00 PM ( PST ) in the Crypto Hunter Telegram Group, AMA TELOS started with Mr.Douglas as guest speaker and Gus Fahlev from Crypto Hunters as moderator. When campaigning, 10 lucky AMA participants when asking questions on Google forms and AMA sessions will get a total TELOS ( TLOS ) prize of $100.
The following is a summary of AMA questions and answers announced by the moderator and
Segment 1
Question 1: Can you explain us, what is Telos?
Answer: Telos is a blockchain platform for smart contracts. It is a low latencya new block every half second, high capacitycurrently in the top 2 blockchains in transactions per day, according to Blocktivity.info, and no transaction fee blockchain. Telos also has many unique features that allow developers to make better, dapps, such as our Telos Decide governance engine.
Question 2: what ecosystem is used by telos?
Answer: Telos is its own Layer-1 blockchain, not a token on another blockchain. The technology behind Telos is EOSIO, the same technology used by EOS and WAX, for example.
Question 3: I see that Telos uses EOSIO platform, what are the very significant advantages that distinguish Telos from other projects?
Answer: Telos uses the EOSIO platform but we have built several additional tools. Some of these add more security and resiliency to the blockchain, such as testing block producers and removing non-performant ones, but most are related to development. Telos provides attractive development tools that arent available elsewhere. Telos Decide is a governance platform that lets any group create self-governance tools easily. These run on Telos at very little cost and can provide all kinds of voting, elections, initiative ballots, committee management and funds allocation. Telos also has Telos EVM, an Ethereum virtual machine that can run Ethereum Solidity contracts at hundreds of times the speed of Ethereum and with no costs. Another Telos technology that is deploying soon is dStor, which is a decentralized cloud storage system associated with Telos so that dapps can store files controlled by blockchain contracts.
Question 4: At what stage is Teloa Road Map now? what are the latest updates currently being realized?
Answer: Telos launched its mainnet in December 2018 and has so far produced over 100,000,000 blocks without ever stopping or rolling back the chain. This is likely a record for a public blockchain. We have an ongoing group Telos Core Developers who build and maintain the code and are paid by our Telos Works funding system that is voted by the Telos token holders. Telos is a leader in blockchain governance and regularly amends its governance rules based on smart contract powered voting called Telos Amend. You can see the current Telos governance rules as stored live on the blockchain at tbnoa.org.
The most recent updates were adding new features to Telos Decide to make it more powerful, implementing EOSIO v2.0 which increased the capacity of Telos about 8-10 times what it previously was, and implementing Telos EVM on our Testnet.
We are currently working on better interfaces for Telos Decide voting, and building more infrastructure around Telos EVM so that it is ready to deploy on our mainnet.
Question 5: Is telos currently available on an exchange? and is it ready to be traded?
Answer: Telos has been trading on exchanges for over a year. The largest exchanges are Probit, CoinTiger, CoinLim, and P2PB2B. Other exchanges include Newdex and Alcor. We expect to be listed on larger exchanges in the near future.
Question 6: Now is the time when defi tokens begin to develop, can telos be categorized as a defi project? and what strategies for this year and in the years to come prepared by telos?
Answer: Telos is a smart contract platform, but it already has many DeFi tools built for it including REX staking rewards with a current yield of ~19% APR, smart contract controlled token swaps (like Bancor) with no counterparty called Telos Swaps, a common liquidity pool/order book shared by multiple DEXs to improve liquidity called EvolutionDEX. Wrapped BTC, ETH, XRP, EOS, and other tokens can be brought to Telos and exchanged or used via smart contracts through Transledger. We have more DeFi tools coming all the time including two new offerings in the next few weeks that will be the first of their kind.
Question 7: Governance is an important topic in blockchain and Telos is considered a leader in this area. Why is that?
Answer: Telos is among the top blockchain projects in terms of how it empowers its users to guide the growth of the chainalong the likes of Tezos or new DeFi tokens that offer governance coins. Telos users continuously elect the validating nodes, called Block Producers, that operate the network based on a set of governance documents such as the Telos Blockchain Network Operating Agreement (TBNOA). These are all stored entirely on-chain (viewable at tbnoa.org) and can be modified by smart contract through blockchain voting using Telos Amend. You can see examples of this at https://chainspector.io/governance/ratify-proposals Telos also has a robust user-voted funding mechanism called Telos Works that has funded many projects and is one of the more successful blockchain incubators around. Voting for all of these can be done in a number of ways including block explorers, wallets like Sqrl (desktop) and Telos Wallet (mobile), telos.net and Chainspector (https://chainspector.io/governance/telos-works). But Telos goes beyond any other chain-level governance by making all of these features and more available to any dapp on Telos through Telos Decide governance engine, making it easy for any dapp or DAO to add robust, highly customized voting.
Segment 2 from google form
Question 1: Defi projects are now trending whether telos will also go to Defi projects, to increase investors or the community?
Answer: Yes, we have several DeFi tools on Telos that can work together:
Telos Swaps is an automated, zero-counterparty token swapping smart contract where you can exchange any Telos tokens you may want at any time.
Telos has DEXs and uses a common order book called EvolutionDEX that's available to any DEX so that a buy order on one can be matched against a sell order on another. This greatly increases liquidity for traders.
We have staking rewards though the Resource EXchange (REX) with rewards currently at about 19% APR.
We also have "wrapped" BTC, ETH, and other tokens that can be traded on Telos or used by its smart contracts at half-second transaction times with no transaction fees. This makes Telos a Bitcoin or Ethereum second layer or state channel that's much faster even than Lightning Network and has no fees once the BTC has been brought to Telos.
Question 2: Telos aim is to build a new global economy could you explain how whole ecosystem works? There are already many centralized competitors so what is decentralization aspect in telos?
Answer: Telos is one of the most decentralized blockchain's in the world. It is operated by 51 validators (block producers) who validate blocks in any month. These are voted for on an ongoing basis by Telos account holders.
Telos is also economically decentralized with no large whales like Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP or EOS because Telos never performed an ICO and limited the size of genesis accounts to 40,000 TLOS max.
Telos is also geographically decentralized with users and block producers on every continent but Antarctica and in numerous countries. The is a large amount in North America and Western Europe, but also in Asia, Australia, and large contingents in Latin America and Africa. Telos has had a Block Producer in Indonesia since the beginning and some dapps on Telos are based in Indonesia as well, like SEEDS, for example.
Question 3: Most investors focus only on the token price in the short term instead of the real value of the project.
Can #TELOS tell me the benefits for investors holding #TELOS the long term?
Answer: That's true about crypto speculators and traders, certainly. Traders are usually looking for coins with good positive momentuum that they hope will continue. But these are often pump and dumps where a few people get in early, pump the price, and then get out at the expense of new investors. That's very unfortunate. Telos isn't like this. One reason is that there aren't large whales who can easily manipulate the price.
Telos seems to be greatly undervalued compared to its peers. Telos has capacity like EOS and well above XRP, XML, Tron, Ethereum. But its value is miniscule relative to these. Telos is a leader in blockchain governance like Tezos but its marketcap is tiny in comparison. Telos onboarded 100,000 new accounts last month and is appearing in the leading crypto press every week with new dapps or developments. So there's some disconnect between the value of Telos and the price. In my experience, these tend to equalize once more people learn about a project.
Question 4: Eos Problems and How Telos Will Solve Them?
Answer: Telos originally set out to solve problems with EOS. It was successful in this and now Telos stands on it's own and our roadmap is more about empowering users. In short, these are some of the EOS problems we already solved:
RAM speculation - Telos had a plan to reduce RAM speculation through a published guidance price that has been extremely successful. The RAM price is guided by market forces but has remained within 10% of the guidance price since launch.
CPU resources - Telos implemented the Telos Resource Improved Management Plan many months ago which was a 7-point approach to making EIDOS-type resource mining unprofitable on Telos. It has largely been successful and Telos has not experienced any resource shortages.
Exchange Collusion/Voting - Telos governance does not permit Exchanges to vote with user tokens. This prevent voting situations seen on EOS or STEEM.
Block Producer collusion - Telos has minimum requirements for block producers and do not allow anyone to own more than one block producer. Those who are found doing so (there have been about 3 cases so far) have been removed and sanctioned in accordance with the rules of the TBNOA.
Question 5: What ecosystems do telos use? and why telos prefers to use EOS network over BEP2 or ERC20? what layer is used telos, can you please explain?
Answer: uses the EOSIO protocol because it is the fastest and most powerful in the world and it also receives the fastest upgrades and ongoing development compared to other blockchain technologies. EOS and WAX also use the EOSIO protocol but they are completely different chains.
Telos is a Layer 1 protocol, meaning that it is its own blockchain that other dapps and smart contracts deploy upon.
One thing that happens when a blockchain like Telos has much, much higher speed and capacity than others like Bitcoin or Ethereum is that Telos can actually run those other blockchains better on its own platform than they can natively. For example, a number of tokens can come in to Telos as wrapped tokens. BTC, ETH, XRP are all current examples of tokens that can be on Telos as wrapped tokens. Once there, these can all be moved around with half-second transaction times and no transaction fees, so they are a better second layer for Bitcoin or Ethereum than Lightning Network or Loom.
Telos can also emulate other chains, which we are doing using Telos EVM which emulates the Ethereum Virtual Machine at about 300 times faster and with no gas fees or congestion compared to Ethereum native deployment. Telos can run Ethereum (Solidity) smart contracts without any changes required. Telos EVM is already deployed on the Telos Testnet and will move to our mainnet soon. So anyone who wants to run ERC-20 tokens on Telos can do so easily and they will be faster and with much less cost than running the same contract on Ethereum.
Segment 3 free asking
Question: I am happy to see new things created by the Telos team. Like What concept did you build in 2020 to make Telos superior?
Answer: Currently, I think Telos Decide is the most unique and powerful feature we have built. There are all kinds of organizations that need to vote. Apartment buildings, school boards, unions, tribes, youth sports leagues, city councils. Voting is hard, time consuming, and expensive for many. Telos Decide makes voting easy, convenient, and transparent. That will be a major improvement and disrupt old style voting. It also goes for buisnesses and corporate governance. Even before COVID it was important, but now people can't really gather in one place so fraud-proof voting is very important. No one has the tools that Telos has. And if they try to copy us, well, we are already way out ahead working on the next features.
Question: If we look about partnerships, Telos has many partnership ! so what's the importance of that partnership for Telos? And How will you protect the value of Telos to your partners or investors ??
Answer: Many of the partnerships are dapps that have decided to deploy on Telos and receive some level of help from the TCD or Telos Foundation to do so. Once a dapp deploys on a chain, it really is like a long term partnership.
Many dapps will become block producers as well and join in the governance of Telos. I suspect that in a few years, most block producers will be the large dapps on the platform with just a few remaining like my company GoodBlock. Of course, we will have our own apps out as well so I guess we'll be developers too.
Telos is very fiscally responsible for investors. We spend little. There has not been any actual inflation on the chain in almost a year. (The token supply has remained unchanged at about 355M TLOS) we are actively working with dapps to bring more to Telos and exchanges and other services like fiat on- and off-ramps to increase value for users.
Question: In challenging crypto market condition any project is really difficult to survive and we are witnessing that there are many platforms . What is telos project plan for surviving in this long blockchain marathon? In this plan, what motivates long term investors and believers?
Answer: True.
While we currently have a low token price, Telos as a DPOS chain can be maintained and grow without a massive army of miners and still maintain BFT.
But the risk is really not whether Telos can continue. Already there are enough dapps that if the block producers went away somehow (not gonna happen) the dapps would just run the chain themselves.
But with 100,000 new users last month and new dapps all the time, we are looking to join the top 5 dapp platforms on DappRadar soon. Survival as a project is not in question.
One of the big reasons is that we never did any ICO and Telos is not a company. So regulatory risks aren't there and there's no company to go bankrupt or fail. We have already developed a bootstrapped system to pay block producers and core developers. So we aren't like a company that will run out of runway sometime.
Question: Could you explain what is DSTOR? What will it contribute to your ecosystem?
Answer: dStor is a decentralized cloud storage system that will have the performance of AWS or Azure with much lower costs and true decentralization. It's based on a highly modified version of IPFS that we have applied for patents for our implementation. It means that dapps will be able to store data like files, images, sound, etc. in a decentralized way.
Question: Trust and security is very important in any business , what makes investors , customer and users safe secure when working with TELOS??
Answer: Telos is decentralized in a way that's more like bitcoin than other blockchains (but without the whales who can manipulate price). There was never any single company that started Telos, so there's no company whose CEO could make decisions for the network. There are numerous block producers who decide on any operational issue that isn't clearly described in the TBNOA governance documents. And to get to an action, 15 of the 21 currently active BPs need to sign a multisig transaction. So that's a high threshold. But also, the TBNOA speaks to a large number of issues and so the BPs can't just make up their own rules.
Since there are really no whales, no one can vote in any kind of change or bring in their own BPs with their votes. This is also very different from other chains where there are whales. Telos is not located in any one country, so our rules can't be driven by one nation's politics.
All in all, this level of decentralization sets Telos apart from almost any blockchain project in existence. People don't have to trust Telos because the system is designed to make trust unnecessary.

【NeoLine Talk】What is DApp and how is it different from App?

Bitcoin 11 Years - Achievements, Lies, and Bullshit Claims So Far - Tooootally NOT a SCAM !!!!

That's right folks, it's that time again for the annual review of how Bitcoin is going: all of those claims, predictions, promises .... how many have turned out to be true, and how many are completely bogus ???
Please post / link this on Bitcoin (I am banned there for speaking the truth, so I cannot do it) ... because it'a way past time those poor clueless mushrooms were exposed to the truth.
Anyway, without further ado, I give you the Bitcoin's Achievements, Lies, and Bullshit Claims So Far ...
.
Bitcoin Achievements so far:

It has spawned a cesspool of scams (2000+ shit coin scams, plus 100's of other scams, frauds, cons).
Many 1,000's of hacks, thefts, losses.
Illegal Use Cases: illegal drugs, illegal weapons, tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, child pornography, hit men / murder-for-hire, ransomware, blackmail, extortion, and various other kinds of fraud and illicit activity.
Legal Use Cases: ~~Steam Games~~, ~~Reddit~~, ~~Expedia~~, ~~Stripe~~, ~~Starbucks~~, ~~1000's of merchants~~, ~~cryptocurrency conferences~~, Ummm ????? The few merchants who "accept Bitcoin" immediately convert it into FIAT after the sale, or require you to sell your coins to BitPay or Coinbase for real money, and will then take that money. Some of the few who actually accept bitcoin haven't seen a customer who needed to pay with bitcoin for the last six months, and their cashiers no longer know how to handle that.
Contributing significantly to Global Warming.
Wastes vasts amounts of electricity on useless, do nothing work.
Exponentially raises electricity prices when big miners move into regions where electricity was cheap.
It’s the first "currency" that is not self-sustainable. It operates at a net loss, and requires continuous outside capital to replace the capital removed by miners to pay their costs. It’s literally a "black hole currency."
It created a new way for people living too far from Vegas to gamble all their life savings away.
Spawned "blockchain technology", a powerful technique that lets incompetent programmers who know almost nothing about databases, finance, programming, or blockchain scam millions out of gullible VC investors, banks, and governments.
Increased China's foreign trade balance by a couple billion dollars per year.
Helped the FBI and other law enforcement agents easily track down hundreds of drug traffickers and drug users.
Wasted thousands if not millions of man-hours of government employees and legislators, in mostly fruitless attempts to understand, legitimize, and regulate the "phenomenon", and to investigate and prosecute its scams.
Rekindled the hopes of anarcho-capitalists and libertarians for a global economic collapse, that would finally bring forth their Mad Max "utopia".
Added another character to Unicode (no, no, not the "poo" 💩 character ... that was my first guess as well 🤣)
Provides an easy way for malware and ransomware criminals to ply their trade and extort hospitals, schools, local councils, businesses, utilities, as well as the general population.

Any others ? (Please tell me).

.
Correct Predictions:

2015-12: "1,000 dollar in 2015", u/Luka_Magnotta, aka time traveler from the future, 31-Aug-2013, https://www.reddit.com/Bitcoin/comments/1lfobc/i_am_a_timetraveler_from_the_future_here_to_beg/ (Technically, this prediction is WRONG because the highest price reached in 2015 was $495.56 according to CMC. Yes, Bitcoin reached $1,000 in 2013 and 2014, but that's NOT what the prediction says).
2017-12: "10,000 in 2017", u/Luka_Magnotta, aka time traveler from the future, 31-Aug-2013, https://www.reddit.com/Bitcoin/comments/1lfobc/i_am_a_timetraveler_from_the_future_here_to_beg/
2018-04: $10,000 (by April 2018), Mike Novogratz, link #1: https://www.bitcoinprice.com/predictions/, link #2: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-21/mike-novogratz-says-bitcoin-will-end-the-year-at-10-000
2018-12: $10,000 (by 2018), Tim Draper, link #1: https://www.bitcoinprice.com/predictions/, link #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AW5s6QkRRY
Any others ? (Please tell me).

.
Bitcoin Promises / Claims / Price Predictions that turned out to be lies and bullshit:

~~ANONYMOUS~~
~~CENSORSHIP RESISTANT~~
~~FRICTIONLESS~~
~~TRUSTLESS~~
~~UNCENSORABLE~~
~~UNTRACEABLE~~
~~SAFE~~
~~SECURE~~
~~YOU CANNOT LOSE~~
~~NOT A SCAM~~
~~PERMISSIONLESS~~
~~GUARANTEED PRIVACY~~
~~CANNOT BE SEIZED~~
~~CANNOT BE CONFISCATED~~
~~Be your own bank~~
~~Regulation-proof~~
~~NO MIDDLEMEN~~
~~DECENTRALIZED~~
~~Instantaneous transactions~~
~~Fast transactions~~
~~Zero / No transaction fees~~
~~Low transaction fees~~
~~A store of value~~
~~A deflationary digital asset~~
"~~A deflationary digital asset that no single human being can destroy.~~"
~~"an asset that is equally as dual use as a car, water, or any other traditional element that has existed."~~
~~"Digital gold"~~
~~Easy to use~~
~~Cannot be stolen~~
~~Cannot be hacked~~
~~Can be mined by anyone~~
~~Can be mined by anyone, even with an old computer or laptop~~
~~Cannot be centralized~~
~~Will return power back to the people.~~
~~Not a Ponzi scam~~
~~Not a Pyramid scam~~
~~Never pay tax again~~
~~Your gains cannot be taxed~~
~~A currency~~
~~An amazing new class of asset~~
~~An asset~~
~~A means to economic freedom~~
~~A store of value~~
~~The best investment the word has ever seen~~
~~A great investment~~
~~Efficient~~
~~Scalable~~
~~Stable~~
~~Resilient~~
~~Reliable~~
~~Low energy~~
~~Low risk~~
~~Redistribute wealth to everybody~~
~~No more have's and have not's~~
~~No more US and THEM~~
~~No more disadvantaged people~~
~~No more RICH and POOR~~
~~No more poor people~~
~~Uses amazing new technology~~
~~Uses ingenious new technology~~
~~Satishi Nakamoto invented ...~~
~~Segwit will solve all of Bitcoin's woes~~
~~Lightning Network will solve all of Bitcoin's woes~~
~~Limited by scarcity~~
~~Can only go up in value~~
~~Price cannot crash~~
~~Has intrinsic value~~
~~Value will always be worth more than cost to mine~~
~~Adoption by investors is increasing exponentially~~
~~Adoption by investors is increasing~~
~~Adoption by merchants is increasing exponentially~~
~~Adoption by merchants is increasing~~
~~You are secure if you keep your coins on an exchange~~
~~You are secure if you keep your coins in a hardware wallet~~
~~You are secure if you keep your coins in an air-gapped Linux PC~~
~~Will change the world~~
~~"the next phase in human evolution"~~
~~"Blockchain is more encompassing than the internet"~~
~~Blockchain can solve previously unsolvable problems.~~
~~"The only regulation we need is the blockchain"~~
~~"Bank the unbanked"~~
~~"To abolish financial slavery and the state's toxic monopoly on money."~~
~~"To have better tools in the fight against the state violence and taxation."~~
~~"To stamp information on a blockchain forever so we can bypass state censorship, copyrights, patents(informational monopolies) etc."~~
~~Will destroy / overthrow FIAT~~
~~Will destroy / overthrow the world's governments~~
~~Will destroy / overthrow the banking system~~
~~Will destroy / overthrow the world economies~~
~~Will free people from tyranny~~
~~Will give people financial freedom~~
~~Will bring world peace~~
~~Never going below $19K again~~
~~Never going below $18K again~~
~~Never going below $17K again~~
~~Never going below $16K again~~
~~Never going below $15K again~~
~~Never going below $14K again~~
~~Never going below $13K again~~
~~Never going below $12K again~~
~~Never going below $11K again~~
~~Never going below $10K again~~
~~Never going below $9K again~~
~~Never going below $8K again~~
~~Never going below $7K again~~
~~Never going below $6K again~~
~~Never going below $5K again~~
~~Never going below $4K again~~
~~Is NOT a Scam~~
~~Hashing Power secures the Bitcoin network~~
~~Untraceable, private transactions~~
~~Guaranteed privacy~~
~~Not created out of thin air~~
~~Not created out of thin air by unregulated, unbacked entities~~
~~Totally NOT a scam~~
~~Is not used primarily by crimonals, drug dealers, or money launderers.~~
~~100% secure~~
~~2010 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2011 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2012 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2013 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2014 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2015 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2016 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2017 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2018 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2019 will be the "Year of Crypto"~~
~~2010: MASS ADOPTION any day now"~~
~~2011: MASS ADOPTION aany day now"~~
~~2012: MASS ADOPTION aaany day now"~~
~~2013: MASS ADOPTION aaaany day now"~~
~~2014: MASS ADOPTION aaaaany day now"~~
~~2015: MASS ADOPTION aaaaaany day now"~~
~~2016: MASS ADOPTION aaaaaaany day now"~~
~~2017: MASS ADOPTION aaaaaaaany day now"~~
~~2018: MASS ADOPTION aaaaaaaaany day now"~~
~~2019: MASS ADOPTION aaaaaaaaany day now"~~
~~"Financial Freedom, bro."~~
~~no single entity, government or individual, can alter or reverse its transactions~~
~~insurance against the tyranny of state~~
~~Bitcoin has come to destroy all governments and bring about the libertarian utopia of my dreams.~~
~~The major issues in Bicoin's network will be fixed. This is still early days, Bitcoin has only been around for 2+ years.~~
~~The major issues in Bicoin's network will be fixed. This is still early days, Bitcoin has only been around for 5+ years.~~
~~The major issues in Bicoin's network will be fixed. This is still early days, Bitcoin has only been around for 7+ years.~~
~~The major issues in Bicoin's network will be fixed. This is still early days, Bitcoin has only been around for 9+ years.~~
~~1,000's of predictions of skyrocketing and/or never falling prices~~
~~Escape the petty rivalries of warring powers and nation states by scattering control among the many~~. The Bitcoin Cash debacle proves that even the most cryptographically secure plans of mice and men often go awry. Ref: https://www.reddit.com/Buttcoin/comments/9zfhb6/like_theres_only_one_flaw_with_buttcoin_crash/ea8s11m
~~People will NEVER be able to welch out of bets or deals again.~~ Nov-2018, Ref: https://www.reddit.com/Buttcoin/comments/9zvpl2/the_guy_who_made_the_1000_bet_that_btc_wouldnt/
~~"Everything will be better, faster, and cheaper."~~, Brock Pierce, EOS.io shill video.
~~"Everything will be more connected."~~, Brock Pierce, EOS.io shill video.
~~"Everything will be more trustworthy."~~, Brock Pierce, EOS.io shill video.
~~"Everything will be more secure."~~, Brock Pierce, EOS.io shill video.
~~"Everything that exists is no-longer going to exist in the way that it does today."~~, Brock Pierce, EOS.io shill video.
~~"Everything in this world is about to get better."~~, Brock Pierce, EOS.io shill video.
~~You are a slave to the bankers~~
~~The bankers print money and then you pay for it~~
~~Bitcoin is The Peoples Money~~
~~Bitcoin will set you free~~
~~Bitcoin will set you free from the slavery of the banks and the government~~ Ref: https://www.reddit.com/Bitcoin/comments/cd2q94/bitcoin_shall_set_you_free/
~~Bitcoin is "striking fear into the hearts of bankers, precisely because Bitcoin eliminates the need for banks. ~~, Mark Yusko, billionaire investor and Founder of Morgan Creek Capital, https://www.bitcoinprice.com/predictions/
~~"When transactions are verified on a Blockchain, banks become obsolete."~~, Mark Yusko, billionaire investor and Founder of Morgan Creek Capital, https://www.bitcoinprice.com/predictions/
SnapshillBot quotes from delusional morons:
"~~A bitcoin miner in every device and in every hand.~~"
"~~All the indicators are pointing to a huge year and bigger than anything we have seen before.~~"
"~~Bitcoin is communism and democracy working hand in hand.~~"
"~~Bitcoin is freedom, and we will soon be free.~~"
"~~Bitcoin isn't calculated risk, you're right. It's downright and painfully obvious that it will consume global finance.~~"
"~~Bitcoin most disruptive technology of last 500 years~~"
"~~Bitcoin: So easy, your grandma can use it!~~"
"~~Creating a 4th Branch of Government - Bitcoin~~"
"~~Future generations will cry laughing reading all the negativity and insanity vomited by these permabears.~~"
"~~Future us will thank us.~~"
"~~Give Bitcoin two years~~"
"~~HODLING is more like being a dutiful guardian of the most powerful economic force this planet has ever seen and getting to have a say about how that force is unleashed.~~"
~~"Cut out the middleman"~~
~~"full control of your own assets"~~
~~"reduction in wealth gap"~~
~~"no inflation"~~
~~"cannot print money out of thin air"~~
~~"Why that matters? Because blockchain not only cheaper for them, it'll be cheaper for you and everyone as well."~~
~~"If you are in this to get rich in Fiat then no. But if you are in this to protect your wealth once the current monetary system collapse then you are protected and you'll be the new rich."~~
~~"Theres the 1% and then theres the 99%. You want to be with the rest thats fine. Being different and brave is far more rewarding. No matter your background or education."~~
~~"NO COINERS will believe anything they are fed by fake news and paid media."~~
"~~I know that feeling (like people looking at you as in seeing a celebrity and then asking things they don't believe until their impressed).~~"
"~~I literally walk round everyday looking at other people wondering why they even bother to live if they don't have Bitcoin in their lives.~~"
"~~I think bitcoin may very well be the best form of money we’ve ever seen in the history of civilization.~~"
"~~I think Bitcoin will do for mankind what the sun did for life on earth.~~"
"~~I think the constant scams and illegal activities only show the viability of bitcoin.~~"
"~~I think we're sitting on the verge of exponential interest in the currency.~~"
"~~I'm not using hyperbole when I say Satoshi found the elusive key to World Peace.~~"
"~~If Jesus ever comes back you know he's gonna be using Bitcoin~~"
"~~If this idea was implemented with The Blockchain™, it would be completely flawless! Flawless I tell you!~~"
"~~If you're the minimum wage guy type, now is a great time to skip food and go full ramadan in order to buy bitcoin instead.~~"
"~~In a world slipping more and more into chaos and uncertainty, Bitcoin seems to me like the last solid rock defeating all the attacks.~~"
"~~In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any filthy statist's blessing, but because I am enlightened by own intelligence.~~"
"~~Is Bitcoin at this point, with all the potential that opens up, the most undervalued asset ever?~~"
"~~It won't be long until bitcoin is an everyday household term.~~"
"~~It's the USD that is volatile. Bitcoin is the real neutral currency.~~"
"~~Just like the early Internet!~~"
"~~Just like the Trojan Horse of old, Bitcoin will reveal its full power and nature~~"
"~~Ladies if your man doesnt have some bitcoin then he cant handle anything and has no danger sex appeal. He isnt edgy~~"
"~~let me be the first to say if you dont have bitcoin you are a pussy and cant really purchase anything worldwide. You have no global reach~~"
"~~My conclusion is that I see this a a very good thing for bitcoin and for users~~"
"~~No one would do such a thing; it'd be against their self interests.~~"
"~~Ooh lala, good job on bashing Bitcoin. How to disrespect a great innovation.~~"
"~~Realistically I think Bitcoin will replace the dollar in the next 10-15 years.~~"
"~~Seperation of money and state -> states become obsolete -> world peace.~~"
"~~Some striking similarities between Bitcoin and God~~"
"THANK YOU. Better for this child to be strangled in its crib as a true weapon for crypto-anarchists than for it to be wielded by toxic individuals who distort the technology and surrender it to government and corporate powers."
"~~The Blockchain is more encompassing than the internet and is the next phase in human evolution. To avoid its significance is complete ignorance.~~"
"~~The bull run should begin any day now.~~"
"~~The free market doesn't permit fraud and theft.~~"
"~~The free market will clear away the bad actors."~~
"~~The only regulation we need is the blockchain.~~"
"~~We are not your slaves! We are free bodies who will swallow you and puke you out in disgust. Welcome to liberty land or as that genius called it: Bitcoin.~~"
"~~We do not need the bankers for Satoshi is our saviour!~~"
"~~We have never seen something so perfect~~"
"~~We must bring freedom and crypto to the masses, to the common man who does not know how to fight for himself.~~"
"~~We verified that against the blockchain.~~"
"~~we will see a Rennaisnce over the next few decades, all thanks to Bitcoin.~~"
"~~Well, since 2006, there has been a infinite% increase in price, so...~~"
"~~What doesn't kill cryptocurrency makes it stronger.~~"
"~~When Bitcoin awake in normally people (real people) ... you will have this result : No War. No Tax. No QE. No Bank.~~"
"When I see news that the price of bitcoin has tanked (and thus the market, more or less) I actually, for-real, have the gut reaction "oh that’s cool, I’ll be buying cheap this week". I never knew I could be so rational."
"~~Where is your sense of adventure? Bitcoin is the future. Set aside your fears and leave easier at the doorstep.~~"
"~~Yes Bitcoin will cause the greatest redistribution of wealth this planet has ever seen. FACT from the future.~~"
"~~You are the true Bitcoin pioneers and with your help we have imprinted Bitcoin in the Canadian conscience.~~"
"~~You ever try LSD? Perhaps it would help you break free from the box of state-formed thinking you have limited yourself...~~"
"~~Your phone or refrigerator might be on the blockchain one day.~~"
~~The banks can print money whenever they way, out of thin air, so why can't crypto do the same ???~~
~~Central Banks can print money whenever they way, out of thin air, without any consequences or accounting, so why can't crypto do the same ???~~
~~It's impossible to hide illegal, unsavory material on the blockchain~~
~~It's impossible to hide child pornography on the blockchain~~
~~Fungible~~
~~All Bitccoins are the same, 100% identical, one Bitcoin cannot be distinguished from any other Bitcoin.~~
~~The price of Bitcoin can only go up.~~
~~"Bubbles are mathematically impossible in this new paradigm. So are corrections and all else"~~, John McAfee, 7 Dec 2017 @ 5:09 PM,https://mobile.twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/938938539282190337
~~Scarcity~~
~~The price of Bitcoin can only go up because of scarcity / 21 million coin limit.~~ (Bitcoin is open source, anyone can create thir own copy, and there are more than 2,000+ Bitcoin copies / clones out there already).
~~immune to government regulation~~
~~"a world-changing technology"~~
~~"a long-term store of value, like gold or silver"~~
~~"To Complex to Be Audited."~~
~~"Old Auditing rules do not apply to Blockchain."~~
~~"Old Auditing rules do not apply to Cryptocurrency."~~
~~"Why Bitcoin has Value: SCARCITY."~~, PlanB, Coin Shill, 22-Mar-2019, https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/modeling-bitcoins-value-with-scarcity-91fa0fc03e25
~~"Bitcoin is the first scarce digital object the world has ever seen, it is scarce like silver & gold, and can be sent over the internet, radio, satellite etc."~~, PlanB, Coin Shill, 22-Mar-2019, https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/modeling-bitcoins-value-with-scarcity-91fa0fc03e25
~~"Surely this digital scarcity has value."~~, PlanB, Coin Shill, 22-Mar-2019, https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/modeling-bitcoins-value-with-scarcity-91fa0fc03e25
Bitcoin now at $16,600.00. Those of you in the old school who believe this is a bubble simply have not understood the new mathematics of the Blockchain, or you did not cared enough to try. Bubbles are mathematically impossible in this new paradigm. So are corrections and all else", John McAfee, 7 Dec 2017 @ 5:09 PM,https://mobile.twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/938938539282190337
~~"May 2018 will be the last time we ever see $bitcoin under $10,000"~~, Charlie Shrem, bitcoin advocate and convicted felon, 11:31 AM 3-May-2018, https://twitter.com/CharlieShrem/status/992109375555858433
~~"Last dip ever."~~, AngeloBTC, 14 Oct 2018, https://mobile.twitter.com/AngeloBTC/status/1051710824388030464/photo/1
~~"Bitcoin May Have Just Experienced its Final Shakeout Before a Big Rally"~~, Joseph Young, coin shill, October 15, 2018 22:30 CET, https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-may-have-just-experienced-its-final-shakeout-before-a-big-rally/
~~Bitcoin would be a buy if the price fell under~~ ~~$5,000~~., Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, 29-Jun-2018, https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-a-buy-below-5000-says-allianz-chief-economic-adviso
2013-11-27: ""What is a Citadel?" you might wonder. Well, by the time Bitcoin became worth 1,000 dollar [27-Nov-2013], services began to emerge for the "Bitcoin rich" to protect themselves as well as their wealth. It started with expensive safes, then began to include bodyguards, and today, "earlies" (our term for early adapters), as well as those rich whose wealth survived the "transition" live in isolated gated cities called Citadels, where most work is automated. Most such Citadels are born out of the fortification used to protect places where Bitcoin mining machines are located. The company known as ASICminer to you is known to me as a city where Mr. Friedman rules as a king.", u/Luka_Magnotta, aka time traveler from the future, 31-Aug-2013, https://www.reddit.com/Bitcoin/comments/1lfobc/i_am_a_timetraveler_from_the_future_here_to_beg/
2018-02: ~~Bitcoin price to hit~~ ~~$27,000~~ ~~by February 2018~~, Trace Mayer, host of the Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast, and self-proclaimed entrepreneur, investor, journalist, monetary scientist and ardent defender, Link #1: https://mobile.twitter.com/TraceMayestatus/917260836070154240/photo/1, Link #2: https://www.bitcoinprice.com/predictions/
2018-06: ~~"Bitcoin will surpass~~ ~~$15,000~~ ~~in June [2018]."~~ John McAfee, May 25, 2018, https://bitcoinist.com/john-mcafee-says-bitcoin-will-surpass-15000-in-june/
2018-07: ~~Bitcoin will be~~ ~~$28,000~~ ~~by mid-2018, Ronnie Moas, Wall Street analyst and founder of Standpoint Research,~~ http://helpfordream.com/2018/12/23/5-bitcoin-price-predictions-gone-wrong/.
2018-12: ~~Bitcoin to reach a price of between~~ ~~40,000 and 110,000 US dollars~~ ~~by the end of the 2017 bull run ... sometime before 2019~~, Masterluc, 26-May-2017, an anonymous "legendary" Bitcoin trader, Link #1: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/YRZvdurN-The-target-of-current-bubble-lays-between-40k-and-110k/, Link #2: https://www.bitcoinprice.com/predictions/
2018-12: "There is no reason why we couldn’t see Bitcoin pushing $50,000 by December [2018]", Thomas Glucksmann, head of APAC business at Gatecoin, Link #1: https://www.bitcoinprice.com/predictions/
2018-12: ~~Listen up you giggling cunts... who wants some?...you? you want some?...huh? Do ya? Here's the deal you fuckin Nerds - Butts are gonna be at~~ ~~30 grand~~ or more by next Christmas [2018] - If they aren't I will publicly administer an electronic dick sucking to every shill on this site and disappear forever - Until then, no more bans or shadow bans - Do we have a deal? If Butts are over 50 grand me and Lammy get to be mods. Deal? Your ole pal - "Skully" u/10GDeathBoner, 3-Feb-2018 https://www.reddit.com/Buttcoin/comments/7ut1ut/listen_up_you_giggling_cunts_who_wants_someyou/
2018-12: ~~1 bitcoin = 1 Lambo~~~~. Remind me on Christmas eve [2018]~~ u/10GDeathBoner, 3-Feb-2018, https://www.reddit.com/Buttcoin/comments/7ut1ut/listen_up_you_giggling_cunts_who_wants_someyou/dtn2pna
2018-12: ~~Been in BTC since 2014 and experienced many "deaths" of BTC... this too shall pass...~~ ~~$10k~~ ~~end of the year. [2018]~~ u/Exxe2502, 30-Jun-2018 https://reddit.com/Bitcoin/comments/8uur27/_/e1ioi5b/?context=1
2018-12: ~~"Yale Alumni prediction -~~ ~~30 Grand~~ ~~by Christmas [2018] - and you my friend... you will be the one eating Mcafee's dick in 2020. :) -:"~~, u/SirNakamoto, 15-Jun-2018, https://www.reddit.com/Buttcoin/comments/8r0tyh/fdic_agrees_to_cover_bitcoin_losses_in_event_of/e0nzxq7
2018-12: ~~"Impossible For Bitcoin Not to Hit~~ ~~$10,000~~ ~~by This Year (2018)"~~, Mike Novogratz, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner, ex-hedge fund manager of the Fortress Investment Group and a longstanding advocate of cryptocurrency, 22-Sep-2018, https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/09/22/billionaire-novogratz-impossible-for-bitcoin-not-to-hit-10000-by-this-yea
2018-12: ~~"[Bitcoin] between~~ ~~$13,800 and $14,800~~ ~~[by end of 2018]"~~, Fundstrat's Tom Lee, 13-Dec-2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/13/wall-streets-bitcoin-bull-tom-lee-we-are-tired-of-people-asking-us-about-target-prices.html
2018-12: ~~"Bitcoin is going to be~~ ~~$15k-$20k~~ ~~by the end of the year (2018)"~~, Didi Taihuttu, 1-Nov-2018, https://www.wsj.com/video/series/moving-upstream/the-bitcoin-gamble/85E3A4A7-C777-4827-9A3F-B387F2AB7654
2018-12: ~~2018 bitcoin price prediction reduced to~~ ~~$15,000 [was $25,000]~~, Fundstrat's Tom Lee, 16-Nov-2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/16/wall-streets-crypto-bull-tom-lee-slashes-year-end-forecast-by-10000.html
2018-12: ~~"I want to be clear, bitcoin is going to~~ ~~$25,000~~ ~~by year end (2018)"~~, Fundstrat's Tom Lee, 5-Jul-2018, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/07/05/tom-lee-i-want-to-be-clear-bitcoin-is-going-to-25000-by-year-end.html
2018-12: ~~"Bitcoin could be at~~ ~~$40,000~~ ~~by the end of 2018, it really easily could"~~, Mike Novogratz, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner, ex-hedge fund manager of the Fortress Investment Group and a longstanding advocate of cryptocurrency, 21-Sep-2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lC1anDg2KU
2018-12: ~~"Bitcoin will be priced around~~ ~~$50,000~~ ~~by the end of the year (2018)"~~, Bitcoin bull Arthur Hayes, co-founder and CEO of BitMEX, 29-Jun-2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/29/bitcoin-will-reach-50000-in-2018-says-founder-of-bitcoin-exchange.html
2018-12: ~~"Bitcoin could definitely see~~ ~~$50,000~~ ~~in 2018"~~, Jeet Singh, cryptocurrency portfolio manager, speaking in January 2018 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, https://www.dcforecasts.com/new-prediction-says-bitcoin-hit-50000-2018/
2018-12: ~~"Bitcoin will hit~~ ~~$100,000~~ ~~this year (2018)"~~, Kay Van-Petersen, an analyst at Saxo Bank, 17-Jan-2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/16/bitcoin-headed-to-100000-in-2018-analyst-who-forecast-2017-price-move.html
2018-12: ~~"Bitcoin price to surpass the~~ ~~$100,000~~ ~~mark by the end of 2018"~~, Tone Vays, 21-Sep-2017, https://www.ccn.com/prominent-bitcoin-trader-price-is-heading-towards-100000-in-2018/
2018-12: ~~"Bitcoin’s Price Will Surpass the~~ ~~$100,000~~ ~~Mark by the End of 2018"~~, Anonymous ("author" obviously too embarrassed to put his name to such bullshit "articles"), Oct-2018, https://investingpr.com/bitcoin-price-predictions-for-2018/
2018-12: ~~"Our [2018] year-end bitcoin target is~~ ~~$7700~~.", James Stefurak, Founder at Monarch Research. See article: "Experts Forecast Bitcoin will rise by 2019", REF: https://hackernoon.com/experts-forecast-bitcoin-will-rise-by-2019-f4af8807036b?gi=dfea3c30d6d8
2018-12: ~~"... we’ll see the price rally reaching its all-time of high of around~~ ~~$20K~~ ~~before the end of 2018"~~, Khaled Khorshid, Co-Founder at Treon ICO. See article: "Experts Forecast Bitcoin will rise by 2019", REF: https://hackernoon.com/experts-forecast-bitcoin-will-rise-by-2019-f4af8807036b?gi=dfea3c30d6d8
2018-12: ~~Bitcoin will end 2018 at the price point of~~ ~~$50,000~~, Ran Neuner, host of CNBC’s show Cryptotrader and the 28th most influential Blockchain insider according to Richtopia,https://www.bitcoinprice.com/predictions/
Plus a whole host of wrong 2019 predictions (could not be included here because of post character limit issues), so please see my earlier post from 4 days ago: Ummm, remember those "Expert" Bitcoin Price Predictions for 2019 ..... ohhhhh dear ....., https://www.reddit.com/Buttcoin/comments/eiqhq3/ummm_remember_those_expert_bitcoin_price/

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But it's NOT all bad news, some claims and promises are yet to be determined:

Never going below $3K again
Never going below $2K again
Never going below $1K again
Any others ? Please let me know.

To get an idea of the huge Bitcoin blackjack variety, it is worth mentioning that from the 5 online casinos mentioned above, BitStarz features 8 different games and 73 live tables, mBit has a surprising amount of 28 blackjack games and 97 live tables, Fortune Jack users can enjoy 57 blackjack games and join 10 live tables, Bitcasino players get ... 51% attack Bitcoin, rolling back the chain 2.5 hours, moving the contents of wallet A to wallet C. The attacker now has $4 million of Bitcoin in wallet C and $4 million of USDT The attacker in this scenario spent $6.5 million to get $8 million. Gavin Andresen. Gavin Andresen – Former chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation and lead developer of the core Bitcoin code wrote back in 2012 that miners on the network would “quickly figure out a rule or rules to reject” a 51% attack.. According to Andresen, a simple line of code could be added to Bitcoin that would stop a 51% attack in its tracks: This is because each Blockchain has its own way of building an address. Bitcoin wallet addresses start with a “1” whereas that of Litecoin starts with an “L.” Multi-signature wallet addresses are an exception to this rule, as Bitcoin and Litecoin multisig wallets often start with a “3.” trusted authorities. Bitcoin is a sort of financial cooperative or a distributed business. • based on self-interest: – a group of some 100 K people called bitcoin miners own the bitcoin “infrastructure” which has costed about 0.5-1 billion dollars (estimation) – they make money from newly created bitcoins and fees

Wasabi wallet - 3 First transactions

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How to 51% Attack Bitcoin - lacker.io

The importance of running your own node

Proposal: The Sia Foundation