Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies

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Mario Speedwagon

Mario Speedwagon

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Seananigans said:
Anyone have a suggestion on best wallet/whatever for self ownership of BTC? I don't really know how all that shit works.
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I bought an ellipal a couple years back. The device itself is good but I should done more research first because the company behind is some weird chink operation and cs is basically non-existent.
 
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Seananigans

Seananigans

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Mario Speedwagon said:
I bought an ellipal a couple years back. The device itself is good but I should done more research first because the company behind is some weird chink operation and cs is basically non-existent.
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Yeah my primary concern is security. Apparently a lot of this shit is owned or infiltrated heavily by intelligence agencies and such. Ideally I'd like something that has the least likelihood of that, I'd prioritize that over ease of use even.
 
Mario Speedwagon

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Seananigans said:
Yeah my primary concern is security. Apparently a lot of this shit is owned or infiltrated heavily by intelligence agencies and such. Ideally I'd like something that has the least likelihood of that, I'd prioritize that over ease of use even.
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It seems good enough to me. It’s completely offline and it has no external ports. A magnetic dongle is needed to charge it or insert an sd card to update it. The only thing that pissed me off about it is a little while after I bought it, they discontinued support for whatever style of wallet or something I don’t entirely remember and I had to update the firmware and then send all my coins from the old wallet to the new wallet, losing transaction fees on the way. There was no way to continue using the old wallet and CS was zero help. Other than that, I pull it out once in a while to send more coins to it and just stays in a safe 99% of the time.

I don’t know if entirely recommend it but I’m not unhappy with it. I remember I didn’t want a trezor or a ledger at the time but I can’t remember what those reasons were. Maybe there is better stuff out there now.
 
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Seananigans

Seananigans

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Mario Speedwagon said:
It seems good enough to me. It’s completely offline and it has no external ports. A magnetic dongle is needed to charge it or insert an sd card to update it. The only thing that pissed me off about it is a little while after I bought it, they discontinued support for whatever style of wallet or something I don’t entirely remember and I had to update the firmware and then send all my coins from the old wallet to the new wallet, losing transaction fees on the way. There was no way to continue using the old wallet and CS was zero help. Other than that, I pull it out once in a while to send more coins to it and just stays in a safe 99% of the time.

I don’t know if entirely recommend it but I’m not unhappy with it. I remember I didn’t want a trezor or a ledger at the time but I can’t remember what those reasons were. Maybe there is better stuff out there now.
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So what's the reason you keep it in a safe? If someone had it in hand, they could transfer your coins out of your wallet, without needing a password of some sort?

Also is there any way to acquire bitcoin without transaction fees, or are they pretty much a given?
 
Mario Speedwagon

Mario Speedwagon

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Seananigans said:
So what's the reason you keep it in a safe? If someone had it in hand, they could transfer your coins out of your wallet, without needing a password of some sort?

Also is there any way to acquire bitcoin without transaction fees, or are they pretty much a given?
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It’s not really necessary but I have one so why not put it in there. The only thing that could be done with just the device is sending coins to it. To withdraw, a paired device with the companion app logged into is required.

Transaction fees are on every transaction. They usually aren’t that bad if you aren’t looking to jump the line and transact immediately.
 
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Flobee

Flobee

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Seananigans said:
Thanks! Any idea how recently?
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Below should get you rolling. Note that SamouriWallet owners got hit recently for "money laundering" due to their coinjoin implementation so their software is, so far as I know, not currently getting updated.

For any wallet if someone has physical access to the signing device (phone with wallet software, or hardware itself like a ColdCard/Trezor) they can likely create a transaction as that device holds the private key for the transaction. Some devices are more physically secure than others, if this is a concern I would suggest ColdCard. They're likely the most costly, but by far have the most security features.

Let me know if you have more specific questions as I just dug up the below quickly and it may be missing some context
Flobee said:
Bitcoin only. Everything else is a scam. Others disagree and I'm sure they'll swoop in you shill their garbage to you, if you go down that path then good luck.

As far as wallets it depends what you're trying to do. I'll go through these is ascending order of how I would suggest.

  1. If you want something brainless and don't care about holding it in custody yourself something like CashApp or Strike will get the job done.
  2. Next is mobile wallets, with these you're holding they keys yourself in what is called a "hot wallet" which just means its always on an internet connected device. BlueWallet, AquaWallet, or something like SamouriWallet.
  3. Desktop wallets are IMO a bit better than mobile wallets but still considered hot wallets though. I prefer Sparrow but Specter is alright.
  4. Finally you have Hardware wallets, these are called "cold storage" because they're never connected to the internet. Examples are ColdCard, SeedSigner, and if you insist on 💩coining Trezor is probably your best bet.

There are plenty of other options and there are features that not every wallet here supports. Samouri and Sparrow support mixing, Aqua, BlueWallet, Strike and Cashapp are probably the only ones here that support Lightning natively, etc. If you're just looking to store a couple hundred bucks and want custody grab a mobile wallet. If you're holding real money though I would suggest spending on a hardware wallet and learning how to use it properly.

If you have any questions I'll try to help. As @Araysar mentioned there is a lot of complexity and it can be overwhelming. The basics are easy though. If I had to narrow the above down I would say just do Blue Wallet. Its simple and has support for most of the stuff you'll want to do.
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I have a couple posts on this page that would be relevant too
Flobee said:
Easiest way is probably just downloading a wallet and creating an address to send it to. I'd recommend Sparrow Bitcoin Wallet for PC or something like Muun - Bitcoin Wallet or Blockstream Green: Simple and secure Bitcoin wallet for mobile. If holding long term and its a decent amount of coin (I'd say $1500+) I would consider a hardware wallet a good investment but probably not relevant here.

If you want something to hold 💩coins too you'll have to get a suggestion from someone else
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Flobee said:
So a wallet can represent both 'cold' storage and I guess 'warm' storage. The temperature is just relating to the wallet signing keys exposure to the internet. A cold wallet is a signing device that is never connected to the internet, the keys live on a hardware device (or even laptop without wifi connected) that has to be engaged with to spend from that address. For example if you wanted to send coin from a cold wallet then you'd need to sign the transaction on that hardware device then send the signature to software that would send the transaction to the blockchain for inclusion in a block.

A warm wallet is simply a software wallet. In this case the 'signing device' for transactions lives in the same software that sends the transaction to the blockchain. The keys for the wallet are generated by the wallet. Most wallet software can create warm wallets as well as cold wallets where the keys are generated outside of the software.

Generally speaking 'warm' wallets are considered less secure but more convenient. Warm wallets are for 'spending money like what you'd carry on you, cold wallets are for long term storage.
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Flobee said:
So if you're trying to take this and turn it into USD you're going to have trouble with KYC regulation wherever your touchpoint is with USD rails. If you hopped the BTC from the gambling wallet, to your own wallet, then to an exchange wallet you're probably going to be fine 99% of the time but obviously going to get hit with capital gains and you'd, legally, have to claim it from $0 to whatever current value is.

There are obviously issues with even the above being the most "legal" because you're not obfuscating your connection to the gambling site at all (easily going to connect you personally to that site via chain surveillance and the KYC regulation required by the exchange) which could get you in trouble. You can deal with this a number of ways. You could run your winnings through a mixer (Samourai Wallet) this would break the ownership heuristics used by chain surveillance and would likely avoid any connection to the gambling site, but does take some technical knowledge to do properly, and you're still on the hook for taxes.

Your other option is selling it peer to peer. There are a lot of ways to do this but the best way I'm aware of that requires no personal relationships is Bisq - A decentralized bitcoin exchange network. This is a P2P trading platform where you can use things like paypal, Strike, Venmo, etc to send cash in exchange for Bitcoin. There are some technical hurdles here too, but not too bad, and obviously if you're not paying your taxes here you face the same sort of issues you would for selling something on Facebook marketplace and not claiming in the income.

Obviously you could also just find someone who wants Bitcoin and is willing to send you cash

You could do it a few other ways too but the above are probably the most straight forward with varying levels of legal risk. None of this is illegal right now (Assuming you claim the income and pay the taxes of course) but they provide increasing levels of personal privacy in the transaction. Hope that helps.

NOTE: 'You' here being the hypothetical person transferring money from shady places
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Arden

Arden

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Mist said:
Well, ETH is on sale. Great time for me to not be holding any.
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Haven't bought anything crypto related since the BTC ETF launch, but will probably dip my toe in FETH tomorrow. Blazin's recent post makes me a little nervous this could be more than a slight dip, so I'm going to go fairly light.
 
Arden

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GTvOciyboAA-6f6 - Copy.png
 
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Flobee

Flobee

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So the Bitcoin conference had a lot of wild stuff happen. Trump and Kennedy both gave pretty pro-Bitcoin speeches, with Trump announcing plans to halt US government selling of BTC and making it a reserve asset. Its fairly clear that the politicians are pivoting on Bitcoin, but why? Because its the only way to save the USD! This whole plan is pretty anti-Bitcoin ethos IMO but its clearly in the works. I'll link some videos below if you want to learn more but the short and dirty version is:

  1. US Debt requires issuing additional bonds (borrowing) to pay it back. This is inflationary
  2. Nobody wants to buy US bonds because they're obviously insolvent
  3. Over the last few years US Gov has wrested control of Tether and Tether now holds at least $90b in treasuries.
  4. US needs buyers, stablecoins represent unlimited worldwide buyers on rails that can be accessed by EVERYONE
  5. Bitcoin bills in US will require stablecoin issuers to back all stablecoins w/ bonds/treasuries
Essentially USD has found a method to switch from the petro-dollar system to the Bitcoin-dollar system. Setting aside the question as to whether this is good or not, what it does mean is Bitcoin number go up bigly. Probably explaining this poorly and missing some important context but feel free to dig in yourself. Plenty of folks talking about it.







 
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Arden

Arden

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Trump and Kennedy want the support/money of the crypto bloc. That's all they are pivoting toward at the moment- money. Harris's campaign even reached out to major crypto players asking for a "reset" of relations.

That said, it's a pretty clear sign that crypto is at least on the political radar in a way it never has been before, which is a step in the right direction. Like any promises made by politicians, I'll believe they are pivoting towards crypto when I see actual pro-crypto policy/legislation. Until then, it's a political money grab like anything else. Or, in the words of Trump at the conference:

"you all have a good time with your Bitcoin and your crypto and everything else, that you are playing with"
 
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Flobee

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An article on the bitcoin dollar topic, more details and written rather than video. Worth the read if you don't understand what I'm talking about


This isn't pro-crypto its progovernment power using crypto as a tool.

How can we continue to keep up demand for the dollar while still pumping the money supply to pay off our compounding debts?…By creating an infrastructural on-ramp to Satoshi’s protocol that is denominated in dollars, in effect, we have recreated the same, ever-present demand for an inflating supply of dollars demonstrated in the petrodollar system. By expanding the Tether market cap to [$115 billion] during the first dozen-or-so years of Bitcoin’s life, when [94%] of total supply was issued, the U.S. market made sure the value being imbued into the now-disinflationary protocol would forever be symbiotically related to the dollar system…

Tether isn’t simply “tethering” the dollar to bitcoin, but permanently linking the new global, permissionless energy market to the United States’ monetary policy. We have recreated the petrodollar mechanisms that allow a retention of net purchasing power for the U.S. economy despite monetary base expansion.
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Seananigans

Seananigans

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Flobee said:
In a situation like this BTC is just usually moving faster than the rest of the market. I suspect we'll see more dumping in traditional markets tomorrow.

That's been my experience at least
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It's also been in the same 55-70k channel for months, so it's nothing new.
 
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