BTC

Capital_Situation961

That is an important distinction, but in my case there wasn’t a long chain of innocent downstream recipients. I monitored the address holding my stolen BTC almost daily after the theft. The coins remained there for months. They did not move through multiple exchanges, swaps or counterparties. Then they moved from that address to Huobi. So the issue is not that blockchain investigators followed some vague trail through dozens of transactions and later labelled unrelated BTC as “mine.” The stolen BTC sat at the same address for months and were then transferred to Huobi, where investigators identified and reported them within hours. That is why Huobi’s response, or lack of one, became such a central part of the case.

PAINFULL_TRUTH_GIVER

You wont be able to retire of this. BTC won't magically jump to 1 million. If you bank your hopes on this you will live a miserable life.

BDCRA

I bought as much as I could in 2020 when it was around 4.5k. I pleaded and begged my friends to take out a loan and buy as much as they could because its for sure going to $15-20k. I also bought into RIOT for like some loose change a share I bought 600 shares. I ended up going through tough financial times and had to sell all of it I had no choice. A few years down the road BTC was 60k and RIOT was $66 a share. I had unrealized gains of 100k or so life changing money for me. Makes me so sad but I had to do what I had to do. I still have all the receipts from all this. I rubbed it in my friends face when BTC hit $100k I went back and found those messages and sent it to them we are close so it wasnt offensive but it was a good I told you so. If you go now and look at my Coinbase history from 2020 its like a horror movie on paper. All that being said I wish I had more money back then to this day I DCA but I only have 1.5k of BTC. Things could have been so different for me. I also was an early adopter but its all gone now lost to old hardware. My dad loved technology and he would always get the newest tech magazines I read about BTC back in 2009/2010 and though it was interesting. I always laughed at the idea that something worth fractions of a penny would ever be anything it was so confusing to read about as well I had no understanding of it. A few years later I would begin buying off the DNM we all know how much money we lost there...all this had to happen for it to be where it is today not everyone could get rich! As a father of twin 7 year old boys and a single father I am slowlly but surely DCA for our future.

filenotfounderror

If its possible to bypass a verfiication, illegaly or otherwise. You dont actually have any verification. sim swaps have been a thing since before BTC and protecting 140 BTC (even though it was worth probably a lot less when this happened) was ill advised from the start. That being said, im pretty surprised the authorities refused to do anything since this is probably the easiest method to trace and track a specific individual.

Capital_Situation961

I bought my BTC back in 2012 and held it for nine years. Over those years, that investment bought me a car, paid off my entire mortgage in one go, funded travel, and much more. And then I got sloppy. I knew perfectly well that you never share your seed phrase. I’d known that for years. And yet, in one stupid moment, I did exactly that. So I think your point is a good one: knowing about digital security doesn’t make you immune to making a mistake. Sometimes all it takes is one. Despite what happened, I had a lot of fun being part of Bitcoin from those early days, and I’m still a fan of BTC.

BuyIndependent2319

I had 50 BTC back in 2009 and I lost the private key for them. And never bought them back even in 2012 when I realized they were gone for good. Thank God you’re not insane like me. I tore a private key written down on paper in a thousand pieces back then because it was “bothering me that I mined some bitcoin”. At the same time I wanted to buy some but I didn’t. Why? It was easier for me not to, and to just forget about it. You have a working mind. That’s all I wish I had. Even though you’re going through all of this, just be thankful you can think coherently. That’s all I want, and this endless nightmare to stop. And the pacing.

RKrugel

HODL, if you sell them, you are going to be sorry IF BTC makes new all-time highs again.

bitusher

With a decentralized ledger its impossible to prevent spam so we can simply drive up costs . BIP110 tries to do so in a very ineffective and harmful manner that also breaks many monetary use cases of Bitcoin and encourages spammers to hide their spam more which has nasty consequences Here are 5 better solutions : 1) The best solution as I often promote is to spend and replace Bitcoin as money. This is best done on other layers like lightning that use much less blockspace, but the more people that open and close channels the higher the fees exist for spammers which will encourage them to use altcoins instead for their spam. Yes , more l2 txs reduce onchain use which is why a large focus should be on adoption overall to increase both L2 and onchain transactions concurrently. 2) The second best solution is education which I have been doing for many years where I inform people that nfts/inscriptions are scams and don't do what people claim they do and are a waste of time. Another important point of education is pointing out the fact that Bitcoin is not immutable as many spammers like to market to sell their product. 3) A third solution is we invest more in bitcoin and bitcoin adoption which raises the price of Bitcoin and since fees are priced in BTC onchain fees will grow as well pricing out spammers . 4) You can set your op_return filter to any setting you want even with corev30 or v31. My personal node is set below the default of knots . Although my pool node is best set to the default of core for better block propagation 5) Spam is just one aspect when the overall concern is efficient block usage. Core is constantly updating to insure better efficient use of Blockspace usage and reducing UTXO bloat in many ways. If you are not a developer you can also help when a company or service misuses the blockchain. Common examples: a) coinbase initially used 2 onchain txs for every withdrawal instead of 1 and also didnt use batching. We shamed them and used other exchanges until they corrected this behavior. b) Some exchanges today still don't use batching for withdrawals . Shame them and use better exchanges until they change c) Some exchanges still don't allow lightning withdrawals .Shame them and use better exchanges until they change d) consolidate your utxos and or batch txs where its appropriate . Use lightning or other l2 options as much as possible e) Shame any miner or company that uses or promotes spam and don't do business with them. Those are 5 quick solutions among many more that I actively am involved in. Suggesting solutions that don't work at all or have very harmful tradeoffs is not effective. This being said I completely support your right to enforce any rules you want on your node and even fork off. Power to the node operators. Just do so with your eyes open because BIP110 supporters and their leaders often are lying or making misleading statements .

OscarCorterz_20

I didn't even know BTC miners are of any use for AI... This is a bit concerning, no?

WillingCurrent3663

You don’t get it. The people who invest in $STRC don’t want Bitcoin and they don’t want amplified Bitcoin in $MSTR. They are fixed-income investors who hurt want a high yield. It’s the largest liquid capital pool in the world, which is why Saylor sells $STRC to that massive market to accumulate more capital to buy Bitcoin with. The people who buy $MSTR are the ones who believe in Bitcoin. And they buy $MSTR vs Bitcoin because they understand the mechanics and that it’s a leveraged play on Bitcoin that outperforms BTC in bull markets.

AvailableTie6834

to flex something, you have to show it, imagine showing that you own 1 BTC, an asset that can be stolen without the stealer being held accountable because of the nature of Bitcoin which can be transactioned without permission, and you literally flexing that you own that asset, seeking attention from the wrong people to you. Are you dumb, op?

BitterCommission3987

I sold some BTC at 16k, which I had bought when it was 6k. Do I regret it? Yes, but what was I supposed to do? If I could predict the market, I would have bought BTC back in 2010 and never sold. What matters to me is that I made a profit, and a big one at that, so there's no point in dwelling on what could have been.

Pasukaru0

I see it differently. I sleep much better with BTC that I know can't be drained because I took the time to properly secure it.

TheVillainInThisGame

Don't give people financial advice, ever. \- Guy who lost 12 BTC to VirWox "maintenance fees"

Slade_Duelyst

This isnt a great analogy, when you pay the fees for your transaction to go onchain you paid for some data to be put on chain, that has never changed, and with current 1sat/vbyte fees this is not a problem. Spam i s not a current issue, if it was we would probably have adopted BIP110. Problem with this analogy is bitcoin isnt being spammed, its a solution to a problem that does not exist. Game theory and BTC fees on the current model already are what you need to prevent the spam. It will always not be in the spammers best interest financially so if it happens it always will stop on its own.

Worldx22

To small of an investment to make a meaningful difference to be buying in pieces. Let's say BTC goes up to $300k. You get a 5x from current levels. Would that be life changing for you?

roamingandy

I would have thought some of the more obscure coins, privacy tokens, or new launches of shit coins, would be the best way to do that. BTC, ETH and USDT bribes are likely to be spotted.

OveHet

Not necessarily. One BTC could be someone's entire life savings. Otoh, someone who buys a $10k likely has far more in his bank account than just $50k or $60k

Fun-Analysis-182

Right, the fault line is what triggers the liquidation. A mortgage only forecloses on payment default, so the house can crater in value and you keep it as long as you pay. Most BTC loans liquidate on the collateral's value instead, a margin call that fires whether or not you're current. The mortgage-style version does exist, but only by starting at a low enough LTV that the lender can absorb the price swings, or by charging more for the privilege. So the immunity is buildable, it just isn't free, because someone still has to hold the volatility.

Oxymorix

There is one important part of the story that I think you are glossing over: **the time gap and the possibility of innocent downstream recipients.** You say the BTC were stolen in June 2021 and that *months later* they began arriving at Huobi. During that period, how many transactions, swaps, exchanges, or counterparties were involved? Blockchain tracing may establish that value can be traced back to your theft, but that does not necessarily establish that the person depositing BTC at Huobi was the thief, an accomplice, or even someone who knew the funds had previously been stolen. That distinction matters. Suppose the thief spent or exchanged the BTC and an innocent person later received some of that value in payment for goods or services. It would be problematic to simply say, “those BTC are still mine,” and expect that person to bear the loss. Transaction provenance and legal ownership are not necessarily the same thing, especially after multiple transfers or exchanges. I do think Huobi could reasonably have placed a **temporary hold** on the relevant account after receiving a credible criminal complaint and tracing evidence while the matter was investigated. But that is different from assuming that the funds in the Huobi account unquestionably belonged to you and should automatically have been returned. For me, the missing information is therefore crucial: **How much time passed? How many hops were there? Were there swaps or other exchanges in between? And was the Huobi account holder actually connected to the original theft?**Without those details, I think the claim that Huobi simply allowed “your BTC” to disappear is stronger than the evidence presented here necessarily supports.

Efficient_Range1156

You left bitcoin during the bear market because of a dodgy signing device manufacturer? 😂😂😂😭 Satoshi himself has locked up 1,000,000+ BTC for nearly two decades. You never had any bitcoin. Any one can secure their bitcoin with 100% certainty if they follow the correct steps.

Elsa_Holly551

Grifters will keep grifting. You can't do anything about it. It's just sad they can raise so much money for their grifts... I just saw Pomp reinvent his business again. He started it as a BTC treasury but when that didn't work he pivoted to an "AI lab" and is now posting charts how his chatgpt wrapper is better than chatgpt at finance... It's nuts out there

CheetahDazzling644

Right now we are using Shopify and it accepts only USDC not direct bitcoin. Are you annoyed if you have to switch your BTC to USDc to buy online? Or would you prefer to send BTC yourself?

Vandeskava

HTX is not responsible of paying you. Other than facilitating resale of the BTC they have nothing to do with you. Google is the very responsible of the matter. They let scam website and apps live on their platform.

vplatt

> I don't think you can keep your freedom and get protection from official governing bodies at the same time in this space. Well, to be fair, even in fiat systems, you'll never have protection from "official governing bodies". But at least there you'd have some protection from fraud under the oversight of those governing bodies and / or through the financial institutions acting in compliance with the requirements of those governing bodies. It's the completely unforgiving nature of crypto that has kept me out of BTC. Bitcoin custody is not forgiving of mistakes and even as an IT pro, I was never confident that I could successfully safeguard my investments. I knew about the cold wallets, pass phrases, etc. and having read all of that I knew eventually I would make a mistake somewhere and it would only take a single mistake to lose it all. It's not for nothing that financial institutions have 24-hour response teams to attacks, fraud locks, dispute procedures, insurance, and more. It's not just a question of convenience. Most individuals don't stand a chance over the long haul, IMO, when it comes to securely managing self-custody. I know that this is just useless hand-wringing to those of you that have this shit locked down properly, and I'm not saying it's impossible at all; but it's easily "difficult" and I would advise most people do not try self-custody at all. Most of us simply aren't as smart as we think.

zante2033

Mt Gox collapse = 850,000 BTC lost / $54 billion lost Coldcard hack = est 2k BTC / $128.1 million lost **Photonic/quantum brute force transaction intercepts estimate to begin occuring in 2029** Address re-use operation risk EST 4.9M BTC / $313 billion lost

Capital_Situation961

That’s a fair question, but I have never claimed that the person behind the Huobi account was necessarily the person who originally stole my Bitcoin. They could have been the thief, an accomplice, a money launderer, or someone further down the chain. Establishing that is precisely what an investigation is for. The important difference with your $20 example is that Bitcoin leaves a traceable public transaction history. Investigators could follow the stolen funds from my wallet through subsequent addresses and ultimately into identifiable Huobi deposit addresses. And again, I wasn’t asking Huobi to decide that its customer was guilty or to immediately give me that customer’s Bitcoin. They were warned while the traced proceeds of a reported theft were arriving. The request was to preserve those assets temporarily, preserve the KYC information identifying their customer, and cooperate with the investigation. If the Huobi customer was an innocent recipient who had legitimately received the BTC in exchange for goods or services, that could then have been established through due process. That is why “just go after the thief” sounds much simpler than it is. The blockchain can lead you to a centralized exchange, but only the exchange knows who is standing behind its deposit address.

antiswe

I do agree with your point, i really do. The only thing that is really different is that your BTC is probably long gone. That exchange has unlimited funds to fight against that order and probably don't even care because of different jurisdictions. (All assuming this) A house could be claimed back as it location doesn't change. I really hope you will manage to get those funds back, But I honestly wouldn't count on it!

Capital_Situation961

I’ll answer this misconception one last time. You’re conflating two completely different things: the irreversibility of a Bitcoin transaction and the responsibilities of a centralized exchange once BTC is deposited with it. I have never asked anyone to reverse a Bitcoin transaction, nor have I asked a government to alter the blockchain. Bitcoin worked exactly as intended. Nor am I arguing that an exchange should reimburse anyone whose stolen BTC happened to pass through it at some random point in history. My case is very different. Huobi was warned while specifically identified stolen BTC were arriving at addresses under its control. The warning was supported by a criminal complaint, screenshots and blockchain analysis from four separate specialist organisations. The request was to temporarily freeze those assets for investigation, not to rewrite the blockchain or immediately return them to me. Once BTC is deposited with a centralized exchange, that exchange controls whether its customer can withdraw or sell it. Exercising that control after receiving a credible theft report has nothing whatsoever to do with compromising Bitcoin’s decentralization. Bitcoin is decentralized. A centralized exchange, by definition, is not. That is the distinction. I’m not going to keep explaining it.

Capital_Situation961

Bitcoin did exactly what it was designed to do. I have never argued otherwise. The transactions were valid, irreversible and recorded permanently on a decentralized blockchain. But Huobi is not Bitcoin. It is a centralized exchange that takes custody of deposited BTC, identifies its customers through KYC and has the ability to freeze withdrawals. I’m not asking for Bitcoin to be reversible. I’m asking why a centralized custodian, after being warned that specifically identified stolen funds were arriving, allowed those funds to move on. There is no contradiction between believing in decentralized Bitcoin and holding a centralized intermediary accountable for what happens while assets are under its control.

Unable_Review3665

sure. BTC did what it is expected to do ... make IRREVERSIBLE transactions and document them in a ledger for the whole world to see. Nothing more, nothing less.

Capital_Situation961

I understand that perfectly well. Nobody was asking Huobi to stop or reverse a Bitcoin transaction on the blockchain. Obviously, they cannot do that. The issue starts when the BTC arrives at deposit addresses controlled by a centralized exchange. At that point, the exchange controls whether its customer can withdraw or sell those BTC. That is exactly why exchanges have compliance departments and can freeze accounts and assets when they receive credible reports that funds are stolen. Bitcoin is decentralized. Huobi isn’t.

Capital_Situation961

No. My BTC was in a hardware wallet, a Trezor, not on a CEX. I was tricked by a sophisticated phishing attack into entering my recovery seed into a fake Trezor page. The attackers used that seed to empty the wallet. The stolen BTC only reached a CEX later, when it was deposited into Huobi.

Capital_Situation961

No, I don’t think it is the exchange’s job to investigate backwards through every transaction and determine whether every person in the chain is innocent or guilty. But that isn’t what happened in my case. The exchange was specifically warned, while the stolen funds were arriving, that these particular BTC were proceeds of a reported theft. That warning was supported by a criminal complaint, screenshots and tracing by four separate blockchain analytics/investigation organisations. At that point, the question isn’t whether the exchange should decide that Z is a criminal. It is whether it should temporarily freeze the flagged funds, investigate its own customer and allow law enforcement and the courts to determine ownership. If Z genuinely received the BTC innocently for goods or services, that is precisely something an investigation can establish. Allowing the funds to leave despite the warning makes that determination impossible and the assets disappear.

Capital_Situation961

It wasn’t simply an unsupported tip from a private investigator. The freeze request was backed by a formal criminal complaint, screenshots and other evidence of the theft, as well as blockchain analysis from four separate specialist organisations all tracing the stolen funds. It was to alert the exchange in real time that funds identified as stolen were arriving there. I’m not suggesting that a private investigator has the legal authority to order an exchange to freeze assets. They obviously don’t. But there was more than enough documented evidence for the exchange to place a temporary hold on the funds while the matter was verified with law enforcement. That distinction is important: I wasn’t asking Huobi to hand the BTC back to me based on an investigator’s word. I was asking them not to let clearly flagged funds disappear while the evidence and criminal complaint could be examined.

Capital_Situation961

Put my BTC from paper wallet to Trezor years later

tenor_tymir

I’m just a guy stacking sats. What does BTC and pedos have in common. What?

Traditional_Most105

Well i think you're wrong. You either lost money in alts, or you gamble with no research based on hype. You can';t say all coins are memecoins. Memecoin is a coin with no real usage based on hype and no project or company behind it to back i up with a purpose. It has a community that hype it up with jokes and memes and if someone famous mentions it, it gains attention. On the other hand there are altcoins that have a company behind them that's developing, the token itself has usage in the network and it don't wait on hype but on real adoption by companies... Then the hype comes in.... There are many coins with strong and developing projects, with strong tokenomics and with their token used in the network. If the project gets adopted and the token is necessary within that network then it's demand will rise. Companies will buy more of that token increasing it's demand and if you're early on it with your research then you'll make money when the first people hype it up. Don't get me wrong. I did not experience a crypto cycle yet but i made sure to read and learn a lot... and what i learned is if the project has a purpose, if the token has a usage with strong tokenomics, if the project gets adopted by big companies and the token is needed then its demand will rise also and you'll make money... The hard part is identifying which coin that will be by researching. And if you do research is not guaranteed cause many factors could prevent if from succeeding like hacks, or anything that nobody can predicts but still it's better strategy than waiting for hype and speculation and fomo.... cause if we talk about uncertainty then btc and crypto market could disappear one day and be replaced by something else completely new. It's just BTC is the safest bet, ETH the second and if you do your research you might find the 3rd which might have higher upside but also higher risk....

Old-Committee944

Winning in court and still cant get your BTC back years later is crazy. On-chain tracking means nothing if nobody can actually enforce it 😬

Wrong_Bumblebee6992

u can send BTC to me if u dont like it

cubeeless

BTC to $400k!

BetterSeesaw

It is stolen or criminal BTC. Least the exchange could do is flag it or something

PirateHunterZoro252

Fidelity or River is good option in my opinion. Ive held 0.22 BTC in river for 2 years now. Never had an issue. Although I will say my password and email are exclusively for this use only. And i have 2 device with 2FA connected to river. The chances of me hetting hacked are low, but not 0. My password is somewhat strong and i do not have the password in an online password manager. I used Keepass XC, completely offline for that password. And i have this password manager file in 3 devices that can be used offline. I strickly avoid uploading the file on any cloud service. I hold about 80 percent of my BTC in self custody. It took me time to understand self custody. And the only thing i recommend is to generate your seed phrase completely offline via printing the 2048 bip39 wordlist on paper. Use Jade (blockstream) dice roll document or Bitbox diceroll document for the print out. Afterwards once you have generated 23 words your last word(24th word) is a checksum. There is only 8 possible words you can pick from so you need a hardware wallet to compute the last possible 8 words. The wallets that i know that can do this are Bitbox02 and the Jade wallet (made by blockstream). Self custody is indeed difficult and i would suggest you really study this in and out before you try it. Once you do decide to try it start with a relatively small amount like $5-$10. There are also other things you should know for self custody such as UTXO's, Network fees, & seedphrase security. Seedphrase security should also be on another level paranoia when it comes to protecting it. For example i do not have my seedphrase stored in any electronic device such as a computer, phone, or other internet connected device. My hardware wallet is the only thing that stores my seedphrase. You have to understand what this statement means. It is indeed possible to extract thw seedphrase from a hardware wallet. For example, the ledger CEO has said in one occasion that all that would be needed would be a firmware update on the ledger device or other hardware to extract the seedpgrase should they really want to.

spacetimeshare

Just one country has to accept it as payment. The purchasing country just has to make the payment on BTC. This could also help mitigate the resource curse many countries face and not inflate their local currency.

Always_working_hardd

Patiently waiting to replace my unforgettable past losses memories with BTC lambo.

69rambo69

But why would you suspect the exchange to freeze that BTC? You said it, it was an investigator warning the exchange. What are the blockchain investigator credentials so the exchange freezes the BTC? They are not a law enforcement, why would the exchange follow any tip coming from a blockchain investigator?

Capital_Situation961

That’s brutal. 140 BTC is an enormous loss, especially knowing there was even camera footage of the person who did it. I know how frustrating it is when you have evidence in front of you and still can’t get anyone to act on it. I’m glad you managed to get something meaningful out of the mobile provider in the end. I’ll definitely look up your case. I’d be very interested to read what happened.

Next-Ambassador9097

If an exchange gets credible proof that stolen BTC is being deposited, I think the bare minimum is to freeze or flag the funds and cooperate with investigators. The blockchain can preserve the evidenc but exchangs still have a responsibility when that trail reaches them.

Jeffmaster102

24.46 BTC?!!! Bruh that's roughly 4B in our currency

BlackSusss

Sucks. I had 140 BTC stolen through an unauthorized Sim swap also in 2021. Unfortunately I just had to settle out of court with my mobile provider for a fraction of the loss. They originally offered to settle for only like $3k. I got a lot more than that at least with a lot of back and forth. They allowed someone to perform the Sim swap at a retail store. Despite camera footage of the perpetrator, FBI IC3 agent refused to go after it. Can probably figure out my case by Google.

PuzzleheadedHuman

Ranking custody and liquidation mechanics above APR is the right instinct, and I'd add one split the thread is glossing: CeFi and DeFi fail differently, so "what matters" is a different checklist for each. For the CeFi names (Ledn, Arch, and so on) your list is correct and it's fundamentally a trust question - who holds the keys, rehypothecation, and their discretion on a margin call. You're right that the margin call is when you find out, and the tell is whether the terms are mechanical and written down or discretionary. For the DeFi option (Aave), there's no discretion to trust: liquidation is mechanical, "partial vs full" is set by the close factor (Aave liquidates up to 50% of the position per call, not all of it), and there's no rehypothecation because the collateral sits in the contract. The risk just moves - to whether liquidators can actually fill at the price you get liquidated at. On a violent BTC drop, if that liquidity isn't there the mechanism still fires and the slippage comes out of your pocket. That's a big part of what made Oct 10 so brutal. So the one thing I'd add to your stress-test: don't just model a 50-60% drawdown against your LTV, check whether there's real exit depth at that price, because a clean margin-call policy doesn't help if the book is empty when it triggers. Disclosure: I work on market data at Coinpaprika/DexPaprika, so the depth/liquidation side is my bias - and to be clear, the CeFi custody question that's your main worry is outside what I can measure, that part is counterparty due diligence. Copy

BetterSeesaw

I was suspecting the exchange to somehow freeze those BTC and give information to the authorities. Also wondering, after such drama, do you still believe in Bitcoin and are you still stacking?

illyusha

That's a mistake right there! Never try to get your BTC stolen, folks!

Patient-Jaguar-736

I mean, if you can prove that the BTC deposited into HTX was stolen and provide them with the necessary details and evidence, then I guess they should be able to look into it and potentially freeze or recover the funds. HTX has previously reported freezing stolen assets linked to external theft cases.

KudaTua

24 BTC ?!?! Sweet Jesus !

Efficient_Range1156

24 BTC x 0 op sec = O BTC

polymath_uk

In that case, just install (eg) the official BTC wallet software. Create a wallet with it. Generate a receive address. Sign up with any major exchange. Paste the receive address in the exchange when you buy the BTC, and you will receive the coins. Use a new receive address for every transaction. The funds will end up in the same wallet. 

WeCanTripleIt

Fidelity HODLs my BTC. I avoid all these headaches.

BlackSusss

I dont see the straight line up or down. It could do either. Straight line up to near infinite if a hyperinflation bubble pops. Wake up to 1BTC= 1 quadrillion $ type shit. USD dusted into Zimbabwe bucks.

UnderstandingAny8589

If you're considering decentralized platforms, here is the reality: * **Decentralized & No KYC:** It operates as open-source desktop software over Tor. It is fully non-custodial and highly private—no ID verification or central entity involved. * **Inconvenient to Use:** It has a steep learning curve compared to standard websites, requires downloading a desktop app, has lower liquidity, and requires you to already hold a small amount of BTC for security deposits and network fees. * **Risk of Account Freezes (Tainted Funds):** Because counterparties don't undergo KYC, trading **large amounts of fiat** via bank transfers carries a non-trivial risk. If you unknowingly receive funds linked to illicit activity or scams, your bank account could easily be flagged or frozen.

AAAdamKK

My brain: held BTC at $120k *Ha what an idiot*

eckstuhc

Your individual cost basis does not make BTC safer, ya knob.

Kie_ra

Dunno mate, I was up 6x my cost base at the 2025 peak. Can you elaborate how the stock market is safer and better? BTC just casually dipped 50% and I am still up a 3x?

DiamondHandDezo

This is sad, and I can't imagine how you feel, but this is exactly why I only trade BTC ETFs. I know it defeats the purpose of what Bitcoin stands for, but at the end of the day, we trade Bitcoin for the financial gain of it. At least most of us do

Ar0war

That is what usually happends to be honest. Not many people join first during a bear market, why would a person who never invested in BTC buy an asset that nobody talks about, and those who talk says it is dead Many people, maybe the majority of people buy during a bull market when the news are about "supercycle, btc to *insert price*". Then three things might happend: . The person accepts defeat and sell at loss during the bear. . Don't sell at a loss but don't buy the dip and "wait for it to pump to his entry point to sell" (those usually end up buying again during the bull market after euphoria hits again) . The person study bitcoin, understand how money works and what actually bitcoin is and therefore keeps buying the dip, and buy again lowing the average. I personally bought first during 2017 bull market at around 17k, then watched it dip to 4k (Corona times). I kept DCAing for years every week, and keep doing.

DontLook_Weirdo

100% - BTC is not meant for quick trades. Should never be considered as such. It's an index fund with severe shakes, it'll blow up but it's going to take you down with it first.

New-Plastic9879

No, not early, the easy money has been made. But Bitcoin is not yet mature either. I have changed my thinking a lot on this topic. I don’t believe Bitcoin will ever represent a significant share of global transactions, at least not in the lifetime of anyone now living. But BTC is still growing into its role as an alternative asset with unique risk/reward characteristics. and will slowly find its way into global asset allocations. This is the only kind of ‘adoption’ anyone can count on right now. It won’t result in massive returns like those early years, but it will likely result in returns competitive with other assets. You won’t get rich quick in Bitcoin anymore. But you can get rich slow.

rgnet1

Yeah, a "BTC mortgage" is completely useless unless it is immune from margin call. A house can go deeply underwater but no one can collect on you if you service the debt. Until a lender is willing to do that with BTC, nothing will change.

crimeo

How? Even if every single Russian retail investor invested in other coins moved 100% immediately to BTC/ETH, it would represent a shift of about 0.05% or something of all crypto investment

Legitimate_You_4730

I've been following the Coldcard situation pretty closely, and I also went through ERA Wallet's post about how they generate entropy. A few people were sharing it as the obvious answer to what happened, but I wanted to actually think through the argument instead of just nodding along. What bothers me most about the Coldcard incident isn't even the amount of money lost. It's how the failure happened. This wasn't phishing. It wasn't an exchange getting hacked. It wasn't someone storing their seed phrase in a Google Doc. The device did exactly what users expected it to do. It generated a seed, kept it on the device, never connected to the internet, and still produced a compromised wallet because of a firmware bug dating back to 2021 that caused it to fall back to a weaker software RNG instead of the hardware RNG. After three waves of drains, roughly 1,367 BTC are reportedly gone. That's the uncomfortable part for anyone who has ever felt completely safe because their funds were in cold storage. The whole promise of a hardware wallet is basically: your private key never leaves the device, so you're protected. But that only matters if the private key was generated properly in the first place. And that's an assumption most people never really question. A secure seed and a compromised seed can look exactly the same from the outside. Both can give you 24 perfectly normal-looking words. That's where I think ERA's approach gets interesting. Their basic argument is that you shouldn't put the entire security model behind one source of entropy. Instead, they combine two hardware RNGs from different manufacturers, using an STM32 chip alongside a NIST-certified secure element. Then there's the optional expert flow, which adds camera input, device movement and touchscreen input before everything is blended through SHA-512/256. The redundancy makes sense to me. If Coldcard taught us anything, it's that a silent failure in a single entropy source can become catastrophic. Having independently manufactured hardware generators means one failure doesn't automatically mean the entire entropy process is compromised. I also like the detail around user-generated entropy. ERA doesn't simply accept whatever input the user gives it. If someone barely shakes the device or leaves the camera pointed at a wall, the system can reject the input rather than pretending it added meaningful randomness. That's a small implementation detail, but it's the kind of thing I actually want to see. That said, I'm not ready to call the problem solved. ERA published this explanation immediately after a competitor suffered a major incident. That's exactly when I'd be paying more attention to the claims, not less. The chip-level claims can be checked independently. The implementation is harder. A well-designed entropy system on paper and a correctly implemented entropy system in production are two very different things. Coldcard is a pretty painful reminder of that. I'd also question how much value the "expert flow" really adds for the average user. Camera sweeps, shaking the device and scribbling on a touchscreen sound useful, but they're also more work. Most people will probably skip them. Which means the two-hardware-generator baseline has to be strong enough on its own. The extra entropy sources are only meaningful if people actually use them. So where do I land? I think the redundancy principle is absolutely the right lesson from the Coldcard incident. ERA's multi-source design is a legitimate response to the question of what happens when one entropy source silently fails. That's not just marketing fluff. It represents a different risk model from relying on a single source. But there's still a gap between "this architecture makes sense" and "this architecture has been independently proven to work." I'd want to see third-party audits, reproducible entropy testing, and eventually the NIST test-suite results ERA has teased. Until then, I'd call it promising rather than solved. Trust, but verify. And that standard should apply equally to every hardware wallet maker, including the ones currently benefiting from someone else's bad week.

Odd_Sir_8705

Pretend BTC was a notebook and people initially used it to track money. And them some people decided to turn it into a hard drive. BIP-110 was ppl saying cut the shit and use it for the money only. This is how my kid explained it to me

b0urb0n

Only BTC

Odd_Sir_8705

Agreed. But you will have people claiming that he's selling the $12k BTC from 2020 and "profiting" $40k a coin and none of that exquisite BTC he bought for $120k and losing $60k a coin...

Soggy-Tutor9366

Well.. I remember selling my BTC at $1k... to pay debts.. and now I'm still in debt.. so I was like, "if I only I hold onto it, probably now, I'm debt-free"

PeaceAgitated1978

Exactly. Nice resume. All we shall look at is, first before anything else, does they plan to print money to debase the national debt. Yes. Then when? Then is the legislations, laws, support from Big money, clarity act is something.. but even without it. We still go up like moonshot if the last correction hit the reset has they wishes. Recovery will be spectacular. Can't happen without a finale. One last fireworks. And how they time it. With the flood's gates of newly minted stablescoin and $$.. is the true how fast will the recovery be. Just wait and see. Macro economics is financing BTC rise.. nothing else. That last cycle was lame because of how adoption been. And because not the same players were in the arena.. ETF and MSTR, versus gamblers over leveraged.. whales has been made in 2021.. now they ain't acting the same. They adapted to who is the biggest fish in the ponds. And it's not them, for most of them. 800 000 BTC all to one single entity. The same for ETF. Even bigger if you group them .. ok, it's just 20% of the 21 millions total supply. But don't forget the 4 millions BTC that never have moved and are estimated lost. Market volatility adapted .. these big entities are feeling bigger since we got some deads account loaded. In % of the whole. They understood that years ago. They control and manipulate BTC. Just by a lack of organization on our side. We totally still can GameStop the chart against them 🤣 only most of us don't share the same language.

Upset-Guard383827

For an open-source, privacy-focused service, I’d focus on Bitcoin-native directories like BTC Map and Cryptwerk, plus relevant communities. Also worth getting your story in front of crypto-native readers through independent outlets like Coin24.news — discovery matters as much as the listing itself.

FingerSerious

Given you work in Crypto. Why not get your employer to pay you partly in BTC ?

Any_Upstairs_6172

Hello... My understanding, after talking to a professional, is that in America BTC is property so as someone suggested... no wash sale...

jgarcya

Study the four year cycle of Bitcoin by Bob loukas...on YouTube. It will rebound .. when you buy the top it takes about three years to break even.. But it will get a new all time high... Like every four year cycle prior. Bob loukas turned 100k into millions... And shares his portfolio. He's a genius that I owe all my BTC success. Best wishes.

TheAudacityofHopium

I've been a BTC enthusiast for a couple of years now. I've honestly never seen anything as devastating as the Coldcard hack. I'm angry and sorry for all of the people who trusted Coinkite and lost everything. However, even now, as bad as it has been recently, I'd say that self custody is still the answer. Your chances (historically) of losing everything to an exchange because you decided not to self custody are still extremely high. We've seen too many big companies fail....Mt. Gox, Celsius, FTX, etc. The way I see it: if you self custody, your chances of making it are still much higher than if you let an exchange hodl your coin for you. It's rough, but you have to try your best, because an exchange at the end of the day is still worse by a long shot. Again, I'm really sad about the hack, but that's part of what big governments like North Korea and China want you to do: stop self custodying and give it to companies from which the bitcoin can ultimately be seized.

Acceptable_Piano4809

There’s never gonna be a top in BTC in our lifetimes

crimeo

BTC literally does nothing useful other than enable scams. The sole seemingly useful thing I've ever seen argued for it is "corrupt central American etc countries can use it instead of their own currency or the USD to avoid hyper inflation and also not allow the Americans to rob them by printing money and only spending it on themselves, diluting your currency" But there's no actual way of implementing that in reality, even, without giving the dictator or his cronies the keys to the crypto = he just rug pulls the country = scam again

tripsy420ish

Someone will say this, so why not me. Not your keys, not your coins. But that aside, I empathize with your skepticism of personal hardware wallets and the implications of self custody. But you can't just wing it if you have substantial value stored as BTC. This is ultimately tech based solution and knowledge about the tech is all that matters. If you become knowledgeable enough: - A, you will clearly understand that there are ways to secure your funds even when using untrusted wallets - B, you will gain confidence to self custody and be ready to deal with life situations as they come.

Upset-Guard383827

Given the Celsius/BlockFi history, I’d rank collateral architecture and liquidation mechanics above APR. A 10% loan with clean custody and predictable partial liquidation can be safer than a 7% loan with opaque collateral reuse. I’d also stress-test the position at a 50–60% BTC drawdown before borrowing anything. The ugly weekend is when the real terms matter.

crimeo

> The amount economically extractable from that does not automatically double because BTC’s market cap doubles. Of course it does. The more blocks are on the chain while you control it, and the more volume of coins in those blocks, and the more customers involved, the directly larger the volume of tokens you can double spend or people you can make side deals with. * You can't double spend anything unless someone is actually normally doing business in that amount and accepting crypto for stuff. Therefore the more people are doing business and the more is normally flowing, the more you can double spend. Completely linearly. * Other methods of extracting value also scale perfectly linearly. Like extortion for blacklisting people from blocks. If 10% of people on average are of the personality type and/or financial situation, and have enough interest in the blockchain, to be successfully intimidated into paying protection money or whatever you call it to not be blacklisted, then when the total number of users is 2x, that 10% of successful and motivated extortion targets is 2x larger * Same goes for taking money from censorship advocates to silence their enemies. If the whole economy is 2x larger, then there will be 2x more such people ethically willing and financially able to pay the asked price for censoring others, so you can profit 2x from that. > An attack itself destroys the value/liquidity you are trying to extract. Based on what do you believe this? if everyone's using some coin for the whole economy, they can't just switch suddenly. It's baked into the infrastructure. They have no choice. They will maybe in months down the line when legislation and institutions have time to slowly adjust, but you will have been making out like a bandit the whole time. > it also means security, governance power and capital ownership are more tightly coupled. Nope. You're not wrong that governance power is tightly linked to security, but you're completely wrong that it's even 1% "more so" than in PoW. Those two things are exactly as tightly linked (as in: both quite tightly) in PoW and PoS. Governance in PoW is directly tied to hash power, because whether everyone moves over to a new protocol or whether anyone can threaten an attack if you don't do what they want, is directly tied to how many ASICs that bloc of people has control of. Which is... hash power. Which is security. 100% coupled. Yeah it also is in PoS, but so what? Nothing new. Nothing different. Both cases it's also 100% synonymous with capital ownership. Hash power is pretty much 1:1 with how many modern ASICs and kWh you have, which is your capital ownership. Again, PoS that's also true, sure, but no more so. They're both just the same in all of those respects, but one uses 2,000x less power for no actual drawbacks whatsoever. Pretty much any sentence you can write about "stake", you can just swap out "ASICs" for PoW, and the sentence will remain true. With the exception of itf you're talking about energy and pollution.

nassauboy9

Only 2 things sell. This is for any product, idea ... anything 1. SEX (directly or alluding to it, appealing to desire to have) 2. FEAR (if you don't have it or do it ... the pain could be too great) When in my corporate job, and want a PO signed ... approach with one of these two principles. Same with BTC (its no different)

Romanizer

The “linear” part is the assumption doing all the work here. A 51% attacker does not crack a safe containing some percentage of Bitcoin’s market cap. They gain temporary control over block ordering: censorship, reorgs and potentially double-spending their own payments. The amount economically extractable from that does not automatically double because BTC’s market cap doubles. It usually is zero. There is no incentive for an attack. An attack itself destroys the value/liquidity you are trying to extract. PoW anchors consensus to an external resource that cannot be created inside the system: specialized hardware, energy and physical infrastructure. PoS anchors consensus to ownership of the system’s own native asset. That is vastly more energy-efficient, but it also means security, governance power and capital ownership are more tightly coupled. So the trade-off is structural: PoW buys external, physically costly security at the price of energy consumption; PoS buys efficiency by making the asset itself the security resource and accepting more dependence on stake distribution, validator economics and social coordination in exceptional cases. Combined with the fact that every PoS coin has a central committee or company, it makes it unsuitable for Cryptocurrency. I mean, what's your opinion on this: why has PoS failed in general?

bjm3384

You can put the $3k for better use by mining BTC and then holding those profits. Essentially the $3k will pay for the BTC and a lot more https://gomining.com/?ref=MINEWITHPURPLE

Bulky-Technician-979

No, I never played there. That address appeared much later in the transaction chain, after the BTC had already been mixed with many other funds. I mentioned it only as part of the trail, not as proof that the casino was involved in the theft.

juniperbit

Strike or River App to buy BTC. You’ll need your ID. After 1k valued in BTC I recommend you move your funds to a cold wallet, Bitkey or Ledger, you can buy it on Amazon

AromaKachu

Probably more infrastructure around actually using BTC, not just holding it. We’re still pretty early when it comes to areas like lending, yield, and other financial applications built around native BTC.

Swimnbud

Honest question, I have a fair amount of BTC in BlueWallet. What do the techies in the chat think of that for security?

AromaKachu

I like that distinction. “Early” doesn’t necessarily mean cheap anymore, it can also mean early in terms of global adoption and utility. BTC still has plenty of room to find new roles in finance, like native staking, collateral, lending, and other ways to generate value from BTC...

uuewy

although, if enough people believe the cycle is broken, it will actually break. my guess is the swings will dimish over time as long-term appreciation becomes more widely recognized. eventually, most people won't event bother trying to time it. bitcoin will become a safe and boring inflation hedge, and all other asset valuations will be in terms of BTC.

offline212

After 2 missed cycles I learned my lesson and will only invest in BTC in this cycle. 2025 was a eye opener. I don't think there will be a run like 2021 anymore, because there are to many alts. In 2017,2021, you had a few thousand alts, but now there are millions. I can be wrong offcourse, but I can't afford to lose so much money every cycle, so only BTC now. I prefer a 3x then just gamble and being broke for another 4 years.

quintavious_danilo

If you absolutely have to invest in alts, look at some of the more stable coins like BNB, TRX, MKR (SKY) and HYPE. They basically all weather the current bear market pretty strong and are not 80-99% from ATH, like so many other alts. TRX didn’t even have a bear market, which shows incredible strength. Imagine what it can do once BTC goes into bull mode again.

AromaKachu

If these products are mostly built for whales and institutions, there’s still a lot of room to make BTC yield and lending more accessible to regular holders and institutions too. I’ll take a closer look once the one I mentioned actually launches.

zampe

Not everything is a conspiracy. Its more that we are now 5 years out from crypto blowing up in the mainstream and having every opportunity to prove itself useful and valuable and it failed. Now we just have the remaining cult members unwilling to move on. Im still holding onto some BTC but not holding my breath for anything interesting to happen.

Gangaman666

Shitcoins definitely are, I hate them. But BTC isn't.

iloverunning11

Nope you will have many speculators as long as crypto is a novelty (will be the case for at least a century) so BTC will definitely not go to 0 (most altcoins will though) and this does not mean there is any real value because there is none. Even real transactions are peanuts and only a little part of the overall volume (real transactions are e.g. products bought for BTC in El Salvador and transfer of BTC to family members or friends etc. who can’t accept fiat)