ISP

SeemedGood

Just as AOL’s insistence on running a proprietary closed access system distributed via mailed CD-ROMs didn’t “affect consensus at all” and was considered a “serviceable nuance” when compared to having a direct connection to an ISP and using Netscape Navigator in 1997. Consensus was that AOL would own the internet…

Decent-Vermicelli232

This is false. You are correct that most cryptos, and Bitcoin especially, would become useless, but energy efficient CPU mining would continue off grid. Phones and the wallet software could easily be charged by solar. There are certainty small scale monero miners and node operators that can can continue to function in grid down situations. I am one of them! In a grid down situation, my node and most efficient miner automatically switch over to battery back up power which is supplied by a solar array. My networking equipment is also on battery backup and my internet continues to function. In case my local ISP has a failure, internet connectivity continues with starlink! As for bitcoin being functional for any substantial grid down situation, good luck with that.

GkyIuR

C'mon really? I meant major intelligence units . Money can find you everything, pay the people who managed the forums/socials where he posted, pay the people managing eventual proxy servers he used, get his IP, pay the people working at his ISP to find out which user had that IP in a certain time frame etc. It's not really that hard if you have funds to burn.

IQtek

Silly wabbit, Trix are for kids! Bitcoin is here to stay, if electricity goes out temporarily, the Blockchain will just continue from the block it left off on, and internet from ISP's isn't required, let alone wifi, just two nodes that are connected to each other are required, it's decentralized, always remember that

McBurger

All domain names are registered through a pseudo-public-private organization called ICANN. Registrars (like GoDaddy or Namecheap etc) pay ICANN a fee of some $180,000 annually for the right to register domain names, reselling them as per protocol to hopefully turn a profit. ICANN is based in California and regulates what top-level domains exist, and controls who can register them. .eu, .mil, .edu, etc they are responsible for this. Your DNS provider (often your ISP, or anyone else with a DNS server) is responsible for routing domain name records to their appropriate IP addresses of their servers. As you can imagine, other nations aren’t always so wild on the idea that a US-based semi-private organization is responsible for all domain names in their entire country’s economy. There are many, many examples of the US govt seizing domain names from piracy websites or illegal content. Theoretically, the US government could force ICANN to delist all .ru domains, for example, to really fuck with all Russian websites, email addresses, and their economy, if they wanted. The US could do this to any company, any nation, any domain name in the world if they wanted, outside of nations like China that have their own internet. Even your normal DNS provider could just choose to blacklist domain names. So far to date, they generally don’t, but the ideology of crypto says they shouldn’t even have the *ability* to. For example, spectrum internet could change a simple record to redirect all traffic on their network intended for starlink.com to go to spectrum.com instead. Anyway this is all stuff that namecoin’s blockchain aimed to fix. A decentralized system with no central authority. No possibility for censorship. You spend namecoins to register a domain, it’s on the blockchain, no one can take it from you, and no one can dispute where that domain names points to. The NMC you spend goes as a block reward to miners. It was all a really, really good use case of blockchain for a system that needs fixing.

RosieDear

I'm like a normal investor - other than I have been at it for 40 years. So, how do I feel about bitcoin and crypto? I'd limit my feeling to Bitcoin only because I think (actually I know) 99% of the 20,000 coins and tokens issued are scams. I surely don't begrudge anyone who was the lottery winner in Bitcoin. I had fund - made maybe enough to buy two cars (or one very fancy car). I still own a tiny sliver and maybe some in a Fidelity ETF. Down on Bitcoin investors? No way....but I am a person of statistics, risks, experience and so on. A local guy whose dad was one of the first ISP's in the area had bought 250 BTC at $12. - unfortunately he sold them at $50 so his son was working in a car dealership! The folks who have lost their BTC are many.....that is, who lost their seeds or their wallets....including some who lost 100's of millions. If we add it all together it's a lot.... Anyone who carefully studies BTC can see that it never became the Promised Land. Vastly more is used for "bad" things...not that I care about drug purchases, etc. but surely it's being used for international terrorism and Russian disinformation payments and so on. Human Nature says it can never be anything other than that. No "community". No "Bros". Just Greed and "freedom" to be only semi-regulated. The amount of BTC (and especially other crypto) is tiny.....a joke. I did worry at one time that too much value would dilute fiat money....I think that is a valid discussion. You cannot create value from thin air and have it not dilute.... Anyway, I think your theory that FOMO drives non-crypto folks is wrong. Most people are risk averse - which is a good thing in investing.

EndTheFed90210

I recommend buying your own rig. Much cheaper. I went on eBay and bought an HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini with an i5 6th gen quad core 3.2Ghz. Came with 8GB ram and no disk or power supply for $55. I added 8GB of RAM ($12), bought a power supply ($13), new cooling fan ($13), and used a 2TB sata ssd I already had. It runs fantastic. I do Bitcoin Node, Electrs, mempool, and Pi-Hole for DNS level add filtering. I generated my own SSL cert, opened some port forwards, use nginx reverse proxy and UFW firewall, and got a free DNS name from changeip and attached it to my ISP router. I'm able to connect apps like BlueWallet on iPhone and Sparrow Wallet on Windows PC to my own node for broadcasting transactions, and it's all secured with SSL certs and TLS 1.2/1.3. It's a bit complicated to setup, but RaspiBlitz has good guides on how to set this part up. Since Umbrel runs in a docker container, anytime I get an update, it wipes out the reverse proxy, firewall, and ssl cert. But it only takes me 10 minutes to set it up again after an update. Since I generate my own SSL certs, I consider this a safe method, because I generate a new cert key each time Umbrel is updated. If what I just typed has your head spinning, you may want to buy the premade node from Umbrel. I'm able to do this method because I'm an IT and network admin. Most people would struggle to do this on their own, and reinstalling all proxies, firewalls, and certs after an update may be a headache you don't want to deal with.

AtomicUnity

All your "points" are destroyed by the simple fact that Bitcoin is a negative sum game in which the hardware and energy costs far outweigh and perceived benefits. There is no permissionless usage of the Internet. Bitcoin requires usage of centralized ISP's. Bitcoin mining is consolidated to a select few billionaire corps. The work being done by miners is arbitrary and makes it negative sum. Bitcoin is a lottery ticket as far as we know. No one actually uses it. No one wants it. No one needs it.

SmoothGoing

Has nothing to do with the government. It's a secure signing device. Completely legal (in most places). Owning it doesn't mean you have a ton of bitcoin, or even any bitcoin. Could have been just a gift for someone else. And even if you do have 0.002 BTC no one cares. Your ISP already knows you're on this sub too.

Common_Consideration

What people actually don't understand is that decentralization isn't one singular thing you are or aren't. It's a broad range of dirrerent things of varying importance, where you can rank it from 0-100.  Yes, hashrate and nodes are very decentralized.  Mining pools are very centralized.  ASIC Production is incredibly centralized.  Internet/ISP connectivity is probably somewhere in the middle. Stake centralization/Coin concentration is going up. 

GrImPiL_Sama

>but the moment banks interact with BTC, you’re selling it… for land? There's a difference between interacting with it and creating a packaged bond out of it. Because then it will become like housing bonds with no real value behind it. And it will sooner or later pop. >Try not paying property taxes and see who really owns it. Lol. Try not paying taxes on your bitcoin etf profits. >You think farms are independent? Try running a farm without government permits, regulated water access, and fiat-based supply chains. We already have lands. And the world runs on fiat. Try doing groceries with your bitcoin etfs. >You think Bitcoin stops being permissionless just because banks offer it? That’s like saying the internet stops being free because your ISP provides access. The real value of bitcoin comes from it's decentralized network. Not the bitcoin itself. When banks start handling the bitcoin they will pump the price of coins by overvaluation. And then one day the market will crash. Seems like people still didn't learn from housing market crash and what caused it. Here's a spoiler 'Speculation' & 'Overvaluation'.

sks143

So let me get this straight… You’re stacking Bitcoin because it’s an alternative to bank controlled assets, but the moment banks interact with BTC, you’re selling it… for land? You think banks don’t control land? Try not paying property taxes and see who really owns it. You think farms are independent? Try running a farm without government permits, regulated water access, and fiat-based supply chains. You think Bitcoin stops being permissionless just because banks offer it? That’s like saying the internet stops being free because your ISP provides access. Bitcoin isn’t ‘bank-controlled’ banks just don’t want to be left behind.

SmoothGoing

>Canada provides 93% of the United States electricity. There's just no way that 0.8% is anywhere close to 93%. All wallets work the same during power outage, though some might have a 9v battery power option, and most can use any USB power bank or cable. The issue from there is whether you have an ISP (which also needs power) to be able to contact the bitcoin network. Maybe you should also buy blockstream's satellite dish lol.

GoAheadNBiteAPillow

Well.. atleast you have one ISP20022 Compliant token in there..

RosieDear

Everyone has stories....I, for example was in on the beginning of the internet and although I made "millions", if I cared (or had wanted to) I could have bought up domain names that later fetched millions. I did my mini-version and actually made 15 or 20K on a couple - seemed like good money back then. Stopped in a local Toyota dealer a few years back - I recognized the sales dudes name as being the name of the first big ISP (Internet Service Provider - before cable and all) in the area. We got to talking and he mentioned that his dad had purchased 250 BTC at about $10. This was someone in the "know" - but no one had ANY idea...... Long story short, his son is selling cars. I'd think that if he kept the BTC, Dad would be worth 25m plus whatever else he made from Internet. Stories are fun and I never have any regrets. I was a "tech leader" - being an older dude I knew stuff. So I purchased TSLA in 2012 at about $20. Ha Ha. My training says, on Wall Street, Pigs get slaughtered, so I sold most of it at $55, although I bought and sold a little after. I could say the same with Apple, which I have owned (on and off) since the 1980s'. Between the two of those stocks I'd easily have 20+ m if I held (again, no regrets...I like to lock in my gains and lower risk).

SpanishPikeRushGG

Right. And what I'm saying is - in light of the small risk that internet access is out or restricted for whatever reason but there is no reason to flee, having a little bit of analog purchasing power to move around and trade with is worthwhile. Like, I'm not making a case that gold is better money. It's not. I've done the necessary hours of education on bitcoin. My choice is to have a small hedge against centralized ISP's being compliant with political directive. That's it.

SpanishPikeRushGG

In my country, there is an ongoing consolidation of ISP's/telecommunications providers with the state's blessing. There are risks that come with that. Having a little bit of analog physical sound money in that environment is sensible.

SpanishPikeRushGG

I'm in this camp. Gold is good too. To me, it's a buffer against the ISP's and telecommunications corps in my country consolidating with the state's blessing and the potential internet access threats that comes with.

iamscott3

Just something to think about… I’ve had a node running for about a year with 11 peer connections consistently & averaging ~500 MB of data upload per day. Fine. Recently I opened up port forwarding for port 8333 & in no time it jumped to 70 peer connections and ~300 GB uploaded in a single day. I don’t know of a way to limit this on my Eero so I may have to remove port forwarding to prevent my ISP from flagging me for excessive data usage.

ComicCollector69

If you have an old unused PC go with that first. Just make sure you can get a 2-4 TB SSD in there. Helps to have a fast ISP if possible but unlimited data is essential. If you don’t have an unused PC consider my approach or get a mini pc. Then install your favorite Linux distribution or something another server type OS so it’s not crashing or rebooting all the time. The use instructions from the web or ChatGPT to install bitcoin core. Then wait a long time before the entire blockchain downloads.

bds8999

About 99%. Are any dialup ISP still around?

SpanishPikeRushGG

The SBR, in a vacuum, isn't a big issue. The problem is the laws that will be passed in the future about how citizens can access and use bitcoin, mining consolidating into publicly traded companies, and the continuing monopolization of telecommunications providers and ISP's.

Criss_Crossx

Overall bandwidth is a concern. If an ISP provides a higher theoretical data cap for a faster speed, that is likely. Whether they care about it or not can change.

Pasukaru0

The gist of it: I have a mini pc that I use as a home server, specifically a minisforum ms-01 running proxmox with 96 gb ram and 3x 4TB nvme for all the storage that I can mount via smb in the various vms and my devices. It's online 24/7. I can access it from outside via my public ip and a selfhosted VPN on my firewall with wireguard. My firewall is also nothing special. Just an off-the-shelf zimaboard with an ssd running opnsense. The router from my ISP does nothing but simply pass everything through to the firewall directly. I handle port forwarding and firewall rules there. Most egress is routed through mullvad vpn. If my house burns down that's what backups are for, which happen daily for most things. One of the examples is footage from my ip cameras which is uploaded every minute. Truenas is running in a vm on the same machine. The disks are passed through to it for the zfs datasets so setting up the backup tasks with various schedules is trivial. Backups there are done via rclone with an encryption password. So even if the cloud platform can look into the data, they only see encrypted garbage. I use backblaze b2 to host the backups.

Wendals87

Sure but was satoshi any interest to the government back then? Certainly now but unlikely the logs were kept by either the ISP or forum

20seh

In that case every ISP in every country of the world would need to cooperate, highly unlikely. There are also many small miners, difficulty will automatically adjust. And it would also be difficult to block traffic because of VPNs, Tor etc etc. Bans have been tried before..

Affectionate-Sense29

Ok, get the fork part, and the decentralization part, but in order to maintain the blockchain you need millions of miners. Many of these are in huge facilities not just users home pc’s. The disruption I’m talking about is at the ISP level blocking traffic or through laws and seizure of equipment.

Strong_Society_3345

It still could be if your ISP was victim of DNS spoofing attack (Adress was correct but you were redirected to another IP). And it would not be exodus fault. But most likely scenario is that your PC was compromised. Just running antivirus SW is not enough, not every malware is detected by them.

MichaelAischmann

One of my grandmothers can't use the internet. She never in her life had an ISP. But the internet caught on.

mikkeller

Sure happy to address any specifics where I deflected, to address your points: \- Skipping over the DAO examples because again thats not protocol governance \- Just on your Lido comment, yes thats how Lido works and it's the largest one, but there are other more decentralized versions like RocketPool where individuals create their own pools and it's like a slightly more decentralized Lido.  Then there's even more decentralized versions using whats called secret shared validator SSV or distributed validator tech DVT, and Obol is one example of this and Lido has announced they will be moving to a DVT based architecture so anyone can join and its fully decentralized.  This tech is pretty sweet because it ensures that no single operator has full control of the validator, and their job, proposing and attesting, are performed collaboratively by the pooled participants.  \- Not disagreeing that slashing and rugging Lido depositors would be very bad but from a chain security and resilience perspective it doesn't bring it down.  At worst blocks would have delayed finality but still have liveness where blocks are still being produced and Bitcoin doesn't even have the concept of finality so a 34% malicious control of stake would degrade it Bitcoin block production QoS.  A 67% attack would be equal to Bitcoin's 51% attack but again Ethereum is able to recover from this where stake is deleted & validators are kicked where PoW mining rigs can't be deleted. \- Home PoW mining vs home PoS staking have the same level of anonymity from an ISP standpoint.  We can get into the PoW vs PoS debate if you want, but I was an early bitcoin miner and mined on the first commercial ASICs as well.  I saw my profitability margins drop pretty fast as total network hash grew and my % contribution of hashes fell.  Sounds like you might know something about this as well no?  \- PoW is inherently a centralizing design as the network grows and you have to essentially start making serious investments in your mining setup to stay competitive.  As industrial mining operators continue to grow they reap more benefits of economy of scale and also raise capital to continue to add hash power, which is good for total network economic strength, but bad for decentralization as home miners have to compete by perpetually adding and upgrading hardware. 

TansySalad

Sorry to hear you're unwell, I wish you a speedy recovery, and thanks for the response & suggestions! More to think about here for sure. There seems to be a lot of info. available on how to set up Bitcoin nodes, but not a huge amount on the security implications of doing so. I'm keen to support the network, but don't want to put myself at risk. To me, it would seem mad to just run the software on your every day PC. . . hopefully the info discussed is useful to anyone who comes across this thread regardless! I was tempted to go down the Linux route, but my proficiency with Linux is limited and I ultimately decided (in my personal circumstances & due to my lack of knowledge) a properly configured and locked down Windows system would trump an incorrectly configured Linux system. I do agree that Linux appears to be a more secure solution overall. There's actually a decently detailed guide here on running a "secure" node on Linux: [https://medium.com/coinmonks/ultimate-guide-2024-setting-up-a-secure-bitcoin-core-node-for-private-transactions-on-linux-e9053658f8df](https://medium.com/coinmonks/ultimate-guide-2024-setting-up-a-secure-bitcoin-core-node-for-private-transactions-on-linux-e9053658f8df) I had also not thought about the implications of matching my static IP to any data associated with that IP - a **very** good point. My ISP does actually allow for multiple external static IP's, although unfortunately it looks like my hardware will need updating to accommodate for this (as you mentioned, additional router etc.). I could also look down the VPN route, but I'm keen to support the network in the best way possible. Running the node via a VPN (which will undoubtably hop IPs periodically) doesn't seem like the most ideal solution. It does look like some VPNs are able to assign a static IP, although you are of course reliant on the external VPN provider not tracking or sharing your data - could be a middle ground. Two opposing forces here. Support the network in the best way possible whilst maintaining security and privacy :) To confirm additional security principles: * Ensure UPnP is disabled at router level. * Ensure remote management or similar remote administration access to router is disabled. * If possible, isolate node's external IP from personal external IP * Configure VLAN to isolate the node's internal IP on a separate internal network - I actually happen to have a setup that's perfect for this. >but you need to also consider the possibility that the software is not secure. What happens then and what this actor could possibly do from inside your home network. * Oh dear, my dumb brain used my personal Windows log in for my node setup - goes without saying that the node itself should be completely disassociated from any personal information, logins or passwords, so if that system is compromised there's not data there to mine. Thanks for the discussion, very useful and multiple layers that didn't occur to me :)

Radiant-Interview-83

Shame that you don't get other answers. I'm currently sick and feeling awful so I'll keep it short. >So long as the software is secure (and keeps the door locked to the rest of the house), then a malicious actor can’t do anything to the rest of the system; True, but you need to also consider the possibility that the software is not secure. What happens then and what this actor could possibly do from inside your home network. You could create a separated network for this node. How this can be done depends on your router. Guest wifi is common way but you could also do it with something called vlan if you are using a wire and your router supports it. With separated network even if the node is compromised the actor can't access other devices on your home network other than the router so make sure to follow best practices on that device too. Disable UPnP, make sure that management portal is accessible only from where you want it to be and so on. You mentioned that you are happy with Windows or with your current setup. That's fine but I would switch to linux node instead. Way less attack surface but this does not make Windows insecure. >Are there any other security concerns with the setup I’ve outlined (static IP & port forwarding)? I think its great that your ISP even allows static IPs. Its fine. And port forwarding is a must if you want to allow external access to your node there is no way around that. Only thing that comes to mind is privacy. If you use the same static IP for bitcoin node and also for your personal stuff then it is possible to link your identity to your node by some actors. Does your ISP provide more IP addresses than one per customer? If so then maybe look at having a completely separated router with static IP for the bitcoin node and another one for your personal use. I doubt that your home router can handle two IP addresses on its own. Not sure how practical two routers would be for your use case but something to think about.

Ricola63

1. Yes. A sybil attack on BTC is hard to do. My issue with them is the Governance Structure. Who knows who decides what? What we do know is there are about 6 Miners who produce the vast majority of blocks. Who are they? I don\`t know, I bet you don\`t know. But I\`ll bet the US, Russia, China and others know. Who\`s to say they are not the owners/ controllers of those miners? Those miners have an outsized say in what happens to the network, how and why. And they are responsible to no one. 2. With ETH, you think that there are thousands more like you around the world. Really? How do we know there aren\`t thousands of N. Korean Government Nodes in server farms around the world? And come to that, how do we know there isn\`t a N. Korean treasury holding huge volumes of ETH in thousands of wallets? We don\`t. 3. At least with Hedera we know there are 32 Entities, each with a hugely valuable reputation to protect, each with just one Vote, Geographically dispersed (Every Continent except Antarctica I believe), dispersed by time (Each GC Member is time limited), dispersed by ISP, dispersed by Industry. And we know what they think and why, and how they vote, because the meeting minutes are published. I disagree with your premise that its \`easy to compromise\`. First of all, because of the transparency its very, very unlikely that N. Korea could manoeuvre the GC into anything. Nothing is impossible, but with voting on any decision required it would mean a full, open transparent discussion explaining why and how things were being done.. Even if say the US Government were to pressure 32 massive entities (many not US based) to bend to their will, that information would be widely shared before anything happened, which is about the best you can hope for. Nothing is perfect. But of the 3 scenarios I know which I have much more faith in.

Blockchainauditor

If she told you she bought you some Bitcoin, but you didn't give her a crypto address, then it is likely at an exchange. If it at an exchange, there may be an indication on her phone or computer of an account. If she was interested enough to get you Bitcoin, she probably did not send you a private key for the crypto address in an email, nor send login name and password in the email. Depending on when "years ago" was, you may be able to contact the primary exchanges operational at the time with a certified copy of her death certificate to inquire about accounts in her (and your) name. However, if she actually sent you a private key and related address, the advice others have given you is about as good as it gets on getting to her or your email ISP.

MichaelAischmann

You paid money via your ISP & electricity provider as well as with your data & time.

Spl00ky

Considering it takes like 3 minutes to setup multiple wallets vs calling an ISP to set up an appointment to have them come hook up internet at your house, ya I could see why bitcoin is growing faster.

Tvmouth

If something shady is happening, a VPN will ensure that only you and the site know about it. Cdc has your login info, it's an account that you log into... right? a vpn encrypts data and deletes historical cache so nobody else can find the **historical logs in between...** but Cdc has that data, and YOU have that data. No, your IP address is not on the blockchain (I've never heard of such a thing). A VPN on public networks means nobody can capture data to use for scam info... like *"hey, we noticed you were researching THIS... here's a place to buy... "* and if you live in a place where crypto is banned (math is illegal? lol) you can use a VPN to hide web history from your ISP, but if local authorities KNOW you have an account at Cdc... they can go straight there, the ISP is irrelevant. A Vpn does not hide the *breadcrumbs* you are making on purpose. If cdc has your home address, a vpn will not stop authorities from having that info.

zfride

have to be my own ISP first

intelw1zard

Pretty much how a lot of Musks companies are. Tesla is a software company that has cars and robots. SpaceX is an ISP that can launch rockets into space.

jaimewarlock

From a technical point of view it is even worse than that. Most 3rd world ISP are dynamic allocation. Your IP address often changes several times per day. I live in Africa and the technicians barely even understand how it works, much less how to get the physical address connected to an IP address from a month ago. It may not even be tracked. Or the IP address leads to an internet cafe with a cheap router and dozens of stations. The owner has to reset the router a couple times a day.

Logical_Lemming

Let's say a local police officer is motivated to catch one of these scammers, what would need to happen for them to succeed? If they're lucky, the scammer has deposited funds to a major CEX like Binance. So the first step is to subpoena Binance for this customer's KYC info. Let's say the customer is from Zimbabwe, now our protagonist needs to call up their contacts inside Zimbabwe's justice department and get them to arrest the criminal and extradite them to the US to stand trial. The officer gets laughed at. If they're not lucky and no funds have moved yet, they need to subpoena YouTube for the IP address that uploaded the video, then they need to subpoena the VPN provider that owns that IP address. The VPN provider tells the officer they have no KYC info about the customer, the customer paid their subscription with Monero, but they connected with an IP address out of India. Now the officer has to subpeona some random ISP in India to figure out who was using the IP address that connected to the VPN. At this point the officer presents his findings to Indian law enforcement, asks them nicely to arrest the scammer, and gets laughed at. The point is, an investigation like this is way beyond the scope of a police officer's job. Best they can do is pass it up the food chain for a higher government agency to look into.

Loose-Grapefruit-516

Well you still need an electric supply and ISP which honestly aren't that free and in most countries are monopolical af

SmoothGoing

Pretty easily. Ask reddit for my IP address. Ask my ISP for my account info. Unless I used VPNs and whatnot. Like Satoshi did.

Areshian

It would be bad, like really bad. But many things will recover. We already have quantum resistant algorithms, we don’t use them because cost, mostly. If a bank suffers a quantum hack, they can shut off online access, rollback suspicious transactions and ask customers to present an ID card to regain access to the new online portal that is safe. Not to mention practicality of the attack. Most encryption we use today is on the transport side. You may be able to hack my connection to my bank, but that requires you to get access to my traffic, possible if you are (or have hacked) my ISP. But if you are doing a transaction, you still need my 2fa, or an SMS. Again, it may be possible for you to bypass that, but is another hurdle. Your QC may be fast to break encryption, but accessing all these systems without being detected takes time. The first problem with Blockchain is that the encrypted data you need to break is readily available. And you know exactly how much a broken wallet will get you. If you have a computer that takes two months to break an encryption key, it may not be worth it to break a bank communication, you may never get something useful, and even if you do, it may be rolled back. You are also facing a serious investigation. With a wallet, all those problems are gone. There is even a chance the owner of the wallet no longer lives, no alarms raised. An even if they do, most people will assume their keys were compromised in a different way The second problem is that the moment a wallet is compromised, there is no way to determine who is the legit owner and who the hacker. Knowing the key is owning the wallet. Even if there is a massive attack, and even if the community de ides to roll back the chain to before, there is no way of denying the attacker access to that wallet while the legit owner keeps it. Third, you can’t just migrate the chain. My bank uses ECDHE/AES-GCM for the encryption. If tomorrow they start using on of those QC resistant algorithms, I may lose access until I get a QC resistant browser, but that’s it. With blockchain, even if the chain adds support for new QC algorithms, there is always going to be an extra step on the user side. I need to transfer my money from the old wallet to a new QC resistant one. This means the migration needs to happen with enough time so users can do these migrations. Because those who didn’t migrate by the time QC is readily available, well, we are back to problem 2, at this point it is no longer possible to differentiate between legit owner and hacker

Key_Friendship_6767

They can make it close to impossible for you if they get the right companies to listen to them. If they get every ISP and other company offering networks to not sell to you, then your only option is to build your own network with physical towers and connections lol.

Key_Friendship_6767

The gov could technically force an ISP to block bitcoin in any given area by blocking your network requests from ever making it out. That said you could move somewhere else where the ISPs aren’t blocking it.

kopeboy_

Nano (XNO) is the best currency imho. Like any scientific base unit, it is fixed, well defined and durable: a perfect denominator. As any open & popular protocol, it doesn’t have fees in the protocol (but you are free to charge for services on top, like ISP do on TCP/IP). As a convenient medium of exchange it has instant transfers (sub-second finality) all over the word and free non-custodial accounts. Like all permissionless blockchain networks, it wants to be decentralized, but ensures that long-term by completely removing inflationary rewards and any intrinsic incentive. Keep up the good work! The market will realize the goodness someday. 💪🏻💙 nano_3qx5cz95xxpd5wsm9imggxpuxhpf5oupx14456ms5f5hn9qhyexiszfhshfb (you can see from any explorer, like spynano.org, nanexplorer.com, blocklattice.io, nanobrowse.com, that I already hold XNO. This is NFA, please DYOR 🙏🏻)

4moneystuff

No - the article is bs - a quick google will show that Noranett is an ISP - they are increasing prices to their subscribers

iam_pink

Like many crypto projects, the purpose is decentralization. I for one am not a fan of having to go through an ISP. If there was a stable, reliable decentralized network like Helium is trying to achieve, I'd join.

Smiling_Jack_

Companies aren't worrying about their IOT devices. They require durable and safe local network for their endpoints, and a stable connection to the internet via their ISP. Since that infrastructure will always be in place, adding a VLAN for IOT devices is trivial. Helium is a neat concept but that's it. It's only a compelling proposition to those with trivial IT knowledge.

Imeanttodothat10

I mean this isn't causally true. It's only possible in an authoritarian government, which is not the same as public utilities. That's like saying you are worried about the government's ability to cut off water supply. Of course there's that risk, but it doesn't relate at all to the company being a utility or a for profit. I'd also be open to breaking up the ISP monopolies and expanding net neutrality as a solution, but really the issue is how much money the US tax payer pays for ISP infrastructure for 0 rights, 0 choice, and generally shitty service with rising prices. I guess what I'm saying is, there is a massive amount of space between "utilities shouldn't be about maximizing shareholder profits" and "we should be like China and Russia".

FordPrefect343

To address why cannot law enforcement do the same. That's a matter of resources and availability. If your neighbor killed someone and you took a picture of the act through their basement window and sent it to the cops, one could ask, why could the cops not have done so. It's unrealistic to have a policy presence on every corner of the internet, private citizens however are everywhere, so of course there will be opportunities for them to turn people in. Regarding the governments misuse of data. 100% agree. The broad wire tapping and data collection was extremely problematic, the issue here is they had the data in hand. Creation of keys handed over via subpoena request, and or passive monitoring (algorithm or AO screen perhaps?) on internal systems is an entirely different thing. The data isn't in the hands of the government, they simply have the ability to access specific instance of it when a subpoena is issued. This creates a paper trail and accountability. Banning encryption as I have said before is not viable as encryption is used everywhere. What I think is needed is clear sensible regulation regarding the services that encrypt communications and data libraries for users. as well, regulation that protects the privacy of users and the handling of their meta data by companies such as Google Facebook etc. I am highly dubious that data in the future will be decentralized, projects like ICP and many others have made big promises while delivering nothing. Centralized computing has always been the most cost effective way to serve large user bases from both a hardware and ISP infrastructure perspective. That's cool that you are working on web3, I hope you build something dope. A focus on law enforced is a very vague thing to say. How is law enforcement supposed to do their job if they have no ability to investigate criminal communication or access incriminating data? They need a way to conduct investigations and I agree it should not be done in a way that doesn't involve tracking everything everyone does everywhere. Services like mixers, megaupload, telegram etc could all have been executed in a way compliant with regional laws that allowed the service to function, while giving operators and authorities a way to thwart illicit use. The makers of these services opted to purposely design the systems in a way that made it impossible. Which is great for privacy, and crime. The arrests of the creators are due to the creators building tools for illicit use to profit off that use. The first BTC mixer laundered money and made a cut, that was the purpose of the software and it was advertised as so. Tornado cash was no different, the makers sought to create a service for illicit use and use "privacy" as a shield. To date, I would wager the majority of money that has gone through tornado cash has been to cover the tracks of crimes. Billions of dollars of stolen eth has cycles through it, and the creators took I think 0.5% or something of it. It's not that "the elite" want to control everything, it's that these people were getting wealthy from the proceeds of crime, and they did so knowingly. The elite, generally want privacy too, they tend to do a lot of fucking crime. Throwing around the term "powerful entities" comes across as a bit conspiracy brained. List the organizations/people who want no privacy, I bet they all have signal and other encryption services that they do not want fucked with.

leaflavaplanetmoss

Associating your identity to something that isn't necessarily unique to you is pretty dangerous from the perspective of getting accused for someone else's crimes. For example, all the traffic out of someone's house could show the same external IP, even though internally to the network, each device has its own IP. In order to figure that out, you have to be able to access the router's logs, but what if its the owner's own router and they've flashed it with firmware that gives them access to the logs? What about shared devices? What about public Wifi? Beyond that, KYC also has lots of use cases for the institution itself, e.g. identifying fraudulent accounts used for stuff like testing stolen credit cards. KYC information is also important for deciding that something isn't suspicious to begin with and doesn't warrant sending to law enforcement, e.g. if you know that someone is wealthy, large transactions are not only not suspicious, but expected. In the case that you can't mitigate any activity by knowing the circumstances behind the person conducting them, you basically have to refer everything remotely suspicious to the government, which then creates the circumstances for a massive dragnet of ISP data.

SavingsPurpose7662

I understand they might be able to get contraband hardware in but how do you connect to the internet in a country that literally controls every ISP and internet entry point?

Nutmasher

Yes, many are here to hedge inflation, but you can do that with index funds. Granted, Bitcoin is yours and index funds are exchange of dollars. If the market/economy collapses, it doesn't mean Bitcoin is in the same boat, and you still own it. However, if the stock market went to $0, it's doomsday and no one cares about Bitcoin. Likewise, no ISP will be around for you to access it.

stoicparallax

It’s a company started by a guy Wences Casares, who also founded Argentinas first ISP, and has been credited with orange pilling a ton of Silicon Valley bigwigs. Xapo had (and likely still have) a billions of dollars worth of BTC in their custody, both private and institutional. Coinbase’s institutional custody business (the one that supports the ETFs) was purchased from Xapo. Mark Goodwin wrote [an article](https://unlimitedhangout.com/2024/07/investigative-series/the-chain-of-custody-the-mafia-holding-the-elites-bitcoin/) that talks in part about Xapo; Mark was on a number of podcasts recently talking about it, which was the first I’d heard of Xapo or Wences.

Exact-Bad8045

Infiltrate and packet inspect all ISP traffic. Isolate node and onion traffic. Cut Internet to all nodes including onion nodes.

ske66

The fundamental principle is that every thing on the Ethereum Network is run by open source scripts called Smart Contracts. In blockchain, the singular purpose of the network is to facilitate transactions. In Ethereum, smart contracts allow developers to store a lot more data in a block and perform operations that are not even related to DeFi. Smart contracts range from tokens like ERC-20, NFTs like ERC-721, or even virtual wallets like ERC-4337. What’s amazing about Ethereum is be can track a lot of state and perform much more complex actions compared to bitcoin. It is pretty much an internet 2.0 (or web3 as some people call it which is really dumb). It allows for an incredible new form of internet where you don’t even need an ISP in order to get online. It’s very exciting, it’s very popular, and from a developer experience standpoint it will most likely get the best rate of adoption compared to Cardano or Solana

MaxSmart1981

i live in the most expensive part of the US and i don't know a single person that works multiple part time jobs. in fact, i'm trying really hard to think of anyone i know that's unemployed. i think i know maybe one or two. my company is desperately trying to hire for groundhands, construction workers and installers (ISP), yet we've struggled to fill spots and are backlogged on work for a large project. derfinitely not saying this isn't a thing, but i keep seeing people talking about how 'everyone is working multiple p/t jobs' narrative, and it must not be in my area or in my social circles, bc over here people are gainfully employed.

quintavious_danilo

Not true. Regulations don’t require a full month‘s bank statement with all unrelated transactions visible just to verify a home address. A utility bill should suffice, like an ISP bill or telephone bill. Asking for a full unredacted bank statement is way more than KYC regulations.

suuperfli

Even if your ISP access is revoked, you can still access the Bitcoin network through various alternative methods: 1. **Mobile Networks:** Use cellular data or tethering from your smartphone. 2. **Wi-Fi Hotspots:** Connect via public or private Wi-Fi networks. 3. **Satellite Internet:** Use services like Blockstream Satellite to receive blockchain data. 4. **Mesh Networks:** Create peer-to-peer connections using devices like goTenna. 5. **Alternative ISPs:** Use smaller, local ISPs or community networks. 6. **VPNs and Proxies:** Mask your internet traffic to bypass local ISP restrictions. 7. **Offline Transactions:** Transfer signed transactions via USB drives or radio. 8. **Tor Network:** Use the Tor browser to anonymize and route your internet traffic. These methods leverage the decentralized nature of Bitcoin to ensure continuous access.

LlidD

They can stop your access to your ISP.

Effective-Noise7391

I stand by what I said. It’s true that there are decentralised aspects to the internet but infrastructure ownership and ISP’s are in the hands of a few big players and government entities. I just think it’s a ridiculous stance to say ’you need bitcoin cuz you can’t trust the government but my conviction in AT&T is unshakeable’.

Tasty_Action5073

I have been running one of those for more than a year now. But even simpler. Even more Plug and play. Almost like how you get your router from your ISP.

Quantris

the "fake blocks" require just as much effort as real blocks to produce. It's not enough to "hack your ISP", they also have to mine a fake block. Unless you're being targeted by a significant fraction of the world's hash rate, that will take much longer than the usual 10 minutes per block. And unless your transaction is worth a TON of money this is probably not worth it at all for the attacker vs. just mining on the real chain.

SmoothGoing

There are no voters and no voting. The block your node sees still has to pass all the validity checks. Creating such blocks takes a lot is energy. Your ISP can't just give you something that looks like a real block. Nodes don't just take what's given, they independently verify. That is the solution.

HSuke

IP addresses can be public or [NAT'ed](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation). An ISP is not allowed to block all traffic to specific IPs since that's highly unethical and almost certainly illegal aside from preventing security attacks (e.g. DoS attacks). Applications often block incoming IP addresses on their own firewalls, but that's on the server or client side, not on the public ISP side. The government could demand to block off a whole country's IP addresses. Though this rarely happens in the US. Instead, the US government often takes over web domains by requesting that the domain services provider hand over the domain. And it has to be done through a court order. Technically, it is possible to block off a whole country's IP addresses. It's just that none of the 1st world countries ever do this.

RyeonToast

The IP addresses are public, are they not? Your computer needs to find out which machines to send data to. An ISP could block all traffic to and from those IPs.

bleudefact

WAG here: Someone must have known that this was a wide-open Coinbase account. If the account had any simple 2FA or even if it had "Allow Addresses list" they could not have withdrawn the funds. I would go back and review all recent communications with: Coinbase, ISP, any other contractor...computer IT person....... And I understand the following comment does not help now, but if 500K was a lot of money to your uncle, then it makes no sense to keep it on a CEX (even secure Coinbase), not having 2FA and "Allowed Withdrawal Addresses" . All you can do now is learn from this bad experience and improve account security in the future.

One_Boot_5662

I think there are two ways to look at this question, technical and social. Technically there are always ways around a ban. For example nodes can communicate via Tor servers, and users can setup their own Tor relays. At this point even an ISP will struggle to untangle the secure communications from regular connections to secure webpages like banks. Node operators could also setup private shared VPN relays. I think it's pretty difficult to prevent cypherpunks from running a blockchain, especially if they are dispersed globally. Socially however, most people will follow a ban. If enough governments simply make using a blockchain illegal then it will pretty much kill blockchain usage, except for a few fringe users. In either case PoW is at much higher threat than protocols based on PoS. PoW typically uses large physical resources and these are easily detected and shutdown, and aren't easy to move. PoS can run on a server with other standard applications, it can be mirrored in multiple geographies at once, it can be moved around onto different physical infrastructure almost instantly with no loss of security.

HSuke

Think about how ISPs would block requests. All they see is traffic flowing from IPs addresses to each other from various ports. Mining and staking don't use special ports. They can go over any port. All traffic is already encrypted from end to end, so there's no easy for ISPs to tell which traffic is specific to mining and staking. (The only way for ISPs to do that is if the local client is using the ISP as a web proxy, which makes no sense since no one does that.) So at least for mining, staking, and peering, it's impossible for a government to block traffic. They can only block it in other ways like via front-end website. Even if the US and Russia were to go to war in mining, they would also have no way to block each other even if they blocked the other country's IP address. It's very easy to have thousands of nodes send all their encrypted data to a single node within the same country, and tunnel that via a single VPN to a different country before it's broadcasted to the network.

Big-Finding2976

Sucks if you used an email provider that's stopped operating since then, or it was an ISP-supplied address and you've changed ISP!

ivanjurman

Yes, it doesn’t mean the internet is down, I didn’t even say that, and its not just my ISP that has issues, people globally have zhe same issue, maybe you don’t, but a lot of people do

SmoothGoing

Yes what? Internet is not down. Your ISP may have issues and some individual services might not work for you or others. It doesn't mean the Internet is down.

reality_comes

True I guess. But your ISP could go down or all windows devices or all Apple devices or Samsung devices or a mixture of all of those things.

reality_comes

For all of those who are saying, "bitcoin is still up" as if that proves anything, it doesn't. It's a meaningless statement. If the device you interact with the blockchain on goes down, bitcoin is down for you. Whether that's a crowdstrike update or someone cuts the fiber between your house and the ISP your bitcoin isn't "up" anymore.

ClockStrange7426

How are folks going to be paying for electricity to mine, ISP's for internet service, cell carriers for phone service etc when, as you put it, the other money collapsed? Crypto exists as a discretionary spend category of fiat currency. If fiat currency collapses, no one can afford crypto any more because no one can afford to service the tech that crypto needs to exist.

VariousTransition795

Unsure to follow your train of thought. Where do you see "centralization of hardware" or "centralization of infrastructure"? I'm curious because you sound like if we were all using the same ISP.

maha420

America Online. An old, crappy dial-up ISP that tried to act like they were "the internet" much like people try to make bitcoin out to be the only "digital currency" and there's no other options. AOL was also slow and cumbersome, and eventually couldn't compete with faster broadband (Cable/DSL) connections. Most people at the time didn't even realize you could connect to the internet without AOL, so you'd have lots of people with cable internet connections wondering why their AOL didn't work anymore. They had never tried to use Internet Explorer (or netscape navigator at the time) outside of AOL.

Flowerburp

Because I’m afraid it may expose me to cyber and physical security risks, and because I’m afraid my ISP will block my connection for some reason.

GGAllinzGhost

""Sure, but ISP's don't control the internet outside of their jurisdiction"" Are you under the impression that I was suggesting there could be a conspiracy of ISP CEO's to shut down bitcoin in each of their personal jurisdictions? I never said that. ""But all they're doing is banning themselves from the protocol, not harming the protocol itself."" Are you under the impression that I said they would try to 'harm' the protocol? I never said that. Is there any chance of your actually answering the point I was making, instead of making up strawmen to attack?-

MittenSplits

Sure, but ISP's don't control the internet outside of their jurisdiction. Politicians can hobble their citizens in acquiring Bitcoin. But all they're doing is banning themselves from the protocol, not harming the protocol itself.

GGAllinzGhost

They can just shut it down at the ISP level. Not allow the traffic through.

only_merit

> What you decribed is basically local government with extra steps and less free. I distinguish strictly between the state (with government), however small, and group of free individuals (a company). In the former, the state has a monopoly on violence on the given territory and membership is not a choice. > In your case you say the companies would have 10,000 shareholders? How can you ensure that the companies would have that many? You can't. There is no problem. A company can have as many shareholders as it wants. 1 or 10 or 100 or 1,000,000. There is no problem in either situation. > Secondly you say that in a government people don't participate willingly. Yes, that's one of its basic characteristics. If people would participate willingly, it would not be needed. > Well in the road example if the payment for the roads was only taken from the road users through tax or subscription to use the roads than only willing participants would be paying for it. It would be similar concept in theory, but in the real world this never happens. > The difference being because its pubically owned everyone would get the benifit of the roads and not just the people who had the capital to set it up in the first place, then rent seek for the rest of the roads existance. It's nowhere near rent seeking. First you need a land. That is a capital. Any use of capital has an opportunity cost for using it for something else. Then building a road is non-trivial cost. Then operational costs, maintenance. Further, if the road was not maintained well, or the fee would be higher than the quality of the provided service in the eyes of consumers, people would use different roads (as they did before A and B were connected with this new road). So if there is any city C with connections to A and B and the cost of fees from A to C plus fees from C to B is a lot lower than fees on the new road from A to B, few clients will use the new road. This is legitimate business, not rent seeking. > I can see how you imagine this private road ownership works but in reality its not going to function in the way you believe it to and will in all probability end up being a complete shambles and a poor experiance for road users. Are there any examples in history when this has worked? There are private cities already around the world. There are many private roads in all countries I've been to. And guess what, the state imposed highway code does not apply on those roads. Nor does police help you resolving a car crash on those roads. A road does not need to be 100 km long to somehow count. Just randomly claiming that it won't work is not an acceptable argument, especially given that many private roads exists around the world. > Also saying the the cities could be run by a city management company is just such a terrible proposal its funny. And yet there are projects like this popping around the globe. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%B3spera "The project is managed by Honduras Próspera Inc. The company is financed by several investors and venture capital firms, including Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen, through the venture capital company Pronomos Capital." I know it may sound weird to you since you are likely operating your whole life under statist doctrine, but there are books you can read if you were interested. > I'll just politely say that these companies are some of the worst to exist as they overcharge for everything because the tenants have no choice and lead to terrible outcomes for everyone involved except the mangement company. This is for sure true for many establishments and false for many others. The problem starts with the statist doctrine where the people rely on state to take care about everything. Hence people are not responsible and do not read contracts, do not know how to negotiate contracts etc. Without the state, within very few generations, people would start to (because they'd have to) care about these things. Those that already know these things live in better conditions than the others. I also live in a shared space managed by a management company. It's case by case, but I surely believe you that it can be terrible. It just does not need to be. There is no such implication. Just as you can have a terrible webhosting service or ISP. Or not. > You then say that interested citizens of the city could form companies to participate in joining the cities with roads - this is just another way of saying that the locals will form a local government for managing the roads, as the funding would likely be coming from local citizens who would want the road built. It's not the same. I explained that already, no need to repeat the nonsense. > We have not even discussed the quality of the roads that would be built. With no standards on the roads being built as there is no regulation applied to the roads its more likely that they will be built as cheaply as possible and as a result may be more unsafe for driving on. It's quite the opposite. As this article (https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/but-muh-roads-how-a-governmentless-society-could-still-have-an-infrastructure-system/) presents a great meme - "without the government, who would ignore the potholes". Also see the article for discussion on who could build the roads and maintain. It is true that private roads are usually cheaper. Like much cheaper. The quality is of course better too. This is true for any good and service provided by government. That is health care (private is usually better), education (private is usually better), security (private is usually better). I'm sure, if you search on the web, you can find the stories of roads built without government.

OffThread

You should check your IP, You might be shocked how long it's 'yours'. The world knows what ISP controls the group of IPs and your ISP certainly knows who owns the individual IPs during certain periods of time. I'm not saying it's static IP, but doesn't change very often at all and time based logs are the norm.

grissomgil

Thank you a lot! Great to know about something that works nowadays. Do you create your own pool because it is required to miner solo? The full node was easy to set up, just reading Bitcoin Core instructions and some try and fails about ISP modem and make rules in the default Linux firewall of my distro (I fail enough because I first try iptables and others, but the default firewall of distro rules at the end). About the rest I am reading some stuff, sometimes scanning when it seems promising, what makes me lose something, the ancient trick.

BigDoodieInMyPants

That can be easilly obtained once reddit gives your IP address to the feds, who then get your real identity from your ISP.

breadereum

And probably access Reddit from your home wifi on clear net, which is connected to the internet with an ISP with whom you’re KYC’d and the government probably gets all info from.

CryptoCrackLord

As long as everything is sent over https (totally ubiquitous) and now becoming more common DNS over TLS but far from widespread adoption, then nobody can read what you’re sending or receiving except the target website. Nobody in the middle can decrypt it. If this was breakable, nothing on the internet would function, it’d be game over. People would be hijacking accounts left right and center constantly, nobody would ever be able to keep their accounts or information private. This is essentially what it was like before https became the gold standard a good 10 years ago. Now a lot of browsers enforce https and there really is no website that would send anything unencrypted. No website that matters, anyways. Maybe some dudes website he hasn’t updated from 1999. Now if your DNS is still unencrypted it basically allows them to identify what domains you’re trying to access. As it asks which IP a domain has over an unencrypted packet, so anyone in between you and the DNS could see that. Realistically your IP and any transient hops in between. But with DNS over TLS now that means nobody in the middle can see that. Only the DNS you’re requesting the data from. So that leaves us with one final piece of information your ISP could track, which really can’t be solved, except for using a VPN. The IP address of what you’re communicating with. That’s really all they can see. So they could for example determine that you’re accessing specific adult websites for which the IP range they use is well established, but they wouldn’t be able to identify anything else, what you’re watching, any accounts you have there (if any) etc. Literally just, your IP is talking to this IP and it’s known that this IP belongs to YouTube, etc. For smaller websites it’s unlikely they’d know which IP belongs to which website. So, if you use a VPN, all you’re doing is centralizing all that IP communication to the VPN provider instead of your ISP. I just don’t think it’s worth it, for the increased latency and slower speeds as you’re unlikely to have a VPN that provides you with enough speed to max out your internet, unless you’ve very slow internet. All anyone will basically be able to see at the VPN or the ISP is; this guy uses YouTube at 10am until 7pm and then uses certain “hub” at 10pm. It doesn’t tell them anything else, no information about your user identity on aforementioned website or what page you were on or anything, as all of that information is encrypted over https and there’s no way to decrypt that in transit. So they’ll basically be able to see that you’re like the average user of the internet. There’s really no particular special information they can garner. Now if say, you were accessing websites with severely illegal content, then your ISP could keep logs of you accessing that IP address and in the future when the FBI busts the website, they can ask ISPs for all of their customers that connected to that website at some point. But regardless, this could also happen with a VPN, you have to trust the VPN isn’t keeping logs intentionally or in the case of NordVPN; accidentally and then they got compromised and someone downloaded all those logs. The benefit of a VPN is very thin in my opinion and very specific and also comes with the possibility the VPN provider could be compromised at some point too.

bongosformongos

I‘m no expert, but isn‘t deep package inspection (DPI) a thing your ISP can do?

Successful-Snow-9210

I trust my VPN provider not to log,correlate or monetize my traffic unlike my ISP which most definitely does all 3. I use the VPN's DNS service so there's only one place getting my traffic.

CryptoCrackLord

Why would you use a VPN in the first place though? You’re just centralizing all of your internet traffic. Everything goes through https already which is encrypted end to end. The only part that isn’t encrypted is DNS but you can also enable DNS over TLS which I’ve done on my devices. At that point there’s not much reason to use a VPN. The only information your ISP can see is which IP talked to which IP but it can’t see the contents or even which website it was communicating with unless the IP is known to be part of a specific websites network of addresses. Using a VPN adds another layer of trust in there where you need to be trusting the VPN provider not to keep any logs, accidental or not. Not to mention sacrificing some internet quality since you’ll have slightly higher latency and probably much slower speeds unless your VPN provider is providing you with crazy bandwidth.

analogOnly

Let's say you checked your balance on a popular blockchain explorer, if you're not using a VPN which is logless, the ISP has that information, that blockchain has that information about who you are. Authorities could probably find a way to get that information if you weren't smooth brained enough to post it online.

tgibby1021

Yes it's possible, but I don't recall at all what the name would have been. The email I had at that time was from an ISP I don't subscribe with anymore but I used MS Outlook for my email client on that computer so there may be an old outlook file on that computer that would allow me to access emails from 2011 stored in that file on that computer because I know with 100% certainty I did NOT have my local outlook file synced with the ISP email server, so once I retrieved emails from my ISP server, they were now on my computer in Outlook and they no longer existed on the ISP server, so even if the email account no longer exists on the ISP servers or archives, my computer still holds the emails in an outlook file. Mtgox vaguely rings a bell. How many sites, platforms, or methods were there in 2011 to buy Bitcoin?

PMull34

Basically the router splits up the IP address your ISP (internet service provider) assigns you into multiple local network addresses like 192.168.1.xxx. If you plug your ISP modern straight into your computer then you wouldn't have to worry about forwarding. If you don't forward a port 8333 then connections coming in don't know which of the computers on the local network to connect to so like u/mainblueberry188 stated people won't be able to connect to your node from outside.  You can still connect to other boxes though which is fine. Any one you connect to has their port 8333 available either directly or by forwarding the router to that machine

0delta

You can only help the Bitcoin network if your ISP lets you open port 8333. Then other peers can find your node and this will improve decentralization. If you can only run behind Tor you don't participate in validating and forwarding the transactions, don't create redundancy for the network. You just download a copy of blockchain for your own use. This is ok if you plan to also run a lightning node, but expect a lot of tinkering, frustration and huge capital allocation to essentially a hot wallet.

bigbarryb

Depending on what messagesyou are thinking about, this actually was a problem until recently. VPNs and TOR solve a lot of these issues, an ISP cannot see where you are sending traffic if you use a VPN, at best they could block access to VPNs. But apart from that, Bitcoin is a peer to peer network, TOR actually is the same, so TOR solves this but of course at a cost of speed. TOR is slow. The problem was/is that Bitcoin nodes have been communicating with each other in plain text without encryption. Even your banking website uses encrypted communication, in fact all websites these days use it. Heard of SSL? With this, an ISP could look at the contents of your message and block it. Anyway, a recent release of Bitcoin core now uses encrypted messaging and eventually everyone will use this. So now you are sending messages to random locations, ISP doesn't know where all the Bitcoin nodes are, and the contents are encrypted. Mission complete.

murkforgian

Yes, the passphrase adds entropy, but that's a dead-end path, because the additional entropy doesn't change the scope of the private key domain The purpose of the passphrase is to be entropy which prevents theft in the event that the seed phrase's entropy is compromised - in the human world. It's not consequential that it also increases the entropy of the BIP32 seed > mynode.local The .local domain is not publicly resolvable in the global DNS. Your instance of the mempool.space explorer is connected to your own node, so your mynode.local queries are completely within your own network, not visible to your ISP

cpt_charisma

2) Depends on your DNS setup. In general, if you are using a router provided by your ISP, they can probably see that you're going to mynode.local, but probably can't see the reset of the address. It is possible that they are spying on everything that happens on your local network. If you use your own router, it's probably fine.

Aussiehash

Sure if they come after your IP address your ISP will gladly turn over your dox in an instant. Then you might start to look at hosting a node on a rented server overseas. Non-economic nodes don't really do much to help the network, if you spin up 100 Azure cloud nodes on a free hosting coupon, but they all shut down after 3 months when your freebie runs out, then they were just a massive waste of everybody's bandwidth. On the other hand if you run your own economic node and connect your SparrowWallet to it, then it makes no difference where you host it. On second throughts, there is always Starlink (Elon resists Government censorship that is not against their TOS) and Blockstream Satellite (which as a passive downlink, even Blockstream have no knowledge as to who/how many people are connected)