PC

Behind_da_Rabbit

Bitcoin is nothing but a trojan horse to usher in a CBDC. The moment they onboard everyone bitcoin gets nuked. Every hot wallet, every PC-based cold wallet, every browser extension will immediately be rendered radioactive. They're ushering in the Number of the Beast.

lonsfury

I bought bitcoin on localbitcoins.com a while back before it shutdown I dont want the bitcoin anymore and I am worried because I keep thinking I need to wipe my PC (I do this every few years) but then remember I have a few hundred euro worth of bitcoin in an electrum wallet How do I sell it?

mbdtf95

Oh look a brainless, barely mentally functioning chimp learned to type on phone/PC. Good job

No_Shower_1702

While tilting my head so much to read your chart, I broke my neck. Can I sue you? :) No I couldn't flip the PC because it weight 15 tons.

MrDanduff

By getting into your PC

NeitherCarpenter4234

It came from a video game, bitcoin logo was used as a currency in an old PC video game called space quest . They called them bukzoid or smng

Illustrious_Ant_9242

You did not need special equipment to mine Bitcoin. A home PC would be enough. If I recall correctly, some people even reposted PlayStations

Zopheus_

In the very early days you could mine BTC with a PC, no special hardware.

hitman133295

A friend in college back in 2012 showed me he bought btc for 100 and show 5 coins for 1k each to buy a new PC. Could’ve bought a house now but he trusted crypto so he probably doing alright now

No_Artichoke_5670

You also have to slice file on a PC, so you'd be putting your seed phrase into a PC that's connected to the internet. It defeats the entire purpose of having a hardware wallet.

riscten

And now you're looking at expensive filament that needs to be printed with a hardened nozzle, in an enclosed printer, on top of all the legwork that needs to be done to ensure both your printer and the PC you're slicing on are properly airgapped. All of this to do barely better than writing your mnemonics on a piece of paper.

No_Artichoke_5670

That's only if you're in LAN mode, like someone else mentioned. Your seed phrase should also never be on any electronics other than your hardware wallet, especially one with access to the internet. It's the entire reason we have hardware wallets. Considering most of us would be slicing the file on a Windows PC, it's even worse.

riscten

Have you audited the firmware running on your printer? Even if the firmware was innocuous, that you spun up an airgapped PC to generate the model, sliced it and copied the gcode to an SD card, printed, then reflashed your printer for good measure, how is that a better process than writing the words on a piece of paper? It's a lot more work for what? PA12-CF will start softening at 108°C. For comparison, paper starts yellowing at 150°C and won't darken or become brittle before 200°C. Pen ink starts degrading around 150°C too. If you had both a paper wallet and a plastic wallet in the middle of a housefire, both would be lost, but if they are in a nearby room that isn't engulfed in flames, the paper would actually last longer. And if you're worried about water, just pass the paper wallet in a laminator, that way you get the benefits of both paper and plastic. Not that either is great for storing mnemonics. The right solution is stamped stainless steel, titanium or even copper. You don't need any specialized equipment for this. Plenty of ways to encode a mnemonic with a hammer and basic punch or even a screwdriver. You don't need fancy letter punches and pre-engraved plates.

Aussiehash

Your PC could have a keylogger malware

Aussiehash

Your mnemonic seed must **Never** exist in digital form outside of your hardware wallet. Not on your phone, PC, browser, cloud, photo gallery or password manager. To create a 3D print of your mnemonic seed you need to use Easel /Tinkercad / Fusion360 or similar software, some of which are online browser based. Then you need to use a slicer software. Then you need to send the G-Code to your 3D printer which could be using some random tool you found in google like Universal G-Code Sender that runs on your PC

Aussiehash

I do not recommend that your mnemonic seed ever exists on your PC

Elean0rZ

I gather from your comments that you're not interested in holding larger amounts of crypto more generally, as in, this is literally just a bellwether for the health of your PC. That being the case, you're essentially spending $100 for a somewhat unreliable test, which seems illogical to me. As a basic point, if, hypothetically, your $100 was drained, your response would presumably be to reformat everything. If reformatting is an option then why not simply reformat now and occasionally in the future, and save yourself $100? Or if spending $100 is an option then why not spend it on good security tools? More generally, your $100 not being drained doesn't prove that your computer isn't compromised. For one, an attacker might choose to just hang out and hope you someday hold more than $100. More importantly, though, you've said you don't plan to hold more than $100, meaning that the things you care about securing are things other than crypto. There are plenty of ways in which your computer might be compromised that impact things other than crypto--your personal info, banking details, sensitive files, whatever. Yeah, a generic attacker might be expected to scan for crypto on any computer they have access to, but it's not a guarantee, and if you really care about whatever it is that you're trying to protect then "not guaranteed" simply isn't good enough. And again, whatever level of confidence you might have, you can be even more confident by just reformatting semi-regularly and practicing good digital hygiene the rest of the time. Now, all that said, if this is just a fun experiment to see how long it will take an attacker to find you given that you do activity X, Y, or Z on the internet then fair enough.

fullstack-sean

Again I am not using this PC for anything crypto related. I'm attempting to use this device strictly as a canary. I don't use crypto. This is my first time using crypto. I only want to know if it is reasonably likely that the device has been compromised. Think of this more like a research hypothesis, and not like a binary outcome, which if wrong would compromise my entire financial security. I'm attempting to use the "be your own bank" as a feature instead of a bug here.

MichaelAischmann

What the fu-llstack? Just use an anti virus software to scan your PC like a normal person.

fullstack-sean

I will never own more than $100 in crypto ever. So this isn't an issue. I am literally just trying to use this as a canary to let me know if my PC has been compromised.

Teamduncan021

But then what if your PC gets infected after 3 months?

fullstack-sean

I just want to know if my PC has been compromised.

Teamduncan021

What if your PC got infected after the bait? Or is this a fresh PC that you won't use for any other purpose (cough porn cough)

Gabe_b

Wish I was at my PC today. Had a standing buy order for a chunk of doge at 22.4, bit saw it coming down hot. If I had been able to cancel and pull a lower buy I could have made out pretty well. Guess I'm just holding till it hits 27 again now

Victor_Pedron

She doesn't connect I just view the balance The wallet, with the seeds, never connects I generate the transaction on my cell phone I read the qrcode on the PC (offline) I read on my cell phone and transmit

crunchyeyeball

Yes, you were scammed. The domain was anonymously registered just a couple of months ago, and the website has more red flags than I can be bothered to list. In addition to whatever money you gave them, you also gave them everything they need to steal your identity, so they may also be taking out loans in your name. You also gave them direct access to your PC, so they may also have installed malware and additional remote access tools. In short, this is a bit of a mess. In your position, I would change *every* password, and reinstall the entire OS on that PC. I would also ask the credit card company / bank to flag my accounts as a "fraud risk" - I was a victim of identity theft years ago, after a theft of *physical* mail. Flagging your account just means they'll require extra checks before giving out a loan or CC in your name. In future, stick to the trusted platforms listed in the sidebar here or over on /r/BitcoinBeginners or you'll just get scammed again. Also, ignore DMs. Anyone offering to help with recovery is yet another scammer. Any advice they won't share publicly where it's open to scrutiny is bad advice.

wookmania

Since Intel’s listing on the stock exchange it’s down 19% all time, listed in 2000. It’s a laughing stock amongst PC enthusiasts for how dated their technology is compared to AMD, how poorly management runs the company (into the ground) and now with a corrupt government intervening in private markets with a share in this failing company. Either you own the stock and are coping or are badly misinformed by how poorly Intel has been managed for the past 15+ years.

Only_Succotash6316

Thank you very much for responding. Could you help me getting the tool to run locally on my PC? I’m not sure how to follow the guide to run it locally. Thanks

JuxtaThePozer

amazing, thank you I'll give that a go this file was definitely generated on a PC, I don't think that'll make any difference to the method?

AnoAnoSaPwet

Yeah that sucks. That's definitely a customer service request. If you still have your SIM card from the US number, you can swap your SIM, put it on roaming, then use a VPN that's based in the US, and use something like What's App on the old number.  If that doesn't work, use Viber on PC with the connected number. Should be able to bypass the 2FA that way. 

GIGAbtcHodl

Recovering those coins without your old PC or emails is tough but not hopeless. Check old USBs, CDs, or cloud backups for a wallet.dat file or private keys. Search blockchain explorers for old addresses if you recall any details. If you bought via early exchanges like Mt. Gox, dig up bank statements for clues.

Prudent-Chef2407

Yeah man, once malware is on your PC, no hot wallet is really safe. Phantom, MetaMask, Trust Wallet; they all store private keys locally. Even if you’re not logged in, malware can still grab those keys.2FA helps a bit, but if the system’s infected, it won’t fully protect you. The only real way to stay safe is a **hardware wallet** like Ledger or Trezor ;your keys never touch your computer, so hackers can’t drain it. Best move: keep serious funds in cold storage, use hot wallets just for small trades, and never download random programs. Treat hot wallets like your “spending wallet,” not your vault. Hope that helps mate

ra246

Yes; I have a list of things to buy once we moon and I think it's a good time to take some profit. I've been depserate to build a new gaming PC for the last 2 months, and essentially I was waiting for another run up to start buying parts. I got bored last month and I built it last week. Nevertheless, it feels like we're so close!

LinkMePorn69

And then there’s the guy who barely can turn on a PC but bought BTC at 300$ and now he’s a millionaire 😆

Romanizer

$1 put into Bitcoin 15 years ago would be roughly $1 million today, but you didn't need to spend anything if you had a PC. So yeah, for the world. Anyone could and can participate.

kobpee

Oh, that's a software wallet right? If your PC breaks, is your wallet lost? Like how if you lose your hardware one, it is lost?

RabbitHoleSnorkle

At early times it was not seen like a lot of money. They might have dropped a bowl of noodle soup on the single PC having a private key

noviwu97

No grandma out there is using desktop PC

GabeSter

They also killed the distinguished profile on PC. Check the linked profile on pc v Reddit app. There was supposed to be a distinguished profile as well. I have to imagine the app version will go away when they remove nft highlights from profiles in November

Odd_Palpitation6715

I used to pay with BTC on darkweb some 15yrs ago. I am sure I had some leftover BTC left on some old PC somewhere...

Quantum_Pineapple

People like to say we're at about the "1997-1998 internet ubiquity/acceptance" stage, but I still think the general public thinks and treats BTC like they did 1989 internet access/someone having a PC in their home (NERD!).

joeyo1423

My dad was an early believer in Bitcoin. He bought a single Bitcoin for like $1000 or something. He unfortunately died later that year and no one cared about the Bitcoin at the time so his wallet was never discovered. Most of us didn't even remember at the time until years later when we recalled him rambling on about this awesome digital currency that he thought would be huge in the future. He told us he bought 1 Bitcoin and the family thought he was nuts to spend a grand on something "imaginary" lol. It's possible he bought more too we don't know. But his PC and everything else were long gone by then. Crazy to think that there's over $100k just lost

Romanizer

Probably much more as mining was still running good on a home PC.

Makunouchiipp0

The software on your PC/Phone doesn’t interact with your private keys directly. It receives transactions that are signed on the hardware. Any good hardware wallet seller has their source code available for inspection on GitHub.

bag_douche

>If you lose the key, you lose your coins. I would lose only one factor of a multi-sig wallet. >You're still vulnerable to a remote attack I would use an airgapped PC running Tails OS. >If you lose your program, (IE the drive it's on is damaged or lost) you'd have to rewrite the program with the same cyrptographic algorithm before you can access your keys. This is the difficult bit. I need to learn how to reliably make and re-create an AES-256 enciphering program, to ensure the same inputs create an identical output. Thank you for your comment, I appreciate it.

riscten

I was with you until you said "save it on your pc". Paper wallets (meaning backups of BIP39 mnemonics) are great, but saving them on a PC that sees the Internet is foolish.

kkrott877

Don't listen to the guys on this thread. Download Sparrow on any Windows PC or Blue Wallet on any Android / iOS phone. Import your seed. If possible, reply here the first 4 characters of what you labeled as "address" so we can make sure it is actually a valid known address or that might be a passphrase. If you have success importing the seedphrase and actually see the funds there, you're good to go to exchange it for money if that's what you desire.

SalteeKibosh

I've been mining for years now. ASICs, GPUs, and FPGAs and even mined Helium. When I started, you could use your gaming PC GPU/CPU to make some actual money. For example, your 1070ti was pulling in $5-7/day on ETH near peak profit. This was well before companies started building warehouses for tens of thousands of GPUs and ASICs to run as a competitor to someone like you. Nowadays, as soon as something profitable to mine is developed, these companies move all those resources to mine as much as they can. As you're probably aware, the more resources on a project, the less each resource makes in revenue and profit. Now, your 1070 is not 1 generation behind, not 2, not 3, but is 4 generations behind. You can not compete against industrial miners with 5090s, h100s, fleets of asics, and fpgas. It's not possible. Unfortunately, you aren't going to make anything worth the effort. Even with a 5090, profit is in the negatives to a few pennies profit per day (on $0.08/kwh power rate) Your best bet in this industry is to work hard at something you're good at, make excess money, and invest that into BTC, ETH, or other bluechip coins. Do not buy memecoins or shitcoins and expect profit. Good luck

Charming-Designer944

Hard wallets shine the day you need to spend or transfer the coins. You know you can do that securely with no worry that the computer might be compromised. You still need a secure backup in case the hard wallet device malfunctions. But with a hard wallet device your wallet keys are never entered on an online connected device that might leak the key to some bad actor,.not even if your PC is completely hacked and filled to the brim with malware.

Automatic-Unit-2346

I’m not anti–hardware wallet or pro by default, I’m pro matching tools to risk. If you hold meaningful BTC or you transact from a PC with many extensions, isolating keys is a real safety upgrade. Best Wallet emphasized clear security prompts with an easy setup. Here’s how I frame it: phones with secure enclaves plus sane habits can be fine for small balances, but they still expose keys to more attack surface and daily wear. Hardware signers reduce that surface and force on-device address checks. The tradeoff is a bit more ceremony and the responsibility to back up the seed properly. If you choose not to use hardware, at least keep the seed strictly offline, use a watch-only wallet for visibility, and practice a tiny restore so you know you can recover. If you do use hardware, buy direct, verify firmware, and store the device and metal backup separately. Either path can be safe if the routine is boring and repeatable.

Zekohl

I bought PC Parts for 2.4 BTC back in the day, was a good PC held up for 4-5 years, still that's a lot of money in today's BTC. Don't beat yourself up for using money as it is intended to be used.

word-dragon

You have a PC, are into gaming, and you like to think you’re usually pretty safe? Hoping your stash isn’t more than a few hundred bucks. Anyway, if it is, get a decent hardware wallet, and a metal device that gets all A’s for fire, corrosion, and physical crushing. I use Black Seed Ink, but plenty of good ones to choose from. On the wallet, create a new seed, then reset it and create another new seed (and 2 more times for good measure). Reset and create a new seed - physically cover any cameras, including your pretty safe PC, and your phones. Don’t talk to yourself while you are working since you can’t possibly physically block all of the microphones around you. Write down the seed on a piece of paper, and generate a receive address. Now reset the wallet and set it up with the seed you wrote down. Make sure it generates the same receive address. Now record the seed from paper onto your metal storage, and reset the wallet and reload the seed reading your metal version. Make sure it generates the same receive address. Now shred the paper and/or burn it thoroughly (crushing any ashes). Send $50 worth of bitcoin to that receive address and make sure it gets there. Get a safe deposit box at a good bank, and put your seed in there. Now generate a new receive address and send it $2000. Wait 2-3 months and make sure no one steals it. Now send it the rest of your stash in chunks of $5,000, each to a newly generated receive address, until your stash is moved. Now generate one final receive address, which you can use to send more coin to in the future, and reset the cold wallet. Either create a new account for “working” bitcoin (as opposed to investment coin), or just keep on the shelf for the time you decide you want to tap into your coin (in which case you take it into the vault room with a visual cloak and flashlight, and load your keys into it right there under the cloak before leaving your seed where it is). You feel safer yet? In my case, I made two metal copies, and stored one in a nearby bank safe deposit box and one in a commercial secure vault in another country I visit occasionally. I’m not sure I feel completely safe, but I’m perhaps a little paranoid. Just never know if I’m paranoid enough! At any rate, I sleep pretty well at night.

Arbiter_89

I don't know enough about AES256 specifically, but assuming that you could make a key from a seedphrase, I think there'd be a couple considerations for you to be mindful of. I don't think any of these inherently rule out your idea, but I think they're still something I'd want to think about if I were in your shoes. 1. If you lose the key, you lose your coins. (then again, if you lose a seed phrase that also happens) 2. If you lose your program, (IE the drive it's on is damaged or lost) you'd have to rewrite the program with the same cyrptographic algorithm before you can access your keys. 3. You're still vulnerable to a remote attack (Someone controls your PC through malware can launch your program and send funds.) 4. If you don't code your program properly, someone could potentially have malware that "sniffs" the text when it's decrypted to be read, even if it's not visible. (This seems extremely unlikely to me, and you'd need to be the victim of a targeted attack, but could happen, and can't with a simple hardware wallet.)

SpiderHuman

Yes. I own "true" Bitcoin, Larry Fink's Blackrock $IBIT, Coinshares $BRRR ETF, and Saylor's $MSTR. I'm scared like your mom. I'm too old to be building my own PC, growing my own food, or custodying my own Bitcoin.

doyzer9

Hi, no this is not an infected download version of TV as such, the video tutorial tells you to run a command prompt code "to update the tradingview platform to an AI version" but the command line code actually silently installs a RAT, with a legitimate remote access software package. Once installed the scammer has hidden access to your PC. No virus, no Trojan, no malware to be detected. Really sneaky, really dirty. Stay safe 👍

Maconi

When PoW failed and PoS tried to supplant it. BTC’s PoW was supposed to lay the groundwork for a truly decentralized currency that could be mined from a basic home PC (so every household could mine their own currency). It didn’t take long for PoW to breakdown to the point where it’s impossible for a lowly home PC to ever mine its own block (and would never pay back its own electricity costs if using a mining pool). PoS plays by familiar Wall Street rules. The more money you have, the more money you make. The only way for the average person to interact with crypto now is to trade on exchanges. No different than stocks. Buying TSLA or BTC feels no different on an app like Robonhood. Hopefully one day someone either figures out PoW 2.0 or comes up with a better solution.

penty

Same, especially the should have mined but I didn't "want to ruin my gaming PC"s graphics card." Did manage to buy late 12-early 13 from a sketchy Second Life kiosk.

poor_doc_pure

Never back up your wallet online did you have it on screenshot on your pc ? Else your PC might be infected with a keylogger or some other kind of malware. Was that supposed to be your. OWN public address ? How come you sent 200k as a newbie ?

crunchyeyeball

Also in UK. I use Kraken to buy, but Strike has a good reputation too. I also use a Trezor for storage. Solid option. So the Trezor is whats called a *hardware wallet*. It stores your keys such that you can send or receive bitcoin without your PC or phone ever having access to them. Even if your PC is riddled with malware, your keys are secure. During setup, your hardware wallet will generate 12, 20, or 24 random "seed words". These words are used to generate your private keys. They will allow you to restore your wallet to any compatible device if needed. The security of those words is much more important than the physical device itself. These seed words need to be written down and *never* stored digitally. Some even stamp them into steel plates. If you ever read about funds being stolen from a hardware wallet, it's because the user was either tricked into giving away their seed words to a scammer, or the user typed them into some internet-connected device, or took a photo of them which was seen by hackers. At some point, you'll likely get scam emails warning of some kind of security issue and asking you to type your seed to "secure your funds". Don't. If you ever find yourself typing your seed words on a keyboard, just *stop*, give yourself a hard slap in the face, and rethink your choices. Aside from that, the other common way to lose your funds is if your PC has malware which changes an address in your clipboard, so always check that the address displayed on your Trezor screen is the same as the one shown on your PC.

Jerrygarciasnipple

Idk, I run a miner on my shitty PC and earn 50-100 sats a day hoping it’ll be worth something some day. I don’t run it every day.

restore_democracy

People thought adoption would be buying coffee but it’s ETFs, treasuries, and strategic reserves. They thought mining would be on your PC under your desk, but it’s building nuclear power plants to run data centers. They wanted it to get big but didn’t realize what that meant.

fairwaysandfinance

Oh, you should print this out and it will be your own Bill Gates comment "When we set the upper limit of PC-DOS at 640K, we thought nobody would ever need that much memory. William Gates, chairman of Microsoft."

stellarfirefly

The "governing body" is technically the tens of thousands of people running a Bitcoin node, which anybody can do with even a fairly low-end PC, and thus for a major change such as increasing the coin cap would require a majority of them running a new version that has that increased cap. Of course, the developers of Bitcoin Core could conceivably change the software to increase or remove the cap. But then, the Node runners would have to majority decide to upgrade to that change. With the fervor of your typical devout Coiner, such a change would be pretty much dead on arrival. At best, a new set of devs would hard fork the code and the changes would be almost universally rejected.

Apprehensive_Let9521

No thanks. There’s a bigger risk of malware stealing your coins on your PC than Coinbase going bankrupt.

anon1971wtf

Mining machines right now are distributed around the world closest to global capital than ever before. So, no, mining it the most decentralized On one end is Satoshi's PC unrelated to global economy, on the other end, currently, the closest distribution

TheGreatMuffin

What makes you think that? If you ever installed any type of software on a windows PC, that's basically the same process :) download installer, click "next" a few times, specify a few options and that's it.

RandoDude124

I threw them out to get my first Windows Vista PC💀

MonsutaReipu

It's an incredibly minor risk, and ultimately no riskier than simply opening your wallet and looking at your private key on the off chance someone has hacked your computer and is looking at your screen. Instances of people getting hacked and having their info scraped from a document on their PC are very rare already. It's easy enough to avoid doing this, so people just normalize saying not to do it. More safety precautions, the better. Having a document with your keys on it, printing them, then deleting the document should also be fine, but at the end of the day it's still riskier than just writing them down. If it's less risky, and doesn't take that much more effort, why not just do the less risky thing?

alineali

This is rather extreme view. IMHO, everything where communication keys do not leave dedicated device and communication between this device and PC/phone is tightly controlled for all practical purposes can be considered cold storage - in the sense that you need to do a lots of additional actions to actually connect it "to the network". Just like if you use HDD in your drawer for backup data it will be considered "cold" backup fi you connect it to PC only when you are actually doing backup.

Ruzhyo04

According to the chain, demand is at an all time low. It’s got more empty blocks than ever before. Hell, Bitcoin Core just reduced the minimum fee level from 1 sat/vb to 0.1 sat/vb. Could there be a bigger red flag? BTC has a supply cap, but that can change. It’s just one line of code. And in fact, to save the security budget, likely will *have to* change. Ethereum has no supply cap but instead has an *issuance* cap. And the burn can reduce that to make the net issuance flat or even deflationary. And Vitalik doesn’t control Ethereum, despite what Bitcoin proponents might claim. Ethereum is in many ways even more decentralized than Bitcoin. It has a comparable node count, wider coin distribution (Vitalik and the EF together have a fraction of the % that Satoshi has of Bitcoin!), redundant and diverse client implementations. And while 2 mining pools control ~60% of Bitcoin’s hash rate, and 1-2 Chinese ASIC manufacturers create almost all the mining hardware, Ethereum has hundreds of staking entities making up the top 1/3 of staking, and anyone can participate with any home desktop PC.

Elvetos_1883

A Raspberry Pi is a small mini PC. But the docker which runs the stuff on the Pi, is builded for both ARM as well as X86_64. The bot is written only against the Kraken exchange. Have a look at the git repo in the answer i provided to the other redditor.

User_Lab_4465

it depends on your bandwidth and the power of your PC. But you can also control that yourself: as I'm on raspberry and and don't want it to use too much of my bandwidth I added some hard limits in bitcoin.conf: maxconnections=32 maxuploadtarget=10000 That should limit to 10GB per day

fonaldduck099

Sparrow is probably the most user friendly on PC, Nunchuk or Blue Wallet on a mobile.

Aggressive-Fact1156

sabes, yo prefiero la seguridad al juicio propio, entiendo lo que dices, pero te explico, tengo una Jade plus, sin eso no puedo enviar BTC a ningún lado solo recibir, ese dispositivo te permite firmar la transacción, osea, aunque se metan a mi billetera via PC o dispositivo que tengas nadie podra sacar ningun sats, además es mucho mas portatil que andar con un notebook. igual tu punto es valido, no atractivo para mi gusto en seguridad y probabilidad de que a ese pc en especifico le pase algo. acuérdate de Mr.beast se salvo por poco que se llevaran todos los BTC, por tener su wallet en una pc. saludos.

McBurger

I did some data importing for a new payroll system for this municipal infrastructure projects company out in WNY. And I was a little surprised (although not *that* surprised) that out of the whole company, one of the highest paid guys was one of two men certified to do underwater welding on bridges. It was amusing because the whole place was a business professional environment, tons of nice dressed staff in cubicles, middle and upper management in their offices. And the underwater welder guy, when I got to his PC to install, I got to talk to him a bit, he’s just chilling there dressed casually in shorts and a tshirt tossing a ball and staring at the ceiling. He’s paid to come in full time but doesn’t have anything to do in office, is only needed in the field a few times a month, and he was easily the happiest person in the building. And earned more than his boss & boss’s boss too lol

riscten

A PC can be used for other stuff. If you're only hodling, you don't necessarily need a dedicated device. What you need is something to convert raw seeds (like you'd get from rolling dice) into mnemonics, derive xpubs, possibly generate multisig wallets and occasionally sign transactions. This can be done by booting from a clean OS with radios removed from the computer (or disabled) and doing what needs to be done. Once you're done, just boot back into the regular OS and use the PC. In other words, it's not $50 hw wallet vs $500 PC, it's $50 hw wallet vs free PC. Also PCs are general purpose devices, and their hardware is far less likely to be targeted by a supply chain attack. That's not to say that hw wallets are not useful, they are, they're just not essential. OPs post is basically promoting self-reliance over consumerism.

inShambles3749

30k? The entire prize pool is 30k? Lmao. I couldn't even be bothered to start my PC for this

riscten

100%, a hardware wallet is mostly a convenience, so that you don't need to whip out the airgapped PC every time. Technically, a hardware wallet IS an airgapped computer. It's just very small. Another alternative for someone who doesn't want to pay for a hw wallet is to dedicate an old phone. The phone can be factory reset, then have AirGap vault installed on it. From there the phone will act as any other hw wallet, and transactions can be prepared on the companion app on a non-airgapped phone, or with any other watch-only wallet companion app (such as Sparrow or Blue Wallet). Only correction I'd make to your post is to remove "or Macbook". A MacBook is a laptop, and the phrasing could be interpreted as a Macbook (not airgapped) being a viable alternative to an "air-gapped laptop".

rgn_rgn

Got a well secured PC? Exodus is fine.

Charming-Designer944

There is multiple layers of security on mobiles, and a remote code execution exploit in one app is not the end of the world. Unlike your PC apps on a phone is sandboxed in an unique environment per app with strict rules on what data on the phone that app have access to. This exploit gives the attacker access to any content and functions already made available to WhatsApp or any other apps using the vulnerable image display library. It does not give the attacker access to any information related to your crypto wallet unless that crypto wallet is completely ignorant of security and stores the wallet as public/shared information (external) and not app-private data (internal).

Conflictingview

>About 3% of the world claims to hold at least some Bitcoin. 3% of PC usage was in the late 70s when the Apple II was dominant. I doubt that 3% of the world's population holds some bitcoin, but I don't know. However, your idea about PC ownership is FAR, FAR off base. [In 1979, 535,000 PCs were sold](https://pegasus3d.com/total_share.html). World Population was 4.4 billion. In other words, 0.01% of the world had access to a PC. If we're being fair and say that PCs are used for about 5 years, you don't get to 3% of the world having access to a PC until **1995.**

crunchyeyeball

*Multiple* points of failure. The first few which come to mind: So presumably he first *typed* out those 12 words before trying to disguise them. That's a big no-no. If the machine he typed them on contained malware, his funds could have been stolen at that stage. It sounds like he got lucky in this case, but others won't be. Where is this file stored? On his PC? What happens when the drive fails? In the cloud? What happens if he loses access? or the provider goes bust? or hackers gain access & delete his files? What happens in 10, 20, 30 years when he no longer remembers the "system" he used, or where the file was stored? Books can be reprinted with minor changes. What happens when he can't find the exact same edition he used originally? Just get a proper hardware wallet and follow accepted best practices for security. You'll sleep a lot better.

Romanizer

We barely reached the first computer at that stage. The Macintosh is from 1984. About 3% of the world claims to hold at least some Bitcoin. 3% of PC usage was in the late 70s when the Apple II was dominant. So you would have to go one step back in that chart.

brendan904

Ser5 Beelink off Amazon. Get an upgraded SSD, I went with 4TB also off Amazon. Install the new SSD (super easy) and then download latest Umbrel OS off GitHub. They have a page for instructions how to flash it to USB and you boot it up. Pretty quick and easy. All in, you get a solid Mini PC that’s future proofed chain wise and a solid Linux based OS with pre-installed apps you just download and run. I’m not technical at all which is why I went down the sort-of-DIY route. Node runs all the time, I’m supporting and feel good about it, didn’t cost me a lot of money (also running my BitAxes off my mini pc too)

spirit-receiver

I agree, I wouldn't recommend a Raspberry Pi for anything more than a simple node. But you can still use the raspibolt guide with a Linux distribution on any mini PC if you want to learn more about setting up a node.

disruptioncoin

They do! I am constantly going back and comparing them wondering which one I want next lol. Especially the Coldcard Q1 and the Jade. Really like the qwerty keyboard on the Q1 - not a fan of entering my password through my PC like I do with my Trezor One. But in the end I feel rather comfortable knowing my Trezor one has been out for a pretty long time and has been attacked many times and had many vulnerabilities exposed and patched. You can't buy back that time with new features. Which device I buy could end up being one of the most important decisions I ever make if Bitcoin continues to grow - it's already a major financial choice, like picking a job or a house. So it’s not something I approach lightly or carelessly.

FancyMusic3783

Its perfect money, if it would be a stock it would be worth 1 million already in 2015 but its chained down by mining aspect (time requiring to lay down mining infra) Bitcoin's price (even though its 'flying' ever since inception) is actually CHAINED DOWN by time, and this chain loosens only slowly each month (even though it doesnt seem so) because it is relatively time consuming to build up mining infrastructure, find cheap energy, make long term deals with energy providers etc. This all takes time and Bitcoin could get only so far in 15 years. Lets assume price of Bitcoin is SUPPLY vs DEMAND. And everyone speaks all the time only about the DEMAND side (basically 'if you buy this for 100k, you will never find an an id*ot that buys this from you for 250k' like Buttcoiner would say OR 'every government needs this as this is the only thing that can be used as a base layer and a unit of measure because nth else is countable without relying on 3rd party' like Bitcoiner would say. But SUPPLY also has its 50% of effect on price while no one is speaking about it. Price of Bitcoin is always CHAINED DOWN by mining price. Lets say it is 2011 and mining 1 Bitcoin on your PC costs 1 usd. Even if majority of Bitcoiners is already convinced Bitcoin is worth 10 usd based on future expectations, price of Bitcoin (unlike stocks) would not be able to get to 10usd over night and stabilise there. With Bitcoin this is a process that takes a lot of TIME. Once price goes up to 3-4usd, everyone will rather switch on their PC and mine Bitcoin for 1 usd over night than buying it now for 5 usd. This relationship obviously increases difficulty so mining price and market price meet somewhere inbetween over time, etc. Sometimes people compare today vs 2021 bull. In November 2021 when Bitcoin was close to 70k, mining price was only somewhere slightly above 20k, i.e. market price obviously not sustainable. In 2017 bull craze it was even sth like 18k market vs 3k mining. Not sustainable.Now the price is 115k and mining costs around 100k. We are in a much more stable situation than 4 years ago. Obviously no one knows where price goes and yes in 1 year we can be at 60k market and 60k mining, but THATS IT. Thats the bad scenario in the current situation. I feel like a lot of people have a PTSD from 2018 and 2021 when they look at 115k but this is completely different situation which from physical perspective looks much more sustainable.

GoldmezAddams

Mining bitcoin profitably these days takes specialized hardware called ASICs and access to very cheap electricity. Professional miners are surely making more than $20 a day, but there are a lot of upfront and ongoing costs. The days of mining on your PC are long gone.

minimaslim

Buy a cold wallet & never show or store your phrase on PC or personal

Amber_Sam

Great to hear. I see you already removed the post so I guess you are all sorted. Just wanted to point out to one thing. Jade (at least JadePlus) has an option to be used as a temporary signer. I use it that way instead of using their blind oracle and every time I type the seed words (and a passphrase) in. No USB cable, no Bluetooth. Just using the QR codes with Bluewallet (or Sparrow on the PC). This is the coldest you can go. I know it's a bit less user-friendly but you're running your own bank, it cannot be easy.

Brrgyy689

Haven't done anything like this yet but I just put Bitcoin knots on a $100 mini pc I already had, downloading the blockchain history was tedious and took 4 days because of its lackluster hardware but runs decently after that finished. It just runs as a desktop PC but I set the settings so it never shuts off, kept Bitcoin knots open, then just disconnected everything but the power supply. Will connect sparrow wallet to it at a later time to see how well it communicates. But so far from the mempool and peer windows, it seems to work.

insidiousfruit

I am referring to each individual person PC that is mining as a node. 1 mining mac may add nothing but 100 million adds something.

longonbtc

Here is a comprehensive tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT4NuAaH3EM That tutorial explains how to run Knots on your normal PC, on Umbrel and on Start9.

Hopeful_Beautiful_94

This looks like the custom PC a 16 year old would build. Tinted window, LEDs and everything. Once you grow out of this shit you'll not be so proud anymore.

AppropriateReach7854

Mining with a gaming PC isn’t really worth it anymore, profit margins are tiny and you’ll just wear out your card. Better to DCA into BTC if you want long-term gains. If you’re curious about payouts without stressing your rig, hashmole lets you rent hashpower, but it’s the same story, small returns unless you scale big

52134682

What's the odds someone buys an old PC from a thrift store and finds a old btc wallet on it?

riscten

> Even though its branded as a public key, when exposed, it pretty much ends your privacy in that all your receive addresses can be identified. To what degree is the public key for my account shared beyond my cold wallet. The companion program/wallet? Other servers? Does this vary by wallet? Regarding this part, I assume you're talking about the xpub (or ypub or zpub)? This is public in the sense that it doesn't need the absolute protection that a mnemonic or private keys require, but it doesn't mean you should post it on social media. Usually, you'll only import it into a software wallet on an online system (like BlueWallet on your phone or Sparrow on your PC) for your personal use. The software wallet needs it to show balance for your entire wallet, to provide you with receive/change addresses when you need them, for instance when constructing unsigned transactions. Your xpub doesn't need to be sent to a cloud provider to transact with Bitcoin, although it's not awful to have it backed up on secured cloud storage, for convenience.

atomicdomb

All you store is the private key. The ownership of the coins is what is transfered and is store globally on every computer which is a full node. So if you store the whole blockchain as a full node then your transactions are stored in blocks. We usually visualize this data as JSONs but it is technically binary on disc storage on your PC.

MannysBeard

I think the only way I'd show off my wealth would be when I travel - fly business, nice hotels, nice restuaraunts - but at home we cook most of our meals, live healthily and catch the train most of the time I like my nice tech and gadgets but also don't need to get the best of the best just for the sake of it, just what is considered high performance for what I need it for. And if that's mid tier vs a high end gaming PC with all the bells and whistles, mid tier it is.

FIRE_and_forget_it

100% - The last thing I want is a lambo or anything in that realm of showoff wealth. What the fuck is going on with people wearing watches? My "big" expense this year was upgrading my home built PC - I finally got a decent GPU and a nice monitor. Spent around $1800 getting fancy. Not because I'm a cheapskate, not because I'm afraid to spend my money or I don't have any or I think I'll lose it or any other weird fear. I just didn't have anything I cared to spend the money on...and then I did...so I did... and now I'm back to not spending much. I think that a lot of people think that they want a lot of "stuff" (for whatever reason). Then you see people with a lot of stuff (big house etc...) and you know what... it looks like work. Keeping it clean. Keeping it safe. That sounds like work - and my ass does not want to work!