TOR

decentralised_cash

Sure! I'll go through your points mentioned. **Safety** ------ The key to storing your Bitcoin safely is generating a wallet **offline**. Your private key material should **never** touch an internet-connected device. The most straightforward way to do this is by owning a hardware wallet, such as a Trezor. You power on the device and it generates a 12 or 24 word seed phrase that you should only write **on paper** (though some people prefer to engrave it in metal to make it more durable). This seed phrase **is** your wallet: an enormous "tree" of private keys and addresses can be generated from this seed phrase. Your wallet software handles generating new addresses, tracking your balances (UTXOs) across addresses, etc... There is also the option of setting up an air-gapped Linux PC (a computer that is never connected to the internet) and using that to generate wallets. That is *very* secure if done correctly, but is much more technical. The above method does not require you to trust any third-party with your keys. You generate and store everything locally and offline. **Anonymity** --------- Now, as you probably know, the blockchain is a public ledger, so every single transaction and movement of coins can be traced. Therefore, even though you might have your own offline, non-custodial wallet (as discussed previously), any address you withdraw Bitcoin to will still be known publicly. *And*, if you withdraw Bitcoin to one of your addresses from an exchange like Coinbase, that Bitcoin address will **always** be tied to your name. Coinbase and the government will know which Bitcoin is yours. This is where CoinJoin comes in. CoinJoin is a protocol for creating collaborative Bitcoin transactions that combine **hundreds** of inputs and create **hundreds** of outputs. The result of this is that your Bitcoin becomes totally anonymised - not even the best chain analysis firms will know where your coins have gone (as long as you don't recombine UTXOs into similar amounts to the ones you had going in). To do this, you need to download Wasabi Wallet and add a good coordinator as a URL - most people us `https://coinjoin.kruw.io`. There are no fees for this, except normal on-chain fees. The protocol is run anonymously over TOR and uses zero-knowledge proofs to ensure that not even the coordinator learns which coins are yours. After you've CoinJoined your coins, you can send them to your hardware wallet (but don't recombine too many UTXOs). The end result is that - even if you bought from somewhere like CoinJoin - no one will be able to trace your coins or know what you did with them. **Buying/Selling Bitcoin** -------- If you wish to do this without a centralised exchange like Coinbase, you'll need to turn to P2P (peer-to-peer) platforms. [HodlHodl](https://hodlhodl.com) is a good option and is intuitive to use, though fees are a little high. There is also Bisq, but it's harder to set up. When buying P2P, you buy Bitcoin directly from others via the method of your preference, e.g. cash or bank transfer. **Purchasing Stuff with Bitcoin** ------ Bitcoin has no "accounts" and doesn't not have any names associated with addresses on-chain (these are off-chain heuristics). Any vendor worth their salt will simply give you a Bitcoin address to which you send Bitcoin directly from your non-custodial wallet. No "account", no verification, no KYC. **Hot Wallet** ---- One additional recommendation of mine would be to use a hot wallet app on your phone for smaller amounts of Bitcoin. The best option for iOS/Android is BlueWallet. Make sure your phone is up-to-date to avoid any potential malware. Having a wallet on your phone is safer than on a normal (internet-connected) PC, but it is obviously less safe than the hardware wallet or air-gapped Linux PC setups I was talking to you about above.

TheFyreLord

1 - build your own hardwallet (search for seedsigner) 2 - generate your own seedphrase 3 - buy non-kyc bitcoin and send to your wallet For extra privacity, you can use coinjoin, liquid network, own node, TOR...

yekcowrebbaj

It’s not immediately apparent but using the public chain with external data has led to some pretty comprehensive digital forensics on account owners. Even before KYC you needed a new address with each transaction and Mixers combined with TOR and VPNs to keep it anywhere close to being actually anonymous.

SpendHefty6066

Not necessarily. You may configure your node for outbound only and not allow inbound peers. Alternatively you may run on TOR, not IPv4, which CAN receive inbound peers without opening port 8333 on your router. If you do accept IPv4 peers to share your blockchain (full peering), then you must open a port which can possibly expose your machine. My node is on dedicated hardware and it supports IPv4, IPv6, TOR, NPR, and I2P. The bitcoin daemon is sandboxed and an infiltration would not leak to other areas of the computer or network. If you want to be a sovereign bitcoiner, you have to run a node. Trust nothing. Verify everything.

BullfrogLevel2087

Thats a dumb statement - where are TOR servers? They made that.

Disgruntled_AnCap

The Internet itself and TOR were made by DARPA. GPS was made by the department of defense. AES was made by NIST. SHA-256 by the NSA. It doesn't matter if the CIA made Bitcoin. Like all of the aforementioned techs, it's way bigger and more useful than them now, and will certainly outlive the USGov.

Working-Business-153

This guy is everywhere atm opining confidently on matters about which he seems to know very little. Bitcoin could potentially be a CIA op as a way to launder money and transfer it secretly to operatives, it's possible, see TOR, Iran-Contra, those dumbass blog sites that got a load of spies caught. 'Professor' Jiang would have no way of knowing either way.

Watada

Yeah. No way open sourced projects like TOR could be done by the govt. /s

vega_9

yup. CIA is famous for encryption and starting the TOR project

PatrickKal

CIA could have contributed. The cryptocurrency development goes back to the 80s with DigiCash and b-money. It is public knowledge that the development of the TOR project was partially funded by the CIA / USA. Just to give an example that it isn't immediately a negative thing.

Quietlion79

Totally agree, I just thought I would try that one time to see if we got lucky. I would think that at some point we'd risk locking the wallet with failed attempts. I was hoping that by going through TOR on the old laptop, we might bypass the need for a seed phrase to log in. Perhaps not? Seed integrity, got it! Thanks. As I mentioned in other posts, this was 13 years ago and looking around seems to be helping her remember things. She has made mention that she thought the wallet, and possibly seed phrase, are located in a separate, possibly encrypted section of the drive. I settled upon a 12 word seed only because she seemed to remember that she accessed it through TOR and I only came up with two wallets that fit the bill; Electrum and Coinwallet. She said Coinwallet was familiar. In 2013, Coinwallet apparently had a 12 word seed phrase. I was thinking a drive clone would be ideal, and try to figure out what names/types of files to search for would be best, along with determining if there is indeed some sort of hidden partition. I appreciate your thoughts!

Quietlion79

Hey there, I appreciate your response! It is quite real as this is a close friend and we did manage to regain access to her coinbase exchange and saw in the transaction log that approximately 14.5 BTC should still remain in her wallet. The last transaction was a withdrawal of 1.5 BTC wallet>exchange>fiat in early June of 2013, and the first transactions were a few months before. I appreciate the perspective on the TOR browser, I wasn't sure how that worked. I was thinking that looking for certain files on the drives would be the best bet, but I would assume that there are no universal wallet files, so figuring out what company she used for her wallet would be a good first step. Do you know what file names I should look for? I believe I have backups of both drives, but I am thinking about doing it again, as I want to be certain I have the entirety of each drive. She is an "analog" person and this is almost 13 years ago, so she is trying to remember what and where things are. She seems to think that there may have been a different "section", assuming she means partition, that the wallet may be on. Using basic diagnostic tools, I believe that I saw two partitions on each drive, so I want to make sure I make an exact clone. I don't think Time Machine will do it, so I was looking into third party software. Any thoughts? I see Super Duper mentioned. The text file is strange indeed. I thought maybe her friend used it as another layer of security, hiding the seed phrase in it, with another document that indicates the numbers of the words in the seed phrase. She mentioned another document (she says she recorded everything meticulously) with VINs on it (she is into cars, so she relates everything back to cars) that were a series of letters and numbers, perhaps? Still looking for that. Thanks for the word to the wise! That was part of the reason why I thought getting the old laptop working was the best bet as it was all original, working and trusted. Yes, it may be that time, but finding a place that is not just going to vanish once her BTC is recovered has to be a minefield, let alone knows what the heck they are doing!

liftcookrepeat

Main issue is the seed phrase without the exact 12 words in the right order nothing will open. The key term here is seed integrity, partial matches from a big list won't work. Best step is to stop guessing and focus on finding the original wallet file or exact phrase on that old drive. Trying random combos can waste time and risk mistakes. Also TOR access won't matter if you don't have the correct seed or wallet file locally. Are you sure it was a 12 word seed and not a different format from older wallets?

ReadingTheSign23

If this is real, I’d honestly slow down and be very careful here, because it’s easy to make things worse when dealing with old wallets. First thing, I wouldn’t rely too much on the TOR angle yet. The wallet itself wouldn’t “live” in TOR, TOR was just how they accessed stuff. The actual wallet data should be somewhere on the drive if it was a desktop wallet. I’d focus on finding wallet files or backups on that original machine before trying random installs on a new one. That text file is interesting but also a bit of a red flag. A real seed phrase would be 12 or 24 words in a very specific order, not buried in a list of 30k words. Trying random combinations is basically impossible to brute force, so I wouldn’t go too far down that path unless you have more context on how it was generated. Also be extremely cautious about downloading old wallets or entering phrases into anything. There are a lot of fake versions out there now targeting exactly this kind of situation. At this point it might actually be worth getting someone experienced in crypto forensics or data recovery involved, especially since this could be a significant amount. Just make sure they’re legit and not another scam.

pricklypierre13

Ah yes, Electrs needs both the Bitcoin Core RPC server and the P2P server for connectivity. I'll look at improving this in a future version of the script. In the mean time, you can set `enable_inbound_connections` to false, then after the script generates the `bitcoin.conf` file hand edit it to have these settings: listen=1 bind=127.0.0.1 listenonion=0 I believe `listenonion=0` will already be set, but you need to override `listen=1` (for Electrs) and add the missing `bind=127.0.0.1` line. That will disallow incoming TOR connections, but allow connections from Electrs but only to [127.0.0.1](http://127.0.0.1) (Electrs will need to be on the same Mac).

Romanizer

How do they know where the nodes are if they use TOR? Wouldn't they just see the final point of the TOR routing?

LurkerFromTheVoid

From the article: What to know: A new Cambridge study finds that 72% to 92% of the world's submarine cables would need to fail simultaneously before Bitcoin's network suffers significant global node disconnection. While random cable faults have historically had negligible impact on Bitcoin, targeted attacks on key submarine chokepoints or major hosting providers could disrupt the network with far less damage. The growing use of TOR by Bitcoin nodes has unexpectedly increased the network's physical resilience, as relay infrastructure is concentrated in highly connected European countries that are difficult to isolate.

xpresstuning

None of that is useful ... it's doing the opposite, actually, increasing risk and the attack surface. Listen, the problem is that being paranoid is to your detriment, and there are a lot of people being just that. Paranoia stems from a ***severe*** lack of knowledge. And there's really no excuse in 2026, just input some stuff like "What are private keys, seed-phrases, public keys, watch-only wallets, etc." into a LLM and it'll basically sum it up for you. It takes like 20 minutes of reading. Here's an example of how i manage my main Bitcoin acc. -> I use an ol "Watch-Only" wallet i created years ago. My seed-phrase, passphrase, **derivation path** and **master fingerprint** are stamped on two pieces of metal. I can import that "Watch-Only" wallet in any good wallet software i want. A "Watch-Only" wallet is created by importing your Public key (zpub/xpub). I have that written down as well. It's for monitoring transactions and receiving Bitcoin (it can generate addresses). Right now it's in Sparrow (desktop) and Bluewallet (mobile). I can't spend from it, because the private key doesn't exist on these devices. **Private Key** (seed phrase is just a human-friendly way to generate the private key) - the secret combo that **opens** the safe and lets you take the money out. **Public Key** = the "outside" of the safe that everyone can see. When i accumulate a undisclosed amount in my preferred exchange (Strike atm.), i transfer to my "hot" wallet. That "hot" wallet is a separate wallet for spending and accumulation. The "hot" wallet was created in Bluewallet alone, and stays there; Bluewallet also has a feature called "Encrypted Storage", which is why i like it a lot. Basically, you make a strong password and it encrypts the entire wallet data. That encryption is generated from that password that isn't stored anywhere. So on top on Android's encryption, you've got Bluewallet's encryption. But because i like to go overkill, i have Orbot (everything routes through TOR). And when i accumulate an undisclosed amount in my "hot" wallet, i send my preferred amount to my cold-storage "Watch-Only" wallet. Once in a bluemoon, i test my cold-storage out, i dunno, like once every couple of years. This is stupid tbh, but i am human and i do it for emotional stability. It's always all still there, as my "Watch-Only" wallet shows.

Eighth_Eve

It was hard, you needed a TOR client and your own vpn to get near it.

LavishnessCapital380

Its just another CIA released tool like TOR. It wont be going anywhere and will serve its purpose.

FishermanWaste1268

Why would they create TOR?

real_dominic_decoco

**Setup** The setup involves coordinated, secure steps among entities like the user, isolated environments (Iso), secure terminals (ST), watchtowers (WT), SAR providers, and hardware applets (Boomlet/Boomletwo): * **SAR Registration:** User registers with SAR entities via an encrypted phone app, providing doxing data for potential rescue. * **Key Generation:** In an air-gapped Iso, generate a normal mnemonic key and Boomlet applet creates MuSig2 shares plus a non-backupable boomlet key. Set duress consent via selecting 5 countries (exact match signals no duress). * **Parameter Agreement:** Peers agree on timelocks (milestone blocks), and WTs via encrypted, signed TOR exchanges. * **Mystery Generation:** Each Boomlet randomly selects a secret "mystery" threshold (steps in withdrawal) within a user-defined range. * **Backup and Sync:** Create/verify a single backup applet (Boomletwo); synchronize keys, parameters, and fingerprints via WT for consistency. This ensures no single party can predict or bypass the process, emphasizing tamper-evident hardware and opsec.

WarpFactor777

That's what you would do. 1) Create a new Bitcoin public address and generate the private key on a usb thumb drive. Do this on a PC running the Tails operating system on the TOR network anywhere in the world. 2) Now you (the bad guy) tell the good guys that your blackmailing to put 1,000 Bitcoin onto your public address. 3) Now your usb thumb drive can authenticate and move the Bitcoin to another address. But you don't do that 4) You make a deal with another bad guy that lives/operates in a third world country that does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S. to buy your usb drive as is. You are simply handing over your entire Bitcoin asset along with the private key on the usb. This new bad guy now owns the Bitcoin. 5) You make a deal and say, pay me 50% of the value of the account in diamonds (portable wealth) 6) You the good guy sell the diamonds, slowly, anywhere in the world risk free. 7) The bad guy with the Bitcoin cashes out on an exchange that does not have KYC laws, and he does not care if U.S. authorities identify him, because he lives where he can't be extradited. 8) The bad guys win. 9) Only problem is the bad guys gotta trust each other.

synthwave_man

Anyone Protocol... A privacy gem in the low market cap zone, with massive potential. They have become the worlds largest onion routing privacy network within just over two years (surpassed TOR). Their network is live, and you can use it (on mobile or desktop pc) as an alternative to VPNs. So far, it costs nothing. You could also buy one of their hardware relays (router), to setup your own relay / node at home and earn rewards, and use the hotspot mode of the device to encrypt your entire WiFi internet traffic at home.

LavishnessCapital380

Its still likely and possible he was never a real person, but an entire NSA or CIA team tasked with its creation. There are some odd similarities with their creation of the TOR/onion network.

SpendHefty6066

I think you are right about Tails using TOR by default. So your real IP addresses are concealed. Still, using someone else's node leaks all of your UTXOs in combination in your wallet and more importantly, you cannot be 100% certain of that node being a good actor. I know of no cases where a rogue node was the default node for a popular wallet, but the Bitcoin ethos is: "Don't trust. Verify." Running a node is the only way to be 100% certain that your transactions are verified. Also, when the next hard fork happens, you want to make sure that your rules are the ones you want. That can only be done with certainly by running your own node...These are some of the other reasons to run a node.

Smiletaint

I’m fairly certain tails uses TOR by default, so OP’s true IP would not be exposed. Please someone correct me if I’m wrong. But yes there are other reasons to run a node.

SpendHefty6066

The alternative is to run your node over TOR.

Odd-Parking-90210

Or if you use TOR for Gmail, google drive, google maps and so on. No.

t00ls742

then you're doing it wrong VPN TOR and proxies....make your IP jump around

Resident-Quality1513

That's correct IMO. Did you know Polaroid cameras took off because people realise they could take naughty photos? Same story with video recorders: uptake was to some extent driven by porn. Silk road was probably what made bitcoin a "must-have". Unfortunately for me, by the time I'd worked out how to use TOR, the feds had busted it.

vertigo42

Considering your only other posts ever are from today concerning TOR. You realize Bitcoin is traceable right?

CoinWalletLLC

If you want to connect via TOR on the web or through the app - [https://coin.space/](https://coin.space/)

PhunterSThompsoN

Bitcoin was about $7000 when I was accessing some market places via TOR and thought I missed the train on Bitcoin...boy was I wrong....

Mistahfen

I faded it at many hundreds for a dollar, I was 13 or 14 years old. We had one family computer in the house, and after researching that you could buy d**gs online on a website called Silk Road, which could only be accessed using a TOR browser, I decided to look into it. I remember accessing the Tor browser and everything was REALLY slow. I remember seeing prices in thousands/tens of thousands of bitcoin. Anyways I was really young, living in a super sheltered household, and had no money anyways but it’s sort of just a cool memory of my childhood.

mzackler

Better to fill a hole with your solution (TOR/onion browser) vs. allow someone to build a real competitor

OrdnanceTV

Shortly after I bought my first bitcoin in Fall 2016, I accidentally sent around $125 dollars worth to a scam wallet through a tumbler site on TOR. The site was made to perfectly resemble the actual tumbler site I had used multiple times, and somehow had a nearly-identical address (not sure how this was done, as I thought TOR addresses were totally random). It was a tad over $600 then, so around 20% of a Bitcoin. I don't even wanna begin to contemplate all the BTC I spent (wasted) on other stupid shit. If this guy was in as early as 2010 (when BTC was around $0.06 each) he likely bought-and-sold many times after this Tweet, presumably for decent profits. I hope he's sitting on a fat pile now.

Poop_Cheese

Similar here. Id go on the silkroad for fun and when it was around 17 cents was gonna buy $20 worth but was in high school with no job and didnt trust the sketchy old wallet system through TOR so bought weed instead.  Realistically though I would have sold well before it was billions so I cant be that mad. 

MinimalGravitas

You might be right about the Bitcoin community, but it is just silly to pretend that is also true for the rest of crypto. The Cypherpunk Congress at Devconnect in Buenos Aires was just a month ago. Speakers included Richard Stallman (founder of the Free Software Foundation and developer of GNU), David Chaum (cryptographer, inventor of blind signatures and digital cash, known as the 'father of online anonymity'), Eva Galperin (director of the Electronuc Frontrirs Foundation), Roger Dingledine (co-founder of TOR), Renata Avila (founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation)... why do you think all these people would gather at an Ethereum developers conference if "No one cares"?

synthwave_man

Check out Anyone Protocol (Token: ANYONE). I'm still surprised that most of the people in the space haven't heard about this coin yet. What they have been building, is a decentralized onion-routing network (similar to TOR), but with incentive mechanism for relay operators. Just recently they have surpassed TOR in terms of number of exit relays. And the speed when tunneling your internet traffic through their network is already 3x-5x faster than TOR. They are also selling their own hardware (relay) that acts as a router, and lets you earn rewards while encrypting your internet at home. The network is running with zero outages since the beginning. So far it costs nothing forend users, who are using their mobile app as an alternative to traditional VPN apps like NordVPN or ProtonVPN. In the near future, a license model will be implemented though, as part of the tokenomics, to support the token and attract new investors.

bongosformongos

Your hardware is almost irrelevant here. Because the speed is depending on how many nodes you are connected to that are sharing the blocks for you to download. You can speed it up by letting it sync via the clear net and once done go back to a TOR connection. Syncing while behind TOR makes it take ages.

goddesse

It has nothing to do with misunderstanding it as a communism protocol. Large institutions have far more money and power than individuals. They are often not as unaffiliated and disinterested in each other as might first appear. So a bunch of governments and large institutions getting involved in mining can constitute a potential 51% attack similar to how security researchers believe most of TOR's exit nodes are now probably owned by state actors. Also the KYC laws and the fact that most real use, people's purchases and transactions of BTC are mediated through large financial institutions, people have willing given up the privacy part of Satoshi's whitepaper.

Mattene

lol 2013 i was about to buy 50 btc to buy something on when browsing TOR but got super sketched out by the dealer. It's my annual christmas story

mynutsrbig

By the way it’s Arti TOR (Rust) and not exploitable C TOR.

Old_Imagination_7282

Any advice on how to use my own node? Is it difficult? I have been using Coinbase but my account it under review and I just tried crypto.com but that won’t even recognize the TOR QR code to transfer.

SteelGhost17

I read “France forces citizens to Hodl and use TOR and defi markets to buy and sell bitcoin”

lebastss

Point 1 is absolutely true. China temporarily implemented this. The network can be restricted, mines can be cut off and so can nodes. You can use TOR to get around it but the government still can find you using it if they wanted to at that point but it would effectively kill mainstream use. It's not decentralized from the system, it relies on centralized network centers and infrastructure to function.

NoChanceItsHer

When you check with a node, it checks your xpub (or zpub/ypub), but essentially it's a key that says: "This guys' addresses are a,b,c,d etc. His future addresses will be e,f,g,h.." When you share that with a public node, they can then work out all the addresses that user has had or will ever have. If you check with your own node then nobody knows the xpub, nobody knows you checked besides you and linking different addresses becomes a lot harder. Yeah, TOR masks your IP but you still shared he xpub and it's up to them what they do with that later. Once you send your coin to a KYC exchange the link can be made between real you and your addresses.

CrosstrekTrail

FYI for anyone interested in the Start9 because of the home server. Yes, it’s very secure (as advertised) but can be very slow and clunky to use and access outside of the home network because of having to use TOR. That’s why I returned mine. If that’s an issue you’d be better off using a dedicated node and finding another solution for a home cloud server.

choicehunter

If he really has that much control already, he would have already drained your wallet and moved it elsewhere out of your control. If this is real, by new devices, create new accounts to sign into them, go to a library or something that he definitely hasn't penetrated yet, run a secure VPN or TOR on the new devices. Buy an air gapped cold wallet and transfer everything to a New wallet with a new seed phrase. There, no more hackers or men in the middle, etc. I mean this in the nicest most inoffensive way possible, but chances are you're just having a delusional panic attack. If someone really hacked you and had access to your seed phrase and your wallet and everything like that, it's incomprehensible that they would have left any assets in your wallet for you to still have access to, instead of immediately transferring them out to a wallet that they solely control. That's how you know things aren't happening the way you are fearing. I am absolutely not saying this to be rude. I have recently helped a couple of very dear loved ones through similar psychotic episodes. One got help and came out of it, the other has a permanently broken brain constantly reporting these same kind of thoughts about being hacked and everything when they are not. Just in case it's not real, I strongly recommend that you have somebody evaluate you, because getting help early on can improve the chances of full recovery and reduction of relapse to over 70% success rate. But getting help Can reduce chances to something like 27%. It's not worth the risk. If it's actually real, great, you've lost nothing by getting evaluated.

Main_Independence394

Yeah, it was the Office of Naval Intelligence as a companion tech to TOR

CrosstrekTrail

The amount of power used will basically be negligible. The only cost will be whatever money you spend on the device used to run a node. So, if you are going to use a device, you already have in your total cost will be basically $0.00. I tried a Start9 a while back, but ended up returning it because I did not like how slow TOR was. And I had bought that device because I wanted to also use it as a server, I could easily access from anywhere. But didn’t realize it would be super slow in most places. I had to be at home and actually on the network for it to be a fast link up. MyNode might be a good option if you just want to run a straight note. But if you can use a device you already have then that would be awesome. I recommend that you have at least 1TB (or more) of free space.

word-dragon

Not counting private nodes, there are around 40,000 full servers. The math keeps the ledger honest, and the numbers keep the servers honest. 40% of the nodes are on TOR, so no one knows where they actually are. Only 10% of the remainder is in the US. Pretty hard to fake data when you have 40,000 people looking over your shoulder!

JuHustle

I had to learn how to run TOR locally on my machine because I can’t use port forwarding with my ISP. Other than that, running your own node is pretty much passive and straight forward, once you set everything up. Bitcoin University and Southern Bitcoiner has easy to follow guides on their YouTube channels.

SpendHefty6066

It’s not protected from the government, but the government cannot stop it. Decentralized Internet protocols have proven their resiliency: BitTorrent, TOR - The Onion Network, IPFS, etc. Bitcoin cannot be shut down by any government. Not even the Chinese ban on Bitcoin made a material impact. Additionally, the USD is in free fall as far as purchasing power goes. It may not technically be “hyperinflation”, but every US citizen knows that things are getting more and more expensive. This is because the Fed has no choice but to debase (print) dollars to cover its 35 Trillion dollars in debt. Interest on debt is now more than the defense budget. No empire in history survived this one fact.

Scionic94

Watched this yesterday, really cool video. Definitely applies to nodes, I'd venture to guess the average node connection coefficient is around 3.0 or less -- a "small world" network. Would be cool if someone went deep on node geographical analysis, but I wouldn't know where to start outside of IP addresses (which can obviously be "spoofed" via VPNs, proxies, TOR, etc.)

cosmic_censor

>I think almost all of the tech seems to be possible without the actual coins being used with them. It isn't as though decentralization networks started with blockchain, there have been plenty of other technology platforms that are decentralized and work just fine (TOR, bittorrent, ActivityPub). There is even non-blockchain decentralized payment systems (GNU Taler). What blockchain does differently to them is cryptographically validate the actions of network participants. If you can maintain a network in a way that can be cryptograpically proved, you can provide economic incentives to participants. Economic value existing on your network allows that system to thrive and compete against centralized systems. Prior to BTC, pretty much every decentralized system relied on either large centralized benefactors (linux), extremely narrow use cases (Bittorrent and exchanging copyrighted material) or a passionate community of highly technical users.

Jaqen-Atavuli

I have no idea if the CIA created Bitcoin, but those arguments are some of the dumbest shit I have ever seen. The CIA can drop a pallet of millions in untraceable cash in what ever country they want. Bitcoin is not anonymous. You have a wallet ID. Any transaction is recorded and everyone can see it. If you think the CIA/NSA etc isn't working to know everyone's ID you probably don't realize they also control TOR exit nodes. I am not even a conspiracy theorist, that is just common sense.

ghostchihuahua

There used to be a rumor, a conspiracy theory of sorts in the early days *(there were very few people interested in bitcoin, so conspiracy theory is a tad over the top)* stating exactly that: bitcoin is the product of some CIA research program. This theory was actually a direct result of the establishment's propaganda machine hammering that bitcoin was noxious because it was most famously used on the 'dark-web' for drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises. In addition, many people knew that the TOR protocol was a product of the United States Naval Research Laboratory, and that the Navy kept (maybe still to this day?) entry and exit nodes running long after they sent the Onion Routing protocol to the open-source realm. Both bitcoin and the 'dark-web' found themselves glued together in people's minds, and the mass-shitposting about this theory began, and lasted probably until 2014 or so ; it would come back here and there in some obscure crypto forum, but was, as it is here, met with so many compelling arguments speaking against the theory that it simply never, ever flew. Anyway, aside all the valid posts explaining why this is most probably not the case, my take is that they have very much tried to discredit it and give it a bad name, they've tried to control it, they did not understand it and they had done their due diligence, all they knew was that there was no way to stop it from spreading. It then took a few years for people to look at it rise continuously, and as usual, greed preceded any renewed push to control Bitcoin long before said push, people started seeing that it was making other people's fortunes, and went all in, simple as that. I've read the white paper, i've read a ton of books about the matter over the past decade, probably read thousands of articles and forum posts, pro-bitcoin as much as anti-bitcoin, and i yet have to find one piece of literature that make me doubt. There's no doubt however that intel agencies around the world have issued shitcoins here and there just for some specop shit, that sport is relatively cheap and can be used and abused in very insidious ways.

TynHau

Germany ranks second when it comes to Bitcoin nodes per country. While there are plenty of known unknowns hidden due to nodes running via TOR it’s still respectable position. Maybe they aren’t talking because they know. 😁

Personanongrata27

I kindly need recommendations if anyone is willing to share their thoughts. I put in $75,000 in bitcoin at 99k. I was talked out of buying $10,000 in 2010 when it was at $.10 because my business partner was adamant that I was going loose the whole investment and see what happened! God knows I had the crazy idea of putting 10k in a new digital coin, I was willing to bet but I was talked out of it at work. I lost it in an IPO and I only invest in blue chip stocks. I’m not mad at myself for not buying, because I know that I probably would’ve sold it at some juncture prior to hitting the market value and the fact nobody knew about it or if was a junk investment as you were only able to get it through TOR. I probably would’ve been killed as I would’ve had the necessary funds to wing suit and cliff dive for the rest of my life!!!

DM_ME_UR_SATS

Something like half the network is hybrid TOR/clearnet. We'll be fine. 

wh977oqej9

You can't, if you use TOR.

The_Meme_Economy

You know they are a clandestine organization that does a bunch of spooky stuff right? They run TOR exit nodes, black ops stuff overseas, psy ops, hell they have invested huge sums in trying to figure out if people could develop psychic abilities to spy on foreign adversaries. Bitcoin is not even that far fetched.

Ilovekittens345

> How would you actually pull off cleaning and using that money? Use tails (a linux distro where everything runs over TOR) to spread whatever crypto he hid over multiple addresses, slowly use dexes like torchain to buy other crypto with it, eventually converting everything to monero, then go in the other direction and eventually end up with various usefull crypto, BTC, ETH, some ltc, some bch, some stabecoins. If he things BTC is gonna crash again maybe he wants to keep more in stablecoins like a mix of DAI, USDT and USDC. If he broke all his traces by going in and out of monero would be hard for the USDC/USDT admins to freeze his addresses. Anyway, once his monero mixing/washing is done he will have a wide range of crypto portfolio. Once in a while when he needs money he can use a crypto ATM to get cash for his crypto. He will never be able to route anything over his own bank account or those of friends/family, that's how they will get him again. But they also won't spy on him, maybe the occasional check. His best bet is doing that and then just go travel around the world with a laptop, spending a bit here and there. If he travels enough maybe he can eventually get his hands on some fake passports and stuff and try to start a new life under a new identity. Very possible when you have over 10 million dollars worth of crypto. You just got to be carefull. As to where to story the crypto, a trezor with plausible deniability. Which means when you type in passphrase 1, just a 1000 dollars worth of crypto shows up. But passphrase 2, a million dollars show up and passphrase 3, everything else. He would need a second trezor for a back up that he is not travelling with. Safety deposit box with the bank, maybe 2. All three trezors can intially be set up the same way. Even if somebody gets their hands on it, no access without the passphrase. And when under pressure he could just give up only the one with 1000 dollars or 1 million on it. He can't save the seeds anywhere. So if all those 3 trezors break he will lose it all. If you are patient and use your brain, even if you are known by law enforcement, pretty nice life you can lead with 30 million dollars worth of hidden crypto. If he does not want to travel there are other options. He can get an normal job, save up some money. Start a new account with a crypto exchange and start doing some trading. Flow some USDC in to a dex from there. Buy a low liquidy shitcoin. Now comes the trick, use the hidden 30 million dollars to pump this low liquidity shitcoin. Then on the other account quickly sell for profit. Report that profit when doing taxes. pay taxes on it. Now he has clean income every year, profit from trading. But secrely the money is coming from his hidden 30 million dollar worth of crypto that he is just using to pump low liquidity shitcoins with. He could use AI to make a shit movie about his life and then sell movie NFT's or whatever bullshit. Then use his secret stash to buy his own nft's with. There are millions of ways to pretend to make clean money in crypto. And it will be very hard for law enforcement to pin any of these pumps on him, as long as he uses monero in and out to break all the links first. If he uses the same addresses that the hacked crypto went into, they will catch him again very fast :-)

Armed_Muppet

Of course they made/funded Onion and TOR. TOR is an encrypted comms system. TOR supports secure intel operations so it’s tactically useful. Bitcoin doesn’t help agencies do anything better than what fiat systems can already do. But for Bitcoin specifically the lack of control, irreversible transactions, global mining and insurgent ideology all make it less likely they invented it on purpose. On top of that they have no control over the hash power, dev community or consensus rules. Read the white paper.

Hanzieoo

All works on your phone. TOR for Robosats. And Blink for lightning.

314stache_nathy

Let's ignore how audited Monero and its protections were, shall we? Justin Ehrenhofer said he would release the tools to the Monero committee to improve Monero, you saying that makes it sound like Monero is nothing, Monero is used by every group that needs privacy in addition to being audited countless times by countless people and organizations, but you just spread FUD.  Monero uses ZKP proofs since 2018 with Bulletproofs+, the blockchain is opaque and the only weakness is bad OPSEC (Use remote nodes without TOR/I2P), FCMP++ will increase this fungibility even more.  Zcash prefers profit over privacy, the creator himself has spoken numerous times about implementing backdoors, you saying I'm “anti-math” is just ragebait. Monero audits: [FCMP++](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://moneroresearch.info/index.php%3Faction%3Dattachments_ATTACHMENTS_CORE%26method%3DdownloadAttachment%26id%3D235%26resourceId%3D242%26filename%3Dbbec3ae84b7fd65f1594068e102eaa83dfd58b4a&ved=2ahUKEwin756rmuGOAxVcrpUCHdRlLQ0QFnoECDgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2EdgETRZYKQvWksHM0BN27) [Bulletproofs+](https://blog.quarkslab.com/security-audit-of-monero-bulletproofs.html) [RingCT](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ACK-J/Monero-Dataset-Pipeline/main/Lord_of_the_Rings__An_Empirical_Analysis_of_Monero_s_Ring_Signature_Resilience_to_Artificially_Intelligent_Attacks.pdf) [CARROT](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://github.com/cypherstack/carrot-audit&ved=2ahUKEwin756rmuGOAxVcrpUCHdRlLQ0QFnoECEEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3HkMIml643TU8O1R8L597o) [Bulletproofs+](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://suyash67.github.io/homepage/assets/pdfs/bulletproofs_plus_audit_report_v1.1.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjrr6ORmuGOAxV6qJUCHRprAukQFnoECCUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0N67lhgtHW3AsZjeOD6AOG) [Blockchain audit](https://area31.net.br/wiki/Audite_a_blockchain_do_Monero). inflation bugs?  https://www.moneroinflation.com/ About Riccardo Spagni:  https://np.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/q8glyq/comment/hgpfelh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

TheHunterAmin

Yep, a RPI is perfect for low costs. I build everything myself with bitcoin knots +TOR using the terminal. But dont do pruned. How more full nodes, how stronger the consensus will be. Just a tip for OP, Get a 4TB SSD. I made the mistake to buy a 1TB. But I have now like 56GB free space left, which in the worse case is totally full in 6 months.

_pm_me_a_happy_thing

I understand your concerns, but I have a few things to mention: 1. The SeedSigner is purely a signing device, it is not a wallet. 2. The open source OS is a specialised version of the Buildroot Linux OS, it's very barebones, this is to keep it lightweight and reduce any possibility of attack surfaces. 3. Only two things touch the SD card: transaction files, public key for watch-only. Private keys and seed phrase stay purely offline. 4. The signing device is stateless, when powered off it does not retain any memory. 5. The hardware itself has no WiFi, radio, Bluetooth modules - and comes from a reputable UK based company. 6. Everything used in the setup is open source, Sparrow (wallet), SeedSigner (air gapped signing device). If you're more security inclined, have Sparrow be on a Linux Laptop running on TailsOS, running your own bitcoin node, and link it to Sparrow via TOR, and only ever use that device for BTC. I much prefer this open source setup than trust a commercialised company.

SpendHefty6066

Bitcoin is hope. Look into the SeedSigner project. I am hopeful you can buy a Raspberry Zero? And several other off the shelf parts there. It's a useful DIY project to create an air gapped alternative to Trezor or Coldcard. And they are much cheaper than the commercial hw signers. For software, use Electrum or Sparrow. These are solid fully open source software wallets, compatible with most hw signers including all mentioned above. Finally look into running a node over TOR. This way all of your transactions and lookups are private and you leak no data to someone else's node.

torxbt

You could just use TorSwap [torswap.pro], TOR-routed, non-custodial, near open source and no KYC, anonymous crypto swap and sell app with no limits whatever.

Kaspaladin

The purpose is to conceal identity with TOR, BitCoin's purpose was to disrupt authority behavior + fully decentralized established foundation that, from the ground up, is being unstoppable once the cards are played right that directly pivots power from Government into the people's hands. CIA can use TOR and still gain power, but they can't directly buy BTC without gaining as much power as the next ordinary person holding BTC. Information is one thing, a whole foundation of generational breakthroughs built by humanity for humanity is certainly one action to raise the CIA's eyebrows. They don't seem to like any good things lol. Hence why the FBI kept 1,400+ watch-list documented papers on Albert Einstein. They did not have your best interest kept in their hearts, they have business and power to worry about. BitCoin is a brick wall that stops them in their feet. Both CIA and ordinary people can use TOR since information can be breached/hacked/spied on. BitCoin can't just be breached/hacked/spied on. That's the huge difference between TOR and BitCoin, one is not controlled and the other one is! At least, I believe there is a backdoor to TOR where BTC is open-source and no backdoors (with extra steps of security + Nakamoto-consensus) However the CIA learns. They make fake crypto-scam coins, they start seizing lost BTC's... they aren't just going to give up that easily.

Brocsta876

You do know who invented TOR (aka the "dark web" as you know it), right? It was created by DARPA/Navy. Not saying Bitcoin \*was\* invented by some government entity but it's not out of the question by any means. Why would they release TOR to the public? Because if you are the only person using an anonymous browser, everybody knows who you are. If EVERYBODY is using it, you blend in with the crowd.

Efficient_Diet_7839

Look into PGP, pretty good privacy, it’s a protocol used to send encrypted messages, popular on TOR browser. Reminded me of btc when I first learned about it.

hazeyAnimal

> knowledgeable guy While this is going into semantics, I disagree with this guy when he says the Bitcoin is like the internet how it is decentralized. The internet is not decentralized, which is why TOR is such a thing

Dry_Tax4805

Look at TOR, a US Navy project designed to bring in public adoption of a fancy encryption protocol to further obscure secure state usage. If they simply made a next better encryption it would stand out among the rest. If you let everyone use it too then your traffic will be indistinguishable and nigh indecipherable. Russia is known to deploy accelerationist policy when it meddles in global affairs. BTC is to finance what tor is for communication.

Head_Performance2432

I was just exhausting all the avenues, not being a TOR user, I just run Knots VPN shielded . So I was asking if a "ban" could succeed against VPN users in my case ?

caramida_plutitoare

They cannot ban nodes connected through TOR.

stan_papusa

Yes, let me give you my setup. I have a HP elitedesk 800 G3, added extra RAM to 16GB, replace the SDD with Samsung EVO 860 2TB and I downloaded and install umbrelOS.iso. Next, I installed Knots, mempool and Electrum and waaaaait for blockchain sync like 2 weeks (depending on your Internet speed). My connection is behind a VPN and I use only onion protocol (TOR). I installed Sparrow wallet on my desktop machine and I use only my node for mempool transaction filtering and broadcasting transactions

TheBigLR901

So, exercising your God-given right to privacy and protected by 4A of the US Constitution by using TOR and Bitcoin is concernjng by the same government that swore to uphold those protections. Makes perfect sense.

CrosstrekTrail

I had to return mine. I only bought it because I was already interested in starting up another (I ditched WD MyCloud) home cloud network that I can access from anywhere. Was about to buy one, but then I heard about the Start9 server while listening to a bitcoin podcast. I loved the bitcoin node side of it. It was relatively easy to set up. But it is definitely not “plug and play.” But still pretty simple What I didn’t like was having to access my server via TOR while outside my network. It would be anywhere from super slow and sluggish to mildly frustrating whenever I would try to access it away from home. And that is the trade-off I guess. With your typical NAS the connections are typically fast and smooth. Even if the cellular data or other networks aren’t so great. But TOR can be pretty frustrating. Would I recommend the device? Definitely! But only if you have the patience that I don’t have in order to put up with TOR. I might end up buying the plug and play device from MyNode.

DapperEngineering983

Heck look at TOR browser and the whole Deep Web, most people do not call it that anymore, its now the Dark Web, because of those using it for drugs, guns, general crime and CP, and they all use Bitcoin as currency. And yet it has positive uses, people getting around government censorship and being able to get REAL facts out of countries with things heading down shit creek without a paddle and more. Its not the tool its how its wielded and by whom. A shovel can be used to dig, or you can use it to crack someone over the head with it, its not the shovels fault. And as always in life, assholes ruin things for everyone else.

SmoothGoing

Looks like an http error, not an exchange issue. Turn off VPN or TOR, clear all your cookies. Login again fresh.

notchceo

Well it’s a long story. Essentially a good friend of mine introduced to me to torrenting, TOR and the Silk Road. Being a dumb college kid I thought I could use the bitcoin to buy weed for personal and school expenses. Because the price was cheaper than buy out right I thought I’d roll the dice. But I wussed out and pretty much stopped smoking that same year because it made me so lethargic. So it was lost to time for a while. I don’t quite remember how much is on there but now that I’m married and have a child. Anything would be a blessing.

kodysatdown

I connected Electr on Umbrel with Sparrow. I used the TOR connection. Works perfectly.

waldito

>The network, supposedly bitcoin’s power, is also its greatest vulnerability. No. I don't agree. For the same reason the Internet was invented: The decentralized network design is the core of it's resillience. Think TOR protocol or torrents. Unkillable. So you can't access your money because of the lack of power? Your money is still on your wallet as long as one copy of the ledger exists. Every bitcoin node has it. Banco de Santander or CaixaBank? Eh.

BaconGreaseShot

Of all the theories I've heard, Dr. Jack Kruse has the most compelling take on how bitcoin was originally created - The concept was started by the Jewish mob as a way to launder money. In 1973 Meyer Lansky is released from jail and went on to search for the most brilliant IT person to setup a P2P money laundering system for Murder Inc and CIA. That's how he discovered David Chaum Chaum works from 1981 - 1998 creating and running Digicash. Couple of his customers are Duetche Bank, Mark Twain Bank (ran by mob) they were trying to take Lanky's idea and use Chaum's system, Lansky dies in 1983, who was trying to build his private P2P network. Chaum open sources it in around 1987-1989, then the Cypher Punks come in. Digicash is sold in 1998 to Naveen Jain who ran Infosis, which was google before google. Len Sassaman, a PHD candicate under David Chaum shows up. He realized what Chaum, Adam Back, what everyone didn't know. Timestamping is key. Sassaman was involved in the creation of TCP/IP for TOR and that's where he learned about timestamping. If it didn't go open source and Sassaman wasn't the PHD candicate for Chaum, bitcoin would have never happened. 02:19:45 of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yALOChgRrHQ&t=8437s

SlimDanky

Oh it probably did, I had friends tell me about BTC back around 2010. I was really interested but I had MacBook. Buying a new laptop to install Linux & TOR and going on the ‘shady’ dark web to buy some new digital currency seemed like hard work. For something I wasn’t really going to use, they wee buying weed & shrooms etc. I never really did that stuff except at festivals here and there.

idifacs311

I also got scammed on the original Silk Road. I bought bitcoin and then heard “it’s bullshit. People only use it to buy drugs on Silk Road.” Me - “what!? You can buy drugs on the computer with bitcoin???” Went through the process of figuring out TOR and how to do it. Tried buying a gram of nose beer for 1 bitcoin. Bitcoin left my wallet and nose beer never arrived:/

Capable_Swordfish_30

Yes, and use different blue/green colors depending whether you are connected through TOR. Electrum is a much better, open source tool for that job.

DiedOnTitan

If you run a node on a dedicated server, there is not much to get compromised. If you put your wallet on there with the private keys, you risk your funds. That is why it is crucial to keep your private keys separate from your node. A node does leak the IP Address, unless you run it exclusively under TOR. My priority is to secure private keys. The node is a much lower security priority, but a vital piece of the full Bitcoin picture.

Specialist_Key6832

"And everyone has had years to front run all of these big players", but they aren't, a lot of people are still not technologically inclined yet. "Magic internet money" is crazy for them. And the fact that they are waiting for corporation and government to "endorse" it, means it will just go the same way the internet went, most people use google, only a few know what is a free software in opposition to a proprietary one, only a few use or knows about TOR, VPN, DAO...

anona_15211

I'm running bitcoin core node over TOR along with electrum personal server. If you got any questions , lemme know.

pakovm

Your transactions will still be trackable on-chain, simply other nodes won't know what IP address sent the transaction as long as all you connections are using either the V2 transport protocol (P2P encryption) or TOR.

cryptosage

They will claim it's "safe" with them... it just depends on your worldview. Do you think a 6102 will ever happen for Bitcoin? What if the exchanges will have to comply even though you don't believe that's right for them to take your Bitcoin because it's YOURS? Then - you'd be better off moving it to self-custody. Not that it'll help since you KYC'ed.... better off getting it via no-KYC methods P2P and then put it on a hardware wallet that you can access via TOR so that there is no trail to you having it. It's literally supposed to be the ONLY property you can own, if you are in a database for buying it and they can prosecute you for not giving it to them "because they say so" - you don't own it. Sorry to tell ya.

BTCMachineElf

I've used Raspiblitz, Umbrel, and Start9, and it's definitely the king of the bunch imo. Slick web interface that can be accessed over your local network or anywhere via TOR. App store that includes all the tools you could need for Lightning, Nostr, and more. Each app has a setting page where you can change the config, and monitor the individual logs in real-time through the interface. So cool. Alby provides connectivity for lightning wallets, web extensions, etc. It will provide you with a Lightning address; YourName@getalby.com, that can be used to send you lightning payments without you making an invoice. It also provides for sub-accounts, so you can give your friends and family lightning wallets on your node, and make free payments to each-other. They're both legit, open source, true-bitcoiner projects. Do yourself a favor and give Start9 a try,. even if just temporarily on another pc or something.

DiedOnTitan

>"Wouldn’t they want to prevent Bitcoin from becoming mainstream" They can't. Not even China could. Decentralized internet protocols are hard to prevent. BitTorrent and TOR are two other examples that persist to this day despite massive efforts to kill them. If they conclude that they can't kill it, and this new money is inevitable (money is a winner take all war), well...if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

GapeJelly

If you run your own node, you have the whole history of every Bitcoin transaction ever. You can unplug from the Internet and still check your wallet balance or the history of any Bitcoin in any wallet. All by yourself without the Internet. (Of course you won't receive new blocks until you go online again). You can't send, receive, or check balances without a node. If you just have a wallet with no node, them you MUST connect to someone ELSE'S node to do anything. That means every time you send BTC or check your wallet balance, somebody somewhere has a record of your IP address and now also your Bitcoin address balances. They may have your physical location if you don't use VPN. But it makes it a lot easier to link your Bitcoin balance to your physical identity. If you were using your own node over VPN/TOR, then any transactions you send just look like any other tax in the mempool com from your node - nobody can tell where the tx originally came from.

kurosaki1990

Use it under TOR, they support Tor links.