TOR

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.

synthwave_man

I'd say $ANYONE ... The biggest privacy project in crypto. With its own hardware / router, and already 10,000+ nodes registered on the network, already larger than TOR. This protocol will disrupt the entire VPN industry. At only $55 million market cap at the moment, it's a steal.

LuptinPitman

Blockchain is 724gb as of this moment. You will want to run an Electrum server and maybe a mempool instance but the space requirements are negligible to add those. I recently spun up a 2 vCPU 4GB RAM VM on my NAS and assigned 2TB of space. Installed umbrelOS via ISO (free) and it was ridiculously easy to get set up and running. Took me like 5 days to sync the entire blockchain but I think that had more to do with the virtualization. I've pulled the trigger on an actual Umbrel Home since it is just turnkey and now I'm comfortable with how to connect Sparrow wallet from my desktop and even Nunchuk and Bluewallet from my phone (while on my local wifi network). I plan to configure TOR connectivity so I can always use my node when interacting with air-gapped cold wallets on my phone and desktop though. Umbrel has the ability to run Plex and all sorts of other stuff non-bitcoin related but at 2TB that's gonna be tough. Worth it for me to just use it as a dedicated Bitcoin Node and Electrum server etc.

yatv

disgustingly wrong lol. Monero is the furthest thing from centralized in fact its the MOST decentralized crypto currency that exists today and due to that it arguably has the most utility. why do you think Bitcoin is no longer accepted on I2P/TOR darknet markets? Monero took it over as the primary currency and no other cryptocurrency has ever been used over there. it was first Bitcoin (where it got most of its early adoption.. think silk road etc) and then everyone slowly flipped from Bitcoin to Monero.

yatv

your simply wrong. Bitcoins entire come up was due to darknet markets on i2p and TOR which is a billion dollar industry and that’s were Moneros utility is because the ONLY currency the underground will accept is Monero. Monero is what people who buy Bitcoin think they are buying. it has been delisted from every major CEX (death sentence to any other crypto) so non technical people can’t buy it just like they couldn’t buy Bitcoin and yet it’s still is a top 30 crypto and its price has remained stable. it is being heavily suppressed by governments (IRS has placed million dollar bounties for anyone who can trace it) ultimately it’s the only truly decentralized cryptocurrency that exists and community and open source dev team is the 3rd largest next to BTC and ETH

JCARPX

I'm born 1990. I was building computers and setting up networks before the age of 12. A child prodigy. I was interacting with SmarterChild in the early 90s, the first publicly available LLM based "AI". I was 18 in 2008. I was learning about bitcoin in 2006/2007. I was a part of communities that offered bitcoin like Neobux surveys, the bitcoin faucet, etc. Trying to figure out TOR and the silk road to buy weed online. I was trying to learn to mine it early on. I never acquired any of it. It was worth pennies. My friends laughed at me for it. A full 10 years before everyone's "I wish I knew about bitcoin" stories. I went to "college" in 2010/2011 at the infamous ITT Tech that got shut down for Fraud, the borrowers defense to repayment lawsuit. I attended the physical campus that was raided. I watched it go down. I was 100k+ in debt from 2011-2022 working in a Call center, 12-15 hrs a day with commute driving 100 miles a day. I've gone insane. But I got out of debt. In 2022, 1 month before inflation. I'm currently renting a 1980s single wide trailer on the same property line I lived on back then. My family ended up on this property line in 2005, fleeing the NAFTA layoffs in that caused my parents to lose my childhood home by 2003.

C_void_function

Works via TOR! Additionally, we have a bookmark feature which addresses the problem that privacy browsers commonly delete the credit id stored in the browser. Let me know if you've got any other questions!

SmoothGoing

Static IP is not required. TOR or VPN also not required. Sure, people will know your IP runs a node. So what? Node is free software anyone can run, it doesn't mean you have any coins. No, forwarding a port doesn't "expose the whole network." BItcoin Core project website is linked on sidebar. Check that instead.

Delicious-Use-8789

Countless escrow markets still exist on TOR. You really can't kill the black market. Where there's a will, there's a way. Just like the hydra, when one market is shut down or exit scams, two more will emerge to take its place, continuing the cycle endlessly.

18284774929377199472

Using bitnodes.io with your node IP IS a good way to get doxed. Please consider exposing your Bitcoin node via TOR for anonymity.

SmoothGoing

Bisq already has TOR in it. You're overthinking and underreading.

Pasukaru0

More peers will probably not speed it up. The IBD is usually slow because of the Pis limited CPU speed. Other than that, make sure incoming connections are possible (Port forwarding if you are behind a NAT, firewall etc). If oyu are suffering from CGNAT maybe also setup other networks to allow more (but slow) connections like TOR and/or I2P.

Xylber

Well, then I'm sure you remember Satoshi's posts in Bitcointalk. He wouldn't restrict anybody, but he wanted a system free of the current one, trustless without third parties, and was worried about privacy (he wrote a lot of posts about using TOR with Bitcoin). A private finantial company selling ETFs is not aligned with what Satoshi wanted.

Delicious-Use-8789

You can also try robosats on TOR. It's a direct P2P exchange without all that kyc/aml bs

SmoothGoing

That's fine if you want to use it for that. The [TOR part](https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.6079) is not recommended.

SmoothGoing

It won't really be doing that. Network has plenty of nodes. Running it over TOR is not recommended. I googled for you and look somebody already asked. Maybe there's an answer? https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/1cdhmhn/how_to_set_bitcoin_core_node_over_tor/

KingWormKilroy

As soon as these digital papers started slinging across TOR in de facto marketplaces the writing was on the wall. Once the hash rate growth rate outpaced SystemicSauron’s capacity to pivot and focus, the outcome locked in.

GoElastic

You won't see TOR nodes

wh977oqej9

Doesn't matter, if he is using his reddit account only through TOR network. Do you, OP?

JustSomeBadAdvice

Done some BTC transactions, from a smartphone, using TOR to hide IP address, in 2009 (iphone 3 / HTC Dream / Blackberry era - only 1 android phone available, virtually no apps as we know them today available), using a windows-only alpha version app? Satoshi would NEVER send an email from a phone. He always used TOR or other anonymizing layers. Just how far are people willing to stretch believability to avoid being wrong?

Freakskat

It happens, exchanges just make it so easy for most people. There’s platforms like Bisq which uses p2p under the TOR network and it’s up to whoever’s selling the bitcoin to pick how much they want to charge you over market price. A lot of times it’s more than what it’d cost on the exchange due to the “anonymity” premium lol

MinimalGravitas

Gitcoin isn't a shitcoin, it's a public goods funding platform that has distributed over $60 million to open source software devs with funding round organizations like TOR, the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, and UNICEF. https://impact.gitcoin.co/

pakovm

You don't need to use the BitBoxApp to take advantage of this protection since it happens at a firmware level, but you do need to use the BitBoxApp to flash the firmware the first time you use the BitBox02, the BitBoxApp verifies the integrity of the device and the device verifies the integrity of he firmware, so you can rest assure that you are not installing faulty firmware on it, also the whole thing is open source and verifiable, both firmware and app, but yeah, Sparrow is perfectly compatible with the BB02 and you will have the same security assurances as with the BBApp, just don't forget to close the BBA if you're gonna use Sparrow because it will interfere with its communications. You can use our app with your own Electrum server no problem, you can even do it through TOR if you want.

siasl_kopika

12 words is superior to 24. Same effective security, less chances of error, but much easier to memorize, and lets you get rid of that pesky "write it down" step more confidently. If you dont grok this, ask why people dont use 64 word, or 6000 word passphrases. . USB is a security problem. Use SD cards instead; much much lower attack surface. "Tails OS" and regular computer are backward. Tails should be the internet connected one, and "regular computer" used for the cold wallet needs to be a secure linux as well, not just anything. It can be tails also for simplicity, but doesnt have to be so long as the drive is encrypted with a 12 word bip32 passphrase randomly generated just like a bitcoin key. Same rule goes for tail: dont use short passwords there either. Bitcoind node is not strictly necessary; you can run a read only node if you like, again on a secure OS, but dont submit transactions to it. Submitting your transactions over TOR is better than sending them over the clearnet. So tails will be sending these.

SmoothGoing

No internet means most any bootable linux OS is fine. Tails isn't some uniquely special cryptographic secrets management OS or anything like that. TOR and a node is a nice touch but seems a bit involved for a "beginner." Some of that USB shuffle can be simplified with a hardware wallet. Seed words mnemonic and paper wallet are not the same thing. Pretty graphics though.

stringings

I replied to the previous comment because it's an interesting project that I've used for many years. Zeronet.io implements namecoin for decentralized dna and allows for decentralized p2p of websites. It operates over TOR. 

stringings

Absolutely a thing. Check Zeronet.io  - it uses namecoin (an early fork of Bitcoin) for decentralized DNS pretty sweet project, this is it's probably biggest implementation. Zeronet has been around for a LONG time. it is completely censorship proof. It uses TOR as the network but could be used with something else in the future, like a cube satellite network.

bigbarryb

You say it is confirmed, can you also confirm the address is correct? Are you attempting to use TailsOS in offline mode? If so, this would explain you seeing a zero balance. The ledger, the blockchain, the thing that records the payment and keeps it secure -- is online. The electrum wallet has a secret key that is super sensitive since it is the sole thing that anyone would ever need to authorize a transfer of your bitcoin away from your wallet. (Aka stealing your bitcoin). For this reason, the key must be kept offline, must be kept "cold". That said, some wallets and hardware devices will allow you to export an XPUB. The XPUB (extended-public-key) allows you or anyone with access to it to see all of the addresses past and future that your wallet can produce. If this were leaked or stolen, there is a security risk in that someone can see your balance, they might be able to observe spending patterns and they may be able to use this information to target you. However, the risk is far lower than if the private key were leaked, which would just grant someone the ability to take your bitcoin with no questions asked. You can get your xpub by following: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/36957/how-do-i-view-the-extended-public-key-in-electrum I wouldn't give it to anyone, it's like giving someone permission to put their own security cameras in your home. But you should be able to take that and load Electrum with it. Now your electrum wallet is a "watch only" wallet. It has no ability to spend, it can only see your balance. Make sure you have the XPUB written down or recorded somewhere. Restart the computer. Load TailsOS. Enable internet access over TOR. Log in. Launch Electrum. Give it your XPUB (DO NOT ENTER YOUR SEED WORDS AS THIS IS NOW AN INTERNET CONNECTED SYSTEM) With the XPUB and access to the internet, Electrum can now show you your balance and transaction history and although it is connected to the internet, it doesn't know your seed words or your private key so your funds are not at risk.

bigbarryb

Yeah, well they'd start with making it illegal to self custody bitcoin. So you may be under surveillance, but we'd all be using it privately like through TOR. Remember that also there is the US and there is the rest of the world. Governments need to be careful. Maybe you didn't lose the keys, but you just "sent the bitcoin to someone in Africa" instead. Call it a donation. Now fuck off.

galacticjuggernaut

Hey! Same timeframe. It was $7. I was learning about the TOR browser or Onion or some crap to see how to remain anon on the internet. That brought me to some shady ass dark web stuff which I was reading about bitcoin but certainly not going to buy it there. I mean TBF back then it seemed it was only for criminals anyway.

bigbarryb

It isn't bad practice, it is just potentially slow and not great for people who want it to "just work (tm)" and fast. I used a TOR node with a Lightning node running through TOR as well, and that was a big issue. Trying to make what should be sub second payments over a TOR hidden service is going to turn 1-2 seconds to 1-2 minutes (I have a video where I attempted it in the wild at a pub when TOR was experiencing maybe the peak of its attack and it was a 3 min long video and very awkward). Ultimately, if you need privacy, you need TOR or possibly the I2P stuff, but I never got that working for some reason. (It was supposed to just work (tm)).

PunxAlwaysWin45

whats wrong with TOR? I have an Umbrel node and it uses tor. never had any issues.

MiceAreTiny

Only for ISPs under their jurisdiction.... and not through TOR. Governments can take their country out of bitcoin, they can not take bitcoin out of their country.

pakovm

Let me start by clarifying that I work for BitBox, so my answer might come with some bias. With that out of the way, the BitBoxApp can connect to your own node, but it does it via Electrum Server, so you'll need to install Electrs or any other fork of it. The only wallet I know of that connects to Core directly is Sparrow which can be used with most HWW, it allows you to use a local instance of Core or a remote one via TOR, if you're using a remote instance it is better to use Electrum due to privacy reasons (the communication is encrypted, which doesn't happen with Core).

soliton-gaydar

Probably. Didn't a bunch of fed nerds make TOR or something? Wasn't the internet invented by a bunch of fed nerds to talk to other fed nerds? Point is, a lot of cool shit is invented by fed nerds.

bigbarryb

According to this, you might have luck combining TOR and VPN together (or just use TOR?) https://forum.trezor.io/t/trezor-suite-won-t-connect-properly-with-vpn-on/10239

bitusher

I and others have noticed the green wallet being "slower" to load today and yesterday , but still working. Seems like a temporary issue. I just opened up my green wallet in android to test for you and the log in took 20 seconds (longer than usual but not unusable) and sent a lightning transaction which took 1 second for confirm Perhaps restart your phone and try again. Also make sure you are not using TOR or a VPN when you test for troubleshooting.

Lekje

TOR makes it hard to track nodes, TOR has been added the updates of most node software.

Echiketto

Many Monero wallets offer the option to only connect to nodes through TOR. No extra program needed.

fonzdm

It all comes down on your next hop when setting up the VPN/TOR. Is It a good VPN provider? Then you are quite ok. Is it a private, good relay? Good to go too. Is it a bad VPN service or a suspicious relay node? Well, back to the main point again.

BouncyKnight2324

Satoshi pulls out and it’s all over. I recommend investing in tech stocks such as Apple and Tesla. Bitcoin is a scam and mainly used for drug purchases through TOR.

Thanis_in_Eve

There is nothing wrong with discussing the technical challenges of trying to track Bitcoin that was introduced into the lightning network and pulled back off. Or acknowledging that tracking is further complicated if you use a different node, or multiple nodes to retrieve the Bitcoin from the network. In my opinion, if you throw in some good ole ((TOR)), like you always should, that would make it the most difficult to track. Technically speaking, of course. Sidenote, as a US citizen, it doesn't matter where you create your taxable transactions. They remain taxable by the US government.

SuccotashComplete

For someone on a bitcoin sub you have far too much faith in our criminal justice system. First of all, why are you doing this in your own home on the open internet on a computer that’s attributable to you? Go to a coffee shop and use a vpn from Thailand or something. Use a hyper secure OS like TAILs and use TOR for web and you’re practically a ghost for everything but a high priority FBI investigation Your local police force is not going to spend thousands/tens of thousands of dollars in wages hunting you down for $500.

Icy-Success-3730

True, but they would have to lose the ability to: * Acquire a computer * connect to the internet * download TOR * download a software wallet

GreenStretch

Why would they create TOR?

Throwaway4VPN

Silk road sold drugs. Illegal. I get it. TOR enabled the silk roads privacy, not illegal. The analogy here is to TOR not to silk road.

popsyking

TOR is not exclusively used for criminal use. It has very legitimate uses. This isn't the case in general.

DaveyJonesXMR

So TOR devs are criminals too ? Don't mix up tools with the people doing the actual crime! Something like this being used by criminals only shows it is working... not that it is illegal in itself... no matter the actual intent of the dev. Otherwise people that invent encryption algos are criminals too... You cannot just draw a line that such privacy tech is cool and the other isn't... It's crazy that someone has to spell it out that you just cannot cherry pick what you like and what you don't like

slvbtc

Lightning is essentially TOR for payments as the channel operators cannot know anything about the source or destination of the packets they are routing making lightning payments almost perfectly private. This is how the world should look. Small citizenry level transactions should be completely anonymous while large corporate and nation state level transactions (main chain) should be public. Today the reverse is true so bitcoin corrects this.

Iamtutut

VPN + TOR to use an actual exchange which allows withdrawals.

Background_Salary_18

Looks like some TOR proxies are down. VMware is one likely a big one.

Background_Salary_18

Likely issue with bitnodes crawler Actually looking more closely it's the TOR nodes that have dropped off. Don't know enough about TOR but looks like networking issue somewhere there.

rayfin

We don't know how many nodes we have. Most people use TOR today. That keeps nodes undiscoverable for the most part and keeps their numbers unknown.

Pleasant_Invite_2009

does Germany sell HYDRA TOR ONION DARK NET ONLINE DRUG STORE Bitcoins?

Ok_Plastic_3055

Why use your own node if you can setup something like sparrow wallet to route all your requests trough the TOR network? I see no pricacy issue with this setup anymore.

MrSchaeffer88

Or just use TOR.

NeroTheTyrade

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Everyone thinks of banking/identity theft and fraud as like hackers in dark corners of the world viewing streams of binary on remote connections on double TOR over Onion (I may be showing my age) they only keep open for seventeen seconds... When in reality it's asking old folks for their passwords and they give them to you.

travilabs

Tonoreum $TOR - one of the greatest project on Ton.

dasmonty

you just use your own node via TOR. Why would you use a wallet app with KYC. you could even just genereate a private key with a pen and a paper.

bigbarryb

Maybe you go to a bitcoin conference in Miami, so you either make transactions privately or you do it through an exchange, but if you do it through the exchange you leak your IP to them and they can build a graph of where you've been. If you use a self custodial wallet without a node, you leak your IP to someone else's node, if you do it yourself, your IP is more protected. Use a VPN helps, use a VPN or TOR on your node REALLY helps.

MysteriousBelt5536

If you have Zelle you can use Bisque, a decentralized crypto exchange that runs on Tor that doesn't have KYC rules. Or you can just use a regular KYC exchange such as Coinbase to get some BTC. I personally used Coinbase to buy BTC and send it to my Electrum wallet on my computer. For DNM look, fire up a TOR browser and go to Dread (look up its onion address). It's like the reddit of the dark net. There you will find fairly reputable markets. I personally use 🧮. You will also need to learn how to use PGP encryption. I use Kleopatra for windows to manage encrypting/decrypting messages. There are plenty of youtube tutorials that cover how to use it. So you need to; 1. Buy BTC from Coinbase or wherever 2. Send to wallet like Electrum 3. Lookup a market on Dread 4. Create account on market 5. Add personal PGP key to account so the market encrypts sensitive info only you can decrypt (such as 2FA codes and vendor messages) 6. Add things to purchase in cart 7. Calculate how much BTC you need for the order and plan to send a bit extra to cover shipping and whatever fees 8. Look up BTC mempool on Google. Choose appropriate fee (sats per byte) in Electrum when you send BTC to the market wallet. Typically you want it in the next block (within 10 min). 9. Wait for BTC to appear in market wallet. 9. Important part: for each vendor you order from, copy their PGP key and import it into Kleopatra. This way, you can encrypt your order info (name and address) with THEIR PGP KEY so only they can reamail. Always use real name and address. 10. Submit the order(s). Vendors may send you some general info that's encrypted with your key. Kleopatra can decrypt them. 11. Wait for goods to come in the mail.

JimmyChitwoodMVP

Appreciate your thoughts. My fear, though, is that while we like to convince ourselves that VPNs, TOR and .onion web will save us, those workarounds aren’t nearly as viable as we like to assume they are. Especially if there’s blanketed legislation that forces VPN logging/reporting (I realize it’s possible to create your own, but the barrier to entry is significant)…and honestly, they may already be doing this quietly. With one law, they can also shut down Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, Uniswap, etc at the host level (thanks to AWS, GCP & Azure), seize domains, and the game is pretty much over from there, given the UX quagmire remaining users would need to sort out to illegally trade near worthless assets. Political risk is a big deal, the coast is far from clear, despite what the media is shilling. It’s the Gold playbook with a digital twist.

SpectaularMediocracy

I like Start 9 but moved on to run Bitcoin core as it’s annoying not to be able to connect through clear net on LAN. Especially on an iPhone which is useless with TOR. Been waiting for over a year for Start 9 to sort this out but it’s still ongoing. As a result I would recommend trying another node like Raspiblitz or the other recommended ones here.

DiedOnTitan

Check your transaction on another node such as mempool.space. It's good to use your own node for total security. If you are concerned about IP address tracking, use TOR or a VPN.

Efficient_Wasabi_575

Ok I’ll bite. How so? That’s a sincere question. It’s a public address. To my way of thinking, unless you’re using TOR for everything and you’re never connecting to a service that identifies you in any way, your movements are seen and associated with you. I live in the US so I assume that everything I do is recorded by some 3 letter agency that we probably don’t even know about.

I_Hate_Reddit_69420

Crazy how simply writing code that makes anonymous transactions possible is illegal now…. Imagine if they arrested people behind TOR for the same thing

BitcoinAcc

If you have Blue Wallet connected to Umbrel, you can import the xpub from Green Wallet as a watch only wallet in Blue Wallet and will see your balance. I know that it works with Umbrel and BW because I have the same setup. But I'm not sure where you can see the xpub in Green wallet. Shouldn't be hard to find though. Probably even as a QR that you can scan with Blue wallet. Be aware that afaik Blue Wallet doesn't work with TOR anymore, so you need to connect it using your Umbrel's local IP, which of course means that the watch only wallet only works while you are in your local network, not on the go. For me that's good enough.

Nonchalant_Calypso

TOR?

No-City94

I use TOR.

Gold_Phishy

Hey, just got my pi5 set up. Bitcoin core synced, working, all good. Question is, to accept inbound we're better to use TOR, I presume? Not sure about opening 8333 and exposing my IP.. I'll need to sit my pi outside the firewall. Are there any security issues I should know about? Close ports? Disable anything? Limit connections? Any help appreciated.

Anahihah

Thankfully we have TOR, I2P, VPN, Decentralized markets, and offshore exchanges, so these aren't the kind of things we worry about.

bigbarryb

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

Blicky83

Silk Road was my introduction to Bitcoin 😂A guy I worked with was buying up all types of crazy substances..I actually thought Bitcoin was made for Silk Road and similar dark websites you could access through TOR

Cheap-Cold-5255

Man do you really think:“This Genius programmer is hiding his real identity, I can make a 1 hour research session on the internet and find out his real identity“. He probably used a VPN, maybe they even used the same server. Maybe the „proof“ is fake to begin with to generate clicks. Satoshi was careful, genius, and didn’t want to be found. He probably even onionised his router and used TOR and 3 different VPNs.

myhappytransition

wasabi works over TOR, so it wont know which country you are using it from. >if the charges stick, there will be absolutely nothing stopping the gov from making the future of bitcoin privacy and permissionlessness impossible. Lol, you are missing the entire point of bitcoin from day one. Satoshi always knew that the government would want to kill bitcoin; so he made it decentralized with no head to cut off. Just because some people built centralized services and got their heads cut of does nothing to change the nature of bitcoin. People should be making decentralized services if the understand bitcoin, Its that simple. Yes; the bank goverment always has and always will try to kill competitors. be ready for it. > and to answer your other observation: I've been active in bitcoin space since 2019. Okay, well for newcomers like you I suggest reading the white paper and really trying to understand it. Bitcoin is permissionless and fundamentally decentralized. Its survival does not and can not depend on centralized services.

mikedensem

It’s traceable so you’re not doing a secret transaction. Try doing it via TOR

Equal_Classroom_4707

"Like I said, they won't stop just because the code is open source." They can stop right there actually. If you look at it yourself, you'd understand why that's the case.  "Quantum computing and AI could make the cryptographic mechanisms behind bitcoin and wallets factually useless." Bitcoin would be the last issue in the world at that point because the entire security infrastructure of every bank, every security protocol is done. How has that worked previously? Security protocols get upgraded in advance of those issues. Not just in the crypto space but what the entire technological world is using. People have plenty of thoughts about these things. Just not in this forum anymore. This is a casino on Reddit filled with noobs.  Anyone can make a copycat, they already have. Networks thrive off of users. The MIC would not have anywhere near the organic users BTC does. So in a sense BTC is a naturally grown hive that fed off individual users for almost a decade before mainstream ever heard of it. Try to recreate that. And at this point, the largest threat is governments making it illegal to individually posses. What a giant obstacle that would be if you have an understanding of nodes, how the source code actually works, and have access to TOR. All of these things are extremely easy to accomplish. There's no way in hell anyone with a technical background went into or attempted to have meetings with Nakamoto or his camp without first understanding that this cannot be undone.  Would they ask him to surrender his personal holdings? To publicly say the project is dead and move to this other project with the backing of a 3 letter? To erase him? The guy or team was extremely intelligent. The fact that he disappeared around the same time could equally mean he went into hiding as opposed to them silencing him. You can refer to his awareness of the forums through his hive comment.  But again, all the things you mentioned have been covered a million times already amongst devs. At this point the only way to attack BTC, would be to offline 51% of the worldwide nodes, and simultaneously bring up 51% of the network nodes, forge the ledger into oblivion and commit double spends all over the place.  To achieve this you would need an astronomical amount of hash, infrastructure, coordination with world governments. With that last bit being highly unlikely. And all of this to say, is you're suggesting BTC is the largest threat to the world financial systems as is.  Literally the easiest and most common method of disruption they could do is to ban the individual ownership of it. Just like they did with gold. You cannot own it personally, but you can own a note that's worth x amount of Satoshi. Then incriminate violators. Bring down every CEX. Create an alternative DEX. Build in actual backdoors, lock up enough liquidity and bring down the entire crypto trading infrastructure as it is.  If they were actually as concerned as you think, they wouldn't be auditioning off the hundreds of thousands of coins they have confiscated through the years. Through American OTC CEX's, and through ETF's alone, they can perform enough price manipulation TODAY, to prevent BTC from ever becoming some 1 single ultimate currency replacement.

Ok_Breakfast_88

I guess we are talking about 2 different nodes. Running a TOR node is not safe. Running a Bitcoin node is safe.

LiveDirtyEatClean

I don’t even know what an exit node is. I run a bitcoin full node behind TOR.

SmoothGoing

If it's not possible to know the number of nodes it isn't possible to know how many connect over TOR. Needs a probably or perhaps somewhere in your claim there.

LiveDirtyEatClean

They’re just going after companies that facilitate non KYC. Individuals can easily fly under the radar with TOR, running their own node, etc

Ivanow

I would disagree. TOR was famously started by US Navy labs. USA funds many projects that might seem incompatible at a first glance, but the general approach seems to be “if we don’t create it, someone else will. And it’s better to be at forefront of developments than playing catch up game afterwards”.

zer0fks

You can be fully synced and not expose 8333 for inbound. You can also advertise over TOR and allow inbound without any IPv4 exposure.