texts: How to make a persistent SPV wallet? (bcoin)

texts:
I created a wallet on a SPV node. The wallet is initialized from a mnemonic. After receiving some transactions, the wallet's balance looks like:

{ account: -1, tx: 3, coin: 3, unconfirmed: 136300, confirmed: 0 }

But when I re-initialize the wallet, it looks so:

{ account: -1, tx: 0, coin: 0, unconfirmed: 0, confirmed: 0 }

On the each initialization the wallet have the same address.

Here is my code:

const bcoin = require('bcoin');
bcoin.set('testnet');
const KeyRing = bcoin.keyring;
const Mnemonic = bcoin.hd.Mnemonic;
const HD = bcoin.hd;

const node = new bcoin.node.SPVNode({
    config: true,
    argv: true,
    env: true,
    logFile: true,
    logConsole: true,
    logLevel: 'debug',
    db: 'leveldb',
    memory: false,
    persistent: true,
    workers: true,
    listen: true,
    loader: require,
    network: 'testnet'
});

// Temporary hack
if (!node.has('walletdb')) {
    const plugin = require('./node_modules/bcoin/lib/wallet/plugin');
    node.use(plugin);
}

process.on('unhandledRejection', (err, promise) => {
  throw err;
});

const walletdb = new bcoin.wallet.WalletDB({ memory: false, network: 'testnet', prefix: '/Users/alestsurko/.bcoin/spvchain' });

(async () => {
    await node.ensure();
    await node.open();
    await node.connect();
    await walletdb.open();
    const mnemonic = new Mnemonic('uncover cash coral neglect upon nurse argue deal right song hood tennis');
    const masterKey = HD.fromMnemonic(mnemonic);

    const wallet = await walletdb.create({master: masterKey});

    console.log('Created wallet with address %s', await wallet.receiveAddress());
    const bl = await wallet.getBalance();
    console.log(bl.toJSON());

    // Add our address to the spv filter.
    node.pool.watchAddress(await wallet.receiveAddress());

    node.startSync();

    node.on('error', async (err) => {
        console.log(err);
    });

    node.pool.on('tx', async (tx) => {
        console.log('------ New tx. Adding to walletdb...');
        console.log(tx);
        await walletdb.addTX(tx);
    });

    wallet.on('balance', async (balance) => {
        console.log('Balance updated.');
        console.log(balance.toJSON());
    });
})().catch((err) => {
    console.error(err.stack);
    process.exit(1);
});


texts: What is the difference between Dogecoin and Bitcoin at the network level?

texts:
With all the Dogecoin hype, mainstream media has been comparing Doge with established cryptos like Bitcoin.
I'm trying to understand the difference at the technical level:

It comes up that Bitcoin network has better security. Is that due to the hashrate? If more miners start switching to Doge, wouldn't that solve the problem?

Doge's codebase is also almost same as Bitcoin.

Ignoring the coin supply factor, where Doge can continue creating 5 billion coins per year, is there any other reason that the Bitcoin network is superior? Does it boil down to simply which network gets more adoption?


texts: 1 block only allow about 2000 transactions. Does it mean every 10 minutes, bitcoin can allow 2000 transactions?

texts: Hi I very new to bitcoin and don't understand this. Isn't this 2000 too small? I thought there would be more than 10,000 transactions going around every 10 minutes. Especially when there is an ICO going on.


texts:
I want to check for every transaction if there is enough balance to pay it(including fee). I found this question:
Is there a way to know the Bitcoin Network transaction fee BEFORE actually submitting the transaction?

But what do I have to use as the TXID by createrawtransaction?


texts: Am I safe if 16 words in my 24 word seed are leaked?

texts: I use a 24 word seed for my private key. I split the 24 words into 16 words in three pieces of paper, so one needs to have at least two pieces of paper to recover the wallet. However my question is, if someone gets one piece of paper, can they easily brute force the remaining 8 words?


texts: What is the "main" difference between consensus mechanism of Bitcoin and Ethereum?

texts:
Bitcoin and Ethereum both use proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. One of differences between Bitcoin Pow and Ethereum PoW is difficulty level, meaning that while in bitcoin block generation rate is 10 minutes on average, in Ethereum is around 12 seconds on average.

Is there any other major difference between these two PoW algorithm?
For example, does Ethereum use proof-of-stake (PoS) in parallel?


texts: What features of scrypt() make Tenebrix GPU-resistant?

texts: There's a fork of Bitcoin called Tenebrix that is claiming to be CPU-friendly and GPU-resistant (with regard to mining). They say that this is because they're using scrypt instead of SHA256. From what I'm reading, scrypt seems similar to bcrypt or PBKDF2 in that it's just a multi-round scheme. If it's simply more rounds of something that's already faster on GPU than CPU then wouldn't N rounds still be faster on GPU than CPU or am I missing something inherent to scrypt that ruins GPU efficiency?


texts: How to get sending address of a deposit using coinbase api

texts:
I am trying to integrate the Coinbase API to my website. I need to communicate with Coinbase's wallets (bitcoin, bitcoin cash etc.) programmatically. Currently I can create different wallet addresses using the API and also I get notified when buy or sell transactions happen.

But I need to know is it possible to get incoming address when a deposit occur to one of my address from outside or another account of Coinbase.


texts:
This is a beginners question related to bitcoin.
As bitcoin is a system of distributed bitcoin users, and a transaction is being sent to 'all' of them - well, what is that network? What IP adresses? Is there a bitcoin databank of bitcoin users? Is there an initial list of some users? How does this 'network' work?


texts: Is it possible to forward bitcoins without the private keys?

texts:
According to this question, there isn't an easy way to automatically send bitcoins from one address to another and I think that it might be useful.
So I thought about creating a website were people could upload their wallets and choose a destination address where the coins would be sent to. A bitcoin daemon would be constantly checking the balance and forwarding any received transactions. But then I was confronted with the problem of securing a collection of online wallets.

When a transaction occurs, what part of the message is signed by the owner? Since the destination address is always the same, is it possible to send the bitcoins without storing the private keys on the server?

Probably the whole transaction is signed (which means that I need the key because the input is unpredictable), but I don't know much about this so I might be missing something here.


texts: bitcoind API rpc calls to encrypt an arbitrary message and create a script

texts:
In the latest bitcoind what RPC calls can I use to:

Create a script with multiple 3 IFs and 1 checklocktimeverify. What are the arguments required here and what is the way to do it via rpc calls?
Encrypt an arbitrary message using a bitcoin pubbkey. The arguments required here will be the plaintext message obviously and the pubkey for the recipient to encrypt the message with (I know address / pubkey hash160 will not work, and whole pubkey is required).


texts:
how to generate regression test genesis block ? i saw in bitcion nonce is 2. but i generate from
GenesisH0 it not showed nonce 2. for other altcoin i saw nonce is 0 why ? how to generate it ?
python genesis.py -a scrypt -z "xxxxxx." -t xxxxxxx -v xxxxx -p "xxxxxxxxx" -n 0
Here is my error when run compile file.
chainparams.cpp:319: CRegTestParams::CRegTestParams(const ArgsManager&): Assertion `consensus.hashGenesisBlock == uint256S("0x060696d44c5aeca64530875d13f349aa5436ce8a55087af86d9e7684c25fedf5")' failed.
Here is example of other reg test hash genesis:
genesis = CreateGenesisBlock(1296688602, 0, 0x207fffff, 1, 50 * COIN);
    consensus.hashGenesisBlock = genesis.GetHash();
    assert(consensus.hashGenesisBlock == uint256S("0x530827f38f93b43ed12af0b3ad25a288dc02ed74d6d7857862df51fc56c416f9"));
    assert(genesis.hashMerkleRoot == uint256S("0x97ddfbbae6be97fd6cdf3e7ca13232a3afff2353e29badfab7f73011edd4ced9"));

please help to advice how to generate reg test genesis?


texts: Does CPU mining become efficient as memory requirements increase?

texts: I am focusing on an anti scrypt coin called Vertcoin which increases it's N-factor at a set interval. On their main page on bitcointalk it states that CPU computation will make gains as N-factor (memory requirements) increase. Can anyone explain as to how this is possible if the memory requirements can reach to > 4gb


texts: Is there someway to determine the current network fee from the bitcoin network/daemon?

texts: Is there some way to programmatically extract the current consensus of the transaction fee from the bitcoin network, either by using the daemon or through some other means?


texts:
Can anyone explain step-by-step the lifecycle of a Raiblocks transaction...in layman's terms?

Having trouble deciphering the whitepaper (see link below).

https://raiblocks.net/media/RaiBlocks_Whitepaper__English.pdf


texts: Is there a site that tracks volume over time?

texts: Coinmarketcap shows the current volume data. Is there a site that tracks volume over time in a graph and data table where you can sort by highest volume days? I'm looking to see if a specific coin has been increasing volume over time.


texts: How create a personal node c-lighting for create a new channel with other node

texts:
I want to create my personal node to create a new channel with another personal node, an example my node with URL 12345678@192.164.1.7 I want create a channel with another personal node.

I could not found some reference for this problem, can you help me for creating my personal node?

I try to add and parameter to command line --addr but this I think is not enough, right?


texts: I tried to withdraw coins from Binance but they were lost on the blockchain. I need help from an expert

texts:
I really need some help from someone with a lot of knowledge and experience with crypto trading.

I tried to withdraw LTC from my Binance account recently, but I mistakenly used a BTC "receive address" from my Green Address desktop wallet, and the transaction didn't go through. I've contacted Binance and Green Address customer support several times and neither company is willing to help me recover my lost coins. Binance won't own the fact that they allowed a transfer that had an invalid receive address (the address started with a "3", not an "L"), and they said my coins are now lost on the blockchain.

Green Address says they don't have access to my private keys in order to help. I don't know how to access my private keys or even if they exist. I do have 2-factor authentication enabled on Green Address wallet. I've been told by members of this forum that I may be able to recover my coins if I'm able to convert my Green Address wallet to a cold wallet, and I have emailed Green Address with that question and am waiting for their reply.

Someone also posted that I try calculating an address from my wallet seed. I have no idea how to go about doing that and that's one of the things I need help with. I'm a total newbie to crypto trading and trying to understand all the technical steps is overwhelming and hard to comprehend.

I would be eternally grateful, if someone would be willing to walk me through the steps of how to recover my LTC coins?

It's a lot of money to me. I'm attaching a screenshot of the original transaction from Binance website, including the Green receive address and the Txid.


texts:
I'm using combination of 'createrawtransaction' and 'fundrawtransaction' API calls to create my transactions. I don't pass 'feeRate' option to 'fundrawtransaction' and rely on bitcoin wallet to figure out the fee. Is this a good strategy for mission critical system like payment system or I have to manually estimate transaction fees and not rely on functionality provided by bitcoin core?

As far as I understand if fee is too low for a network conditions then transaction may stuck in the mempool of some nodes. Even worse it may be expelled from some nodes while still remain in others. Is there any way to cancel such transaction and make sure no miner will ever pick it up? If not then what are my options when dealing with stuck transactions?


texts: Multibit backup created partial transactions

texts:
Here's what happened. I took backup of the following:

   savings.wallet
   savings.info
   savings-data (and all its contents)

Then I connected to internet, started my MultiBit. The wallet was open by default. There was a new deposit transaction.
I closed the wallet. Opened my backup wallet, to see if it can pick up the new transaction.
When I opened the backup wallet, it can recognize only until when backup was created. It doesn't recognize the new transaction when synced.

When I have two copies of the same wallet file, one recognizes the new transaction while the other sees all transaction except the new one.
Why would this happen?


texts: If a BCH is mined do those coins go against the total 21 million supply

texts: I wanted to find out when a fork happens does that mean there are double the amount of total coins added to the max original total of 21 million


texts: How do exchanges use cold bitcoin wallet while still able to automate transfers?

texts:
Some exchanges mentions they use a cold wallet to keep the private key. As far as I understand cold wallet is a wallet either in an offline machine or kept in hardware.

However, it appears that transfers can still be made online on these exchanges and the underlying system will automate the signing of transaction.

How do exchanges able to maintain a cold wallet while still able to automate the process? Is it by setting up local network with limited access or by other means?


texts: Why for creating a new test coin is suggested to use Litecoin code?

texts:
I think I'd prefer to use Bitcoin code. Is there a reason that LiteCoin is preferred?

As far as I know, for creating a different coin from BTC source I need to create a genesis block and remove the checkpoints. And obviously change any important parameter that I think should be changed (block rewards, etc.).

Is anything else needed? Maybe it's hard to create a genesis block for Bitcoin?


texts: Regtest: One node nullifying other node's balance

texts:
I'm running 2 bitcoind servers on the same machine, called node0 and node1.
In the following I'm listing steps I take and results I get and I'm wondering what is causing one node nullifying other node's balance by block generation?

Started two independent (by independent configuration files) servers
node0 generates 101 blocks
node1 generates 101 blocks
each node has a balance of 50 BTC
connected them by adding one by the other node via "addnode "localhost:port" add"
version messages are exchanged
getconnectioncount returns "1" on behalf of each node
node0 generates 1 block
node0: getbalance: 100 BTC
node1: getbalance: 0 BTC

...trying to figure out what's happening...

node1 generates 1 block
node1: getbalance: 0 BTC
node0: getbalance 150 BTC
node1 generates 100 blocks
node1: getbalance: 50 BTC
node0: getbalance: 5100 BTC

I guess this problem has to do with an error I get after generation of blocks - see my corresponding question here.

Or is it because of the settled connection which causes a conflict on which blockchain to work on and thus abandonning one node's blockchain - in this case, abandonning node1's blockchain?


texts: Why does Bitcoin not have faster downward difficulty adjustments?

texts:
The BCash fork seems to have correctly anticipated the need to adjust difficulty downwards in the case of very slow blocks. This means it's much less likely for the chain to be orphaned when it was nowhere near as profitable to mine as the BTC chain (the first period was very unprofitable). All you need is one miner to continue mining to produce an adjustment downward fairly rapidly. However, now we're at the point where it may be more profitable to mine BCH and this may strip mining capacity away from BTC - the profitability will see-saw between both chains.

Why does the BTC chain not have faster downward adjustments? I'm guessing there is some important security reason for this. It certainly saved BCH in the beginning so superficially it seems like a good idea. If BTC loses a lot of mining power and has slow adjustments you could have really long periods of slow confirmation times on the legacy chain.

I expect this issue will become even more important with the 2x fork when BTC (presumably) loses much more hashing power. Perhaps there is no easy solution because it would require a hard fork in itself, defeating the purpose of not forking the legacy chain.

So to summarize:

Why is downward adjustment so slow on the legacy chain? There must be some real benefit to this.
Will an equilibrium in mining be found, assuming short-term profit seeking miners? How will that equilibrium be arrived at?


texts: I used multibit years ago - now what? (BTC, BTG, BCC etc...)

texts:
I have some old wallets from multibit era (~2013).  There is no way I can now download the full blockchain, so I need to import these keys into somewhere.  Worse still, I also need to import the same keys for BCC and BTG.

Try as I might, I can't seem to find clients that allow me to import old base58 keys.  I have a few files called something.key which came from multibit and are human readable with the private key in.  Everything seems to be "mobile" and "QR codes", "passphrases" and whatnot.

It's not a lot of money, and fragmented over multiple wallets, so with transaction costs stupidly high now, sweeping is infeasible.

How can I spend these old coins?  Is the only way to free up 150GB and wait?

Edit:  Ultimately I just want to create a transaction from all these wallets, to send the coins to an exchange.  So sweeping to a new wallet just doubles all my transaction costs for no reason.  Also I need a way to repeat the process for Bitcoin Cash and Gold...

Is there no simple tool to just "create" a transaction?


texts:
I want to Send bitcoin from my wallet to another bitcoin address.
I have been working on their API.

  http://localhost:3000/merchant/$guid/payment?password=$main_password&second_password=$second_password&to=$address&amount=$amount&from=$from&fee=$fee

This is what i tried to do.

But here the amount is bit confusing to me. My product price is  0.03000000 BTC.
So what will be the value of $amount ?

Official documentation says: $amount Amount to send in satoshi.

And what will be the value of $fee ?

Documentation: https://blockchain.info/api/blockchain_wallet_api


texts: New to Bitcoin - Need help understanding the mining part

texts: I had a quick read of the basics of Bitcoin and the mining, but i still don't understand why this is done. can someone please explain in simple terms...


texts:
When trying to access the Coinbase API I am getting a header required: passphrase error.

How do I create a passphrase?

On the GDAX website, it states you create your passphrase when you create an API key, however, I just created a new Coinbase API key and could not see any option to create a passphrase.

Thanks in advance


texts: request btc payment when insufficient btc sent

texts: If a transaction was made and not enough btc to cover it, what are the options to add to the btc to cover the transaction.  How does the request payment work in this instance?


texts: Can I convert BTC to USD without a bank account?

texts: Just asking. Say, I want to switch BTC to USD inside Steam Wallet. Is it possible?


texts: what is the motivation behind one-cpu-one-vote rule?

texts:
Original paper published by Satoshi Nakamoto, compares between one-cpu-one-vote and one-ip-address-one-vote, then chooses former because of the reason that someone would be able to allocate more than one IP.

This statement also sounds against anyone with huge hash power.

With this, it seems that, GPU / FPGA / ASIC hashing was not predicted at the time of publishing this paper.

Is this an important change, or just a design decision for the growth of Bitcoin ecosystem? What's the motivation behind one-cpu-one-vote rule? And, will it still applies to Bitcoin ecosystem?


texts:
When user A sends Bitcoins to user B, user A signs the transaction with his private key. This signed transaction is being sent to the Bitcoin network and all the nodes collect, confirm and pack these transactions to blocks by mining. Is that right so far? But what exactly happens at the confirmation. What are the nodes doing? I can't imagine what confirmation means technically. Does the transaction contain the public key and the nodes look if they can decrypt the transaction with this public key or what?

And what does it mean to wait 6 confirmations or more? (see http://bitcoin.org/en/vocabulary#confirmation). Why should one wait for a confirmation and how can one decide how many confirmations to wait? This is very unclear to me (Bitcoin newbie). The tooltip here tells me "the more confirmations a transaction has, the more likely that it will remain in the chain permanently". Why do I want my transaction to remain in the chain?


texts: Claiming Bitcoin Gold from BTC address private key using Coinomi gives an error - "the private key does not contain any funds"

texts:
When I create a new wallet in Coinomi and try to sweep my old BTC private key (BTC since transferred to another address) I get an error - "The private key does not contain any funds".

I'm receiving with Bitcoin Gold and I'm using the WIF PK provided by blockchain.info - this is where the address (not a wallet) is located. I've also confirmed that I have BTG in my wallet using https://btgexplorer.com.

None of the issues detailed here: https://coinomi.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/29000017747-i-can-t-sweep-my-btg-private-key are applicable.

How can I gain access to these coins?


texts:
I am trying to create a custom transaction. I am using c# and I will code the signature code myself since no library currently allows this. The transaction involves 3 players; a buyer, a seller and an escrow. The transaction must do the following.

Transaction skeleton:

1. The buyer will send 2BTC to the escrow.

2. The seller will sends 2BTC to the escrow.

3. At a later point in time, the buyer may choose to
        send 1BTC to the seller, or not.

4. If he does, the BTC placed in the escrow are
        returned (2BTC are kept by the escrow
        as commission).

5. If he does not, the BTC in the escrow are lost.

To implement this, it gets complicated. The escrow would need to run a daemon in a loop that would check to see which transaction are been placed in order to return the BTCs correctly.

Is there a way to use the advanced scripting and contract capabilities of bit coin to make it so the escrow doesn't have to run a daemon, and to simply the process as much as possible?


texts: Displaying the bitcoin wallet on the internet

texts: I was wondering, is it a security risk if you display your bitcoin wallet on the internet? Let's say my bitcoin address is 123abc. This is linked to my wallet which stores several bitcoins. It is adviced to place the address 123abc openly on the internet? Or is it a security risk?


texts: Can I claim Segwit2X with a blockchain.info wallet?

texts:
I have a blockchain.info wallet, but I am not sure whether I would be able to claim segwit2x?

Thanks in advance.


texts: Should you protect your Bitcoin address like your credit card number?

texts:
Today, I recieved this scam email:

  We have reached the biggest milestone in our history – over a million wallets.

  https://[removed] will celebrate with some big prizes.

  In October 2013, the lucky user who created the 500,000th wallet was rewarded with 10 BTC.

  Read more about this: http://[removed]

  We have discovered that you created the wallet with number 1.000.000

  [removed] want to reward you with 50 BTC.

  To prove that you are the rightful owner of the lucky wallet,
     please reply to this email and send us your mnemonic ( the long string of words generated randomly when your account was created)

  After verification, your wallet will be credited instantly with the 50 BTC.

  Thank you that you have chosen https://[removed]

I am guessing this is a scam as (a) it was sent to two separate email addresses I have, (b) the sender's email is in no way affiliated to the websites listed in the email and (c) I don't think anyone is willing to just give away 50 BTC which is close to $42,000 USD. I was wondering if I were to give them my Bitcoin address, what would happen next? Would they be able to use it like a credit card number? Or would they just be asking for more personal information?


texts: Can one receiving address from my Wallet be linked to another from the same Wallet?

texts:
I have created a wallet using Electrum. Electrum creates 20 receiving addresses. My question is can these be linked or traced back to each other?

I want to understand if I have create another wallet if I want more receiving addresses apart from 20.


texts: Why is BIP-147 (Dealing with dummy stack element malleability, part of segwit) necessary?

texts:
Given BIP-11 (M-of-N Standard Transactions) it's not clear why BIP-147 (Dealing with dummy stack element malleability) is necessary.

BIP-11 states:

  OP_CHECKMULTISIG transactions are redeemed using a standard scriptSig:

OP_0 ...signatures...

  (OP_0 is required because of a bug in OP_CHECKMULTISIG; it pops one too many items off the execution stack, so a dummy value must be placed on the stack).

Yet BIP-147 claims:

  A design flaw in OP_CHECKMULTISIG and OP_CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY causes them to consume an extra stack element ("dummy element") after signature validation. The dummy element is not inspected in any manner, and could be replaced by any value without invalidating the script. ... [my emphasis]

This statement appears to contradict BIP-11, which clearly requires OP_0 as the first validation script element.

I can think of two reasons for BIP-147:

BIP-11 doesn't explicitly require the stack to be checked but just that a multisignature validation script begins with OP_0;
BIP-11 doesn't apply at all to OP_CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY.

Are these indeed motivations for BIP-147, and are there others?


texts: Why are there multiple input addresses in one transaction and are they linkable to one single address?

texts:
For example, see this transaction:
https://blockchain.info/de/tx/517c634fcf802bb8114516bc32718acf8a4e360decb7d93859e913f958d7bb6d

In my understanding, the bunch of input addresses (usually) come from a single HD wallet. I.e. a transaction input address is hierarchically derived from the previous one and so on. Is this true for every transaction? What else could be a reason for multiple input addresses?
Is there any way/method/ready-to-use-script that I can input with some address from an HD wallet and that generates a series of child addresses?
Say, I know some (hierarchically older) address of the user who sent this transaction. This method would allow me to compare the thus generated child addresses against the input addresses visible in the transaction. Hence, if there is a match, I would be able to link this transaction to this particular user. Is this train of thoughts correct?


texts: Opening wallet.dat in python, using bsddb3

texts:
I'm trying to open wallet.dat using the bsddb3 module for Python 2.7.

db = bsddb3.btopen("wallet.dat", "r")

contents of db:

{'main': '\x00\x00\x00\x02'}

I have to Which is almost nothing.

ls -l wallet.dat -> 72K

I though I could view information about the wallet, is there problem with the version of bsddb or this line of code?


texts:
My transaction hasn't confirmed after 3 days , and I have no wallet for it to come back to, because I sent the money straight to the browser. If any miner can help me my code is below:
    1NGrDbtmQkMajCezPx7Mo9jjkQHSo1Xbdu


texts: Bitcoin cli asks to use estimatesmartfee with new syntax that is not described in docs

texts: In previous versions of bitcoin-cli I've successfully used estimatesmartfee 2 syntax. But now cli answers {'errors': ['Insufficient data or no feerate found'], 'blocks': 0}. How should I estimate fee now?


texts: What does the "relayed_by" field in the BlockCypher API represent? Is there a way to gather geographical data of transactions?

texts:
The transaction data returned by the BlockCypher's API includes the "relayed_by" field, which the documentation describes as "Address of the peer that sent us this transaction". Is this the IP address of the original node that broadcasts the transaction?

In general, we're trying to gather geographical data of the transactions; is there a reliable way to do so?


texts: Two bitcoin addresses - Can you link them together?

texts:
I'm new to bitcoins and I was wondering; if I generate an address, add money to it (from MtGox for example), remove the address and use another address in the future. Would it be possible to link those two addresses together?
Or would I be perfectly safe (anonymous)?


texts: Bitcoin-Qt Command line - adding private key - Mac OSX

texts:
I recently created a custom Public key (with vanitygen) and i would like to add the corresponding private key to my bitcoin-Qt wallet client.  I have started bitcoin-Qt in server mode using:

$ open Bitcoin-Qt.app --args -server

And then issued the following commands, yet i cannot seem to successful add the private key, can anyone tell me what i am doing wrong?

$ curl --user bitcoinrpc --data-binary '{"method": "walletlock" }' http://127.0.0.1:8332/
Enter host password for user 'bitcoinrpc':
{"result":null,"error":null,"id":null}

$ curl --user bitcoinrpc --data-binary '{"method": "walletpassphrase", "params": ["************", 120] }' http://127.0.0.1:8332/
Enter host password for user 'bitcoinrpc':
{"result":null,"error":null,"id":null}

$ curl --user bitcoinrpc --data-binary '{"method": "walletpassphrase", "params": ["************", 120] }' http://127.0.0.1:8332/
Enter host password for user 'bitcoinrpc':
{"result":null,"error":{"code":-17,"message":"Error: Wallet is already unlocked."},"id":null}

$ curl --user bitcoinrpc --data-binary '{"method": "importprivkey", "params": ["************", "************"] }' http://127.0.0.1:8332/
Enter host password for user 'bitcoinrpc':
{"result":null,"error":{"code":-4,"message":"Error adding key to wallet"},"id":null}

So what happens is, when i try to decrypt my wallet it just says 'null' as a response.  At first i thought it wasn't actually decrypting, but if i lock it and then try twice to decrypt it, it tells me "Error: Wallet is already unlocked".

Great! so it is unlocked and we should be able to now add the private key, but i just get error code -4 ? what is error -4 ? how do i make this work??


texts: Other than the previous block hash and nonce data, which elements of a block are concatenated in order to be hashed?


texts: Wallet: how to generate public extended key?

texts:
As far as I understand, when I want to create an HD Wallet, do I need a private key that is derived into an extended public key?

So, my question is, if I am coding a portfolio of bitcoin in java, how can I generate this public extended key from a private key (I assume that the private key is like a private password right?)?

Thanks for your help,


texts:
I'm compiling a SmallChange clone on Mac OS using the .osx makefile, and I get this error. What should I do?

'boost/assign/list_of.hpp' file not found


texts: Is PAN or ID card verification necessary to buy Bitcoin in India?

texts:
There are many Bitcoin exchanges in India but all of them require PAN or others documents to validate identity. However, the Central Bank of India i.e. RBI has not given Bitcoin the status of a valid currency so the exchanges shouldn't ask for PAN Cards or other details but they do.

That's my other question, are these exchanges authorized to ask for PAN card or other documents to verify identity since I am paying through my debit card or bank cccount so additional verification should not be necessary.

Is PAN card or ID card verification mandatory for buying Bitcoin from exchanges in India, even through the RBI hasn't issued any such notification?

The is the only notification by the RBI related to Bitcoin I was able to find find:  https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=30247


texts: C secp256k1: What is the purpose of the idiom '(void)data;'?

texts:
The following code is contained in the file secp256k1.c:

static void
default_illegal_callback_fn(
  const char* str,
  void* data)
{
  (void)data;
  fprintf(stderr, "[libsecp256k1] illegal argument: %s\n", str);
  abort();
}

Could someone explain the purpose of the line (void)data;? I am pretty sure there is one, but I can't figure out what it is :(


texts:
Normally somebody who signs a multisig transaction also needs the redeem script or all the public keys used for the creation of the redeem script, alongside their own private key.

No I was thinking, is this also required for a 2of2 multisig address. Let's say the 2 parties are Alice and Bob. Alice and Bob both generate a keypair. Bob sends his public key to Alice and she creates the redeem script. Now Alice knows both public keys but Bob does only know his public key. Alice now creates a transaction spending the funds and signs it with her private key. She sends this raw half signed transaction to Bob. So far so normal. But normally here Bob needs the redeem script or both public keys to generate the redeem script himself. I was wondering now: When signing the transaction Alice adds her signature to the transaction and also her public key so the signature can be verified. So Bob could extract Alice's public key from the raw transaction he just received and use that to generate the redeem script himself?

So my question is: Is this true? And if it is, does that mean that no matter if it is 2of2 or 4of4  the last signer can always recreate the redeem script from the received raw transaction?


texts:
Can i use Bitcoin sign to create logo? I can not find any resource that says it's not protected. For example http://localbitcoins.com/ uses Bitcoin sign in they logo.
I heard it's licensed with CC licence, but not sure.

Maybe someone know's this?


texts:
Here's goes the steps that lead me to a wallet passphrase error:

OS: Mac Mojave (64bits)

Started bitcoin-qt app to sync (long outdated)
While managing to solve disk size errors (external drive), I updated bitcoin-qt to the latest version (18), but not sure what the previous one version was (perhaps 16.0).
As soon sync finished, I choose to encrypt my wallet :(.
I saved my passphrase, as it was created (100% sure!). To make sure it works, I changed the passphrase twice, but making sure the last change was the one I saved previously.
As bitcoin base was huge in my external drive, I set prune mode on (550).
All set, asked to received from my exchange.
Finally, when I tried to send the received amount, bitcoin-qt asked me the wallet passphrase, were I got the wrong passphrase error...

Is the only cause for that the wrong passphrase ? I mean, I'm sure I have typed the right one...


texts: Security advise on setting up a gambling Bitcoin site

texts:
I have written a Bitcoin gambling site and am planning on the best approach to host it/manage it securely.
The site is implemented in Java using the BitcoinJ API and servlets etc are handled via the Play framework.

Here is an overview of what the site does at high level:

Communicates to a datastore where "receive/return addresses" inputed by user are stored.
Creates a unique receive address for the user (also stores this).
Stores the answers chosen by user.
Checks for verified transactions and updates datastore with this info.

Finally, when the app has a return address to send winnings to and confirmed verified and confirmed winner, the winnings are sent out.

I am thinking about how to best host this application. Would the best way be to proceed to purchase a dedicated server and run the whole app on there? Are there better/more secure ways that this can be done (also cheaper methods i.e. shared hosting?).

Thanks for your help!

EDIT
Potential alternative option:

Lightweight app on web which communicates directly to a database.
Database holds a big list of readily created "receive addresses" by a wallet held off server.
Off server process runs on my PC continuously checking the database for "work".

This approach is probably a lot safer and would also remove the need for a dedicated server. The downsides would be having to run a PC 24-7 at home which constantly checks for work.
The off server process would create more addresses when needed and add them to the database (remotely). It would also send out bitcoins to winners and transfer the bulk of BTC to an offline wallet.


texts: How long do transactions on the Liquid Network take to clear?

texts: Transactions on the Liquid sidechain are said to enable much faster transfers than the main Bitcoin blockchain.  How fast are the the transfers?   Does it still use a blockchain?


texts: I bought bitcoins and sent them to the wallet, however the wallet is not synchronized and as a result I cannot see my bitcoins. Will I be able to see them as soon as the synch process finishes or have I lost them? And if I did, is there any way I can recover them?


texts: Cashaddr (bech32) to legacy address format convertor for Bitcoin Cash

texts:
Several days ago our bitcoin cash core wallet started to generate addresses using the new format: bitcoincash:q...... . That's nice and differs from the bitcoin blockchain generated addresses, but some of our users have problems with the new address formats: not all the online exchangers supports the new format and mark it as invalid.
Is there an ability to show the user his OLD format address alongside with new one? So that we need some kind of convertor between cashaddr/legacy address format standards (maybe that's silly, sorry), or do it via wallet RPC API?


texts: Implementing Secret Sharing with an Encrypted Bitcoin Wallet

texts: How would I implement Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme with an encrypted Bitcoin wallet?


texts: How would one "Encrypt" a message using a Bitcoin *public key* and use its private key to decrypt it?

texts:
I have the following text string:

This is a test message.

Using my bitcoin public key (bitcoin address?), how can I encrypt this message?
How would I decrypt the message using a bitcoin private key?


texts:
I'm a newbie and trying to grasp some concepts that are challenging.

In the case of a p2sh transaction - when is the transaction executed?
I grasp that these transactions give the receiver control of the terms of sending - but what I want to know is if the sender - when initiating the transaction - submits this data to the block and if so does that mean that p2sh transactions are mined twice? Initially from sender to '3' prefaced address and then once again from '3' prefaced address to the receiver..?
Any info is appreciated.
Regards,


texts: How was bitcointalk attacked in Dec 2013?

texts:
There was a man-in-the-middle attack on bitcointalk on Dec 2013.

  News: If you used your password to login between 06:00 Dec 1 UTC and
  20:00 UTC, then your password may have been captured in a
  man-in-the-middle attack, and you should change your password here and
  wherever else you used it. If you were only logged in via the
  "remember me" feature, then you're OK.

How was this executed? Didn't bitcointalk use SSL? Are there technical details on the attack vector?


texts: Bitcoin client 0.4.1.1 stuck at block 176947

texts:
Bitcoin client stuck. Tried to rebuild whole blockchain, but it went up to that number and got stuck again.

Here's a screenshot: http://vvcap.net/db/2IR75OWyJj5AsUW7eo_i.htp

Any suggestions?


texts: I do not remember the details but I got some Bitcoins for free years ago. I think it was on a slot but can not be sure.  How can I go about trying to find out where I would have put them if I even kept them at all. I might even have lost them right back to the slot if that is where I got them. I just remember getting them at a time I never had heard of them. Just a thought.  why not find them if I can.


texts: How to install & activate a c-lightning plugin in lightningd?

texts: I recently stumbled across the https://github.com/lightningd/plugins github repo and wanted to install the autopilot plugin. But how can I install and activate the plugin which I downloaded from the website.


texts:
How do I get to the value in the 'scriptPubKey' part of the transaction ? shows a great example of going from address to scriptPubKey.

I'd like to do something similar: go from private key (ECDSA) to address.  How do I do that? References to libs or code, as in the above question, would be appreciated.


texts:
Where can I get official DiabloMiner.app? Is it safe?

By safe I mean that it neither will try to steal my wallet nor will dig for somebody else.


texts: How fast is the Bitcoin (mining) network?

texts: How fast is the Bitcoin mining network compared to other distributed computing networks? ;)


texts: mining revenue equation difference to calculators

texts:
I am interested in the revenue calculation of mining process.
From a few references like this I found a equation that people say it's correct.

Unfortunatelly it differs to the results which are calculated by public available calculators like this.

with a hashing power of 13.5 TH/s the referenced calculator and others resulting in 0.001304 BTC per day. The equation in the other thread results in 0.002134 BTC per day.

H = 13500 GH/s * 10^9 = 13,500,000,000,000
B = 12.5
D = 1,590,896,927,258

(86400 * 13,500,000,000,000 * 12.5) / (2^32 * 1,590,896,927,258) =
  0.002134 BTC/d

Could anybody please help me to understand whats the right way to calculate an approx. revenue?

Thanks in advance


texts: How can you consolidate your personal UTXO set? (different wallet answers welcomed)

texts:
With network fees so low at the moment, I've seen a lot of recommendations to take the opportunity to move funds to segwit addresses and consolidate your UTXO set. During peak congestion, many smaller UTXOs were simply not economical to spend and this is likely to occur again in the future. However I haven't found a definitive guide on how to actually do this.

I'm using the Ledger Nano S Bitcoin wallet, which doesn't provide the most granular control over software tradeoffs but not the most abstracted away either. As far as I can tell from the interphase I have two UTXOs in the wallet, one with the majority of my coins and one tiny one of change that I'd like to combine into the larger amount.

I thought this would be as simple as spending the full wallet amount to a new receiving address for the same wallet, and watch as the two inputs were combined into two outputs. However when I did this the wallet simply spent to two outputs of the same amount (minus a tiny fee) regardless. So since I'm assuming my end goal is to in fact combine them into a single output, what are my options here?


texts: anyone can help me recovering my bitcoin bip38 password?

texts:
i have bitcoin wallet with more than 1 btc but i cant import it without losing this amount cos i forgot the bip38 password
public key: 1CZosSHnf87ZqZ3fRiAuikpzdCZhAKsi3y
private key: 6PRVbkCfZ4YGwXhdJwJ6rR56gRnwLBvMDRbncp3PUeT9QwAG8cd1xVVDKc
anyone who finds it take the half and send me the other half to this wallet
3BbdSKZB9qn1T27t9FMYQpKB86sgPxobbW


texts: BitLaunder's mixer vs "major exchanges" mixer

texts:
BitLaunder (seemingly created by syadasti) writes:

  Secure Launder renders your bitcoins completely untraceable, even to
  the most persistent forensic investigator. You deposit bitcoins into
  your BitLaunder wallet, where we scramble them with coins of other
  users. When you withdraw your coins, however, we send them from a
  completely different wallet, a wallet located in untraceable
  'onionland' where there is no history whatsoever of your coins.

However, it is trivial to send bitcoins from a completely different wallet. For example, we can do it ourselves using the default "mixing" services provided by some major exchanges like BitStamp which places bitcoins from all users into a common pool. We can even manually (or via a bot) add in some delay prior to withdrawing so that the transactions are harder to trace.

As such, is it true to say that technologically speaking, there are no difference between the mixing services provided by BitLaunder and by BitStamp, and they are basically the same thing except provided by different parties?

How does a mixing service located in "untraceable onionland" (I suppose it meant a wallet which only does transactions on the Tor network) give us more security and/or anonymity compared to a mixing service located in the normal Internet?


texts: The value of Quarkcoin knowing that big amount was preminted

texts:
Few hours ago I was looking at bitcoin.stackexchange and found a question about quarkcoin. I was curious to know what is this. Reading a little bit I have found that it does not provide anything new except of:

combining a lot of cryptofunctions in a big ball of mud and calling it super secure
quick block generation 30 secs
more coins to mint
Total of 247 million QRK will be mined in ~ 6 months, after that ~ 1 million QRK p.a. (~ 0.5% p.a inflation)
other small tweaks

And from wiki page it is written:

  Of the 247 million QRK the developers own roughly 85-90% of them.

I am just curious what value does it bring to the table and why someone would like to mint it, if it sounds like it was created just for developers to dump it for some other crypto.


texts: Is a digital wallet created by blockchain?

texts:
Currently reading an article here, I came across the following sentence which really confused me:

  Through the digital "wallet" a blockchain creates around not only
  virtual money but the pieces of data that make up your identity,
  blockchain will act as a gatekeeper of sorts to how we interact with
  the digital world

Does the author really mean: a blockchain creates a digital wallet around 1)virtual money and 2)certain pieces of data, and through this wallet the blockchain acts as a gatekeeper to...? How come a digital wallet is created by blockchain?


texts: When does Ardor smart contracts come into effect and how does it work compared to Ethereum, EOS, and Lisk?

texts: Ardor announced they are launching smart contracts on their system and how does it work compared to the other platforms like Ethereum, EOS, and Lisk?


texts:
So here is my situattion:

A while back I have purchased as and experiment some cloud mining, I ended up getting about $70 out of it. Anyway I use the official Android bitcoin app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet&hl=en

I have it backed up. And now when I try to restore it, the app just freezes at certain point. At the beginning it is 8 months behind, and as transactions start to appear in it, under each transaction there is alert basically saying that due to the fact that these transactions send to multiple addresses at once that app may become slow over time. And boy.. are they right. After it reaches certain point the transactions don't even  show up anymore, and I can't seem to be able to send any bitcoins to some other adress before it is fully synced.

So my question is, can I maybe take the back up file and restore it to different wallet app (maybe one of the online based, or even some PC based  one (Ubuntu)), as my guess is that my phone just can handle it (tried HTC ONE m7 and some shitty Sony Xperia). If so, how would I do it? Or all I can do is just keep on waiting? Or any other way to get my bitcoins out of that wallet, and just to forget about that wallet?


texts: Is Bitcoin Core storage compatible across different machine architecture?

texts:
I want to run Bitcoin core on a raspberry PI (arm32v7), but the initial sync takes way too long.

I am thinking importing the UTXO set from another of my node which run on x64.

Would it work? Is it safe to assume it will always work?


texts:
As far as I know, mining means verifying transactions and thus keeping the Bitcoin network alive.
Today, at a local meetup, some people have informed me that mining doesn't need transactions. They said that even if there are no transactions waiting to be verified at all, you can just mine away based on the previous block's "hash", and as soon as you find the right salt you create a new block.
That would mean you don't do anything by "mining" except for blowing a bubble. Where is my logic flawed?


texts: Does my client accept inbound connections?

texts: How can I verify that the Bitcoin client is well connected to the network and is able to receive incoming connections?


texts: Is 250mb/month enough bandwidth to support the internet needs of 4 mining rigs?

texts: So this question was posed in 2011; I figure by now there may be slightly different factors at work, but mainly I ask if i can use a prepaid hotspot plan for 250mb to connect 4 sp20 mining rigs each clocking ~1.5 Terrhashes/sec.. I can get a higher bandwidth plan, but it's significantly more expensive and so I seek the input of you fine folk :)


texts:
Surely if there was a major bug discovered in the Bitcoin architecture, there is someone who would have the power to push an update and fix it.
Then I assume that they could also make changes for malicious purposes.
Who has the power to make changes to the Bitcoin architecture and what is the scope of their power?
Could they turn off the Bitcoin system completely?


texts:
I'm not sure I understand the fields of my input. I have a P2SH address (Testnet). This is the input of my transaction:

  "vin": [
    {
      "txid": "a61389ff9af670770182198a984a4c1785625c60795bd57645ecc78765b23679",
      "vout": 1,
      "scriptSig": {
        "asm": "0014778daf651b21684b572644b47d551fce0ff71c74",
        "hex": "160014778daf651b21684b572644b47d551fce0ff71c74"
      },
      "txinwitness": [
        "3044022034a07f088dd88396cd378912a4ed6a156701b075f0facbbae810677048c390e602205df07e13bf4d56feece791a1b5e4d94bec9c93aae14bb87a1b4c6c54ae9bf2f701",
        "032c27921f2d15e7eca768c0e8a8b1aeb863328c74d6c194d41dde2888d4b0e75b"
      ],
      "sequence": 4294967295
    }
  ],

  I understand that: in "asm" i have RedeemScript. In txinwitness i have
  my signature and the pubblic key. Correct?

Now, from the utxo used:

"txid": "a61389ff9af670770182198a984a4c1785625c60795bd57645ecc78765b23679",
    "vout": 1,
    "address": "2N7MaihNErbNH8XTkuZWtJYPzMQAWMPVKHd",
    "label": "",
    "redeemScript": "0014778daf651b21684b572644b47d551fce0ff71c74",
    "scriptPubKey": "a9149ac58ff47e27214b158b38da04bc8cbf72def14387",
    "amount": 0.01944571,
    "confirmations": 116,
    "spendable": true,
    "solvable": true,
    "desc": "sh(wpkh([7de694b7/0'/0'/7']032c27921f2d15e7eca768c0e8a8b1aeb863328c74d6c194d41dde2888d4b0e75b))#6z7uwusp",
    "safe": true

I deduce that I have used a P2SH-P2WPKH output. So in the ScriptPubkey I find the unlock condition (HASH160 of the public key of my address). In the redeem script I find HASH160 of the compressed public key 032c27921f2d15...

  is it correct to say that, as an additional condition, to unlock a
  UTXO P2SH-P2WPKH, compared to a P2PKH, you need the HASH of an
  additional public key?


texts: Installing Electrum on a cold wallet linux usb

texts:
I don't usually use linux but I'm looking to start using it more, if I can just figure out how to do anything. . .

I'm using Ubuntu on a usb, I've downloaded Electrum (from the site since I couldn't download python-pip or electrum through the terminal). So in the terminal I'm in the Electrum folder and trying to install electrum, but the message Unable to locate package electrum. I think I need to enable the component called 'universe' but I've had no luck with the answers as depicted here

If you can offer any advice as to how or why I couldn't originally install pip, or why electrum won't work now I could really use the help. I need to make this wallet, and I've been trying for a very long stupid time trying to, and I have btc idly sitting by that need to go into a wallet. Sorry for such a basic question, but I'm running out of time with this.


texts: Do legacy nodes receive the witness fields of a Segwit transactions?

texts:
My question  comes from not understanding how BIP 144 works? Regarding the BIP what I ask is, whether legacy nodes support the new parser, so that they treat Segwit tranasctions as valid? There it is stated:

  Parsers supporting this BIP will be able to distinguish between the old serialization format (without the witness) and this one. The marker byte is set to zero so that this structure will never parse as a valid transaction in a parser that does not support this BIP. If parsing were to succeed, such a transaction would contain no inputs and a single output.

In relation to my main question, I could not understand how legacy nodes treat the witness fields of a segwit transaction?


texts: Does Armory work with a pruned copy of the blockchain?

texts: I'm recovering a wallet from Armory and the blockchain is taking too much space. My HD is 500 GB big but none of my partitions have more then 70 GB left. The folder .bitcoin/blocks already uses 37 GB and Armory is only at 52%. Any solution to this?


texts: Bitcoin client won't connect to the network

texts:
I installed Bitcoin QT yesterday and it was very slow to connect to the network. It didn't actually get there for over an hour.

Today I opened it again and it won't connect to the network at all. Any ideas why?

I'm running a Macbook Air with all software updated.


texts: A couple of years ago I purchase a little Bitcoin. I don't know where I purchased it through, but I do have the Wallet Name, Wallet Address, and Wallet Key. How do I retrieve it? Can I access it through any exchange? I'm confused here a little.


texts:
I recently had two transactions transferred to an address I created within my bitcoin desktop wallet to be transferred. They were transferred from a mining company, but still, are not showing up in my desktop wallet. They were transferred today, also there's something that says "reindexing blocks on disk", in my desktop wallet. The desktop wallet I am using by the way is "Bitcoin core". If anybody knows how to help me out, please I would really appreciate that.

Thank you.


texts: I want to accept bitcoin on my raspberry pi

texts: I have a web server running on a raspberry pi and I want to accept bitcoins. I have very little disk space so I don't have room to install bitcoind. I don't trust any third party services to process my payments so that wont work. Is it possible to accept bitcoins with my setup?


texts: How did transaction fees work in the version 0.3.24?

texts: Is there a minimum transaction fee for every transaction? When do I pay a fee over the minimal fee?


texts: What would happen if miners refused halving

texts:
In may 2020 the supply of bitcoin per block is supposed to be reduced by half https://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/

What if after this phase the first miner or more than 51% of them decide to keep the current production rate ? Do their block will be refused like if they had produced a wrong block ?


texts: Is there a platform where I can use Bitcoins to gamble online?

texts: And do I have to signup for these services and/or verify my identity?


texts:
On Bitcoin's Blockchain, how is information transmitted instantly to all other nodes and do nodes 'talk to each other' through an API?

Do Blockchain nodes communicate with each other through HTTP requests? If yes,
do they use a Pub/Sub to transmit information to all the nodes? Or is there a delay until the full blockchain information reaches all nodes?


texts: Remove address from sequence in HD wallet

texts:
Is there a way to eject an address out of the sequence of an HD wallet?

Lets say an address was used for a political donation to a regime in Namibia that may get international condemnation a few decades in the future (can never tell with political parties, maybe they don't invade Russia in the winter and end up writing the history books) or perhaps anyone that donated to a campaign against zombie equality rights is now condemned publicly in the unforeseen future even after the majority population donated and voted the same way you did

Therefore I don't want that to appear in my wallet, whether I restore a seed on a different device or future wallet. But I only thought of this after the address was used. This is considering the possibility that in some future, I may accidentally mix inputs to other addresses, providing for blockchain analysis of addresses I own, or perhaps I simply leave my computer unlocked at some point in the future and someone is able to see my addresses.

Is there a way to eject that address from the HD sequence or perhaps is this simply a GUI thing that software clients would have to do on there own?


texts: Secret Key value for decimal versions over 127

texts:
After reviewing the address prefixes page on the wiki, I have noticed that in Bitcoin and other altcoins that the secret key / dumped private key header is always the decimal version + 128. So with a decimal version of 0 you will get a regular Bitcoin address starting with 1, while adding 128 to that you can find the private key which starts with 5 / L / K depending on the compression state.

Further example would be Litecoin's decimal version which is 48 while the secret key version is 48 + 128 (176).

So the question is: what about decimal versions between 128 and 255? I can see this going one of two ways.

Instead of adding 128, you subtract 128. So for decimal version 128 you will end up with a secret key of 0.
You round up to 255 in all cases of 128 and over.

I looked through the wiki and I couldn't find a reason as to why the secret key header is 128 greater than the public key header. One example that contradicts my two points above would be Unobtanium Coin whose public key header is 130 while the secret key is 224 (94 difference).

Is there any point at all for the secret key and public key headers being so far apart? Or is it fine to just have the headers be different in the first place, not necessarily 128 apart?


texts: What are protocols in Crypto? What are token protocols?

texts:
I understand how Consensus protocols work. They are essentially rules that nodes follow in order to validate transactions and blocks. It seems as if all tokens are their own protocols.

So what are protocols, and protocol tokens?

If DogeCoin and Litecoin are forks of Bitcoin, does it mean they are using the Bitcoin Protocol? Or do they have their own blockchain?


texts: I'm looking into developing some Go software on Ethereum and I'm wondering - are there any API wrappers around for Ethereum (something like BTCSuite's BTCRPCClient is for Bitcoin)? I know there is a whole Go Ethereum implementation, but I'm looking for more lightweight way of interacting just with the JSON RPC server, rather than interacting with the whole network directly.


texts:
I have a bitcoin testnet account in copay wallet. I want to import its private key in bitcoind. So, I exported the private key, but they were encrypted. I got a

  Test-Copaybackup.aes.json

file. Therefore, I can't use importwallet rpc in bitcoin-cli, since it requires an unlocked wallet or an unencrypted wallet. What else I do?


texts: When downloading the blockchain for the first time using bitcoind, how do I know when it's done?

texts:
I'm using bitcoind on Ubuntu, headless. So there's no GUI to tell me when it's done.

So how do I know?


texts:
I'm trying to use the lib bitcoin library for use in my project. I've tried following the build guide on github without any success. Could someone please explain simply how to build in Visual Studio using the NuGet package manager?
Thanks.


texts: How do you calculate the transaction fee when sending to multiple addresses?

texts:
I am sending 50mBTC to 10 Wallet Addresses in a single transaction. What transaction fee should I add to the entire transaction? 0.1mBTC?

Following on from that, what is the maximum number of addresses I can add to that single transaction that keeps below the 10kB threshold?


texts:
I'm currently studying Bitcoin and I followed Bitcoin wiki's instructions to make an address.

But my program never responds as the site above does.

Supposedly, the ECDSA key 0450863AD64A87AE8A2FE83C1AF1A8403CB53F53E486D8511DAD8A04887E5B23522CD470243453A299FA9E77237716103ABC11A1DF38855ED6F2EE187E9C582BA6's SHA-256 should be 600FFE422B4E00731A59557A5CCA46CC183944191006324A447BDB2D98D4B408, but my code returns 32511e82d56dcea68eb774094e25bab0f8bdd9bc1eca1ceeda38c7a43aceddce and I don't think it's wrong because alot of online SHA-256 service returns the same.

Need I convert the hex into something else like binary to generate the hash?


texts:
I was trying to use the bitcoinjs-lib (1) with my regtest network. More specifically I was trying to build a tx with TransactionBuilder but it gave me a 'transaction has no matching Script' exception.

In a closed github issue (2) I find out that it's possible to specify the network (network.testnet), but I can't find any documentation related to regtest. I just want to create and broadcast a raw tx created with bitcoinjs to my regtest network.

So, has anyone talked to a regtest network with bitcoinjs-lib successfully? If not, what other libs would you recommend for the satoshi client? Thanks.

(1) https://github.com/bitcoinjs/bitcoinjs-lib

(2) https://github.com/bitcoinjs/bitcoinjs-lib/issues/500


texts: What possible explanation could there be that Bitcoin Core on Linux Mint claims to but does not save the wallet backups?

texts:
Linux Mint. Bitcoin Core 0.21.0.
I go to "File" and "Backup wallet", then select any location. I've tried with /home/a and /tmp and others.
Every time, Bitcoin Core says that the file has been successfully saved to the location I picked.
Then I look at that location in the GUI file manager, as well as in the terminal. THE WALLET .DAT BACKUP FILES ARE JUST NOT THERE!
I swear I'm not making this up and that I've enabled "Show hidden files" and tried everything to make sure that I'm not doing something wrong.
The files just are not saved, even though Bitcoin Core claims that they are. Why?
They are just not there on my file system. The only wallet.dat that exists is the actual one that Bitcoin Core itself saved, and it has put that in: /home/a/.var/app/org.bitcoincore.bitcoin-qt/data/blablabla/wallet.dat
At this point, having tried and asked and searched so much, I'm starting to truly question my sanity as well as the QA of Linux/Bitcoin Core.
This is even worse than various file nonsense in Windows. Is there some secret, very well hidden setting that I need to enable to "actually show the files" or something? Beyond "Show hidden files"?


texts: Is there a way to see the precise time of when a transaction was sent out?

texts:
I'm a developer. I'm not really knowledgeable in bitcoin development, yet.
Say, I'm using Electrum wallet. I share an address with someone. The thing is that I need this someone to pay a certain amount of BTC within a certain time-window, 15-30-60 minutes. It's because I have products that are priced in fiat money.
That person will send me BTC. I may open my wallet not right away but in 12-30 hours, to check incoming payments. Or, even if I open it sooner, there may also be delays in BTC network and I won't see a payment, right?
Goal: to prevent a customer from taking a potential advantage of fluctuation of BTC/FIAT prices.
I don't consider handling my payments via 3rd-party crypto-coin payment providers or their APIs.
Is the precise date and time of when a payment was sent attached to a transcaction and can it be retrieved? How, where?
Can it been seen in Electrum?


texts: BTC/USD price changes approximately the same way over many exchanges at the same time, how?

texts: I have seen this many times, the same minute the price goes down on GDAX, it also has gone down on Bitfinex and Bitmex and Binance USDT etc. These exchanges have different prices, that's understandable, but how come they follow the same movement and not go all for each own path? I suspect there is something behind all this that brings them together even tho they are different places to trade on. I need to know what this is. Perhaps it's the price of the USD? Is it the same seller(s) selling at the same time over several exchanges?


texts: Is the fastest Bitcoin ASIC miner available today still profitable after block halving?

texts: As the title says, I was wondering if the fastest Bitcoin ASIC miner will be profitable after block halving?


texts: Can I import wallet words more than once?

texts:
I am trying to transfer my electrum wallet, which was imported from
MultiBitHD. I just found out that Electrum is not compatible with other wallets since it doesn't use a BIP39 seed. Can I use my old MultiBitHD wallet words although they have been used for recovery once?


texts: Will ASIC miners hold the network "hostage" and demand a fee for their services?

texts:
I can see a trend coming where miners will likely hold the network "hostage" by mining blocks with no transactions in them... even when the block reward nears zero. This would leave transactions in the perpetual pending state.

The reason I suspect this will happen is so that miners will need to cover the expense of hardware that will never be recuperated otherwise.

This scenario can also happen if the value of BTC drops to a very low value.

I'd like to understand the variables that would cause a miner, a mining pool, or anything that would cause them to demand a transaction fee in order to accept the transaction.

Question

What ratios, statistics, or variables are useful in tracking what the miners will demand the transaction fee to be?

Some ideas would likely include

Quantity of transactions -vs- fee paid  (the higher the fee, the fewer transactions will be conducted... supply/demand)
Network difficulty "beta"  (a beta is a Finance term discussing rate-of-change)
Blocks that accept no-fee-transactions vs blocks without
Transaction delay time (before being included in a block)
average miner investment in hardware


texts: How do I enable segwit in Bitcoin Core 13.1?

texts:
Bitcoin Core 13.1 includes the segregated witness (segwit) soft-fork. The release notes say:

  Segregated witness (segwit) is a soft fork that, if activated, will allow transaction-producing software to separate (segregate) transaction signatures (witnesses) from the part of the data in a transaction that is covered by the txid.

How do I activate segwit in Bitcoin Core 13.1? I couldn't find a command-line option for enabling it.


texts: what distribution does the hashrate follow?

texts:
Where can i find historical data for the distribution ?

How does it fluctuate ?  It is not constant, correct ?

Mr Nakamoto in his white paper assumed it was constant ?


texts:
For the following setup:

         A   ----(HIGH Fee rate) ----  B  ----------------  C

B want to charge A for more fee, he raises the fee of the channel between AB

A pays to C
A pays to B
C pays to A

Does high fee rate only affects case 1 only??


texts: Who approves the feature and bug code reviews in Bitcoin?

texts:
I see a list of Bitcoin feature and pull requests here. How do all million plus users agree to these feature/bug requests? Do all users of Bitcoin have to approve them, or who represents them in approving these code requests?
Where can I access the original, Satoshi written Bitcoin code?


texts: What do you think about "squashing" the blockchain?

texts:
So for some time i was thinking about a process where you "squash" the blockchain.
This would reduce its size significantly while maintaining integrity.
The process would look like this:

Summarize all transactions to a certain block
Throw away adresses with a balance of 0
Create a new genesis block containing all adresses that have a positive balance

Would this be possible?
What do you think about this?
Ps: Im new to blockchain and this community. So please dont be too harsh :)


texts: What methods are available to accept Bitcoin payments?

texts:
I'm curious about offering Bitcoin payment instead of PayPal (for all the usual reasons for disliking PayPal). Is this realistic, or is my understanding of how bitcoins can be used off?

My customers are mostly nerds or at least tech-savvy people, so they are somewhat likely to be familiar with Bitcoin, and equally likely to be sceptical towards PayPal.

Are there any decent guides on how the whole thing ties together, and which merchant actors are considered serious or "big players"? I'll be looking at getting the bitcoins through whichever funnel is required and transferred to my "real cash" bank account (in any currency, really) as quickly as possible.

Of course, it wouldn't hurt if I could get the coins all the way to my bank account for a <2% commission, but I'll take reliability over price any day of the week.

Clarification: I sell a commercial software license to an open source product (free for personal, non-profit etc use), so there's nothing to be delivered upon purchase. Current options are hand-rolled integration to credit card and PayPal providers.


texts: How does Mt.Gox calculate high and low price?

texts: How does Mt.Gox. calculate high and low price? How can last price, over time, be higher than the high price?


texts:
I'm searching for BTC historical prices and people often link this source: http://api.bitcoincharts.com/v1/csv/

Now, I'm familiar with forex historical prices where I have tick or OHLC data with bid/ask prices. However, data from that website have 3 columns (timestamp, price and amount?).

Is there a way I can get/extract historical bid/ask prices from data available on http://api.bitcoincharts.com/v1/csv/? If not, is there a (preferably free) source of BTC historical bid/ask prices (at least for the H1 timeframe)?

Thank you.


texts: How can I create a private blockchain with my own transactions?

texts: I need to create a transaction where Alice can write a message and send it to Bob, for example: Alice sends a "Hello" message to Bob, to achieve this, Alice creates a transaction and sends all her interconnected blockchain nodes. Each node validates that transaction (with some policy) and if a valid transaction sends the transaction back to all its connected nodes. Then the mining nodes add it to a block and also add that block to the blockchain. To be able to achieve all this procedure I have to modify some code blockchain (a code poorly documented). Would you know if it is feasible to do? Would you know if there is a place that can help me achieve it? Regards!.


texts:
I come from a programming background and I am trying to figure out how Bitcoin allows for divisibility.  An example using high level code would also be nice.

I understand the high level basics of transactions (Bitcoin Transaction Diagram), but I am interested in divisibility specifically.


texts: How do the miners earn money after 2140 on no-transaction-block?

texts:
A block can embedded no transaction, miner gets no fees for this block.
So, how do the miners earn bitcoin/money after 2140 on no-transaction-block?

thanks,
-baco
(a back-to-the-future-man from december 2139)


texts: Error sendrawtransaction BTC 0.21 Fee exceeds maximum configured by user

texts:
How to fix Fee exceeds maximum configured by user (e.g. -maxtxfee, maxfeerate) (code -25) in BTC 0.21?
sendrawtransaction "hexstring"

Result:

Fee exceeds maximum configured by user (e.g. -maxtxfee, maxfeerate) (code -25)


texts: Why does Bitcoin-QT not seem to be catching up on my Mac?

texts: I've had Bitcoin-QT running for about six total hours, and the rate at which it's catching up is glacial at best. It takes about an hour to advance a week, which would make the process take about 4 days to complete. It didn't take nearly this long on my PC; I started and finished the process while my Mac was still running. I'm running Bitcoin-Qt v.0.10.1 64-bit on a 2011 MBP, 8 GB of RAM, on 10.10.4. Is this normal, or is there something wrong?


texts: PayJoin privacy only works with specific output sizes?

texts:
In the specific example of PayJoin here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/PayJoin the wiki equates a PayJoin transaction as indistinguishable from a regular transaction.

However the transaction example itself seems a little weird and potentially misleading.  In a regular transaction, if I have a UTXO of 2 btc and another UTXO of 5 btc, an attempt to send that results in an output of either 3 or 4 btc would be best served by using the 5 btc input only, as this would create a smaller transaction than needlessly using inputs of 2 and 5 btc (it would also needlessly link two addresses); we can postulate a rational coin-holder would never construct a transaction with more inputs than required.

So it would seem that to make a PayJoin transaction genuinely indistinguishable from a regular transaction, one of the PayJoin outputs must be larger than any single input.  If in the example the merchant and customer wished to exchange 5 btc, then outputs of 6 btc and 1 btc could be created, which would absolutely justify combining a 5 btc and another input of at least 1 btc.

Am I correct, or have I made some oversight?


texts: Why is Ethereum total network hashrate still increasing if there are no GPUS to buy?

texts:
The total Ethereum network hashrate is close to doubling relative to its December level. Mining difficulty is also increasing proportionally of course as the total reward per block stays the same.

However, it is impossible to buy new GPUs in large quantity anywhere. So, where does the computational power comes from? I can't believe that there was enough capacity used to mine other coins to double the ethereum global hashrate, but I may be wrong. So, where do all the new mining rigs get their power from?


texts:
Some services, such as bitcoinlaundry.com, claim that they can launder your bitcoins.

Since all bitcoin transactions are publicly logged, how is this done? Wouldn't it be possible to trace back the transactions and find out the initial address?


texts: Wallet programming, search transactions by address

texts:
This may be a silly question, but I keep running in circles. Using either bitcoind or JSON-RPC is there a way to search all transactions involving a address hash? I understand every wallet and most block explorer websites have this feature, but is it a native one I'm overlooking, or does everybody keep a separately indexed database off the blockchain?

I assume from the research I've done its #2, but given the size, history and Speed at which the blockchain updates building this database seems like it would take longer then actually downloading the blockchain.

Can someone please stear me in the correct direction so I'm not wasting the next 6 years rebuilding the wheel?

Thanks in advance for the assistance.


texts: How can I pick up the blockchain download where it left off on another computer using an EHD?

texts: I started downloading the Bitcoin blockchain via my MacBook Pro onto my 1TB external hard drive. I want to use my iMac to finish the download. I plugged my EHD into my iMac and checked to blocks folder and it contained the previous transaction I downloaded (86GB). The wallet.dat, peers.dat, chainstate, banlist.dat and fee_estimates.dat files. I opened Bitcoin Core and moved the directory to the blocks folder where the previous transaction I downloaded are. I followed the steps to start the sync. I expected the blockchain to recognize the blocks and start where it left off on my MacBook but it started from the beginning. Any ideas on how to pick up where I left off?


texts: Bitcoin migrating to a ASIC resistant mining algorithm like RandomX used on Monero

texts: What would need to happen for Bitcoin to fork to a ASIC resistant mining algorithm like RandomX used by Monero for CPU mining only?


texts: Cannot build secp256k1 C library on Debian stretch

texts:
I was hoping that someone would be able to suggest something about this
(the same process works perfectly fine on my Debian Jessy machine)

$ uname -a
Linux front 4.8.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.8.7-1 (2016-11-13) x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ git config --get remote.origin.url
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1

$ git pull
Already up-to-date.

$ ./autogen.sh
...

$ ./configure
...

$ make
gcc -I. -g -O2 -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused-function -c src/gen_context.c -o gen_context.o
gcc gen_context.o -o gen_context
./gen_context
  CC       src/libsecp256k1_la-secp256k1.lo
  CCLD     libsecp256k1.la
/usr/bin/ar: `u' modifier ignored since `D' is the default (see `U')
  CC       src/tests-tests.o
src/tests.c: In function ‘test_ecdsa_der_parse’:
src/tests.c:3702:52: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type ‘ECDSA_SIG {aka struct ECDSA_SIG_st}’
valid_openssl = !BN_is_negative(sig_openssl->r) &&
!BN_is_negative(sig_openssl->s) && BN_num_bits(sig_openssl->r) > 0 &&
BN_num_bits(sig_openssl->r) <= 256 && BN_num_bits(sig_openssl->s) > 0 &&
 BN_num_bits(sig_openssl->s) <= 256;
                                                ^~
Makefile:1050: recipe for target 'src/tests-tests.o' failed
make: *** [src/tests-tests.o] Error 1

EDIT: replacing ./configure by ./configure --enable-tests=no leads to a successful build. The command make check is also successful.

EDIT2: As indicated by Andrew, the answer is to use ./configure --enable-openssl-tests=no

EDIT3: This issue has been resolved on master branch, as far as I can tell


texts: How fast can one generate Bitcoin addresses?

texts:
Seeing as the topic of generating address conflicts comes up every now and then, I am wondering if someone looked into the problem a bit further.

Has anyone measured the speed at which Bitcoin addresses can be generated (mainly with some efficient languages, not javascript)? Are there programs akin to GPU miners that instead of generating hashes would generate addresses?


texts: What happens to my outgoing txs in a block reorganization?

texts:
Let's assume I create and send a series of txs:

|------block A--------|------block B----------|----block C-----|----block D-----|
|Tx1......Tx2.........|...Tx3.................|................|......Tx4.......|

but then a fork happens and a block reorganization takes place:

|------block A--------|------block B----------|----block E-----|----block F-----|--block G--|
|Tx1......Tx2.........|...Tx3.................|......???.......|......???.......|.....???...|

Whatever happens to Tx4? Will it be included in one of blocks E, F, G or another block? Is it gone? Conflicted/invalidated? Do I need to resend it? If yes, can I spend the same inputs I did when creating Tx4?


texts: What exchanges trade with Unicoin right now?

texts:
I absolutely LOVED the new Stack-Exchange-specific cryptocoin, "Unicoin", mineable by humans and unicorn-themed.

As well as the diverse options to pay for it (gold, silver, BTC, LTC, DOGE, reputation on this site and Reddit, bacon, among others) and the incredibly useful, succint and accurate legal disclaimer message.

But then, I haven't found an exchange that trades it. Is there one?


texts: Exchange API - more frequent high and low value

texts:
Any way to get high-low values more frequent than every 24 hours from say the Bitstamp API ticker? The link only tells you how to get the value for every 24 hours.

This also seems to be a problem with every other exchange I've tried.


texts: What is the best consumer grade hardware for litecoin mining?

texts:
I want to start litecoin mining and have following questions:

Given that I already have a desktop, and with the investment of < 500$ for GPUs, what is the best hardware to mine litecoins?
Is it worth mining litecoins with such hardware?
Are ASICs available for litecoin mining? If not, any possibility of them coming soon?


texts: What is the canonical way of creating merkle tree branches?

texts:
I'm currently looking into creating some compact merkle tree branches to prove that a given hash was included in a given merkle root. My initial thought was to list the leaf, the merkle root and all of the hashes that the given leaf was combined with to make the merkle root.

So in this example:

I would state

Leaf: 12c5
Root: 2f9c
Nodes: [d187, a8b5, 1328, d063]

However, since the order of nodes matter for creating the merkle root, I would also need to list whether the node was on the left or right side.

I'm wondering - is there a canonical way of listing this information to create the merkle branches?


texts: Gear/approach to legimitately mining (not buying) a single Bitcoin

texts:
Background
I have a relative who has been trying to get into Bitcoin mining. He accidentally installed malware onto his home PC twice, thinking it was a mining tool. He understands mathematics but is not well versed with modern technology, PCs, etc.
Question
What sort of hardware/software/etc would I purchase if I want to have a standalone device sitting (quietly) in the corner of my office that would have a reasonable expectation (95%+ CI) of earning a single coin within, ideally, 6 months? The power/hydro bill isn't a problem, as I'll be paying it. It's to my understanding that I need to consider ASIC/FPGA-based boards to be remotely competitive.
Goal
My goal is to pre-mine a single coin, give him the box as a birthday present, and have a cron job add the coin to his wallet at a set date. I think it'd make his day (day he always felt lucky).
Additional info
How do I help him legitimately cash-out his single bitcoin, so that the bulk of the face-value is cashed out, and he has a receipt he can file properly at tax time?


texts: Does Proof of Stake Lead to a Positive Feedback Loop?

texts:
(I may have horribly misunderstood PoS, so be gentle!)

Reading about PoS, the general idea seems to be that each miner has a "hit rate" proportional to their coins / total coins in the system.

Now, if there is a reward (generation, fees, etc.) for successfully mining a block, we seem to have a positive feedback loop. A richer miner has more chance of solving a block and so their wealth would increase at a greater rate than a poorer miner.

Does this means that the richest miner in the system only needs to keep mining till they are rich enough to mount a 51% attack?


texts: Why bigger blocks will bring bigger memory usage for miners?

texts: I see the different proposals for the block size and I keep wondering why bigger blocks means a bigger chain ? If the block limit size will rise to twenty-megabyte, it is just a limit, to fill it it requires twenty-megabyte of transactions. so if there are twenty-megabyte of free transactions a block will be twenty-megabyte size but it all still depends on the total size of valid free transactions and now it doesn't even get to 600k in average. yes in time the block will be filled I guess it will take years but it is the natural growth of the system. so my question is why bigger block size means immediately bigger memory for miners ?


texts:
BIP141 says wtxid is SHA256 of [nVersion][marker][flag][txins][txouts][witness][nLockTime]. Is data that hashed as txid includes witness?

And will txid be presented in block, e.g. be counted when building Merkle tree?


texts: How to transfer all my funds to another wallet

texts: i"m a blockchain wallet user with multiple wallets for different businesses but i would like to centralize all my funds to one wallet so i want to know if it is possible to transfer all the funds from the other blockchain wallets to the central one?


texts: This issue came up in this question - Are the miners concerned with what the pool operators do with their hashpower?. What can a pool operator do with their miners' hashpower?


texts: Unable to remove bitcoins from watch-only address

texts: I'm new to bitcoin and my situation is this: I installed Bitcoin Classic wallet, then sent bitcoins to it from Coinbase before the entire blockchain was finished syncing. The transaction timed out and the bitcoins never appeared in my wallet. A week later I tried reloading the entire blockchain, and the transaction came through to my wallet at that time. However, the bitcoins are listed as watch-only. I have tried dumping the private key for that address on console for my wallet, but the results continue to say that the private key for that address is unknown. What do I do about this? How can I make my bitcoins spendable? Any help would be appreciated.


texts: Looking at my peers list in the debug window for my node, I can see that a lot of bitcoinj clients have connected to me. Is this any cause for concern?


texts: Can I test Lightning on Bitcoin regtest?

texts: I want to do some Lightning experiments, but want to avoid the burden of synchronizing the blockchain (even testnet). Can I experiment with Lightning using regtest? Is there a manual for setting it up?


texts: BIP91 is activated, why BIP141 is still dormant?

texts: The moment is BIP91 activated non-SegWit signaling blocks will be orphaned. Since BIP91 is now activated won't that immediately boost BIP9 to 100%? Why is it not happening?


texts: How does the bitcoin client make the initial connection to the bitcoin network?

texts:
Once the bitcoin client is connected to a machine (or multiple machines) on the bitcoin network, they can share information (e.g. the block-chain, IP addresses of other nodes, etc). I understand how this peer-to-peer architecture is robust to nodes joining/leaving/crashing and not relying on any central authority.

My question is: when I start my client, it has no information about the IP addresses of the other nodes, so how does it know who/where to connect to initially? How does one 'boot-strap' a peer-to-peer network?


texts: If bitcoin have a 21 milion limit...what happens with the lost bitcoins?

texts: After reach the 21 million limit, and every year there is some coins that are lost... won't this make the value of the bitcoin go up?


texts: Why is Bitcoin defined as having 8 decimal places?

texts:
At the protocol level bitcoins don't actually exists, but rather base units (recently called “satoshis”). Bitcoins are defined as 108 base units, meaning that for a 50 BTC mining reward, you are actually earning 5 000 000 000 units.

So, why was 108 chosen as the value of one bitcoin relative to the base unit?


texts: bitcoin-0.9.3 won't syncup on TESTNET stuck at height 26859

texts:
Downloaded the latest bitcoin core tar ball 0.9.3.
New install for test and development. This thread relates only to the TESTNET, I haven't tried on the production network.
When launching the bitcoind everything works as expected until it reaches block at 26859 where it stops adding blocks. Nothing happens after no more blocks are requested.
After some debugging, it appears that the next block 26860 contains a transaction that fails verification, so it won't validate the block. These blocks (that are failing) are more than 2 years old, but I didn't expect to hit this hurdle so early in the game. Can anybody shed some light ? Am I doing something wrong here? DOwnloaded the bitcoin tar from the official web site and checked the signature.

Anyone can easily reproduce this on the testnet network.
Any help appreciated.


texts:
I understand the mining fee will be the major incentive when the Bitcoin supply hit its limit of 21m. But right now, new coins are still being minted and are much higher than any fee can compansate. Shouldn't the fee calculation be a WIP improvement protocol that needs to be worked on in the Testnet rather than causing huge innefficeny in the Main Bitcoin network?

I am very sorry if it is naive to think that, but I see that many debates on Bitcoin's future are based on the high amount of miner fees or the long waiting time for confirmations.

Why shouldn't miners just add the transactions randomly and just incentivized by the reward?

I believe the mainstream usage adoption will be provided by the people who can't afford the current miner fees, but still wish there could be a way to actually use the network at least in a fair way where the highest fee couldn't win the confirmation race.

To sum up, I am wondering, why the fee structure shouldn't be tested and worked on on the Tesnet until a good protocol for fee calculation has been developed, and in the main network miners just incentivized by the reward and add the transactions in blocks randomly or by First In First Out method or by some other criteria rather than fee?


texts: Bitcoin Block Size - What are the rules?

texts:
What is the maximum size a block can be?
Is there a minimum size?
Can you have a block with 0 transactions included?


texts: Where are my bitcoins - unconfirmed transactions

texts:
Using Bitcoin Core wallet, I sent coins to an address of mine outside of the wallet. All three transactions sit as unconfirmed though show in blockchain.

https://blockchain.info/address/1HYK6Key5EUwAyaxh6SniXKEjSMsPAgY94

they are the bottom three transactions. Not sure why they are showing as "spent" - I did send about 0.65btc to this wallet after which I then spent.

So in short - the bottom three transactions are showing as unconfirmed on BitcoinCore, the btc is not in the account they were sent to. Where are they?

Further info - the bottom 2 of the 3 transactions were sent almost a week ago though didn't show up in blockchain until I reinstalled the wallet app. However, BTW is still nowhere to be found. Fees - bottom two were sent minimum, top of the 3 was sent as recommended and all are showing as "0/unconfirmed" in the wallet app


texts:
So I'm developing a system that generates addresses for users to send bitcoins too in order for them to deposit on the system.

I generate addresses using the following:

var derivedPubKey = config.BIP32_DERIVED;
if (!derivedPubKey)
    throw new Error('Must set env var BIP32_DERIVED_KEY');

var hdNode = bitcoinjs.HDNode.fromBase58(derivedPubKey);

exports.deriveAddress = function(index) {
    return hdNode.derive(index).keyPair.getAddress().toString();
};

An example address this generated was: 17fPG6yJujgzysrAozHM5FTEytBvWzF2gS

However, I checked my main wallet address 1CGM9zBt885ccKg6j1aqbBESsdPju4aj2m and I don't see the transaction that I sent to the address above?

How can I access these funds?


texts: If each miner has a different share difficulty in a PPS pool, how should I calculate and reward the relative effort of each?

texts:
For discussion purposes, suppose I have an ASIC miner, several GPUs and a CPU botnet all mining with different difficulties.

When a share is returned to the pool, at what difficulty threshold should I consider multiplying the per-share value for that user?

For example if the ASIC miner returns a share that is substantially closer to the target than what a difficulty of 1 would return, should I treat that as any more valuable?

Am I incentivising correct behavior in a client?


texts:
I remember seeing a question a while back about how to code your own cryptocurrency here:
How to fork Bitcoin and build own cryptocurrency

Unfortunately, it seems to suffer from a lack of in-depth information of how
to "start" the currency in the network. I was wondering what it would take to
implement a new Proof-of-Work/Proof-of-Stake and how to actually get the entire
currency "started".


texts: Lightning Network on testnet - listchannels and listnodes returning empty values

texts:
I have setup a lightning node on testnet using c-lightning.
The lightning-cli getinfo command output:

{

"id" : "0315a5746114ab9f3e8f0a3f2f73153ef1e4a8fb58daa54fa97c9603dfab989a30",
   "alias" : "snjnode",
   "color" : "ff9900",
   "num_peers" : 0,
   "num_pending_channels" : 0,
   "num_active_channels" : 0,
   "num_inactive_channels" : 0,
   "address" : [
      {
         "type" : "ipv4",
         "address" : "103.72.61.18",
         "port" : 9735
      }
   ],
   "binding" : [],
   "version" : "v0.7.0-408-g0c189fe",
   "blockheight" : 1519822,
   "network" : "testnet",
   "msatoshi_fees_collected" : 0,
   "fees_collected_msat" : "0msat"
}

But lightning-cli listchannels and listnodes return empty values:

{
"nodes" : []
}

It should return the list of all nodes in the testnet network right? What is wrong?


texts: Why can't the block size upgrade be trialed on testnet with an organised "stress test"

texts:
A stress test was run on mainnet to see the effect of exponential demand in Tx volume.

Why can't a testnet "stress test" be organised to look at the implications of the 20Mb block size (and other variables?)

I can't understand how there's so much speculation when a test environment would solve some of it by delivering actual metrics.


texts: I am new to this bitcoin wallet use. I have funds allocated to Coinsquare but have yet to buy a single bitcoin or fraction of one. My question is,....... do I need a certain wallet for use in conjunction with a certain funding source? Will my Electrum wallet receive crypto currency from my Coinsquare account?


texts: Does the US hold almost all of the bitcoins?

texts:
It seems to me that most of the people involved in this bitcoin market are from the US.

Are there any statistics that can confirm this?

Also, related question. If this is indeed true, is it reasonable to think that bitcoin was invented by the US in order to destroy the dollar? The US would win because they hold most of the bitcoins, while superpowers like China, who sit on trillions of dollars, would end up with worthless dollars. Does this make sense?


texts: Does a margin trade influence the order book?

texts:
I'm not sure if this is the place to ask this, but I didn't know where else to go. I'm doing some crypto trading on bitfinex and I'm particularly interested in margin trading.

What I wonder about is the following: if I do a large margin trade (long or short), does that influence the order book? I mean; does a margin trade actually buy (or sell) the underlying assets? Or does a margin trade only buy a derivative (just like options) and thereby doesn't influence the order book of the underlying asset?


texts:
I get this warning on my Bitcoin client:
"Warning: Displayed transactions may not be correct! You may need to upgrade, or other nodes may need to upgrade."
I am also downloading the blockchain and i am stuck at "18 weeks behind" for days now. Is everything alright?


texts: Best trader from an European perspective

texts:
I would like to buy some bitcoins (and potentially litecoins). I live in Europe, what is the best way to get and trade them from Europe? I would like to avoid all unnecessary fees, as much as possible.

Thanks.

I've also heard that MtGox has some problems and withdraw the money from there is quite annoying in this period.


texts: What is the purpose of the script like RETURN PUSHDATA(36)(...)

texts:
The example is in here:
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/63910fdfa84db96bd1f28fead4c32f97388d5368c10059d035aac3c5f72fcdc0

Actually, there are two outputs
DUP HASH160 PUSHDATA(20)[78ce48f88c94df3762da89dc8498205373a8ce6f] EQUALVERIFY CHECKSIG
and
RETURN PUSHDATA(36)[aa21a9ed9463ee420b10cbad1d997bfa132a89dc9ba3de04e7233e6e6954f1bc339ebb1a]

The strange point is the first output has 12.77303443 BTC, the second is 0 BTC.

There are two questions about this transaction.
1) How the coinbase could have more than 12.5 BTC?
2) What is the purpose of the RETURN PUSHDATA(36)(...), actually, in theory, this output can never be consumed by anyone, becuase there is no OP_CHECKSIG or similar OP at the end to return true in the Script stack.


texts:
What is the procedure to calculate the bitcoins owned by any address X?

do we have to search for every transaction in every block in the block chain, with recipient as X? But this will not give correct result, as X might have spend some amount? How is this recorded>?


texts: Are sequential blocks more likely to be "empty" if solved by the same entity?

texts:
If not SPV mining, so-called "empty blocks" occur if there are no available transactions to include and is usually when the previous block was solved a short period of time previously.

Is there any reason for this to happen more often if the previous block was solved by the same entity?


texts: What would be the effect on the number of leading zeros hash generation if bitcoin increase its nonce size from 32 to 60 or 100 bits?

texts: If Bitcoin increases its nonce size from 32 bits to double or triple the size, how will it affect the speed of getting the right hash with the required number of zeros?


texts:
So let's assume at some point in the future bitcoin has replaced fiat currencies and we thus have a fixed money supply. Let's also assume we have increasing production and therefore deflation.

It seems that wealth could then be preserved simply by holding onto it without even taking some investment risk as one has to do today.

Wouldn't the effect of this be to make the wealthy extremely risk-averse?
Wouldn't this increase wealth inequality and make social mobility more difficult?

Footnote: Defending Some Premises

As one can see below, there is an extensive discussion below with @david-schwartz on whether the premise is correct in the first place. To keep this a bit more readable I'll update this post with what I think are his main arguments and my view on these.

Is (predictable) deflation even possible?

He argues that no such thing as predictable deflation can exist. I think that is incorrect. If you have constant monetary base and increasing productivity (e.g. technological innovation), you will have deflation. There is nothing contradictory about that.

Investment & Deflation

He also argues that if you don't invest you become poorer thus if the wealthy don't invest they won't remain so. But let's say you have 10% deflation and spend 8% of your money, then you are becoming richer every year (i.e. your purchasing power increases). This massively diminishes incentives to invest and it seems that would reduce social mobility (all else being equal).


texts: With the Bittrex BTC-BCH pair how do I order enough BCH to exactly spend one BTC?

texts:
Bittrex orders have their lot size/quantity in BCH and price in BTC. If I only have one BTC in my wallet how can I convert it all to BCH?

To ask another way: How do I know the exact quantity of BCH to order so that I fully convert my one BTC to BCH.

Note this question applies to other pairs and other exchanges. I am also looking for how fees would come into the equation as if I request too much BCH there might not be enough BCH in my wallet to cover fees.


texts: Bitcoin transactions with multiple participants from input side

texts: Is there any other type of bitcoin transactions with multiple partisipants from the input side except different types of CoinJoin transactions?