texts: Does Electrum reveal a wallets public key to Electrum Servers?

texts:
When Electrum Bitcoin wallet queries a random Electrum Server does it send the public key to the server or does it send a batch of addresses to check?

For instance, after setting up Electrum Personal Server between Electrum and a Bitcoin Core full node would it be prudent to create a new wallet and transfer funds to protect future privacy? (e.g. move funds from 84-0-0-0 to 84-0-0-1) Is it possible that previously connected to Electrum Servers that are potentially malicious have saved public keys to aid in chain analysis, or are they only given a batch of addresses to check making this attack impossible as you migrate to addresses further down the list?


texts: Can I send bitcoin to other address in my wallet to provide anonymity?

texts:
I want to buy service Z.

I have 2 addresses in my bitcoin wallet: aaa and bbb.

I buy 1 bitcoin from coinbase and tell coinbase to send them to aaa.

Now I send them from aaa to bbb. No one else knows that bbb is also in my wallet.

I buy service Z by sending my bitcoin from bbb to Zwallet.

I'm safe. Yes? Safe ish? Not safe at all? Dead already?

I couldn't find this question asked in such stupid terms. I'm an idiot and need simple questions and answers.

Thanks for your understanding.


texts: Trezor backend development , blockbook installation error

texts:
I am running my own node bitcoin core , mainnet and testnet , with trezor custom backend Blockbook, so that i can access my nodes wallet, send tx. on trezor wallet.
I am not able to sync the chain with blockbook. getting follwing issues:

inconsistent db state
refused to connect 127.0.0.1:18030
Further to reduce the memory footprints , i also used -workers=1 and dbcache=0, for rocksdb.

Any suggestion, guide, reference would help


texts: getblocktemplate not returning coinbasetxn

texts: In a simple 3 node regtest mode setup getblocktemplate does not return 'coinbasetxn' even when passing in the capabilities string with coinbasetxn set.  I do get a coinbasevalue and coinbaseaux field.  What am I missing?


texts:
I have some bitcoins and ether at Blockchain.info and I am really scared of losing them.

How do I best secure them? Right now I have a paper with the code to restore my wallet, but my coins are still stored at Blockchain.info.

Wouldn't it be better to store them completely offline? How do I do this? What is the difference of storing them at Blockchain.info and keep a paper with the code to restore the wallet?

I guess if I store my coins at Blockchain.info, I have to trust that they don't go bankrupt, they don't steal my coins, and no one hacks their servers and steal my coins.

Therefore, I guess it's more safe to store them physically, but I don't understand how they are stored physically. From my understanding, I just create a code that can validate that I am the owner of the coins. So if I in the future want to see my coins, I can create an online wallet using the physically stored code?

What I basically want is to store my coins offline but have a wallet where I can see exactly how many coins I can access with the offline stored code (without giving the code to an online wallet).

I have also looked at Ledger, but they are very pricey and I don't really see the value in them, since I still have to store a code on a physically printed paper to be sure I can still access the coins in case I break or lose the Ledger.


texts:
How can someone including governments and hackers can find the owner of bitcoin wallet or the company that has offered that bitcoin wallet to the owner ?

If they have someone's bitcoin wallet address can they understand who is the owner ?

If they have someone's bitcoin wallet address can they understand that wallet belongs to which broker?


texts: How can you construct a cycle with LND to rebalance one of your channels with another?

texts:
I have at least two open channels, one of which has inbound capacity and the other has outbound capacity. How can I find a route and construct a payment to rebalance my channels against each other just using the LND commandline?

As in, what steps are necessary to stitch two routes together to form a cycle?


texts: So I’m kindve confused I have 4.25 btc in BitPay wallet so what’s the difference between a bitcoin worth 33k

texts: Just need to know the difference between the two and what’s the difference between the BitPay wallet and regular bitcoin


texts: I would imagine Bitcoin is the perfect tool for students to learn about economic and learn about investing. Any out there available yet?


texts: How do traditional transactions take place (paypal, banks, etc) in comparison to Bitcoin transactions?

texts:
Here we talk about bitcoins and blockchain. It is said they are more secured, and people ask questions about how they are implemented.

Since I am a complete newbie to blockchain, and I don't know neither how traditional transactions platform works, I would like to know if there is a comparison between blockchain and, for instance, paypal's transactions system.


texts:
I notice that mempool messages result in multiple tx messages, usually completely out of order.

What I generally do is re-queue the message until the parent is processed, however that doesn't seem to be the right approach. If the parent can't be verified, shouldn't it be discarded immediately?

In a hostile scenario I could receive an unsolicited tx that relies on an unseen parent. What are the best practices here? Just wait up until N seconds and then discard?


texts: Bitcoin-qt requesting reindex on already indexed blockchain data directory

texts:
To save time, I synced the blockchain on my laptop for import to my Raspberry Pi node. I had set txindex=1. When setting txindex=1 on my Raspberry Pi and pointing the data directory to my previously synced blockchain, launching bitcoin-qt warns me that reindex must be requested if txindex previously was set to 0.

This doesn't seem right. I've already indexed these blocks. Is there a way for me to move my synced and indexed blockchain from one machine to another without having to reindex?


texts: Erroneous blockchain transactions...more coins than I specified!

texts:
This isn't directly related to Bitcoin; rather this is related to Infinitecoin, however the technologies are virtually the same.

The other day I sent 2,000 IFC from my wallet (Infinitecoin-QT for Windows, version 1.8.8.0) to another address.

I looked at this transaction on the blockchain, and it is reporting that I sent 60,000 IFC.

The transaction shows the 2,000 IFC as being sent to the correct address, and then another 58,000 IFC to an unknown address.

Here is a link to the transaction for more info:

https://coinplorer.com/IFC/Transactions/106a8812b178c74b65303c42c8a754941db4a296b861eab116d71bd8f4c0492c

I'd really like to know where my 58,000 IFC went!

P.S. My wallet does not show 58,000 missing coins


texts: Why downloaded Block Size doesn't match with actual block size mentioned on network?

texts: I am trying to download a block(Height:474044) using an API from here in python. Block is obviously downloaded in JSON format. But when I store it in a file on my system it shows very weird size number, not matching with actual blocksize on network. I also tried to download data in hex format using this link. But still, when I try to store it in a file(JSON/Text), It is not showing the size same as shown in block details officially. I have intentionally chosen a block before segwit BIP to avoid any further confusion. Help me to confirm my downloaded blocksize with actually mentioned on network. This question might seem naive to some users as I am new to bitcoin. Thanks for help in advance.


texts: What do the indicator lights mean on USB Block Erupter ASICs?

texts: The lights on USB Block Erupters stay solid when not mining. During mining, there will be frequent tiny flashes, and occasionally longer flashes, lasting a few seconds. What exactly are do the short and long flashes indicate?


texts: What is the difference between the rpc port 8332 and port 8333?

texts:
What is the difference between the protocol and commands used on default ports 8332 and port 8333?

From what I gather, port 8332 is the RPC port, it's "sensitive", only allowed by local host by default, and it has one username & password.

On the other hand port 8333 is some kind of P2P port that is used with Bitcoin transaction replication.

Can anyone clarify the official names, purposes, and security of each of these ports?

Which one uses JSON, and which is Binary?


texts:
Q. Is it correct to state that a Bitcoin miner has only two jobs:

validating transactions
creating a block to add into the blockchain


texts: Minimum software to broadcast a Bitcoin transaction on a resource constrained environment

texts:
What is the minimum software I would need to broadcast a Bitcoin transaction without using an external service like bitcoin.info?

I have a signed transaction that I just want to spit into the
blockchain preferably through the command line.
Preferably without having to fully install Bitcoin core.
Preferably not using a browser.
I don't have the resources to run a full node.
I have a very limited bandwidth, think of it from an IoT perspective.


texts: Are wallet address generators considered a dapp? like bitaddress or warp wallet?

texts: Is bitaddress or warpwallet generator considered a dapp? They aren't tied to centralized server when you use the application to generate your own addresses and it can run by itself.


texts: Is Bitcoin network an overlay application network?

texts:
Is Bitcoin network constructed with just Layers 1-4 of the OSI model? Or it's an overlay application network?

Can someone please explain about structure of Bitcoin network?

Thank you


texts: What does the prefix of the raw transaction encoding of an exported Electrum transaction file (.txn) mean?

texts:
I have exported a testnet transaction into a .txn file:
{
    "hex": "45505446ff0002000000000101c6be24d86ab1ae5b54e7e7905b...",
    "complete": false,
    "final": false
}

However, as explained in this article, a raw transaction string starts with version number and:

The version number is four bytes long and is expressed as a hexadecimal value in little endian format.
There are two version types. Version 01 indicates that there is no relative time lock. Version 02 indicates that there may be a relative time lock.

So this hex is not a qualified raw transaction encoding, due to the prefix
45505446ff00

The version number comes after this prefix:
02000000

So I was wondering, what is the function of this prefix that Electrum adds to the raw transaction string? And is it always the same length? Because I need to automatically splice it off in order to get a valid raw transaction string.


texts: Is the Lightning Network sufficiently secure and well tested for wumbo channels?

texts: Has the Lightning Network reached a level of security and maturity where I can open wumbo channels (channels over the previous 0.1677 BTC limit) and be reasonably confident that I won't lose funds or have my funds locked up for long periods?


texts: Why can't mining pools provide fake transactions within the generated blocks?

texts:
Suppose Alice wants to add a fake transaction where she receives X ammount of BTC. I understand that in order to add that transaction to the blockchain she would have to compete against all the other miners to generate the next block, which makes it improbable to happen as an individual against them.

Now, if we take a look at the next figure (taken from blockchain.info) which shows the mining pools with highest hash rate at the network:

we see that, for instance, the mining pool BTC.com has 26.4% hash rate of the network, and thus comes my question: Why can't all the miners at this pool make an agreement by adding fake transactions to all the blocks they generate? Differently than the previous case, where Alice was an individual with almost no chance to generate a an altered block, the pool could make it very likely.


texts: What is/are the first proposal(s) of blockchain or alternatives?

texts:
I am writing a thesis about blockchain and part of my writing is the history of blockchain, so far I found the first proposal was “How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document” in 1991 by Haber and Stornetta. Source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-blockchain-technology

The second proposal was by the unknown Satoshi Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.

So my question is there any other proposals before the Bitcoin implementation of blockchain?


texts: Python implementation for LND path finding algorithm

texts: The most common Lightning nodes use GO, C or Scala for their implementation. Is there any publicly available Python implementation for the path finding algorithm any of the most known clients use (LND, C-Lightning, Eclair)?


texts: What RPCs can I use to transform an address to a paying script?

texts: What RPC(s) can I use to transform an address to a paying script (0014<addr>)?


texts:
Suppose I have a Wif private key from Electrum 4.0.9:
L2pt3eVopnxfBBvMwrJV2saZeAyQfF77UQSH5WGj5q9LBS6WWBmN ( this one or the other generated from the seed is non used of course )
with a corresponding public key:
14k8mYFC1LBWiBN8WSxpJN48jQYX1FZ6kz
I am using the code from the book "programming bitcoin" and the way we create private key is by converting the bits of a secret phrase like this:
secret = little_endian_to_int(hash256(b'dat_test_private_key'))

So I was thinking I just had to put the private key derived from L2pt3eVopnxfBBvMwrJV2saZeAyQfF77UQSH5WGj5q9LBS6WWBmN instead of "dat_test_private_key"
then we do more step to get our private key here:

https://github.com/jimmysong/programmingbitcoin/blob/master/code-ch13/ecc.py

Then to get our public key:

public_key = print(private_key.point.address(testnet=False))

But no mater what I tried I dont have the same public key as electrum, so I guess I must be off something or they use a different WIF format or the way they derive public key


texts: How to create a Blockchain for new alt coin after genesis block has been created?

texts: I am creating a new alt coin and I want to know how to generate a Blockchain for that coin. I have already created the genesis block for my new alt coin.


texts: Could bitcoin be destroyed if an entity cornered the market?

texts: I know the US Government is opposed to competing currencies.  It seems that it would be a rather simple solution for them to destroy Bitcoin before it grows too much by merely buying all the currency, which would be rather feasible given today's market cap of $80M (as of July 2012), and never selling.


texts: Lightning network explaination (bidirectional channel funded by one party)

texts:
Let's say Alice and Bob want a bidirectional lightning channel with common 2-2 multisig address C.

Alice is the only one putting funds in, say 100BTC. They agree on nLock of these funds to be 30 days (channel will be open for 30 days). This requires Bob to sign and give Alice a refund transaction with nLock 30.

Now during next 15 days Alice pays Bob 10 BTC three times, each time giving him a signed transaction with respective outputs 90Alice-10Bob (on day 5) 80Alice-20Bob (on day 10) and 70Alice-30Bob (on day 15).

If Bob wants to close the channel he needs to sign 70Alice-30Bob transaction and broadcast it. And these 3 transactions don't need to have nLock. (unidirectional channel)

But instead Bob wants to pay Alice 10 BTC (on day 20). So he makes and signs a new transaction 80Alice-20Bob and gives it to Alice. They leave the channel open for more transactions.

Which of the above transactions need to have nLock and with what value?


texts: Bitmain S9 BMMINER does not respond to Stratum set_difficulty command

texts:
We use a modified version of this library to implement the first SHA256 multi+merge mining pool.

It works just fine with the S7 which has CGMiner 4.8 ("cgminer/4.8.0").
However, the S9 with BMMINER 2 ("bmminer/2.0.0") is either unable to connect, either connects, and remains on the initial difficulty of shares, and thus all work gets rejected.

We suspect that the BMMINER does not support the set_difficulty method.
The question is, how can this be solved? can we use s7 firmware for s9, or find a CGMiner compatible with S9 anywhere?


texts: Electrum Offline Storage - two different OS, multiple wallets

texts:
Regarding the instructions to create watch-only wallets in Electrum, I am clear on the intial setup and functionality, signing transactions, etc. but I have a few questions about going forward:

Is it problematic to use two different OS (Windows on a Chromebook for offline comp along with OSX for watch-only comp).  Will Electrum have any problems going back and forth between two different OS?
As I make more transactions, is there any mistake I can make that can un-sync the two wallets? (I am mainly concerned about change addresses).  Going forward, can I always rely that I will be able to access newly generated private keys by expanding the gap limit and/or adding change addresses in the console?
Can I manage a separate seeded wallet on my watch-only comp for smaller amounts or is this not reccomended?

I am trying to be as secure as possible without having to learn Linux.  It has taken me long enough to figure out bitcoin and Electrum in general!  Thank you so much.


texts: Convert byte string into a base58 string using Base58Check encoding

texts:
I'm trying to learn every bit of the process of converting a private key to WIF (Wallet Import Format).
I've been following the steps on this page and have made it all the way to the last step (Step 7 - "Convert the result from a byte string into a base58 string using Base58Check encoding") and that's where I'm stuck.
I need to use this process:

   code_string = "123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz"
   x = convert_bytes_to_big_integer(hash_result)

   output_string = ""

   while(x > 0)
       {
           (x, remainder) = divide(x, 58)
           output_string.append(code_string[remainder])
       }

   repeat(number_of_leading_zero_bytes_in_hash)
       {
       output_string.append(code_string[0]);
       }

   output_string.reverse();

That process is from the Bitcoin wiki.
I'm pretty sure I've managed to decipher all of it except for this part:

x = convert_bytes_to_big_integer(hash_result)

It looks like its telling me to convert the bytes of a hash result into a "big integer", but I'm not sure what hash result it's referring to (I think maybe this one?: 800C28FCA386C7A227600B2FE50B7CAE11EC86D3BF1FBE471BE89827E19D72AA1D507A5B8D) and I don't know how to convert its bytes to a "big integer" (keep in mind that I'm trying to learn and therefore need to do all of the math myself instead of simply having an existing programming command or web tool do it for me).

And to a lesser extent this part:

repeat(number_of_leading_zero_bytes_in_hash)

I'm not sure what "hash" it's referring to.

I've spent many hours trying to figure all this out and have done a lot of searching and tried many possible interpretations so please don't think I'm just looking for someone to do the work for me.
Thank you.


texts:
I have read online that the last bitcoin will be mined in the year 2140. However, I am not completely sure how this is calculated. As I have seen some sources say there is 32 Reward Eras and given that each reward era is roughly 4 years wouldn't the end date be:
2009 + 4 * 32 = 2137.
Thanks in advance for any explanations.


texts: How to answer merchant who asks "What is Bitcoin?"

texts:
There is a software product that I'm interested in purchasing a license for.  I sent an email to their customer service asking if they would be interested in accepting Bitcoin.  Software licences seem an ideal use of Bitcoin since there is not physical product to ship.  Since the product is "virtual", why shouldn't the payment be "virtual" too?

They emailed me back the question "What is bitcoin?" What is the best way to answer them?  Is there a blog or web page that is specifically designed for this situation?


texts: BTC denominated vs fiat denominated stock exchange?

texts:
What could be done more easily (or just be doable) in a BTC-denominated stock exchange that is difficult (or plain impossible) in a fiat-denominated one?

i.e. what features of a BTC denominated exchange would make it relatively attractive to ordinary traders?


texts: Why is the disappearance of Mt Gox a problem?

texts:
I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm not a bitcoin user and may lack important information. My understanding was that each bitcoin user has a wallet on his harddrive or wherever, where he stores his bitcoins with the transaction history proving that they are his.  So the system is pretty decentralized. Then why is it such a problem that Mt. Gox disappears? Don't the people losing money have it in their own wallets, if so why?

Edit to add: In case the question was unclear, I was asking for why people lost money with Mt. Gox - not about the wider ramifications like potentially lost trust in *coin etc.


texts: How to improve bitcoin-qt when downloading blockchain? (very technical, dev views appreciated)

texts:
GitHub suggested discussing here before bothering developers with an issue.
So be it! :)
I'm running Bitcoin Core Version v0.20.1 and Linux Mint 18.3 on crappy old hardware. Pruning blockchain to 2 G and setting dbcache=2048 didn't help much. Moving datadir from HDD onto a USB-Stick did a little.
top says CPU around 20% can reach up to 40 if I manually drop slow or unresponsive nodes.
CPU frequency is rarely going up. So, no issue here.
Memory usage is fine too, actually a lot of headroom. Looks like bitcoin-qt doesn't need that much cache.
Swap is empty. (vm.swappiness=5)
iostat
Device:         rrqm/s   wrqm/s     r/s     w/s    rkB/s    wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz   await r_await w_await  svctm  %util
sdc               0,00     0,00  549,00    0,00 51125,00     0,00   186,25     1,06    1,92    1,92    0,00   1,70  93,60

Bottleneck seems to be file I/O. Which confuses me since that is what a cache is meant to fix, isn't it?
Now to my questions:
Is there anything I am missing to improve disk access?
Is there an open issue on GitHub regarding this already?
And secondly for the experts on dropping lazy nodes. Can you give me a hint at which classes I have to look to understand the strategy? Or even better a link to the discussions on that topic.
For I don't want to start an arms race between clients seeking faster download and nodes trying to serve fair.
Short summary what I've learned so far.

Don't use USB-Sticks for datadir. For bitcoin-qt might shutdown due to Fatal LevelDB errors.
Pruning increases disk I/O while saving disk space.
Even on crappy old hardware memory and CPU are most probably not the limiting factor.


texts: I need to restore a wallet created with bitcoin-qt which was encrypted.  I have the encrypted wallet.dat file only.  Do I restore this simply by replacing the current wallet.dat with my backup wallet.dat file?


texts: Verification progress decreasing when validating genesis block

texts:
I've been experimenting with the litecoin source and have decided to make my own token network for personal use. I've mined my own genesis block, and assigned unique identifiers for base58Prefix and pchMessageStart.

getblockchainInfo returns:

{
   "chain" : "main",
    "blocks" : 0,
    "headers" : 0,
    "bestblockhash" : "00000ee1064237cca4001f4707031d29c0253c09005c67f0ff9fdeb268591c26",
    "difficulty" : 0.00024414,
    "verificationprogress" : 0.00255052,
    "chainwork" : "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000100010"
}

verificationprogress has been steadily decreasing, but according to https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference#getblockchaininfo verification progress is supposed to start at 0 and increase to 1, is it validating correctly? If so will I receive the premine reward once the genesis block is fully verified?


texts: How to quickly find out if wallet.dat has balance

texts:
I have some old wallets (wallet.dat) on my PC, but I do not remember if they have still balance, I do not even know if the wallets are from bitcoin or bitcoin cash.
One working way would probably be:
For each wallet.dat file:

put wallet.dat in bitcoin data folder
start bitcoin core
redownload / rescan whole blockchain
if found positive balance, send to new wallet or whatever

..then do the whole procedure with bitcoin cash client.
This would take me days, if not weeks. Isn't there a simpler way?


texts:
While reading through the bitcoin wiki I found this following segment describing a bitcoin RPC safe-mode

  Until version 0.3.20, Bitcoin went into safe mode when a valid alert
  was received. In safe mode, all RPC commands that send BTC or get info
  about received BTC return an error. Current Bitcoin versions no longer
  go into safe mode in response to alerts, though Bitcoin will still go
  into safe mode when it detects on its own that something is seriously
  wrong with the network.

  Even though Bitcoin no longer automatically disables RPC when an alert
  is live, it is wise for Bitcoin sites to shut down when an alert has
  been issued. To detect an active alert, poll the "errors" field of
  getinfo.

  To test safe mode, run Bitcoin with the -testsafemode switch. To
  override a real safe mode event, run Bitcoin with the -disablesafemode
  switch.

  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alerts#Safe_mode

It says "Bitcoin will still go into safe mode when it detects on its own that something is seriously wrong with the network." I am interested in learning which events would make bitcoin go in to safe mode on it's own.


texts: Blockchain MySql Implementation - Updating Database

texts:
I know there are similar posts here about utilizing MySQL as the basis for an application which contains the contents of the blockchain, but i have not seen any on-point answers to the issue of updating the database after the initial dump.

Assuming i move forward with blockparser or ABE (or another application which you believe works better), how do i update the database after the initial dump? I have not implemented any solution yet as i would like to have this piece figured out before diving in.

My goal is to have my local blockchain inserted into MySQL, and then have periodic updates occur to keep the database up to date.


texts:
I'm looking for a Bitcoin blockchain explorer that will work in "regtest mode", mostly for demo proposes.

Any suggestions?


texts: How can I make transaction output time locked?

texts:
Is it possible to submit some coins to some address and make them spendable after some period of time?

Like I want submit 1btc to address 1Kc24m... and make that output to be spendable after january 1st 2030.


texts: Tramsaction taking long, 1 part is spent

texts:
So i made a transaction today:

https://blockchain.info/tx/1eab828a3e673e322aa4da4ff03962dbad3b2fa5b70818e3db9c5dc32abead93

Besides the fact that this is taking ages, 1 of them has the state 'spent'. I am missing some informatioon on this. Could someone explain this? And why is the rest unspent?


texts: Strange public note on FBI's silk road address

texts:
http://blockchain.info/tx/532bef49b54304eb2471008d9612ebc6501c91080888a9ba8dd24904d67f19ce

  A deep well lies hidden at 19FZMqGmkLVNxtkjeXW5sUtVThPkFVkThM where
  strange eddies swirl the bits. Drop a coin and make a wish. The splash
  will echo through the blockchain for eternity, and binary fortune will
  smile on you.

Anyone know what that means?


texts: How much money in terms of electricity and hardware was invested into blockchain?

texts:
Right now in this moment Thu 11 July 2019 22:08 UK time

That's a sizeable number. Almost as big a fraud comitted by a single bank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_Bank_money_laundering_scandal
It would be easy to calculate the current price of Antminer, current difficulty, ignore the difficulty adjustment and come with some number.
But in reality, there were many different hardware, difficulty was changing and as a result I'm rather unsure - how much money in terms of HARDWARE and ELECTRICITY was invested into Bitcoin?
Feel free to make reasonable assumptions, such as 10¢ per kWh.
Relevant resources:

Historical difficulty: https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Difficulty_in_Mining
Mining devices: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
Time to rewrite the blockchain: https://twitter.com/lopp/status/1136976776524128257

 More explanation:

https://hackernoon.com/the-future-of-machine-learning-hardware-c872a0448be8

2009 CPU - no hardware investment - just electricity
2010 GPU - some hardware investment
2011 GPU and FPGA - hardware investment
2012...

Given all the data, it should be possible to come to some reasonable estimate.
(not including the cost of real estate to house mining farms and 1000s of engineering hours and constant worldwide media attention)
PS. I love everything about Bitcoin, specifically math, cryptography, economy, and physics - conversion of energy ⚡⚡⚡


texts: Zero Percent Interest Nonresident Free (Online?) Euro Checking Account with Good Service for Cashing out Bitcoins?

texts:
You can cash out bitcoins the cheapest way in Euros, right?

I'm from the EU but my country is not in the eurozone, so that's why I need a convenient nonresident euro account.

I'm looking for the zero percent interest/no cost option for various reasons:

I rather don't need the interest to avoid the fees. It's not my savings.
The EU Savings Directive makes it a hassle to hold even a small checking account outside your country because you have to report any interest earned on it except for accounts held in certain countries. Maybe is there a negligible minimum you don't have to report? Let's say you earn a horrible 0.1 percent on your euro checking account and you have money come in and go out of the account every month so you don't even hold a balance there but you are required to calculate the taxes for that huge amount? It's ridiculous. It's just control freakery from your government that they have to know where you have a simple bank account, great. So the zero percent interest have privacy benefits, too.

I'd rather go with the exchanger Bitcoin Central, which just got a payment processor license in France (similar to Paypal) so I can be sure it is legit and the bank can be sure I'm not a money launderer. By the way it's an interesting question how banks consider money coming in from bitcoin exchangers? Is it suspicious for them or not? Maybe it depends on which country the exchanger banks. Another question is do the banks treat resident and nonresident account holders differently if they receive funds from bitcoin echangers? I just need to cash out the monthly living expenses. Nothing more, nothing less.

Any thoughts or recommendations? Hey! It's not illegal to hold on some bitcoins, right?


texts: How to achieve fast mempool synchronization at startup?

texts:
I just started my 'occasional' full-node and I am watching the size of the mempool grow after full block synchronization - watch -n 3 'bitcoin-cli getrawmempool true |jq "length"' - it has around 4000 pending transactions. My 'continuous' full-node, however, has around 18000 pending transactions which seem to never become available to my 'ocasional' node.

Looks like that when a node starts up it will receive the new transactions that arrive at the mempool, but the old transactions that had been laying there are never 'synchronized'. How can I synchronize the mempool of a recently launched node with the one of its peers?

I could shut down my other full-node and copy past mempool.dat into my other node but this solution is very ugly as I need to shut down a long-running node with many connections.


texts: How do I extract get money off a local wallet with only the key words?

texts:
I am a bit new to BitCoin and as it happened, I just transfered some money into my wallet when I noticed that my client (MultiBit HD) won't let me log into it anymore. Apparently it's a thing since last version that the client sometimes "forgets" a password or whatever. Either way, I have the wallet on my hard drive but can't log into it. I tried to recover it but recovering the password just gets Multibit stuck and recovering the wallet just creates a new, empty wallet, it seems. I still want to get the money off of my wallet I can't log into though. Ideas?
I tried the often suggested method using this site: https://iancoleman.github.io/bip39/

If I got this right, I just enter my key words in the "BIP39 Mnemonic" field, set it to the BIP32-tab and set the client to MultiBit HD. After that, it should give me as many addresses that fit as I like with their corresponding private key, which I would then use to import the wallet somewhere and have access to the money, right?
However, I generated 150k results, the address of my faulty wallet wasn't in there and my browser just dies after that. I am trying alternatives now to see if I can get it to work, but if anybody has any ideas?
I mean, I have the physical file of the wallet and the key words...I should be able to extract the private key somehow, right?


texts: My Radeon 7570 that comes with my hp envy h8-1409 is not being detected by CGminer (Litecoins)

texts:
I'm using Windows 8.1 and CGminer 3.1.0 trying to mine litecoins

What's odd about this computer is that the video card is some kind of HP OEM device, that's getting driver updates (latest August 2013) in the windows device manager and plays video games well, even without Catalyst and/or the SDK installed.  When I do install the latest 13.1 CCC it doesn't do anything, the card isn't even being detected in there.  GPU-z and Afterburner show my card as a 'radeon 7500 series' and 'Radeon 7570' respectively.

There are all sorts of AMD drivers in the /windows/system32/drivers section

This is what CGMiner says:

So I go ahead and log in:

Does anyone have any suggestions?  I noticed that the new CCC doesn't list 7500 series (not saying they don't support them) but maybe an older version of CCC?

I recently did a driversweep where I ripped all of the 7570 drivers out of the system and reverted it back to a Windows Basic Display Adapter, and installed Catalyst.  That didn't work, I had to do a system restore.

Any suggestions welcome!  Thanks :D

EDIT #1  CGminer would just hang and eventually a windows "This application is not responding" screen would come up before I installed the SDK.  I forgot to mention this earlier.


texts: What gives bitcoins value? What are bitcoins backed by?

texts:
Possible Duplicate:
  Where do bitcoins come from and what give them its value?

Often times people ask (shortly after muttering something beanie babies), What gives bitcoins value? What are they backed by?


texts: Should i send bitcoins to hash160 or normal address

texts:
I am a bit confused here.
I know that a public address is generated from the private key which you should keep secret, or else, anyone who has it will be able to spend the coins "in that address".

However, when i was checking this link:
https://blockchain.info/address/dd9c56410b2e734e551fc34331a056b70e939c98
containing the hash160 address, blockchain.info showed me that the address from which this hash160 was made is the following: 1MCmcsjzocP68LyBZznA3tjRMvGd4eQRx1
However, if i navigate to this link:
https://blockchain.info/address/3MtnYRESMWhUDWfch6SkUX6MWSZLcYpRc1
blockchain.info will show me that the hash160 generated from the address : 3MtnYRESMWhUDWfch6SkUX6MWSZLcYpRc1 is the same as the one generated from 1MCmcsjzocP68LyBZznA3tjRMvGd4eQRx1.
I know that hashing is not a one to one function, it 'is' a many-to-one function but in this case,
My sub-questions are the following:

1) is it possible to get the real address (e.g : 1MCmcsjzocP68LyBZznA3tjRMvGd4eQRx1 or 3MtnYRESMWhUDWfch6SkUX6MWSZLcYpRc1) from the hash160 address (dd9c56410b2e734e551fc34331a056b70e939c98)?

2) why is blockchain.info showing me the the address of the hash160 (dd9c56410b2e734e551fc34331a056b70e939c98) is 1MCmcsjzocP68LyBZznA3tjRMvGd4eQRx1 and not 3MtnYRESMWhUDWfch6SkUX6MWSZLcYpRc1?


texts:
The "Company Values" section at the Zcash website states:

  we are not the controllers or the power-holders, and do not control
  the mining or distribution of Zcash. Every user of Zcash contributes
  to its decentralization, helping to protect it against failure and
  corruption.

but the zcash Security Information page reads that:

  If we are sufficiently hacked, or if we collectively turn evil, the above resources will not be sufficient to protect you. Luckily, the Zcash network is growing into a larger and more resilient community beyond Electric Coin Company itself. If you suspect that the company has been compromised, please also check other community resources unrelated to Electric Coin Company.

This is slightly confusing to me. I would have thought that the distributed / decentralised nature of it offers enough protection against anyone turning evil. What is the level of control that the Zcash have over the currency?


texts: Why Owner 1's Signature is in transaction #2, not #1

texts:
In Bitcoin, what is the Signature and why Owner 1's Signature is in transaction #2, not #1?

I'm implementing a demonstration of blockchain database. But I noticed that the Bitcoin whitepaper has many ambiguous things, such as what is a hash of previous transaction of the first transaction. But the hash problem seems to be resolved somehow. The problem is what is the signatures and why it exists in next transaction of its owner issued?


texts: Could Taproot or Graftroot enable the execution of complex scripts?

texts:
From my understanding, Taproot uses a Merkle Tree structure whose root represents the outcome of a script. That representation is in the form of a signature that may unlock the inputs associated with its public key counterpart, which is shared by all participants.

I have two questions related to this:

First, how is the script structured in the tree? Does each path represent a different execution outcome? If so, how are the potential outcomes defined?

Second, if it follows a Merkle Tree structure, is there a limit in terms of the size of the script? I'm inclined to say no, given that this occurs off-chain, but I might be wrong.


texts: Does a blockchain need a distributed hash table?

texts:
In this question on StackOverflow, the OP is asking if there is a difference between distributed hash tables and blockchain. The answer to that question seems to indicate that there is no point of overlap between the two as they are for completely different purposes. However, I would like to clarify this point.

To the best of my knowledge, blockchain is a peer-to-peer implementation, which means that the entire blockchain is stored in every peer. However, if there is a need to broadcast consensus of a particular transaction, there is still a need to look up the other peers in some kind of table of addresses. Am I correct? (My underlying question is: In a blockchain, would all nodes or peers get the information about successful transactions simultaneously? It doesn't seem likely to me, and I'm trying to understand the protocol for doing this broadcast in a simultaneous, or near simultaneous manner).


texts: Can you put additional data in the payload?

texts:
It seems to me like you could put arbitrary data into a transaction payload, since it is JSON. Is this true, can a sender add additional fields to the transaction JSON? Or if thats not possible, could a sender put an arbitrary program into the scriptPubKey?

For example, ScriptPubKey could be OP_DUP <myArbitraryData> OP_DROP OP_HASH160 <pubKeyHash> OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG, which would put some arbitrary data on the stack and then pop it off the stack right away again, which wouldn't influence the result of the script but would let the sender include arbitrary data in the transaction.


texts: How much "Proof of work accepted by server" needed to generate 1 bitcoin (or a part of it)

texts:
I am using Bitminter client, and I am confusing about how much I earn in one week while my system working overnight.

https://bitminter.com/ says "Mining one bitcoin with just a PC now takes millions of years".

What is the basic rule of calculation?

Thank you.


texts: Is it possible to connect remotely to a c-lightning node with an exposed TCP port?

texts:
If you run a c-lightning node with EXPOSE_TCP set to True, it seems to me it should be possible to connect with it remotely, provided that the c-lightning RCP is listening to all incoming traffic. (IP is set to 0.0.0.0)

I tried the Docker setup recommended in the c-lightning readme and when I use socat to connect directly from inside the Docker container everything works smooth:

socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/home/simnet/.lightning/lightning-rpc

But when I try to use socat from the container host the connection closes directly upon opening with no error or anything:

socat -  tcp:127.0.0.1:14302

The ports seem to be mapped correctly

0.0.0.0:14302->9835/tcp

I don't understand what I am missing here. Is it even possible to connect remotely with this setup? I've read this question as well, and the answer suggests to use socat inside the Docker container to bridge the Unix socket to TCP, but it seems to me that the EXPOSE_TCP is meant to do exactly that natively.

UPDATE: The API doesn't really seem to be exposed over TCP after all, although the parameter is certainly set to True.
This is how I found out:

I wasn't even able to use the API over TCP from inside the docker container
Then I bridged the Unix socket to TCP manually by using socat. socat -d -d TCP-LISTEN:9835,fork,reuseaddr UNIX-CONNECT:/home/user/.lightning/lightning-rpc
After this I was able to connect to the lignting-c node remotely.

So maybe there's something wrong with c-lightning in interpreting this setting, or maybe there's something wrong with my setup. I'll explore further and report back.


texts: Bitcoin: transaction completed, bitcoins never arrived

texts:
I'm currently mining some bitcoins during normal computer use. I am using windows. The wallet is Bitcoin, as a miner I am using GUIMiner and pooled mining.

I am happy with the way everything works, however, I wanted to move my wallet to another location, so that I had access to it everywhere. I rented a virtual linux machine running Ubuntu 12.04, then installed bitcoind. I created an account and a new address.

For testing purposes, I transferred 1 BCCent to the new address. I was watching the sending wallet waiting for transfer confirmations, that never came. However, I remembered that the first time starting a wallet it takes quite a lot of time to synch to the network completely, so I went to sleep.

In the morning, the transaction was done and was affirmed by a lot of sources. I confidently checked my target wallet, and found that there were no bitcoins on the address and the account.

Checking the wallet for the transaction using

bitcoind gettransaction <the used txid>

gives the message

error: {"code":-5,"message":"Invalid or non-wallet transaction id"}

I am not sure how this could happen. I've double-checked the target address, and it matches.

Does anyone have an idea how such a thing can happen?


texts: What are the pros / cons of using Electrum 3.3.2 over Bitcoin core 0.17.1? And what about running your own Electrum Server?

texts:
Aside from not having to download the entire bitcoin blockchain when using electrum, what other advantages are there over using Bitcoin core 0.17.1?

Also if I chose to use my own electrum server, what advantage is that over Bitcoin Core 0.17.1?


texts: why have my 8 BCH (bitcoin cash) disappeard

texts: I received 8 BCH after the fork and have had them in my Blockchain.com wallet in Settings-General, up to the 14th December, when I checked on the 15th December the BCH had gone with absolutely no reference to them, the wallet pages have been changed to show how many BCH you have as well as Bitcoins and Ether. there is now a page dedicated to getting started with BCH and what you can do with them but mine have gone. I have emailed Blockchain.com they don't reply. This has to be a cock up by the blockchain.com team as my BTC and Ether are all there. any one know what I can do please.


texts:
I'm trying to create a testcoin using litecoin. To create genesis block I changed some lines to :

block.nTime = 1390948469; // current time

uint256 hashGenesisBlock("0x"); //I dont now it's true or false

uint256 hash = block.GetHash();
        printf("%s\n", hash.ToString().c_str());
        printf("%s\n", hashGenesisBlock.ToString().c_str());
        printf("%s\n", block.hashMerkleRoot.ToString().c_str());
        assert(block.hashMerkleRoot == uint256("0x")); //I dont now it's true or false.
        block.print();
        assert(hash == hashGenesisBlock);

When I build daemon and launch it, I'm getting this error:

litecoind: main.cpp:2788: bool InitBlockIndex(): Assertion `hash == hashGenesisBlock' failed.
Aborted

When I check the ./litecoin debug.log file, I'm seeing the previous hashMerkleRoot and hashGenesisBlock that litecoin uses now. I can't create new hash and merkle root.


texts: Should I run Bitcoind / JSON RPC on a home server connecting to a VPS

texts:
I'm debating whether to run bitcoind/ JSON-RPC on a server from my house that takes requests from users on hosted VPS. While I'm not starting a bitcoin poker site, I can explain what I'm doing easier with that. A user sends bitcoins to a pre-generated address. When user sends bitcoins, the home server will see whether it is sent then tell the VPS, which will then give the user chips or credits.

My questions :

Will this eat up my internet from home assuming I have 100 gb bandwidth / 6-8 mbps upload speeds? If not, how many people can be served at a time?
Does anyone actually do this compared to using a hosted vps/dedicated server because they want security and don't want to rely on 3rd party services like blockchain?


texts: Best Public cyrptocurrency APIs to develop exchange

texts:
We are developing cyrptocurrency API where we are relying on Blockcypher for several currencies. But we would like to add more and more currencies to our exchange. But it seems all crypto currencies look to develop our own node and make rpc request to that from localhost itself.

We are looking free REST api to generate addresses and make transactions.

Is there any source or idea from where we can get the API of most of the currencies.


texts: Digital currencies pegged to dollar value

texts:
Some digital currencies, like NuBits, declare that they peg their value to dollar or other fiat currency.

How does this work?
Under what conditions this can work?
Can this be distributed, or does there have to be trusted parties who are always willing to exchange NuBits back to dollar and vice versa?
Are there other such digital currencies? I understand BitGold value comes from real gold bars which match to tokens on blockchain, which is little different I believe.


texts: The bitcoin address space seems to be closer to 2^40, not 2^160

texts:
The Base58 Encoding of a public key hash outputs:  "A set of 58 alphanumeric symbols consisting of easily distinguished uppercase and lowercase letters (0OIl are not used)"

This set is a fixed string of 34 characters.

That is to say, "A bit coin wallet's address is 34 characters, each character being one from a possible set of 58"

So the total possible addresses is 58^34 which is just slightly less than 2^40.

I understand that the hash space is 2^160, but the final result is much smaller at 2^40.  What am I missing?

  Edit:  I made a simple math mistake reducing 58^34 to a power of two
  by adding not multiplying the exponents...  The bitcoin address is
  sufficient to contain the 2^160 possible hashes:  58^34 is 904
  octodecillion (60 decimal digits), and 2^160 is 1 quindecillion (49
  decimal digits)... the larger number accounts for the version byte and
  checksum.


texts: Does rootstock need segregated witness to work?

texts: Does Rootstock need segregated witness or any other bitcoin improvements not currently included for it to work?


texts: What is the economic value of Litecoin? Is it simply a subdivision of BTC?

texts:
The main differentiator between Litecoin and Bitcoin appears to be the quantity of coins available, the frequency in which the blocks are mined, and the mining technology is different.

The first benefit "Quantity" appears to be a subdivision of another arbitrary fixed value.  Since BTC is easily divisible, I don't see the the benefit of having more units that can also be subdivided.

The second benefit "Frequency" appears to create more blocks for the sake of creating blocks, and the safety zone of one 1 hour double spend attack has changed from 6 blocks BTC to 150 blocks Litecoin.  (no benefit)

So what economic value does litecoin provide

During the high value mining period?  (high block reward)
During the low value mining period? (low block reward)

In other words, it seems that the initial differences between BTC and Lightcoin deal with the block reward, but once that is used up (or too low of a value) there isn't much more that makes Lightcoin more exceptional than BTC.


texts: Is there some way to safely prove that you control a certain number of Bitcoin?

texts:
I want to know if there is some Bitcoin Core-supported feature where it takes the current amount in your wallet.dat and dumps it in such a way that another person can take the data and verify that you own X amount of Bitcoin, obviously without giving up the private keys/control of the coins, and somehow tying them to an arbitrary string, such as a real name, nickname, e-mail address, greeting of some kind, etc.

If this is possible, how is it done and how does it work on a technical level?

And is/could this be done without actually revealing which coins/parts of coins you control? Only that you have X amount of BTC in your wallet.dat?

And how easy is it to verify this "public coin proof" blob of cryptic characters? One might guess that most people would just look at the amount of Bitcoin on this "receipt", that greeting text, and the encryption-looking text following it and assume that it must be the right person, without actually feeding it into Bitcoin Core. So it should be very simple to verify, such as being able to drag and drop the file/image into a Bitcoin Core GUI window and immediately get a "Correct: X BTC" alert box pop-up, or a "Could not verify proof blob." error message.


texts: Can anyone give an explaination of what exactly a Bitcoin is and where it derives its value from?

texts: I really just want to grasp how a bitcoin actually is something of value? and how a string of characters equate into something that is worth dollars?


texts:
I have Windows 7 and i’m using the bitcoin-qt client v0.8.6-beta.

Last night i tried to open up the client – but there was a message that said i had some issues with the blockchain. Which is weird, i never had any problem before so i closed it and reopened the client.

Then suddenly the blockchain started to download it self from the very beginning (!) backlog of like 260 weeks! But the old (and already downloaded) blockchain is still on my pc – so why dosen’t the client recognise it?

The bitcoins are still inside the wallet – or at least it shows them.


texts:
Back in 2011 when bitcoin started to make the news, I created a wallet and let it run for a bit (no pun intended). It almost fried my computer so I stopped. In the process, I think I remember I mined 0.05 BTC. Before deleting the app from my Mac, I've saved a file called wallet.dat somewhere.

Today out of curiosity I googled the conversion rate and saw that 0.05BTC are worth about 45 USD.

What can I do to recover that file? I've opened a Coinbase account but I don't see anything about importing files. I'm on Mac OS, if it matters...

EDIT: I've now installed Bitcoin-Qt. I've replaced the wallet.dat file. It says

"wallet out of sync", balance = 0.05BT

It also says "synchronising network" but it's been 15 minutes and the progress bar barely seems to be at 1%.


texts: Can't pay with Electrum - invalid password?

texts:
Update

  Well, it was my bad, dreadfully sorry guys. My bad with the password
  and seed, mixed some things up :(  Everything restored successfully.

I use Electrum 1.8.1 (portable edition) and have some mBTCs in my wallet (electrum.dat). I tried to send a payment and was asked to type the password which I had set before. The password is kept in KeePass, I pasted it from KeePass and... "invalid password". But it is correct for sure.

I have the seed (12 words) well kept. I tried to restore the wallet with the seed, after backuping my electrum.dat and deleting it, but if I paste the seed words and the wallet is created and synchronized, I'm told the wallet has no transaction history (therefore, no money there).

I tried these ideas as you can see above: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=261777.0 and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=170610.0

Questions:

1) How could it happen that Electrum says the password is invalid when trying to send the money?

2) How could it happen that no transaction history is detected after using the seed (12 words) to restore the wallet?

3) Does it have anything to do with the list of Electrum servers? It is shown when I try to restore the wallet using the seed. If yes, do I have to try every server from the list to understand which one keeps the data about my wallet?

4) How do I recover my mBTCs from the Electrum wallet? I see the number I have, but can't send because of the password issue.

The first experience with Bitcoins and kind of frustrating... I hope I've explained the situation more or less well.


texts: How can I calculate the bitcoin per day from mining in a pool?

texts:
So, I'm trying out http://cex.io, a cloud based hash market. They use the pool http://ghash.io which uses "PPLNS" for distribution of funds(?)

Given that I can see how much total hashing power is in runs, and I can see how much hashing power I am contributing to each run, how can I calculate an average rate of BTC I will get?


texts: Problem of crashing command on "lightningd/lightningd --network=testnet --log-level=debug"

texts:
When I try running the "lightningd/lightningd --network=testnet --log-level=debug" after sucessfully starting the Bitcoin server using the "bitcoind -daemon -testnet" ,following issue occurs:

lightningd/lightningd --network=testnet --log-level=debug
2018-02-12T12:34:40.313Z lightningd(14966): Trying to guess public addresses...
2018-02-12T12:34:40.313Z lightningd(14966): Address 192.168.0.73:9735 is not routable
2018-02-12T12:34:40.313Z lightningd(14966): Failed to connect 10 socket: Network is unreachable
2018-02-12T12:34:40.313Z lightningd(14966): testing /home/blockchain/lightning/lightningd/lightning_channeld
2018-02-12T12:34:40.314Z lightningd(14966): testing /home/blockchain/lightning/lightningd/lightning_closingd
2018-02-12T12:34:40.314Z lightningd(14966): testing /home/blockchain/lightning/lightningd/lightning_gossipd
2018-02-12T12:34:40.315Z lightningd(14966): testing /home/blockchain/lightning/lightningd/lightning_hsmd
2018-02-12T12:34:40.315Z lightningd(14966): testing /home/blockchain/lightning/lightningd/lightning_onchaind
2018-02-12T12:34:40.316Z lightningd(14966): testing /home/blockchain/lightning/lightningd/lightning_openingd
2018-02-12T12:34:40.471Z lightningd(14966): Client: Received message 11 from client
2018-02-12T12:34:40.480Z lightningd(14966): Loaded 0 invoices from DB
2018-02-12T12:34:40.480Z lightningd(14966): Client: Received message 9 from client
2018-02-12T12:34:40.480Z lightning_gossipd(14974): pid 14974, msgfd 12
2018-02-12T12:34:40.481Z lightningd(14966): Loaded 0 channels from DB
bitcoin-cli exited with code 1: error: Could not locate RPC credentials. No authentication cookie could be found, and no rpcpassword is set in the configuration file (/home/lightning/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf)

2018-02-12T12:34:40.518Z lightningd(14966): bitcoin-cli exited with code 1: error: Could not locate RPC credentials. No authentication cookie could be found, and no rpcpassword is set in the configuration file (/home/lightning/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf)

Log dumped in crash.log
2018-02-12T12:34:40.545Z lightningd(14966): FATAL SIGNAL 6 RECEIVED
2018-02-12T12:34:40.548Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: lightningd/log.c:486 (log_crash) 0x410b18
2018-02-12T12:34:40.561Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: (null):0 ((null)) 0x7fc0b7dc24af
2018-02-12T12:34:40.561Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: (null):0 ((null)) 0x7fc0b7dc2428
2018-02-12T12:34:40.561Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: (null):0 ((null)) 0x7fc0b7dc4029
2018-02-12T12:34:40.561Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: lightningd/log.c:575 (fatal) 0x410f52
2018-02-12T12:34:40.561Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: lightningd/bitcoind.c:723 (wait_for_bitcoind) 0x4056c9
2018-02-12T12:34:40.562Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: lightningd/chaintopology.c:723 (setup_topology) 0x407bd8
2018-02-12T12:34:40.562Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: lightningd/lightningd.c:331 (main) 0x40f258
2018-02-12T12:34:40.562Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: (null):0 ((null)) 0x7fc0b7dad82f
2018-02-12T12:34:40.562Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: (null):0 ((null)) 0x403248
2018-02-12T12:34:40.562Z lightningd(14966): backtrace: (null):0 ((null)) 0xffffffffffffffff
Fatal signal 6. 0x410bfe log_crash
    lightningd/log.c:512
0x7fc0b7dc24af ???
    ???:0
0x7fc0b7dc2428 ???
    ???:0
0x7fc0b7dc4029 ???
    ???:0
0x410f52 fatal
    lightningd/log.c:575
0x4056c9 wait_for_bitcoind
    lightningd/bitcoind.c:723
0x407bd8 setup_topology
    lightningd/chaintopology.c:723
0x40f258 main
    lightningd/lightningd.c:331
0x7fc0b7dad82f ???
    ???:0
0x403248 ???
    ???:0
0xffffffffffffffff ???
    ???:0
Log dumped in crash.log
Aborted (core dumped)

Can anybody please solve my issue and explain me what is exactly happening!


texts: Will all UTXOs eventually be worth 1 Satoshi?

texts:
If I want to spend 0.4BTC and I only have a UTXO for 1.0BTC, I will send 0.4BTC to the seller's address and 0.6BTC to my address. The seller has one UTXO and I have the other.

One UTXO has become two.

As time passes and more transactions occur, the number of UTXOs increases monotonically and the value of each will fall monotonically. (Right?)

If we extrapolate, the value of the individual UTXOs will tend to 1 Satoshi.

Or to ask the question differently, can two UTXOs ever be combined into one UTXO?

Thanks


texts: Could somebody be traced in a situation like this?

texts:
I'm fairly new to bitcoins and wanted to know if somebody could be traced easily in a situation like this:

Somebody buys btc with his/her own name
Btc are sent to an address, an offline wallet, which already has some bitcoins in it. The wallet is not associated with his/her name, other than the fact that the btc the specific somebody bought are sent to that wallet.
He/she sends all of the bitcoins from that wallet trough a mixing service via tor to some address.

There is one condition. It is known that he/she bought the bitcoins and had them sent to the address of that offline wallet.

More specifically: could it be proven that that somebody who bought the coins and had them sent to the offline wallet was the one who sent all of the wallet's coins to the final address?


texts: I want to start mining new blockchain (exactly as Satoshi did in 2009) for testing purpose

texts:
I will mine myself ONLY so difficulty will be always in 1 range so CPU is enough for this task

So my question is: how to setup bitcoin core 0.12 to start mining with CPU new blockchain ?

If I type in the console: setgenerate true and wait a few hours it's possible to mine first block with 50 BTC (of course with internet connection OFF to prevent download blocks)?

I know that this BTC will be worthless ATM (without $ value) but I want to do that anyway to better understand mining process


texts: What determines how many transactions end up in a given block? Blocks can have various numbers of transactions, so what decides how many are in a certain block?


texts: The name of MyBitcoin eWallet comes up quite often here and there. What is the story behind it and the attack on it they claimed occurred?


texts: validation of a block with false transactions

texts: When a miner can find a number to create a hash with enough zeros, the other miners can verify his work by testing that number and seeing if everything is correct. But how do they verify that the transactions in the block are not false? How do they see that the amounts are properly authorized? An attacker could create a transaction in which Alice sends him 5 BTC, without Alice knowing about it. Is it possible?


texts: Is anyone working on / has implemented a "two-factor paper wallet"?

texts:
I just created this wiki page.

I'm coining the term here, I think ... not sure what was it called when discussed on Bitcointalk.

My question is: Has anyone implemented this "2 factor paper wallet"? Is it being worked on?


texts: What are the limits of the bitcoin protocol for making thousands of transactions, and what are the alternatives?

texts:
What are the limits of the bitcoin protocol for microtransactions, and what are the alternatives?

I am contemplating an application that would require each user to spend fractions of bitcoins multiple times every second. I understand that there are limitations in the protocol to prevent such a thing from happening. How can I proceed thousands of microtransaction using bitcoins without having a central server?


texts: Can someone explain this weird mining activity?

texts:
I can't figure why this block has 0 coinbase with 0 transactions... however still a valid block? Or it it empty? According to whalepanda this coinbase was sacrificed by unknown miner.

See the block at height
    501,726


texts: ASIC Miner Block Erupter & bfgminer: "no devices found"

texts:
Bit of an experiment.

I have 2 x ASIC Miner Block Erupter 333Mh/s Rev. 3.00 plugged into powered USB ports.

I've downloaded and installed CP210x_Universal_Windows_Driver from https://www.silabs.com/products/development-tools/software/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers.

I see:

If I run bfgminer, I receive an error "no devices found. Press 'M' and '+' to add". I press M, then +, but no devices are detected.

Help appreciated.

This is the tutorial I was following.


texts: How to create block height to UNIX time converter?

texts:
I want to create a converter that can be given a block height, human readable time, or UNIX time and then provide the correlated information for it. For example, if given a block height, the converter will give you an estimated time (UNIX and converted to human readable format). And the same if given a UNIX time, it'll provide block height and human readable time associated with that block. And so forth if given a human readable string (stretch goal).

However, looking at the information online it seems pretty lack luster and also very approximate, using formulas, etc. See links here of similar questions:

https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/10576/calculate-approximative-block-height-at-a-certain-time

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/87lr89/is_there_any_block_height_to_datetime_converter

Are there any methods that could be achieved to create a deterministic result?

One method, I am considering is to iterate through the blockchain and generate a database that stores the block height and the UNIX timestamp associated in the block header of the block. Would this be a proper solution to the problem?


texts: Anybody have any good resources to learn about bitcoin from an economic standpoint?  Specifically discussing the debate around its deflationary nature?


texts: What stops a miner from including arbitrary transactions in their block?

texts: Suppose there is a miner who consistently cheats. That is, she will include "Alice sent me 100 bitcoins" in every block she creates. If she became the first miner to find a passable hash, then she would get 100 coins. This scenario is not impossible. How does the mining algorithm prevent this?


texts: How can forks coexist even though only one of the is the longest chain?

texts:
We know Bitcoin has some forks like Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. They make a new branch on chain, so how can they coexist without the shorter branches being discarded, and just the longest chain staying around?
In the Satoshi paper, we read that just the longest chain is valid. So, if each of them has a longest chain, why doesn't one override another, for example assuming Litecoin has longest chain, why are Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash still working?


texts:
I started mining today, and I'm using the bitcoin GUI miner, along with rpc2013-cuda. I'm running algorithms on the CPU(completely maxed out - It's a core i7 quad-core/Hyperthreaded at 2.3GHz) and the GPU(98% Load - GT 650M at 1GHz Core/ 2GHz Memory don't Know the shader speed. I think it is the same as core) and got no share of bitcoins so far.
How much do you guys think that i'll be able to get a fraction of a bitcoin. I say fraction because I'm mining in a pool. That is Eligius. Should I start to mine in another pool? Maybe forget about CPU/GPU mining and try to buys a FPGA or dedicated miner?

edit 1: On total I'm having a hashRate of 40MHash/s


texts: eth says I have a balance of 35 ether - etherchain can't find my address

texts:
In the ethconsole I get the following:

> web3.fromWei(web3.eth.getBalance(web3.eth.coinbase), "ether")
35'

When I run web3.eth.coinbase and enter the resulting 0x00f24... address into https://www.etherchain.org/ , I get Error: Account '0x00f24...' not found!.

How do I independently verify my balance? Is my coinbase address my wallet address? Or do I have a different address where the ether is residing?


texts:
I have a simple/old CPU (like dual-core/Quad-Core) with unlimited electricity and all the other stuff.
I would like to run 10 PCs with CPU mining.
It's better to mine solo or the join mining pool hub?
I know the profit of the mining will be very very low (I don't care :D)
Thanks for the help, Roee!


texts:
How do I export my HD wallet's Xpubkey in Bitcoin Core?

Do I construct it using the value of "hdseedid" returned by getwalletinfo?


texts: What if Bitcoin gets to the point that all the coins have been mined? There will be lots of transactions and no one to process them. My question is who will do all the transaction processing when mining no longer pays.


texts: Do you really need more than 50% mining power in order to attack Bitcoin blockchain?

texts:
My question is about concept, so code is not related, however, do you really need 51% of the mining power in order to attack/replace the real bitcoin Blockchain?

For example, a blockchain has a length of 8, A, B, C, D, E each represent a individual with 20% of the total mining power, let's say person A and B decide to work together, but that's only 40% of the total mining power (less than 51%), for illustration purpose, miner C, D, E will always mine alone, so by the time miner C, D, E each finished mining the 9th block, A and B have already mined the 11th block (assuming they mine faster, since they work together and have a total mining power of 40%), so longest chain wins right? and now the 9th block that miner C, D, E just mined becomes invalid and their chain will be replaced to the longer blockchain, does this mean A and B might have the power to control and manipulate the entire bitcoin Blockchain with only 40% of the mining power as long as the rest of the network don't work together? if so, then bitcoin is not really safe, because most of the time there is no way for small individuals to work together, it's like owning a company, you don't have to be holding 51% shares in order to be in charge of the company, you can do it with just 2% as long as the rest of share holders each hold less than 2% and don't work together against you,

So my ultimate question is, does bitcoin network have a way to force the rest of the share holders to join forces? Therefore you need a true 51% to control/manipulate it or is it like a company?


texts:
in Bitcoin, every node solves the POW puzzle.

instead, are there cryptocurrencies where a random group of nodes is chosen (before block creation), and only that group solves for the puzzle?


texts: How can you buy XRP with BTC if you don't have any XRP?

texts:
As far as I know the best way to buy XRP for BTC is from the Ripple client ... which requires some XRP to begin with.

If you own 0 XRP and some BTC, how can you get started acquiring XRP?


texts:
As you all know it's not very secure to send bitcoins on known addresses, some bots are watching.
Could someone explain me how these bots manage to propagate several transactions of the very same transaction output in the network (ex https://blockchain.info/fr/address/1HZwkjkeaoZfTSaJxDw6aKkxp45agDiEzN)
It appears there is a competition between at least 3 bots on the previous address.

For fun, I try to code a C# app building+broadcasting transaction as soon as bitcoins are received on the watched address. No chance at all. Bitcoind/blockchaininfo says this output is already spent (only 2 s after receiving it). So if there is a mechanism which prevents to add multiple transactions on the same output (before any confirmation), how did current bots do that (1LdUHTEVxWJhrhKfy4H3VuYDnTHQVjsdBn  && 1aa8hSJaxa2jKFtuBYp8VBsFNofsnoBHX)???

And it seems that  1LdUHTEVxWJhrhKfy4H3VuYDnTHQVjsdBn is almost always the winner!


texts: Does Segwit mean easier government monitoring?

texts:
I have noticed a steady stream of PR articles talking ad nauseum of the dangers of a contentious hard fork and how miners refusing to signal segwit are screwing us all. Many are quite well written and read like propaganda to me, so I am naturally suspicious of their intentions and motives.

I see many talking about investors that have a long position in BTC, also founders of startups that seek to open up a market for sidechain solutions. My understanding of segwit is that by moving witness data aside, then third parties no longer have the ability to change a tx id, which gave me the realization just hoe hard it would be to monitor the blockchain for specific transactions.

Would it be safe to assume that law enforcement or governmental entities are having a difficult time tracking criminal behavior because of this and that segwit would make their investigations significantly easier and less complicated? By adopting segwit are we abandoning what little anonymity remains in Bitcoin or am I missing something important?


texts: Is a wallet just a collection of private and public keys?

texts:
There is a fundamental bitcoin concept I don't get. Am I correct in that all I "need" to send and receive money are a single address and its associated private key?

In other words, can't I just create an address and private key and print them off and store it in my desk? And in this case, if I print two adresses and private keys, couldn't my physical desk be considered a "wallet"?

I'm just trying to figure out what a wallet is specifically. Is this just some sort of file or folder that stores those private and public keys?

Thanks!


texts: How do the most popular Bitcoin wallets handle transactions stuck in the mempool with too low fees?

texts: If unconfirmed for a specific period of time, do popular wallets remove transactions from the mempool? Are there some wallets where if your transaction is never confirmed, your funds are never returned?


texts: Why does txID generation consider signatures?

texts:
I've been reading a lot about transaction malleability, and noticed that the only way to achieve it is by altering the transaction signature/s.

Why does the protocol even consider the signature in the payload for SHA256?
The protocol should only consider inputs and outputs as they are, ignore the signatures. txID should only be altered by altering inputs or outputs, thats it. If anybody would like to alter any input or output to change the txID, he'll need to change signatures as well.

In other words, if you don't consider signatures while generating the txID, transaction malleability would be impossible.

Please, let me know if I'm missing something here.


texts: Coinbase (or other service) conversion to fiat: how is that recorded in the Blockchain?

texts:
This is probably already answered, but I searched and couldn't find a similar question or answer.
If I use a service such as Coinbase to buy Bitcoin, Coinbase generates a BC address for me and that's recorded in the blockchain.
If I convert to fiat (i.e., USD) all BC at the address and send that USD to my bank account, Coinbase records that in my account. Since my account with Coinbase is private, only I know I have cashed out.
But how is that "cash out" and transfer to my bank account recorded in the blockchain? Does the blockchain show it is a cash out from Coinbase?
Or are there no records in the blockchain, other than the one BC address that shows a last transaction to 0?


texts:
I want bitcoin to be sent to my address after I wire the money.

How can I do so?

I want something with less kurs fee. So little comission


texts: How can a lightweight client make sure output has not been spent yet?

texts:
It's simple to prove the creation of a UTXO: You just need to provide the transaction data, the Merkle branch, and block of the creating transaction.

Then, as a full-node, it is simple to check whether the output hasn't been spent yet: You're keeping track of the UTXO yourself, and if it hasn't been removed from your UTXO set, it's still unspent.

As a lightweight client doesn't have the full UTXO set at hand, how could it make sure that an output is still unspent? I see that BIP0064 introduced a getutxo message, but can't seem to find more about it. Is such an interface still in effect? Is there an option beyond polling a number of different nodes for a particular UTXO, or running a full-node?

Clarification of what I'm interested in: I've recently read the paper Sybil-Resistant Pseudonymization and Pseudonym Change without Trusted Third Parties. The proposed system BitNym manages pseudonyms by storing them in transaction outputs. A pseudonym stays valid until the anchoring output is spent. It is therefore of interest to check whether an output is still in the UTXO set.


texts: How companies are accepting bitcoin for their products or services?

texts:
I am new to the crypto currency world and fascinated by its growth. I looked at some of the companies that accept bitcoins for their products. companies accepting bitcoin

Lets say i buy an Xbox from Microsoft for x bitcoins. On the date of buying the x bitcoins correspond to z dollars. After few hours, the bitcoin cost reduced from x to y. (The price is volatile right) How Microsoft will handle this situation? They are ready to take the risk? Or they exchange to dollars or any currency as soon as I buy the product in bitcoin?


texts: My first bitcoin transaction with core and coldcard

texts:
I use coldcard and bitcoin core 0.20.1. I have checked how to do it with HWI at https://github.com/bitcoin-core/HWI/blob/master/docs/bitcoin-core-usage.md.
It appears more complex than needed.
With the core's GUI, I can create a PSBT, save it, and then sign it with an SD card and coldcard. The latter will create a TXN file with the finalized transaction, that I can just broadcast with core.
No need for HWI and only 1 console command (sendrawtransaction) needed.
I am afraid: am I missing something?
Thank you for any suggestion.


texts:
Recently updated my LevelDB parser to work with the new LevelDB 0.15 internal structure. However, I'm wondering about two small changes I found:

The prefix for transactions was changed from b'c' to b'C'.
The nVersion field was dropped from the database.

Is there any specific reason for changing the prefix?

On the other hand, and regarding the version field, it was always set to the same value for every entry (can't recall if 1 or 0), so dropping it seems the right thing to do but, why was it included in first place?


texts: Is Bitcoin network truly distributed without central authority?

texts: When a node joins the Bitcoin network it gets its info from either a preinstalled list, dns or irc. All of these 3 could potentially imply a central authority for who's on the network. Who exactly maintains them?


texts: Is there an address format for P2WPKH or P2WSH? If P2WPKH uses the same address format as P2PKH, how does a wallet know which one to use?


texts:
When we buy/ sell bitcoin through some exchange say "Koinex in Indian context", what is the process i.e. actually followed ?
1. Does exchange communicate to node(s) in the bitcoin blockchain thru my public address on my behalf or
2. My browser directly communicates with node in blockchain which then broadcast it across bitcoin blockchain or
3. Exchange itself is a node in the network and to which i am communicating and it is broadcasting my transaction in the network


texts: Do bitcoin addresses reveal my identity?

texts:
Is it recommended to use different addresses for transactions whenever possible? I have been told that a bitcoin address is similar to an email address.
Is my total possession of Bitcoin visible on the blockchain by anyone?
If address A receives 1 BTC from Alice and address B receives 1 BTC from Bob, and then I want to send 2 BTC to Dave; is that possible and how?


texts: I know that on blockchain info there is a list of bitcoin tagged addresses https://blockchain.info/tags. I'm wondering if there exists something similar for Litecoin, since I did not find any information about it.


texts: When was the last time a block was solo-mined?

texts:
Was curious about it the other day, what would be the quickest way to check for the last block payout minus the transaction fee to know when the last block was solo mined?

Thanks.


texts: Connecting to a node and opening a channel

texts: What is the difference between connecting to a node and opening a channel with a node in the lightning network? What are the events happen when I just connect to a node?


texts: CiPHREX mSIGNA wallet recovery from private key to new wallet

texts:
I use mSIGNA for my bitcoin transactions. This is a multi-sig P2SH wallet that requires private keys and an account file to create/view/receive transactions.

I've searched through the documentation and attempted to find answers online but there appears to be a lack of posts regarding mSIGNA.

Is it possible to recover my wallet from private key seed without having access to the 'account' file that mSIGNA requires you to create?


texts: Different balances Bitcoin-Qt vs. Blockchain.info

texts: Why is the balance in my Bitcoin-Qt wallet different from the balance when I check the information about my address on blockchain.info? All transactions are confirmed.


texts: How would you end up with more than two transaction outputs?

texts:
I saw a Bitcoin transaction that has 6 inputs and 4 outputs. I understand that several inputs are sometimes used in order to meet the amount requirements of the output. As a result you have two outputs: The spent amount and the change.

How is it then that a transaction can have four outputs? Is it possible to pay more than one person (address) in a single transaction?


texts: Will Bitcoin Cash (BCC) be mined like BTC?

texts: Will the new bitcoin-cash be available for mining and if yes, is it mined on new fork that will be submitted or on the previous code?


texts: Should I include the fee in the sent bitcoin amount?

texts:
I'm using Electrum and want to purchase something with Bitcoins. When I get to the bitpay screen with all the details (And the timer) I input the information into the electrum client, which then generates a Fee for the transaction.

My question is: I need to send an exact amount, will the fee take the amount straight out of the amount being sent (And therefore send too low an amount) or do I need to add the fee to the amount being sent?

i.e Let's say the site requests exactly 0.05 bitcoins, fee is 0.02. Do I send 0.07 and let it take the fee, or do I send 0.05 and it takes the fee out of the wallet another way?

Thanks.


texts: Is it possible to have a modified Proof of Work that does not require as much energy to secure the blockchain?

texts: As more ASICs hash away for acceptable difficulty, the difficulty keeps rising over time. Greater difficulty means to me that more electricity is used to secure the Bitcoin blockchain. Are there clever ways to modify Proof of Work, continue to use existing ASICs, spread block extraction to more miners, and continue to secure the blockchain without increasing power requirements? I'm not interested in other algorithms like Proof of Stake, Proof of Burn, etc.


texts: Why do multihop LN payments start settling from the recipient's end?

texts:
In HTLC, after all the parties have locked their funds in the contract, claiming payment happens in a reverse way, starting with the receiver who reveals the preimage of the corresponding payment hash.

What would be the problem if it had started with the sender? After the receiver confirms receipt of the contract, it sends an acknowledgment to sender. Sender releases preimage, timelock set in increasing order across the path, contract initiated by sender having the least locktime. Receiver is the last node to settle the payment.

For reference, I am adding a picture so that one can visualize what I am trying to say.


texts: In the BIP39 specification, are seeds generated from encoded or decoded passphrase?

texts:
From the BIP39 spec:

From mnemonic to seed
A user may decide to protect their mnemonic with a passphrase. If a passphrase is not present, an empty string "" is used instead.
To create a binary seed from the mnemonic, we use the PBKDF2 function with a mnemonic sentence (in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the password and the string "mnemonic" + passphrase (again in UTF-8 NFKD) used as the salt. The iteration count is set to 2048 and HMAC-SHA512 is used as the pseudo-random function. The length of the derived key is 512 bits (= 64 bytes).

I assume that (in UTF-8 NFKD) means that encoded characters are hashed, rather than the original binary data. Is this correct? If so, is there a security reason why it was done this way?
One consequence of this is that, if the seed is generated from the actual encoding rather than the original bit sequence, then one cannot encode the same bit sequence into multiple languages to give access to the same private keys. This is a pretty big down-side for wallets that provide a language setting. If the user changes their language setting, for example, then they cannot retrieve and enter their wallet words in their new language.


texts: GitHub won't let me fork Hivemind, maybe something about sidechain repos

texts:
On my GitHub page I have a fork of bitcoin/bitcoin.

The project Hivemind seems interesting, and I want to check it out.

When I try to fork it GitHub tells me that I already have a fork of it, and it references s-matthew-english/bitcoin, which is my fork of bitcoin/bitcoin.

Why is this happening? How can I circumvent this?


texts: At which stage is a transaction validated?

texts:
Let's say Alice owns 12 BTC in her wallet, and she tries to send 5 BTC to Bob. First the transaction is broadcast to all nodes, then transaction is in the transaction pool. Then miners would choose Alice's transaction and add it to their block and find the nonce, and once they've found the nonce, they will broadcast the block with Alice's transaction. In that flow, at which stage is the transaction validated?

Whether while each node receives the transaction ?. Is it the stage , requires 51 % confirmation to validate the transaction?
Otherwise at the stage , once miner found the nonce, he has to broadcast the transaction , other miners will verify the correct combination of nonce.In this stage , does miners need to verify the nonce along with the all the transactions in the block??


texts: so how many possibilties for 3 random missing words?

texts: I have a combination of 24 words made from 2048 words. I have 21 of these words known and in order. I am missing 3 words that can be placed in any slot from the 24. How can I work out the number of outcomes that I need to try to find these 3 missing words and where they are in the code?


texts: NoClassDefFoundError when using Java Coinbase API

texts:
I've simply downloaded an API .jar file of a Coinbase. I've created a project dynamic web project. I added successfully into a reference library that API.

Here is my simple program:

import com.coinbase.api.Coinbase;
import com.coinbase.api.CoinbaseBuilder;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args){

        try {

            Coinbase cb=new CoinbaseBuilder()
            .withApiKey(System.getenv("My API KEY"), System.getenv("MY API SECRET"))
            .build();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

As i run this program, it says:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/fasterxml/jackson/core/type/TypeReference
    at com.coinbase.api.CoinbaseBuilder.build(CoinbaseBuilder.java:16)
    at Main.main(Main.java:11)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.fasterxml.jackson.core.type.TypeReference
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
    at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
    ... 2 more

Do I need to put something here? I'm did checked thrice, My API key is correct!


texts: The Merkle reported a user lost 17BTC in a fire that destroyed his private keys and backups. Are those BTC (out of the fixed 21x10^6) lost forever? I assume they are and assume there are many lost bitcoin over time that actually decreases the total amount that will circulate or be accessible. Interesting in that bitcoin scarcity also becomes a function of inadvertent or accidental attrition over time.


texts: How to prevent a miner from stealing another miner's block?

texts:
Many articles only contain a phrasing like

  A miner A solves the hash problem and gives the result to the network to check. Once a majority of the network confirms, A gets the reward.

But how does one protect his effort from being stolen? As I think:

A solved the problem, so A get original string S which could be hashed to target hash H.
A sends his result to the network (some other miners) intending to get the reward.
Other nodes (miners) need to hash S and check whether the result equal to H to determine whether A is right or not. (So I think here one can get S and H)
But B near A, he get A's works, so he get the S and H. Then he can construct a new result send to others, claim that B solved the problem
If B can spread his result faster than A, he gets the reward.

I have seen Can a miner steal another one's block? , in which @Highly Irregular says

  The block that Alice mined includes the mining rewards going to
  Alice's address. If Eve alters the block data to output the rewards to
  her own receiving address, then the nonce (and other variable values,
  I think "extranonce" and timestamp) that Alice used to solve the block
  will almost certainly no longer solve the block.

But he didn't tell how in detail.

@Stéphane Gimenez gave the normal steps of mining here, in which I didn't see a measure to prevent B from stealing the block from A (or how to validate the result is originally calculated by A).


texts: Use several PC to generate vanity addresses

texts:
I have seven PC and I want to generate a unique Bitcoin address. On one PC the speed to generate addresses is low.
How can I use vanitygen.exe on all of my computers to increase the speed of generating the intended vanity address?


texts:
Does anyone know if someone has created an open source (preferrably LAMP/PHP based) software package so that they can bring up their own BTC to ?currency? trading site?

I would love to be the guy getting 2% to 3% on transactions. And then I'd be responsible for server uptime and availability, fraud checks, APIs running smoothly, etc.


texts: Open source wallets to host on our website

texts:
We are a team of experienced devs, also with experience and knowledge of Bitcoin, but with zero experience so far in Bitcoin/blockchain specific development.
We would like to host a Bitcoin wallet on our website and are exploring the development lift required from open source options. There will be frequent deposits/withdrawals, internal transactions and naturally security is of the highest priority.
Any advice on avenues to explore (and pitfalls to watch out for) as we assess options would be very helpful.
Thanks,


texts: When importing private keys, will compressed or uncompressed format be used?

texts:
I am looking into implementing support for compressed public keys on Vanity Pool. However, I have my concerns about importing solutions into a desired vanity address under that format. From what I can see about the explanation how a compressed key format works, it appears that one private key can map into two different Bitcoin Addresses.

Is there some way to specify in the Standard Client which format is to be used for importing, or will one of the formats be preferred all the time?


texts: Does Bitfinex support B2X? Will BTC holders at the moment of the fork be credited B2X on a 1:1 ratio?

texts:
I know, we should hold them in cold storage, etc, but I can't know for sure whether Bitfinex will credit the B2X on a 1:1 ratio for BTC holders.

Thank you for your answers!

David


texts: How do you make the unicode Bitcoin symbol show correctly in text on Linux?

texts: The Bitcoin symbol was added to the Unicode standard as ₿ (U+20BF). This shows up as a placeholder (empty box) in texts for me. What do you have to do so it will be shown in text, e.g. in the browser?


texts: Notifications to watch only addresses in bitcoind

texts:
I found a similar question, but rather outdated in my opinion: How to get instant notification of any Bitcoin transaction involving a specific public address as recipient without knowing the wallet or private key

I have a bitcoind running, however don't have any funds managed by it. I want to run a script by any transaction, which is going to one of my (many) addresses. All the addresses are not part of the bitcoind wallet.

The following I want to achieve:

Configure bitcoind with a list of my addresses (not part of the wallet), might be around 200
Remove some addresses (if not needed anymore) from watch notifications
Notifiy a script when a transaction to one of my addresses arrives (mempool transaction, no confirmations)
Notifiy when a transaction gets confirmed (first time, maybe also sixth time)

My Setup:

Newest version of bitcoin core (can be updated)
Scripts in PHP (could be other programming language with bindings to bitcoind)

Basically, I want to get the notification to the respective script. All relevant information can be crawled via the RPC API. However polling the bitcoind needs to be eliminated.


texts: Does blockchain.info retain the wallet password in client-side memory?

texts:
When you log into blockchain.info - you enter the password on the client side.

Does the password remain stored in a local javascript variable on the client side after the login process is over?

If yes, does that count as real a security risk? What kind of attack vectors does that open you to?

If not, how else does the wallet update the server side state?


texts: Do pools distribute "jobs" to miners based on "failed" solutions which have already been submitted?

texts:
My question is this: How exactly does the stratum protocol distribute "work" to miners? More specifically, since mining can be compared (in many regards) to "brute forcing" a cryptographic hash (i.e. hashing random inputs until, by luck, a random input matches a desired output), wouldn't it make sense to keep track of potential solutions submitted and confirmed as invalid for a particular block, and to somehow communicate that to miners so the same work is not being done over and over again?

I realize this would require a lot of overhead, but it would seem worthwhile. Is there any mechanism to ensure two independent miners do not waste time working on the same inputs? Could sending a different seed for random number generation to every miner upon the start of a new round of mining have effect? I've read simplistic descriptions of mining as simply incrementing the nonce until a solution is found, but I've also read much more detailed explanations which would imply much more is involved. Even if only the nonce is changed in the input, the pool would still need to assign each miner a unique nonce to try after each submission, no?

As a final, semi-unrelated question regarding the implications of storing solutions: Say a pool stored every solution it had ever received, considering the massive size of the bitcoin network, would this not eventually become a statistically significant (in terms of usability) database of sha256 collisions? And eventually, could enough data be collected to come up with a derivation for SHA256? At minimum, could a pool with malicious intent temporarily divert unknowing miners's computing power to crack SHA256 based TLS signatures or PGP public keys? Especially a pool which also controlled the hardware and software on the majority of its devices (e.g. Antpool).


texts: PSBT encoding : what's the aim of convertBytes function?

texts:
I'm currently working on PSBT and I try to understand all the part of the original implementation.
Dealing with base64 PSBT encoding: it seems that we convert the buffer from a base 8 to a base 6 using the convertBytes function.
Is someone that could explain me the aim of this conversion ?


texts: what will be the best approach to accept Bitcoin payment instantly?

texts: How could I receive Bitcoin instant payment?


texts: LND Port 9735 still closed after setting up port forwarding and firewall

texts:
I have set up my bitcoin/lnd full node and would like to have it run as a routing node for the network. So I have opened my port 9735 from the router and allowed access to it in my firewall (ufw on Ubuntu).

Now, although my node is running and listening, my port still appears as closed. I have had no issue establishing connections or opening channels with other nodes but it seems they cannot connect to me.

Here are are my bitcoin.conf and lnd.conf file as well:

bitcoin.conf

# server=1 tells Bitcoin-Qt and bitcoind to accept JSON-RPC commands
server=1

listen=1
daemon=1

# RPC server options
rpcuser=xxxxxxxxxxxx
rpcpassword=xxxxxxxxxxxx

zmqpubrawblock=tcp://127.0.0.1:28332
zmqpubrawtx=tcp://127.0.0.1:28333

# Connection options
bind=192.168.0.12
externalip=94.107.123.223

# Use only TOR for routing
proxy=127.0.0.1:9050
bind=127.0.0.1
externalip=f5arugxcfm4tkjtc.onion

# Long running Bitcoin Nodes on the Tor Network
# http://nodes.bitcoin.st/tor/
addnode=pqosrh6wfaucet32.onion
addnode=btc4xysqsf3mmab4.onion
addnode=gb5ypqt63du3wfhn.onion
addnode=3lxko7l4245bxhex.onion

# Verified Online Bitcoin nodes on the Tor Network from
# https://rossbennetts.com/2015/04/running-bitcoind-via-tor/
addnode=kjy2eqzk4zwi5zd3.onion
addnode=it2pj4f7657g3rhi.onion

# Verified Online Bitcoin nodes on the Tor Network from
# https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Fallback_Nodes#Tor_nodes
addnode=hhiv5pnxenvbf4am.onion
addnode=bpdlwholl7rnkrkw.onion
addnode=vso3r6cmjoomhhgg.onion
addnode=kjy2eqzk4zwi5zd3.onion

# Verified Online Bitcoin nodes on the Tor Network from
# https://sky-ip.org
addnode=h2vlpudzphzqxutd.onion
addnode=xyp7oeeoptq7jllb.onion

# Maintain a full index of historical transaction IDs
# Required by LND Server
txindex=1

lnd.conf

; set external IP if not using NAT
externalip=94.107.123.223
; set node alias (seen in explorers)
alias=ln.brussels

tlsextraip=192.168.0.12
rpclisten=0.0.0.0:10009
restlisten=0.0.0.0:8080
listen=0.0.0.0:9735

[Bitcoin]
bitcoin.active=1
bitcoin.mainnet=1
bitcoin.node=bitcoind

[Bitcoind]
bitcoind.rpcuser=xxxxxxxxxx
bitcoind.rpcpass=xxxxxxxxxx
bitcoind.zmqpubrawblock=tcp://127.0.0.1:28332
bitcoind.zmqpubrawtx=tcp://127.0.0.1:28333


texts: How does the blockchain work, explained in layman terms?

texts: I did a lot of intensive research on how the Blockchain actually works. I understand the machinery but it's really difficult to explain this to a layman. Could someone provide the simplest of explanation that can be comprehended by any person,  whether or not he/she is a tech enthusiast.


texts: json_rpc_call solo mining with bitcoin running on Windows 7 for antminer

texts:
I setup BitcoinD on a Windows 7 PC.  I configured for defaults except user/pw and rpcallowip=192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0. have also tried 192.168.1.* with no luck.

I ultimately want to use an Antminer to connect to it for solo mining but cannot use it for anything other than mining on the same computer on which it is running.

WORKING: using bfgminer with the following command line:
bfgminer-5.0.0-win64\bfgminer-5.0.0-win64\bfgminer.exe -o 127.0.0.1:8332 -u rpcuser -p rpcpw

NOT WORKING: using bfgminer-5.0.0-win64\bfgminer-5.0.0-win64\bfgminer.exe -o 192.168.1.123:8332 -u rpcuser -p rpcpw

The only difference is the IP address where 123 is my IP.

Error: "json_rpc_call failed, retry after 30 seconds"

I looked at firewall and it has entries for "Bitcoin Core"

"Netstat -a" output:

0.0.0.0:8332
0.0.0.0:8333
127.0.0.1:8332
192.168.1.123:8333

Antminer says pool is dead.

How do I get another computer or antminer, on my network, to connect for solo mining?

Thanks.


texts: How to place a sell order on Kraken that only sells when the price stops going up?

texts:
I can do basic buy/sell on Kraken fine using market and limit orders.
I'd like to place a sell order that will only sell if:

the price of BTC reaches a certain minimum amount
but, if the price keeps on going up, I of course want the system to wait until the price starts to drop again, say X %, before selling.

How can I do this?


texts: Are there any miners that will always include microtransactions even when no fee is paid?

texts:
There is a node that will always relay every transaction, regardless of whether its amount is acceptable and whether a fee was paid.  This node is described in the Free Transaction Relay Policy page on the Bitcoin wiki.

There are no miners listed though which will always include these transaction.

Microtransactions for amounts worth just a few cents would not be able to pay a fee and even the minimum fee causes Bitcoin to no longer be "near free", as the amount on a percentage basis can become quite high.

Are there any miners which will include these microtransactions with no fee?  Do any of them connect to the node listed in the free relay policy page, or are the IP addresses for these shown anywhere?