When you connect your Bitcoin Wallet to a random node, there's a high enough probability that you'll connect to one owned by (or co-opted by) the surveillance state. They will then know all your addresses (and the billions of unused ones), so even if you had KYC-free coins in there, they'd all get doxxed.

You should run your own node and only ever connect your wallet to that.

Learn more here:

https://armantheparman.com/why-should-you-run-your-own-bitcoin-node/

https://armantheparman.com/run-a-node/

https://armantheparman.com/wallet-to-node/

My roommates bday is today as well as my gfs next week. Plus on top of that Black Friday just happened and cyber Monday was today. And Christmas is coming up as well. All of that reminded me for those who are looking for gifts that are crypto related this year that cold storage wallets are going to be a very popular option this year with all the exchange collapses.

That being said NEVER buy a cold storage wallet like. Ledger Nano S second hand or in other words used. Someone else has the passphrases and codes and although it can be reset it is never going to be secure as one that no one has ever set their hands on or looked at the secret phrases.

Buy directly from the producers. Brand new. Lower your risk of losing those valuables coins.

So, I had 1k left on BlockFi, the majority of it in their GUSD coin. I know, joke is on me for not reading all the signs on the wall. I wanted to hope they could bounce back. Now that I can kiss that money goodbye, can I claim this as a crypto loss on my US tax return? Where would I claim this loss? I do my own (simple) taxes with TurboTax Deluxe. Do I need any documents from BlockFi to attach to my return? I'm sure others have been on the same boat with other coins. Thank you in advance for your help, everyone.

I had some in there, and I'm aware they paused withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy. I'm wondering, do people believe there will be a total loss of everything a small investor like me had? Or will they eventually be able to restructure and allow users to withdraw?

I'm aware I'll get some people who just chime in with "Not your keys, not your crypto" and flame me for even asking or having any on an exchange at all, but I'm more interested in any knowledgeable or informative input on what those of you smarter than me here believe will happen.

* ANY DMS WILL BE IGNORED *

I was really careless on twitter and signed up for an NFT thing on a scammer site (a Yuga Labs copy account). I used my Meta mask wallet. The reason why I did it is because I only had a tiny amount on it left and though "why not." So after the transaction, I have only $1 left in ETH. So, it's not a problem if the scammers clean out the wallet. What my question is, are the only chains on my wallet compromised and anything else on my phone/computer compromised? It's not a wallet I use much anymore but I do have some BNB on it.

Based on several indicators, I am very bearish on Nexo, especially for the next weeks and months. I believe the chance their native token will underperform the market (or possibly crash) is very high.

I was wondering if there is any way I can short Nexo token? Unfortunately, I could not find a single CEX that offers a solution for that.

Is there maybe a decentralized way? I once read about a decentralized lending protocol that let me borrow USDT against my USDC, which is technically a short position against USDT. The rates were very low there, like 3-4%/year. I am willing to pay a lot more for a short position on Nexo token.

Do the decentralized lending platforms only support more liquid coins, or is there a platform for altcoins as well?

Thank you for your answers! All the best!

This is from the book Bitcoin: Hard Money you can’t fuck with by Jason Williams. I read this last year and invested a decent amount in GUSD on Blockfi to earn interest. I recently learned that this guy was an investor in Blockfi along with Pomp.

​

https://preview.redd.it/je95wxe6hr2a1.png?width=1536&format=png&auto=webp&s=3d4b5b5df45bd30307e903d2555b3b9730ba04be

​

​

https://preview.redd.it/adkw2px4hr2a1.png?width=1536&format=png&auto=webp&s=c407b7db47a05406d57d9e1f2f602091809bf109

Another person that I was influenced by was Dan Held. He always promoted these lending platforms and even promoted Blockfi and Celsius on Twitter. I listened to these guys and lent my Bitcoins and GUSD.

A few months later I needed the money so took GUSD out. I definitely dodged a bullet here and feel very lucky to have followed many "toxic" Bitcoin maxis on Twitter and Reddit. Reading their constant tweets about self-storage and anti-CEFI rants prompted me to move my funds to a cold wallet.

Now, I realize how Bitcoins maxis are always right. Many maxis correctly predicted the fallout of these CEFI platforms in 2020 and 2021.

Wonder, how many people got rekt due to these influencers. I want to hammer down the message to everyone here. It is not worth risking 100% of your funds for minor interest gains. It's not worth trusting any platform or any individual. Why do you guys still invest in shitcoins and pre-mined scams like ETH, ADA, or SOL? Bitcoin is the only real one. Rest is all noise.

Always, DYOR and store your own coins. Don't trust, Verify.

So of course, like any good little internet boy, I did in fact Google this, but maybe I just wasn't putting in the correct search query or something, because well nada for answers, and the information I did find was information pertaining to before the Reddit Vault successfully went live on the Ethereum blockchain.

The reason I ask, is because I do not like this verbiage in the Reddit Vault terms of service:

Can I lose access to my Vault?

If your Reddit account is suspended, while we can’t take away your Vault (or any Collectible Avatars in it), we may restrict your ability to interact with your Vault on the Reddit platform until the suspension ends.

Remember that Reddit's site-wide and community rules apply to your activity on Reddit, and you may be unable to access your Vault (including any Collectible Avatars in it) through our services if you break site rules or violate our Previews Terms.

My next question is about my 12 or 24 word seed phrase. I read somewhere that when creating a word sheet (Ledger Billfodl) that I only need the first 4 letters of the seed words, because the Ledger will auto-populate the rest of the word once you put the first 4 letters in... is that true?

I hope this wasn't posted somewhere else on here already, if so my apologies.

Any information would be greatly appreciated, and hopefully this post gets populated on the first page of Google whenever someone else is seeking the same information, so thank you in advance!

Hi. I've been using Kucoin for a while because Binance don't have Futures in UK but am fed up with the massive amount of maintenance shut downs Kucoin always have at times of high volatility. I'm pretty sure they do it to stop cutomers making decent profits.

So I need a new CEX. I really like the clean UI of Kucoin and Binance, whereas, I looked at PrimeXBT and hated their UI - too messy. Having a phone app is essential.

Obviously, SAFU is important in these times.

Please, all recommendations appreciated.

Thanks

edit:

Thanks for all your replies. I've signed up with Woox and Mexc and will try them out.

Now to put my life savings on a 200x short without stop loss! LFG!!!

Just for the sake of diversification, would it be the one digital coin worth having alongside other more traditional forms of investment? Would you recommend anything else? I thought about Bitcoin too but maybe it is just a bit too volatile for this purpose, but PaxGold seems like a good option. It can actually give me more than i would make with the bonds and it isn't as risky as most coins.

I'm open to suggestions. Where would you park your money right now? Not just crypto, but investments, in general

I don’t have a big bag of crypto but I bought my hardware wallet. Ledger has 10% off till tomorrow btw.

What do you recommend I do in preparation?

I use binance recurring buy usdt and then auto investing in different coins every week.

The fees don’t seem too bad about 3gbp for btc and about the same for eth. Does that sound right? Or am I reading it wrong?

Have about 25 different coins.

Should I keep some on cex or transfer them all to binance.

Does ledger allow stalking? Are the returns any good?

Edit: staking

Assuming you use like binance or coinbase or something similar.. and you want to day/swing trade some generic stuff like bitcoin or dogecoin ..what percentage gain on each trade would you personally aim for - assuming that youre going to be a good stand up citizen and report all of everything on your taxes and get ass ramed by the fees and taxes for buying selling etc...in other words, would it even be worth it to try and take a couple thousand dollars and try to buy sell buy sell getting like 1-5 percent on each trade, or would you essentially just end up spending more time than its worth in the end..just general thoughts with ball park estimates please

As entitled, what are the best deals for hardware wallets this Black Friday/Cyber Monday?

I have seen that Ledger are doing 10% off for Black Friday and previously had a deal where they were giving $10 or $20 Bitcoin vouchers with each purchase but that has since finished. Are we expecting any more deals?

Trezor are doing 30% off until Monday so it is unlikely there will be another deal.

Are there any other hardware wallets that are on offer that the moment that are worth buying?

Note: I will update this post with any good suggestions

foreword I know NFT's get some stick, I myself didn't follow them at all until the Reddit hype that has gripped many of us, as I can see the potential of projects with a strong social following to turn decent profits. So NFT debate is welcomed in this post as I'm hoping to be further educated myself.

I want to teach my child the ins and outs of the future of the Blockchain, of decentralisation, self custody, and freedom from the impending big brother society I feel the world's rapidly slipping into. Namely BTC but, I do believe that innovation can mean current and future projects may improve the world in all areas of the space.

The problem is, she's at an age she'll be bored out of her skull and dad will look like a conspiracy theorist she'll want to disown if we dive straight in!

She's recently been interested in her art though, all bias aside I think she's really good at it, and want to bolster her interest there too as any parent would.

Which brings me to NFT's, I think they'd be a nice little gateway for her to start exploring the Blockchain, a launchpad to catch her interest and open the door to educating her in a way she may enjoy. (Alongside realising the importance of work, setting up her own little nestegg along the way through selling her art)

The problem is, I've not delved into NFT's at all and don't really know where to start, hopefully someone can advise here of the simplest ways to get her involved in creating them whilst allowing her potential to move into the cryptospace as she gains interest as we go?

All advice gratefully accepted as always you lovely people 😘

I created a Trust Wallet a year or so ago and loaded it up with a little ETH and a bunch of LRC and have since created a GameStop wallet and wish to transfer all my coins. I assume I can transfer from TW to GME via L1 paying gas and then transfer from L1 to L2 paying more gas but I remember reading awhile ago something about using a seed phrase from one wallet to restore into another if they are the same type.

Can I avoid gas by using my Trust wallet seed phrase to restore into a *NEW* GameStop wallet (my existing one has been activated but that's it) and thus my ETH/LRC will be available (in L1 I assume)?

I'm a GenX noob with very little knowledge/understanding of crypto/wallets, please be gentle.

I’m wondering about the basics.

Is it more expensive to make these withdrawals at certain times of the day? Are certain exchanges worse than others for withdrawal fees?

I’m my case, I just tried a test send of $30 of our grand daddy blue chip from crypto.com app to trust wallet. When it got to trust wallet it was only $20 worth. I’m so confused. If I sent a larger amount like $100 or $1000 would the fee be the same? Would it be larger?

Also, I have a ledger ordered from their website on Black Friday. Would you recommend waiting for the ledger or getting the crypto off the exchange right now and then sending from trust wallet to ledger later when it arrives?

Anyway, I apologize if there’s somewhere else I should have posted this. If that’s the case please let me know. Thanks in advance for the advice

Hi, first post here!

I'd like to share my views on Coinbase stock, as at this moment there are some key factors I consider relevant taking into consideration, which are:

1. Obvious one: crypto markets are in a bear stage, and have historically behaved as cyclical markets, so odds are quite storng on a bull market during 2023 / 2024. Ofc, this doesn't mean that it will recover its 60k + all time max, but I believe it is quite reasonable to see a growth in btc market cap and price.
2. BTC, the biggest crypto in the market, will be halved probably during 1st half of 2023. Maybe my analysis is quite simplistic, but I would bet that is a factor to consider. On its own maybe its not to make BTC rise.
3. Markets expect a FED pivot in interest rates, maybe in 50 basis points. There is a strong consensus that high interest rates are translated into stock and crypto price decrease. A FED pivot would also be a factor that could make BTC rise.
4. If BTC rises, and so its market cap, it will probably mean the crypto market will also follow that tendency. That would extremely benefit COIN balance sheet and cashflow.
5. FTX, on of the biggest competitors, is down. The scandal around it is now scaring away people from crypto markets even more, making everything that has "crypto" on its name toxic to investors. Prices, as a natural consequence, are going down. COIN rumors over FTX crash contagion have been dissipated as the company stated it only had 15$ million of deposits with FTX.
6. Given the probable chance that crypto markets could experience a bull phase during the next year, the two main options new traders will have are BNB (biggest and most popular one, lower fees) and COIN (which is more welcoming to new investors). The focus COIN has over attracting new investors with a simple, intuitiv eapp, could be a good advantage towards its main competitor in a stage when market is receiving loads of newcomers. Plus, COIN doesn't seem to have as many legal/regulatory problems as Binance does.
7. COIN profits as a result of its share in USDC, which went up more than a 360% since last year, and will probably continue to grow (can't tell if in the same proportion, but USDC is currently one of the leading ones in the e money market).
8. COIN has 5,006,584 $ only in cash. It's 50% share on Centre Consortium (USDC) hasn't provided an exact data about its financials, but it could aslo have a big amount of it. Compared to its current 10,000,000 market cap, knowing for sure they have 5,000,0000 in cash and God knows what from USDC, that by itself seems a good reason to invest in COIN.

So, this is my first post ever here, first time making a stock analysis, if you can say that what I've done is one. I'd like to hear your thoughts about it!

And please, forgive my english in case I made any spelling mistakes, I'm from Barcelona.

Many here make us remember how riches are done in bear markets and not in bull markets. Global turmoil indicates that the current situation may take longer than previously expected to recover.

It seems logical that we should increase our DCA amount for these times. Do you generally agree with that? and if so, what strategy do you follow?

I've heard people talking also about improving their entry point with "bigger amounts" when crypto goes even lower. In that particular case FOMO kicks in (to me) and it gives me the impression that waiting for BTC to go to sub 10 is like 100K eoy and again greed is in action again. And in doing so, greed prevents us from selling when in profits and from buying when crypto prices are low.

what are your strategies (apart from great time to accumulate) for bear markets? I think stocks can be great indicators to assess the current situation of markets and how low BTC could go and SPY does not look very promising.

But, at the end of all reasoning, I always conclude that I don't want to be in the group of people who say "I should have bought more....".

While we're all stuck in this bear market, I watched at some coins which this sub in-officially declared for dead with the main reason:

because they haven't reached its former ATH in the last bullrun in 2021.

Now I show you some examples, not advertising these in any ways:

EOS:

• ATH in April 2018 at $21.27

• "bottom" March 2020 at $1.99

• bullrun 2021 17th May $11.38 (5.7x from bottom)

NANO:

• ATH in Jan 2018 at $33.69

• "bottom" Mar 2020 $0.35

• bullrun 2021 May 2021 $11 (31x from bottom)

---

So if anybody bought the ATH, they never had recovered from their losses. But it is just half of the truth about >90% of altcoins ever reaching its ATH again and therefore saying that they're bad.

Conclusion: They are still a viable investment, if they're bought in a bear market, as a lower percentage in your portfolio as risk management, but with high reward profile.

EDIT: typos

I have a fairly simple question... Why is decentralized better?

I get the idea that there's no corrupt central body. I understand regulation can slow innovation. I also generally understand that you don't want a powerful few.

This doesn't actually support the argument - that removing them is somehow better.

I also generally don't like the idea of the general populous making decisions around things like banking.

In general I think people are unfit to make decisions for others. Specializing in something makes you fit for that decision.

I saw a person this weekend hit a tree, just driving down the road and didn't turn. Nothing wrong with them, just not paying attention (I stopped to check on them). My coworkers have their passwords in their Notebooks. People consistently vote against farm subsidizes in the farming community I live in.

Can you help me understand why the way we vote and support these defi / blockchain projects makes you feel like it's better than the existing systems?

Or am I missing the actual argument completely?

I have an insignificant portion of my portfolio in crypto.

Thank you!

Every week we already get several posts that speculate if we are at a bottom. We got a small break during the FTX collapse but they are back up in number. We may get some kind of analysis, at times good tho that is rare, most of the time half-baked and other times completely nonsensical. Even at this point in time people are looking for prices pump when crypto is going through what is likely the most chaotic, uncertainly and trustless moments in cryptos history. It shows you were at least some if not a lot of people here are for. We are at a point when things could potentially all collapse but these people are still chasing the pump. Although I would personally say a fully collapse is more unlikely, the point still stands.

Even then, if those people actually thought about things they'd realise that there is no way prices can pump. Apart from the terrible state of the general macroeconomy, crypto is going through serious 'growing pains'(to put it nicely) of its own. Even if all you care about is the pump, crypto has to fix its issues to have any chance to properly become an asset of it's own and break from stock correlations.

CEXes and their reserves need to become trustless and blockchain validated by math so we don't need to rely on founders' 'trust me bro'. Defi needs to become more hack-resistant to encourage self-custody and those who prefer complete anonymity. Regulation is coming whether we like it or not but we need regulation and not overregulation where government doesn't go overboard and stifle crypto. We probably still need crypto to be simplified for the regular Joe for mass adoption. It is only when this is fixed when crypto can pump as more average people enter the sector since they can easily use it and they can trust it.

It doesn't really matter if you're here for the tech or just here for the gains. Pumps full of hot air only quickly deflate and go nowhere. We need pumps backed by tech and value for prices 'to moon'. Fixing crypto benefits everyone regardless of your stance or position.

Hi folks,

I have a pretty large amount of crypto across multiple currencies and I've been upgrading my cold wallet recently to try and improve security and recoverability (I've previously lost a seed phrase for another wallet which was very painful)

My new setup is 3 Ledger Nano S devices stored in tamper-evident bags in multiple geographic locations, each is running the exact same wallets via a shared recovery phrase, the PIN needed to unlock them only being known to me. The idea being this balances security (only I know the PIN) with recoverability (it would be very hard for all 3 devices to fail) - Example of device 3: https://i.imgur.com/tnheHKA.jpg

What I can't work out though is what to do with the recovery sheets, I have 3 of them which I'm currently just hiding but I don't really like that at all. I understand I can't pull the recovery phrase from the Ledger devices after setup (this was my preferred option) so I'm likely going to have to store them so I can enrol future devices into the wallet

Is there a good way to go about storing recovery sheets? I've thought about putting them in safe deposit boxes but that feels like it significantly downgrades my security, because with the Ledger devices you needed some knowledge only I had as well as possession of the device. I've also considered encrypting the recovery phrase somehow on an airgapped machine but this would be a huge pain, and very expensive if I destroyed the airgapped machine after it handled the recovery phrase.

If anyone has any better suggestions would very much appreciate any advice :)

First I want to say that this bear market was my first, I've never experienced one before.

I did all mistakes that can be made in this bear market, as like the all mistakes you can do in bull markets.

But besides the losses I've made in both of the markets (for example: not taking profits in bull, buying the dip, but it keeps dipping throughout the year and bear period),...

...the bear market taught me invaluable lesson:

• Patience and "Steadfastness**

Why this?

In the bullmarket, I was just chasing pumps (spoiler: which ofc dumped on me), but the only valuable thing in bullmarkets to learn is "not to FOMOing in.

But in a bear market, there you truly learn to recognize the way of investing and "DYOR".

Being patient, not chasing pumps, going in for the long term and investing in good and legit project which you have to discover and research yourself. Less distractive shitcoins around, which eats up some of one's investment.

I pray for everyone being safe and patient in this hard bear market. Let's stay strong together.