Topic: BitcoinTalk Newbie of the Year 2021[Voting] - page 2. (Read 930 times)

If anyone wants to go over a list of all accounts created during 2021, sorted by merits (descending), as an entry point indicator to start looking through profiles, the data is available here:

https://public.tableau.com/shared/XT27NJPMK?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

Data is as of last Friday, and I’ve pre-filtered the list to those non-banned with 50 merits and above. If you click on a name, a popup screen should appear, with the option to go to the User Profile on Bitcointalk.

This user has already been nominated more than once, in my opinion, there's no need to nominate a user more than once, if your favorite candidate has been nominated already, then you can either just wait till when the voting commences to vote for that very user, or go ahead and nominate another user to make things more competitive and interesting.

According to the error message, I looked at the code and found this:


So, you're calling getKey() just fine, but something breaks when this method calls ECKey.fromPrivate(...).
It seems to me that there's something wrong with bytes, so probably your initialization of dumpedPrivateKey is wrong. Might want to look into that a bit more.

Thanks to @larry_vw_1955, I think I got it.

We can see in the Java code that it doesn't permit private keys zero or one exactly because they're not allowed to be used:

But in this case, ill choose this user n0nce  cause he did a lot of things here in the forum he share his knowledge with everyone here. Here's

I thought about that user, but decided not to nominate him. The good thing he did was only a week ago, and that's why several people remember him. If this nomination would have been half a year later, chances are he wouldn't be the first one to think of.

I thought about that user, but decided not to nominate him. The good thing he did was only a week ago, and that's why several people remember him. If this nomination would have been half a year later, chances are he wouldn't be the first one to think of.

i will also nominate EZ0010

Though I believe, a nomination would require someone to be contributed to the forum heavily, and thus, someone with lots of helpful posts and a lot of merits must be nominated, I would still go with EZ0010 because of his honesty. It doesn't happen every now and then what he did. He proved bitcointalk has honest members too, not only a lot of scammers. There are not a lot of his posts. I will simply quote his post where he got most of his merits.
By the way, his profile address of vanity address at least says he is somewhat knowledgeable and a genuine user.

-snip-
Important thing is that he accomplished all that without any paid signature advertisement on his profile.

PS
Nominating yourself for Newbie of the Year is not cool at all 

PS
Nominating yourself for Newbie of the Year is not cool at all  

Everyone should have the opportunity to run a node.

I strongly believe that it's one of Bitcoin's core values to have as many full nodes (and preferably also miners, but that's another story ) as possible, distributed in as many households as possible.

While cool node boxes, composed of all-new hardware with SSDs and sexy metal cases can be built for between 200€ and 300€ (or dollars!), that might still be too much for many people. Especially in countries where wages are lower, I understand that this can be an infeasibly large sum of money.
MyNode and Argon One m.2 enclosures, full setup ~250€

The good news: it can be achieved much cheaper than the above mentioned figures! In fact, it can even be free if you have old hardware lying around.
The fact of the matter is, Bitcoin Core doesn't need a whole lot of resources and a 10-year-old, decommissioned laptop or Desktop PC might have enough power to run it.

So I would like to encourage everybody that's not running a node yet, to reconsider it if price for the device itself or an SSD was the main deterring factor.

Hardware selection
Almost any kind of desktop PC, laptop, NUC-type device of the last 10 years should suffice.

Make sure you can swap the drive (they are usually dead after such a long time) and you have a working PSU for it.
Anything else - screen, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, it can all be broken. You will SSH into the machine anyway and you can connect to a HDMI screen + USB keyboard during setup.
This kind of hardware is very often given away for free if you ask around friends and family, or got cheaply (or free) on craigslist.

Recommendations
RAM: 4GB - 8GB (Even as little as 1GB can suffice! If you have more, it's better of course See my graph down below about sync time with 4 vs 8GB)
Drive: 500GB - 1TB (HDD is fine, but SSD will help for faster initial sync. 500 will not last long and not suffice for Lightning and Electrum server - 1TB would be advised!)
CPU: Intel Core i3 (2nd generation or up tested and working just fine) or better - dual core is advised by me

If the machine you acquired, doesn't meet those specs, you can in many cases just add more RAM or swap the hard drive.
I would stay away from Chromebooks with non-replaceable drives and RAM since they're usually too small and USB drives aren't convenient.

Price
Of course, this low price is mainly made possible by relying on free and cheap old & used stuff.
The final price will depend a lot on how many things you can find for free, but it's possible to build a node from scratch for around $50.
I personally built one of my nodes off a gifted laptop that had no charger, so the person wanted to throw it away. I just bought the PSU for ~20€ and added an existing 500GB USB HDD for the bitcoin directory. So that node cost me just 20€. Here's a setup if you really can't find anything for free.

Example setup for $58:^{[JUST QUICKLY CHECKED EBAY!]}
Laptop without RAM and charger for $29:


4GB RAM for $10:


Laptop charger for $10:


500GB HDD for $9:


Of course, shipping adds up and I actually surpassed my $50 limit already. But I just checked eBay 'buy now' section very quickly! If you search locally, ask around, you will easily find someone who will give you an old laptop that doesn't turn on anymore (often broken charger and / or battery) or with cracked screen etc. for free.
Then you just source the charger and a new HDD for a total of $20!

If you actually have a working (but old) laptop already, with charger and everything, maybe invest the full $50 into a new SSD for better performance and longevity!

TL;DR
Get as much free and cheap used, old stuff as possible and slap it together!
I know it's not the 'deepest' topic that exists, but it's mainly to explain and show figuratively that running a node can be done very, very cheap and storage size is not an issue either, since HDDs are so damn cheap and can easily be swapped out.

Have you seen The future of Bitcointalk: Low Ranking Top Merit earners in the past 30 days?

Yesterday, I attended a crypto seminar in my city.  I knew I had to be there to increase my knowledge about cryptocurrency. There were popular crypto traders present as speakers, there was an interactive section where we were given the opportunity to ask questions. Afterwards we had dinner with the speakers. I got the opportunity to have a close look on what it means to be a crypto trader or investor. I won $200 for being the most interactive person in the room. These are some of the points I went home with
1.Identify with a community: I am glad I have bitcointalk forum.  I would not know this things I do now without the forum. We live in an age of Google, YouTube videos and tiktok where everyone is a professional. I guarantee you the quality of information dispensed here on a daily is incredible. When you come to a community such as this. You don’t have to ask stupid questions the first thing is to carefully read through the threads. Understand the subject being discussed before asking questions. Every community has its rules, try and be conversant with those rules so you don’t get kicked out. I'm happy to be here I would not have made that $200 if I wasn't a member of this community.
2. Learning before earning: This is one point that stuck. Making money has always been the goal. It is very convenient to forget that there is a process to achieving  that goal. You have to be aware of activities happening in the crypto industry.
3. Mentorship is important: There is a old saying where I am from "if you have a father you will fly farther" that means you will fly on their wings. Mentorship is essential for you to learn crypto trading. A mentor gives you experience. I know we are in a digital era where you can learn trading courses online and read books about cryptocurrency. That alone cannot gauarantee success. Mentorship is the shortest cut to success you need to differentiate the hype from the value. You have to aware of activities in the crypto space. Know the real from the fake. This is something you learn from experience. You must learn to differentiate the value from the hype. There are lots of so called successful traders online and offline. You will be shocked to find they have nothing to offer.
4. Consistency:There are days crypto will slap you in the face. The First three letters of crypto are “CRY”...that was meant to be funny   There is so much in the crypto industry defi, Nft, blockchain technology, investments, blogging. You have to choose an area to focus on and be the best in that field. Consistency is very important you can’t be a crypto investor by day and pessimist by night. Believe in yourself and what you do

Elektra supermarket in Mexico recently started accepting Bitcoin payments and is encouraging their clients to do so, as they offer a 20% discount when paying with it (until end of the year).

Here's the promo banner (in Spanish):



Now people in Mexico are able to buy groceries, and retail in general using Bitcoin directly.

An interesting thing to consider is that the parent company, Grupo Elektra, has operations in these countries: Mexico, US, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Panama, and El Salvador.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grupo_Elektra

That means that they already accept Bitcoin directly from at least 2 countries: Mexico, and El Salvador. Some of the other countries in that list could potentially be the next one.

I know how it feel to lose some Bitcoin either by human error or getting scammed as I experienced both and dont want someone to get same feelings.

Happy to see you got your money back. And many thanks to theymos

What do you suggest?

You can't enforce this in a poll.

Based on Merit earned and post quality, n0nce did quite good this year.

2. You must be a Full Member or higher to ~ Vote

The idea is inspired from econoalchemist's blog post Securing a Bitcoin seed phrase in stainless-steel washers. and it's very great:

• Materials cost under 5 bucks (€, $, £, it's always the same ballpark). I paid around 3€ for 32 washers and maybe 1€ for the screw and nut.
• No shipping cost since everyone has a hardware store nearby.
• Anonymous since nobody knows what you use basic metal hardware for.
• All stainless steel, quite durable, on par with commercial Bitcoin backup products.
• Greater thickness than some commercial products

Backstory:
After reading the aforementioned blog post, I went to download the file for the jig from blockmic. It can be found in their Thingiverse and they wrote a very good article about it.

But: For one, I wanted to use larger washers. In fact, I think I got the largest that I could find in the first hardware store I walked into. A reason for this is that larger washers are usually also thicker and thus more durable, and the other reason is simply because the stamps I already had were too large for such small washers.

I have 6mm high letters and the stamps are 9x9mm in size.

So I did the natural thing: create a new 3D design from scratch, which is completely parametrized. This allows me to adapt it for anyone with different sized washers and / or stamps! Then did a few iterations, as shown here, and now it's ready to rock!

It's really the most pleasent stamping experience (only did plates without any jig so far), since the stamp is held in place very well, while still being able to slide and of course it's perfectly square. The inner and outer parts are also designed such that there is not much friction when assembling them, but there is no wobble when stamping. So you can actually go back and re-stamp a letter if it didn't come out perfect for example!



PSA: I can achieve much better print quality than what you see in the images, but I am finishing up some old rolls which have taken a lot of humidity so the results don't look as good. Also, I used more perimeters than CryptoCloaks since it makes things more sturdy. Finally, the darker colour you use, the more print lines show (especially when photographed)


An idea to achieve tamper evidence and protection (though we had the discussion if it's even a good idea or not): weld on the nut.
Protection: Not everyone just has an angle grinder.
Evidence: Someone would need to weld it back on which is visible, or redo the backup identically, thus needing a welder AND a 3D printer and all the same supplies that you used. Otherwise the letter size would be different for example.