Bitcoin

Since Bitcoin's inception in 2009, the amount of energy required to mine has always been less than the amount of Bitcoin you got for mining. But that was never going to last; there was a limit of 21 million possible Bitcoins baked into the system from the jump, and the rate of new coins mined has gotten slimmer as competition has increased, making the economics worse and worse over time.

These days, one Bitcoin trades for around $94,000, but costs about $137,000 in electricity for small-scale operations to mine, making new coins an economic liability for all but the largest players. For those whales, Gizmodo estimates the most optimal cost for mining a bitcoin at around $82,000 — slim margins which are shrinking fast.

Right now, the top 8 percent of crypto wallets own a little under 99 percent of all Bitcoin in circulation. Zooming in even farther, we see that the top 1 percent of crypto wallets control over 90 percent — so much for all that decentralization that Bitcoin was supposed to represent.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28740924

I've used Trezor model T and Ledger Nano. Was wanting to explore other hardware wallets.

What hardware wallets do you recommend?

I have been using crypto since 2017, made plenty of dumb trades which caused me to lose out a lot. Currently my portfolio is about 80% BTC and while the new USA admin seems they may do more damage than good to the crypto space I'm still positive about Bitcoin.

This sub seems like a meme or anti-btc sub mostly. Anybody here who isn't that way?

Do you think a corporation would do anything to get an extra 1% return on their next quarterly report? Would they do things that hurt them in the long-term just so this quarter looked good? Make their products worse for a quick buck? Fuck over their long-term employees they spent years training? Skimp on quality and safety? Yes. They absolutely would. Corporations pay 3-5% on credit card fees and wait weeks for settlement. Lightning is <1% and it's instant. It's that simple. That's why Bitcoin lightning is going to win in the long run.

It's the same reason the food cart down the street takes venmo: because, at one time, venmo was free, which made it cheaper than credit cards. It's not free now though, because it couldn't be sustainably free, because nothing is free, and because venmo has every incentive to suck every dollar of profit out of those transactions it can. They have a captive audience. Lightning doesn't work that way. Liquidity providers, nodes, etc they all have to compete for your payment, so over time, fees get lower, not higher. Venmo isn't growing in adoption any more among merchants, lightning is.

The savings on fees is so significant that merchants can offer a discount to customers equivalent to the customer's normal credit card cash back and the merchant can still save money compared to credit cards. Last time Bitcoin got real hyped and lots of merchant adoption, fees and transaction confirmation times became a limiting factor. That factor is gone now. Cash App, in the US, has 25% market penetration. That's a lightning wallet. When customers realize they can get a 3% discount everywhere just by using it? Game over for credit cards.

If you haven't tried lightning, it's awesome. Instant confirmation, fees <1%, and very decentralized. There were some growing pains, but it's pretty robust now, I use it on a daily basis. It's where the majority of Bitcoin transactions occur, and nostr users alone are using it to send millions of transactions a month.

Looked around and saw this didn't exist it, so I made it. If you need to report your Zeus transactions to Koinly for tax purposes, this script will convert Zeus's export format into something Koinly can use.

I've been using Zeus as a daily driver for months, solid wallet, quick transaction confirmations, handles on-chain and lightning, really a winner all around. I like that it can give you a lightning address too!

https://github.com/makeasnek/Zeus2Koinly/

Stack sats, stay humble. Onwards

A computer scientist has been found to have committed contempt of court for falsely and persistently claiming to be the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

In March, the High Court ruled Craig Wright was not Satoshi, and ordered him to stop claiming he was.

However, he continued to launch legal cases asserting he had intellectual property rights to Bitcoin, including a claim he was owed $1.2 trillion (£911 billion).

A judge said that amounted to a "flagrant breach" of the original court order and sentenced him to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21228280

The bill, known as the Digital Assets Authorization Act, was passed by a 176-26 vote.

The legislation offers regulatory clarity at a time when federal regulations on digital assets are scant. While former president Donald Trump has promised to transform the United States into the "crypto capital of the planet," his vision is short on details.

MARA's process captures gas that would have been flared, generating carbon credits

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18390499

For those of you using Proton services to protect your privacy, a new feature is being rolled out which is a self-custody Bitcoin wallet. If you have a proton e-mail address, you can now send and receive Bitcoin automatically. This is in tradition with their long-standing policy of accepting Bitcoin payments for their services.

A few key points to know:

• You and only you have access to the Bitcoin, it is a self-custody wallet. You are not dependent on proton's cooperation to access your funds and they do not hold onto the funds for you.
• Proton automatically translates e-mail addresses to Bitcoin addresses. This means you can send/receive BTC to/from any Proton user by just knowing their e-mail address
• Proton does not support Bitcoin lightning. This means transactions will take an average of 10 minutes for an average fee of 75c. Hopefully they will add lightning in the future so that can drop to under a second for pennies in fees. Lightning would also enhance privacy
• Note that using Bitcoin is pseudonymous. Using it privately and anonymously requires some effort.
• Proton has also put together a good primer on Bitcoin here.

from their blog post:

Early in our journey, we experienced first-hand what it’s like being cut off from the financial system and at the mercy of large banks and institutions — an ordeal that affects millions of people across the globe. In the summer of 2014, as the original Proton Mail crowdfunding campaign was in progress, Proton had a near-death experience when PayPal froze our funds, questioned whether encryption was legal, and whether Proton had government approval to encrypt emails.

Fortunately, in that instance PayPal returned the blocked funds, and Proton was able to start the journey that we’ve been on for the past decade. However, that dangerous moment has always stayed in our minds, and we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.

Having experienced firsthand the unreliability of the traditional financial sector, building Proton Wallet is an important strategic move to make Proton more resilient and independent in the future. By enabling us and the entire Proton community to more easily adopt means of payment that deliver on the promise of financial freedom for all, we better insulate Proton from the risks posed by traditional finance.