[...]There are still various tactics that can cause plausible deniability in regards to coins, and sure depending on who any of us might be wanting to be private from.... There is a lot of power to be able to directly transact with folks, and if we are drawing from wallets that might ONLY have as much as the transaction or maybe reasonable amounts higher than the transaction, then maybe no one would be able to figure out exactly how many hops back they might have to go to figure out if we might have larger stashes, and yeah we could end up making mistakes if someone is going back and looking at from where those coins had come. But yeah, if we get a lot more people transacting with bitcoin then that could also help to have the transactions to be more common... but we still might not want to spend from a 2 BTC wallet in order to buy $100 worth of something, but instead use our wallet that has 0.00634582 BTC.. and yeah maybe in some places we might want to use even a smaller wallet... but yeah, maybe $100 or less might be better done on lightning network to the extent anyone is set up with that ability..and practicing, too.[...]
What I do is keep a very small amount of BTC (currently, around 0.6 BTC) in an exchange, so whenever I need to spend/send some small amount (say, $100), I just do it directly on the exchange (either convert to fiat and withdraw to my bank, or withdraw the 0.001 BTC to my phone's hot wallet, and from there to the intended recipient). Any trace done on such transaction would point to my hot wallet and then to the exchange's hot wallet (used for daily customers' withdrawals), and not linking in any way to my cold wallet. The exchange is effectively mixing my 0.6 BTC and isolating the two wallets, so the recipient wouldn't be able to link to one via the other. Not talking about coffee purchases. I guess Lightning could be used for these, but, believe it or not, I haven't used it yet for anything. I don't even know how it's done in practice (Lightning wallet app?), but I'd like to get into it. The thing is, we (still) live in a fiat world, so buying coffee with fiat makes more sense, as things currently stand at least.
I like to look for opportunities to spend bitcoin in order to try to support the infrastructure when possible, but yeah, it is not always easy to find such possibilities. For lightning network, I have ONLY used BlueWallet (no longer available as their custodial), Phoenix (no longer available in USA), Breez (they force closed my channel in late 2023 and I have not opened a new one) and Cash App (custodial). I had downloaded Agua and I am not opposed to trying out some others, even though there are ONLY so many hours in the day...but nice to have some option available if I were to walk into a coffee shop that accepts lightning network payments, I would probably buy some coffee or something, even if I wasn't thirsty.
An obvious question could arise from the above: what's the point of converting to $100 of fiat from the 0.6 BTC stored in the exchange, instead of simply using $100 from my fiat bank account?
Many times I don't like transacting small amounts from exchanges, since I hate paying them so many fees and I don't like not having coin control even though it seems that it could serve your obscurity purpose, but it seems to be overly guarding yourself.. but yeah, each of us has to figure out how much is enough or not. I don't mind holding some larger amounts on my phone like I would in my physical wallet, and surely if I was going to buy some kind of more expensive item in bitcoin, then yeah, I would pre-charge higher amounts for that purpose. I did have a real world purchase of something that was close to $10k .. and I used a wallet that I had gone up a lot in value, so it was like $2,200 in that wallet, and then by the time I made the large purchase, the BTC price had gone up so much that it was like $15k at the time that I made the transaction... .so that person probably could have seen that I got around $5k back in change.. usually i keep much smaller amounts, on any of my hot or semi-hot wallets.
Well, not all things we do make logical sense, and sometimes we may need to make use of our coins for some illogical, psychological reason. For example (I've probably mentioned this before), the current fiat value of my above mentioned 0.6 BTC exceeds my total fiat investment value used to buy my entire BTC stash over the years. My plan is to use that 0.6 BTC to slowly withdraw my entire fiat investment amount.
The numbers can get crazy, and even figuring out how to calculate them. I recall several times wondering if I should withdraw my initial investment or not, yet it seems that over the years, I had ended up withdrawing my initial investment, even though I did not really do it for that purpose.. but there were a couple of times that I was dealing with some business type arrangements, and I just decided to either buy out the situation or to provide loans to others, so then those were largely taken from my bitcoin, and so I had more than cashout my original investment. I also had some coins lost due to my own mistakes that could have been considered cashing out my initial investment too. Funny that all of these things can be done and how the fiat value of the cornz has become. Some folks we had been recommending to get a few coins, and now those guys are not even able to afford 0.21 BTC... even though surely some of the folks can still buy bitcoin on a regular basis and still maybe could reach decent amounts of BTC (satoshis), but they just have to get started rather than continuing to watch and wait.. and it can take a bit of time, just to have one or two or three places to cash in and out through exchanges, and I have a few exchanges that I can no longer use..... but there are options available... and people in some locations have more options than in other locations, even though it is becoming possible that bitcoin is being exchanged at more places around the worlds than any other currency... even the dollar.. even though the dollar amounts make bitcoins amounts look like amounts for ants.
The funny thing is that, during the Q4 2024 rise to $100k, I was seeing the value of my 0.6 BTC getting higher while I was actually withdrawing from it... Something like a never-ending money generator! Is this what our Bitcoin stash has become?
That seems to be part of the reason that I continue to suggest to people that once they get to a stage of having enough or more than enough BTC, then they likely will be able to withdraw from their BTC stash in amounts that are much greater than they had expected and still their BTC will likely be growing in value faster than they are able to spend from it. Of course, many of us might still spend from our fiat first, and then bitcoin later, and if I do make large transactions with BTC, I still might end up doing spend and replace (especially if I am spending from my BTC in ways that go beyond my normal budget, then I might still end up putting cash back into my bitcoin system to keep things reasonably balanced).
A never-ending money generator? Was Saylor's comment to Laura really true? Are we really getting richer while we sleep? I still find it too good to be true (but it really seems to be!).
Pinch yourself. There are way too many people still talking about BTC prices going down, and sure it might happen... but relying on BTC prices to go down seems problematic.. and surely when BTC prices get above $100k but they don't come back below $100k, then some of us HODLers might still end up suffering while we might end up spending some of our coins during dippening periods, but those dippening periods will be in the 6 digits.. which is not really even much different from our today's BTC prices that are bouncing between $96k-ish and $98k-ish. It is not like suffering. .but surely times that many of us continue to pinch ourselves and we might even consider that there is not much difference between shaving off some cornz.. let's say 0.004 BTC at $100k or maybe if the BTC price gets to $150k, and maybe there has been some inflation, but we then ONLY have to shave 0.003 BTC for some similar thing. What I am saying is that we might not even be bothered very much if we might have to spend 0.004 BTC or 0.003 BTC .. sure it makes a difference but not enough of a difference for us to really get worked up about.
Thanks JJG for taking the pain of writing down the terms and conditions .
I fully AGREE with terms you mentioned.
After going back and forth between us, I doubt that we would disagree about term interpretations, but I did not get
@hissleness to agree in advance to his role... so hopefully, he would be willing to resolve any dispute in regards to the terms of the bet, if any disagreements were to arise.
role will be to act like a third umpire in Cricket (or VAR in football). Third umpire is available to resolve disputes which on field umpires can't resolve. Third umpire has better visibility of the disputes and can give best decisions which are also final.
Sounds good.
Roses are red,
Crypto's a trip.
I fell for you hard
Don't you dare dip!
You're my moonshot,
My charts delight.
When others sleep,
You took flight.
So,Happy Valentine's
I am holding tight,
To you, my Btc Hodl
To the moon and out of sight.
#4 haiku in valentine
Your poem is nice, but surely such poem is not a haiku, in terms of form... 5-7-5.. You are all over the place in terms of your syllable count.
I think the cycle breaks this year.
At least the 4 year concept.
We did new ath before the 1/2 ing
We cracked 100k way early last dec
And we may have witnessed the ath on January 20 a few hours before the musky trumpeter was signed in
Are you in the mood to bet in regards to your repetition of dumb.. ? Not complete dumb, but pretty close to it. You sound like someone just new to bitcoin.
I somehow inadvertently inserted myself into this wager, out of frustration, mostly... However, i am more than happy to be the third adjudicator in this and also act as a third reminder of such wager! Rules are crystal clear, that i am sure i will not be needed.
Good Luck to you both!
quoted for reference
good luck and thanks hisslyness
You can also volunteer yourself as a referee, that will over look the process and give decisions in case there is a dispute.
It seems that we have to have an odd number.. so.. vapourminer could be a back up to hisslyness... but only if hisslyness were not available or able to appear... I would hate there to be a dispute between us, but then we end up with a dispute between the referees.. .. that is why there would need to be an odd number.. and one is an odd number....even though a back up could come in handy... even though it could take until January 1-ish, 2027 to resolve.