Well its one day later since you have posted this comment and in that time Kucoin has just been hacked for 200 million usd. So this kinda proves my point if not about proof of keys but about how secure your money is on an exchange.

And yes you can say that i don't use Kucoin or it always had a bad reputation. I only use binance or coinbase etc and those are safe. But in reality both of those exchanges have been hacked in the past as well, it is just that they were large enough to be able to cover losses associated with the hacked funds. So can you really just depend on the fact that the hack will not be large enough to effect you or take the exchange down. 

So i say again if u want to keep some money for trading on an exchange fair enough, but if you are using that has your primary form of storage for your Bitcoin or other cryptos then you are only asking for trouble.

Go check out the Kucoin telegram channel to see what a shit show that is for users whose funds are now locked.

Honestly i wouldn't suggest you use it.  Obviously awful and unacceptable but unfortunately this seems to be happening a lot especially whenever Bitcoin or crypto is in the news. I guess its largely based on luck based on who is at the customs checkpoint at the time. But yea its not worth the risk of putting your money into it in case someone has tapered with it or such and such.  If you do however decide to use it ensure that at the very least you reboot it and create an new seed word, dont use any seed word or keys that some may have pre-installed.

It's very unfortunate but as the others have said bitcoin transactions are irreversible. So there is no way to get your money back. Best case for you here would be to either contact support at the website, however if you think its fraudulent then it's unlikely that will help.

Apart from that you could file a complaint with local authorities I dont know how effective this would be as it would be dependent on which country you are from as this isn't really effective in a lot of countries with poor ineffective law enforcement.

But might as well make a complaint, even if you can't get your money maybe it will help ensure some one else doesn't make  the same  mistake

Actually i think a lot of politicians are at place where they are not able to publicly express their support  and endorse cryptocurrencies because  of a fear of alienating people within their own party many of whom are staunchly opposed to cryptocurrencies or perhaps because the general public as whole still is not educated enough about bitcoin and thinks of it as that thing for criminals.

Another important factor is that a lot of politicians around the world are corrupt and often have illicit proceeds from back end deals and such. I am sure plenty of them may hold this money in bitcoin as a way of hiding their assets or for quickly moving it abroad in case they get caught up in scandals back home. ( this is especially true for countries with heavy cross border and capital control restrictions.)

Jacks been pro Bitcoin for quite a while now. And yes while there are other influential people who see the potential of BTC Jack seems to top the pile right now because of his control of twitter. I think we arent to ar away from a BTC tip bot there.

And yea no other crypto really comes close, thigh perhaps an argument could be made for ethereum.

Well the problem with other using other altcoins as u say is that they wont hold your value. Not saying that Btc isn't volatile but its less so then alts. Also with alts there is always the risk of exit scams and such and such. Btc is the only crypto currency that really has any form of stability relatively speaking of course.

Fundamentals have never really meant much in crypto/altcoin market in my opinion. It didnt matter back in 2017-18 when tokens wit copy/pasted code and whitepapers were popping up like rats and it dosent mean anything today as well where most tokens arent even releasing white papers anymore and yet still managing to raise money in another form ( by getting retail investors to give them liquidity through uniswap Lp's by promising them 1 million% APY) Only thing that matters is hype and greed.

As the saying goes a fool and his money are soon parted.

Its just the hype shifting away from Defi Into something else that's all. With all the recent rug pulls on Uniswap people aren't going all Degen into random liquidity pools on uniswap anymore. So people have just shifted the goal posts From Defi into NFT tokens now.  The last time NFT tokens were big was in 2017 with Crypto kitties. People were paying anywhere from 1- 100 ether per kitty if i recall. Will not turn out well.

Often this has to do with liquidity and demand. Now in china the difference is still very small when compared to the international aggregated price, however when you look at other Asian, south american, African the premiums can often be as high as 20% for purchases.

These differences are largely owing to a number of factors with most being linked to liquidity. For instance low liquidity in the that country or maybe just on that particular exchange. Also demand for crypto currencies would also be higher in certain countries that impose heavy capital controls and regulations on cross border transfers Iran for instance. While in some cases price differences could be due to weakness/ high inflation/volatility in the local currencies being used Venezuela here.

 Further all these  premiums are also heavily impacted by bull and bear trends. If i recall the Price of BTC in South Africa had reached nearly 30k USD at the height of the bull run in 2017.

It really is insane and to me is an indicator that we most likely at peak prices rite now. I mean if this isn't a sell signal what is. Also to highlight i joined a few of these airdrop groups yesterday and it is totally insane, i honestly cant believe how easily people get scammed. Just to put some perspective  in one telegram group i joined yesterday people gave some dude with coin name called bananas for apes  20 ether to provide liquidity and for transaction costs for sending the airdrops. And when he put up a zip file on the group for who would be airdropped the coins people started fighting for the next 20 mins because everyone was to scared to open it. I mean at that point you really have no one to blame but yourself.

All of these are capitalizing on The Meme, few, Many airdrops.

Just shows how much DEfi is like the ICO craze from 2017 with people sending money based on copy/pasted whitepapers

Actually back in 2017 Ontology airdropped 1000 tokens to anyone that signed upto their newsletter and telegram listed at 10 buks for an easy free 10k. I missed that one unfortunately. Also one could argue that that the biggest airdrops were probably the 5 btc faucets in the early days.

Also Look at how many scam airdrops have popped up rite now to capitalize on the uniswap trend. ( MEME, FEW, MANY etc)

I hadn't considered the fees aspect of it, so i can understand why something like this would not really be viable if transaction fees are running high or in the case of people who have smaller balances. Also given that exchanges often charge higher then the actual network fees i can see why a lot of people would be put off participating in this.

Bitcoin is decentralized which means that almost any rule/protocol/design could be changed by almost anyone, and this is working exactly as intended as is the nature of anything that is truly decentralized.

However once code has been changed it stops being  Bitcoin unless that change is supported by most of the community including miners, devs, holders and other stake holders. If however there is not enough support then it simply becomes a fork of Bitcoin and its future success or failure would then depend on how much community support it gets. ( think of the  B Cash fork, BSV  etc which did not get enough community support and was not able to hijack the BTC ticker despite the best attempts of many very influential stake holders roger ver for instance to do so).

As such anyone could go on to Github and submit a BIP proposal for implementing a change/ improvement in Bitcoin. But  more often than not these proposals are discussed meticulously for long periods of time before they are actually able to get enough support to be implemented.

Attempting to change 21 million coded cap would be very contentious to say the least.

Yea this was exactly my point there needs to be greater awareness about it in order for proof of keys to be effective and actually act as test for exchanges. Personally I think even if 30% of the community were to withdraw their money simultaneously it would be more than enough for cracks to start showing up with regard to exchanges where solvency was an issue. ( the conundrum ofcourse however is that if the exchange was insolvent they would naturally use an excuse to deny any such mass withdrawal as was the case with hitbtc for instance. But even then at the very least this would mean prevention of further people depositing money into an exposed exchange.)

Quadriga ofcourse is not a great example here since despite being exposed a lot of people continued to deposit more money into It, but like you said some people will never learn. ( similar situation happened with bitkonect)



 
Yea always better to keep money of exchanges but i think the reason most newbies end up leaving their money on exchanges permanently is because it is for many the first fiat to crypto gateway and many  subsequently never end up taking the time to learn how to use a private wallet.

No one's suggesting that people should use custodial wallets, its always best to use to use a wallet that you control directly especially when you are holding from a long term perspective.

But the fact is most people do tend to have at least some amount of money on exchanges which they use for trading.
And most newer people  always tend to use a centralized ( coinbase for instance) exchange for their first fiat to crypto purchases either for ease of use or because many dont take the time to understand how to use a private wallet, and these people often then never end up withdrawing their money to private wallets.

These were who the primary target was for the proof of keys event( apart from testing the exchanges ), if nothing else it would help people learn how to use private wallets.

For anyone that Doesn't know what Proof of Keys is it was an Idea that began in 2018 by Trace Mayer on twitter that involved the Bitcoin community as a whole retaking control of their Funds. Most people leave a lot of their Bitcoin on centralized exchanges which are often prone to hacks, exit scams, insolvency and as of today are increasingly enforcing KYC on their users.

https://twitter.com/TraceMayer/status/1071870548421066753


Proof Of keys was meant as way for the Bitcoin community of retaking and exercising control of their bitcoins ( not your keys not your Coins) by simultaneously withdrawing all their Bitcoins every January 3rd of the year from centralized exchanges, third-party bitcoin services and Custodial wallet providers and moving it to private wallets controlled by themselves.

This was meant as a way of exposing exchanges that were perhaps running fractional reserves, faking trading Volumes and/or generally being disingenuous with their users.

However 2 years on the movement doesn't seem to have gained as much traction as originally hoped, with community participation being somewhat limited based on, on chain data which did not suggest any spike in transactions.

And yet even with this limited participation many exchanges were reported to have delayed/frozen withdrawals or halting trading for supposed maintenance, including Hitbtc, Robinhood, Poloniex, Qudriga ( Exit scammed later )

So what Do you think can be done to spread greater Awareness about Proof Of keys and ensure greater community participation when the Next proof of keys event takes place in 2021

What is Proof of Keys

https://www.proofofkeys.com/

Other Sources and Useful Links

https://www.coindesk.com/proof-of-keys-bitcoin-bank-run
https://www.coinspeaker.com/proof-of-keys-exchanges/
https://news.bitcoin.com/proof-of-keys-day-returns-on-bitcoins-11th-birthday/
https://icoexaminer.com/ico-news/cryptos-day-for-proof-of-keys/
https://bitcoinist.com/not-your-keys-not-your-coins-what-proof-of-keys-day-means-in-2020/
https://academy.binance.com/security/the-ultimate-guide-to-proof-of-keys-day

Yes whether in Bitcoin or some other facet of life you have to fight these things or states will just take one liberty at time inch by inch, all the while having the gall to brand you and anyone else that talks about about privacy and mass surveillance as some sort of conspiracy theorist nut job or as someone who is being selfish and not thinking of the greater good. However nothing can be used as an excuse/justifaction for actions like this or we will soon find our selves in an Orwellian. 

I think the best example of this is the Prisim debacle ( which many people seem to have either forgotten or simply ignored) where despite being caught red handed the government working hand in hand with many media outlets was able to change the whole narrative from one of spying/mass surveillance ( which ironically we so quickly condemn other nations for however when we do it it is only for the greater good, orwellian much) to one of treason against the Edward Snowden.

This is tough one. Normally i would say that it shouldn't really have much of an impact, if anything it should help create more public awareness, interest and debate on bitcoin( which always a good thing IMO). 

Now I don't really think a CBDC will harm bitcoin because bitcoin largely caters to a different market (those focused on privacy and sound money principles which is not something you would get with CBDC's  in fact it would only make it easier for sates to monitor everything you do.)

However i feel that CBDC could negatively impact Bitcoin ( at least its price) through tether. CBDC's could very well be a competitor and alternative to the swath of stable coins currently on the market and most of the KYC or heavily regulated exchanges (coinbase) could be expected to create trading pairs with a US CBDC. ( this would also mean more money flowing in to crypto in general since it would make it easier for the masses to enter)

Again the impact here would largely be dependent on your thoughts on the solvency of tether. It could be the nail that brings it down or it could finally be what gives the whole market a more trusted stable coin ( at the cost of less privacy and  more regulation)

While i agree that said challenges could be overcome, it would be disingenuous to come out and say that everything is fine and business as usual. As a user of said exchange your primary concern in such a scenario is the protection of your own funds and nothing else. IMHO why should a user risk his funds and take such a large risk.


I would hardly call 2 raids in the span of a week and followed up with a court enforced order for seizure as being a social media demolition job. It would only be prudent for any user with funds on bithumb to withdraw their money as soon as possible ( while this option is still available). And maybe nothing comes of it down the line but do you really want to put your money at risk on a maybe especially when there are so many exchanges available for use.  And assuming there wasn't another exchange then why not move to cold storage until there is more clarity available on the matter.

While i agree with everything that's been said here, the problem in these type of situations is that government's often don't care about this. Most end up taking a heavy handed approach to these issues and push out or at least attempt to push out bans even when they know themselves that such bans will be difficult to enforce. It doesn't matter to them that criminals will always manage to find away around their bans and it is always the average user that ends up bearing the brunt of their arbitrary laws.


Take Tax laws as an example here. Most states try to impose heavy penalties including imprisonment etc for non payment of taxes, late filings etc. Again this is done to deter criminal and large organizations yet most times its the little guy that ends up getting targeted or bearing the brunt of these laws while the larger entities who can hire the best lawyers ( or the best options that money can buy depending on what scenario we are talking about) will often find a loop hole around the problem.


Yes, I agree, but as a conclusion of the posts above you, you can use a knife to make a great dinner or to kill someone. It doesn't make the knife illegal, but the person who uses it to murder.
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Yea the thing with any technology or anything for that matter is that some people will try to use it in a way that society does not deem appropriate. That however does not mean that any fault lies in  the product only in the entity using it.