Or you can exchange all those free air-dropped coins into something more meaningful, just look at the top of the coinmarketcap list for prospectful candidates

I have been in crypto space long enough to witness large price fluctuations, and I would not be surprised if we saw - say - 4k price, however I think that going from 20k in Dec down to 1k would be too much even for bitcoin. So I am very sceptical about your prediction.

Summing up:
 - 4k - yes, we have seen such magnitudes in the past
 - 1k - no, I am sceptical

Hi m0gliE, I think that the OP ment buying another hardware wallet, not buying another cryptocurrency, for security reasons.

Anyway one scenario that I can see a benefit of having two hardware wallets is using one to hold your founds and using the other for everyday expenses or to sell some of your bitcoins to localbitcoin dealers - it may not be very safe to go around with all your crypto holdings on you.

OK I will follow that instruction and let you know how long it takes. I am past point 0 and I will be providing feedback on my progress. Point one seems straightforward too, the interesting part is the synchronisation part. We'll see

EDIT: the time I started the synchronisation 25th Feb, 19.30 CET
EDIT: OK it is synched as of 5th Apr. More than a month (!) Past that, I was able to execute the rest of the points successfully

And this is why we need regulations behind ICO, to separate the wheat from the chaff. Governments are there to protect their citizens. Its why they exist in the first place. So they should create environment for people not to HAVE TO determine which ICO is scam or unreliable and which ICO is worth investing.

And governments started to do that: Switzerland is regulating ICOs already.

The author of this list https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2880178.new#new thinks differently

He put McAffee on the 8th place. And he's got a lot merits for this list.... so I guess means people like it.

OMG did you guys read this thing: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xe3dx/dna-storage-bitcoin-mystery-puzzle ?

So it seems that CompNeuro's thinking was actually most acurate and to the point. OMG can't wait to see the solution

EDIT: In case you wonder, yes, I am aware that the one cited above was a different puzzle

I want to congratulate the winner and everybody who took part in the puzzle, it was a great experience.

By the way, did you guys read this https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xwx7z/a-popular-bitcoin-puzzle-has-revealed-an-even-larger-mystery ?
I was not aware of it. I found it in the motherboard article.

Hi, if you would be so kind and read my posts that would be most welcome. I really try to be to the point and helpful, so I think (and hope) that my posts deserve merit.

Thank you!

Thank you, it is very kind and nice welcome coming from you.

I was thinking about it some more after I posted my comment and I figured out that I was not precise enough when I said about returns being "the best (and most sure at the same time)". The author I was referring to, he had a probabilistic model behind investment strategies and his results were expressed in terms of expected value and variance. He showed that one is able to keep expected value high while minimizing the variance when he chooses his portfolio to minimize correlation.

I will try to get the title and author's name and get back to you, if it is of interest to you.

And again: thanks for the warm welcome

And you will not find such a person. I can tell you once a friend gave me a book on mathematical background of investments. I don't have the book now, and I don't remember the equations, but the bottom line of that analysis sunk very deeply: the best (EDIT: and most sure at the same time) returns one gets from maximaly divergent assets, in terms of their mutual correlation. So it seems that gold and crypto are not correlated particularly well and it would be good to have them both in your portfolio.

It is a very interesting question that you pose. They say, that the true insight comes from the ability to pose questions, not from giving answers

So it really made me think. You may compare bitcoin to gold, and that comparison is sound in a lot of ways (limited supply, store of value, etc.) and unsound in others (bitcoin is much more abstract, you cannot weigh it in you hand, you can't make a nice ring out of it), but for the sake of this discussion let us make that comparison and go forward.

Well, gold has never been the reason for crisis. Rather, gold was the escape from crisis and a way for one's wealth to be preserved. If you were smart enough to have gold, then you were kind of immune to the price hyperinflation and misery all around you, and after the crisis is done you emerged even stronger than before. But as far as my knowledge goes, gold was never the cause behind the crisis.

Bitcoin is something like that too. I don't think that it with its price fluctuations can cause problems. Rather, the price fluctuation and its rapid growth is an effect of general instability in fiat pseudo-currences and debt fueled economies. I think that it offers a way to escape and preserve your capital. This is maybe why its value should not be denominated in fiat currencies, rather it should be considered as inherently valuable.

In 2015, when bitcoin reached 1000$, it subsequently dropped to 200-300. Where is it now? 11,500? So I can see no reason it wouldn't drop to 2-3k mark.

So even if you look at the previous bitcoin price wave it is absolutely possible.

well I am sure that you know that currently you cannot exchange your bitcoins to fiat without providing like a scan of your driver's licence to the exchange ?

my friend had some income in US and it was very very small so he forgot about it completely, until the letter from his country (non-US) tax authority arrived and they told him: "hey, you had this income in US. Why don't you tax it with us too?" and then he remembered. He paid the due tax, it was no big deal, the sum was very low. What I want to tell, is that it is not necessarily your country that must implement measures to tax bitcoin, but if you use the US-based exchange than you are in trouble too, your country may/will learn about it, because US has already implemented such measures (KYC and others) and the tax authorities collaborate very closely.

Actually in Wallet Import Format (WIF) there are four bytes that serve as control bytes, so if you change one or more address letter by mistake you would need to correctly change the 4 control bytes too, and for it to happen by chance the probability is not 1 to 100, but 1 to 4,294,967,296 which is rather impossible.

But you may copy-and-paste a wrong address. That is definitely possible. I copy and paste wrong info all the time (thankfully it never happened with the bitcoin address and I hope it never will)

well I am reading in some other thread that bittrex asked its members to provide the selfie and the scan of a driving licence in order to withdraw funds. Try not to pay taxes if they have your selfie already...

maybe the Russian reporter is the White Rabbit. Now he has to answer before the Creator, too

well, there is not much to say to this, all have been said before:

A lot of people have died and their money (fiat) was lost in a pot in a garden or thrown away in some old mattress. It has happened and will happen no matter if it is fiat or bitcoin.

What you need to do is tell your family how they can get to your funds, and it holds with both fiat and bitcoin all right.