I’m still a novice here, but don’t multisig and Shamir address two different needs/issues?

Multisig exists so that more than one person is required to authorize a transaction. But Shamir exists so that more than one seed shard is required to restore a wallet seed phrase. Is this not the case?

Thank you all. Again, very helpful.

Newbie now learning about seed phrase generation.

I'm familiar with BIP 39 and its use in generating 12 and 24-word seed phrases. I'm also familiar with Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm, which at least one company (Trezor) has implemented using a 20-work seed phrase based on SLIP 39. I'm not clear, however, on the relationship between BIP 39 and SLIP 39.

What I think I understand, however, is the following:

1. BIP 39 is still the official bitcoin standard.

2. BIP 39 is implemented across many hardware wallets. If you lose a hardware wallet manufactured by company A, you can buy a new hardware wallet from company B and rebuild your bitcoin keys from your 24-seed phrase.

3. SLIP 39, at present, is a company-specific (Trezor) standard.

4. If you lose your Trezor hardware wallet, you will have to buy a new Trezor hardware wallet to rebuild your bitcoin keys from your 20-work seed phrase.

Does this sound right?

So a guy breaks into a home and terrorizes two people, and the only consequences mentioned are six months of unpaid work and a suspended sentence? Great to be a thug in Scotland I guess.

Again, thank you all. I now understand that if I sign a multi sig transaction, then in a “2 of 4” situation, I also need to send a data file to the other three potential signers, which in conjunction with their hardware wallet allows any one of them to sign and broadcast the transaction. That’s the part that was eluding me. But now I understand what the data file includes and how to generate it from Electrum.

Thank you all. Appreciate the education.

That helps. How do I send my partially signed transaction to the other person?

Also, if I originally had set up the wallets on Electrum, do I have to use Electrum for my future multi sig transactions? Or can I use Coinbase, Binance or any other exchange?

Sorry, still not getting it. In the "2 of 4" scenario, let's say you signed a transaction on your wallet (eg, Ledger). The next day I sign the transaction using my wallet (eg, Trezor). Does my wallet somehow know you already have signed, and thus can broadcast the transaction? If yes, how?

Newbie learning about multi sig. I watched a number of videos on how to set up multi sig using Electrum and various hardware wallets. I understand the mechanical steps one would go thru to set up multi sig. But something fundamental is not clear to me.

Let's say I set up a "2 of 4" scenario, where two of four individuals (via their hardware wallets) must sign a bitcoin transaction. Where is this "you must have two of these four" rule stored? Is it somewhere on the bitcoin blockchain?

Said differently, if I authorize a spend transaction using my hardware wallet (I am one of the four), how does the exchange (Coinbase, or any other non-Electrum) know that a second signature is required?

Thanks.

All good points. Another reason, IMHO, is that bitcoin is still too hard to use for the average person. That person is not going to learn about fiddly hardware wallets, engrave their seed phases on metal plates, or do anything of the sort. For them, there needs to be a “Steve Jobs moment” that makes everything simple and safe.

Side note: I know this violates the “not your keys, not your crypto” mantra, but bitcoin awareness has gained a lot of ground over the last year in the investment space. Individuals and institutions alike have poured $19 billion into the iShares bitcoin ETF. Not small change.

Got it. Thank you all. Very helpful.

This is a great forum!

Thank you. Who (or what process) decides if the removed transaction will be broadcast again?

Are there any statistics on the percentage of transactions that get removed and never make it into the blockchain?

I'm learning about the mempool and found this text on a bitcoin educational site: Once the Mempool reaches full capacity, nodes start prioritizing transactions by setting up a minimal transaction fee threshold. Transactions with a fee-rate lower than the threshold are immediately removed from the Mempool.

If a transaction is removed from the mempool, where does it go? To some holding area, I assume, for possible inclusion in the next block? What is the name of the holding area and where does it reside? Thx.

Great. It seems like it would be clearer to see a specific output in the block showing the reward going to the miner (and the address), but I guess there are good reasons why it wasn't done that way. But I won't go down that rabbit hole.

I get what you are saying, and thank you to all of you who responded!

Let me see if I understand what you are saying. Within blockchain explorer, I know how to find the fee for a given transaction within a block. And I know how to see the total reward (base reward + fee reward) for writing the entire block.

So if the fees do not appear in my individual hash (and in all the other individuals hashes within the block), I assume there must be a separate, unique transaction that records the total reward for the miner. Correct? What does this transaction look like? Does it also have inputs and outputs?

So I'm watching a video where Andreas Antonopoulos explains how bitcoin transactions are structured. I think I understand the input side (the spending side), and I think I understand the output side (the recipient address and the change address). But I'm confused about the transaction fee paid to the miner.

Andreas says the input side (eg, 100,000 satoshi) will not be equal to the output side (eg, 98,000 satoshi). He said the difference is the transaction fee paid to the miner (2,000 in this example), but this fee does not appear in the transaction.

If I understood Andreas correctly, I'm confused about this. Doesn't the transaction fee need to go to the miner's public bitcoin address? If it's not specified in the transaction (as an output), where is it? I assume it must be somewhere on the blockchain?

Thanks.

Clear. Thank you all.

Newbie question. AFAIK, each US banknote has a unique serial number. Is the same true for bitcoin? Does each bitcoin have a unique identifier, regardless who owns it? Does each satoshi have a unique identifier?

Clear. Thank you.

Thank you for responding. That is helpful.

I didn't realize that the two addresses I mentioned each have their own private key (I thought they both were generated from a single private key). So in the case of a cold wallet (eg, Ledger, Trezor), I guess it's the wallet software that is generating all the necessary private and public keys, and then keeping track of all these keys.

Thanks again!