https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

TX's are basically free rn.

I read some convincing evidence that large exchanges, particularly Coinbase, were responsible for the recent mempool backlog by not properly batching transactions and consolidating UTXO's.

Depends on what you mean by incredibly rare. It's happened to me more than once.

You kind of made my point here. If you set it too low to even get included when the high fee transactions have been decimated during the last hours, then you're in trouble. But if you go with a fee has been included at many different times during the last hours/days, then you're pretty safe even if the miners are unlucky for a while.

Trezor does if you use Electrum.

It should happen once every 3 years or so according to the math. Not sure what actual results have been.

did not know that, thanks

You're right, I should probably have used one hour instead of two to make my point, wouldn't have made a difference. When I think about it, I think it happened during the Bcash EDA shenanigans, when I wasn't paying attention.

Np . If you also want to use your own node, you could set up an Electrum Personal Server.

Andreas dispels the myth that a nation could take down bitcoin by way of 51% attack.

Would like to gif this

Too bad he is ignoring the fact 50÷ of mining is in China that can just confiscate those rigs. No billion dollar investment needed. Also focusing on double spending is weird as the goal would be to make the network unstable without caring to profit themselves. So ignoring fees and only including certain transaction would be enough and is harder to detect.

Not that this would happen. Nation states only care about bitcoin use in their own country and that can be limted very easily without attacking the blockchain.

Yeah, Andreas ignores the fact that it's much easier for China to confiscate the rigs or apply weight on the pool operators to attack the network. People would definitely lose faith in SHA256 coins, but the general GPU coins like ETH (or ETC?) can easily handle the current transaction load.

You guys are over thinking what could happen out of China. Plus mining is on the way out of China anyway. The Chinese signaled for them to stop operations and the big Chinese miners are setting up operations worldwide now to diversity. It’s in their best interest for these attacks not to happen given they have lots of infrastructure investment and coins to protect of their own. To be able to use whatever they confiscate for a attack is a whole another story. It’s been known lately that they could make these rigs useless remotely. Plus all these mining centers are spread across lots of vastly rural China where these centers bring in lots of jobs/money for some of these small villages/towns. In these corrupt broke small villages. I doubt the Chinese even have that much pull to make a ban really enforced when over half the small rural village gdp is on the line.

Serious?

If 10 countries wanted to pool together 50 billion, or however much, while simultaneously attacking the foundation, they could pretty easily overwhelm the network. I don't think there is much motivation to do that though.

Ah, we've finally reached the "Well, if these countries that hate each other and can't agree on anything could somehow come to a consensus that they have a common enemy and get organized, they could REALLY put a dent in this thing" phase

Newsflash: It ain't gonna happen

.

In the majority of China I think they have the pull to to do it. My point is the small rural villages in which I don’t think they will have much control over. So basically it’s not centralized through all of China but has pockets of decentralization in it. How money and corruption usually ends up usually making decisions?

You pull that quote out of context.

In these corrupt broke small villages. I doubt the Chinese even have that much pull to make a ban really enforced when over half the small rural village gdp is on the line.

10 countries to openly pool together 50 billion or whatever amount of their citizens money to try to kill a 160 billion asset owned by the citizens of that country in a democratic world. That’s not going to have any blow back. Keep thinking up that brillant counter strategy.

This would have to be some type of covert espionage take down and it involves way to much funds to pull off to even make a small dent for the biggest spa agencies involved.

I'm not saying they would, but the central government could pull the plug on electricity to the whole town if they wanted to.

Its like you guys didn't read the part where I said there isn't much motivation to do that.

But Antonopoulos's response is pretty laughable in the context of a country actually trying to attack the network, especially with the slow clap moment that made all the fanbois moist af. If the US alone wanted to do it, they could. Easily.

If they could do it easily. It would be done already. That’s a fact. It’s not been done yet bc the US alone can’t do it “easily”.

It’s not easy because the cost is extremely expensive to take it down. Extremely expensive. It’s legal. Citizens own the majority of it and big US businesses are built on top of it. The law suits and blow back would be huge as well.

And better more advanced version would just take its place...

I disagree with this being fact.

Seems like basic game theory to me if they can already take it out easily as you say, why wait?

Because they don't perceive it as a threat?

Why attack something your own citizens are invested in and that currently is posing no threat at all. The first steps of any country that wants to get rid of bitcoin is to increase regulations, ban exchanges, wait a while hoping this dropped your own citizens investments in bitcoin and then attack it if the above wasn't enough already.

This is a good point. Because politicians always play GTO 100% of the time.

Yeah, I disagree with that too. No way.

I've seen a gif of this. If I see it again I will send it to you.

As far as the US is concerned, I don't see any major motivation to quash BTC+alts.

They tax mining + cap gains, so they get revenue from it.

I guess some over zealous bureaucrat could get into power and pull a UIGEA, but I don't think that is likely in the current climate.