I got an important question and I'm sure it has been asked somewhere in this thread.


So if you have bitcoin in a wallet whether its nano ledger or a desktop wallet, well as long as you have the 12 word or 24 word seed, you can claim your bitcoin. Now if something happens to you, well the bitcoin will be gone unless you give someone your seed. The thing is what if your family have the seed but they are not computer savy and thus wouldn't have a clue what to do with it? I'm sure there are lot of people here who have family where they wouldn't even know how to claim the bitcoin. Are there any bitcoin recovery services for something like this? Thus you go to a service that would help you claim the btc with the 12 or 24 word seed and then they pay them the fee to help them claim the bitcoin? However, that would be not enough since well they wouldn't know how to send. But i mean like a service where they would help you create a coinbase account for example, then you would transfer the btc to your btc address and help you cash out the btc to your bank account.


Im sure there has to be a service like this right? And if so, what are the fees like? Would it be a flat fee or a percentage of how much btc someone has to claim? And i assume some service like this would probably require anyone to have probably at least 5k worth of btc right? The other thing is of course there is a chance where when you put the 24 word seed, there might be little to no btc as well etc. So i would assume a flat fee would probably be right for this? Because imagine someone would tell me okay this is the btc phrase. Well i would then put the phrase into a desktop wallet and see how many btc there is. Then help them create a coinbase account and send the btc to that wallet. Then help them cash out to their bank account. But i would probably tell them okay first create a coinbase account first and get verified. Then we would have the btc sent to that address, then assist them in cashing out to bank account. I mean something like this would be pretty quick since you only need the seed. So wouldn't a service charging like $500 be more than fair etc?


So i like to know how you all do this. Because im sure the person you gave this seed to... probably doesn't know how to claim it themselves.


Because i read of stories where ppl bitcoin are gone because of that because either they never give the phrase to someone or maybe they give it but how does the other person go and claim it if they are not computer savy at all.

Thanks bitcoin core!!!

Who would've thought outrageous prices for transactions would kill adoption...

Anyone who recommends a coin because of the 'tech' or 'sharp team' behind it has no clue what they are doing. Overall market flows are what count. This can be derived trivially by looking at the biggest coins, open outright scams, dead chains, pure ponzis that don't pretend to be anything else all in the top 20.

Other signs of people that can't/won't grasp simple basics:

Strong beliefs about BTC vs BCH

Check out Coinmarketcap. They introduced a new currency comparison called lambo. The timing is a bit awkward though considering crypto's current state.

Well yes and no. At this point, most people have heard of bitcoin. In that sense it has become "mainstream". But most people have very little understanding of what it is, how it works and what value it could provide to society.

I'm guessing a similar thing happened with the internet. I'm sure in the early 90's most people had heard of the word "Internet". But most people probably had no idea what it was beyond just "connecting computers" and at that time the internet was 5+ years out from providing a good user experience and people actually having a need/desire to use it.

Bitcoin is in a similar spot. Most people have heard of Bitcoin, but have no idea what it is and how it works beyond it just being "digital internet money." It's complicated, confusing and annoying to buy bitcoin, store bitcoin and spend bitcoin.

Lightning Network is in its infancy, wallets are ugly, exchanges are shady, Bitcoin ETFs haven't arrived, the big Wall St players haven't arrived, most services to use it+store it are still centralized, volatility is still sky high, privacy options are limited, mining is too centralized, the community is too divided etc etc etc. Bitcoin is nowhere close to being finished and being ready for wide use.

Bitcoin skyrocketed way too early. It was not ready and the price collapse is revealing that. But reports of its death are greatly, greatly exaggerated.

Many wallets are fine. Holding small amounts is fine, it becomes more complex if you want to hold significant amounts and keep it secure.
Right now it's fairly easy to accept bitcoin cash and litecoin as payment. Bitcoin with segwit is fine atm but it will be much better once people can pay with lighting (doable with BTC pay already i think).
Coinbase offering a simple way to integrate their services is a huge step.
As for global adoption for commerce i bet we ll have some good centralized services and it's fine. The future of bitcoin will be the balance offered between centralization and decentralization not one or the other.

Whats the value of a centralized BTC solution? It is substantially worse than fiat currently for legit uses. I guess if people wanna evade money transfer laws, capital controls, etc or buy drugs/child porn/hits then why would you ever centralize?

It is not controversial that at a stable price almost all mined coins get converted into fiat to pay for electricity and mining equipment. If there was a big margin to hold coins then new miners would enter the market until the above is true.

MtGox depends on the Japanese legal system. So far all indications are that it doesn't allow partial distribution of coins wich means they need to be converted to fiat.

Man at this point for Easter maybe Jesus came back to destroy Bitcoin. What a day.

You confuse protocol and services.
You can have a wallet using the decentralized network and you can have a PayPal like that centralize some wallet with advanced security. Both have merits and can coexist.
We ll see some very centralized services built over LN and they ll have to compete with decentralized services. The simple fact we ll have a choice is the value of bitcoin over the current financial system.

AFAIK, the Trustee is bound by court order to sell the coins.

Miners must sell coins to replenish equipment and cover electricity costs.

I mean, these mining operations are huge with massive investments behind them. It's not just a bunch of poor dudes living paycheck to paycheck who need to pay their electric bill. Mining BTC can be seen as a cheaper and more anonymous way of acquiring BTC. I'd expect some of these bigger players to be mining+holding BTC to position themselves advantageously for the future. I'd be curious to see a study that looks at how many and how quickly newly minted BTC get sent to exchanges.

And AFAIK the fate of the rest of the Gox coins is still undetermined.

It has nothing to do with the size of the operations or the wealth of the people behind it. As long as miners are competing they will add hashrate if they have a decent margin because otherwise they lose money to someone who does. This directly translates into electricity/equipment that is paid in fiat.

Only time this is not true is when the price fluctuates faster than miners are willing or able to add/remove hashrate

That's all true, but if you're able to profitably mine bitcoin then it's cheaper to mine bitcoin then buy it directly from an exchange. So if you want to hold bitcoin and you're able to profitably mine, then mining and not selling is the correct play.

The bigger the mining operation is and the more investment they've received, the more they're able to invest into mining gear/electricity without having to turn around and immediately sell the mined btc to pay their expenses. They may instead choose to sit on a portion of the BTC, believing it will appreciate in the future.

I'm just saying that assuming that 100% of mined btc gets immediately sold is a terrible assumption. Whatever the true % is a number I'm very curious in learning.

Anybody think that tax season might be playing a small part in the selling pressure? Could see plenty of people needing to sell recently or soon because they didn't keep enough cash to pay taxes. Especially since poker/crypto people are less likely to pay up throughout the year

I think you may be onto something here. You could potentially have made money, but actually end up losing due to taxes. Especially if you rebought after you sold not much later.

This has been probably very bad for traders that didn't exit bitcoin entirely. They have to pay short term capital gains taxes and can only claim up to a certain amount on losses. I can't remember the number, I think you can only claim up to $4,500 on loses. (This is US tax law, not sure about what it is in other countries)

None of the above matters. The end result is still that the mined coins are turned into fiat. I agree that they are probably not showing up on exchanges but the conversion still happens because you can only buy electricity with fiat.

If you're selling off your investments to pay off your income taxes, you're doing something spectacularly wrong.

I agree, but I don't doubt that a lot of stupid people end up needing to do it every year.

this couldn't be more wrong

why...taxes?

What is going on. I can't believe my eyes! Bitcoin is at $800! What?!?

$800. This has got to be the end of crypto currency as we know it.

Litecoin is at $4.31 and Ethereum at $20.80. This is a sad day for crypto indeed.

I don't know what else to think than that this is just a nightmare.


How can Bitcoin go from over 6k down to a lowly $800!

Just got out at $675. Thank goodness. Wow dropped to $0.30. I got out just in time. I'm considering getting back in just for the heck of it.

Who would have thought that Bitcoin would be worth $0.30 in 2018!

What are you all talking about? I thought BTC was just under $7k.

Are you on the West coast Godson? It's already April 2nd here lol

Happy Easter!