I interacted with a malicious website with two of my Metamask wallets.

My first interaction was with a burner wallet that barely had any funds, mostly just enough to cover gas fees. I approved the contract and it subsequently drained my ETH sitting on Arbitrum. I didn’t know it at the time, as it was a very small amount of ETH. So I proceeded to connect with my second wallet.

My second interaction, the Metamask wallet that I set up from Reddit vault, had less than a dollar of anything other than Moons. The website did not prompt me with a smart contract, just to “connect wallet”. My Moons and Reddit avatars were not touched. I dodged a bullet. I believe they were spared as Moons are not relatively known outside of Reddit. Other people reported their ADA, BSC, ETH, and even NFTs were stolen.

I used Revoke.cash and also checked my wallets address with Etherscan, BSCscan, and Polygonscan. I revoked everything I could. However, I don’t know if the scammer stole my seed phrase and could still load up my wallet at a future date.

Should I start a fresh Reddit account, and transfer my Moons and avatars?

EDIT: Helpful link that congregates revoke access links and sites to scan your wallet address:

Metamask Support site to revoke smart contracts

I've managed to get myself tangled up in what I think is a scam? It looks and smells like a scam, quacks like a scam, so it's probably a scam? I'm hoping an internet bro can help me think of a way out of this. This will be a bit long, but I want to provide enough detail to help weed out the BS or real factor.

Lots of mistakes made I think, but I was cold texted to a wrong number. (I know. /facepalm) Started chatting with "Jennifer" (could be catfished here, not clear) and it came up that they had a crypto business. Naturally, being interested in crypto I asked about the kind of business and she said she does short-term buying/selling contracts (like 30 second real time market up / down trades). I mentioned I had some Eth that I had bought awhile back as a long term investment to sit on and it's done nothing but lose value. She insisted short term trading is the only way to go and I will just continue to lose value sitting on ETH while the bottom falls out. I wasn't really interested, as I'm not skilled enough to day trade, but more time went on chatting over many days / weeks-- not just crytpo, just general life stuff and she keeps coming back to this. Sends me screenshots of her trades and profit, etc. If she's scamming me, she's playing a long game.

Finally Jennifer convinces me to try out the short term trades even for a very small amount of seed money to see that this is real. I ask more about it and it's on a platform called GMO (https://app.gmovip.com) so I decide to try it out for a small buyin and check it out. I transfer a very small deposit from Coinbase over to GMO. The site seems sketchy AF, google turns up nothing on GMO, not on app store, it doesn't seem reputable, etc. so I'm VERY VERY skeptical going into this. A couple times a week she would tell me exactly when to trade and when to stop, and adhere to a strict 10% of principle trade. (E.g. have $100 principle only trade for $10 per trade). It seem(ed) legit with a scientific system built around limiting risk. So we proceed to trade and I estimate it's about a 95-98% success ratio with a 40% return. (Trade for $100, profit $40). We typically would do 4-ish trades per "trade node" then stop (her wording for the couple times a week market if favorable). I do a test withdrawl back to Coinbase of $5.00 just to confirm that I can in fact withdraw from GMO to Coinbase (and cash out from there). It worked, the $5.00 showed up to my Coinbase account.

We both do nothing but win time and time again week after week, always 4 trades in a very brief window. One single trade loss out of maybe 30 individual trades. At this point I have become a believer and decide to go ahead and move my ETH (about $18k worth) so I can start making larger trades and up my profits. Gravy train keeps rolling and I start making some decent returns, making more in 20 minutes than I'm making in a week at work.

So Jennifer keeps encouraging me to add more principle balance so I can continue to make more profits. (Potential red flag, but she's right that more principle is more profit and I need to put idle resources to work) So now I'm thinking I need to get more money into this so I can increase my trades. I had $18k sitting in a bank account doing nothing, but it was all the extra cash I had. I decide to go ahead and add this to my GMO account by way of Coinbase (bank account already tied to CB, so just ACH'd the funds to there, then transferred to GMO wallet after clearing). Funds show up on GMO and we keep trading.

With the funds I have put in, + the profits I have made compounding, I'm now making more money in 20 minutes than I'm making in a MONTH of day job. (what could possibly go wrong?) Jennifer continues to keep pressing me to add more funds even though I was comfortable with the amount I was making. She suggests taking out 401k money, getting an online loan, borrowing from friends, etc. anything it takes to increase principle. This starts to throw a red flag for me and I decide I want to cash out my $36k I have invested and then I don't care what happens after that because I'm on "house money". And of course, NOW THE PROBLEMS START.

I try to transfer $15k back to Coinbase and the transaction never shows up on Coinbase wallet but the money is gone from my GMO account. I keep waiting and waiting thinking it just takes a few days, Jennifer assures me to just be patient it can take a few days and it's nothing to worry about. Finally I decide something is wrong and I contact GMO support from their app. They immediately ask to chat with them on Telegram (which seems weird and maybe another red flag?) so I do. Jennifer tells me this is normal and that she had to do the same thing on a previous account and that if I just do what customer service is asking they will unfreeze my assets. She is encouraging me to go find the $20k somehow (like it's just under the couch money or something) and send it to open up my funds.

They inform me that my account has been flagged as high-risk for illegal activity by the "Wind Control System" and that my $15k withdrawal transaction is on hold pending account verification. The verification consists of a self photo holding ID (this seems real, have had to do this on other platforms), 3 months bank account statements (red flag?) AND A $20,000 FUND VERIFICATION?! (SAY WHAT?!) I tell them I've already transferred $36k from another wallet to GMO, so that should cover that $20k requirement, but they say that "the funds you transferred are only used for your transactions and have nothing to do with verifying your account" (direct quote). I sent them the photo ID and bank statements, and they acknowledge 2 of 3 steps are complete, but that I must send $20k more to fully verify the account and then they will unlock my funds. So to recap, I put all my extra money $36k into this, made successful trades that put me at nearly $100k (I don't' even care about the profit, if I could just get the money I put in back out) and they are saying that I must put another $20k into GMO for them to verify my identity/account and allow me access to my funds. I literally have NO MONEY left to give, it's all there, and they won't let me cash it out. They are even holding the money I moved over from Coinbase, not just the profits I made trading on the platform. $20k might as well be $1million, it's a distant sum of money I have no way to get.

I now believe I'm being scammed and I'm probably just F'd. Even if I had $20k, which I don't, it seems foolish to give GMO even more of my money. Of course throughout this I'm giving Jennifer the "WTF?!" and she just keeps telling me to do what they say and I'll get the money (maybe she's in on it, I don't know). Finally I ask Jennifer if she is willing to help me with the $20k and I will immediately send her the money back as soon as it's unlocked WITH INTEREST (It's $20k to unlock $100k afterall). Jennifer says she doesn't have that much liquidity, but that she could manage to give me $5k to help if I could come up with the other $15k (I still can't, no money left as stated above). The fact that Jennifer offered to give me $5k of her money gives me a tiny bit of hope that maybe this isn't a scam afterall, but for all I know Jennifer could be a GMO clown punking me.

So there it is, hopefully someone made it through that story and has some thoughts or experience to help me determine if this is a scam or not. I honestly don't have $20k anyway, but could slowly work towards getting it if it really meant being able to get my money back out. Jennifer tells me I could immediately cash everything out the moment my account was verified. They GMO seem interested in knowing how long it will take me to get the $20k and pressing urgency on it, which also seems scammy.

Does anyone out there have any ideas of what I can do here?

Should I just accept that I have been scammed of all my savings? Classic case of "that only happens to other people". Oof.

Have you ever been looking at your wallet and noticed that it is filled with some random NFTs from all over the place?

If your first instinct were to transfer these NFTs away from your wallet, then congrats, you lost everything.

These NFTs are scam NFTs. If you try to send them out of your wallet, move them or sell them, you will need to approve a contract. However, most of these NFTs have smart contracts that will drain your wallet of most of of your funds.

​

What can you do?

• Nothing
• You can visually hide them from your wallet, but cannot remove them safely

What should you NOT do?

• Interact with the NFTs in any way
• Attempt to sell or transfer them
• Approve any related smart contracts

​

How to detect if it’s a scam NFT?

• If you don’t recognize it, it’s 99% a scam. No one will spent time and gas fees sending you an NFT normally. If the NFT is worth something, then it is also probably a scam. No one will send you free money
• If the smart contact requires a significantly larger amount of gas to be approved. It it needs a lot more gas than your average NFT contract, it’s a tell tale sign that it’s a scam

​

As always, good luck and happy trading

Stay safe out there

Backstory

Over the last few years I've really embraced streaming services typically at the cost of my own media library.

I had hundreds of DVDs that I collected over the years. As home media capabilities became more pragmatic, I moved my dvd collection to a storage array and streamed in my house.

As the kids got older and our devices proliferated - (6 laptops, 4 tablets, 5 TVs, 4 phones) the hassle of maintaining the home media service became too much and I stopped. Prime, netflix and Disney reigned supreme..Nice and easy to use.

The Fuck Up Last night the family sat down to watch something, queue 30 minutes of the usual fighting. Wife remembered we had a film that she hadn't seen. We bought it on Prime for the kids to watch with some friends. We scrolled.

It wasn't there.

We checked that we had bought it. Yep, email receipt still exists.

Film was there, however we had to buy it. Queue argument that I must had rented it. Checked receipt again, nope. Bought it.

Spent 30 minutes trying to get answers on Prime. Fucking useless. Another 20 minutes trying to get through the wonderful "help" system to get to a human. Bounced around 6 times and finally got through to someone on live chat.

That was fun. We got a torrent of poor language about how it was our fault for apparently not watching the film more. Very confused, we asked why this was relevant. No answer. Lots of questions about how is it a newish movie is available on the platform that we purchased isn't available to us...

Bounced to another agent who could write in English (or maybe chatGPT) who gave us a voucher to spend on the film. No answer as to why we'd lost access.

Googling around turns out it's quite common for Prime to remove things. They don't even notify you.

web3.0

So, how can web 3.0 help?

For starters, we should start introducing different license types. I have no problem paying if I know what I'm getting. A 6-month lease for HD. Lifetime for UHD, 3 months for SD...all fine and valid. But most importantly it should not be revoked.

For the likes of Amazon and the content creators, they can see ownership quite clearly and the blockchain would typically reduce the costs associated with running this ledger privately.

For content creators it means they can be more creative on how the sell goods and ensures customers have a great experience.

We cancelled our Prime membership and won't renew. I'm happy to go to BluRay or similar and have spent the morning putting together a 10TB raid array.

Hi there everyone.

TL/DR: What do NFTs Non Fungible Tokens look like in 5-10-15+ years?

Think we will have larger super computers and we have quantum computers but they only work on one task really. In 10 years we should have the new generation of computers that are quantum not binary 0-1 or smart 0-1 or part of. Where quantum has 1-2-3-4-5+ up to like 24 for some small computers then nearly infinite amounts for super large like IBM deep blue for us now. Anyway..just thoughts.

I would like to start by saying I’ve brought sold and created over 50-500 per tx type making selling and buying and trading too but I never have made generative NFTs this why not many NFTs I have made myself. If don’t know what generative NFT is it’s a smart contract that when the buyer executes on chain it will open a or code one of the “1000” piece collection let’s say, and you will get random uniqueness or rarity chance. It’s coded art from a lucky draw virtually that you know what the theme is.

Anyway I just think we hear much negativity when NFTs are brought up for specified chains which would really bring only GOOD things to that company or coin or DEX or original NFT exchange for that coin. Sure may be issues for day delayed times for transfers or overloaded network or NEW FEES. But those fees will only be for the NFT section of that coin or token.

For the main question I do want to know what we think will come of NFTs. The use case is large in my thoughts with the uptake of AI and it’s adoption. With green energy = more incentive to mine where you have solar or other renewable energy. Heck you CAN ALL make a wind farm or water farm for powering purely your mining PC or a specific voltage. That’s needed or a bit more for safety sake. Put up a big wind turbine even in your roof like on cars or other house roofs in old days on old houses or old caravans they have then that powers things.. it’s a generator.

Use a pipe along your house from HIGHER TO LOW pvc pipe maybe 4 meters or longer in length and you make a U shape that connects where the U has a gap and it will all go down then at the bottom a up angle for the water to gather and it will fill up to the top and push half the water back down the top again continually making a stream to turn a turbine. There are many ways you can do this with less difficulty but this is a constant non energy consumption continual energy creating device and that’s what you want to mine with. Even solar panels on your roof it helps! Trust me. So generating power for mining crypto is very smart it cuts the costs = larger gains.

Anyway what is your opinions where I’ll And what will NFS be used for in 5-10-15 years? Thanks!

P.S. If you have other questions that are related to this post do share!.

Last week we got some shocking news. I already covered that at:

• PSA: Ledger is officially a hot wallet. It can expose your seed phrase to third parties! (Confirmed on their sub)
• Comparison of Hardware Wallets (Conclusions After My 5 Hour Evaluation)

After the dust settled from Ledger's statement that they had the ability to extract the seed all the time, I decided to address the most common comments I saw on various crypto subs.

Below, I compiled a list of the most common arguments and will try to dispute them all:

Argument 1: "All hardware wallets can expose your seed"

This statement is technically true.

However, it's not an argument for sticking with Ledger. Here's why.

While all hardware wallets technically can do it, they all have open source firmware. This means that if such a change is implemented in any of them, you'll be warned not to upgrade to that version and you won't be at risk.

Ledger has closed source firmware - this means that their code is not public and you trust them not to expose your seed.

TLDR They can all leak your seed, but Ledger is the only one you won't see coming.

Argument 2: "Reacting out of emotions is more risky"

Here's a situation where you'd be reacting out of emotions: a Bitcoin maximalist saying to you "I don't use Ledger because it supports shitcoins. Ethereum is an attack-vector for Bitcoin as well!". And then you panic and switch to Coldcard.

This is emotional behavior.

Here's a situation where you'd be reacting rationally: the CEO, co-founder, and technical lead of Ledger say: "You've always trusted Ledger not to leak your seed phrase. We previously said that the seed can't escape the secure element - that's only true if we add: if you trust Ledger.". You switch to Trezor the next day.

This is not emotional behavior.

TLDR There is difference between rational and emotional actions, and both can be swift.

Argument 3: "I trust Ledger more than myself not making a mistake"

Then you can also trust BitBox02 or Trezor more than yourself, can't you?

Especially because those are open source and you'll always know exactly what's going on.

But most of these people are referring to them transferring the assets to the new wallet. Here's a easy-to-follow tutorial:

1. Buy a new wallet
2. Click "Receive" and copy the address
3. Go to your Ledger account
4. Click "Send" and paste the address

TLDR You shouldn't rely on trust.

Argument 4: "Nothing changed for me / it was always like this"

A lot has changed for everyone. Ledger released new information stating that this "vulnerability" always existed.

Maybe you were aware of it before, maybe you weren't.

If you weren't: everything changed. You should get a new wallet ASAP.

If you were: so far, you trusted that Ledger's firmware won't interact with the secure element in a malicious way. Ledger's statement is your urgent reminder that open source is the way to go.

TLDR There is new information - the company's reminded us that they'll do what they want.

Argument 5: "I use a passphrase"

You don't know what Ledger does with the passphrases and whether the device stores them in memory.

I know this because nobody has read Ledger's firmware code.

Go open source and continue using a passphrase.

TLDR Continue using a passphrase with open source wallets.

Argument 6: "I won't opt-in to the Recovery Service"

The recovery service was never the problem. It's a good service actually and n00bs might prefer it.

The problem is the device's ability to access your seed and expose it to the internet.

Ledger confirmed that this could always been done and now they'll offer a service to do it for you (while sharding and encrypting it).

With all of the other hardware wallets, you can see their firmware code and know exactly what they're doing with their seed. Ledger is the only exception. Avoid it.

It boils down again to open source vs closed source. And open source wins when it comes to security.

TLDR You can opt out of the Recovery Service. You can't opt out of the device's ability to leak your seed.

Conclusion/TLDR

As your portfolio grows, instead of being uncertain whether something will happen, just get a new hardware wallet and sleep well.

Arbitrage is a simple concept. If you can buy a token for a low price and then sell it immediately elsewhere for a high price you are arbitraging.

Earlier in the year, Safemoon experimented with cross chain. They basically launched an Ethereum and a MATIC version of the Safemoon token, and then implemented a token bridge so that you can move your tokens across the three chains (BSC, ETH, Polygon).

As you will remember, it resulted in a disaster. Someone exploited the contract and took nearly $9m in BNB out of the Liquidity pool. Since then, the funds were partially recovered, minus a $2m bounty for the exploiter, and this recovered liquidity was split across the three chains.

Safemoon added liquidity to these new chains and purposely set the ratio so that the price was $0.0003 per token. This is problematic as the token was trading at less than $0.0002 on BSC.

What this means is that as soon as the bridge is activated, people could buy the token on BSC, bridge it to ETH/MATIC and immediately sell for a huge profit.

This was further compounded by smooth-brains buying the token in isolation on MATIC and ETH chains. Yes, they were literally buying Safemoon tokens for up to $0.0005 when the same token was trading for less than $0.0002 on BSC.

I have no words.

——

Anyway, yesterday the bridge opened and as predicted, a few outsiders took advantage. They bought tens of thousands of dollars of Safemoon on BSC at the lower price:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x8414f65a6c6fc2a00473e4b512dc2775729b5a4d1c8fed49ef94ef4a26338b5b

Bridged them to the other chains:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x66270782e9c3d1b72d7d86a713825ef22c934d172d7cd6c36ef8ef95033a9240

And sold them at the higher price:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x99663207b3e46538a69108e6895f9a147f41271aaeee099065b6e7ec94c230c0

In this single series of transactions, this person managed to make $2.5k for a couple minutes of work. This was repeated over and over and over.

This of course raised the price of BSC Safemoon by like 20%, which got all the maxis in a tizzy. And now they’ve convinced themselves it’s the start of a new rally.

Except… nothings changed. A token that nobody wants to buy is now available on 3 chains… so what? What does it being cross chain actually do? Nothing.

And evidently, people are now dumping Safemoon again, thankful for the small bump in prices. The price on ETH and MATIC got decimated and the arbitrage bots walk away with handsome profits.

The list of people who have now profited from Safemoon grows:

• Development team
• MEV bot
• Arbitrage bot
  

You won’t find regular Safemoon investors on that list.

It is a serious question. I know and understand that Lunc will never reach 100$ again or even 10$!

A lot of people(maybe trolls) are saying that LUNC is a shit coin or a meme coin now, but there is a serious team making constant upgrade, few projects are in progress and soon project based on LUNA can be on the LUNC blockchain.

There is no pumping or irregular variation that looks like pump and dump. Of course, the price going down, but exactly like the rest of the market in a bear market and every big variations bitcoin have the same.

What is your realistic (serious) opinion? Good or bad I don't care but please no trolling or being aggresive in your answer.

P.s. Sorry for my english writing, it is not my first language

Hello community,
it is now pretty clear for everyone that using a hardware device for generating seeds and signing transaction is not the foolproof 100% secure solution for Bitcoin self-custody.
It is also clear that using a closed source device needs the user to completely trust the provider: Ledger openly disclosed that Secure Element firmware can be updated to send out shards and could also potentially be updated to send seed or private keys.
This is a problem because USB connection could be potentially used to exfiltrate Secure Element content.

Some rightfully scared Ledger customers are now looking for an open source alternative and some are rushing to buy discounted similar hardware.

Open source hardware and software allow for peer review and it's a great improvement compared to closed source, but it is still not the solution since code review and audit requires highly skilled profile and it is not a task for the average user that still need to trust reviewers and auditors.
Using open source code and schematics does not guarantee that code won't be changed to allow the same critical update that Ledger is pushing for their devices.
The only solution would be to fork away from the code provided by vendor, and only if the device allows to load a non-vendor signed firmware.
This seems also difficult and inconvenient for the average user.

The most important part about self custody is 'keeping keys offline', and USB connection breaks this rule.

Before rushing to buy another USB device that could be exposed to the same problem, take your time and go into details about self custody.

You don't really need a specialized device to generate seeds and sign safely in a completely disconnected sealed environment.
Using a special device like Ledger is only a convenience, because you can manage your holdings without using a modified computer or mobile (removed network interface) and you can easily generate quality entrophy using embedded TrueRandomNumberGenerator (if available) without boring dice throwing.

BUT, before buying another device, go deeper!
Bitcoin network is not just Ledger Live.
A great starting point to learn more about self custody would be trying to use more advanced desktop wallet application like Sparrow Wallet, or Specter Wallet.
If you have a old unused computer or mobile you can easily experiment 100% disconnected airgapped key generation and transaction signing without a specialized device.
Both Sparrow and Specter allow you to use your own or trusted bitcoin node/electrum private server, support multisignature and PSBT.

Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (BIP 0174) allow to:
- generate a transaction on a connected device using UTXO data and fee estimation
- save the transaction on a media (usb key, sd card), or export using a QR code
- sign the transaction on a disconnected device
- save signed transaction on the same media, or generate QR code
- import and broadcast transaction from the connected device

This is a extremely secure solution that involves no trust other than bitcoin protocol, because you can verify transaction content, and there is no possible way for the disconnected device to leak your key.

To test this you only need to install Sparrow on both connected and disconnected device.
You can also keep using your Ledger with the disconnected device to generate a good quality seedphrase and sign transactions securely without risking seed exfiltration by USB. https://sparrowwallet.com/docs/

If you don't have a spare computer, you could also do some testing for experimental purpose using Airgap Vault Android/IOS app on a disconnected mobile, using generated QR codes for signing https://support.airgap.it/guides/sparrow/

This is a great exercise to learn more about self-custody options that could help you to make a more informed choice about hardware signing devices.

This was as of a few weeks ago. If you opt into CoinJoin, the operators are linked with chain analysis firms (that can link with powerful entities). In conjunction, they can de-anonymize and / or censor 'tainted' addresses.

Given the crypto ethos, is this any better or worse than what we just went through these past few days?

Sure, it's less of an attack vector because our keys are not exposed. Or is it really less...? Is it not effectively the same result of say one's entire wallet was censored due to it being labeled as 'tainted' for having a different opinion on something, or for speaking out against their government? At the very least, it is open source so things can be verified (if someone opts to do the verification for every update). But what does the community think?

Discuss.

In the crypto world, we have done a full cycle, and we are once again experiencing the helm of meme coins. Memecoins always bring attention to crypto, and often encourage new people to invest, create their own wallets, and get into crypto. All of this is a good thing (to a certain extend)

However, with more people joining, I think that it is crucial to mention and remind some of the newer users of some of the risks in crypto.

One common scam that is often seen starts in your wallet. You are checking the tokens in your wallet, and you suddenly see a new token, one that you did not buy. Its name is perhaps Dogeloinshibainu42069.

Now this token you have received is mostly harmless, as long as it sits in your wallet and you do not interact with it at all. The moment you interact with these tokens, trying to sell or transfer them, they will ask you to approve a smart contract. Pretty standard right? The only problem is that this smart contract will have malicious code, allowing it complete access to all your funds and the ability to drain your wallet completely. In other words, do not interact or try to sell any tokens that you did not buy. Some of these tokens will show that they have a very high value; this is a trick, do not try to sell them. You have not become lucky. No-one gifted you 100s of thousands worth of a token for free.

​

TL.DR: Do not interact with tokens you did not buy. Even if they show a high $ value. They will drain your account of funds. No-one is sending you tokens worth a lot of money for free.

- A good tell signal that a contract might be malicious is if the gas fee for approval is significantly higher than for any other token you approved before.

​

If you accidentally approved a malicious token, or just want to reject token approvals, you can do so through a number of websites, including Etherscan. Not including a link for security, but feel free to search it up.

​

As always, happy trading and stay safe

I know people don't like to be told to take care of themselves, but I feel like it's an important reminder especially in crypto spaces where emotions run high and stakes are usually high for your mental state.

And now that the market is picking up steam and new investing opportunities come up, you really have to stop and ask yourself what you want out of this. Not just economically. First define what are your financial goals, THEN decide how that's going to impact your life for the better outside of the market, and make sure to dedicate enough time to that so crypto doesn't become your life.

Take it easy, touch some grass and hang out with friends. The $100000 dollar opportunity isn't gonna come and go while you're away. Remember we're all doing this so that we can use the money we get to enrich our lives, but you gotta have a life to enrich before that.

Stay safe out there, and remember that crypto is a hobby, not a lifestyle.

How could we find out, if our seed phrases/keys are potentially compromised without us noticing it too late?

Over the past decade, tools like haveibeenpwnd became popular. You simply enter your email address, and the service returns you a list of data breaches, where you email was found + what the breach contained. This is very useful!

Obviously this doesn't mean, that one should be laissez-faire with opsec.

However, I was asking myself if and how we could do the same for our dear seed phrases and private keys. There doesn't seem to be anything like this for crypto wallets.

It would be great to have a website, where we could at least see a collected list of data breaches and documented hacks on wallets.

Edit: To clarify. I don't mean databases of Exchanges. That's not self-custody. I mean databases compiled by hackers after using /discovering security vulnerabilities in wallets and compromising them en masse.

And furthermore, it would be great, of there was a service, which could securely check, if a certain seed phrase /private key/ public key is part of a data breach of hack. I think public key is best.

There are many cases, where hackers only make use of the compromised wallets, when the victims actually put lots of funds inside. Victims feel safe with 50$ but once they put 2000$ there just for a moment from the CEX, it's gone!

What do you think about this? I wonder where the existing pwnd search engines get their data from. After all, such datasets are expensive and highly sought for in the dark market.

I'd really like to be able to at least have a way to check, if certain addresses are defin

So lately there have been lots of posts about the ethereum L1 gas fees being high. Aside from the usage of proper L2s (which is what the ethereum community actually recommends; see https://l2beat.com), there another thing you can do to save gas fees.

Did you know, that you can actually have your transactions automatically run at a cheaper price by having it wait for lower gas fees? (e.g. during US night time)

Take a look at the first chart here: https://ethereumprice.org/gas

You can see, that the gas prices fluctuate quite a bit during network activity. Usually it's more regular day night cycles, but because of some tokens being popular in the past few days the fluctuations are even higher.

Now, you can actually do the following for your L1 transactions. When you make an NFTs opensea sale for instance, the gas price of currently 100gwei would cost around 14$. This is expensive, but did you know, that you can also make the same sale for just under 4$?

All you need to do is to tell to your wallet, that you want to set a custom gas fee and have it execute at 30gwei. Here is an article show how to do that with Metamask. Essentially, if you set the Max Gas Fee to a lower value like 30gwei, the network will keep your transaction in the pool and automatically run it, when the gas fee reaches 30gwei (or lower). This is great! This means, you don't need to wake up at uncommon times just to send your cheap transactions. You can let the network do it for you!

But how do you know, which lower gas limit to set? That's why we need the above charts. You can take a look at the last few price dips (usually at US night) and use that's as an estimate. The longer you are willing to wait, the cheaper you can have your transactions. Essentially, it's just like those limit orders on order book exchanges.

Here is an example of me adding Liquidity to a uniswap pool for the cheap gas fee of below 20gwei. Back then the median gas price was much higher, but I was willing to wait:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4afa63e62e7d0909bca9cc858ceb2b2ad9df474555ac5fca49d17485512c546d

Caveats:

• While your transactions is waiting in the tx pool, you cannot make another tx to be executed immediately. Your transactions have to be sequential, since your nonce is increased one by one for each tx. This means, that if you have a transaction waiting for a low gas fee, you can make new transactions to run after that, but they will have to wait, until the previous one is done.
• If the gas price never goes low enough, you can cancel or speedup the tx with a higher gas fee. Metamask shows this option in the UI natively.
• For some things like high frequency trading, this doesn't make sense. But if you can afford to wait, it's worth it!

Alright then! Hope you learned something new today! Now go on and save your gas fees! 😎

So, just wanted to share.
I used the service "stoic" last year, it sucked, and now during declaration I got over 4900 trades to declare. Couldn't find a service to do it, nor could chatGPT help. So I called them and got the answer "Oh... shit... well.. Can you send us a CSV-file? If so then we can calculate it for you free of charge" :D
I had about 100 trades on Crypto.com, did the same thing with their file. KuCoin can't export the data, so dunno how I'm supposed to do with them.

Also, have anyone declared win/loss from a DEX?

I was watching some videos related to the recent banking crisis, where I came across this very interesting quite from someone called Minsky:

Anyone can create money; the problem lies in getting it accepted.

• Minsky

The video explained one crucial aspect which I sort of knew already, but didn't quite fully grasp about banks.

Banks are not even trying to store your money. That's not their goal. They're literary taking it and giving you a promise of return+interest - so essentially they are in debt to you. The balance you see in the online banking is not how much money YOU have, but how much money THEY are in DEBT to you. Not more, not less.

What does this mean? This means, that banks defaulting and you not getting all of your money back is expected. After all, it was essentially you giving out a loan to the bank. (Edit: By expected, I don't mean, that you actually expect to loose money like when you actually gamble. I just wanted to highlight, that the safety is not guaranteed as they don't actually keep the money. Ofc there is FDIC insurance etc.)

The quote from above means the following. Because banks are (in general) trusted with taking on your debt and returning it on demand, people feel comfortable with putting their money there. The goal of banks is to be trusted with debt, so that's why they can create money. Because we trust them when we take a loan from the bank, it actually works. The above quote essentially says, that money can be created here, because people trust that the banks won't default.

This also explains why there are only overcollatoralized loans in crypto. After all, crypto is based on trustlessness, so new trust based debt cannot be created like described in the quote.

With this understanding, I am actually very confused as to why most people don't understand this. Am I wrong somewhere? What do you think?

After all, almost everyone outside of Crypto thinks that banks hold your money. But actually You're giving out a loan. Most people wouldn't do that if they understood what they're doing. They'd rather put the money at home or put it into actual investments. But this wide misunderstanding between what banks actually do and what people think what they do worries me.

What do you think? Would the world be better off, if everyone understood banks as places to give out loans than places to store money? I have no problem with people doing that, if they actually understand what it means.

Note: Yes, giving the bank a loan by putting your money is not 1:1 like a real p2p loan. You have insurance upto a certain point. But that insurance is essentially paid by everyone via bank fees. So bank customers are paying for it as well.

Edit: I found a great guardian article describing what I mean and even linking to an official document by the bank of England further highlighting this point of misconception. The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it and the paper

Edit2: To make the point regarding taking loans from the bank. There is the misconceptions, that the loan money comes from other peoples deposit. It doesn't. It's not other people's deposits. Look at the document straight from the bank of England.

In the modern economy, most money takes the form of bank deposits. But how those bank deposits are created is often misunderstood: the principal way is through commercial banks making loans. Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower's bank account, thereby creating new money.

Emphasis from original document.

With the federal reserve requirement at 0%, this effect has little limits.

As the title says, I’m thinking migrating to better country like Canada ( I live in Myanmar which is a hellhole ) .

I have a background in Project Management for IT and Web Related and used to worked as a PM for Web Design Agencies.

I’m thinking about becoming a blockchain analyst or smart contract developer.

Does anyone here has already pursued a career in blockchain and if so , how did you do it ?

And yes , some of us prioritize about career first before financial freedom given we had rough lives who from 1st world can’t imagine.

Please share me your blockchain career stories.

Love you guys.

Hey everyone!

When people are invested into something (working in a company, living in a specific place, investing into X, etc.) I often like to ask "What would it take for you to leave X?" to get some interesting perspectives on what matters to the people.

This is different than asking "Why are you here?" - because people often answer things different than what they actually care about (because of sub-optimal psychological self-assesment, bias, over-confidence, common set phrases, etc.). However, by asking specific questions on scenarios which would have them decide to leave, we can circumvent that and get a slightly better assessment because people are encouraged to actually think deeper about it.

Hence, now to you!

What would need to happen in the world (or in your personal experience) for you to leave crypto or specific projects? Try to think of specific scenarios rather than generic ones.

Curious to hear, what we all think on this 😄

Huge "down-under" ATH of $0.0001922 - 98.25% below the highest price seen on May 12th 2021.

Let me tell you a little about that All Time High.

First, Safemoon stole 55,705 BNB (worth $37m) and the equivalent 3.6 Trillion Safemoon tokens (also worth $37m) from the Liquidity Pool.

Then they used that stolen BNB to perform three market buys within 27 minutes on May 12 2021:

1 13,221 BNB buys 1 Trillion tokens worth $7.8m
2 22,500 BNB buys 1.5 Trillion tokens worth $13.3m
3 Another 22,500 BNB buys 1.5 Trillion tokens worth $13.3m
4 These 4T tokens were sent to Bitmart to cash out
5 Regular withdrawals of USDT enter John Karony's 'Gabe' wallet from Bitmart addresses

So yeah, not only is Safemoon a massive, clear & obvious fraud, but the All Time High that maxi's are desperate to re-live? They don't even realise that it was only possible by Safemoon stealing holders own liquidity money and using it to buy themselves tokens to cash out on Bitmart!

They pumped Safemoon using stolen BNB, and then sold those tokens for tens of millions of dollars on Bitmart.

This post is a response to this, which has 2k upvotes, tagged as COMEDY, and somehow TONS of comments with people taking it as serious for some reason. Regardless of whether or not the commenters were trolling, 90% of them were commenting as if they were seriously thinking that it's how tax law works.

DISCLAIMER: No, I do not think OP was seriously trying to convey that what they described was the law, but their response here made me realize that maybe some people seriously don't have an understanding of capital gains/losses on property, which isn't a very hard concept for crypto.

For those who want a high-level understanding of how U.S. taxation works for crypto, keep reading. Here is what the current law generally covers.

If you purchase a cryptocurrency, regardless of platform, you own X amount of crypto (i.e. 1 BTC) at a purchase-price/cost-basis of whatever amount you paid for it (let's pretend $10k for 1 BTC)

Anything you do that gets rid of the bitcoin in exchange for something else, whether it be fiat, crypto, an NFT, etc, is considered a taxable EXCHANGE, which is REALLY treated in tax-law as multiple transactions. Let's give the following scenario(s):

TXN 1: Buy 1 BTC for $10,000

You have no fees, therefore, you have 1 BTC at $10,000 cost basis.

TXN 2-1 (EXCHANGE): Trade 1 BTC (now $12,000) for equivalent amount of ETH (i.e. 6 ETH at $2k)

1 BTC is SOLD for FIAT equivalent (you traded $12,000 of BTC for $12,000 USD, and you originally had paid $10,000 invested. You had a cost basis of $10,000 in the BTC (you paid $10,000 for it), therefore, you have a capital gain of $2,000 because you gained money on the sale of the BTC for your "fiat". Your 6 ETH that you received now has a cost-basis of $12,000, because you essentially bought 6 ETH for $12,000.

2-1-1: SELL BTC

2-1-2 BUY ETH

​

TXN 2-2 (WASH SALE): 1 BTC drops to $5,000, and you sell your 1 BTC and buy it back.

You just cashed in a capital loss of $5,00. Proceeds 5k - cost basis 10k = (5000) capital loss

You now have the SAME 1 BTC, but now collected a $5k capital loss. You can write-off up to $3,000 of your capital losses per year off of your taxable income. You can write off unlimited capital losses when you can use them to offset capital gains. If I had no other capital gains or losses, I could write-off $3k of my W-2 job income, and carry-forward the remaining $2k loss indefinitely, and next year either write-off 2k, OR, offset future capital losses. Note that you must deduct your capital losses from your capital gains first, and only when the gains are extinguished can you deduct them from your income.

2-2-1 BUY BTC

2-2-2 SELL BTC (collect losses)

2-2-3 BUY BTC

​

TXN 2-3 (TRANSFER): Transfer your BTC from TXN 1 to another wallet you own.

Your cost basis transfers. You pay nothing. If you move it from wallet to exchange or wallet to wallet, it doesn't matter, the cost-basis is always the same.

2-3-1 MOVE COIN TO NEW ADDRESS

These are just a few high level explanations -- there are more complex scenarios, but in TXN 2-2, the point here is to show that wash sales don't exist in crypto and therefore you can do as I described. If you purchased a bunch of BTC at $50,000, go and move it to Coinbase right now, sell it all, and then buy it right back. Send it back to your wallet. Congratulations, you now lowered your cost basis and got a ton of capital losses that you can offset future capital gains with. There's no point of doing this when you're in the green, as you're essentially doing the opposite, which is cashing-in capital gains for whatever reason. So only sell when you're ready to cash-out and only cash-out what you need. For reference, I did this last year, and I got a few-thousand dollars back from the IRS. Why wouldn't you take advantage of the tax law? This is what all the whales do.

Using BITCOIN as a store of value for your other crypto purchases is the best thing to do, as whenever BTC's in the red, you can cash in on those capital losses whenever you sell. Try to NOT do a ton of useless transactions, as tax-time will be a HASSLE and you'll wanna blow your brains out dealing with your return.

PSA: If you do not file your taxes and you bought crypto on a KYC CEX you are an absolute moron. The exchanges report every single thing you buy to the IRS and they know exactly what you have, they know your EXACT wallet addresses linked to the exchange, and the exchange THEMSELVES reports EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION they do on-chain to the IRS. I don't know this for fact, but how else do you think these exchanges file their OWN taxes and prove to the government THEY aren't money-laundering? If you think they aren't, you're tripping balls.

​

TL;DR: Learn the tax law, don't go to jail for tax evasion, take advantage of the tax laws, wash sales existing for crypto commodities such as BTC is BIG for investors and can save YOU a lot of money.

EDIT: This is in regards to U.S. tax law(s) (if it wasn’t implied…)

Crypto Wants to Know What the Rules Are

Kraken's CEO David Ripley and Coinbase's CEO Brian Armstrong have called for "clear regulatory standards" and a "regulatory framework." There have been calls that the SEC is following a "regulation by enforcement approach" where you are told you are breaking the law when you receive an enforcement notification, but the regulations are not clear.

Many people involved in crypto in the US want to know what the rules are, that crypto is not a security (not one agency saying ETH is not a security and another alluding to it being a security), and who is in charge of enforcing the rules.

The Biden Administration Thinks of "Regulation" Differently

The Biden Administration published "White House Releases First-Ever Comprehensive Framework for Responsible Development of Digital Assets" which gives some insight into what their thought process is for crypto. (Bolding is not mine)

• "consider agency recommendations to create a federal framework to regulate nonbank payment providers."
• "evaluate whether to call upon Congress to amend the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), anti-tip-off statutes, and laws against unlicensed money transmitting to apply explicitly to digital asset service providers"
• "encourage regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), consistent with their mandates, to aggressively pursue investigations and enforcement actions against unlawful practices in the digital assets space"
• "recommended steps for Congress and regulators to make stablecoins safer"
• "Financial Literacy Education Commission (FLEC) will lead public-awareness efforts to help consumers understand the risks involved with digital assets"
• "Agencies will encourage the adoption of instant payment systems, like FedNow"
• "Treasury will lead an interagency working group to consider the potential implications of a U.S. CBDC"

There is a big difference here

The Biden Administration is implying the regulations that you need to know about crypto are already there under the mandates of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). David Ripley and many others think that cryptos are not securities and fall under the CFTC to regulate them, but a broader regulatory structure applying to crypto needs to be outlined.

The White House thinks regulation is focused on controlling the minutia, whereas people in crypto think regulation is about knowing the rules. Unfortunately, it is not people in crypto making the rules.

Gary Gensler did not have a brainstorm one day and decided to use SEC securities regulations to go after crypto, as outlined in the above Fact Sheet, he was told to do it by his boss, the White House. Any regulation that comes from the White House and not Congress during this administration will likely be seen as punitive and stifling to crypto innovation by the crypto community.

So every time I see btc or eth move 5% or more, up or down, I see a ton of bull/bear posts and I just don't get it. If it went up 10% in a few hours sure but i constantly see peoples emotions take over and a post about how the possibility of the next big crash/bullrun is coming soon. These kind of interpretations are dangerous in a speculative market because you're influencing others into fomo. Now maybe that is your intention all along and you're trying to pump your bags on some shit coin, I'm not one to judge.

But the moment I see these posts I cringe and just think of when I first got into crypto. Watching charts daily and just obsessing over it. That is not healthy and focusing on money that much will give you grey hairs. Don't believe me though and go for it. Unless you have a lot of disposable income then it will be a stressful experience no doubt.

Just consider others the next time you start making too big of assumptions. It is fine to speculate as I said, but a lot of people proclaim 100% the next occurrence is coming. Then an ftx incident happens, or covid money comes into play and things go the way you'd never assume.

So just play nice, don't try to fomo others into your ideas and just discuss the possibilities without actually thinking you're the next crypto wizard, because I can tell you this is a casino if you do it that way. And dyor, reddit is not the place to come for news, it is a only a small piece of it. A lot of the real news is in the background and you have to really listen to what is happening before it ripples into crypto, sometimes reddit is good at this, others it misses it completely so go to multiple sources for information.