Creating permanent uncensorable messages on the Bitcoin blockchain

Learn about bitcoin By Jack Filiba, contributor to Trezor blog One of the most commonly praised features of Bitcoin is the fact that its underlying technology stores immutable information about transactions. When money is sent or received on the Bitcoin blockchain, relevant details are publicly viewable and impervious to change. Less attention, however, is given to the fact that blockchains can also store permanent and uncensorable messages. Since Bitcoin is not controlled by a single ruling entity and is not vulnerable to a single point of failure, messages stored on its blockchain cannot be censored or deleted. The network is decentralized and…

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Do you need to pay tax on crypto?

Wherever you are in the world, there’s a good chance that you’re expected to pay tax on any money you’ve made from buying and trading cryptocurrencies. You might even be surprised to find that your government wants you to pay up for hodling, staking, or even gifting coins to someone else. Tax is one of the few tools governments have for striking back at Bitcoin, so make sure you’re not caught blindsided. The common misconception that Bitcoin is anonymous stems from the fact that transaction tracing came much later than the network itself, meaning many early adopters enjoyed stacking and…

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What happens to lost bitcoin?

Every year, millions of dollars worth of bitcoin and other digital assets are lost. In most circumstances, these coins cannot be retrieved and permanently exit the currency’s circulating supply. More often than not, lost coins can be traced back to user error, so let’s take a look at how to avoid costly mistakes. Where the missing coins go Unlike fiat currencies like the US dollar, Bitcoin was designed to have a limited supply. While more bank notes can always be printed by the Federal Reserve, new bitcoin cannot be issued once all 21 million coins have been mined. Lost and destroyed Bitcoin…

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How to be a successful crypto trader: the trading mindset

Cryptocurrency Trading by Nebraskan Gooner, professional trader Everyone wants to make more money. That’s why trading and investing make such attractive side-hustles and even more attractive professions. Many people will have a go at trading and fail. Beginner’s luck is real and most enter the markets during extremely bullish conditions when assets are moving straight up. The “it’s easy money” and “I’m quitting my job to become a full-time trader” self-proclaimed geniuses are everywhere during these conditions. That leaves them vulnerable to corrections which they aren’t sure how to handle. Their lack of preparation and understanding of market cycles leaves them…

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Pro-blockchain, anti-crypto? The curious case of China, Russia and India

Crypto Regulation By Michael Borowiec, contributor to Trezor Blog In this series, we discussed how the majority of economic superpowers see intrinsic, long-term value in incorporating the cryptocurrency industry into its market structures, as long as it plays by their rules. As with anything, in this development there are winners and losers. But the overall sentiment is that crypto is staying relatively independent, with large parts of the sector allowed to thrive, along with a rich ecosystem of tokens alongside it. At the same time, a smaller group of countries is taking a much more cautious approach to regulating cryptocurrencies. There…

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Don’t lose your Bitcoin to bad luck!

Bitcoin Security From week to week Bitcoin is cresting the charts, supported by growing waves of public and commercial interest. You don’t need to be an expert in economics to see that Bitcoin’s encroachment on gold suggests a lot of room for growth, but when it comes to making and securing your investment, it can feel like you were meant to pick up a PhD somewhere along the way. Over the past decade, tens of thousands of Bitcoin have been lost or stolen because they were not properly secured. The scale of these losses in dollar terms will continue to increase…

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Will Bitcoin bring financial equality for women and other underrepresented groups?

Learn about Bitcoin Will Bitcoin bring financial equality for women and other under-represented groups? On International Women’s Day 2021, over a decade since the launch of Bitcoin, there still exists a large imbalance in the ratio of women to men who are investing, using or building upon cryptocurrencies. Is the new technology failing to resonate with women, or are there systemic problems that are not being addressed? The true number of women who hodl is of course impossible to tell. There are likely more than any study will account for, but there is no doubt the disparity exists. Reported figures have…

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Celebrating three years of the Trezor Model T!

The first Trezor Model T hardware wallets were sold three years ago today. Since then, thousands of devices have been bought by happy customers across the world, as more and more people realize the importance of Bitcoin self-custody. But how does a Trezor Model T make it easier and safer to secure your keys? In this blog, we’ll cover some of the important improvements that the Model T brought over the first-generation Trezor Model One, and how they work. From a more user-friendly design to a revolutionary new way to create backups, the Model T has become popular as a reliable everyday…

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Multisig and split backups: two ways to make your bitcoin more secure

Bitcoin Security Multisig and split backups: two ways to keep your bitcoin more secure As the bitcoin price continues to grow, high-security storage becomes much more important. Using multi-signature addresses or split backups like Shamir’s secret-sharing are two effective ways to protect your cryptocurrency for the long-term. Using a recovery seed is an easy way to back up your wallet offline. As long as you keep it somewhere safe, you will be able to recover your coins. But if something happens and your seed is damaged or lost, you could be permanently locked out of your wallet. Both multi-signature and multi-share systems…

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Fixing Bitcoin transaction problems using RBF

Learn about Bitcoin Networks like Bitcoin follow a set of rules and processes, including ways to deal with problems. There are a few mechanisms in place which, intentionally or not, can result in funds being stuck as pending or not appearing altogether, which can be worrying at first. Fear not, however — most of the time it can be fixed quite easily. If you have had an issue sending Bitcoin or you seem to have lost your cryptocurrency in a transaction, it may be the case that one of these common problems has been encountered. Using Trezor Suite with your hardware wallet, it is…

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What the recent string of regulations tells us about cryptocurrencies’ future

Crypto Regulation What recent regulations tell us about cryptocurrencies’ future By Michael Borowiec, contributor to Trezor Blog In our last blog, we discussed how the early regulation of cryptocurrencies revolved around customer protection, crime prevention and anti-money laundering. Thirteen years on, things have clearly changed. What was once an upstart sector, existing at the boundaries of legality with vague use cases and unclear potential has flowered into something else altogether. In 2021, global economies have no choice but to bring the crypto industry into the mainstream. For better, or for worse. Today, we will delve a little deeper into some of the…

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How to spot a cryptocurrency scam

Bitcoin Security By Dan Raywood, Security Journalist Cast your mind back to mid 2020, where among the continued uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic and what the end of the year could look like, an incident involving several high profile Twitter users raised the issue of cryptocurrency scams. In that incident, a bunch of (mostly) teenagers were able to hack into Twitter and send tweets from some major accounts including Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and both Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Companies such as Apple and Uber also posted the tweets, as around 130 accounts…

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Is Selling Bitcoin for Fiat a bad idea?

It’s impossible to say when is the best time to buy Bitcoin, but what about selling it? Most bitcoiners will say never: Bitcoin is a long-term investment with radical economic mechanisms that promise greater value over time, but we must account for situations where you may have to go through the unfortunate process of exchanging your coins for dollars, euros, liras, rubles or won. The world still runs on fiat, so being able to exchange bitcoin for these currencies is an essential use case. The ideal way of either getting money into or out of one’s cryptocurrency portfolios will vary greatly…

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Why is Bitcoin Development so Conservative?

By Vlad Costea — External Contributor to Trezor Blog In a world where software applications get weekly updates and can afford to release as many fixes as they want, the Bitcoin network finds itself embracing a rational form of conservatism. As the base layer converges towards ossification, becoming more rigid in how it operates, the developers also bring optional optimizations that don’t break consensus between nodes. To newbies, it may seem like nothing new ever happens in the realm of Bitcoin. The fact that altcoins experiment with all sorts of ideas and deploy heavily-marketed features also contributes to this distorted perception. After all, Bitcoin…

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Austrian Economics and Bitcoin: A Virtuous Cycle

by Dominik Stroukal — Economic Expert at SatoshiLabs and External contributor to Trezor Blog I first met Slush, CEO of SatoshiLabs, at the University of Economics in Prague in 2013. We lectured — surprise! — about Bitcoin. His job was to explain it more technically, I did it more economically. It was clear why they had invited Slush. But me, a nobody in the Bitcoin world? I received the invitation because I loudly defended the ideas of the so-called Austrian School of Economics. I was attracted to Bitcoin by another “Austrian”, Jeffrey Tucker. He used to be “biased against it,” as he later admitted, but once he…

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Trezor Fortifies Unchained Capital’s Multisignature Vaults

At Trezor, we believe in a future built through open source collaboration. Bitcoin is one of the greatest successes of open source and, staying faithful to that vision, we are pleased to support the launch of the latest project from Unchained Capital, where Trezor hardware wallets help secure their Multisignature Vault in a way that has never been done before. By using Trezor’s on-device confirmation feature, multisig addresses can be checked without relying on what you see in your browser.This collaboration was made possible because Trezor uses an open-source architecture that anyone can build upon. Following from a discussion on our…

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Blockchain Gaming: A Sandbox for Digital Ownership

Video games are an incredibly lucrative sector, one which is at the forefront of commercial trendsetting. Today’s gamers have gone through dozens of technological leaps, from sitting on the floor side-by-side and sharing a screen, through LAN parties and then MMORPGS, exploring and interacting with players from across the globe, often unwitting playtesters for experimental technologies. Now, loot boxes and pay-to-win mechanics have begun shipping with every new gaming title, at a time when Bitcoin is building a new narrative for digital assets; will Bitcoin be the tool gamers turn to, to end their exploitation?This commercial wave has caused a…

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Will the Bitcoin Revolution Surface in Emerging Markets?

by Dominik Stroukal — Economic Expert at SatoshiLabs and External contributor to Trezor BlogMost likely. For most of us in the richer part of the world, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are still just a toy. Of course, we know very well how important it is to have sound money. For us, however, Bitcoin is still Plan B, an asset we hope to rely on in the event of the collapse of the current financial system, or should we need to flee underground from the authorities.In emerging economies, the financial world actually does collapse from time to time, and evading the authorities is the…

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How to Memorize a Seed Phrase: Building Narratives from Nonsense

It is not safe to rely on your memory as your only backup of a seed phrase. If you want to improve the security of your coins beyond just using a traditional seed phrase, you can make use of Shamir backup, which subdivides your seed in a way that prevents it from being damaged or stolen.Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39 (BIP39) was created in 2013 to make it easier to safely backup and restore cryptocurrency wallets. Derived from a very large random number, they represent a calculation based on 12 or 24 words and their sequential order. If you use the right…

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Bitcoin and Censorship Resistance: What does it mean for you?

Censorship has been a means to control society since ancient times, shaping the thoughts of entire populations by removing references to any ideas not aligned with the state’s. It is a tool much more effective than simply enforcing laws, as it can prevent discontentment by restricting the population’s free thought and free speech through bureaucracy alone.We commonly understand censorship as black bars spotting the pages of sensitive government documents, but it can be much more sinister. Censorship manifests in the silencing of whistleblowers and free-thinkers, and in the power of the government to remove your access to financial resources. It…

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