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Well, here's one instance where BTC is *not* better then USD in e-commerce | null | pretty sure the next client coming out has tx fees of .005
edit: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12269.0 (actually 0.0005) | Bitcoin |
U.S. senators target Tor hidden service that sells narcotics for Bitcoin | null | I doesn't sound like they understand that the technologies involved here are going to make this harder than usual. There's no domain name to seize, no published server IP to track, and there's not a trivial way to subpoena financial records from anywhere to find out who made payment.
Seems like the best they can do is have the DEA start posing as a seller, but unless they intend to actually make a few transactions before they roll the trucks, good luck finding enthusiastic buyers... | Bitcoin |
Good miner without OpenCL or CUDA? | I tried the python based miner, but my graphics card doesn't support OpenCl. What should I do? | CPU mining is a bad idea. It's probably negative expectation given the difficulty of the network. It would probably cost more in power to mine with CPU than the value of bitcoins mined. | Bitcoin |
Can anyone explain to me how exactly one figures that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme? | I haven't figured this out yet... suppose it is a scheme. How exactly would an anonymous P2P network be a pyramid? | If you send me one bitcoin, I'll tell you the answer which you can then sell to a minimum of four friends. | Bitcoin |
Does this seem like a good, cheap, GPU miner? | null | Nope. The 5450 will hardly get you anything. You might as well buy Bitcoins with that money. | Bitcoin |
i have a friend who makes and sells handmade, high-quality soaps in small batches, online. How would I go about setting her up to accept Bitcoin, assuming she was interested? | The easier, the better. She's not extremely computer savvy. What would be the easiest way for her business to accept Bitcoin? | If they are simply small batches...
1. Create a new "address" every time an order page is created.
2. Save the order to a "pending payments" database.
3. When bitcoins are received at the new address created in step 1, ship the client's order.
This is all pseudo code but can be implemented with the [PHP api.](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/PHP_developer_intro) | Bitcoin |
Anagram for Satoshi Nakamoto: "A Hook to Satanism" - i think this explains all. What other Anagrams can you spot for this name? | This was just discussed on #bitcoin-otc.
*I soak NSA Math, too.*
or it was created by musical Aliens:
*Sonata hit ask MOO.* | [I win.](http://www.mbhs.edu/~bconnell/cgi-bin/anagram.cgi?cpw=1&phrase=satoshinakamoto) | Bitcoin |
bitdump : just some simple bitcoin graphs | null | I was fed up with all the information overload on most sites and how ugly the mt gox graph is, so I amateurishly hacked together a site of my own.
p.s. I used day/month/year and a 24h clock for the times. Take that America ;) | Bitcoin |
"[Bitcoin] is an online form of money laundering used to disguise the source of money" -US Senator Charles Schumer. Shit just got real. | null | [Shit just got real.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUH3JQjcweM)
Hey, where can I get bitcoins for $9? | Bitcoin |
TIL MtGox limit the amount of BTC you can withdraw per day | I understand the FinCen aspect for USD (though it's annoying), but BTC? Really? | Welp, there goes one plan for arbitage. | Bitcoin |
Couldn't you use Bitcoin's source to make an separate but identical/equal program? | What's to stop me from making a Bitcoin app that is exactly the same but I call it "D Harry coin" and it operates exactly the same? | nothing. But, why would anyone use D Harry coin? | Bitcoin |
BitCoin Debit Cards | null | So, someone on a Kickstarter knock-off site, with no credentials or even a picture of their *actual face*, wants $5000 to:
- "[S]tor[e] your private key on a secure server", with no specifications as far as what "secure server" entails.
- "...will develop payment processing machines that can either be connected through their business computer (to interface with their software) or even directly to the internet..." which probably means an Arduino with a mag stripe reader.
No details on how the cards will actually be printed, or how the entire system will be secured, or any reason to believe this person (people?) has any previous experience with anything in the payment processing or retail field.
Yeah, no fucking chance I'm touching this with a 10-foot pole. | Bitcoin |
If Bitcoin usage was considered a criminal offense in your country, would you continue making transactions? | I know it's quite the hypothetical, but work with me. I'd just like to see how many of you wouldn't be fazed by it.
Personally, I have multiple wallets so I would funnel that BTC so hard I'd never get caught.
EDIT: Please explain your reasons for continuing or not continuing. | What are your reasons? | Bitcoin |
what will bitcoin/dollar exchange rate be 1 months from now? | i would like to hear your guys opinions and why | I'm guessing somewhere around $20-25 USD to 1 BTC. The upcoming difficulty for miners is what makes me think so. Value could possibly be higher, too. | Bitcoin |
Silk Road: "The die have been cast" | null | Hooray for the nerds! | Bitcoin |
New to Bitcoin, need some help | I've been trying to get into bitcoins and waiting for my Dwolla account to verify, it's been over a week and obviously, mining with my home pc cpu hasn't generated anything. I want to try transferring BTC and experiment with encrypting my wallet file etc but I cant get my hands on any BTC. Would anyone be willing to send me the smallest possible fraction of a BTC so i can start playing with this? I would be willing to pay for it via paypal if necessary, but I'm hoping to get started with it as soon as possible. Also, I'm assuming I need to have the client runing to receive payment? Or will it pick it up the next time I turn it on? Thanks in advance, reddit.
19UonTNCBT4p8SSMFP8yoFvxmV9VzhadpW | BitCoin fountain. There are a few around. | Bitcoin |
Is bitcoin mining and transaction traceable by ISP? | Not an expert on CS. Here's the question: Is bitcoin mining and transaction traceable by ISP?
Is it technically possible to ban it? By mining I mean individual mining, pool mining relies on a server and can be traceable. But what about individual mining? | Banning and tracing would be two different things.
A newly mined block or newly generated transaction have to originate somewhere. Once they are published to the generator's peers each peer forwards this package on to its peers, etc, until it traverses the entire network.
In theory you could trace the origin of a transaction or block but you would have to be listening to every node on the network simultaneously to find the first to send.
Blocking would be much easier with the current protocol. Nothing is encrypted and there are only a handful of well defined message formats. If you got every ISP to inspect every packet for bitcoin traffic and drop it you could stop the network.
The developers would quickly implement ssl and port randomization to get around this.
| Bitcoin |
Mt.Gox increases the Darkpool size from $1k to $10k and why it matters | Source http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11949.0
>darkpool means that orders over a certain size, previously 1k $, now 10k $, are secret from the public mtgox order stream and do not affect the pricing.
to put it mildly: it allows large traders to game the market and effectively influence price movements to their advantage.
given that mtgox is the only, for bitcoin economy at least, large trading entity, the darkpool size effectively governs the size of orders that are not affecting the valueation of bitcoin.
>this in effect allows professional traders to buy btc cheap in darkpool at market price with huge volume, then drive the price with a smaller, but for normal trade large order, then selling off to the normal market at now increased pricing, effectively gaming the system.
| Yes, this is one of the most concerning problems I see with the market right now. The Volume is so low that it's really easy to play it for a quick buck.
I wonder if we can hold even $10 for the next week. It wouldn't suprise me if we'd crash way lower then that. And that is not even taking into account the horror that is going to break out once they shut down silk road. I'd short them right now, if I could. | Bitcoin |
I installed the Bitcoin software, how do I mine for coins? | Under the Settings menu, I checked Generate Coins. The bottom of the window changed from Not Connected to Generating, and I have two connections. Am I mining for Bitcoins? | Generating with a CPU will not work any more. It is so unlikely that you would be able to generate a block with a CPU that the option is being removed in the new version of the software.
Mining has moved on to specialized farms of GPUs running in pools sucking down incredible amounts of power.
If you would like to see how long it would take to generate a single block with your CPU you can use this calculator. http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/old_calculator.php
Enter the number of khashes your client is reporting.
If you believe the value of bitcoin is going to rise it is probably a better choice to just buy them.
| Bitcoin |
My transaction to my Bitcoin Market account has had 0 confirmations and no deposit for well over 2 hours, what's up with that? | I've never had this happen before. I updated my BTC client and still nothing. With the current rate, I'd hate to see even my small transaction go poof. Haaaaalp! | Nobody can do anything except the OP (because he holds the private keys of his adresses). We can only advise him what to do, once we know what the problem is.
In case the transaction has happened but is not displayed in his client, I would say he should backup his wallet.dat and reinstall BitCoin, then copy the wallet.dat into the new installation, redownload the block chain and see if that helps.
But this all does not seem to matter now anyways, since OP did not answer for 24 hours now and probably figured it out on his own and forgot about this post here :-) | Bitcoin |
If we created a competing currency, could we make a more effective or fair initial distribution? | null | Not really. I think this is pretty fair. Whoever contributes the most to the network gets the most coins. | Bitcoin |
Are there any programmers out there? | I was wondering you take on Bitcoins. Do you think the code will ever be broken? What if the invention of quantum computers is in the future? Computing capacity will only get more advanced, do you think Bitcoins will ever be compromisable and thus cause users to lose faith in them? | Check out the bitcoin forum if your interested in what quantum computing can do to damage bitcoin [this link](http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3008) describes the communities feelings about it pretty well. If quantum computing can break the hashes and private keys then more than bitcoin will be in trouble (think secure internet banking etc). | Bitcoin |
How to cash out in AU$ | while I don't plan on selling my bitcoins anytime soon (if ever), I'm a little worried about how I can cashout via Mt Gox, it seems like you can now send funds from an Australian account but not too an Australian account.
is my only option exchanges that take paypal (seems like they are not a good idea)
anyone have any suggestions?
| there is https://bitpiggy.heroku.com/ too | Bitcoin |
A Bitcoin World | null | Hmm. That's either a brilliant piece of satire, or a very sad piece of writing.
Reallllly playing up Silk Road in there. God, I hope that's satire. We really don't need a "War on BitCoins" because someone thought it would be awesome to link drugs and BitCoins in the 'security' people's mindset. They've been desperate for a new enemy since OBL died, let's make it something safe this time, like Mars. Mars is now your enemy. Go attack it.
That should buy us some time. | Bitcoin |
BMBTC/PPUSD trades are suspended until further notice | null | Paypal is toxic. | Bitcoin |
Google may be the first bitcoin bank | The Google Wallet service lets users pay digital cash in exchange for goods at the register. I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened on the eve of bitcoin's coming-out party. It would be trivial for them to accept bitcoin in exchange for USD in a user's wallet, so here is what I think might happen:
Google users are given bitcoin addresses into which deposits may be made. The daily exchange rate is used to convert to USD at the time of purchase. Spending limits are set by the users before the address is given out, in case someone steals your password and tries to spend all your money.
Why would people give up their anonymity in exchange for this service?
* A lot of people know their computers are not secure and they don't know how to secure their wallets no matter how many how-to's you write for them. However, any monkey can open a Google account, and there's a good chance that Google servers will be more secure than the average user's. Besides, Google accounts can still be somewhat anonymous.
* Out of all the big tech companies, Google has the best track record for protecting users from government intervention, i.e. China. I know that's giving them a lot of credit - all I'm saying is, they stand to gain a lot of street cred from coming out on the side of bitcoin and the consumer. In addition, it would be an extremely lucrative investment for them.
Google's political clout could sway the media away from demonizing the fledgling currency. It's good PR for them and for Bitcoin. Plus, they have an army of lawyers on their side. Does anyone else see this coming, or is it just my over-eager brain malfunctioning?
**tl;dr** Google offers bitcoin for wallet users. Lay persons trade anonymity for convenience and security. Hilarity ensues. | Hell yes I would sign up to this. Having to keep your own coins secure is one of the biggest things holding Bitcoin back from going mainstream. I'm a huge geek but even I would rather store my Bitcoins with a bank rather than keep my wallet on my PC.
Because there's always the thought that one day I may get a trojan or get hacked and all my coins could be stolen and there's nothing I can do about it. | Bitcoin |
Penn Jillette just found out about Bitcoin. | null | Wow, over a million followers. Let's hope he has more to say soon. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin’s Four Hurdles: Part Two – by the founder of the Pirate Party | null | "There is no Bitcoin economy."
I was planning on writing up a whole thing about what Bitcoin needs to succeed (and still might), but for the most part, this guy is saying exactly what I planned to.
His point about decimal places is key. It is *incredibly user unfriendly* to require a payment of 0.00141, as he referenced. Imagine trying to verbalize that request! "Hey, could you send me point-zero-zero-one-four-one?" We need friendly nomenclature, stat. On the official bitcoin forum, I believe they settled on calling it a milli? "How much?" "Oh, just 2 milli." Much better, though it still takes a bit to get used to. | Bitcoin |
Confused about markets | Can I buy Bitcoins on one market, say btcexWMZ, and sell them on another market like mtgox? | Sure. Why not? | Bitcoin |
Lets have a conversation about the next big step. | One of the things that makes me really excited about bitcoin is that it has opened up a new conversation. Bitcoin is a great starting point for challenging the status quo. It is an attempt by every day hackers to solve a world class issue.
Continuing along the same lines, it is hard to not notice the direction our world is heading. When you look at Spain, Greece, and even my own country (US), politics are faltering. There are obviously many reasons for this, and probably just as many plausible solutions. At the same time the internet itself is becoming larger, and governments are starting to take notice (and even feel threatened)[1].
I would like to start having a conversation. I want to take the momentum of bitcoin, and apply it to policy making. I would like to see an experiment in a more formal internet self governance that is not based on a regional government, but a global democracy. My hope is that by taking preemptive action we can prevent other countries from scarring the freedoms that exist today. I also have a proposition on structure. I'll add it as a comment, so as to not hijack the conversation.
[1] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/05/201152692413757852.html | The goal of my idea is to create a customizable system of government, so each person on this planet can get the freedoms they desire, and the quality of life they desire free from corruption, and exploitation by virtue of the architecture.
As a software engineer I have drawn my inspiration from that of Object Oriented Programming. All policy is managed online via open source transparent software, and voted in by people registered to a global layer. Policy is managed in an organizational unit. These organizational units carry with them access to a pool of tax resources (which might be bitcoins). Entrance to an org unit is determined by the org unit, however no org unit can implement measures to prevent exiting. Additionally org units can inherit policy (and tax resources) from other org units. Each policy will define its own access privileges which govern how inheritance is handled. A policy may be private (only applicable to voters who are direct members of an org unit) protected (applicable to voters who are members of org unit A, or any voter whom are members of org unit B that may be inheriting org unit A, but not applicable to say org unit c which is completely unconnected) finally a policy can be made public (unrelated org units can subscribe to a single shared policy, which may include tax resources). Additionally policy can be overridden by any inheriting hive if it is marked virtual. With this structure I’m hoping that as org units start faltering due to internal politics, corruption etc a replacement can be created, and people can move with ease.
| Bitcoin |
New Difficulty:567358 | null | Where you can determine your BTC rate per Mhash/s.
http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin Randomizer: Earn Bitcoins by inviting friends | null | Yo Dawg, I heard you like Ponzi schemes, so i put a ponzi scheme in your ponzi scheme you can get get screwed while you get screwed. | Bitcoin |
Holy shit, BitCoin hit $18 over the weekend. | null | Madness! Waiting for the crash... | Bitcoin |
GO drink your herbal tea and meditate and leave us druggies alone. | null | What a self-important douche, thinking his linkbait article changed everything about the bitcoin economy. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin Bubble: Yes | There is a Bitcoin bubble. But it does not have the same structure as the fiat-based bubble. Fiat-based bubbles are created by two primary dynamics: a) monetary inflation, b) cluster of errors.
Neither of these dynamics are present in the Bitcoin economy.
Clearly, the monetary inflation dynamic is absent. The inflation of Bitcoin is not keeping up with demand (by design). And since there is no true monetary inflation, there cannot be a cluster of errors.
Simply put, cluster of errors in fiat-based economies manifests as "the same mistake made by everybody with money to invest." Basically, it's the financial equivalent of putting all your eggs into the same basket. This is why we are always told to diversify one's portfolio.
As I said, the Bitcoin bubble is not based on these dynamics. Instead, it is based on the real free market. Is it a bubble, then? Is a free market immune to bubbles? Well, it is immune to the fiat dynamics, but I don't think it's totally immune to bubbles.
The difference is that these bubbles cannot be meddled with directly. In fiat-based economies, bubbles are made worse by fiat itself.
Maybe it's not fair to call it a bubble, when talking about a free market. But all free market economies are affected by fear and greed (fear and greed are good things in the free market). Corrections are part of this.
When there's enough fear, the value of Bitcoin will fall. When there's enough greed, enough to overcome the fear, Bitcoin will rise.
The question is how much fear and how much greed.
Threats of violence from the fiat-based economies can introduce external, artificial fear. The unintended consequence of the introduction of this artificial fear is for the risk-takers to stay greedy while the people who want to play it safe fall away.
If the artificial fear is removed, greed will cause more people to return to the market once again.
So the question is, what will happen if enough fear is created around Bitcoin? What will happen if fear is suddenly removed after being there for a while?
I think the Bitcoin bubble is caused by a lack of fear. Once sufficient fear has been introduced, the value of Bitcoin will fall. It won't fall to zero. This "pop" in the bubble will be an opportunity for risk-takers to adapt, allowing the people who play it safe to enter once again, once the fear has been mitigated.
In other words, the Bitcoin bubble will *only* strengthen Bitcoin. It is the classic Admiral Tarkin Slip.
**TL;DR**: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. | Very insightful and original analysis. Thanks! | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin on the front page of South African finance magazine! | null | Pretty well researched too (5 page article), nice graphic explaining how it works and everything. South Africa uses a lot of mobile payment systems already, if someone makes an SMS / USSD system it could work, as bitcoin aint going to run on old nokias :P | Bitcoin |
I see a lot of talk on the forums about AISC's for hashing. Don't all recent Via Chips have SHA circuitry on the hardware? | null | It seems to me if AISC's were going to be the next big hurdle that VIA chips would dominate, as they already have an SHA engine on-chip, running at Cache speed, I'm assuming. I realize it would have to be run twice since BitCoin mining is a double-hash operation.
Would this not count as a proof-of-concept that AISC's won't be quite as effective as everyone says? Via Nanos run at 2 GHz and one can get the MB/chip combo for less than $140. | Bitcoin |
Want Amazon to start accepting Bitcoins? | Then tell them!
[This Link](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=513058) will take you to Amazon.com's Payment, Pricing & Promotions Help page, and on the side of the page is a "contact us" button.
As per my discussion in a live chat with an Amazon rep, Amazon has no current plans to accept Bitcoin, but they welcome suggestions to help improve their site all the time. If we really want them to take notice, we need to let them know that we want Bitcoin as a payment option!
This is obviously something that cant happen overnight, but the sooner you get the ball rolling, the sooner it *can* happen. | If you want to do that indirectly, I exchange bitcoins for products on Amazon and Newegg. bitcoinredemption.com | Bitcoin |
Wow, just discovered Ripple, a currency (?) exchange system that relies on NOT being anonymous... | null | A really interesting idea, possibly could even be paired up WITH bitcoin (or any other currency)... | Bitcoin |
I backed up my Bitcoin data folder to a server. Can I delete the original, unencrypted copy on my computer? | So, I zipped up and encrypted my data folder. If I delete the original folder and don't have the client running, then I will still receive payments, right? In other words, I can download this backed-up file a year from now and open it, and it'll have my up-to-date wallet? | Correct. The coins are stored in the network (in the block chain). The wallet simple stores the relevant data to access the coins which are yours.
If I'm wrong, someone please feel free to correct me. | Bitcoin |
Site that sells Bitcoin mining rigs | I just found a site that is selling bit coin mining rigs. They're rated at 546 MH/s and priced at ฿45.70 [Check it out](http://bitminer.us/) | That's really expensive. For $930 you can get 1200MH/s
Antec One Hundred $55
MSI 890FXA-GD70 AM3 $180
4x SAPPHIRE 100297L Radeon HD 5830 1GB $440
ABS Majesty series MJ1100-M Continuous 1100W $180
AMD Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz $40
Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR3 $15
Western Digital AV RFHWD3200AVJS 320GB 7200 RPM $20
~$930 Total | Bitcoin |
Quick way to check Bitcoin exchange rates against Mt Gox by @philfreo | null | Better: http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/time-sales/ | Bitcoin |
Honest question, what are you actually buying with your BTC right now? | If the answer is "nothing," I think the deflationary disaster may hit very soon, instead of waiting until all the coins are mined out. Thoughts? | Nice try DEA | Bitcoin |
A beginner question about running a gpu 24/7 for mining. | Hey guys,
I've recently (last week) started mining bitcoins with pocblm on my sapphire HD5850. I'm putting out an average of 270MH/s. This is not too bad for my expectations, but since I run it only 2-3 hours a day I'm not really making any progress on the bitcoins (about 0.3 so far in total, over 5 days).
I'm thinking about running the card about 12h a day but I don't really dare to. Currently I set the fan speed manually to 100% to keep the temperatures in the 70-75°C range, which I'm told is a safe temperature. I can't sleep with the fan on that speed though so mining at night is not really an option for me. I'd have to run it during the day when I'm not around, but I don't dare to leave my pc running with a gpu that's spinning a fan at 100% and hovering around the 75°C mark.
What are the risks here, long- and shortterm? What could happen to my gpu if it ran for, say, at that temp for 6 hours straight, or more? I originally built this system around christmas because my last pc died and I wanted to play some games and have a medium-end pc for the next couple of years. So I don't really want to risk too much (I'm not a very rich guy), obviously.
Is there a chance, for example, that the fan could break down and my gpu would overheat? Or am I being too much of a paranoid parrot atm? Any advice on the possible risks or about some precautions I could take are very welcome. | I run mine at 90C 24 hours a day, and the graphics card's own management software doesnt even wana kick the fans on higher than 50%. You are absolutely correct. A graphics card GPU can handle a LOT more heat than a traditional CPU. I used to have an nvidia 8800Ultra that IDLED at 85c | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin value has doubled in the last couple of days, to $18.26 - does is make sense to have static prices? | It's an insane increase... and yet prices to buy products in bitcoins remain static. Does this make sense? Shouldn't they vary in relation to the value of bitcoins? | Doesn't really make sense to me either.
Eventually, I'd expect to see merchants peg prices in BTC to the current Mt.Gox exchange rate... | Bitcoin |
Libertarian Goldbugs Hating On Bitcoin - Free Market Money | null | One thing that really pisses me off about goldbugs is the use of the term *intrinsic value*.
> Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act.
Mises *Human Action* p96.
What makes something money is that it is others are likely to accept it in payment - not to keep or use for themselves, but to further trade. Things can be both commodities AND money at the same time, and some of the qualities that make something likely to be money may overlap with their usefulness as commodities, but the two aspects are *not* the same. The primary difference is that with money, one primarily gains satisfaction by *getting rid of it*, with other things, one primarily gains satisfaction by *obtaining or using it.*
I say this as one who is holding both bitcoins and silver.
The other bitcoin dis I hear a lot is that it's "fiat currency." Oh, really? Where's the decree? Is it the algorithm used? Bitcoin is *currency by consensus*. To a degree, all currencies are, but with bitcoin it's an existing agreement that one can enter into or not through use of the monetary system without having to worry about those rules suddenly morphing when some new group of people get into power. | Bitcoin |
I am calling for the creation of a Bitcoin lobbyist organization to represent our interests at large... | null | Donated 1 BTC | Bitcoin |
LulzSec Hackers Post Sony Dev. Source Code, Get $7K Donation in Bitcoins | null | You forgot a link: http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/06/06/lulzsec-hackers-posts-sony-dev-source-code-get-7k-donation/ | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin 0.3.22 final released | null | Changelog:
Notable changes:
* Client will accept and relay TX's with 0.0005 BTC fee schedule (users still pay 0.01 BTC per kb, until next version)
* Non-standard transactions accepted on testnet
* Source code tree reorganized (prep for autotools build)
* Remove "Generate Coins" option from GUI, and remove 4way SSE miner. Internal reference CPU miner remains available, but users are directed to external miners for best hash production.
* IRC is overflowing. Client now bootstraps to channels #bitcoin00 - #bitcoin99
* DNS names now may be used with -addnode, -connect (requires -dns to enable)
RPC changes:
* 'listtransactions' adds 'from' param, for range queries
* 'move' may take account balances negative
* 'settxfee' added, to manually set TX fee | Bitcoin |
Issue with Sandy Bridge laptop and guiminer | My new laptop has an I7-2630 and an HD 6570.
For some reason the only option I get for devices is the I7-2630.
I have installed the latest gfx drivers for the computer but can't understand why my gfx card is not given as an option.
Has anybody else had this issue or know of a solution? | Try to find the AMD Stream for Open CL.
BTW, you be better off just buying BTC. | Bitcoin |
I will draw a picture of..whatever..for BTC | I'm an illustrator/cartoonist, and also nerd. I would like some BTC..and want to trade my skillz (with a z, yes) into BTC! Because..why not? Art is fun, BTCs are fun..everyone wins!
You post your request and how much you'll send. I'll do the drawing and post it here.
Update: my website is www.Ladycartoonist.com. I just woke up, drawing now! I foolishly posted this with a new account, my regular account is Satiredun- you can check my karma, or whatever.
| Could you draw the reddit alien sitting on top a pile of bitcoins? I can send you 1BTC! | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin top 100 rich list 27th May 2011 | null | Dude almost has 6 million bucks | Bitcoin |
A scenario for lost and stolen wallets | Bitcoin is very robust and fragile at the same time - atomic transactions have been accomplished, but as bitcoin grows the wallets will become larger and lower hanging on the tree. A well designed wallet theft could cripple bitcoin forever and ensure that no one develops trust in crypto-currency.
A 0-day exploit will be used to copy wallet files for several weeks or months without triggering alarms.
When sufficient wallets have been collected, the attackers will sell half the value of each wallet - this gives them coin while only crippling the market without killing it.
It is very clear that wallet security is severely deficient in bitcoin. Actions similar to the following need to happen within the next few days or weeks to prevent a failure:
* Require encryption upon wallet creation. The bitcoin installer should require encryption of any newly created wallet, and implement encryption on any unencrypted wallet that is imported.
* Ask Google for help. Gmail could provide a prompt that says, "I see you're uploading a digital wallet. Can I help you encrypt this for safer storage?" Perhaps the client could even link to your google account and and send automatic encrypted backup to your email.
* The client must prompt for backup to flash drive. The client prepares a truecrypt volume on a dedicated flash drive and performs backups upon request. It also enforces software write block on the flash drive to prevent easy erasure (except by the bitcoin client). | These would be good measures to implement, though I don't know if they should all be mandatory. Those who are security-minded have already backed up and secured their wallets. If you're technical enough to understand and use bitcoins then you should be smart enough to understand that you should be encrypting your wallet as well. | Bitcoin |
The Bitcoin Randomizer: A randomly distributed system of Bitcoins that is profitable for early birds. | null | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme | Bitcoin |
What do you guys think of bitcoinpool.org? | Does anyone have experience with bitcoinpool.org? I'm thinking of trying to join a pool, but I don't really feel like using an email address. What do you think?
Edit: Something was wrong with their Captcha so I didn't bother and signed up for mining.bitcoin.cz with a throwaway email.
Edit: I'm actually using Eligius. It's actually pretty sweet: you just use the bitcoin address you want your funds sent too as the username, so there's no need to sign up or activate the account or anything. Just point your miners there and go.
They send you your BTC after it reaches one **or** you've been inactive for a week. So all you have to do in order to collect (if you don't reach 1btc) is stop mining. | [Eligius](http://eligius.st/wiki/index.php/Getting_Started) doesn't require an email adress or any registration. | Bitcoin |
A few question on the current situation of bitcoins and Mt. Gox | Hi,
I've been following the developments concerning bitcoins quite intensely lately and I've been thinking of what the odds are of bitcoins actually becoming viable. Here's a list of thoughts and questions:
* I've been following the BTC - USD parity on Mt. Gox. It looks like the deflationary spiral has stopped and the market is a lot more stable over the last few days. Does this have anything to do with dark pools?
* Also, how legal are dark pools? Could you have an equivalent construction with standard currency?
* How high is the possibility that insider trading is going on at Mt. Gox? They know how the market is actually moving because they can see the dark pools. Arbitraging that is dead easy.
* I was discussing bitcoins with a friend recently and he raised a good point against BTC. From what I gather, BTC is supposed to be independent from all governments and central regulatory entities and everyone hopes that the market will adjust itself. What happens however, if a really powerful investor (say China) gets in on this and buys a large amount of BTC. Is it true that, essentially, they would be able to control the price of the BTC just by hoarding or releasing more coins into the market? | Where's the Mtgox quote from? | Bitcoin |
Why Bitcoin Will Fail As A Currency | null | > Knowing this, unless you were super desperate, would you really spend those Bitcoins today?
You could buy a fast computer right now for $1000, or you could wait six months and get the same computer for $600. Therefore no one will ever buy a computer.
The same thing wrong with my logic above is the same thing wrong with his logic regarding Bitcoins. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin is not user-friendly. Here's a short list of problems, and proposed solutions. | While a lot of attention is being paid to the technical side of the bitcoin protocol, I've noticed a disturbing lack of attention paid to the user experience of the client, and of the ecosystem in entirety. "It's good enough" is tossed around a lot. It works, it's functional. Let me say this unequivocally:
**Bitcoin is not even close to ready for use by the general public. The problem is not a lack of exposure. The problem is that it's a pain in the ass.**
I mean no offense to the developers working on the client. I'm a web developer myself, and I have a ton of respect for the complexity of what they're building. But, someone needs to throw up some giant red flags as soon as possible to ensure that development starts to trend more towards usability rather than just functionality.
For the sake of making this discussion easier, I'd like to define a few classes of people:
- *Developers* are the folks working on the client itself, building tools like MtGox to trade bitcoins, and so on.
- *Nerds* are folks like you and I, the majority of people using Bitcoin today. We have a high tolerance for pain and can cope with difficult or unnecessarily complex programs; some of us even enjoy it. We'll spend a week learning the quirks of the system for the sake of using it.
- *Users* are normal people, like your parents or people who watch American Idol. (I'm generalizing, but you probably understand what I mean.) They like things to be easy to use. Truly easy, not easy-after-I-spent-2-weeks-learning-it easy. If something is difficult, they will stop using it. Nerds have a strong tendency to look down upon Users, because we're anti-social and kind of jerks and because Users are great at pointing out when a system that we spent hours building has a stupid flaw that makes it utterly baffling to use for anyone who didn't build it.
Developers are building Bitcoin for Nerds right now, but Users make up the majority of the human race. If we don't start working on making it accessible to Users, and soon, this bubble that everyone keeps talking about is going to burst and instead of being left with an inflated currency but a thriving, stable economy, we'll have a bunch of Nerds who spent a lot of time day-trading and never actually buying anything. Bitcoin needs sellers of goods and services in order to thrive, sellers can't thrive without buyers, and we *need* Users to buy. There aren't enough of us Nerds alone. There has to be growth.
So, without further ado, please refer to this image:
http://mlkshk.com/r/35UI
Here's what I think needs to change.
1. This Address Book hijacks the common usage of the phrase - that is, the place where a User keeps data about their personal contacts. The Bitcoin Address Book is where one keeps a list of their own addresses. For a new User, this is incredibly confusing. There are a number of immediate, unanswered questions: Why do I have multiple addresses? Which one should I keep my money in? I didn't create this address, why is it here?
I'd recommend obscuring the multiple address concept as much as possible. The creation of a new address when sending bitcoins is a clever anonymizing tactic, but very confusing to the User. The client can create as many addresses as it needs to, but the User should see their funds as existing as one cohesive unit unless they explicitly create a new address.
(Side note: if one wanted to determine where someone had sent bitcoins, wouldn't it be easy to research both the addresses used and find out which one had a history and which didn't? If I donate .90 of my 1.00 BCD to the EFF, the public will see .90 go to address ABC and .10 go to my new address XYZ. If they Google both of those, one shows up on the EFF's website, and the other is brand new. Seems sort of frivolous to me.)
2. Calling this "Your Bitcoin Address" implies that the User has one address. "This is *your* address". In reality, this displays the currently selected address, which doesn't appear to change the UI in any significant way. Copy needs to be changed, at least, but I'd again recommend obscuring the concept as much as possible for the sake of preventing confusion.
3. The balance is, arguably, the most important bit of data in this interface. It should be significantly more prominent. Perhaps the transactions table below should be redesigned (see #9 for more) with the UI border removed and table headers less accentuated, and the current balance displayed in larger text above the Credit column. This would create a visual flow between where a user is now in terms of bitcoin balance, and how they got there.
4. For about a week in to learning Bitcoin, this New button scared the hell out of me. Combined with the "Your Bitcoin Address" copy, it creates the implication that you can create a new address - that is, replace your current (singular) address with a new address, theoretically wiping out your old one. The button copy needs to be improved, to better explain what is really going on. "Create Additional Address", "Add Address", something like that. Less new/replacing, more creating/adding.
5. Why can't I just highlight the address and copy it with Command/Ctrl-C? Visually, it's in a stinking text box. The cursor even changes from arrow to text selector! The fact that I can't copy it is silly. Make the box look different, or remove the button and allow for selecting with the cursor.
6. This doesn't belong at the beginning of the table. Confirmation count is only useful to determine whether or not a transaction is valid, so once it's accepted this data doesn't need to be displayed at all. Probably doesn't ever need to be displayed to Users. What's the difference between 200 confirmations and 300? Practically: nothing.
7. Hid this for the sake of protecting my privacy, but the date format is silly. 24-hour time by default, no way to change it, no indication of the time zone used. There are a number of little quirks like this in the UI. Individually, they're just picked nits, but combined they create enough cognitive stress to make an interface "difficult". It just doesn't feel good.
8. Listing the address that received the transaction is silly. Of course I received it with that address, because that's the address I'm currently viewing the transactions for. Show me where it came from.
9. If you're going to use plus signs, you don't need to use Debit/Credit columns. Redundant data, one way or another.
10. I'm twelve years old and what is this. Or if you'd prefer, this data is contextless and meaningless to Users (and frankly, I'm not entirely sure why I should care either). Connections count could be useful as an indicator of client connectivity, but that should be displayed as a binary Connected/Not Connected indicator (red/yellow/green light?) or not at all. Block count isn't important for a User to know unless they explicitly want details on the system's status, which should be buried in a menu somewhere. Transactions count should be with the transactions themselves.
So that's a short list. I didn't even get in to the concept of the ambiguous delay when receiving bitcoins, or why requiring manual Wallet backups is a dangerous idea, or why the Wallet itself is stupidly fragile, but maybe I'll touch on that later.
For now, think about Bitcoin from the perspective of a User. I mean, really think about it. Could your grandmother use it, as it stands today? Why would she? How could she? Bitcoin needs to be accessible, easy, and - dare I say it - *fun* to to use if it's ever going to succeed. Functional isn't good enough, and the discussion about the next steps needs to start now.
And for what it's worth, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. If you're developing a client or a Bitcoin-related service, I'd really like to stop complaining and do whatever I can to help fix this. Get in touch. (Note: this isn't a plea for work. I have a full-time job, I'd just like to offer anything I can to improve the system.)
Thoughts?
[Edit] Wow, this got significantly more attention than I expected. Glad to see so many people contributing to the discussion; even most of those who disagree with some/all of what I said have pretty good arguments! I am working on a basic GUI wallet as a proof of concept of what I'd like to start seeing, but no guarantees that it will ever actually get finished. I don't have nearly enough free time to devote to it right now, sadly, but I'll do what I can. The post from MtGox today implied that they're working on reducing the difficulty surrounding converting currencies, which would be a huge step in the right direction too.
Also realized I should have included my Bitcoin address!
1. Write a long post.
2. Get a ton of attention.
3. Don't include Bitcoin address.
4. ~~Profit!~~
If you feel like throwing a few bitcoins my way: **1KSEKy3XTRxJd7CqKciSsnx752VRaibBWr** | I'll post there too, but I think this is a perfectly valid place for such a discussion. This isn't just about the client, it is about how we all approach the entire ecosystem. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin transactions are scarily traceable... | Well, sort of.
Any website which you provide your bitcoin address to can associate that with your IP address. Unless you're on Tor or something, isn't this a bit of a cause for concern? | This is no more traceable then anything you do on the web...its traceable by IP. Even tor has vulnerabilities.
| Bitcoin |
CPU Bitcoin miners forum. | null | AKA: The Miners With No Coins forum | Bitcoin |
Wallet backup? Am I doing this right? | So, after reading threads on the bitcoin forum of people losing over $160,000 worth of BTC by incorrectly backing up their wallet; I'm a little paranoid. Last night I copied my wallet(with the client closed) with my balance in it, encrypted it in truecrypt and saved it in multiple places. I also saved a non encrypted version on a flash drive. I have been reading a lot about wallet back up and I'm struggling to understand about the "every 100 transactions" backup rule. Another note is that after I saved the wallet everywhere, I deleted the wallet file from the appdata\bitcoin directory and restarted the client which then created a new wallet. Anything I should be aware of? How often should I update my backup?
Threads in question:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11104.0
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=782.0 | From what I've learned, you should backup at least every 100 times you *send money*.
If all you do is receive money, you can do that indefinitely without needing new backups. Bitcoins aren't stored on your computer; they are stored on the network. Your computer contains the authentication keys. You could store your hard drive in a safe-deposit box for 5 years, and as long as that was the only copy of your wallet.dat, when you pull it back out you would have access to any deposits made to it in the meantime.
| Bitcoin |
What will you do for Bitcoins? New website for spending Bitcoins. | null | Damn. Why can females whore out their body and males can't? I doubt a lot of people are interested in words written on my (male) chest. | Bitcoin |
"Mt Gox charges a small fee (0.65%) for each trade." | I don't get this. Seems like a really large fee surely? Considering one of the major advantages of bitcoin is that transaction costs are almost infinitely small?! | Uh, you realize that .65% is percent not decimal right...? | Bitcoin |
BitCoin just hit $20 on MtGox | null | Before it happened, the estimated USD volume required to buy up to that price was about $150K. Another $150K buy-in right now would carry the price past $34 with the current ask offers. I would not be surprised to see a bull-rush up to $25 or $30 tonight.
More direct data, but harder to read: https://mtgox.com/trade/megaChart | Bitcoin |
Bitfaucet down? | Hi I recently heard of bitcoin and decided to check it out today since I had a bit of free time. After poking about a bit I found out about bitcoin faucet but it is being fixed and was wondering if any of you folk had any insight into what is going on with it? Either way thanks + plenty of luck with mining :) | The Bitcoin Faucet just went dry. Not sure how long ago, as I joined on the Bitcoin ship 2 days ago. Not sure what they're doing either. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin: the future of money - What's Trending - CBS News | null | anyone walk away from that article feeling sorry for the author? Obviously no interest in the subject of the report. Seems like he was out for a juicy story on this new "drug currency" but instead found nothing.
also: "This new cyber currency is on the rise and is currently being traded at 19.24 dollarsand 6.2 million of them outline being traded that is nearly 120 million dollars worth of wealth being exchanged."
??
Edit: Looks like the author writes an article like this every hour or so. Not to excuse the lack of poor reporting, but I doubt I could adequately research (read: comfortable for print) anything "news worthy" on that time budget. | Bitcoin |
Just Another Bitcoin Directory? | I am putting together you guessed it, an online directory for Bitcoin Merchants. So what is different from all of the other existing directories? So far, registered users have the ability to submit and maintain there own listing (as well as claim an existing listing once they are confirmed owner). It also has a built in Reviews section for each individual listing, a rating system as well as a method for a consumer to directly contact the listing owner if contact information is provided.
I welcome you all to try the site and give me your feedback! The good, the bad, the ugly... all I ask is please just be constructive in your feedback. For an added incentive for merchants to register, I will be "Featuring" the first five merchants to sign up and post their listing.
http://mybitcommerce.org
| COMMERE! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c-ziUnfkh4&t=28s | Bitcoin |
Don't mine bitcoins with an iMac! | I just got a new iMac at work (I'm a PC/linux guy, but my boss is a Mac guy). It has a ATI 6970, which is one of the best video cards for bitcoin mining today. So I figure I'll download Diablo miner and set it up. Apparently Open CL doesn't work very well on a Mac, so I was only mining at about 1/4 the rate that the 6970 would get in a PC, but still figured it would be worth it to run it over the weekend.
So I come back on Monday, and the computer is froze. I restart, and I'm getting visual artifacts on the screen, and it freezes, usually at the login screen, sometimes it logs in, only to have more video artifacts, and freezes shortly after. I'm pretty sure I fried the video card. . .
I load in safe mode, and delete everything related to bitcoin or the diablo miner, and call the company's tech guy complaining my New iMac is acting up, acting like I have no idea why it would do that.
TL;DR
I fried my brand new (company) iMac by running bitcoin miner over the weekend. | Sounds about right. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoins as a transaction currency, but not a store of value? | I'm still not sure if there is a bitcoin bubble, or if bitcoin is inherently subject to wild fluctuations. My thoughts are that Bitcoins could still effectively act as a good transaction currency, even if they end up having problems as a long term store of value.
As a thought experiment, lets say I have $2100 dollars, and am willing to back the bitcoins as a currency. At that point, bitcoins could never go to zero. Anybody who wants to do transactions for a few hundred dollars, would probably be able to do so uninhibited. However, as bitcoin use expands, more and more people would probably be willing to do more and more backing. Eventually, somebody who wants to make sure that all his transactions for over a thousand dollars go through smoothly would likely be willing to back all the bitcoins in existence for $21000, and so on. My point is that as long as bitcoins have a useful transaction utility, somebody is always going to be willing to back them. Nobody but the market knows for how much, but what we do know is that as long as if can function smoothly in transactions, it will likely be backed by something allowing people to trade and accumulate capital.
People who are willing to take the risk of currency fluctuation would be willing to store their money in bitcoins, but people who don't could easially and instantly offset it onto something else, like cash, or gold.
Bitcoin is range bound. We know backing can't go to infinity, because there are limited resources in the world, but we also know that is is very improbable for it to go to zero because it is useful for transactions. The only reason for people to switch, would be if something better came along. Also, it's electronic, so use is immediate. No matter how much bitcoin fluctuates, somebody who wants to use it for transactions can get in and out of it quickly.
Also, when governments screw with the currency, they almost always accompany it with things like capital controls, legal tender laws, limited withdraws, forced exchange rates, and so on. Bitcoin has none of that getting in the way, meaning the market will probably be able to cope with fluctuations smoothly.
Just my 2 cents, and sort of a thought experiment. | The deflationary nature of bitcoin actually makes it a superior store of value. | Bitcoin |
This was a triumph, it will be on my desktop. | null | It was a god damn rocket ship climbing. | Bitcoin |
DAE daytrade bitcoins? | (Before the current monster spike) I was using MTGox to trade BTC as a commodity. I was making about .3 BTC a day. Is anyone else doing this? Is it bad for the bitcoinimy? | I am trying to. It isnt working out well. Are you using programs to help you, or are you just manually trading?
Bad for the market? I wouldnt think so at all. | Bitcoin |
BitCoin - replacement for Gold instead of USD? | First, thank y'all for the good answers in the other thread. I will be replying there shortly, but the answers were actually a little better than I expected. There may be hope for BitCoin after all.
I got to thinking about the advantages of BTC against other currencies. I have no training and little reading in economics, so bear with me, but it seems that some of the things BitCoiners hate about USD, such as central banks, and inflationary policy, are arguable. Certainly there are plenty of economists, lawmakers, and citizens who think they're good things, and that the USD is a healthy currency. I don't really mean to get into a debate about them. At the very least, for the purposes here, take that on face value - after all, "one man's trash is another man's treasure," and all.
What I *do* think BTC has a future in is as a replacement for gold. Much like gold, the production of it isn't controllable; people from all countries seem to be putting their stock in it; its physical value is much less than its intrinsic value as a trusted store of wealth. Also, much like gold and other precious metals, it can go through bubbles and other normal market stages. National currencies aren't so much prey to the whims of the market, as they are an intersection of politics and economics. (National currencies are *still* prey to market whims, of course, but not in the way that, say, MSFT is.)
This is probably wishful thinking on my part too. I would love for the world's "intrinsic currency" to transition away from rocks controlled by old money, and into bits controlled by libertarian nerds. I'm not old money or libertarian, but it would be one step in the right direction. And perhaps gold and the rest of the precious metals would be freed up for their legitimate industrial uses.
So, again, thoughts? Economics-wise, am I completely off my rocker? If so (or even if I'm already right) what is some good crash-reading I can do to catch up to speed on this kind of thing? | Also I know a lot of people are in it for the anonymity. I would contend that, too, competes with gold instead of USD. Basically what I think I'm seeing is that BTC is muscling in on gold's target market moreso than the market which is happy with paper currency. | Bitcoin |
Is anybody else having trouble getting money into Mt. Gox? | I've watched the value of bitcoins increase 2 and a half times while I wait for my transfer (which was acknowledged on Friday) to show up in my Mt. Gox account. I've emailed multiple times over the past two days but have gotten no response. I tried calling Tibanne Ltd. directly in Tokyo (during Japanese business hours) but nobody answers the phone.
edit: Finally went through. I'll pass on the advice Mark gave to me: the emails are being answered oldest thread first. So if you send multiple emails, your email thread will get pushed back with each new one and there will be additional delay. | My money actually got there on Friday (confirmation email came). Still hasn't shown up in my account. | Bitcoin |
I think we're past conjecture as to weather bitcoins are going to maintain value. Question becomes, how much, and how reliable? | I'm feeling confident that bitcoins are going to retain some sort of monetary value for the foreseeable future. Is >$22 reasonable? should it be higher? Lower? At what point does it stabilize enough to start using it more for transaction rather than future value conjecture? | It's a bubble, kind of by design.
We're in the ramp up phase, eventually it will correct.
| Bitcoin |
To the naysayers and UI complainers... | Did the original gold miners have CAT bulldozers and dynamite? No. Did they know where gold was beneath their feet when they walked over it? No. They used all available means to introduce a viable and superior currency to the current model, and most of them probably got rich doing it. Once they did, nobody had to trade sheep or cows or beans anymore.
Good suggestions are definitely appreciated when it comes to frontend improvements, and I definitely encourage contribution to the project from developers. But for everybody else, grab your shovels. It's valuable and the program and interface will improve with time. What's important is the core idea which does not need foreseeable adjustment.
So, stop worrying about whether users that have no idea what a command line interface is can jump into their bulldozer and dig yet. Usability is not what makes Bitcoin valuable and will not convince shops to support it, which is an absolute necessity for a winnable end-game. Stop deviating from the hypothesis of the project you're supporting, and if you have program/UI suggestions make them without the sensationalism. Some of us have mining to do.
Thank you. | Yeah, us miners have it hard! | Bitcoin |
So, who else is kicking themselves for deleting old bitcoin wallets right now? | I had a couple hundred in one of them... | Next time don't delete paradigm-shifting currency that the world has never experienced before. Hope you learned your lesson. : ) | Bitcoin |
Back of the napkin calculator: how much the computing power of the network is worth | It's [theoretically possible](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_power) for an attacker to upset Bitcoin by excluding and modifying the ordering of transactions, so long as he controls over 50% of the network's computing power.
This got me thinking, how much would this cost to do?
At the time of this post, [Bitcoin Watch](http://bitcoinwatch.com/) puts the current network hashrate at 61282 teraFLOPS.
The [Wikipedia article on FLOPS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS#Cost_of_computing), has a list of computing power costs to produce a gigaFLOP. As of March 2011, it was possible to build a cluster at $1.80/gigaFLOP.
Let's take a look:
61282 teraFLOPS -> 61282000 gigaFLOPS
61282000 x US$1.80 = US$110,307,600
If 50% is needed, the attacker would need a set up of approximately US$55 million to control the transaction ordering. But, of course, the computing power of the Bitcoin network is expanding all the time.
As at the time of writing, the current market cap of the Bitcoin market is US$157,752,100. | Your math is wrong. If it is currently 110 million and the attacker added 55 million to the network in an attempt to take it over, that would mean that the network would be 165 million and he would have a third of the power. In order to get to half of the power he would need to add 110 million. | Bitcoin |
What's the best Bitcoin explanation to link to friends? | I'm trying to tell my friends about Bitcoin without having to tell the whole story myself. Can someone recommend some good links for
1) Telling the story of Bitcoins. The quick gist of what they are and why they're awesome.
and also
2) How to get started with them (client download link, Mt. Gox, etc). | This is a good intro: http://www.weusecoins.com/ | Bitcoin |
Friend is having trouble receiving BTC | My friend said he is having trouble receiving his 5BTC from slush's pool. [This](http://i.imgur.com/DUyip.png) is the screenshot he sent me. His balance is 0BTC but [blockexplorer says](http://blockexplorer.com/address/1KQRnQpLgrVS6McdnvGhjctqVQc4Do1nxP) he has 5BTC. What is going on? He has updated his client to the latest version? | He only has 59000 blocks. There are like 128000 blocks. He needs to wait a while to download all the blocks. | Bitcoin |
"You can sign up for a BitCoin account and then transfer money from your PayPal or other account to pay for them. When you finally use the BitCoins to make an online purchase, they're completely anonymous. There's nothing to link you to the BitCoins." - FoxNews | null | Guess we're going to get another influx in *checks his wrist watch* 4 days. | Bitcoin |
How I know bitcoin is not in a bubble | [This](http://i.imgur.com/m04ZC.png)
Try this experiment: go out onto the street, stop the first 5 people you meet, ask if they've heard of bitcoin.
Unless you're on the campus of MIT or something, chances are they have not. [But more people are learning about it](http://i.imgur.com/m04ZC.png).
The more the people that know about bitcoin, the more the people who will want to buy bitcoins (and the more people will hate on it too). The price of bitcoin is driven by people wanting to buy.
I'm not worried about a bubble until this flattens out. | This is what they said about every bubble in history. Think: dot coms, or housing. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin is up to almost 30$ USD....speculations? | null | CBS story on it probably. | Bitcoin |
Deepbit pool owner pulls in $112* an hour, controls 50% of network | It's totally cool to be profitable (profit, hooray!), but it is a very scary situation to have a pool as large as Deepbit [1]: The pool owner is in a position to change the rules of Bitcoin, since none of the pooled miners can verify that he is playing by the rules of the system [2], and the pool owner is not interested in putting in any safety measures to prevent his pool from obtaining a majority [3].
Please consider patronizing other pools: based on [1], there are at least 4 pools that can provide a daily payout, some of which have lower fees than Deepbit. Also, while the [MtRed](https://mtred.com/) pool is not large enough to provide a daily payout, please consider it as well: a little bit of patriotism couldn't hurt.
\* Back of the napkin, he's pulling in $112 dollars an hour, 24/7:
3% fee * 6 blocks per hour * 1/2 hashrate * 50 BTC per block * $25 exchange rate
[1] See the [hash throughput pie chart](http://bitcoinwatch.com/#footer)
[2] [Having a majority of CPU is baaad](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_power)
[3] http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=3889.msg183370#msg183370 | **this is serious.** i trust Tycho, the deepbit owner because he has done a terriffic job ob implementing great features.
BUT you cannot rule out that he is somewhat compromised. May it be through hacking, or physical harm. in the past he has already faced serious DOS attacks.
to protect the whole bitcoin infrastructure i encourage everyone to switch pools until he reaches < 33%.
in the worst case, one one node controls more than 50% bad things can happen. transactions can be forged, and the block generation rate can be altered. *you do not want that to happen - switch pool now* | Bitcoin |
Impossible to just buy bitcoins | Decided I wanted to try and buy some bitcoins, but finding it impossible to just buy them. Safely at least.
Anyone have recommendations other than the weeklong process of getting money from Liberty Reserve to Mit Gox? | The other popular way is #bitcoin-otc. See my article: http://astrohacker.com/ahc/one-week-of-trading-bitcoin/ | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin's successor: will it steal bitcoin's thunder? | null | You didn't link anything? | Bitcoin |
The Bitcoin network is now collectively the biggest distributed supercomputer in the world. | [Bitcoin Watch](http://bitcoinwatch.com/#footer) estimates the current hashing strength of the network at 63.157 PetaFLOP/s. [Stanford](http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats) estimates the current strength of the Folding@home network at 9.324 PetaFLOP/s.
Does anyone else feel a little guilty? | Its all about the money. People are willing to contribue cpu/gpu power as long as they have a monetary incentive. | Bitcoin |
How secure is Mt. Gox? | Now that values are rising, it's only a matter of time before somebody tries to hack into Mt. Gox. How secure is that site? Should I be backing up bitcoins to my PC, or is it safe enough to keep them on the site? | I always withdraw my Coins from MtGox. But I also encrypt my savings wallet and back it up. If you dont plan or know how to do that, its probably safer to leave it on sites like MtGox or http://mybitcoin.com. | Bitcoin |
Can not access britcoin.co.uk. https does not connect and http seems to have been replaced with a domain holding page. | I purchased ~ £75 last night through Britcoin. I hope that's not going to just vanish. Although yeah, I'm aware it was always an 'alpha'.
Anyone heard any news about what is going on with Britcoin? | Eep, I just bought £50 from there too. Hopefully it's just a website issue and not anything else!! | Bitcoin |
I Just Came | null | You came to where? From where did you came from? | Bitcoin |
Bitcoins just passed Justin Beiber, aiming at Paris Hilton... | null | It's ok, you can say *fuck* on the internets. | Bitcoin |
Is there any reason for a newcomer to buy into bitcoins at $25+? | I've been a bit of a bitcoin preacher and its finally reached a point where a couple of people don't say "What's that?". However, today when someone asked me this question (I didn't even know it had gone up that much at the time) I was at a loss for words. So I am wondering, is there?
Its not like you can actually buy anything with it where I am, or do anything with it. And unless something has changed in the last 6 months, it took me almost a month to acquire bitcoins in the first place (not counting mining). At this price, my old arguments of investment, supporting a framework outside of banks and the rest fall a bit flat. I could use some new material.
Update: To put a practical spin on the question. Assume I do not exist (meaning there is no local exchanger as I believe I am the only one in my country ATM and I am very low volume and face to face only exchanger) so its still Liberty Reserve to Mt Gox, BTC market or the like for the non-technically inclined (e.g. to those who #bitcoin-otc is "scary") and there are no local vendors accepting bitcoin. Shipping anything in is not worth it, I bought a USD500 tablet from the US last month for my mother. It cost me USD162 to get it shipped to me after paying for shipping and punishing customs duties upon arrival. Standard mail works, but its so slow to be practically useless, requiring a month to 3 months for things to arrive from outside of Asia (about 1 month to 6 weeks inside Asia).
| Could go higher to like 100. | Bitcoin |
Just Hit $30/BTC | null | Pay off my school loans! :-) | Bitcoin |
A msg from Mt.Gox | Yes, we're redditors.
We're absolutely inundated with email right now and have been battling to get Dwolla transactions functioning after they changed their API today. I saw some other threads in /r/bitcoin that I plan to address later on but we're barely sleeping trying to keep up with everything. Please be patient, if we do not answer emails right away it does **NOT MEAN WE ARE RUNNING AWAY WITH YOUR MONEY**.
Seriously, we're not.
We want to see Bitcoin substantiated as legal tender just as much as all of you and we aren't going to do anything short sighted, illegal or stupid to jeopardize that.
Thanks for all the support, and to the haters we're planning on putting every dime we can into lawyers, lobbying or whatever is necessary to ensure a place for the Bitcoin economy. Through the 0.65% trade fees you are ***directly*** supporting the future of Bitcoin.
**EDIT** Alright, it seems like you guys care a lot about what we're doing. Let's try to make a place to consolidate all of this feedback. I've created a new subreddit [/r/MtGox](http://www.reddit.com/r/mtgox) where you can organize your feedback, suggestions, criticisms etc.
Viva la Bitcoin!
Adam | Nice to hear this. I am glad that you are putting money towards lobbying, we are going to need it. | Bitcoin |
Can you still surf the web, YouTube comfortably while mining? | If there is a difference in computer responsivenes, how big is it? I got a 5830 or two I could put in my parents machine but it can't be unusably slow while mining. I realize that you can turn %'s down, but I'm wondering of their relatively new PCs should be fine to do other things when 80-100% gpu power is used. | Use flags on the miners to increase responsiveness. For example **-f 30** will split the works in 30 frames per second, such that other applications can perform graphic updates. Also aggression flags and process priority (both the miner process and your browser) will prioritize resources differently, allowing you even to play FPS games while still using half the hash power from a GPU. | Bitcoin |
Ars Technica: "Bitcoin: inside the encrypted, peer-to-peer digital currency" | null | A very decent introductory article in this bleak land of bad journalism. I would not be embarrassed to send someone this link! | Bitcoin |
The flexibility of the Bitcoin should allow for structure in the system | The beauty of the Bitcoin is that it's decentralized and anonymous. Great, we all know that. Why shouldn't services spring up to fill gaps and needs in the system? For example:
I know the delay between sending an amount and having it confirmed is a pain to wait while it goes through. Why can't we have (I'm going to catch flak for using the buzz word here) a bank-like system where fast payments are a necessity? At any given time, you can pull your coins out and "go dark" with your transactions, but if you for example wanted to buy a McDonalds burger, you could achieve this with a centralized mediator.
Thoughts? | There's been lots of talk of centralized payment processes, and as a big fan of decentralization, I think they may have their place. However, there are other methods as well. If a merchant is connected to many nodes, they can accept a small transaction without confirmation if they listen for a few seconds for a double spend attempt. At that point if one is not seen, it is unlikely that the double spend transaction would beat the real transaction, and it is "safe" to accept the payment (for small amounts). | Bitcoin |
What is a good workflow for backing up wallets after every transaction? | So you have a "pocket book" and have a "savings". The pocketbook is vulnerable if you are hacked, since bitcoin doesn't encrypt it, so don't keep much money in it.
I guess my question is surrounding the savings. Do I have to load it to send coins from my pocketbook to my savings, and then back them both up? I can't just encrypt a wallet and then send bitcoins to an address in that savings wallet with out loading it into bitcoin right? or what is the deal with that.
Right now I am just encrypting in a rar and putting it in different locations. | You do not need to load your savings wallet in order to receive the Coins. So encrypt it (better use TrueCrypt) and back it up and delete the plain text wallet.dat after that. You only need to access your savings wallet again when you want to withdraw the funds. | Bitcoin |
Could I, hypothetically, sell a "Bitcoin Entitlement Slip" on eBay? | Suppose I am selling a piece of paper for $150 that says "This slip entitles you to 5 BTC from oneminuteslow". I would mail the piece of paper, the buyer would email me a proof of purchase, and I would send 5 BTC to the buyer. Is this against the eBay TOS? I'm selling the paper, not the Bitcoins, after all. I checked through the "prohibited items" list, and there doesn't seem to be anything preventing this. | > I'm selling the paper, not the Bitcoins, after all.
This has been tried many many times in many many places. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin causes brain damage | null | Wow. I expected the hash rate to fall off in July due to heat, but this.... harsh. | Bitcoin |
As much as it's cool to wake up to a 50% move in BitCoin value, I'm worried things are moving a bit to fast. | Nay sayer's have been indicating a bubble, and unless things slow down a bit, they will be right. The value of BitCoin needs to be reflected in the goods and services that can be purchased with this currency. At of this writing, BitCoin market capitalization is around $205 Million ($31.80). Does anyone think that there is that much business happening in BitCoin? | Obviously not, it's all speculative right now. Fun to watch though ;) | Bitcoin |
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