Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

when I make a regular bank transaction I have the opportunity to send a message to the recipient, usually a text of what this payment is about (client number , bill number etc.).
Bitcoin is currently lacking such an option. If it shall be used more widely, I believe it is necessary such an option will be included in the client/infrastructure.
Otherwise it is impossible for a bigger company to effectively track payments.

To track payment you have to issue a new address every time. This is how it works.  ;)

alright, sending out payments I usually know what I am doing, but I am more concerned about the recipient.

Let's say I sell 10 items with the same price and 8 people pay me, I will have a pretty hard time finding out who did and who did not pay me so far.

You can create 10 addresses so you can give different addresses to different people.

is there a limit to the amount of adresses I can assign?
For bigger companies this might be a crucial point.
If I have 100'000 transactions per month that I want to monitor, I would need 100'000 adresses - per month.
Is the system capable of providing that?

Can't see any reason why it wouldn't be...

Do you mean, is the address space big enough? In which case, hell yes.

Yeah don't worry, address space is huge, and unused addresses will be reassigned.
Just think about those "vanity address" miners, they throw away millions of addresses just to keep the ONE they like ;) .

Tell me, when you pay for something with physical cash, do you write a message on the banknotes first?

I'm pretty sure banknotes are used widely.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=27277.0
Pretty much explains why we never need to worry about running out of addresses!  ;)

when I pay with physical cash I usually get a receipt on what that cashed was used for and even the receiving business keeps a copy for their records.

But in all thanks for clearing this up for me, when I can issue as many adresses as I want I have a way to track payments, even in a large business environment.

Yes, and you can also issue and ask for separate receipts.

Would still be cool to send a message with the transaction ^^

no it would not! its not what the blockchain is for!

I think a small twitter like message wouldn't hurt that much.
I for one would like to include my email address along with each payment i send. Just in case the receiver messes up, i can point him to "that payment you received with my email address in it, search for it!".

you give address 1 to customer 1. and you will receive payment from customer 1 on address 1. you now knows customer 1 has payed.
you give address 2 to customer 2. and you will receive payment from customer 2 on address 2. you now knows customer 2 has payed.

an address is a hash of a publickey.

the hash is 160 bits long. it means that there is 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976 possible addresses. which should be enough.

now SHUT UP!

you already can do that. it would not be good. every block would grow very large.

twitter message is what twitter is for.

Huh?

Don't be an asshole. He said twitter like, like 140 characters long, you moron. You really came across as a real asshole on your 2 last posts. :-[

This is the newbie board. If you don't wish to answer newbie questions then STFU & GTFO!

Okay, maybe i'll just twitter my email address along with receiving bitcoin address, everytime i pay.
Unfortunately, i don't twitter .

Now stop sulking, cheer up   :)

Bitcoin messages would be helpful and handy. Also, if there was bitcoin messages would those messages only be viewable to the sender?
This thread got me thinking about that... i think the answer would have to be yet i suppose in the name of bitcoin

math:
VISA is handling 10.000 transaction/sec.
each bitcoin transaction is around 3100 bytes long, it can vary. that means when/if we are gonna handle as much transactions as VISA,
each block will be a round 10000*3100*60*10=18.600.000.000 = 18.6 Gb big.

what you are suggesting is making a block 340 bytes long, right?
then the blocks will be of 19.56 Gb big.

do you see the problem?


conclusion:
dont put messages in transactions. just dont.

1GB more is hardly anything when it's that much already..

still, bitcoin is not an messaging system. 

Only if you count GB's in the same way HDD manufacturers do  :P

It would become more attractive ;)

That's why the block solving should be done as a big pool with every machine getting a small part of the work (and bounty) and not by a single machine like it is done now.

If bitcoin really grows to that point it will be impossible to manage, with or without messages ;)

I'm open to understand why i'm wrong, if that's the case :)

And i'd rather read spam that cost some bitcents to send than the usual email spam  ;D

It would become more error prone, and costly to use, for no actual benefit. Do not add unneeded complexity to already complex systems!

one other thing is i think at least the client should have some input for notes when you send an amount.

that note doesn't have to go into the block chain but just get recorded somewhere in your client's files.

Another option to track payment may be to have people pay with very small divisions. E.g, 5.3594812 BTC. The .0094812 being fairly insubstantial, but used to track payments and associate them with order data.

Hmm i didn't really think about the enormous space issue.
Is there a way we could have a parallel block chain that will have transactions associated with messages. That way the messages aren't forced into the block chain? I know this sounds redundant but messaging would be very appealing to new users i think.

or you cloud just make a new address to them.