Bitcoin Forum

with Christmas season approaching, more people will have money on their minds, both in spending (gifts, donations, end of year tax purchases) and receiving (Christmas bonuses, monetary gifts, etc.). The media is keenly aware of this and will probably be talking quite a bit about the economy and subsequently, Bitcoin - as it's outperformed every other investment opportunity this year. I wouldn't be surprised if we hear more of the "got rich quick on bitcoin" stories surrounded by ads of expensive cars, diamonds, and other goods most people go into serious debt for....     

Also keep in mind the amount of parties happening from Thanksgiving (US - Nov 28th) to Christmas. I would think many who talk about finance at these parties would also be talking about bitcoin, as they did when the dot coms were taking off. So, although there may be some selling off before christmas, I do think we are going to get a lot of new buyers in the next month through January. I'm open to being wrong, but my gut tells me this is going to go really viral and the numbers will be around $800 or more by Christmas.

Just some ideas I wanted to share. Any opinions?

forget black friday. this year's hot christmas item? BTC

The Christmas thing is for real.  I gave my kids paper wallets last year, 2 BTC each.  They think I'm a rock star.  And they still haven't figured out how to spend it!

It is supposed to fall 30-40% around Christmas. People might cash out for gifts, holidays, etc.

China doesn't celebrate Christmas as western countries do...Also buying bitcoin - not the worst idea for a gift...

As much as I love BTC, I think it would make a terrible gift.  Every single person I've told about how well it has done this week has said "SELL".

These are the same people that said "SELL" a week ago when I similarly told them about breaking the ATH.

It would be a great idea if they would promise you they won't sell for 1 year, though, and stuck to it!

just think of it as a gift card that continually appreciates... if the recipient chooses to sell it well that's too bad for them, cause it could be worth more tomorrow.

i guess an analogy in economic terms would be it is like a bond.

Fuck man, I wish my Dad had done this for me.  You are fucking cool, respect!

what would be really cool are coins which are "sealed" in a way they only open up in a year
maybe some slowly decaying cover-paint and an qr code printed with air reacting paint
sealed in clear glas - if you break it to get the key earlier it would just get lost forever

You could just as easily theorize that people will sell bitcoins to raise fiat funds to buy presents.

I don't think we would see massive selloffs to pay for Christmas gifts. At around 430 per coin, I might cash out 10 but that would be it. Not planning on that though, as i think we've got a quite a bit more uptrend to go...

They did have the big online internet sale on "singles day" 11/11

Maybe we have to wait till they get another paycheck or two before they start to gobble up bitcoins.

People were telling me to sell it all when it went up to $70. People can only see dollar signs and do not understand bitcoin signs which are better.

I have given a bitcoin out to each of my nieces and nephews this year and none have spent it. I basically gave them a vanity address and a private address in a card telling their parents to keep it safe.

I still have one niece and nephew with birthdays this year...they will get a very expensive gift.

I know someone who has been thinking about getting into Bitcoin since the low this summer, but wanting to wait until it gets back to it again ... they should have done it instead of waiting.  But to the point now, I intend to give them a paper wallet for christmas (it has already appreciated a lot in value since I bought the coins for it).  They hopefully won't want to sell right away, but in any case, I think I'll only give the address to them right away and help them set up a proper and secure environment before importing the private key.  That way, this risk of selling immediately (as well as losing the coins) is reduced. ;)

That is already possible with lock_time transactions. The way you do this is generate a paper wallet normally, then create a raw transaction that sends funds to it (from a freshly funded address that you will not use anymore in the future - this is important) with lock_time set to unix timestamp of one year from now and sign it. With lock_time parameter set, this transaction will be relayable after the this amount of time (you can try to send it to the network, but it will reject it). Then you just print this transaction data as a QR code and put it on a paper wallet as well.

Unfortunately, there are no tools that make this process easy at the moment, but if you're interested I can write in another topic how exactly you can do it by yourself using bitcoind.

Give your kids a paper wallet with some BTC this christmas.

Give them the private key next christmas  ;D

We will see a dip when some people cash out to go on holiday or something

Either you don't understand lock_time, or I misunderstand it.

According to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification#tx lock_time prevents the transaction from being included in a block until the specified block or unix timestamp.  You are indeed preventing the coins from being spent from your paper wallet for a year, but in the mean time the coins can still be spent from the addresses you used as inputs to your locked transaction.

My understanding of the lock_time feature is that it is used to allow you to potentially change a transaction before it is solidified, not to lock some coins into the ether.

Now if you were to also destroy the private keys of any inputs to your transaction, then you could accomplish what you want (provided those keys were secure before you deleted them and there is no chance they could have leaked to someone).

I think we both do understand how lock_time works :). You are right on all your points. I did omit some details from this explanation, but the key quote is:


The reason for that is that after sending it, you should destroy the initial private key, as you noted later. Then, the only way to spend the funds is to wait until lock_time is complete and push the transaction on the network to fund the private key that you gave out.

The above method of using lock_time was already described somewhere in these forums or the mailing list, I don't remember where exactly though. But if you follow all the steps it should work perfectly.

You sure they aren't hoarding it on purpose?

How old are they? Maybe a 4-year-old might not be able to figure out how to spend it but anyone over 10 with internet access shouldn't have a problem.