Bitcoin Forum

anyone else experiencing problems with Instawallet ? I'm scared something very "MyBitcoin" is going on...

Today, I deposited 5 bitcoins to it and 10 showed up!  refreshed then 5 then tonight its down to 4 bitcoins (now I do have one person that might have taken that out I'll check with them). That was one wallet.

Then I deposited 1 bitcoin to another wallet today and its gone this evening ? this I know I'm the only that knows of it.

Anyone else?

edit: also, very slow to pull up .....

to the people saying its my fault I admit it I know.

Looks like people haven't learned their lesson.

Retards why cant you just keep your own wallet. Is it really so hard?  All i see around here is a bunch of people crying about how someone stole my bitcoins.  well you deserve it. IMO

No problems on my end.

I keep multiple wallets with a few coins total in them. The account balances are accurate, and things went very smoothly with it today as I was moving funds around.

I also periodically empty, then later reload the wallets (just to make sure there are SOME bitcoins behind the screen!) Haven't had any problems with that.

The only issue I've had was when I had two browser screens open at once to two different wallets. The balances began fluctuating oddly. Problem went away after shutting down the browser and re-opening only one wallet at a time.

So, no problems here. Still worth keeping an eye on though.

(Btw... it might have made sense to check with the other possible person who could have accessed the wallets before posting.)

"The only issue I've had was when I had two browser screens open at once to two different wallets. The balances began fluctuating oddly. Problem went away after shutting down the browser and re-opening only one wallet at a time."

Yes, I was doing that at the time so that might be why.

(Btw... it might have made sense to check with the other possible person who could have accessed the wallets before posting.)

The 2nd wallet was more concerning thats all ....  thanks for the feedback though I'm sure its a reliable service and I just messed up or something ....

Hopefully no one is keeping thousands (or even hundreds) of bitcoins with them. Hopefully.

But browser-based wallets do let you access funds on the go. I don't feel that it's their existance that's the problem, but rather the usage (although I have my fingers crossed that there won't be the massive losses to an online service yet AGAIN.)

I couldn't agree more these are the last place you would want to put a lot of coins in . For small amounts and on the go they work fine. I'm sure I'll be able to go to my work computer on Monday and make sure I got the right wallet and stuff.

Never had any problems with Instawallet. Sometimes it shows more deposited than is real, but that gets corrected fairly quickly.

It did correct itself from 10 to 5 bitcoins pretty quickly ;)   I'm pretty sure I have the wrong wallet ( I hope ) for the 1 bitcoin that is missing. Its a quick service I do like just got panicked!

Why don't you guys just use Mt Gox as a wallet?

God damn, bitcoin is going to fail cause half of us are retards that can't learn a lesson apparently. I'm should open up a wallet site so I can take advantage of this.

For me...

1) Mt. Gox is bigger. With all the activity and funds being tossed around there, it's more likely to be targeted and hacked, or run into some problem. They also would probably be less incentivized to jump on a complaint about a few coins going missing (and it might be harder to find the issue.)

2) Instawallet is simpler... a single-purpose server. This makes it easier to maintain and just keeps things pretty clear. (This also allows Jav to focus on wallet-specific features. The green address addition is pretty nice.)

3) Instawallet is faster, and has easier access. I can open one, two, or ten new wallets, on-the-fly, anonymously. They're essentially disposable too... a new wallet that doesn't get funds put in doesn't seem to stay around very long. There's no password to slow it all down, I can get to it from my simple non-smartphone (I've done so,) and now I can choose to send the funds I have there from a green address.

4) If I ever start trading, I'd want to diversify my quick-spend funds into a seperate wallet away from my trade wallet(s) anyway.

His How do you spend bitcoins away from home?

Welcome to the Wild West

ssh into my machine and spend the coins

Yep.

Now, if someone can't or doesn't want to do that, what options do they have?

I plug in my linuxcoin usb and reboot. done.

So you want to give your bitcoins to anonymous guys in the cloud?
Then proceed, but don't complain

This presumes that anywhere you want to spend coins, there will be a computer available for you to use. So having a bitcoin-loaded laptop with you at all times is the solution?

Believe me, I haven't (and when the time comes, won't) complain. But then I'm not storing the bulk of my stash online either.

Still, that wasn't exactly a responsive answer to the question: if ssh to the home computer is out of the question, what other options are available?

It does not have to be my laptop/computer. Linuxcoin is a self contained operating system that I can boot almost any pc to. I don't see their hard disk and they don't see my operating system.

Again though, this presumes that there will be a computer freely available for you to use anywhere and anytime you want to spend coins.

I may be wrong, but I doubt Meze Grille would let you plug your USB flash drive into their computers when you were ready to pay in bitcoins. Even if you can convince them, others might not be so easily convinced.

And then there are the times where the receiver doesn't have a computer on them; they might have a smartphone that lets them ssh to their system.

I don't see Linuxcoin being a broadly-viable solution.

There are not many, yet:
Bitcoin on smartphone, see the dev subforum
Php frontend for bitcoind (three of them)
Keep your wallet with you, in a truecrypted usb key
Find another solution

how do you people not realise that the only reason it "still works fine" is that the total amount of stored BTC is still under the planned target at which the service owner will run with all your money?

sometimes the sheer stupidity of some people amazes me.

OK. (I'll move your first example to the bottom of the list, because it's the best one.)



I suppose I should have been more clear. I'm looking for a solution when the home computer simply won't be online and running code for you whenever you're not home.



How do you spend from it?



I've been looking, and am hoping better solutions present themselves. For now a few coins in an online wallet I can access from my smartphone seems to be the best choice to suit my needs, even including the virtual certainty of those coins eventually disappearing.



Now this would be the holy grail, although from what I've been reading so far, there are going to be major issues getting it to work properly. Last I checked, some folks had lost coins on the actual Android-phone wallet clients that are in use; I'll just let the bugs get worked out for now.

Have you tried any of the bitcoin smartphone apps that don't require a home system setup for remote access?

Which is exactly why anyone who doesn't need to use an online wallet SHOULD NOT USE ONE.

If you don't have a laptop, there are cheap ones I believe (like eeepc or so maybe?)
It's better to buy a laptop than lose all your coins online

No, they are all for Android, I don't have one

Yep. I like the idea. I've been looking at a cheap, tiny little laptop that I'm planning to get soon. I'm still debating whether or not to install Linux on the thing (I know folks, I know, not this thread though, please?)

I just see two little problems.

First is that I'll either need to have a cellular modem for the thing, or make sure I have wifi access when sending (not a guarantee in my area.) Fortunately, my smartphone can take care of this, but now should I want to spend bitcoins someplace, I'll be juggling the laptop AND the smartphone.

Second, is that now I'm carrying a laptop around with me. The one I'm looking at is small, but it's not pocket-sized. Encryption and backups let me keep my bitcoins secure if anything happens to the laptop, but still, the laptop itself is a bit of a concern: it costs more than I'd ever keep online.

Obviously, neither of these two issues is insurmountable. In fact, I'll probably go ahead and experiment with this. But for now my only real answer to having portable bitcoins is to use an online wallet, keep the amount stored in there VERY low (ideally only shove coins in just before heading out the door, and transfer them back as soon as I get home), and to NOT trust the site, instead behaving as if they will eventually disappear.

Watch what you say man, you could jinx yourself there ;).  For a lot of people keeping there wallet online is much safer and convenient.  The fact is more and more people using bitcoin these days aren't tech people, and you can't expect them to know what measures they need to take to protect their money either on a server or on their own computer.  Instead of people pointing and laughing at the people who lost their bitcoins why not make security software to help protect them?

Really, it's safer to store your wallet on your own computer even without encryption and backups. Would you hand your wallet to a stranger on the street for safekeeping, provided there was no insurance on your money at all? Would it not be safer to keep it in your own pocket, even without security measures such as a chain?

And people wonder why there is no new money coming into Bitcoin...

Just deposit to an encrypted offline wallet and use blockexplorer to view your current balance :\

People did this in the USA everyday before the formation of the FDIC.  For the most part it was safer than keeping it in your house.

I have a friend who likes to play the lotto, so I convinced him to spend a little $$$ on bitcoins (seems like the better bet to me, despite the lower payout.) I gave him two copies, burned to CD, of a wallet with his bitcoins in it. I've shredded the copy I had, so he has total control over and responsibility for it. It's pretty safe, and until he gets active accepting and spending them, it should be convenient enough.

Should he start actually wanting to make occasional use of the wallet, I'd point him toward his computer and explain how to use the client.

Not until he got to the point where he was walking around and exchanging BTC on the spot would I suggest an online wallet, and describe the risks involved.

And of course, were he... unwise enough to put his entire stash online, and lose it, I'd probably just shrug and say "I told ya so."

I'm not so sure about that. Bank runs were not at all uncommon before the Federal Reserve.

Okay so lets step through this, pretending I am a normal retail customer type person who walks around some town somewhere ready to spend some bitcoin at some shop or other in town that turns out to accept bitcoin.

Lets assume further that I did not know ahead of time that this particular shop accepts bitcoin so I did not bring any "bitcoins that can only spent there and that they will only accept from me not from some mugger who mugged me on the way to the store".

So I am faced with being unable to buy anything at this newly-bitcoin-accepting shop unless I somehow managed to bring with me some non-earmarked bitcoins (that is, bitcoins that are not secured against being spent at this new shop) OR this newly bitcoin accepting shop has some technology itself that I can trust to use to go grab myself some bitcoins I have stashed in some encrypted stash someplace that can be reached by me with the right magic words and so on via the internet.

Fine. So I look through my printed traveller's coin certificates I printed to see which denominations haven't been printed in a "spend only to these whitelisted recipients" mode, and wonder whether to deposit them in this newfangled online wallet this shop's sales clerk is suggesting I use...

Hmm, why do they want me to buy credit on some online wallet instead of buy a sandwich or whatever tangible good the shop purportedly sells?

-MarkM-

This thread is just a bunch of doom and gloom whining. Y'all are not actually looking for solutions IMHO.

"It's too hard!" "Whaa whaa whaa!"

None!

And that the prime flaw with Bitcoin.

Bugs exist, but showing Bitcoin Wallet to people generates a lot of excitement when they see how extremely easy it is to transfer value via QR codes.

(Screenshots in link. App based on the BitcoinJ java library anyone who has any interest in Bitcoin adoption should put effort into supporting)

https://market.android.com/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet

There is a huge hole in the mobile bitcoin market.

There needs to be a better smartphone app that can hold a wallet. One that does NOT need to download the entire blockchain to work.

One that will instantly creat a QR code of a bitcoin address, and be able to scan a QR of a bitcoin address.

The blockchain download is a major hurdle.

I have not been paying attention to dev lately so this could be a non issue. if so let me know.

https://market.android.com/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet&feature=search_result


Here you go, smartphone app that can scan/create QR codes, has NFC support and does not need to download the entire block chain (although it does grab a very small portion of it)

To the original poster:

I think we should clarify there is no evidence here that Instawallet is acting like Mybitcoin.  Please consider updating the title of the thread or adding a note to the first post.

What has been suggested is that attempts to view/use more than one Instawallet at a time can confuse the site, the browser, or both.  That should be brought to the attention of the Instawallet operator immediately, especially by someone who can provide an exact example.

(This thread may have enough detail already -- experiments might be hazardous to your balance!)

Many new web services exhibit issues when multiple tabs/windows are opened in the same browser, or when the 'Back' button is used, or when a 'Submit' button in a form is pressed repeatedly.  I recently noticed a certain Google service acts erratically or hangs (without any error message) after I open a second browser tab and log into a different Google service with a different user name.  If you have dozens of tabs open, it's hard to avoid these situations.

Where irrevocable transactions are concerned, this sort of issue could conceivably lead to a loss of Bitcoins or payment from an unintended wallet.

Panic at the Bitcoin Disco!