Bitcoin Forum

'Ello everyone. ^^ First off, I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm not a proficient (or even competent!) web programmer or anything like that. Just another BTC lover that loves sometimes conceptualizing things in my spare time. Hehe.

I do feel, though, that this idea is feasible; and since I have heard murmurings of people wondering how to make BTC a physical currency I thought I would throw my hat in the ring. THAT SAID, here's my idea.

The way this would work is there would be a website where one would deposit BTC, all of which would be held under a username of some sort (perhaps OpenID, which has seen some popularity recently?) until the end user decides to withdraw it.

At that point, a one-use code would be generated on the server's end and given to the user in the form of a graphic to print out (containing the randomly-generated code, a barcode with the same information to scan [QR codes would be very useful for this purpose], and most likely some superfluous material such as the site's logo, background image, and so on).

The user would then give it to the other party (that they're paying) and the second party would then input the code on the same site as before. The server would recognize the code and deposit however much the first user had given them and register the code as 'invalid' (so as to avoid it being used again in the future). At this point, the second user could either let the money sit in their account and build up over time, or withdraw it into their own BTC application/wallet.

The only problem I can see with this (aside from the possibility of the money getting lost; which is a possibility for all physical currency for the obvious reasons) is that after the money had been spent by the second party the 'money' that was printed would be rendered useless (whereas with the regularly mass-printed currency such as USD, a dollar is useable at any time as long as one has it available to them). One would have to dispose of it after they're done (which isn't a huge concern, since as I see it BitCoin *is* primarily a virtual currency, but it still bears mentioning).

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this? Comments? Ways it could be improved? ^^ I'd love to see what people think of this idea, or (if someone has thought of this/is working on something similar) how they're improving on the concept. Also, my apologies if this is the wrong subforum to post this in... I wasn't sure where to post it but this seemed like the most apropos place.

One problem: how does anyone know if a note has been redeemed already?

This has definitely been discussed in the forums before. Try doing a search and see what they came up with.

A simple solution is for a bank to issue it's own notes backed by bitcoins. Free Banking style.

Please see previous forum threads:

"Printing bitcoins : could it work?" (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=737.0)

and

"Printing bitcoins, an implementation" (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3716.0)

I think in the mid term a smart phone compatible Bitcoin client and the multiplication of public wifi nodes would be a first solution to this problem. It will certainly need a more secure system later on though.

Also see the scratch-cards mentioned on http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1514.0 and http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4555.0, which are in fact actually usable as physical bitcoin currency. The only necessity is trust in the issuer of the card, though...

Scratch private key
see this
what do
http://imghaven.com/images/11274

Put on your 3D glasses of course.