Bitcoin Forum

Our hot wallet has run dry,

the timing of this has coincided with the messing up of the bitcoin client that normally handles our cold storage.

We have to wait for the blockchain to download before we're able to top up our hotwallet.

This means that all withdrawals are going to be delayed for 4 more hours at least (it's already been a little over 12 hours since this problem started).

All bitcoin that we've kept in coldstorage is perfectly safe, and this is nothing more than a delay.

Sorry for any trouble this may cause.

Nefario.

Better then the risk of loss of coinage through a huge hot wallet though.  ;D

Thanks for the update, that makes you a class act.

THis does point out a real problem though - I shouldn't have to download an entire 2.3 GB file to send a few coins when I have to reinstall a client. There should be trusted block chain that can be downloaded faster & validated, or the ability to validate needed chain pieces on a mirror.

There's an ongoing discussion about this problem, I think they can use a hand: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0 :)

As a stop-gap until scalability issues are sorted, this link can be faster than a standard download: http://eu1.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/
However, you must rescan all addresses after importing that.

Coming from Bitcoincharts, I would consider it trusted.

Yeah I'd already downloaded the blockchain from sourceforge but it only goes up to March.

While doing this I did look at electrum but just got errors when I tried to send any coins, so that was a no go.

Personally I think the electrum model is the best but the client is not really usable at the moment.

I don't understand, why post this here? When you have issues like this you're supposed to keep them on the down low until enough people start complaining, and then blame them until you have time to resolve the situation. Geez, you brown nosers are going to give everyone else a bad name. :P

What kind of errors did you get?

LOL sorry I found this funny :).

I just had a withdrawal go through in reasonable time, so I assume these issues have now been dealt with. Can you provide an update, Nefario?

I have opened a support ticket for 5 days with Nefario. Do anybody know what is happening?

This ++ :)

He got back to me today.

Thank you Nefario.

Update, wallets empty again.

A secure longer term solution could be simply paying out only of cold storage a few times per day.
The insecure alternative would be only operating a hot wallet.

Is it really that necessary to have bitcoins confirmed in your wallet in ~1 hour? Within 24h would be fine for me as well, if it is more secure and it would still be faster than bank transfers.

Also P2SH might be interesting to evaluate, though I still haven't seen some real implementations of that... considering Gavin was acting as if it has to be done asap and better yesterday than today, it seems a little bit weird in hindsight.

What about a small fee (0.05%?) For hot wallet transactions and free cold transactions within whatever timeframe Nefario wants to offer.

Any thoughts?

It wouldn't solve someone wanting a large amount of BTC immediately to put into something else if the hot wallet's refill amount is less than the amount being withdrawn -- it'll always still require Nef manually refill the hot wallet. I think that's what is causing problems -- someone like Goat wanting the huge investment money to deposit in Pirate - and it results in massive losses for him to wait for the BTC. It would be nice if how many coins remain in the hot wallet were displayed on GLBSE so we can better-plan our withdrawals.

Do you think that would introduce a security risk ?

The big result would be that people would be less inclined to use the hot wallet. It may be easier for Nefario to as a little extra to the wallet on Monday figuring this quick use is from that.

In the "just crazy enough to work" line of thought, if there was a hot wallet fee, why not alert and allow other people to add funds to the hot wallet to claim the fee for themselves. The setup and implementation would be a pain more than likely, but it might lower the time for the wallet to fill up again. (The fee should keep people from gaming the system).

I like the idea of people covering the hot wallet deposits for the fee.