Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I've been posting about bitcoin in Iran before.

It's really a pain to even download the standard client as sourceforge denies requests from Iran (This is not the Mullahs being bad, this is sourceforge embargo of Bitcoin users (aka "us") in Iran. Many other sides enforce the embargo for open source, too).

It is a pain to get informed as 99% (really 99%) of the people there don't know any English so all the basic information should be translated to reach out to such countries.
There should be need as the inflation is horrible there.
There are no exchanges for IRR obviously.

Is there a project already of any kind that lists our reach for regions and languages? Like a checklist per country of availability of local(ized):
information (like bitcoin.org or this forum)
client (web, full node, mobile)
exchange (local, doing business in the local currency or being reachable through local payment providers)
BTC business (locals actually running some kind of btc business)
...

I know that at traviangames.com the huge success came with internationalization. The game was available in German and English and those markets were totally saturated with games. The Arab version rocked though as there was not much of competition. I could imagine that the western world is pretty saturated with financial online services, too and reaching out to more exotic languages could boost bitcoin.

Lastly to get BTC to for example Iran there needs to be something to sell from these countries. IRR are not really useful for anything outside of Iran so Iran would have to export something else in exchange for in-flowing BTC. I can only encourage all of us to keep mentioning bitcoin to all that want to sell stuff online. I told Mohammad Rafigh (https://www.facebook.com/mohammad.rafigh) about this new way to sell his music outside of Iran and he's trying it out now via coinDL. I love this album (https://www.coindl.com/page/item/338) and hope for more soon and I'm sure if it works for him, he will spread the word and people like him wanting to get fiat for their BTC will try to sell locally, … well … you know what I'm trying to say. Stop getting too excited about yet another clone of an existing service opening up for explored territories and reach out for the white spots of bitcoin-land instead!

scourcforge plays politics and puts an embargo on the people of Iran??
Why? Thats wrong.

I totally agree with this! Bitcoin needs more platforms to spreads all over the world

Another way for Iranians to acquire bitcoins would be to mine them yourselves.

That, or as you said sell some sort of products online.

You must have something in Iran, that doesn't weigh too much and can be legally exported, and would be of interest to foreigners...

All I know that we import from Iran is dates tho :)

There are international sanctions against Iran. Those apply to you and bitcoin as well as nations and there fiat money.

According to the TV, Iran is the devil.

I am surprised you are allowed to be on this website.

I call for a ban!

Try to spin it trough other countries. Can Iran make businesses with China?

In my point of view, USA is much more evil than any other countries.

why would i care if people who have nothing i want and dont speak any language i speak use bitcoin or not? if iran suddenly vanished i probably wouldnt even notice.

Here is the American way! Congrat dude! (sarcastically)

I believe it is wrong, too. That is why I try to bring it to your attention. Just like people from Iran use a proxy to not run into theirs or our blocking, you can use a proxy to see the internet through their eyes.

My experiences might be outdated and I can't find a proxy that works right now. Feel free to verify if you can use github and sourceforge if you have your proxy set such that you get some strange Farsi link list for facebook or blogspot.

Yes, some companies might be bound by law to block connections from Iran but I doubt that this is a general problem as so many other US-based sites are still reachable.

The brilliance of your words shines bright. You must truly be an outstandingly happy and intelligent being.

Because if they use BTCs, their value grow  ;D

then tell me what exactly changes for you personally when a few hundred thousand iranians suddenly use bitcoin?

Exactly as much as if a few hundred thousand Americans, Germans, Chileans or Italians suddenly used bitcoin. Opposed to you I actually do have friends in Iran and I do care if they can interact with the rest of the world or not. Their government discusses ultimately cutting the internet and makes them jump through hoops to get in touch with the rest of the world and ignorant fornits that don't care, make it possible that not only weapons and "dangerous" high tech can't be sent to Iran but also bitcoin and firefox. Congratulations.

unlike the countries you mentioned there is absolutely no shared market with iran. 300.000 more american or european bitcoin users would be great news for all companies already supporting bitcoin and will very likely bring more developers and other entrepreneurs. plus thats a goal that might actually be achievable. getting 300.000 iranians to use bitcoin on the other hand might be next to impossible and leave us with 300.000 we are barely able to trade or communicate with.

i didnt make the trade embargo nor did i forget to put english on the school plans in iran. and i dont support any of that either. but i acknowledge their existence and the effects they will have on bitcoin adoption in iran and similar countries. i think you are the ignorant here, because you refuse to acknowledge a reality you dont like. which is that bringing bitcoin to iran is a very likely futile effort at this point.

it would be great to bring bitcoin to iran!
but it has to be a person from iran to translate a how-to-use-bitcoins site cause nobody else knows how t is possible in iran.
i dont see Iran as an enemy, we're just disinformed by evil mainstream-media.

I met developers and entrepreneurs in Iran. Iran actually has huge quantities of oil for sale among many other products.

Oh, yes, we forgot to put English on their school plans. Right. That's what we did wrong. (sorry I have to ignore you and you are the first troll that gets this honor on this forum. The others I at least manage to not feed.)

Judging from most of the above post, I would say brainwashed instead of disinformed.

Why would I have to spend time reading idiotic statements on this forum? Oh, wait - I don't. There is the "ignore" button available.

lol, impressive refutation guys. hitting the ignore button after 2-3 posts counts as a immunisation strategy in my book. or maybe i am just the most effective troll in recorded internet history...
i have no tv btw  ;)

Years ago, I used to scoff at statements like the above, but over the past couple years, I've been starting to lean the other way, seeing us (US) through other's eyes.

~Bruno~

There is no Persian version of the Bitcoin wiki yet.  Anyone can champion that effort though.

For some of the apps and sites, all that is needed are string translations and support will be added.  Some of these that have active efforts to expand translations include Bitstamp, and BitcoinNordic (exchanges), Bitcoin.org and MultiBit (clients), Bitcoin Spinner, Paytunia (online and mobile wallets) and SatoshiDICE.com (merchants).  There are more, these are just examples.

There is an Iranian digital currency exchange:

 - https://karsha.biz/?do=contact

Also, BitcoinNordic.com now accepts CashU cards, which is used in much of the Middle East.  It looks like years ago they had locations where the cards could be purchased in Iran, but not anymore.  Just thought I'ld mention it though in case it is relevant.


Bitcoin is suited well for use by tourists and for business travel.  Suggesting that bitcoins can be used to exchange locally for IRRs gives the traveler the ability to not have to carry much cash while traveling there.    Also, at internet cafes and other places where gamers and techies are found, sometime online and in-game transactions will allow purchases using a voucher method and then Bitcoin available for withdrawals (e.g., Second Life Lindens on VirWoX).

There are no doubt thousands of opportunities missed daily because Bitcoin are not widely known or available yet.  All it takes though are for a few developments to get things started and then progress can build from there.  For instance, I once handed over a fraction of a bitcoin using a paper bitcoin created by BitAddress:
 - http://www.BitAddress.org
The coin from that paper then was sent via coinapult through e-mail to someone else, then through InstaWallet to another party before finally being spent on a game of chance. At least four people then learned how bitcoin can be used and one later invested in a small amount after reading up further.

But it takes a catalyst, and people like us -- who can see the potential, and effect change to move bitcoin forward, are it.

[Update: A Farsi translation for Mutibit has been released:
 https://twitter.com/MultiBitOrg/status/227708399750610945 ]

Because of this thread I have added Farsi/ Persian to the list of target languages for MultiBit but it is (currently) just 6% done. Anyone who would like to contribute to translating it, please have a look at the
MultiBit translation site (http://translate.multibit.org/).

The demographics of Iran seem to make it a fertile ground for adoption of Bitcoin: lots of young people, many un/under-employed college educated people, relative oppression of the young by the state...I ran a proxy server for computers in Iran after the last election debacle a few years back, hoping to be a small part of helping them take their own freedom from the govt.

22% done now.

 - http://translate.multibit.org

Is there anything someone who does not read/write Farsi can do to help hurry this up?  (e.g., donate towards a bounty?)

How Does a Currency Drop 60% in 8 Days? Just Ask Iran
 - http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/02/162165257/currency-in-crisis-collapse-of-irans-rial-continues

https://i.imgur.com/iOHEO.png

I pledge 1 BTC towards a farsi translation of multibit.

(I think many other resources of bitcoin should be translated first but jim stepped up asking for it, so I support this now.)

fornit aside, this is a great thread...watching this one

Where is this chart from? The linked article has no charts.

Thanks for the pledge giszmo.

To help get a Farsi speaker, I have tweeted from the MultiBitOrg twitter account about it:
https://twitter.com/MultiBitOrg/status/253427704618160128 (https://twitter.com/MultiBitOrg/status/253427704618160128)

Sourceforge is forced to do that by the dictatorship, we are not free  ;)

Sorry, yes that was from a different article:
 - http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/how-does-a-currency-drop-60-in-8-days-just-ask-iran/263159/

[Update: And in greater detail here:
 - http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-03/guest-post-hyperinflation-has-arrived-iran ]


Jim, perhaps set up a Bitcoin address so that donations targeted to this feature can be sent?  Also, you might have multiple contributors of translations, how would a bounty be allocated?  (e.g., the bounty split proportionate to all all translations performed on Crowdin between now and a certain date (e.g., Nov 30th).  Or should there be one person that agrees to do all the remaining translations to receive the bounty?  )

Though there are several hundred phrases remaining, I can't see this being too big a job for one person fluent in the language who would knock these out after being incented with a decent bounty.

BTW, I pledge 1 BTC towards the Persian translation bounty as well.

[Update: The Multibit thread:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=43616.msg1241474#msg1241474 ]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for your pledge !

I will set up an address specifically for the Farsi translation tomorrow (Thursday).
If multiple translators work on it I can pro rata the bounty by number of terms done as crowdin.net gives me that. You are right there should be a date cutoff - your end 30th Nov 2012 will do nicely.

For a fluent Farsi speaker who knows Bitcoin it is probably somewhere about 6 hours work.

I have set up a bounty address for anyone who would like to contribute to the Farsi/ Persian translation of MultiBit.

The bounty address is: 1K6EJJYftWNyhre3codjT4jWyczrdRVG1n (https://blockchain.info/address/1K6EJJYftWNyhre3codjT4jWyczrdRVG1n)
Or, as a QR code:

http://multibit.org/images/qrcodes/bounty-farsi.png

The terms of the bounty I have added to: http://multibit.org/ (http://multibit.org/) (below the screenshots)

Sent.

Incidentally,

This is what happened to you if you offered to exchange your dollars for rial on Tuesday (you were met with a long line of customers):

https://i.imgur.com/HK6Ai.jpg


This is what happened to you if you did the same thing on Wednesday:

https://i.imgur.com/EqLl7.jpg

 - http://twitter.com/mojtabamo/status/253751126472654848


https://i.imgur.com/Y1CcM.jpg


And it is only the beginning for them:

Europe Weighs More Sanctions as Iran’s Currency Plummets
 - http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-03/europe-weighs-more-sanctions-as-iran-s-currency-plummets
 

Police in Iran clash with currency protesters
 - http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/10/2012103113527747494.html

Could you please state what will happen if the bounty does not get claimed? I will send my Ƀ if I get it back rather than it being sent to your wallet for simplicity. Also please blockchaininfofy your Ƀ address above.

Hi giszmo,

I have added a 'Small print' section to the bounty as follows:

----------------------------------------------------
Small print:

1) If the bounty is not claimed, BTC will be returned within 7 days of the bounty end to the address of the first transaction output consumed by the sending transaction. (This means you should send it from an address you definitely control i.e. no green addresses).

2) Any BTC sent to the bounty address after the end of the bounty will be transferred to the general MultiBit donation address.
----------------------------------------------------

What I mean by this is, if you look at the very first transaction sent to that address it is:


A refund would be sent to: 12F8uztWoQQRPuZ7XPSnYDkKJ5MnvQZuwC

Ok, sent 1BTC. I'm curious why do you send to "the first non-bounty output" rather than "the first input"? The inputs are save to use while the outputs (you even acknowledge that there could be more than 2 outputs) could be some other bills paid aka not in the senders possession.

Thanks!
I think it is a matter of "one transaction's output is the next ones input" so perhaps I was not clear enough.
What I mean is:

Person X sends 5 BTC to the donation address. Say the transaction that does this consumes the following existing transaction outputs to make up the 5 BTC.
    Transaction T1, outpoint 1, that was sent to address A1, value 1 BTC    
    Transaction T2, outpoint 2, that was sent to address A2, value 2 BTC    
    Transaction T3, outpoint 1, that was sent to address A3, value 3 BTC

(There will be change of 1 BTC going somewhere but that is unimportant here.).

By the "small print" rule, the first output consumed by the sending transaction is "Transaction T1, outpoint 1". This is controlled by the key to address A1 which the user should have as long as it is not a green address. They should have it as they signed the transaction to send the value to the donation address. The change will go there.

Edit: to give a concrete example, the transaction that you just sent to the donation address is as follows:
 
Any refund would go to 127dvNfYuQa8xLYco8d8zZ62a8uGiYVuM8

Ok, so while I still have difficulties understanding your wording, this example definitely is clearer. The other example apparently was a bitcoin spinner with the only input address also being the return address.

Thanks to the efforts of techmix and mohammad_rafigh there is now a Farsi translation of MultiBit. They will share the bounty on this translation work (pro rata on number of terms done).

It just missed the 0.4.11 release which went out today but here is a screen shot:

Updated below

I will spend a bit of time over the weekend tidying up some of the layout anomalies (white space, placement of 'BTC') and aim to get it out early next week.

Well that was easy, and fast!  Ok, the next translation I personally am looking forward to seeing completed is the Hindi.  The Persian translation yielded 2.7 BTC.  I'll start it off with a pledge of 2.7 BTC for completion of the Hindi translations.

Jim, would that be another instance where you could set up a bounty for it with a dedicated bitcoin address?

Yes it was impressively quick !

I will set up a bounty for the Hindi in a similar way. Will do it tomorrow (Sat) morning.

Jim how do you treat the questions of quality and word length? I could easily contribute by picking all the one word "phrases" and auto-translate by google.

Actually I have a project where I got community help and me doing google-translations in an attempt to help my contributors lead to my (=maintainer) translations overruling the native speaker's correction on getlocalization (http://www.getlocalization.com/FluxCards/) having me to up-vote their correction manually.

Anyway, as long as contributors don't complain about to much work or unfair rules I highly welcome Jim's attempt to reach for the white spots and hope for other projects to follow (or be more aggressive about their localisation attempts) ;)

For quality checking I was going to take some samples and reverse translate with Google to check they made sense.

I have also asked the translators to have a check once the version with their text is in. Often you can only pick up inconsistencies when you actually see the text in situ. There is no BTC for this - I am hoping people will take pride in their work for this.

I was not going to bother with word length in the payment metric - mainly because the crowdin.net platform does not give me that. It does give number of terms done by translator.

The terms of the bounty are phrased in terms of terms approved i.e. that actually get into the code base. If you autotranslated and someone else gave human translated phrases and theirs were then approved then they would get the bounty.

Of course you need a native speaker to do the approving but hopefully it will stop someone contributing rubbish.
If people are obviously gaming it to the point of uselessness as the terms of the bounty are in approvals it would be legitimate to approve nothing, throw everything away and return the bounty. If it gets to that point I will stop doing bounties and go back to people doing it for the love of it !

I have set up bounties for the translation of the remaining Arabic and Hindi phrases of MultiBit.
If you are interested in either contributing to a bounty or doing the translation, please have a look here:

multibit.org/bounties.html (http://multibit.org/bounties.html)

There is a link from the main text on the multibit.org landing page too.

Please post once the Farsi bounties have been paid. If it worked well, I will contribute more to other languages.

Yes - will do.
I am waiting for a reply from one of the translators for their address.
Also, I want to do a bit of QA on the phrases before I send out the bounty.

Current Arabic bounty (http://blockchain.info/address/1BLDGGqK95LfTwkY8Zx7ZNAVs2Wap6f2CP)

Current Hindi bounty (http://blockchain.info/address/1AgpygLhmfcPPwKy2TstHbBthDVLS3qzjD)

RE: other languages - that would be excellent but I would prefer it if we don't run too many languages in parallel. There is a bit of overhead in running bounties and there is other development work I want to keep progressing as well.

Hi everyone I'm from Iran I'm one of the friends of techmix(one of the translator) actually we as PEOPLE OF IRAN don't have any kind of problem with any nation or countries even USA or ISRAEL it's a government and political problem but some people think that we're very wide and we like a big terrorist but it isn’t true we have a lot of problem because of these sanctions so I said as a person who lived in Tehran Bitcoin is great for Iranian people we are not stupid I'm telling you why it is great for us for example : Islamic Azad University is a private university in Iran and with a total of over 400 campuses, is a unique institution, that can be considered one of the largest in the world (more information (http://www.intl.iau.ir/in.html)). it has a lot of branches here so as you know many universities especially if they have a ENGINEERING department they have computer engineering faculty so we have a lot of these student in Iran who study these science also we have a lot of private institute that teach Networking and these things so just think that these student want to challenge with servers and VPS so they can learn better and working with server and you know ask their problem from their professors for that even for these little thing they can use bitcoin and buy some VPS for their self and this is good for everyone because you know in Btcoin ... THE MORE THE MERRIER ... we all use the benefit of bitcoin and notice that because of sanctions we can’t use credit card so this is the best way for us to buy what we want but NO ONE I emphasize NO ONE(except few people like Jim and some of you that donate us and support us)help us we don’t say give us money but you know some people they didn’t even bother them self to reply an email to us for example techmix few days ago emailed to admin of bitcoin.it and asked from him that make a Farsi section for us that we can translate wiki for Iranians but although techmix emailed 2 or 3 times to him he didn’t reply anything to him so now here we are ... we must buy VPS and build a site for this so as you could see it just not because we don't want to give information to Iranian People we want but some people think that because we're Iranian so if they work with us some how Obama and US government Banned them or I don't know ARREST them and these NON-sense things ... by the way from techmix & all the rest of our team I appreciated from you that donate us some bitcoin it is what you do that give us energy to work again
thank you very much  :-*

http://twitter.com/withfreeiran

I ran a proxy server for connections originating in Iran a few years back.  Bitcoin + Iran (with its loads of young, smart people) could be prime for true revolution...

I understand there's some US export embargo on a number of countries for cryptographic software. Are we talking about that?

Bitcoin isn't a US software product. It just utilizes some cryptography made in US.

The US has full embargo with Iran, so nothing (bar some very specific exceptions) can be exported to there directly.

Ok, so technically browsing a website always is "downloading" some index.html. So if downloading the bitcoin.exe is illegal, why isn't downloading the index.html or downloading the somethingWentWrong.html illegal?
Can please somebody rename bitcoin.exe to bitcoin.exe.htmlindex.html!

MultiBit/bitcoinj uses the crypto software called BouncyCastle, which is Australian.

I have paid out the bounty for the Farsi translation of MultiBit.

I have put the details here:
http://multibit.org/bounties.html (http://multibit.org/bounties.html)

(As all the bounty information is on the blockchain and the translation details are all available at translate.multibit.org I think it is ok to put all the details in the public domain).

Now that there is a 100% Farsi translation of MultiBit I have improved the right-to-left layout.
It is not perfect but I think it is now usable.
Screenshot in Farsi:

http://multibit.org/postImages/farsi2.png

I plan to get this released this week.

Jon Matonis just wrote on how the Bitcoin.org client software (binaries and source), which uses SourceForge, is unavailable to those from Iran:
 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/10/09/as-inflation-rages-in-iran-bitcoin-software-not-available/

MutliBit differs in that it uses GitHub for distributing the software but that it is not software from the U.S..  Is access to MultiBit on GitHub also restricted for those from Iran?

No. I'm just talking generally not us sanction I'm just saying that because of media a lot of people in a lot of countries think that we're some kind of terrorist ...
I know that bitcoin is not US software so maybe we translate it after this one but now we want to give information to our people so they realize what is bitcoin & how great is this ;)

yes this is true some time government block some site like facebook,youtube, ... but some time US and the main site block their service for Iranian I don't know why they do this because as Obama said(link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBtkSa6RiPg)) it doesn't related to sanction but anyway they do this and now for this some how blocking from this side and that side many people use VPN , PROXY , TOR and many other things to access to the WORLD WIDE WEB  ;D

The Farsi translation is now in the MultiBit release at:

multibit.org (http://multibit.org)

this is awesome. this needs to hit arabic Iranian blogs...

Farsi (or Persian as it is called in the West) is a distinct language to Arabic. (they do look quite similar to Westerners I must admit - I cannot tell which is which).

There is a small bounty on the Arabic MultiBit translation work - it is 30% done at the moment.
Arabic has a huge number of speakers - 300 or 400 million - and includes the rainbow arc of the south Mediterranean coast so it would be useful to have it available.

I am no expert, but apparently Arabic is a family of about 15 distinct-but-similar languages. There is a 'Standard Modern Arabic' which everyone understands so that would be what you would want a translation into.

I would recommend everybody to learn English (with my mother tongue being German) - but until that happens I guess translations really are important.

iran is the worlds largest producer of the spice safron, international safron prices are way higher then in iran because they cant export it easily.   if you could flip iranian safron you'd be a millionaire.

People have said that its hard to download the standard client. [In Iran] [possibly elsewhere too. ]

I made a torrent file, not sure if this helps.

This is the magnet link:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:8AD4F7C839B65BEEB03B582CA843E7A704995FEC&dn=bitcoin+0+7+0&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce (http://magnet:?xt=urn:btih:8AD4F7C839B65BEEB03B582CA843E7A704995FEC&dn=bitcoin+0+7+0&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce)

Is this helpful ? I am not sure.

Bitcoin project on GitHub has been mirrored:

As I understand it, gold and silver markets are well established inside the bazaars of TIRoIR. If I were an Iranian national, I'd set up a BTC exchange and immediately convert all the Rial I receive in exchange for BTC into gold and/or silver. Alternatively, since the construction sector is still active, you could convert Rial into industrial copper stores, e.g. copper pipes, etc...

Both still have high internal demand, so you could liquidate the metal holdings if needed. Export of your gold/silver might be tricky as I believe there are rules prohibiting silver/gold export via personal carry?

====

Be doostane Iraniha: salaam o inshallah omidvaram ke Iran behtar mishe! (-:

I just received 184.82089mɃ. Is that what's left over of my 200mɃ sent to a bounty to translate to Arab? I'm confused.

Hi Giszmo, from the amount it is your refund for the Hindi, which was only partially done.

I have written up the details at:
http://multibit.org/bounties.html (http://multibit.org/bounties.html)

I posted the URL on the multibit thread but forgot to post it here. Sorry.

Bounties work but they are a bit time consuming to do (as you can see from that bounties page!).
Also, the most prolific translators do not want the BTC - they just want to see the software in their mother tongue. (MBH, who did most of the Arabic, donated his share back to multibit.org. Thanks!)

There are a few translators who have not yet sent me a bitcoin address for me to send their share to but that is no big deal. The BTC is not going anywhere.

Who control the spice, control the universe!

Wow. Saffron really is "the spice". Wikipedia seams to be a bit outdated with prices of USD 1,000 – 10,000 per kg while Alibaba.com quotes are much lower (while exceeding the total annual Saffron production in offers from China alone?!) but still it seams to be the most expensive spice in the world.

So while there is a monetary and an import embargo in place, how about export? Somehow in one hour of googling I couldn't find any easy to read source of whether or not ships with Saffron could freely travel and unload in foreign harbors or not. Here and there I read about an EU oil embargo but even this is super poorly documented in Wikipedia. WTH?

sounds like a business idea: smuggling saffron