Yes but hondas and toyotas are in the same league. Tesla's are nowhere near lambo's. Actually is an insult even mentioning lamborghini and that crappy electrical things in the same sentence.
who cares the lambo, I want that crappy electrical thing+1 for the Tesla. Elon Musk should be taking his USD 5K Tesla deposits in BTC - for conversion to USD at purchase/delivery time. He'd get more than a few takers on that. |
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The way I looked at it from the start, I imagined something could attract their attention but even then, it would be a win-win for Bitcoin.
I have always believed that any outreach by the government would be impossible without some sort of implicit official endorsement of Bitcoin as being "money" - something that in Sept 2011 when I started this, was little more than a far-off dream. At that time the world saw Bitcoins the way we today see the euphemistically self-deprecating altcoin called "shitcoin". I mean, all the news coverage was consistently "Bitcoins are dead", "Bitcoin hacked, value plummets to 0.01", "the rise and fall of Bitcoin", "ponzi scheme collapsed", etc etc. People couldn't chuck them fast enough.
Now we're at the point where FinCEN wants to bother me...and...drum roll...Bitcoin is officially being considered money. The original reason I ever started with my coins was to bring positive attention to Bitcoin, and even now that my ability to continue making coins is being put up for question, I can't see how what's happened overall anything less than total victory for Bitcoin. Even if my legal counsel says "Don't make or sell another Casascius COin ever again in your life"... 2 1/2 years of Casascius Coins = mission accomplished.
That's very true. I just wonder how the press could possibly illustrate news articles about bitcoin without any Casascius coins  Maybe you could sell unfunded coins, it can't be against any FinCEN guidelines to sell metal discs with stickers - at least not yet. |
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I did get contacted by FinCEN... I probably can sell still, might have to KYC and/or report anything beyond $10k to Feds. Possibly might be other ideas to steer way clear of any definition of money transmitting. Don't know yet, and I need to err on side of caution. Will learn and then see what to do. Am still taking steps toward production of 2014 coins and a Bitcoin-enthused legal team working on it in the mean time.
Sometimes the process is the punishment. FinCEN, DHS, etc. know this. A simple inquiry can be as effective as a cease and desist order. A good example is how Dwolla just caved-in and is now discontinuing all bitcoin related transactions. I think it's important that you win this, and that any compliance requirements don't shut down coin production. Keep us posted. |
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Bitcoin must prevail. Its code allows no other outcome.
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Usually American companies looking to do business in China find someone in China who speaks English.
Actually that's better english than some Americans I've done business with. How's your mandarin? |
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Mike has earned the well-deserved trust of the bitcoin community over the past few years - as well as being the creator of a key enabling technology that makes bitcoin safer and more useful for millions of users (the BIP38 encrypted key protocol). This protocol is used for encrypted paper wallets and will also be an important component of upcoming POS applications. If you don't trust casascius coins there's a simple solution: You don't have to buy them!Some have actually suggested the uBTC be called a 'Mike' (not completely sure if that's related to Mike's contributions or not though ) |
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Any other ideas on this?
Instead of using hexadecimal fragments parts of the actual private key, you could use a bunch of words, numbers, phrases, etc strung together as a password for an encrypted key (using the BIP38 encrytion available for many paper wallets). You could also have a sequence of 'prizes' that could only be claimed in sequence since a portion of previous key could also be used as part of the passphrase to the next one: password = "test 1234 word 5A23d ..." etc edit: Someone already suggested using a 'brain wallet' phrase, but BIP38 would be significantly more resistant to password cracking attempts. |
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The bitcoin protocol offers absolutely no hard guarantees about consensus until a transaction finds its way into a valid block. Placing any trust in unenforced and unenforceable relay rules is a recipe for disaster.
In an absolute sense, this is of course 100% accurate. Back in the real-world of retail transactions however, there are no absolutes or guarantees. A 99% (or even 96%) certainty that a tx will eventually confirm is all that would be required to make bitcoin payments on par with existing networks (Visa, MC, or even cash) in terms of the cost/risk exposure profile (which is huge). Perfect is the enemy of better. |
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There are two major issues with sequence mediated replacement:
First is that it opens a major DOS vulnerability: I start issuing bunches of the largest transactions the network will tolerate, with high fees, locked so they are not going to be mined for the immediate future... but I'll never pay those fees because I'll replace them all before they become due. But until then I'm running every node out of memory pool storage. Any way that closes the DOS attack provides a way for an attacker to help them violate the sequence ratchet.
Yes, agreed. I think the implementation of this would need to be constrained and certainly not be open-ended. This could so easily be exploited it must have already been seen as a vulnerability when the spec was drafted. ...
The second is that it demands all miners behave in a way that reduces their income, perhaps substantially. If I learn of an earlier sequence spend with an child transaction that pays a high fee, why should I continue to attempt to mine the higher sequenced spend?
Miners behaving in their own short term interests against the interests of (some of) the users is not hypothetical, its a reality today.
So far I've not seen or come up with any way of solving the DOS problem, nor any way of solving the incentives problem that works for non-trivial-valued transactions (for trivial valued transactions we could perhaps use the threat of increased orphan risk, but that stops being a solution for high values or if attackers start bribing many miners with chains of fees).
The following minor implemention would "fix" the double-spend by higher-fee-replacement scenario: If sequence == UINT_MAX, then the tx 'finality' would be respected (as originally intended per the spec) and the tx would not be replaced by any node - even if replace-by-fee was implemented and the fee was higher. This would go a long way to reducing any chance of malicious double-spend success, while not increasing DOS vulnerability or affecting other situations where replacement-by-fee could be useful. |
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It is! Definitely worth a repost here for posterity: glorian
28 November 2013 7:49pm
Eighty-seven percent of the nation’s top economists think that the digital currency, Bitcoin, has “limited usefulness.”
Wow. So a technology that eliminates transaction fees, Internationally, over the Internet, has "limited usefulness"
Anyone can create what amounts to a checking account, for free. Only no overdraft is possible. Payments clear in minutes. Your boss can pay you with "direct deposit" in seconds (no special service required). You can pay anyone else in the world, and they can pay you. Securely, with no double spends, no charge backs, no bad checks. Wells Fargo charges me 10 bucks a month for a dim shade of that, but it seems accountslike this are of "limited usefulness".
Bitcoin solves the micro payment problem. You can actually make very small payments with smaller yet transaction fees, and it just works. but that is of "limited usefulness".
As long as you can figure out how to secure your private keys (by printing them and putting the only copies in a safety deposit box, memorizing them, or engraving them inside a ring), your Bitcoins will be protected by 256 bit encryption. Banks use 128 bit encryption, but the difficult of breaking encryption doubles with each bit. That means if BS = Bank Security, then Bitcoin Security = BS x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2. Obviously increasing security like that is of "limited usefulness"
Bitcoin is going to inflate, just like the Dollar, for another 30 years, only WAY slower. Since 2008 the Federal Reserve has printed TWO Dollars for free for every Dollar you worked to earn, or saved, or acquired through taking the risk of investing. Actually for every dollar that existed prior to 2008. In just a year or two. Bitcoin has predetermined inflation programed into it so you can know what is going on. And those newBitcoin are given to the people "mining", who are actually doing all the verification and validation of the ecosystem. Huh. Giving people Bitcoin for actually doing something useful for everyone else. That is clearly of "limited usefulness".
Bitcoin may make early adopters rich. Like early investors in Apple, or in Plastics (watch "It's a Wonderful Life" again!), or in Microsoft, or IBM, or Exxon... Heck in anything successful. Don't let Economists tell you it isn't fair to be an early adopter! Figuring out why a technology changes the game, and getting in early (to them) is of "limited usefulness".
Maybe just trying to reply to this is of "limited usefulness". ;-)
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Very good point... I think I'll start a thread to see if people are actually buying anything with their bitcoin or if they're just holding it as an investment. I've been buying alternative currencies with mine...
I know "someone" who bought a subscription to Bitcoin Magazine in 2012 for about 15 btc... Seemed like a pretty good deal at the time. Oh well, I suppose it was still a bargain compared to that $10M pizza. |
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All forms of commerce CAN involve fraud. One could counterfeit $1 bills just to steal a lifetime of sodas from soda machines. It probably isn't worth the cost and risk though. One could get free coffee from this hypothetical scenario by putting a gun in the face of the cashier and demanding not the money in the till but a free large espresso. I don't see that happening either.
In time merchants will adopt the level of security vs convenience that they see necessary. Much like how soda machines are wide open to attack by stolen credit cards and counterfeit bills yet have not taken more expensive and intrusive countermeasures there will be a place for 0-confirm transactions. Note: nothing I said should be taken that all merchants should rush into accepting 0-confirm txs in all scenarios without understanding the risks.
^ This. Exactly. Merchants will manage their risks exactly like they do today with credit cards, cash, etc. Once adoption becomes more widespread, statistics will be available to to this. In almost every case, risks and overall costs should prove to be much lower than existing payment networks. BitPay has reported that in their first 10K transactions, there wasn't a single case of fraud. Compare that with any credit card scenario online or in-person. Satoshi actually included a very useful mechanism in the protocol specifications and data structures which hasn't been implemented in BitcoinQT but could basically solve the double-spend problem (at least regarding tx replacement) if it was: Using the sequence and lock_time fields prevents a tx from being replaced by another tx after the specified time (or block number, or ever if sequence = UINT_MAX) If/when the core devs ever implement this it would be a major step toward 'last mile' adoption of bitcoin in retail and we could finally get beyond the discussions of the (mostly hypothetical) double-spend "problem". Any "replace-by-fee" mechanism that ignores the sequence and lock_time fields would be likely be considered broken by Satoshi. |
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Ok is there a dummies guide anywhere to transferring my bitcoins from blockchain.info into a paper wallet at bitaddress.org? And I mean a really intricate guide anyone with whatever little experience can follow? Such as; Step1. first click here,
Step2. then load up this,
Step3. then blah blah blah...
Many on the forums use these, great design: www.bitcoinpaperwallet.comUSB storage works too and is convenient, but USB keys fail and can easily be corrupted. |
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We can expect to see increasingly creative attacks with btc >~1K USD. There are many attack vectors left to be exploited.
Code should never keep unencrypted keys in memory longer than absolutely necessary and overwrite any instances as soon as possible. Scanning multiple GBs for likely keys is trivial. It's not necessarily difficult for malicious code to cause a core dump - not all OS's are created equal.
One thing we can definitely be sure of - the "best" minds of the eastern bloc are already working on it.
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Once replace-with-fee is deployed, I could rip off that coffee shop with near 100% reliability, every time until they stop serving me coffee. Don't accept zero-conf transactions.
Except that you couldn't, at least not without a significant amount of effort, cost and luck - far disproportionate to any possible gain. That's exactly the problem that OpenCXP solves. |
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I agree that with the proper precautions (waiting a few seconds to see if there are double spend attempts, ensuring the transaction has a sufficient tx fee) 0-confs is enough for a point of sale transaction.
No, no, and no. None of those precautions you mention do anything to protect you against a double spend. There is nothing you can do to provide significant protection except wait for a confirmation. Do not trust zero-confirmation transactions, ever*. (* Unless you are extending pre-existing trust you've placed in the person sending the coins, or have some mechanism for obtaining restitution in the case of a double-spend. Either way, that's side-stepping, not solving the problem.) Depends completely on the context and the method of transaction. A coffee shop accepting 0-confirmation transactions using a protocol like OpenCXP will have virtually no chance of a double spend. Ever. Any risk of loss would be far, far lower than the 1-3% average fraud loss for card payments which retailers already accept today (over and above the guaranteed "loss" of 3-5% in fees!). |
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As Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, wrote more than two years ago: "What we want from a monetary system isn't to make people holding money rich; we want it to facilitate transactions and make the economy as a whole rich. And that's not at all what is happening in Bitcoin." I don't know if he noticed, that it is not working as intended. Because people who have money will invest them in houses or other things, they not only get richer while others don't they also increase price of houses for other people so they can't afford one when they need them for living and not for investment. And it is not only for houses but for everything people invest money in to not lose value of they fiat. Remember, Paul Krugman may not be quite the visionary he's made out to be. He also made this prediction about the internet: "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." |
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Between which contractors? If you read my posts carefully, you would have noticed that I was talking about international trade between China and the USA... If you tried to pay in BTC for USD orders but got caught what would happen?
"Got caught"? doing what? Doing payments in BTC (or any other currency for that matter) for dollar-denominated orders while all your documents (contracts, invoices, customs declarations, bank guarantees, etc) are officially issued in dollars and you ultimately end up paying customs duties and taxes if applicable, selling currency to the state if required as well as falsifying your accounting and financial documents (e.g. bank statements) necessary for making corresponding accounting records... I'm not talking here about you paying for a shirt you order from abroad but about multi-million contracts employing all available means of foreign trade... Sorry but you clearly have no grasp of either of the processes or legalities of international trade. Nothing is "falsified" etc etc. You just agree to send the equivalent in BTC to settle an invoice in USD. Simple. Happens all the time, nothing remotely illegal about that! |
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I haven't seen a store that takes it, and everyone I talk to thinks it's "risky" (which I don't agree with).
It is incredibly risky. The price of Bitcoin could crash to near zero at any moment and it's far from certain that it would necessarily recover. I think Bitcoins are a pretty good investment (though now is a particularly dangerous time to buy) but to deny that it's very, very risky is madness. 1) Accepting bitcoin using BitPay or Coinbase and having dollars deposited to your account: Cost 1%. Risk of loss due to fraud/BTC exchange 0% 2) Accepting credit cards: Cost ~3-5%. Risk of loss due to fraud or chargeback: additional 1-3% (avg, US) 3) Accepting bitcoin for gold bullion with zero confirmations in a dark alley in eastern europe: "very, very risky"  |
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Whatever the background for the reddit submitter's post (the 'fortune 500 ceo's' scenario sounds slightly implausible), there is a good discussion going on over there. There's no way btc is ready for primetime at big box retail using any current solutions. Coinbase or BitPay could undoubtedly rise to the challenge using their proprietary back-ends, but it would need to be integrated into their existing POS infrastructure (no small task, but it could be done). Likely they would test the water with online sales (easy) and gift cards paid in btc (also easy). We're a long way off from in-store btc for major retailers. For a discussion from a merchant perspective of comparative risks and costs between bitcoin and credit/debit cards etc at POS, the preliminary whitepaper at www.openCXP.org shows that bitcoin transaction times are more of a theoretical than practical issue for retail implementation. (OpenCXP is currently at RFC "request for comment" stage). |
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