|
Bitcoin's technology is unstoppable, like p2p filesharing has proven to be unstoppable. But "the Bitcoin Project" could fail in a bunch of different ways.
If mainstream people think "Oh, bitcoin is that internet thing used by criminals", that is bad for bitcoin. It might be bad enough to kill the project (note that I said "the project", not "the technology").
If bitcoin really does turn into an internet thing only used by criminals then I'll personally consider it a failed experiment and will find something else to do.
PS: the cbsnews interview was with Jeff, not me, and my last name is "Andresen"
|
|
|
|
The biggest thing non programmers can do is TEST IT! One bug was found a little while ago were some coins were lost with the encryption. The more testers there is testing the encryption, the faster they can release it! Try moving money around with a few coins, pretty much try to get the client to not work as expected!
+1 If you can, please help test, it really helps. Patch for wallet encryption is at: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/232As bitlotto says, us a wallet with very few coins in it and/or run with the -testnet flag to use test network coins. |
|
|
|
|
If your device (computer, mobile phone) is infected and your bitcoin wallet keys are stored on that device (encrypted or not), then the bad guys will get your coins sooner or later.
Sooner if the wallet is not encrypted. Later if it is encrypted.
Come up with all the fancy "measure timing and enter your fingerprints and choose an 80-character-long password and store your private keys inside the Trusted Platform Module Chip" pseudo-security measures you like; if your device is infected they will not work.
The bad guys will simply hack the software so that you THINK you're securely sending 1 bitcoin to your cousin (because that's what it says on the screen), but instead you're REALLY authorizing sending your entire bitcoin balance to the bad guys.
|
|
|
|
Just a quick question: is this just for mainline client dev, or are we alternative developers allowed to ask questions too?  As long as the questions are core-bitcoin-related and not specific to your alternative client. Good alternative client question: "I'm writing an alternative client that doesn't store private keys at all (they are generated from the user's password). But I'll need a bitcoin protocol message that does XYZ to make it work; are other clients willing to support that new message?" Bad alternative client question: "I'm coding my alternative client in Forth; what's the best GUI toolkit to use?" |
|
|
|
|
Yep. Every transaction you make potentially leaks a little information about other transactions to/from your bitcoin wallet.
That's why I always say "bitcoin anonymity is complicated" and "bitcoin transactions are more private than credit card or bank transactions, but less private than cash transactions" or "staying completely anonymous while using bitcoins is hard."
And that's why you won't find (or, at least, shouldn't find) any claims that bitcoin is anonymous on the bitcoin.org home page or in the bitcoin source code.
What can you do? Use separate wallets. Make your donation address an instawallet or mybitcoin address that you don't use for anything else.
|
|
|
|
|
I exchanged email with Jacob, and he's predicting bugs because some very good "white-hat" people are looking hard at the code, trying to find bugs or vulnerabilities.
That's all. And that's good news; the more people who try to find problems with the code (and who will report any problems responsibly so they can get fixed before they're exploited), the better.
|
|
|
|
I'm reposting from the ClearCoin news blog: http://clearcoin.blogspot.com/2011/06/charity-escrow-changes.htmlI've been contacted by a charity who is not happy that they were listed as a donation option for ClearCoin charity escrows. I made the mistake of assuming that charities would appreciate the extra bitcoins; it never occurred to me that ClearCoin customers might contact a charity and ask THEM for their (supposedly-donated) coins back. Charities can't be expected to resolve ClearCoin disputes. To fix the problem, I have disabled all charities for new escrow accounts except one: the Bitcoin Faucet. I will be writing to any charities that received ClearCoin donations from already-created escrow transactions to make them aware of the situation and will ask them to forward any ClearCoin-related issues to me. |
|
|
|
|
This would be like a 6-blocks-back block chain lock-in. Maybe not a bad idea at this point (unlike the early days when legitimate users might throw lots of new hashing power at the network or there might have been network splits because there were so few nodes).
I think there would have to be an override, in case there WAS an hour or two or three network split.
Or maybe some attempt to detect double-spends (e.g. more-than-5-block-split OK if all transactions are valid on both chains).
|
|
|
|
Ebay specifically prohibits the sale of currency. I know, because I tried to sell 10 as an experiment, some dick flagged my listing, and eBay sent me a message with clear threats of shutting down my account if I ever list one again.
Anyone know a way around this?
I still think selling boot-able USB sticks that contain a Linux distro, bitcoin, a bitcoin miner, and "starter" bitcoins would be a great eBay business/product. You're not selling currency, you're selling software and a USB stick. You'll have to have a good eBay rep, though, because the person who gets it would have to trust that you didn't keep a copy of the wallet. |
|
|
|
|
Does anybody have the full text of the open letter? Mr. Google is failing me when I search for it...
|
|
|
|
|
I'll confess: the bitcoin GUI is not a high development priority for me because I think downloading and running software on your computer will soon be almost extinct.
I expect pretty soon most people will be using bitcoin through web applications (like mybitcoin or instawallet) or as apps running on their mobile phones.
I'll also confess that I like the bittorrent model-- create a great technology, a "good enough" interface for it, and encourage the creation of compatible applications that have great user interfaces.
|
|
|
|
See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proper_Money_Handling_(JSON-RPC) for relevant advice. As Pieter says, bitcoin converts all user-entered values and JSON-RPC values to fixed-point 64-bit integers as soon as it gets them. All calculations except for that conversion are done using 64-bit integers. Bitcoin does not "use floating point", it parses numbers-containing-a-decimal-point values that come from JSON (the Number type in JSON is double-precision float; let's not restart the "we should pass numbers as strings in JSON" debate, please, there are several long threads from a couple of months ago about that) or from the GUI. |
|
|
|
|
Can you make one that says "I am NOT Satoshi Nakamoto" ?
|
|
|
|
|
I'm going to keep the main Faucet closed until the 0.3.23 client with default 0.0005 fees are in place, and I'll drop the reward to somewhere around 1 millibitcoin (which, at $30/BTC, is 3 cents).
|
|
|
|
I think I meant to post my version and just got busy and forgot... #!/usr/bin/env python
#
# Reads an array of JSON objects and writes out CSV-format,
# with key names in first row.
# Columns will be union of all keys in the objects.
#
import csv
import json
import sys
json_string = sys.stdin.read()
json_array = json.loads(json_string)
columns = set()
for item in json_array:
columns.update(set(item))
writer = csv.writer(sys.stdout)
writer.writerow(list(columns))
for item in json_array:
row = []
for c in columns:
if c in item: row.append(str(item[c]))
else: row.append('')
writer.writerow(row)
|
|
|
|
|
Buying lots of bitcoins with dollars, driving the price up (and maybe creating an expectations bubble), then waiting for the price to stabilize before selling all you've bought (hoping to create panic selling) would, in my humble opinion, be an effective attack by anybody who had a lot of money to spend, didn't mind making the owners of the bitcoin exchanges very wealthy, and wanted to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the bitcoin market.
Of course, if there was somebody with a lot of bitcoins willing to sell on the way up and buy on the way down to stabilize prices...
|
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
