Implemented here, please review (merge request pending): https://gitorious.org/~ovidiusoft/electrum/ovidiusofts-electrum

Ha, that's nothing! The Internet is started by DARPA and our beloved cryptography (yes, including bitcoin's SHA256) by the NSA. Turn off your computer nao1!!!!11!!!

(I am sorry for trolling, I just couldn't resist)

@freequant Sealand is not a country. I'm not saying that it can't play with a cryptocurrency, just that it won't mean anything and will most likely be laughed at, just like the "country" itself. Sorry if I'm being harsh.

But Greece OTOH...

Anyone else considers useful to have the server's config file structured like a INI file, using ConfigParser http://docs.python.org/library/configparser.html ? I am also thinking of moving a little more settings into it, for example:


I can probably hack something tomorrow. Also, I never used gitorious, if I create an account I can push directly to your repository?

TradeHill will take OKPAY transfers directly.

This shouldn't be posted here, but I don't see any bug tracker on gitorius, so here:

#1. Config file should be (in order): ~/electum.conf, /etc/electum.conf, or the hardcoded defaults if neither exist.

#2. The server readme file refers to the patch bitcoinrpc_connection.py.diff agains bitcoinrpc (https://gitorious.org/python-bitcoin), but the file it modifies doesn't exist in that project (src/bitcoinrpc/connection.py). Please advise/fix.

Also, there should be documentation about how to run Electrum and all deps from a single directory. For example, I don't want to install bitcoin-abe and other stuff that doesnt's exist in Debian system-wide. I want to have them all under the user 'bitcoin', for security and ease of administration reasons. After I'm done testing, I'll write my own howto, for the moment I'm stuck

No, the site is supported by ads. It will take a few hours to get your coins, they don't send immediately. You can get free coins from them daily, and the amount is enough to play around and learn how the system works.

After contacting OKPAY by PM, he explained to me exactly what they need (in my case a printed account statement, signed and stamped by the bank, then scanned. They accepted it in romanian, as the bank didn't provide me with a english statement). After submitting, the account was verified in a few minutes, so karma++ from me!

There is no difference between addresses used by v0.4.0 and v0.5.0 software. Get come free coins here and have fun: http://dailybitcoins.org/

I am familiar with the name, he is pretty active on the romanian blogosphere and on social networks. Also has some online projects. I don't think he's a scammer (or he's really bad since he left so much personal info about him), but Google said there are mixed opinions about his way of dealing with people (read: he pissed off and insulted a lot of people). I didn't know him personally so I do not have a personal opinion on him.

More info:

http://polimedia.us/?q=company
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mircea-popescu/18/2A4/22
https://twitter.com/#!/Mircea_Popescu
http://polimedia.us/mpopescu_cv.pdf

(Before someone checks out the whois for his domain and yells scammer, the domain was registered by a business partner of his, I googled it).

I hope you'll solve any issues you have, good luck!

No, they don't. International transfers are difficult, slow and expensive, for the majority of the world. And by "here in Europe", I guess you mean "here in my country", because I live in Europe too, and SEPA transfers are pretty expensive.

Government-backed pseudo-anonymous cryptocurrencies? With no possibility of blocking accounts or taking money from users whenever they want, or monitoring you whenever they want? Hahahaha. Not gonna happen. Never-ever-ever-EVER.

On the other hand, a private corporation(s) backed cryptocurrency is, I think, possible. I actually discusses about this a litte on IRC with a fellow romanian bitcoiner (hi!). It could work like this:

* mining could be optional, fees might be distributed across active nodes or there could simply be no fees. This will allow faster block generation (1 every minute is, IMHO, about right. We live in the Internet age, people, I don't want to wait +10 minutes for my transaction to "clear"!).

* new money will be injected into the network by selected, trusted nodes. Clients will have a list of certificates that are allowed to create and sign generation transactions. I'm thinking something in the way SSL certificates and CA's work.

* money can be "destroyed" by a trusted node + the user who cashed out.

The system might work like this, let's call it usdcoin:

* There are a random number of companies who already have fiat cash. They can prove this to all the other companies in the web of trust and to any 3rd party. They will be required to do this regularly.

* A company will generate a transaction for injecting new money in the system. All the other companies will check the validity of the transaction and sign it off. Time is not relevant here, so they can all take their time to independently check that the money exists and is available if needed.

* After all the trusted nodes signed on the new money, they can be "sold" to users, for a fee, by the issuer. The users will send fiat cash using any accepted method and will receive usdcoins to their address.

* From there on, transactions will function like bitcoin's, maybe with a method of rewarding nodes for propagating them. As I already says, mining is not necessary, the trusted nodes could take turns generating blocks. For some extra protection, there should be ways to evenly distribute different coins generated by different companies. This will help if a certain company goes down - users will lose only part of their assets.

* If at some point a user decides he wants fiat cash out, he can contact any of the trusted nodes and send his usdcoins. The trusted node will then generate a "destroy" transaction, send fiat to the user, who will also sign on the destroy transaction. If he doesn't sign in a reasonable amount of time, the network will simply continue using those usdcoins (node can resell them) (fraud issues here I ignored, I know).

Any thoughts on this?

The main "suspects" to do something like this would be, IMHO, e-currency companies that already have a large user base and their implicit trust (and they also solved the legal issues, which is very helpful): LibertyReserve, Pecunix, WebMoney, MoneyBookers and so on...

Ha, now that you mention it, I did exactly the same Now it works, but I can't find anything... I created a offer and searched for it, but it won't find it.

Suggestion: OP, can you add a "in person transfer in <region>" option for trading?

I am pretty sure you need to physically be there to open an account.

Yes. GLBSE is down for the moment (the backend, at least).

It's short for Liberty Reserve, one of the most used e-currencies. http://www.libertyreserve.com/

The infrastructure costs are significant, and with so much free wifi options, this doens't seem like a good business. I would also expect that people who heard of bitcoin can manage to google "free wifi in <city>".

You didn't say if you are selling in a real shop or online? Depending on which (or both...) you should think that the goal for the customer is to get the cheapest price. So you can't ask a huge premium, or he will simply pay cash or use his credit card. You can add a small percentage to catch the small daily swings in the exchanges, but not much. How about the fees for using fiat?

Next, I believe you should decide for yourself if you believe usd/btc exchange rate will be stable, go up or down in a selected timeframe. I prefer to work on months, you might want weeks. Let's say you believe the rate will go up or be stable. Considering you won't have that much bitcoin volume in the beginning, I think you can simply take the risk of caching bitcoins for a full month and then selling for get usd.

It's been already mentioned - bit-pay. Do the math, it's possible they are the easy solution that you can also afford. Unless you're an expert in trading, I would avoid hedging with a margin trading service like bitcoinica, but I guess you could transfer the coins to an exchanger (daily? weekly?) and put some sell orders to stop losses in case the rate goes waay down. Just don't forget that too aggressive sell orders might get fulfilled too soon...

Oooooooor.... you can contact your suppliers and talk your way into paying with bitcoins! Then you send them here and then we'll answer them and so on

Some more possible combinations here: http://magnetic-money.org/ . You can probably create a circuit of exchanges.

Playing with it right now. Looks very nice, it's fast enough - cool stuff!