Your wording here is going to unnecessarily preclude a large number of goods and services, and possibly put a lot of users off (at least me) from using your site. That said, it's your choice, so good luck.

Very nice. I had something half baked I was using, but this is much cleaner. Great job on the UI.

No, unfortunately it cannot add or remove keys from the wallet. It merely does a dumb encryption of the entire wallet using the public key of the specified GPG recipient. This means that any time your wallet is open, it is vulnerable. To me, this is better than it being vulnerable all the time, in addition to the added ease of working with multiple wallets.

Sorry!

Hey, I did build it already. I think it might even work on Linux, but nobody trust my code.

Also, I should mention that I have not significantly tested this, so any feedback is great.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3735.0

For clarity's sake, I will refer to the private keys for use with Bitcoin as BPKs. Any other keys referenced are those used to encrypt/decrypt the BPKs.

Using this implementation, I could set up three levels of security for my wallet.

Level 0 has cleartext BPKs. Access to my wallet is sufficient to spend these coins.
Level 1 has BPKs encrypted with a GnuPG-like scheme as described above, with they encrypted private key stored in the wallet. In addition to access to my wallet, my passphrase is required to spend these coins.
Level 2 is the same as level 1, except the encrypted private key is stored on a smart card or USB drive. In addition to my passphrase and access to my wallet, the hardware device storing the key is required to spend these coins.

I could just be off my rocker, but this seems to rather elegantly solve some of the problems with password encrypted private keys.

I'm cross posting this from a thread in tech support, and also github issues, but I thought it might get some more views here.

Suppose we encrypt keys with the public key of a separate private key. That private key is encrypted with a symmetric algorithm, whose key is derived from the passphrase. I believe this is how GnuPG works. When we store this encrypted key in the wallet, we also store a reference to the associated private key. (Or, perhaps have it elsewhere on the file system... usb drive? smart card? keyring?) With this functionality, we could prompt the user for a password once and decrypt multiple keys. It also means that a wallet could be separated into virtual partitions with different encryption keys. I think it would allow a smooth transition, but would it be backwards compatible?[1]

Here's the way I imagine interacting with this. I would keep a small amount of bitcoin in the clear. This allows me to easily spend the small amount while assuring I won't lose much if my device is compromised (good for mobile devices). I can easily encrypt/decrypt keys by entering a target amount to "transfer". The actual amount is determined by picking keys with transactions (outputs?) summing to approximately the target[2]. In order to spend more than is in the clear, I must enter one (or more) passphrases, but the rest is automated.

[1]Can the structure of the wallet be modified for encrypted keys and a reference to the encrypting private key without causing a breaking change?

[2]You can't split the output of a transaction without writing to the block chain, right?

What? Are you fucking serious? That's not a market, that's a coercive entity, also known as a state.

Exactly this. Can you legally (in the eyes of, say the U.S. or U.K.) waive your right to use the judicial system to mediate disputes? Could I draw up a contract that I use with anyone I do business that says "in the event of a dispute, you agree to use X, Y, or Z dispute mediator", where X, Y, or Z doesn't include state courts?

vlad: Why are you so infatuated with the courts of nation states?

His actions will be proven to be beneficial or detrimental to his business based on the volume of business once this situation has been resolved. If you're not a customer, I don't understand your constant outrage. It's my and everyone else's choice to do business with mtgox, not yours.

The user in question supposedly had Bitcoin stolen, not LR.

So you're saying that a business owner should not be allowed to protect his business by investigating potential thefts from users? Why don't you just stop using mtgox instead of bitching so much?

You keep going on and on about this. I see it as the equivalent of standing on the steps of the courthouse yelling about how one must be innocent until proven guilty as the trial is happening.

Has mtgox's statement still not satisfied you? He has reason to believe that Baron stole money from another individual's mtgox account. Would you use mtgox if you knew that there were no repercussions for someone stealing money from your account?

If it showed you that information, then mtgox wasn't authenticated to freenode, so that may not be him. If he was authenticated, he would have been hidden behind a cloak.

So where did you get the IP address?

Hmm, I don't know. Who runs MyBitcoin? It would be nice if you could leave out an amount and have the user enter it on the MyBitcoin payment page (like Paypal donations).

Just FYI, I noticed that there's now a Bitcoin donation option on Anarchy In Your Head.

I don't understand. Profit above zero is only possible when costs are externalized, or just in this particular case?

It's 100% speculation.

Did you try using the -rescan switch? This forces it to scan the downloaded block chain for any transactions missing from the wallet.

But the story does not make sense. How could mtgox know that Baron received 9000 BTC to a private address? The only thing I can think of is that the coins were once owned by the exchange, and Baron used the same address to cash out of mtgox and receive the 9000 BTC.

Until costs exceed returns, then some people will get out of the game, difficulty goes back down, and it's once again more profitable. Are we talking past each other?