The wiki article could use an update then.   [Edit: Nope, it only mentions AliPay as a cash-out method.  Is that correct, AliPay is one of the way you can withdraw?]



Ha, I'm lost then trying to use it then.  Are you saying I can register and navigate the site and the text and prompts are all in English?

The Moving Server is like the message from the last scheduled maintenance.  Apparently this one wasn't scheduled:

- https://twitter.com/blockchain/status/310074372088033281

If that person that sent payment to the Ping Service using a hosted (shared) EWallet, that "return" payment most certainly WILL NOT go back to the intended recipient.  With a hosted (shared) wallet the Bitcoin address used for sending a withdrawal is not tied whatsoever to the account of the party requesting the withdrawal.  That's why SatoshiDICE has a "Warning: please read first" on their site.     

BitLotto maintains a list of clients that are valid (see "BitLotto compatible software").  It includes Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind, Blockchaiin.info/wallet, Multibit, Electrum, Armory, Blockchain for iOS and Android, Bitcoin Wallet for Android, and others.  There is one hosted Wallet that appears to not be shared, and that is Coinbase -- so that might be one EWallet option that would work with this PingService.

This is still available.   Does it just take the wallet backup (aes)?  For decrypting the wallet.aes.json wallet backup.
 - https://blockchain.info/DecryptWallet.html

[Edit: And related topic on StackExchange:

How to restore locally a MyWallet backup?
 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/3034/153 ]

No ELI5 but here's a script:

 - https://gist.github.com/fcicq/3368495

[Edit: then in Bitcoin-Qt's Debug console,


once for each key]

I can just picture some Wall Street veteran hedgie reading this article and seeing all the steps needed to protect a bitcoin investment and then after looking up how Shamir's Secret Sharing scheme works thinking that maybe March 2013 would be a good month to enter retirement before it gets just too complicated.

Let's say for the photo above (the "pre"-enhancement, on the left),   How much would you quote for that?

I am in the U.S. but let's say I do swing trading and hold CADs for trading on BTC/CAD, EUR for the BTC/EUR market and AUD for the BTC/AUD market.  Will I still have those accounts after being transitioned to Coinlab? 

I just received a Deprecation Notice from Mt. Gox via e-mail:


Does that mean I can still create and redeem a MTGEUR code after April 10th?

I don't know that this situation has ever occurred with anyone else.  It sounds like something you should have piuk take a look at.  (He'll probably need your wallet password, or perhaps you can change it to one that you can share with him.)  Try sending him a PM and ask for this to be investigated.

Summary - piuk
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=17928

The Weekend Dip strategy was to take advantage of a recurring pattern in which when there was a downtrend (defined very specifically) where way more often than not you could consistently earn a profit from doing trades by selling on a specific day and buying back after certain moves occurred.  There was this pattern where something like out of eight or nine weekends where the Green Light was lit, all but one resulted in gains.  Of course the timing on buying back made the difference between nice gains versus very nice gains.

The very specific definition is to wait until Wednesday night (West) / Thursday morning (East) and check the high for the previous seven days.  Then compare that to the high for the seven day period prior to that.   If the most recent 7-day high was lower than the previous period's 7-day high, then a week-to-week downtrend was occurring.  When that happens the Green Light goes on.  Following the "Weekend Dip strategy" meant selling coins at that time (Wednesday evening in the West, Thursday in the East) and waiting for a selloff.  Then hold on until the drop starts to inch its way back up, maybe recovering to about a third or a half of the drop.  If there is no recovery happening, then let it ride further into Monday if the selloff continues.   Oftentimes the best time to buy back was late Saturday evening (West)/Sunday afternoon (East), or later.

Following that strategy when the Green Light was on would pretty consistently return like 5% or more (sometimes a LOT more, sometimes approaching 30% with perfect timing).

What kind of killed off the trend is that it became a trend.  And more people traded it ... to where even a 5% drop was getting snapped up by buyers with funds ready and waiting.   The trend worked consistently way back when nearly all funding to Mt. Gox occurred with wire transfers.  So if you are in the Europe or the U.S., any wire sent on Friday arrived too late for Mt. Gox in Japan to process it until Monday.  And any wire sent on Monday wouldn't get processed until Tuesday.  And the combination between U.S. bank holidays and bank holidays in Japan often left many three-day weekends as far as no effective transfer between the U.S. and Mt. Gox for several days.     But it seemed miners, many of whom were over-invested in GPUs and with electric bills would sell 24x7, regardless of the price.   When Bitcoin currency was inflating at an annual rate of 50% or 33%, and 50 BTC per block, that meant a ton of coins were selling on Friday, Saturday and Sunday -- and no bank wires were being credited during that time.    Trader's were still leery of keeping lots of funds at the exchanges so there just wasn't many USDs sitting there ready to be put to use, at least not for just a simple 10% or 15% weekend dip.   (because if you used up your powder on a 10% gain you might miss the more attractive 35% rollercoaster ride.)  

Those days look to be behind us, but just like this past week's $49-ish to $34-ish dip, big swings still can occur.  More often than not they occur over the weekends.   But big rises can occur on the weekend as well.  So waiting for the Green Light basically was a way to lessen the chance of a big rise occurring as rallies with huge spikes up didn't usually emerge during the middle of a week-to-week downtrend.

The wallet.dat holds a collection of private keys.  Each private key yields a unique bitcoin address.  So the wallet doesn't have a single private key, it has many private keys, and each one can be hashed to come up with the corresponding Bitcoin address.


Well the Bitcoin-Qt client will look at all unspent transactions of Bruce's (i.e., for any address in his wallet) and choose one or more based on a set of rules (which include minimizing the change amount, for example).


So the two outputs are Linda's Address (with amount 1.88 BTC) and then the client pulls an unused address from the keypool and adds that as a second output (with the amount being the total input amount(s) less 1.88 BTC to Linda less the fee to give to the miner).


Not necessarily the latest.  The specific unspent transaction used will be whatever one the client chose based on the client's ruleset.  This is different for different clients.  Bitcoin-Qt uses one method for coin selection, Armory uses its own, etc.


No.  For this "transfer to bitcoin address" action, each output is simply:

- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transactions#Principle_example_of_a_Bitcoin_transaction_with_1_input_and_1_output_only

There's nothing in each OUTPUT other than the output instruction and the hash of the public key -- specifically RIPEMD160(SHA256(PubKey)).  And there's nothing that would indicate that one of the addresses happens to be an address that is from Bruce's own wallet.

All the signing and full public key is in each INPUT, not the OUTPUT.  Only during transaction verification are these two used together:

- https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transactions#Verification

[I'm not well versed on transactions at the script level so I may be describing it incorrectly so if anyone has corrections or comments feel free to share.]

The attacker stole funds from BitInstant's account at VirWoX exchange.  VirWoX offers two-factor authentication (2FA) protection which BitInstant hadn't implemented (perhaps because VirWoX didn't offer 2FA at the time BitInstant first establish their account with VirWoX)..   Had BitInstant been using 2FA, the attacker would have gotten nada, zip, zilch ... just like was obtained from the other BitInstant's other exchange accounts the attacker tried to get at.

Now that doesn't mean with 2FA you are completely immune from risk, but the complexity of the attack just got exponentially more difficult -- the device where the 2FA (e.g., Google Authenticator) is used must be compromised as well.

Bitcoin users who store funds (either fiat like USD or bitcoins) should also be using two-factor authentication if they use an EWallet service.  Here's a list of EWallet providers who offer two-factor authentication:
 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4113

[Edit: Apparently the domain registrar, Site5, doesn't appreciate the need for two-factor authentication:

Site5, and their insecure practices and questionable business ethics
 - http://joepie91.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/site5-and-their-insecure-practices-and-questionable-business-ethics ]

Then for how that transaction is used (as far as getting into the blockchain), see:



 - https://i.imgur.com/DKa2T7q.jpg  <--- Full size JPG, 1871 X 1420.


So in the example of Linda receiving 1.88 BTC, that amount will be added to the balance shown by her client until she has spent that transaction.

[Edit: Most] everything you need to know about transactions you can learn from Blockchain.info.  

Here's some random transaction pulled from a recent block:


 - http://blockchain.info/tx/9f0003404687772167a216a8939c7bd77cd75b6e5ce607a872c7c5e62e78d975


Let's say this was Bruce's payment to Linda.  There's no way to know if the 1.88 was the payment to Linda or if 245.614 BTC was the payment.  Arbitrarily let's pick the 1.88 BTC as being the payment, and the 245.614 BTC was the change back to a new address in Bruce's wallet.

To see the scripts, Blockchain.info gives a link "Show scripts & coinbase".  After you click that, scroll down to see the scripts.

To see the previous outputs for Bruce's payment, at the very bottom you'll see Advanced: Enable, click Enable.    Then next to Bruce's 1PvFignfc4H1hvUJU8EuoeUNMh7WtdJPgp input, you'll see the link Output which will bring you to the transaction in which Bruce received the 247.495 BTC.

That should give you about everything you need to know to have a general understanding about Bitcoin transactions.  There are further details, such as how BTCs don't exist ... there are only Satoshis.  (e.g., 188,000,000 Satoshis = 1.88 BTC).  And other scripts that might be used, etc.

Every market is different, and bitcoin is really an oddball that doesn't seem to follow any traditional trading patterns.

What does matter is the information (and disinformation) available.  And with this bitcoin is no different from the stock market or any other area where speculation reigns.

If on February 1st you knew ahead of everyone else that by now:
 - Bitcoin would be accepted by Reddit (for Reddit Gold),
 - and by Namecheap
 - and that v0.8 would be released and widely adopted with no issues, and it solves the #1 reported issue (long wait for initial blockchain sync),
 - and that 80% (by trading volume) of Mt. Gox's customer base would be getting "transitioned" over to a U.S.-based financial operator,
 - and that any Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) online store could accept bitcoin for payment
 - and many of the other great developments occurring in Bitcoinland

then you might have considered all of these developments and gone all in ... betting the farm that these developments would boost the exchange rate ahead.

Some of these "surprises" were already expected due to rumors that had already been circling well ahead of the official announcements.  There have been other rumors that have not played out too though, so not each piece of information can be taken at face value.

But one way that information is "signaled" is through price.  So as the exchange rate rose in January up into the high teens on good volume and there was no apparent reason for it to do so, a rational trader might take note that others probably know something that has not yet been shared.  When some of the positive developments emerged officially (e.g., Reddit gold) those that bought on the rumor generally then will sell on the news [being released].  When the exchange rate continued rising after the official announcements, that meant there was probably even more information about other developments that hadn't been shared.  

Eventually when a significant development is announced (e.g., Fulfillment By Amazon support) and the exchange rate instead reverses and heads down, that probably means that finally most of the cards have been turned over.   Then you might look for trading volume collapsing (except when selling off) which means nobody else is buying aggressively and thus there appears to not be much trading occurring based on information that other's don't yet have.

I'm not a daytrader and don't do much arbitrage so I'm not someone who really cares much if there's a 5% move up or down that might make for a trading opportunity.   I generally try to add to a position after there's been a sharp selloff (still waiting) and also I try to lighten up a little when it seems that a rally fizzles out (like right now maybe).  It is easy to make a wrong call though but everyone makes mistakes and hopefully learns from them.

To get a feel as far as what's important, try hanging out in the IRC channels #bitcoin-otc, #bitcoin-assets, #mtgox and maybe some others.  Follow #bitcoin hashtag on Twitter.  To some people Google Alerts is crucial.  After a while you can start to know what information is signal and what information is noise.  There is value in taking that information and gaining knowledge from it, hopefully resulting in the ability to make better trading decisions.

The cash deposit methods for BitMe (at Chase) and BitFloor (at B of A) don't require that you bank with those institutions.

You are depositing cash into the account that the exchange gives you.  They know whose deposit it was based on the amount.  e.g., if you want to deposit $100, they'll tell you to deposit something like $100.34.   That $0.34 extra is like your unique identifier.  When I go to deposit $100 the amount I am told to deposit is different, like maybe $100.84.  That's the only thing that differentiates the two of us as we are both depositing into the same bank account number.

In Chrome/Chromium when I click on the Market Depth chart it moves (like a scroll down) but no chart displays.

[Edit: as segabtc reports, nearly no data is displaying, not just this depth chart issue.]

Yet one more weekend where the Green Light is NOT green.  

However, if there is a "top", and a decline trend returns this is what the start of that very well could look like:



 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg10zig2-hourzczsg2013-03-05zeg2013-03-08ztgTzm1g10zm2g25

So, while the green light doesn't shine right now, I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't another 10% dip awaiting before the New Money Monday rise.

Mt. Gox did exactly what your actions instructed them to do.  They processed your withdrawal request and sent your coins to the address you specified.

It would be a nice service if they did block withdrawals to SatoshiDICE addresses, certainly.  But they don't.  And there isn't outrage by the community because Mt. Gox having to add protections for you costs money, and you don't pay for that we do as it gets added to our trading fees.

I want low cost trading more than I want guard railings.

Bitcoin is a non-reversible payment method.

Non-reversible.  Low cost. That's why it has value.

That's called performing arbitrage and is a necessary component of keeping prices between exchanges in equilibrium.

The problem is in moving cash to and from the various exchanges in order to do that trade.  Also a person trading on various exchanges needs to consider counterparty risk -- meaning not only must you trust that the exchange won't run off in the middle of the night with your funds, you have to trust that they are competent enough so that your funds won't be stolen and you'ld be in the same condition, without access to your funds.

Both BTC-E and MtGox have had security breaches in which customer funds were stolen.  In both instances the exchange covered the losses, but in neither instance apparently was the amounts stolen above the levels that would make the exchange insolvent.

So generally, traders doing arbitrage will limit the amount of funds to a minimum level.

So right now the difference in the exchange rate between BTC-e and Mt. Gox consists of the difficulty and cost in moving USDs from a bank account into BTC-e, combined with the difficulty and cost in moving USDs out of Mt. Gox (after selling bitcoins) to a bank.  In all, that's requiring a lot of USDs to be "in play", and thus exposed to exchange rate risk (can't simply buy bitcoins on demand with the funds should market conditions change).

So you are free to give it a try.  Just that the nearly $2 per bitcoin difference ends up being so little profit by the time all is said and done.