The average doesn't matter.  What matters is what orders are on the book at any particular moment in time.

Did you transfer bitcoin private keys (e.g., import into Multibit) or did you send a payment from somewhere else to an address from your MultiBit client?

If pywallet can't read it and salvage wallet can't even load it ... that's not good.  You don't have any older backups?  If you had backup media (e.g., flash drive) have you re-tried re-copying from the media with both pywallet and then -salvagewallet  (i.e, not used the same wallet.dat after one failed and then trying the next?)

The last ditch approach might have worked except that it only works for non-encrypted backups:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25091.0

But the number one lesson about backups ... if your backup can't be used to recover the database, then you have no backup.

Here's one way ... paper wallets with password encryption:



Back in the day, a loss of bitcoins in the thousands (of BTCs) would happen now and then, apparently.  That's also back when an offer of 10,000 bitcoins to get a pizza delivered took a few days of waiting and some prodding for anyone to finally make that trade.  

There still are losses of bitcoins that happen now and then (e.g., forgot the password to the encrypted wallet, didn't have any back ups and hard drive crash, etc.).

But as a bitcoin increases in value, the amount of losses occurring are much smaller.  Losing 2 BTC today is a loss of more purchasing power than what  Laszlo's 10,000 BTC had back less than three years ago.  

Make sure he joins the Bitcoin team on Etsy:
 - http://www.etsy.com/teams/10366/bitcoin/members

You can sell BTC/USD futures contracts on ICBIT.se, with leverage up to 10X
 - http://www.ICBIT.se

Another form of shorting bitcoins is to buy PUT options on MPOE.    Or the trading methods offered through 1Broker provide a way to go short.

None of those are offered from a financial institution in the U.S.  That might cause some to see the counterparty risk as being unacceptably high.

CoinSetter could be the first U.S.-based organization to offer methods to go short.  Kraken is another.  Neither is open to the public yet.

There are other methods coming as well.

When they arrive, they will be added to the list here:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Financial

You have no control over the direction of the bitcoin exchange rate.   If it stops rising (like it did for many months until June 2012) or heads the other direction, you not only don't earn anything you lose value.  

Some traders are good (or lucky) at determining a move up or down and can profit by actively trading it and making money when it goes their way, but everyone else holding coins sees declining purchasing power when the rally ends.

So,if you have an approach that consistently generates profits, that is much more valuable than seeking speculative gains that you have no control over.  You might find excess USD profits make a good way to add to a BTC position.  But remember that revenue and profit-generating ventures aren't always possible to build or find so if speculating on bitcoins comes at the expense of that venture, that might not be the wisest turn to make.

You are correct.

They aren't selling a whole lot on the way up.  And they probably aren't planning on holding if it starts heading the other direction.  A lot of people have the exact same intention ... ride it up, then get out when it turns.

I doubt the exist doors are wide enough for everyone.

So, what to do?

There's a saying that goes something to the effect of, "nobody has ever gone broke taking a profit".

Nobody lost anything.  Nobody else has spent your coins (nor can spend them) and you still have the private keys for them.  

There is an unfixed bug with the client where an outgoing transaction that never confirms and ends up being a double spend does not get purged automatically.  

That appears to be your problem.

SatoshiDICE is pretty much the only one doing this (payout with funds that get double spent, necessitating a replacement payout).  You can pretty much avoid this ever happening again by not using that service (at least not until they stop sending payouts that never confirm.)

Since your wallet.dat is encrypted, you must use the version of pywallet that supports the -password switch.

 - https://github.com/joric/pywallet

Well, they aren't all that popular with either investors or asset issuers.  

And I understand why though -- the GLBSE experience and its unorderly shutdown was a prime example.

Many investors who had not been used to performing due diligence first-hand themselves were led to financial slaughter in many instances.  On the asset issuer side, selling shares in a company to the public is yet today something illegal here in the U.S. unless done in a way that is compliant with securities regulations (again, there are changes coming for crowdfunding but they are not in effect today, and will be of limited use when they do).  

So you have the differing approaches being taken in this post-GLBSE environment to try to figure out a method that meets to goal of bringing capital from those wiling to invest and delivering that capital to those who have legitimate ideas or existing businesses that can convert that capital into profits.  

Even some risky GLBSE assets did have some successes.  ASICMINER, for instance, raised about $100K USD worth of bitcoins on GLBSE to fund their ASIC venture.   Days ago they started earning revenues of about $30K USD worth of bitcoins PER DAY and are just now paying dividends at a level that simply doesn't exist elsewhere.

The presumed rulemaking to come from the SEC on equity crowdfunding would never let an ASICMINER get its start here.  The amount being raised was probably too small to justify the expense of the preparatory steps to reach an IPO, for instance.  The shares could only be offered in the U.S. to U.S. investors (ASICMINER has shareholders around the world) and there's no way the investors could acquire equity and remain anonymous -- the State will never endorse a system in which profits cannot be tracked and taxed.

At the same time, if an issuer that does go through the SEC's hoops and then tries to disappear in the middle of the night, investors would have more than a name and a (photoshopped ?) copy of a Chinese ID card (which, presumably was the extent of the burden GLBSE required of ASICMINER before they got the green light to raise that $100K worth of bitcoins).


Entrepreneurs and financial supporters are free to form a voluntary association, but when the agreement is that profits are to be shared with those who have contributed that's when the State gets in the middle and makes proceeding so expensive that what you end up with is progress impeded.

Many entrepreneurs with great ideas remain without access to capital because they don't have wealthy friends or family, or aren't willing to cede the levels of equity traditional seed / angel / VC investment approaches require, or simply because the idea is not yet fleshed out enough to be of interest to the particular set of investors it is being presented to.

But the Internet and equity crowdfunding combined may cause an investor in Clovis, CA who is really interested in the same innovation as the maker in Cleveland, OH to extend $100 towards her goal of the $15K needed for equipment to be able to produce a working prototype.   But different from a Kickstarter or other donation-based crowdfunding approach, with equity crowdfunding the investor from Clovis gets a proportional share of the profit if that venture pans out -- and voting rights and whatever else the company charter has specified.

That would be a great story, right?   Well, we simply won't hear of it happening because of laws the SEC has "to protect investors".  That $15K raised won't even cover the legal costs for raising capital through crowdfunding.  So now this Cleveland wonder needs to raise $35K,  $20K for the legal and administrative stuff and $15K for the equipment.  And by the time that the funds are raised and the $15K worth of equipment eventually arrives the Cleveland maker's competitors might have already emerged.  And even raising the $35K of capital now cannot be assumed as being a given since instead of needing to raise just $15K, the additional $20K may have caused the whole venture to become deemed now as something unattractive to investors.

Now if the Cleveland's maker were to list her venture on BitFunder today, she may have her $15K worth of coins tomorrow.  That's an efficient system for raising capital.

We are letting innovation today be stifled from these rules.   BitFunder and potentially others provide a glimpse into what is possible when those rules are bypassed.   But those rules being in place are harmful yet.  Ziggap, a recently listed asset on BitFunder, claims to not be offering equity in the company, only a share of the company's profits.   That is weasel language composed specifically to get the benefits of raising capital (i.e., the transfer of bitcoins from the investor to the asset issuer) yet try to avoid getting in trouble for raising capital.  

What a crock.  

If I want to to invest $100 worth of bitcoins in Ziggap in exchange for a few thousand shares of their equity, why is my government making it impossible for this private contract between the two of us to be made?

[Edited for clarification and readability]
[Update: Oh, and that $20K needed for my example is an expense that would be incurred prior to the raising of capital, so the Cleveland maker would first need to borrow $20K in order to eventually raise the $15K for the equipment.    Obviously, that's senseless.  Also, that number for legal and admin for the process is likely to be much higher than $20K to boot.]

Mt. Gox is owned by Tibanne of Japan, a privately held company.

Coiinlab has various investors and also is privately held.

Neither ever offered shares to you and I.   They can't (at least not to me).   See, I'm not an accredited investor.  In this country [Edited: (U.S.)] it is illegal for a company to offer equity to me unless I have a close preexisting relationship (e.g., family member, close friend, maybe former coworker in the industry, etc.) or I am an accredited investor (i.e., already wealthy which presumes I either can afford to lose money in investments or that I am smart enough to avoid taking on excessive risk).

The SEC is supposedly working on the rules to allow equity crowdfunding since the JOBS act was passed nearly a year ago, but that has stalled due to complications and leadership changes at the agency.  But even when they are done, it isn't likely for the next Mt. Gox type of entity to hold out the hat to raise funds from us.  Even if the new rules will allow it, those rules will still cause it to be too expensive to go after and manage all of us as small investors.

That's why BitFunder and the other equity crowdfunding (asset markets) are so underappreciated.   It enables the decentralization of the methods for raising capital.

This would probably be the closest to what you are asking:

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Buying_bitcoins


Nope.  CampBX in 2011 said that it was coming soon.  So did Mt. Gox, and a few others.   Never happened.


I believe CoinSetter, "launching February 2013", will have stop loss triggers and leverage.  If you still wanted to trade at Mt. Gox for example, but wanted the protection that stop loss offers, you simply have a position on CoinSetter opened when the stop loss trigger occurs -- even if it makes use of margined funds.  Then at some point you can close both your position at Mt. Gox and the position opened when the stop loss trigger fired.

The #bitcoin-otc marketplace is one of the more valued methods.

To use #bitcoin-otc, you'll need to install GPG software, and then register your GPG key with the #bitcoin-otc gribble bot:
 - http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/GPG_authentication#Third-party_guides

Once you got that though then using the #bitcoin-otc Web of Trust (WoT) lets you build a trading history that is used to help your potential trading parties determine risk.  You can then list orders on the #bitcoin-otc order book:
 - http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php

GPG is used by a number of other services as well.  Some exchanges either require GPG or allow security to be improved thanks to GPG.  Some bitcoin-based E-commerce sites use GPG as well.  For instance, when ordering mobile phone recharge/top up cards through BTCBuy.info, you can provide your GPG key and the mobile top-up code will be sent to you encrypted so that there was no chance that any eavesdropping of your e-mail ensuring that your code delivered would will still be valid and not already redeemed.

Seriously?

Well, the production will decline by half, from 25 BTC per block to 12.5 BTC per block (which, at 144 blocks today means a drop from 3,600 BTC per-day to 1,800 per-day).   So at block 420,000 there will be 15,750,000 BTC minted (more than 3/4ths of all coins that will ever be mined).  The rate of currency inflation will drop from an 8.3% rate on an annual basis to a 4.1% currency inflation rate.  

The speculation occurring today may already include a premium due to the weighing of this event -- even though it is still roughly 3.75 years away.  

For anyone who might be interested, earlier that week in San Francisco is Finovate Spring:

Concourse Exhibition Center
635 8th Street (at Brannan)
San Francisco, CA 94103

May 14, & 15, 2013

 - http://www.finovate.com/spring2013/

Exactly.  All those freelancers working for oDesk, eLance, Freelancer.com, etc, should be banging the drum and insisting on being paid with bitcoin.

What would cause that trend of bitcoin as a settlement method to happen faster is a competing service that starts to take share of the talent pool by using bitcoins as a competitive advantage over the alternatives.

Sometimes when the Bitcoin-Qt client has the wallet open there are crucial pieces of data held in logfiles.  When the client shuts down, that process properly closes the wallet.dat and the file has data integrity.   If the client crashes or has some problem shutting down, the wallet won't have been closed properly.  Normally when that happens the client can be restarted and the data from the log files will be used to recover (rollback) the wallet or clean up, with not even a hiccup noticed by the user.  If you grabbed a copy of the wallet.dat while it was not in a closed state or was in need of recovery, then now when it tries to perform that recovery the needed log data is not accessible.

That may be what happened, or perhaps there was a media error with the backup, or the wallet.dat was already corrupt but the client didn't notice (the more recent releases are more stringent about checking validity) or any number of explanations for why currently the wallet.dat is unreadable.

What you can do is try to salvage the wallet.

Run Bitcoin-Qt manually from the command line and do a -salvagewallet

That moves the bad wallet.dat to wallet.timestamp.bak, then runs a 'salvage' operation to get key/value pairs, and writes them to a new wallet.dat.  Then the client continues from there.  If there was keys in corrupted data that it couldn't recover, those won't be in the new replacement wallet, but if it was able to salvage everything you won't be missing anything.

Which brings me to a different question, will CoinLab have a verified account's transaction history (deposits, withdrawals and trades) that occurred prior to the transition?

How about users that never verfied their identity but are from the U.S. or Canada.   Will they be forced to use CoinLab as well (in order to trade or access their funds?)?     Same question as above, will CoinLab have their their transaction history?

Any desire to have it read a wallet.dat?

Here's a resource on that:
 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/849/153