Welcome to my ignore list. Trolling the other pull thread too in addition to this? Your ignore button can now be even more orange.

Changes to how the blockchain is stored on a local client do not affect the Bitcoin protocol or the way signature verifications work. It can only improve things. We already see the failings of the current BerkleyDB format with its single-purpose huge index file, notably the inevitable unrecoverable corruption that comes from writing and rewriting 2GB files, and we are halfway to the file size limit of the hard-coded index. Many alternate clients already store the blockchain in different ways.

So such an alarm might be a netsplit/isolation warning, such as an in-sync connected client not getting a new block for an extremely long time and/or one or more blocks with extremely long timestamp delays. The time thresholds could be set to an example .00001 probability of taking so long. Such a warning would come up every few years on normal Bitcoin and be erased quickly when another block comes, but would stay present on a client on an isolated network until block finding returns to an expected rate.

It would only take one person smuggling a blockchain copy on a USB flash disk across the border to catch everybody up in censor-stan. Spending money (smuggling out transactions) would be a bit harder though; you'd have to get out a hibernated laptop with cached transactions or such.

It's hard to picture a scenario where a "freeze" would be needed or could be automated. However, payments you have received that have only been confirmed by extremely long block times could remain marked untrusted (indicating they may only exist on an isolated subnet far behind the current block count). Do you have a link to an explanation of "exponential climb"?

I thought I'd make a thread to keep track of members dumping spam posts as I come across them - they post useless and obvious "me too" one liners all over the forum immediately after joining or after a period of inactivity, solely to pump up their post count, to increase the perception of reputation or participation on the forum. Scams likely to come. If you're not a scammer, this is your "you're not adding anything useful" warning.

1. HolyScott - recent posts

2. BitcoinOxygen - recent posts - dumps spam, then starts a "pool"; also  BTCOxygen

3. josephliton - recent posts - signature spam

4. hobo66. - recent posts - Posts 100 crap posts, profile impersonating another member, then the loan request comes.

5. SimpleMan - recent posts - Lots of redundant and me too posts.



Post yours; I'll add to the first post if they are good examples of this.

The "wallet.dat" data file maintains a current balance for your addresses. Every time that a new block is downloaded, any payment to you is noted and the balance in addresses you own is updated in this local file.

However, if your local client is in sync, having already downloaded the entire blockchain, and you then import a private key through a third-party utility, the Bitcoin client doesn't go back in history searching for old payments to this new address. You must close Bitcoin, and relaunch it with the command-line option "bitcoin-qt -rescan". This will start up Bitcoin in a mode where for several minutes it will re-examine the blockchain and attempt to detect any missing payments to you to correct your balance.

A 51% attack refers only to mining and the transaction blocks that are included in the blockchain, it matters not for the average Bitcoin user.

It would require a malevolent actor to have more than the hashrate of the entire bitcoin network for a sustained time, and they would be generating valid blocks, just ones with different transactions in them than were previously sent. There is no "invalid" blockchain, just a longer one.

The attack scenario would be that I spend 10000 BTC buying dollars or something else tangible and irreversible. My transaction sending the seller money is included in block 210,000, lets say 10 blocks ago. I then start generating my own blocks starting at 210,000 that would erase the transaction and overtake the network's current block number, and then publish the whole longer blockchain I've been working on, thereby wiping my 10000 BTC transaction and refunding my money. Very improbable with the current difficulty.

If there was a major network split, it would still be hard to set an "alarm". Let's say that you are in Iran, and they turn off the Internet, cutting off Bitcoin to the outside world. Now people in Iran can only mine the local copy. Blocks would come incredibly slower because of the small number of miners in Iran vs the current difficulty, and people in Iran wouldn't know about the transactions the outside world is making. The new blocks and transactions are still valid though. Someone might send you coins that have already been spent on the worldwide network, and the payment is still valid, even though you might have this transaction erased once Iran reconnects to the world.

the data directory on *nix is .bitcoin in your home directory. Files starting with a period are hidden. Open a console and cd ~\.bitcoin

"mempool Tx prev not found" errors are from live p2p transactions being received by your bitcoin client, but the blocks that fund those transactions have not been downloaded yet. This is normal from an out-of-sync Bitcoin. A bitcoin transaction has inputs which are the signatures of the coins that are being sent, and outputs, which are the addresses where the coins are being sent to. Where it says "FetchInputs failed", the "inputs" that it fails to fetch are the transactions in previous blocks that say that the sender owns the coins.

And how, exactly, are people supposed to send you coinage when their Bitcoin doesn't work?

I've never heard of that payment processor before, the second google search result is "scam!!" but more useful is this post on a forum that payments can be reversed:

Also note that they take credit cards, this is an immediate red flag, as a dispute with the credit card company by the buyer will yank the money back out on any of these types of services. They also seem to have the same issues as other processors: payments take considerable time to be withdrawn to any funding method, and the mystery fund lock with months to verify.

Found this one? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115283.msg1253198#msg1253198

In the bitcoin data directory there are debug.log and db.log files that document all activity of your bitcoin, including the likely errors near the end that will help you get it sorted.

The rules of bitcoin are encoded in the software and enforced by the majority of the miners and mining pools that use that software, however change is possible. If a major change to bitcoin were desireable, it would have to get through the approval process to be included in the software, and then a majority of the users, especially those who mine blocks, would have to start using the new version of the software. Smaller changes to how bitcoin works have been similarly rolled out, where the change to new rule (such as more efficient network communication) will take place far in the future so there is lots of time for users to adopt a new version.

Your exact question is hard to decipher.

When Bitcoin was created, it was decided that half of the bitcoins that will ever exist will be distributed within four years (then one-fourth of the remaining bitcoins will be distributed in the next four years, and so on). It was also decided that the total amount of bitcoins that will ever exist will be 21 million. For a new transaction block every 10 minute, that makes the mining reward start at 50 BTC per block.

After someone has earned 50 BTC, we could make it so only whole units of 1 BTC could be sent, but that would make it very hard to expand as a worldwide currency - you could only send the equivalent of $11 increments at today's valuation, and only 10 million people could have one bitcoin each. So 1 BTC was made to be comprised of 100,000,000 "base units" called satoshis, so that it could be useful for a globally sized economy, so that even very small fractions can be sent.

Then some people started trading them for things. Like 10,000 of them for a pizza, 1000 of them for a dollar, and it started to have a tangible value in terms of real goods and other currencies. Whatever that value is or might become, Bitcoin is ready.

The minimum amount that the client could send used to be in increments of .01. However it was increased to full precision. The valuation in other currencies has little to do with bitcoin's location of the decimal point though, it's still useable if it becomes worth a million times more.

The issue (attempted to be) addressed here is key and wallet security. The answer has nothing to do with whether the addresses are "vanity" addresses or not.

Many people have used live cd with printouts of keys in a diskless station to make offline addresses (see casascius paper wallet, it's just been generated from a non-storage system and the paper is the only record of the address/private key pair). This prevents the hacker or trojan horse software from getting to your savings because the private key information has never been stored on a computer.

Any key/address you make will be uncrackable as long as they are not created by flawed software. It is keeping the private keys out of other people's hands that will keep your bitcoins secure.

These may be trades executed with the API: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/Streaming

One should investigate if API trades do not show a login, and if they don't, then that is likely the method used.

It is very possible that someone found a way to exploit persistent data, cookies, or some other way that a users session or identity can be hijacked in the MtGox interface.

Here's an opinion on these cards from eight years ago:

the fx series of cards from nvidia had some issues with pixel shaders. the le is also the slow version of the 5700, 5700ultra. the fastest version, the 5700ultra is showing its age and i would say thr minimum card to upgrade to right now is the 6600gt(agp) on newegg.com

There was a guy able to sell two similar cards buy it now for $25 with free shipping, but it may take forever to dispose of them if you ask that much. I can get better freecycled AGP cards all day long, this is the kind of video card you will find in "free computer tower on curb" ads.

I've got a copy available in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51456.0, it's from July 15, but if you are expecting payments or have recent payments that haven't yet been received into your wallet, you don't want to substitute a too-new blockchain, you want to download recent blocks yourself and process them normally.

You can look at this (large, currently down) web page to see unconfirmed transactions still waiting to be included in a block: http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/txlist/. Simply look for your receiving address and see if the payment is there waiting.

You can give your Bitcoin address to anyone - that's what it's for. The worst someone can do is send you illicit money linked to terrorist hacking child porn drug cartels, and that's still not a big problem, as Bitcoin payments can be hard to trace.

The wallet file on your computer however you must protect, both by backing it up so it doesn't get lost if your computer crashes, and also by protecting it from other people/hackers/trojan horses. The wallet on your computer has the secrets that allow spending any bitcoins that are sent to your addresses.

Please take the time to read and understand this complete post before following any instructions.

If you have backups of your wallet.dat file to several locations (such as copying it to removable media plus another location on your hard drive), than your bitcoins will not be lost. The issue will be getting the Bitcoin client working and caught up so that you can actually spend your money.

Do you have at least 5GB of hard drive space free?

At this point, I would be looking at possible problems on your computer, such as bad sectors on the disk or bad RAM.  Bitcoin uses processor and disk-intensive processes when downloading blocks which may reveal computer problems. Even a problem like a bad CPU fan or a CPU heatsink clogged up with dust and lint could cause processing errors on a high-CPU-usage program like Bitcoin.

To avoid ambiguity, I'll tell you exactly what I would do in this situation (these instructions assume English Windows 7 or similar):

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A. Verify wallet is backed up properly:
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1. Restart computer
2. Verify Bitcoin is not running (Press CTRL-ALT-DEL key combination, start task manager, and view the applications and processes tabs to ensure you do not have bitcoin-qt.exe running).
3. To avoid mistakes, disable Windows' file name and extension-hiding: In the Windows "Control Panel" -> "Folder Options", select the "View" tab. Uncheck the boxes next to "Hide extensions for known file types", and also select "Show hidden files...". Press OK.
4. Open the %appdata%/Bitcoin data directory using Windows Explorer (note the actual directory name is similar to C:\Users\BrendStatter\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin, using whatever your Windows user name is)
5. Copy the wallet.dat file to several locations, such as a USB stick, onto your Windows desktop, etc. so that it will never be lost (also keep these backups secure, if someone else got your wallet.dat file, they could spend your bitcoins). Verify the file is properly copied to the new locations.

---
B. Computer checks
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There are several utilities I would recommend to ensure your computer is working well.

Check disk for errors:
-type "Command Prompt" in the start menu search. Right-click on the found "Command Prompt" program, and choose "Run as administrator".
-in the command prompt that opens, type chkdsk /f c:
-you will be prompted if you want to check next time the computer restarts, press Y (and enter) to schedule a disk check
-restart the computer
(advanced check, type chkdsk /r c: instead, to additionally scan for bad disk sectors. This may take from 5 minutes on a small SSD to 10 hours on a slow 2GB drive, but will ensure the entire surface area of your disk is ok)

Memory check:
In the start menu, run "Windows Memory Diagnostic", and choose "restart now and check", let the computer restart to do a memory test.
More advanced: Download memtest86+, and burn the ISO disk image to a CD, restart your computer booting off that CD, and let the memory test run for several hours until it has passed several times.

CPU test:
Try the burn-in program OCCT. It has 100% CPU usage tests such as the default test and Linpack that will make your CPU hot, and will also report to you if any error has happened in calculation. This test must pass - if it fails at all, your CPU is getting too hot or something is bad.

---
C. Remove Bitcoin data directory and retry block download
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Just like it says. After you are 110% sure you have multiple wallet backups, completely remove the Bitcoin data directory (we'll just rename it):
1. Ensure Bitcoin is closed
2. Type %appdata% into the Windows start menu and press enter to open the Windows application data folder
3. Locate the "Bitcoin" directory
4. Right-click on the "Bitcoin" directory, choose "Rename", and rename it to "Bitcoin-Bad", "Bitcoin-Original" or such.
5. Start Bitcoin, it will act like a brand new install, creating a new data directory, new wallet, and will begin downloading from block 1.
6. Do not interrupt Bitcoin - give it 6+ hours or more to download the complete blockchain until it is caught up (Note: after block 180,000, download starts becoming much slower)

---
D. Restore your original wallet
---
Hopefully all that worked, and you have an in-sync fresh copy of Bitcoin with 0 bitcoins. Now we need to put your original wallet into the working Bitcoin so you can spend your money!

1. Close Bitcoin and the Bitcoin tray icon, make absolutely sure it is closed (it may run up to a minute in the background after you close it)
2. Type %appdata% into the Windows start menu and press enter to open the Windows application data folder
3. In the "Bitcoin" directory, rename the wallet.dat file to something like "wallet-empty-good-whatever.dat"
4. Locate the "Bitcoin-Bad" backup directory or USB backup that contained your original wallet.dat
5. Copy your original wallet.dat file into the %appdata%/Bitcoin directory
6. Restart Bitcoin this way:
 Paste the line
 "\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" -rescan
 into the start menu search bar. (remove the " (x86)" if you are using 32 bit Windows).
7. It will take several minutes for Bitcoin to start up, because it will look through the new complete blockchain for any payments to you.
8. Send your money!

If you post the receiving address and transaction amount (and date you think it was sent), others can look it up to see if what you think is a transaction actually was processed through the Bitcoin network..

These instructions make no sense. While it is good to have a backup of the wallet, you are doing nothing in this description which will fix the problem. The wallet and current data files are not affected by a Bitcoin software upgrade (in fact, you can uninstall Bitcoin completely and the data files will remain untouched for your security), and a software upgrade does not solve the issue, since he can receive coins sent to him now, and is just missing a transaction.