As I understand it, Electrum uses 128 bits of entropy for its random seed generation, whilst the total space of bitcoin addresses is 256 bits. So by generating addresses using Electrum, you have already vastly reduced (by 2^128) the search space of addresses to perform a brute force attack. Am I understanding this correctly? Electrum is great but this has always worried me.

Not so long ago there was an attack on android wallets because the random number generator was broken. Could something similar happen here?

Here is my logic - the last time we had an exponential rise like this in April, the price crashed from $266 to $70 - a 73% drop. This time I dont think its going to be nearly as hard but you've got to be ready for it, so I just sold about 20% of my BTC, and will buy back again when the Chinese have had enough and this rally pops.

Ok everybody keeps mentioning the problem of hackers, so what about games where its more difficult to hack, e.g. racing games. Would anyone be interested in winning BTC for winning a race of Extreme Tux Racer? 

Hi Luke,

Thanks for your hard work.

Would it be possible for the importaddress function for watch-only wallets to be merged in? This is something that merchants & services desperately need - to be free from thirdparty sites like blockchain.info

Here it is:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2861

Ok I can give some pointers:

bitcoind is the command line version of the bitcoin client, as opposed to bitcoin-qt which has the QT graphical frontend. You can compile both of those programs from the bitcoin source code, or just download the binaries.

If you run either bitcoind or bitcoin-qt with the -server option, they accept RPC commands given by your script to make transactions, make new addresses, show deposits etc.

If you want to control bitcoind using Python, then this file is what many people use to send RPC commands:

https://github.com/jgarzik/python-bitcoinrpc/blob/master/bitcoinrpc/authproxy.py

Here is some python code to connect to the bitcoind running on the same box:


I hope that is helpful.

One important reason for having the seemingly pointless proof of work problem that bitcoin uses (as opposed to a useful problem), is that its difficulty can be adjusted up and down to regulate the block discovery time. If you were solving a useful problem like cracking keys, how could the difficulty be adjusted?

This project looks awesome. Great work indeed!

Have you got any case designs yet for the device?

Also, would it be possible for the hardware to have a tiny cheap camera? That way you could meet someone and show a QR code from your device's screen and your new friend could scan it with his device. If it could do that I would buy multiples of them.

Im sure many people on this board are like me - sick at the sheer scale of government spying that has been revealed over the last few weeks.

Well here are my thoughts and suggestions on how to fight against it.

The only way to communicate securely is by encryption, but encryption has a huge hurdle to overcome in terms of momentum and ease of use before it can become widely adopted amongst regular people. This is the key to fighting the ubiquitous surveillance state - the tools & software to communicate securely must be ridiculously easy to use AND most importantly easy to share with the people you want to communicate with.

There needs to be a catalyst to increase adoption of software that is peer to peer, secure and censorship resistant. My suggestion is to manufacture a dedicated hardware device with these attributes:

-Preloaded with an open source Linux distribution installed with Torchat, Bitmessage and a Bitcoin client. The Tails distro could be good for this.
-Cheap enough (as in Raspberry Pi cheap) to buy one and give another one away to your friends & family. Giving the devices away will build momentum behind using encrypted software.
-Equipped with a NFC chip scanner to easily share public keys with the people you meet face to face. Alternatively, the device could show a QR code on its screen and the other device scan it with built in camera.

How cool would it be to meet someone at a conference and swipe his to device to instantly give him your Bitmessage and Bitcoin addresses?

The reason I'm fairly convinced that making a new dedicated device is the best way to do it, is that the existing phones dont meet these criteria in that they are too expensive to give away, and force you to use their closed proprietary software. Most manufacturers really don't care about your privacy, and would all bend over to put in a backdoor for the NSA in a heartbeat. This needs to be a community effort.

We could name this device the "Bitstick" or something. Im a developer so I would be willing to contribute time and funds to see this device made, as long as other people thought it was a good idea as well.

What do you guys think?

Definitely check out Electrum if the thought of syncing gigabytes of transactions doesnt appeal to you.

Im in 
13SpJPZCen6ffz7EqA8bLWNGW2aeiMgstQ

I am a developer, and I was developing another gaming site. Im thinking of taking what Ive got and turning it into an Intrade style Bitcoin prediction market site.

Is anyone else using Electrum to control the transactions? Its really nice to import Electrum into a python server, and you dont have to worry about having the blockchain on your server like with bitcoind.

I agree, so find a seller on the site and message him to get his phone number first - thats what I did.

If you want to purchase face to face, then I suggest localbitcoins.com where you can find people in your area willing to sell. You can meet them and decide if you trust them before buying.

Thanks very much Chrithu for the feedback.

Yes I think I have some rethinking to do about the product. I just noticed another thread here where the general consensus is that almost all skill based games are basically impossible to provide for Bitcoin, because of the ease of writing bots etc.

I will take the transaction code that Ive written, and develop a different kind of service.

Hi everyone,

Happy to be making my first post in the forum. Ive been following it for a few months now when I bought my first load of Bitcoin, and was especially interested in the Urban Terror gaming website that was announced about a year ago.

I like first person shooters, so Ive almost finished creating a website where you can play OpenArena for Bitcoin.

Ive been programming for years, but wouldn't say I'm the best product designer in the world. Therefore I wanted to get some feedback on my project before I invested more time putting the finishing touches to it and then paying for web servers etc.

Here is the way it works. Users register an account on the website, make a deposit and get given an OpenArena server address to join. For each frag made, the winning player obtains 0.01 BTC from the losing player. It's more fair than the older project in that the losing player can then get his 0.01 BTC back by fragging the winner - the website only takes a commission when making a withdrawl. Users can look at their account to list their deposits and make withdrawls, as well as viewing their scores.

Ive restricted the weapons to the rocket launcher to make aimbots less useful, and Ive set the game server level to be wrackDM17 - a wide open level with almost no walls. But if the game server admins do see any cheating, they will suspend that player's account and distribute his funds to the other players.

I would also like to make the website support private rooms where you can setup games with your friends. That way if your friends are Bitcoin broke you can donate (or trade for cash) to them to let them play a game with you. I haven't implemented this yet.

So I wanted to ask the Bitcoin community:
-Would you want to shoot in OpenArena for Bitcoins?
-Would you play on my public OA game server, or would you prefer to wait until the website supports creating private games for your friends?
-Would you totally prefer I made my website host a different game, such as Hedgewars? (It has to be an Open Source game)
-Any general criticism about the project?

Thanks for any feedback.