Thanks, Polvos.  I appreciate it.  Which address did you send it to?  I see xDan's bounty but not any others.

The online version currently takes the unspent transactions from the blockchain.info API, although I'm testing my own local database of unspent outputs so that I'm not reliant on an external site for the unspent outcomes.  The problem with the local bitcoin-qt/bitcoind is that it doesn't track arbitrary Bitcoin addresses' unspent outcomes, only the addresses in the local wallet.  So you have to build an external db of those outputs.

Thanks, xDan.  I appreciate it.  Sorry for being offline for a while -- I didn't realize this was still being discussed.  I had an out-of-state family member in the ICU for a week, and then a family member's funeral about 1000 miles away.  So I've been out town for most of the past few weeks.

The reason I still hadn't announced the software was that I haven't had enough time to test it to the fullest extent.  But if people really want to use the implementation as is (early alpha), I'd recommend using this link I've put up for the online portion (if you decide not to run that locally).  It's the same as the copy posted above but it's over SSL:

https://bitcoin-secured.com

Since the link that emergenz posted is not SSL-encrypted, it could pose a big risk for these types of transactions.  Someone could easily swap out Bitcoin addresses of the non-SSL link using mitm.  The site I put up above is SSL-encryped.  If you're comfortable using alpha quality software, you can ignore the notice since this is the same implementation as emergenz posted (except he had removed my alpha software notice or used an earlier version).

Since there is interest, I'll try to test this some more and remove the alpha warning.  But please realize that this is all alpha quality software (including the copy of the program posted by emergenz), and I can make no guarantees.  Personally, I use and recommend Armory for offline signing of significant amounts at this point, although I may move to my implementation as my main offline signer after some additional work and testing.

EDIT: After thinking about it, I'd recommend that no one use any version of this software until I have some more time to look over it tonight (28 May 2013).  I'll post here tomorrow when it's ready.

As far as I know, there are no plans for OP_EVAL on the main chain.  The idea was discarded long ago in favor of other approaches to the desired functionality, partly because of the very issues you mention.

I can't even find any references to OP_EVAL from this year.  And it's not on the wiki or any other current list of Bitcoin opcodes.

Is this not correct?

Really, the whole alt coin subforum is a joke now.  It's sad, because if an alt coin is created that makes significant improvements, it will be drowned out by the daily pump n' dumps.

But no, I don't see any of these new forks having any effect on Bitcoin.

What the hell is a KP injection?

My hobby: extrapolation

http://xkcd.com/605/

This Financial Times article carries such a deceptive headline.  No one here is talking about regulating Bitcoin, or even Bitcoin trade with fiat, but rather Bitcoin derivatives.  Derivatives meaning futures options and other financial *derivative* products such as those offered by icbit.se (which is fortunately located outside of the US).

But writing about some arrogant regulator talking about *possibly* regulating financial products derived from Bitcoin, and not Bitcoin trade itself, wouldn't garner many link clicks.  So they fudge it.

This, totally.  I can't believe that the price jumped $100 on thin air, and now is piddling along on this kind of news.   And this is not just "news", some of these are strong indicators that the fundamentals are good.  These kind of VCs don't drop millions on a project without some very serious research.  The same would apply to China's ruling cadres, I would suppose.

It sometimes makes me question the viability of the $10,000 coin, which I always thought was a given if Bitcoin went mainstream.

I agree.  Let's start using millies.  I'm going to look into how to mod Armory so we will have a choice of how to display Bitcoins.

Or it could be that they realize what an excellent tool Bitcoin could be for moving their bribes out of the country, particularly if the exchanges have a lot of liquidity.   A lot easier to move around than mooncake vouchers, right?

VC = venture capitalist.  If you google "bitcoin" and "VC", you'll see all the names.  The fact that you didn't do that makes me question the wisdom of even addressing your questions, but I'll try a few anyway.  A few of the names: Fred Wilson, Chris Dixon (of  Andreessen Horowitz).  Google for the rest.  Etc.  Major venture capitalists.


Bitcoin is recognized as a "virtual currency".  Read the FINCEN document.


Yes, I honestly believe that WU may integrate Bitcoin into its service offerings.  Paypal, unlikely.  But the point of mentioning it is that CEOs of huge companies are talking about Bitcoin in a serious manner.  They don't make these comments off-the-cuff.  Some very serious vetting is going on.

Look, I don't need to convince you, and I don't have the time to answer all your questions.  But try researching some of these topics yourself, and you'll get a picture of what's going on. For example, check out r/bitcoin for the past week or two for all the businesses announcing that are accepting Bitcoin now.  I'm not claiming that huge businesses are accepting bitcoins, but more and more small- to -mid-sized businesses are.

It's good to be skeptical with Bitcoin-related discussions.  But I have little doubt that Bitcoin is going mainstream.  What that means for the price I'm still not sure.

I've been involved with Bitcoin since early 2011 (registered here in June 2011).  A dump wouldn't surprise me at this point, but I'm honestly perplexed as to why the price is not skyrocketing now.  So many of the things we dreamed of in 2011 are happening:

1.  Bitcoin has gotten serious and very favorable attention from a number of extremely well-known VCs
2.  As a result of (1), a number of amazing new Bitcoin businesses are being built as we speak.
3.  Bitcoin has gotten explicit legal recognition from the US (Fincen)
4.  Bitcoin is routinely covered in mainstream financial news (WSJ, Forbes, Economist).  Much of the coverage is positive.
5.  Bitcoin is gaining adoption as a payment system by more and more "regular" business each day.  Watch r/bitcoin for a few days and see.
6.  The CEOs of both Paypal and Western Union have said that they're seriously thinking about integrating Bitcoin into their businesses.

And to top it off, we've gotten a huge positive surprise no one even dreamed of:  Bitcoin was covered very positively in a half-hour special of one of China's most popular financial news programs, signaling implicit Chinese government approval of Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin dives, I know what I'm doing.

I think you're confusing Coinlab with Coinbase (don't worry, I've done the same thing).  Paul Graham/ycombinator invested in Coinbase, which has nothing to do with any of this as far as I know.

Are you kidding?  The Chinese middle class numbers over 300 million -- larger than the entire US population.  You know how many Chinese millionaires there are?  Over 1 million!  And all of that is because of their massive production capabilities, and backed up by huge gold and US dollar reserves.

Yeah, there's lots of money in China.

I suspect that the Chinese political class (the nomenclatura, or whatever it is in Chinese) have realized that Bitcoins are a great way to move all that corrupt wealth that they've made from political favors out of the country.

And the most amazing thing: that both of the above happened and the price is still not skyrocketing.  Bitcoin rises from $80 to $250 for no apparent reason, but when Paypal and Western Union start talking about adopting Bitcoin, world-famous VCs rave about it, Bitcoin is featured on China's most popular finance show, and most important of all -- we're clearly on the verge of going mainstream! -- the price does...almost nothing.

Yet Ripple is going gangbusters.  Go figure.

I voted 9 times (I think paid accounts get 9 votes).  Almost to 16,000 now.

14Cy1kuGo45BrAuygqsYZZD2LDBhXz7A3J

Flavius, if you gave him your wallet, you gave him your money.  There's no flaw there presuming it gave him money in exchange for your wallet (although it may have other flaws, we'll see...).

Best practice for long-term storage of Bitcoins is storing the private keys to your wallet on acid-free paper.  Point blank.  Digital files can and will be corrupted, no matter what format you use.  They *probably* wouldn't become corrupted after only 3-5 years, but I certainly wouldn't risk a large sum of money on it.  Paper files in a fire-proof safe are the only safe long-term option.

You can dump private keys from your wallet using any of the common clients: bitcoin-qt, Electrum, Armory, blockchain.info, etc.  Just make sure you delete the wallets from your non-backup locations so they don't accidentally given away with an old computer.

If you're worried about your safe getting compromised, you can encrypt the bare keys before you print them out using gpg or something similar.  Just make sure you can remember the key!  Store it in another location away from the safe since you'll likely forget it after 5 years.

It's not only extremely unlikely for someone to generate the same private key as you, it's impossible to the extent the human mind can grasp probability.  Take a look at this poster and see if you can understand how unlikely it would be: https://i.imgur.com/fYFBsqp.jpg

Yes, it probably *could* be done using a scripting language like Python or VBA, but why?  Do you have some complex formulas that would be hard to port to a scripting language?