I just uploaded the first draft for the mining guide. Before I publish it, it really needs some feedback from people who actually do any mining. Let me know if I got anything wrong or missed anything important.

As for the Technical Background section. Note that this is not meant to explain everything there is to know about Bitcoin, I just picked some stuff miners might be interested in. Still, let me know if you'd include something else.

http://www.weusecoins.com/mining-guide.php

Here you go: http://rapidshare.com/files/453964245/What_is_Bitcoin.srt

Note that the subtitles are ultra-fast, so when you translate: Use the shortest wording possible!

I agree, but you can never plan for something to go viral - we're just trying to add to the pool of resources that make Bitcoin hip and interesting. The idea is that you can send the video to somebody and they'll be curious enough to read up on how Bitcoin works. You mention how all these questions are popping up in your head - that's exactly the effect we were looking for. If you neatly tie everything off, people will look at it, think it's cool and be on their way. If you raise more questions than you answer you get people to click through, read the website, read the wiki, try the client, post on their blog 20 reasons why Bitcoin is stupid - that's what you want!

Note that we recognize there is a need for longer, more explanatory videos. That's the number one thing we plan to invest in if we win the bounty.

I've uploaded the French and German subtitles. Since they're even longer than the English subtitles, they're too fast in some parts. Any changes to shorten them would be appreciated. Don't worry if you change the grammar a little as long as you get the meaning across imho.


I've emailed him yesterday, we'll give him a few days to respond. I don't suppose anybody has a phone number?

Or like "free speech". I think libertarians will get it.

Plus you can get free money at the faucet anyway.

Thanks FreeMoney for making this possible, you rock, dude!

Here you go: http://rapidshare.com/files/453964245/What_is_Bitcoin.srt 

Addressing a few points people have raised:

Tempo. What hazek said is exactly what the professionals were saying as well. No way you can "explain" Bitcoin to a lay person without a lot of time and repetition. The video could be much slower and no more clearer. But that's fine, people can rewatch it, go to the site, go to the wiki, watch other videos, etc. All this video needs to do is pique interest and convincingly state that Bitcoin really is different and worth looking into. Future videos would put much more emphasis on actually explaining, so they'd likely be much longer, much slower and less visually dense.

(I actually started out envisioning this as a ~4 minute video, but every single one of the marketing and film people I talked to, including the designers recommended this tempo. There is a reason advertising is always a bit faster, louder, etc. than is necessarily comfortable - it's because that's what works.)

Link. The video links to weusecoins.com because we wanted a site that specifically picks people up where the video left off. It'll also be a place for us to post future videos. As for the bitcoin.org front page - if we win the bounty and the interest is large enough we can get the last sentence re-recorded and do a version saying bitcoin.org. Also note: Due to the license anybody can go to Chris Rice and have him record that sentence and create a version of the video with whatever link they like. (I'd ask that the weusecoins.com should still be in the small print to give us a little credit.)

Website. Some people have already made suggestions for weusecoins.com. I'm reading those intently and will implement them as soon as possible. Thanks, guys!

Everyone who has sent PMs: I'm working through those right now, stay tuned and thanks for the interest.

Ok, well, the website is only half done, but I'm tired of keeping everybody waiting.

I'll strive to quickly improve the site - feedback is welcome. And if you have a cool Bitcoin service that could help a newbie that isn't on there yet, please let me know.

Now onto the subject of bounties: If we win the main bounty I will recoup the costs for this video (exactly 2000 BTC b/c our motion graphics designer gets 2000 BTC minus audio costs) and the rest (6400 BTC) plus any other bounties or donations we receive will become a fund for promoting Bitcoin. I'm thinking of things like:

- Additional, more in-depth videos
- Updates/improvements/features for weusecoins.com
- A donation to the faucet
- Sponsorships (e.g. paying a popular podcast to mention Bitcoin in their opening)
- Posting bounties for usability features etc.
- Other ideas are most welcome!

The reason I want to reinvest the bounty in this way is that I think with Bitcoin being an open source project the marginal utility of having even a small marketing budget is rather large. I own a lot of Bitcoins and I'm good at doing a lot with a small budget, so with the bounty as a permanent Bitcoin marketing fund, I'm hoping to be able to do some good over the next year or so.

The address for the Bitcoin marketing fund is 17eSZivDJpuJp9TxezTXVxkgLbsr3XZM1i - we will make a page where everything we spend from this address will be listed and of course the block chain will allow you to confirm the amounts are accurate and how much is still there.

First step for winning the main bounty is getting Satoshi's approval for the video, so I've emailed him and will let you know how it goes. If we can't reach him, I propose asking Gavin for approval instead.

As for Reddit and Digg bounties - I have no interest in those sites and no idea how to promote something there so I won't bother. Feel free to post links to the video on those (and other) pages if you like, any bounty we win from theymos will be added to the marketing fund and will go towards further videos etc as stated above.

Finally, the video:
http://www.weusecoins.com/ or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo

The video is released under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. If you would like to provide an HTTP mirror or seed the video on Bittorrent please contact me for the original H.264 1080p file.

Having a contract should be standard practice for larger transactions. You still need to trust the other party, but a contract does help ensure everybody is on the same page. It might even help in case of a Paypal dispute for example.

The technical definition theymos posted is great, I think though you should also have a way for a novice to verify the transaction. For now perhaps a reference to Blockexplorer would help? "The Bitcoins are considered delivered once a transaction to the Bitcoin address 1xxxx.... appears in the Bitcoin block chain as displayed by blockexplorer.com" or something to that effect.

Right now everyone is happily trading without a contract, but let's say I buy 15000 bitcoins as 0.7$ and the next day they're at 0.9$ and the seller doesn't want to deliver at the agreed price. It just takes one botched transaction like that for people to appreciate the value of written terms.

A lot of people in the community I think are looking at technical/procedural solutions for the trust issue (like ClearCoin), but the legal system provides some great tools as well. It definitely wouldn't hurt to have both available.

Sorry for not coming on the forums right after the meetup - I came back to a pile of work waiting for me. The reception of the movie at the meetup was very positive. We had one last minute change to the credits, but the video should go up today.

We may delay for a few more days so that the website can launch at the same time. I'll write a more in-depth post about launching the video in the animated movie thread later.

Agreed. Let bitcoin.org be the site for the official client and bitcoin.it be the wikipedia for all things Bitcoin (including third-party clients, the Bitcoin economy, etc.)

I'm happy to announce that we will be able to premiere the Bitcoin Animated Movie at the meetup! See you all there!

Ok, here we are for the final status report! Since Friday we're officially moving - or rather our pictures are. I've received the first draft of the animation on Saturday and the second draft yesterday morning.

This is the last static graphic that was created - it's a bulletin board, representing the Bitcoin Trade page. (We have a tiny little section appealing to merchants and freelancers and why Bitcoin is a particularly great proposition for them.)



The rest of the new stuff is all animated and firstly a screenshot doesn't capture it and secondly I don't want to spoil it, since it's getting pretty close to final now.

But I will post one shot from the video, mostly because I wouldn't mind some input:



We're not all too happy with the title "rate"? But "Money supply" seems long and we are worried not everyone will understand it. "Limit" is already in the script and it somehow tends to draw forth deflation phobia. "21 million" is a possibility I quite like, though some people said it sounds arbitrary and in a way it is. So maybe it shouldn't be in the video. I'm interested to hear your views, we can incorporate any suggestion for the title or the italic text until around this time tomorrow. If you don't have a suggestion of your own, feel free to vote for one of the options that I've just listed.

Now to go through the remaining todos. Music. We had a long discussion with our composer and ultimately decided to go with a minimal beat with no melody. This may sound like we're wasting our chance to get an orchestral piece written for our puny little video, but form has to follow function: The video is very fast and rich with information. A minimal rhythmic piece, no melody adds the least amount of distraction. That does however mean that we get more revisions and time to spend on sound design (basically a fancy term for sound effects). All in all I'm very glad we went with a professional composer, having that specialized experience on board turned out to be invaluable.

Animation. I'd say we're about two thirds done, depending how many little details we'll find in the end that we need to fix. But we're only a few days away from wrapping animation.

Website. Yes, website. We looked around and while there are many fantastic links you can give to a newcomer (bitcoin.org, the wiki, bitcoinme, mybitcoin, bitcoinbulletin, bitcoinwatch, bitcoincharts, etc.), we wanted a page specifically designed to pick up where the video leaves off. Happily, one of the people who reviewed our script and in doing so got excited about Bitcoin was a webdesigner. He's agreed to help build a companion website for the video free of charge. The website will be fairly simple, probably much like bitcoinme.com - ideas, texts, audio, links and anything else that should go on the website are very welcome.

Aaaand finally... I am happy to announce our release dates!

The video will premiere at the Bitcoin Geneva meetup on Saturday, March 19th 2011.

If you are anywhere in Switzerland or Southern France, or damn it, anywhere in Europe - make the trip! This meetup will be awesome, we've got many cool people coming (many of whom haven't RSVPed publicly in the thread), so don't miss this chance to meet some real Bitcoiners in real life and have a beer with us! Newbies and veterans are of course equally welcome!

After that, we reserve the right to spend another day or two on it until our compulsive disorders are all satisfied and are planning for public release via YouTube on Monday, March 21st 2011.

<offtopic>Signing itself is a form of asymmetric encryption. To sign something you encrypt it with your private key and other people decrypt it with your public key to confirm you indeed used the correct private key. Though your point is well taken that from the perspective of the user, DSA is not used for encryption.</offtopic>



You are still working off of the assumption that you can somehow limit the amount of data people can write into the block chain. You can't. You can only control the cost of doing so. Whether you require a larger fee for a single transaction or more transactions is fairly irrelevant.

That said, 32 bytes is plenty of room for a hash, a shortened URL or even "Happy Birthday!" so I'd be happy with that as a compromise/immediate solution.

To allow larger messages without centralization and without further changes to the blockchain, a DHT could one day be implemented in Bitcoin clients similar to the way modern BitTorrent and eMule clients have one. Just store the key for the DHT in the transaction and the DHT in turn could make it's expiry, size limits etc. dependent on the underlying transaction's fee to help defend against spamming/attacks. Just like BitTorrent, not every client would have to support such a protocol extension, it would work just fine as an addon for those who need it without polluting the block chain or Bitcoin's core protocol. Like jgarzik said: Layers.

Signing is a special case of asymmetric encryption. </terminologynazi>

Yes, but other nodes can't know if I generated a public address randomly as a keypair or whether I just made it up.


ECDSA

An addendum to my original post: I'm not just suggesting a fee that increases linearly. A fee that increases exponentially with the size seems warranted since the data eats resources in three dimensions: Size, time and replication. So growing with size to the third power would seem the most logical.

I can already encode 512 bytes of data in my transaction using crafted recipient addresses.

So the question isn't "Should we allow it?" but rather "Should it be done by requiring people to encode it in addresses or by adding a message field?"

I'm in favor of allowing more data in transactions as long as the fee closely depends on the amount of data somebody wants to send around.

Yes, Gavin and [mike] reviewed the script and provided feedback on the technical parts.

I'm also currently in #bitcoin-dev, asking questions as we go along.

Guys, thanks, but let me emphasize that I'm posting these status updates for fun mostly and because publicly announced deadlines help me keep people motivated. Please reserve your judgement positive or negative until you see the final product. 

Next status update on Monday.