Huh?

You can't send a payment to an address without the bitcoin network then becoming aware of that address the payment is sent to.  As soon as that transaction is broadcast then each node becomes aware of the address if it hadn't known of it previously.

Doesn't BTCTip.com do that?   For example, After registering with BTCTip, send a tweet with the following:
 
  Thanks for your help! #btctip @exampleuser 50 millibits!

There was someone doing this on Facebook, Bitcoin-App.com, but that closed recently. 

I'm thinking a bar crawl approach would be great to try.

Find an entertainment district (i.e., multiple restaurants / bars close together).  In the group, one person acts as the exchange.  So the order is taken, people pay the exchanger in bitcoins (e.g, via mobile, or some paper bitcoins even) and the exchanger pays cash to the bar.   Bring some tablet mobiles and [at locations where wi-fi is available] play bitZino, KingCo.in or SatoshiDICE to help show the server / bartender / bar owner one way that some people come into having a bunch of bitcoins they would like to spend on food and drinks.  

Maybe spending a half hour at each stop the crawl could hit about five places in a few hours.  Updates would be made via Twitter or e-mail or something so that late arrivals would know where to meet.

The part of the copy that I don't follow reads:


Are they planning to make Reddit Gold work payments outside of Reddit?

Would you post the final settlement numbers please?

I see the WTI settle price was something like $97.31 on Nymex, I didn't look up COMEX but I'm assuming they would be within pennies.  So if the CLG3 "last" was 3.8709 BTC, that must mean the Mt. Gox daily weighted average price was somewhere near $25.14 today at 20:00 UTC.

You should be able to monitor the "sweep" transaction through Blockchain.info.

If the transaction has six confirmations, then the BTCs should be added to your Mt. Gox account.   If the transaction isn't confirming, then it has nothing to do with Mt. Gox and everything to do with it not having fees paid, or it coming from a transaction which also is waiting on confirmations, etc.

If it is a "spam-like" transaction (e.g., low amount, was paid out recently, like within the past day, etc.) it can be a day or longer before a miner includes it in a block.

There's one cash-out method that rocks, but you need Dwolla.  But then you get debit gift cards to things like Chevron, BP, Shell, Home Depot, Walmart, etc. etc., with no premium paid -- not even for shipping.  If interested, send me a PM and I'll forward your info to the appropriate party.

As far as cashing out, I always scratch my head in wonderment when I hear someone whine about there being no way to cash out without paying a fee.   But then I look at LocalBitcoins, and I almost never see anyone selling their bitcoins at market rate.      See, ... if you list your bitcoins at spot market rate, the chances of someone contacting you to buy them ... at market rate, increases.

Don't just assume some buyer is going to list that they want to buy at spot rate.   Everyone is looking for a deal, but if you want to sell your coins, list them on LocalBitcoins, at spot rate (or lower if you need to).   The buyers will come running.   Then let those buyers know you regularly have more coins.   Eventually, you'll no longer have any problem cashing out.

An exchange doesn't exist to speculate, it exists to make money off of those speculating.     I don't want my exchange to be taking the other side of any trades.  An exchange should not be exposed to exchange rate risk, for its customer's sake.

A party with a lot of money could leave funds at an exchange to try to stabilize the exchange rate.   But that's capital intensive, and there are costs to carrying the capital.  [Edit: And why would this "rich party" care to do this?]

The exchange rate had just more than doubled from a few months ago.  This wasn't even a 20% pullback.   Bitcoin used to see that level of volatility every other weekend, so it is just a matter of letting the market discover the price.  Merchants who use a payment processor to convert to cash weren't affected by this.  But obviously a volatile exchange rate isn't good.

When more methods for shorting bitcoins are made available then the exchange rate should level out a bit.  There are a couple that I know of being built or are in limited (invite-only) trial currently.

The thread with the e-mail address for you to send your inquiry:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101467.0 


A hosted (shared) EWallet like what Tradehill used does not have the concept of "client's wallets".  Your bitcoins were in Tradehill's wallet.    The problem likely ins't that there is a problem accessing the wallet the problem is that the company claims to have suffered what ended up being fatal losses when Dwolla reversed deposits.  As a result, the company doesn't have all the bitcoins necessary to repay those who had bitcoins deposited.


So there's no such thing as a "Tradehill wallet backup" that its customers had.

We should start thinking like Roger Ver. 

Something along the lines of.

"I see you don't yet accept bitcoin payments.  I prefer to use bitcoins to pay for stuff.   Here's my payment in bitcoins.  [Sends a coinapult e-mail with bitcoins in the amount of the purchase].  We cool?"

Chirpify was the innovator of that.

Ihad suggested how bitcoins could be used in the same manner:


But I think Twitter's new terms of service make this approach to be pretty much a dead-end unless the service has officially partnered with Twitter.

You probably won't get a reply in this post either.  There is a thread specifically for BitInstant support:

Official BitInstant Support Thread (Active Customer Support)
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.0

Keep in mind that the bitcoin client doesn't know the public key [Edit: Bitcoin address] of others until there is a transaction with a payment to that address.  

For example, create an address using BitAddress:
 - http://www.BitAddress.org

That can be created offline (e.g., load the page, disconnect from the internet, then generate a new one).  That is a valid address but nobody else in the world knows about it.   You can give that address to anyone and they can send bitcoins to that address without the network ever having seen it before.

You could hit print and leave the computer disconnected for 50 years, and the funds would still be there waiting to be spent (by someone with that private key).

If you sent from Bitcoin-Qt (or any other client in which you have the private key, ... such as MultiBit, Electrum, or Blockchain.info/wallet) you can use the Bitcoin-Qt client to digitally sign a message to prove ownership as nobody could do that except someone with the private key for that address.

If you sent from a hosted (shared) E-Wallet, such as from Mt. Gox, Instawallet, Coinbase, Paytunia, etc, then you are pretty much out of luck as far as being able to prove that the payment came from you.

How to prove that the sender for a payment was truly me?
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4411.0

If you are paying from a hosted (shared) E-Wallet to an address for another party using the same E-Wallet provider then depending on how that provider operates, that transaction might end up just being an account-to-account transfer that is internal and never touches the blockchain.   Mt. Gox is one such provider that does this.  Mt. Gox also happens to offer an option when withdrawing called "Open Transaction".  When this checkbox is marked, the transaction will always go through the blockchain, regardless of whether or not the recipient is another Mt. Gox user.   This causes the payment to not be instant, however, and it must confirm before the recipient gets the funds.

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox#BTC_2

You can use AurumXChange to convert bitcoins to Liberty Reserve:
 - http://www.AurumXChange.com

Also, BTC-E supports LR withdrawals:
 - http://www.BTC-e.com

ECurrencyZone also converts to LR:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Selling_bitcoins

Somehow the cash needs to transfer, and there are almost no "anonymous" methods for larger amounts.  For instance, BitInstant has limits of $500 USD per transactions and $2,000 USD per day.

There are a handful of bulk sellers (Tangible Cryptography and BitPay being two) but they require a bank transfer or other method in which wouldn't be considered "anonymous". 

Occasionally there are larger amounts of bitcoins being shopped OTC (over-the-counter), and usually indirectly by a party claiming to serve as the intermediary.  I've seen these communicated on the #bitcoin-otc channel, the #bitcoin-assets channel, on private Skype chat rooms, and through personal messages sent on the forum.   

Also, every merchant that accepts bitcoins is a potential source for coins.  For cash-flow purposes some of these merchants occasionally need a local buyer for large deals where a customer pays with bitcoins.   The merchant might not be selling the coins directly to the anonymous buyer but a broker acting as intermediary might.


LocalBitcoins today has a fairly comprehensive directory of those who buy and/or sell bitcoins for cash.  Some of those listings show "max trade" amounts in the thousands of dollars range.  Even traders who don't directly offer larger amounts might know how to facilitate a larger trade (by partnering with other local traders, or by brokering a larger deal).

To-date, I don't really know how much interest there really is in acquiring large amounts of bitcoins anonymously.  I do believe there is a bigger (and growing) interest in finding ways to anonymously convert bitcoins already earned or otherwise acquired into other forms of value.

So I suspect anyone with cash will easily be able to find an anonymous trade, but the reverse -- someone with bitcoins will have a little bigger challenge in converting those coins anonymously to cash.      When there is the volume to support it, a service that maintains an order book for local traders will probably be needed such that less and less needs to travel through the exchanges.  Ripple could become a tool used here as well.

For BitInstant support, please inquire in the BitInstant support thread:

Official BitInstant Support Thread (Active Customer Support)
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128314.0

What does "old Bitcoin Address" mean to you? 

Bitcoin addresses don't expire.  Nearly every hosted (shared) EWallet service which gives you a deposit address will credit subsequent deposits to your account once the transaction confirms, so if you were using an EWallet you should see those coins.  If you were using a client such as Bitcoin-Qt or Blockchain.info/wallet, then you those addresses can continue to be used.

About the only time an "old address" is truly an "old address" is if you didn't back up a wallet and lost the ability to access it or were using a hosted (shared) EWallet that you no longer have access to.   This happens pretty regularly with "low security" wallets (e.g., Instawallet, EasyWallet.org) where knowing the URL is the only way to access the wallet and people don't write it down or backup that URL somewhere.

 - http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com


Not "for free" but there is:
 - http://btccharts.com <-- Premium service.