Suddenly this Aussie is a monarchist!
Please bring this to the rest of the Brittas empire before sharing it with those pesky neighbours up there!

Apparently we did have a government solar rebate scheme here - but it certainly wasn't 100% - and for some reason it's been cancelled.

And now for my latest butt-snaffled prediction...

The last 10 Million bitcoins will be at least 90% mined by Chinese (mainly students) using high end GPUs that cost them about 1/4 of what the rest of the world pays for them.


I guess I have to wait til about 2013 to see if this prediction starts to look like it's on track.. but by 2030 you'll all see how right I am. Just you wait!!

I suspect the Indians will go for a late run to grab a decent slice of the last 3 million,
and the African continent will go for a quick jog in 2032 to snap up some scraps of the last million.
(Some parts of Africa managed to skip some of the shoddier mobile technology and jump straight to the good stuff - with any luck they'll skip to some decent GPUs and seriously jump in to the fray a lot earlier than I predict. You know those Nigerian guys at least are hungry for it!)

Surely a true bitcoin forum would have peer to peer based storage of the forum posts, where we mine threadstartcoins, postcoins and modcoins,
and where once a thread or post is added to the chain it cannot be removed (not completely censored - only modded down and hidden depending on client settings).

With any luck - the threadstartcoins,postcoins and modcoins would all rise in value so much - that we'd all just shut the fuck up

Maybe the guy just doesn't have access to the server on the weekend, or doesn't pay attention on the weekend.
I've heard rumours that there are people out there who don't live in front of computers.  It seems a stretch that some of them can also write code and set up a website - but you never know.. maybe some geeks have found a way to escape and get this work/life balance thing going.

 

That happened to me when I touched the pad too long. Have you tried a really short tap?

Just login and use it.  After the first use - it'll be required next time.

You only need to give the pad a very short press for it to spit out it's stuff.

oh.. and make sure the key is the right way up in the USB port.. if you're not used to those flat keys, it's kind of ambiguous

There are also losses due to transactions that were in progress between customers and merchants.

Some merchants used mybitcoin as part of their ordering process.

Well this is embarrassing for me.
After taking you to task on this issue - I realize I'm guilty of attempting to do business with a bitcoin site that gives no more than a support email address.  Bitbills.com

Normally - for my non-bitcoin purchases - I've been pretty careful about checking out who I'm doing business with. I think the fact that I saw one of the bitbills guys appear on Bruce Wagner's bitcoin show, made me let my guard down!

However I'm hopeful that bitbills will do the right thing by anyone caught up by the problem that they were using mybitcoin as a payment processor.
They have a great product and a good reputation that is no doubt worth protecting.

They really should provide more info about their operation though. For bitbills to ever be accepted by the general public, they'll need to have some idea of who the issuing company actually is!

I've just discovered, by looking at the new notice on the bitbills.com home page, that they were using mybitcoin for their transactions.

This annoys the hell out of me.  I saw the various concerns/issues people were having with mybitcoin - and chose not to use the service.
I don't recall seeing any indication that mybitcoin was an intermediary when purchasing my bitbills.

I really hope the delay in my order is not due to this - as I ordered a couple of weeks ago.

As far as I'm concerned - my purchase was directly with bitbills - and I consider it their responsibility to provide me with a BTC deposit address that they have control over.
Once the blockchain has reported my deposit to the address they supplied - then I've fulfilled my part of the transaction with them.

It seems the flow-on effects from this mybitcoin fiasco may be larger than I first expected.

 


EDIT: As far as I can tell, this is little more than an inconvenience for BitBills - and once they have their new ordering solution in place it's business as usual. My order came through just fine

This.

I'm mystified that the other exchanges haven't figured this out. I don't think mtgox maintains it's volume lead purely on momentum. It's about convenience too.
The MtGox interface could be slicker for sure - but it's core ability to place pending orders without the covering funds is handy both for the auto-calculation mentioned above, and for placing a trade which will only run if some other order or deposit supplies the funds.

Well that's somewhat promising if others are also seeing this.

It however could be that
a) mybitcoin has lost their wallet files like the Polish bitomat site just did and effectively destroyed all the coins.
b) that they have all the coins - but lost the database which tells them who owns what.
c) they have stolen everything but are being cautious about spending/transferring their booty
d) Just a malfunction that's being repaired.. but there are some serious losses so the owner is too scared to communicate.
e) ?

All pointless speculation on my part..  but I hope we hear something soon.

Simply awful.

Do yourselves a favour and use integer calculations - either satoshi or even smaller.
(and please tell me you're not rounding during intermediate calculations!)

I have little faith in a system that doesn't account for the full divisibility of bitcoin from the beginning.
I predict you'll have quite a few headaches adjusting the code during any serious rally in bitcoin value.
(unless you have a pretty comprehensive test suite and anticipated it well)

Already a millibitcoin is US 1.4cents.   You've ruled yourself out of being a competitor in the online wallet field for micropayments right there.
(mtgox is moving to offer online wallet-like services.. are you?)

Disrespect the people's bitdust at your peril!

Now we can finally cut loose and say what we really think!

I'm worried about the effect of this on the bitcoin PR machine.
Specifically - Bruce Wagner and onlyonetv's  bitcoin show.

Love him or hate him - he does get the message out there.
Unfortunately that message has often included mention of mybitcoin.

It's bad enough to lose one's personal holdings - but it's another level altogether when you introduce friends/family and small business owners and they then lose their money based on your recommendations/advice.   (even if it's not strictly 'advice' - and you did hint that it was a bit 'wild-west')

I feel for him and anyone else in a similar situation.
I do think Bruce has been a little too starry-eyed in some cases (e.g suggesting bitcoin 'seems to only go up' , and talking of potential huge values) but overall he's been doing a great job.  

Whatever the final outcome with mybitcion - I hope Bruce and the team will continue with the show and their efforts to cast light on all things bitcoin.

(EDIT: as you said above offering escrow as an option sounds the best way..  even 'requiring businesses to offer it as an option' could be a problem)


That seems like a non-starter to me.
Routing all payments via a central system is technically fragile, politically risky, innovation unfriendly and impractical to set up for all the various foreign currencies & payment systems out there.

Perhaps you meant only for Bitcoin transactions..  but I suspect it will be the minority of enterprises that are truly 'pure Bitcoin'.

For the sort of business I have in mind - the escrow would be complex - sometimes requiring only part payment back to the client.
Escrow services based on a written escrow agreement where the UABB can easily determine fulfillment of conditions are one thing..
but are you really going to intermediate in all that in a high-volume transaction environment?

Requiring businesses to give their customers an *option* to route payments via the escrow may be nice for specific types of transaction.

Escrow only caters for a subset of the possible services for which someone might 'hand over' bitcoins in expectation of a set of services.
The point at which actual 'payment' occurs and value changes hands is service specific.  


How you can require 'at no additional cost' I don't know. Even with pure Bitcoin transactions there will ultimately be fees.
Maybe all you meant is that when the business and customer do both choose to use your escrow - the business doesn't charge an additional fee above what the network charges?
If so.. sorry for my rambling above, but it wasn't clear


P.S nice to see the 'about us' improvements on the UABB site.

I hear a similar story regarding De Beers and Diamonds.
Apparently it's working ok for them.

Do you know of a specific mechanism by which someone could take it from you?
As far as I can see - it's infeasible to 'guess' a wallet address.
If you don't leak it - then theoretically only you (and instawallet) should know of a wallet's existence.
(spy software on your computer is also risk.. but that goes for any bitcoin service)

The greatest risk I can see is losing your wallet address - which presumably leaves the coins available for instawallet to claim for themselves at some point.
It's disturbing that the operator doesn't clarify what happens to these 'lost' wallets - or how long before they decide it is lost
(if in fact they do.. but if wallets are sitting with no activity for 5+ years.. don't you think they'd be tempted to just.. reclaim them?)

The figure mentioned on NPR is 25K (Which Bruce claims isn't his..)

It's very unfortunate that mybitcoin has been mentioned as a way for beginners to use bitcoin on some major news networks.
NPR & CNN at least.

Given the number of businesses in rush-to-market mode in the bitcoin community - I'd say coincidence.
Security and business processes across most Bitcoin start-ups are likely to be immature.

This sort of thing is disappointing, but shouldn't be a complete surprise.
It's only made worse by the fact that it's such an adversarial environment to operate in.
Not only are there competing services, but the systems effectively hold 'cash' on their hard drives, which of course attracts the cyber bandits.

Hows this for a standard.
The *first* thing you should do - is have a proper 'about us' page which actually contains contact details.
Not just a contact form - phone numbers and a physical address.

UABB has no such info.
Put that up *FIRST* - then give us your spiel.

http://uabb.org/about.php -  is empty as at 2011-08-01

Seriously. You should be educating consumers to look for this information first - so you need to have it yourself.
Who started it, and who administers it is important information.

I see also " Our professional escrow services stop fraud before it starts."

Oh.. so UBB itself has *business* operations?
A faceless business without contact details - dishing out 'ratings' for other businesses.. some of whom might compete???
 FFS.  

Ok - so I have a feeling that you're actually acting in good faith - and this is just an oversight.
My point is - this is just the sort of 'oversight' that should raise red flags for consumers and that UBB should use to give a *lower* rating on!
Don't give me  "oh.. we're getting round to that" .. that just legitimizes this excuse for other operators who might actually be shady.

RULE *1*: Site goes live - must have contact details, preferably including registered business/association number in some jurisdiction.

Given the shenanigans going on in the bitcoin world... do I really ask too much??


(EDIT: btw - obviously I have no idea who the 'you' is in this case! For all I know Matthew - you're just mentioning a site you found, though you do seem to be rocking a signature-pimp-logo for them)