Something's about to happen, one way or another. Last time this happened it dumped $250 and then bounced back to $700. I'll probably miss it laughing at the bear though.

I came to this thread looking for some insight as to what the extremely narrow range of trading today might mean (virtually static market often heralds big move in my opinion).
But this is SO MUCH BETTER.

Ok: more suspiciously, 1SochiWwFFySPjQoi2biVftXn8NRPCSQC has just sent me 1 satoshi. Literally just now.
That probably means someone is screwing around, probably on this forum: saw my post and sent it almost straightaway.
Come on, people. If you're going to prank someone at least make it 0.1 bitcoins.

Thanks for the reply. That's good to know (I'm assuming your address that got dust was not generated from a brainwallet, or has a very strong password.)
However, at the time of the dust payments, someone did send 0.000546 btc to a bunch of *dictionary-generated* brainwallet addresses (not random) and swept them back a week later - take a look at the addresses generated by those words, "speculat-", that I mention, and plenty of others. That's weird. Like I say, I don't know why you'd do it that way - sweeping the funds straightaway if the address has anything in it, as you describe, makes more sense - but that's apparently what happened. That looks a lot like something sinister to me. If it was routine bot sweeping, they wouldn't have put btc in and they wouldn't all have come out the same week. The amount was also roughly (exactly?) 1c at those prices, which may or may not be coincidence.
One alternative is some kind of DoS attack. Around half the addresses on the blockchain (1.2 million) that have any funds in have only dust, which dates back to c. 2011. At the time the amounts would have been tiny; they're much more now (and I imagine the perpetrator would like them back). I wonder whether it was something similar?

Another theory. I'm not sure about this: just want to run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it.
If you look at brainwallets, you'll see that they can be incredibly insecure. A lot of people treat them like email and use bad passwords. It makes them vulnerable to people guessing them.
What if you used a dictionary to generate private keys and addresses, then sent a small amount of bitcoins - say 0.0000546 - to each address. A week later you run the same script and hoover up your coins, plus any others that happen to be sitting in an address you have 'guessed' right.
I don't know why you'd do it this way. Maybe you're a lazy coder, or something. But that appears to be what someone has done. Do a brainwallet address search for speculator, speculating, spectator, spectacles, etc, and you'll see what I mean. 0.0000546 bitcoins goes into the account, a week later out it goes. Looks like someone is running dictionary attacks with words over a certain length.
(Just so we're clear, I found this out through research into brainwallets and general curiosity, not to steal bitcoins from badly-secured wallets. I can't prove this but suffice to say I probably wouldn't post this warning if I was. )

*** People who have received dust payments: are you using a brainwallet? If so, consider it insecure and move your coins ASAP. ***

Like I said, not sure whether this is right or not. But something weird is going on with dictionary-generated brainwallet addresses.
Alternatively, I'd love to know any other theories as to why someone would send 0.0000546 bitcoins to a bunch of dictionary addresses.... any answers?

I'll let that comment speak for itself.

Anyone else have anything useful to contribute? You know, in the interests of mutual furthering of knowledge through balanced discussion?

What, why would I think freely for myself, when I can dumbly take someone else's word for it?! Even when they're paid by someone else to tell them what they think...?
I have read that thread, all of it. I didn't like the methodology, or the conclusions, so I took a different route. It's one that makes sense to me, and a lot of other people too. That in itself doesn't make it more accurate, but neither does paying a researcher.
Thanks for the thread, anyway.
Point taken about the exchange addresses (for all who mentioned it). I imagine they complement other addresses, though - a handful of people might only have bitcoins in an exchange, but that must be more than compensated for by those with multiple addresses. Any serious bitcoiner is going to have at least one 'proper' address and probably more (current account, cold storage, etc).

rpietila, this is based on blockchain addresses. It's hard to argue with a 100% transparent source.

Maybe. I reckon even less. 1.2 million max, but lots of those will have forgotten addresses, not care about minimal amounts, plus you have some people with dozens of addresses.
But apparently exchanges, where people keep a lot of bitcoins, don't have an address for everyone? I think that's weird as I send my btc to a specific address for Bitstamp.

http://bitscan.com/bitnews/item/how-many-people-really-own-bitcoins-and-why-does-it-matter argues 500,000 - probably a lot fewer because a lot of people have 5, 10+ addresses?

Very nice machine. Like it a lot.
We'll probably look at converting an existing dispenser that takes £1 coins or maybe all coins, just to trial the idea. I love the idea of your fiat disappearing into the machine and your balance updating in real time as they do (or at least, a balance that will be transferred to your address shortly).
Larem: I know it's possible to create screen-scraping APIs for online banking, though it's a little beyond me (whether you use PHP, Python or whatever is another question). But it's messy and I don't like the security implications - I'm pretty sure it will 1) open you to hacking and 2) void any insurance you have with the bank.
ShireSilver: I'm pretty sure SEPA is good, as are all direct deposits. It's what Bitstamp uses anyway, if you happen to be on the wrong side of the English channel. It's just darned expensive.
Either way, getting a live update from your bank account is a heck of a lot harder than it should be.

Yes, I've seen that on Bittylicious. Unfortunately it's still subject to the same markup as direct deposit.
Current plan is to adapt a digital coin counter to convert fiat coins to btc in real time. Would love to create a website that took direct deposits or other irreversible payment, but cannot figure out how to do it reliably and securely.

I've been looking at using OKPay. I'm in the UK so not many good options for buying btc at market rates (e.g. bitstamp) as you get hammered by currency exchange and charges. What are the fees/exchange rates like with OKPay? Is it worth paying in GBP from a UK bank and withdrawing as btc?

I wish it was that easy. I looked into it, and the bank's fees and exchange rates basically make it uneconomical: you can buy 1btc that way for about the same price as you can from one of the sites in the UK (i.e. the banks rip you off to the tune of a 6-8% mark-up). And you can't use a cheap money transfer service, because they've stopped moving money to Bitstamp.
Funny you mention the bitcoin atm. It's something a friend and I are looking into (making one, not forking out $20k). But you run into similar problems at some point: Bitcoin transfers are fast and irreversible, and you need a form of payment that is too. It also has to notify you immediately. The best option is to register instant payments by SMS/direct deposit, but you need an API for that and guess what? The banks only provide them to corporate customers (turnover of £5 million+).
Have you had any experience of OKPay? Seems like they may be worth looking at but I don't know whether they offer the functionality we need.
* Instant payments
* Irreversible payments
* Instant notification of payments so transfer of btc can be made
It shouldn't be this hard to put those things together in the 21st century...

Thanks. I'm based in the UK, using Natwest, and apparently they do offer OFX amongst other formats for downloading statements.
I'm interested in my own account, here (I'm intrigued about the pandora's box and its solutions, though).
In short I'm researching creating a *very* simple (simple as possible) system where someone makes a direct deposit into my account to pay for bitcoins, that are automatically sent to them.
In the UK there are no decent exchanges and you cannot buy BTC at competitive rates. The sites that exist charge a premium of a minimum of 6% and often much more, depending on price. They work manually: you place an order and the vendor checks their bank account online and makes the bitcoin transfer when they see the funds have arrived. That's where we're at over here.
I guess I got curious as to why we use such a clunky system. Turns out the alternatives are fairly messy too. The best solution as I see it is to create a script that logs in, checks your balance and pushes a transaction to the blockchain when it sees the right payment has arrived. But it must be full of holes and security is probably a nightmare.
Probably much easier using a PayPal plugin, but then you have chargeback issues.

Also, Shire Silver is a great idea.
Figured out that I'll need an online banking API to login to my account and scrape the balance. Duh.

Thanks ShireSilver. That is pretty cool and maybe directly useful at some point.
I've been doing some research around this and it turns out there's a fair amount of Python written for this. I've been looking at Pybitcointools (https://github.com/vbuterin/pybitcointools) which I think is something like what I need. Do you have any experience of this? Helps that I vaguely know Python, whereas the other suggestions would be a steep learning curve.
What I'm look at doing (or rather, trying to establish whether it's even possible) is creating a very simple webpage that would *automatically* send bitcoins to a given address when payment is made. Submitting transactions to blockchain.info/pushtx seems like one easy way to do this. All the sites I know (I'm in the UK) require manual transfer when the seller has checked their bank.
The catch comes in accepting payment. Obviously I don't want to use PayPal. Direct deposit is the best, but integrating that with a Python script that sends the coins when the money comes in? Not easy. Crazy workarounds with email notifications from online banking have sprung to mind, but that just seems inelegant...

Well, no. That would be silly. Good mental picture, though.
Thanks for the other suggestion. Slightly more complicated than I'd hoped - I had wondered whether Coinbase or anyone else had something that could be adapted, but looks like no such luck.

Thank you.
For people paying money there are lots of options (though only a handful of suitable ones). But I'm also interested in the other side of the transaction: what are the ways that are typically used to transfer bitcoins automatically? So if you were just doing a proof-of-concept version, you could have a simple PayPal button to send the money... what would be used to send the bitcoins to the recipient?
All of the sites I've seen are either full exchanges, or they involve manual transactions - i.e. a person sat at a computer, waiting for funds to show up in their bank account before making the transfer of bitcoins (or vice versa in a few instances). I'm curious to know whether a 'But it now'-type button could be developed.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughts.

Er, no.
It's a simple question about what technologies are typically used. In case you didn't know lots of people buy and sell bitcoins already.
So don't worry, I'm not going to steal your IP and turn it into a multi-million dollar business. If you're worried I might, feel free not to reply with any ideas, good or otherwise.