I'm not sure what you're aiming for. Getting a computer to enumerate possible chess games isn't hard; the problem is that there are so many of them. In particular, to prove that a given game is unique will, in general, require storing all the previous unique games, which will be prohibitively expensive.

If you are aiming for a proof-of-work scheme that involves humans doing the work, then that's quite an interesting idea, but chess isn't suitable because computers can do it better than humans can. Also, to resolve conflicts in a distributable system, you need a way to measure which block-chain has the largest proof-of-work, which means assessing how much effort went into the chess games.

As an aside, in John Varley's Titan SF trilogy, long-distance communication is done by singing to a special plant, that will relay the song to distant plants that will also sing it, provided the plants consider the song to be beautiful enough to repeat. With those plants you could maybe create a crypto-currency based around proof-of-beauty, that would be hard to forge because creating beauty is hard.

Doesn't that valuation mean 1 satoshi is worth £2*10^5 / 1*10^8 = £2*10^-3, or £0.002 or 0.2p ? I think you missed a factor of 100.

If it becomes a problem, a soft-fork can add more precision. (There are 12 spare bits due to the 21 million BTC limit being smaller than what will fit in a 64-bit integer, and we can add more bits if we have to.)

Inflation of fiat is irrelevant here. If a loaf of bread cost 2 satoshi, that would be a problem for Bitcoin even if 2 satoshi happened to be £500.

I own 1BrangfWu2YGJ8W6xNM7u66K4YNj2mie3t. Only 5 letters because it was generated on my offline machine, which is very slow and has no GPU. I'm not going to bother proving I own it.

You can install wallet software from a USB drive, so there's no need for the cold computer to ever be connected to the internet. Buy a cheap laptop, format it, install a free Linux-based O/S from USB, install Armory from USB, create a wallet, export it as a "watching" wallet (ie, without private keys), import it into a wallet on a second, online, computer. You can check the balance from the online computer. There's no need to use Blockchain.

You can even spend the funds without the offline computer going online. You have the online computer generate unsigned transactions, move them across the air gap to the offline computer, sign them there, move the transactions back, publish them from the online computer. Armory generates new addresses in a deterministic way, so you avoid reusing addresses and the offline wallet still only needs to be backed up once.

This is what Armory is all about.

I'm not sure what BIP-38 gains you in this scenario, over just encrypting the wallet and then making copies of that. I trust my encryption enough to store a copy on DropBox.

Of course you have to make sure your heirs can get the necessary passphrase after your death, but nowadays most of us have a lot of passphrases so this is nothing new or special. I use a password manager. If my heir can get into that, they can find all the others, and the procedure can be documented once in my will.

I agree that Primecoin is not the answer.

I'm not sure that power spent on mining altcoins would be better spent on mining Bitcoin. I suspect that switching wouldn't benefit Bitcoin significantly. More important is whether the altcoin has any social value. If it doesn't, and is just a ponzi scheme, then that's the reason not to mine it, and the power argument doesn't matter.

I suspect the real answer is proof-of-stake. Sure, the value of Bitcoin is such that we can justify the resources of mining it, but a good POS altcoin could have the same value and be hugely cheaper to mine.

Not in the UK. Lots of activities around it are illegal, such as kerb-crawling and soliciting. The law is mostly geared around protecting women from being forced into prostitution, and protecting non-prostitutes from being hassled, and protection of minors. (It's not always ideal for achieving those goals.)

As an aside, one problem with Bitcoin for websites is that it doesn't have a good subscription model. There isn't infrastructure to make monthly recurring payments.

There would be benefits in PR. It would make for better media stories than the Silk Road did. Also, it would create a market for Bitcoin-related services and a proving-ground for Bitcoin-related technologies.

Those are the countries that need Bitcoin least, where it is likely to be least important, because they already have a good financial infrastructure.

I want to reach the tipping point where a company can use bitcoin to pay its suppliers and employees. I see that as meaning lots of places taking bitcoin transparently, rather than going through a third party like Gyft.

I have some coin so I will benefit from the price going up, but I also believe in Bitcoin and want it to be available for me to use in future; it's not just a stock investment.

No. I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but Bitcoin is not designed for micro-transactions. The minimum fee is deliberate policy to stop people using Bitcoin to send trifling amounts. They are seen as spam at best, and a denial of service attack at worst. If it were possible to sent 0.00000001 BTC with a 0.00000001 fee, then some villain could broadcast millions of them for almost no dollar cost, and then they'd clog the block-chain forever.

(There are ways to use Bitcoin for micro-transactions, but they are built on top of the raw protocol. They are supposed to use block-chain space efficiently.)

As it happens, the fee does scale, but in accord with the size (in bytes) rather than the value. See the Bitcoin Wiki for details.

I just failed to send some coin to three addresses. It got as far as asking for my password, but when I clicked Unlock it returned to the "Sending from Wallet" dialog. There was no error message. I'm pretty sure I had the right password (and if I hadn't, I'd expect a helpful error message saying as much). I tried again after deleting the last address, and that failed the same way. I then deleted another address, so that only one was left, and that succeeded as expected.

(This was all on my desktop; no offline signing shenanigans involved.)

That downloaded OK. That URL seems to be the same as in the first post in the download thread.

---------------------------
Package Information
---------------------------
Download information for <b>ArmoryTesting version 0.90.99.5:</b> <br> <ul> <li><u><b>Operating System</b></u>:</li> <ul> <li>Windows 8 64-bit</li> </ul> <li><u><b>Installer Filename</b></u>:</li> <ul> <li>armory_0.90.99.5-testing_winAll.exe</li> </ul> <li><u><b>Download URL</b></u>:</li> <ul> <li>https://s3.amazonaws.com/bitcoinarmory-testing/armory_0.90.99.5-testing_winAll.exe</li> </ul> <li><u><b>Verified sha256sum</b></u>:</li> <ul> <li>9b5a76cdb28b7cb8f5bd3446646f018d30394994330a995fd979db9b4e72c1bc</li> </ul> </ul>
---------------------------
OK  
---------------------------

Should "Review Offline Transaction" show more information?

I've now created an offline wallet, sent some coins to it, created a transaction on my desktop, signed it with the offline machine, and broadcast it with the online machine. It all seems to work OK. However, I noticed that the dialog to review the transaction before signing or broadcasting seems to be missing information. There's nothing for the "Wallet:" or even the "Transaction Amount:", although those should surely be known. Also, clicking for "more information about this transaction" did nothing. The dialog after "Sign" or "Broadcast" did show some information, including the transaction amount.

Yep. "Check for Updates" says they are up to date, but Secure Downloader still says "There was a failure downloading this file: 0" when I try "Armory testing (unstable)"

Also I note there are no release notes for it.

(1) The scroll bars on the dashboard message have a problem. When I try to scroll down, it jumps back up. I think it wants to keep the "Armory is offline" message visible at the top.

This is on WinXP - it installs and works there now. My screen on that machine is only 600 pixels high, so without the scroll bars I can't read the rest of the message. My Win8.1 install doesn't have this issue, not even if I make the Dashboard window small. However, it is online, so it's displaying a different message.

(2) My Win8.1 Armory thinks it is online despite not having an internet connection - is that correct? It is running Bitcoin Core and has synchronised blocks etc, but won't be seeing new transactions and probably won't be broadcasting them either, because I've disabled my network adaptor. I can't access Google. I guess that the internet part is done by Bitcoin Core, so Armory doesn't know its status, but it's a bit confusing to be told it is online when it isn't.

It's also wrong in the Secure Downloader for Windows, I think.

I got an announcement in Armory itself, which led to the Help/Update Armory dialog. 0.90.99.5 is listed for WinXP, Vista, Win7 and Win8, both 32-bit and 64-bit, but none of them actually work. It's not listed at all for Win8.1.

Edit: I've now downloaded manually from the link. I notice that the installer defaulted to C:, rather than the location I the previous Armory is at, which is D:. Is that intentional?

If you spend some coin face to face and don't have a receipt, and instead you set the value from what the main bitcoin exchanges were using as the rate, would the IRS accept that? If you got, and reported, a higher value, wouldn't the IRS be even less likely to dispute it?

Why not? The maths seems right. Morally, he risked $5m of his money, so deserves some reward.

The rig should pay for itself in honest transaction fees and block rewards. Revenue from dishonest double-spending attempts would be a bonus.

The miner risks getting a reputation for dishonesty. I don't know what the consequences of that would be. Do miners get blacklisted?

As for $12m, that figure appears to be in the right ballpark. This Ars Technica article talks of a rig costing $3-5m that has around 5.6%. He reckons it has paid for itself many times over. I'm guessing he, personally, would not approve of his gear being used for dishonest transactions, but I suppose he might eventually have company employees junior enough to be bribed or coerced into it, yet senior enough to get it done. The main problem is that it's not worth it for a few low-value transactions, and high-value ones can usually wait for confirmations and/or know their customers.

Getting 51% would only cost $60m, so it's within reach for a great many people and institutions.

At least some of the value they offer comes from consumer protection. The charge-backs that vendors hate are beneficial to customers, and since it is customers who have the money there may well still be a market for credit card-like consumer protection in Bitcoin.

Besides OSX and WinXP.

Sorry to go on about it, and I may be the only tester planning to use XP, but the original post listed WinXP support as one of the bolded new features. I hope someone checks that 0.90.99.5 at least runs up on it. Running a cold storage wallet on a cheap, low-end notebook is a valuable feature for Armory, and XP is often the only version of Windows those machines can handle.