That would be a good idea Kprawn.

If we could reach a point where it was possible for me to buy a small miner for under $100 that would plug into my home PC and generate enough BTC just to cover the electricity cost of running my PC I would definitely do that.

It would then cost me nothing to leave my PC running 24/7 and if it took off and millions of people embraced it we could have a large enought mining distribution to prevent a 51% attack.

In theory.

Thanks. So does that mean if I use one installation frequently and then I go to the other one every now and then my addresses and transactions will sync up from the server?

Hi,

I've got Electrum set up on my main PC (Windows) and linux laptop.

Both installations are set up to use the same wallet and I've checked that the receiving addresses are the same on both computers.

When I start sending and receiving I understand it's good to generate a different address every time, if possibe. Does that mean that my laptop wallet will automatically sync changed addresses if I don't log into it for a month and I use the Windows one on a daily basis?

I think to increase popularity we need a hit single to chart that is Bitcoin related.

I'm heading to iTunes chart on Monday to get the release of "Girl you know it's prudent" by Milli Satoshi.

Yeah, but what about Moore's Law? 

Seriously though, jonald_fyookball, that's a good quote if I ever have to explain to a friend how unlikely a collision can be.

Wow, Light! Mind blown, and satisfied, at the same time. Guess I'll stop worrying about collisions and leave it to those that have a greater understanding of how the system works.

Thanks, I was thinking along the same lines of minute chance too.

In theory though, especially if bitcoin becomes mainstream, is there a way to modify the way bitcoin operates to ensure no collisions: both past and future collisions? Someone out there could be auto-generating hundreds of keys a minute for various reasons. As we all know, there is an abundance of dishonesty on the internet where money is concerned.

I realise from previous posts that even if someone were generating pairs in their hundreds or thousands there would still be a very small collision chance, but it's a chance none the less. I would be pretty gutted even if I lost just one BTC due to a collision. That could be a lot of money in the future, or could be next to nothing. I don't want to get into speculation 

I was just thinking about a possible flaw in my system of creating a paper wallet, as detailed above.

Would it be a good idea once I've generated an address (and matching private key) to use my internet PC to search for the address on blockchain.info before depositing my coins into it?

If blockchain.info comes up with a blank for that address does that mean it hasn't been used and I can go ahead and make my deposit?

If it has been used then someone holds a private key for that address and I can go back to my disconnected Tails live OS and simply generate a different address and key pair.

Is my working correct and is it necessary to check the blockchain before depositing?

Thanks. I think it might be a good idea to use a VPN, which could give me protection against whatever taxation system is applied to BTC over the coming era.

Taxman: "What happened to those coins you bought X years ago?"

Me: "Oh, I spend them/traded badly and they're mostly gone."

I'm not against paying my taxes for work and helping pay for the upkeep of the society I live in, but do have reservations towards government/financial wasters. I'd like to see cryptocurrency as an alternative to that and allow people to direct their own savings without these bullies getting involved.

When I use the Tor network I understand that my ISP can detect that I'm using Tor, but are unaware of the specifics of what I'm doing (market place/secure browsing etc.)

When I use BitTorrent I'm aware that my ISP see that I'm using BitTorrent, but unless I'm in a swarm for the latest movie releases that cost Hollywood money in lost revenue I'm part of the "safety in numbers" brigade. After all, I could be just sharing a Linux distro or large home made project.

What about when I use my electrum wallet? Are my data transmissions transparent enough so that bitcoin movement is logged and dated? Are the amounts moving on and off of the blockchain loggable and auditable to a specific ISP/person?

I'm thinking about the money I've sent to long term cold storage. Should that money turn out to be a good investment in future and at some point two years down the line I decide to cash in will I incur taxes?

I know we can't accurately predict the legal status of a developing medium like bitcoin two years down the line, but I expect lawyers, backed by IRS and Inland Revenue, will have a keen eye on this stiuation.

Any thoughts on how to avoid the corrupt banking/taxation system of plutocracy that makes bitcoin an attractive prospect to the average working person?

I already have an electrum wallet for send/receive transactions and wanted to keep the bulk of my coins offline, as it were.

So I've went down the pen and paper route, sending most of my coins to a paper address and keeping copies in different houses (family members with no idea about Bitcoin). I feel that having a couple of private keys stashed that have never been exposed to the internet is a decent strategy and won't touch them for a long time. When that time comes I'll probably import the funds into a wallet.

Yeah, running Tails in non-persistent mode from USB runs an identical live environment every time you boot. It won't save any of your previous session; just boots into a fresh OS every time and does a quick memory wipe on shutdown.

I don't use it for regular browsing, just for doing stuff like this so the chance of any malware getting onto the live USB is extremely unlikely. Possibly an even more secure way would be to burn Tails onto a live CD so that it's write protected and boot from that. I think I'll do it that way in future.

Good to know about the extra security bits on a brand new, unused address too. Thanks.

I just copied the HTML file over to a non-persistent Tails desktop and opened it in the secure browser (Iceweasel, I think). At no time I was connected to any network and I used the "shred -n" command to get rid of anything I had saved, even though this is redundant since Tails claims to not save any data on shutdown.

i thought the HTML (containing the Javascript generator) was open source and presume it has been audited and inspected by those more knowledgeable than me in Javascript/HTML.

Since I ran and shutdown Tails on a laptop that was at no point connected to a network the bitaddress.org page could not have reported any generated data back to anywhere. However, if there's a purer way of generating a key (which includes user generated random content) in the terminal that would be good to know.

As for the second part of your post, jonald_fyookball, thanks. That puts my mind at rest that my private key has a ridiculously minute chance of being spoofed.

Hi there. First post/topic.

I'm about to put coins away in cold storage on a long term, to be forgotten about, basis and have some newbie questions:

1. I understand I can use the bitaddress.org HTML document, copied on a clean USB stick to a live USB version of Linux (Tails) which has never been connected to the web to generate a public address and private key. How do I know that the pair that's generated is unique and hasn't already been generated? What are the mathematical odds of someone coincidentally having the same private key?

2. Is there a "scene" for people using powerful computing technology (high-end GPU's etc.) to generate and test thousands of private keys in the hope that they'll stumble upon some coins?

In short, am I OK to store a couple of coins in a paper document and forget about them for a year or two?

Thanks muchly. I find this site very interesting, even though some of the more mathematical explanations can go over my head.