With it being exactly one month to settlement now, I would think the gap between the spot price and BUZ2 would start to narrow.  It is instead growing, the BTC/USD is going up and at the same time BUZ2 is going down.
 - https://icbit.se/BUZ2

Anyone have thoughts as to why BUZ2 is bifurcating from BTC/USD, ... more than 10% below the spot market price now?

Bitcoiners should be very careful be allowing software to be installed from anywhere, including something like this.

The error is likely due to an improper shutdown (either app crash, or windows crash, or power interruption) in which the automatic recovery of the database wasn't successful.

Firstly, make sure you have a backup of your wallet.dat (but don't overwrite a previous backup).

The debug.log will help show which database the program is having trouble with.

"World currency" is a pretty vague term.

Would this be a currency that is a commodity?  (e..g, gold?)   Or a digital one controlled by an entity?   Or a decentralized one like Bitcoin?

Would the use of this single world currency be enforced (i.e., barter is outlawed, use of alternatives made illegal, no private currencies, etc.)?

And it is kind of like the question about why doesn't someone do a 51% attack to double spend bitcoins?   Because once you do that, the coins you got from double spending are no longer worth anything because you just destroyed the entire reason they had value.

So let's say the merchant uses the Bitcoin.org client and has it properly configured (no incoming transactions, has an outgoing connection to a well-connected node).  The success of a race attack double spend is maybe one in twenty (5%) (this is a wild ass guess, ... it is probably below an order of magnitude of that even.)  

So if I am a thief, I then have to buy 19 meals (at $100 each) in order to steal the 20th meal (using the unverified estimate that on average, one out of twenty attempts succeed).

I think the restaurant might just encourage this practice, since margins at a restaurant are often much better than 5%.  

As far as the other double spending threat, the Finney Attack, an attempt of this for stealing from a restaurant doesn't work well.  The thief can't wait for the restaurant to process the charge, instead the thief needs to have the timing down exactly.  As soon as the miner has a block the thief then needs to get the merchant to process the payment in seconds and upon doing so the thief needs to runs off immediately as the merchant will discover the double spend seconds later.

With the Finney attack, each second the miner holds onto the block costs just about ten dollars worth of bitcoins, so if this takes more than ten seconds the miner loses money in gaining a $100 food bill.  

And both of these are silly thought games anyway.

Why wouldn't the thief just walk out the restaurant without paying rather than mess with this double spending approach?

[Edit: On second thought, concerns about the risks are valid, just that they seem to be easily blown out of proportion because there is so little actual bricks-and-mortar types of activity so far to know which types of situations have risk and which don't.]

That's a very good point that I had overlooked (as I'm generally not an online gambling player, ... primarily for the reason you cited ... I try to avoid negative EV   ).

This was illustrated in another thread where bitcoin gaming is sometimes used as a way to get a "bridge loan".  The example given was where someone wants to make a purchase but is just a little short of funds.  It will take a few days either to get more funds or for an existing funds transfer to complete in order to buy more coins.  So using one of the bitcoin gaming services a person can make a wager (or two) and likely win the amount that was needed.

In the worst case scenario the person loses and has to wait a few days for a funds transfer to complete, just like they would have been had they not placed the bets.

Of course for a person in financial distress, this can accelerate a downward spiral but for those simply wanting a few more coins quickly, the immediate access to winnings is something Bitcoin gaming offers that is not found anywhere else online.

Well that's probably more determined more by luck now than anything.  It is looking like either sometime on the 29th (GMT) or possibly late in the day (again, GMT) on the 28th.   

So it is getting pretty safe to say that if you were to attend an all-day "halving day" party on Wednesday, Nov 28th, 2012 in the U.S., you would be present to raise your glass for a toast at the point that block 210,000 is solved.

Two words: House edge.

No, sorry.  Four words.  Add two more: Provably Fair.

Most state-operated lotteries pay out in the range of 70% or less of the lotto ticket/wager revenue.   I don't know the actual number for a fact, but most of these state run lotteries are audited and when you dig you can find their reported results for each jurisdiction.  If you believe they aren't cheating and can trust the audited numbers, you'll probably end up with a number in the 70% range.

BitLotto pays out 99%.   I do know this number to be a fact as I see the blockchain and know exactly how many tickets were purchased.  I can perform the calculation to independently determine the winner, and I see the payout transaction.  Thus I can conclude that player returns when playing BitLotto are 41% higher than when playing MegaMillions (99% versus 70%).
 - http://www.BitLotto.com

SatoshiDICE has a 98.1% payout (before considering transaction fees) which means they keep the 1.9% house edge.  Today I can go through the blockchain and verify that every single wager ever made to SatoshiDICE (ever, like all the way back to their April launch) was calculated correctly and paid out correctly.   I can prove that SatoshiDICE is operating fairly.

In Vegas casinos, the most widely used gambling options (e.g., slot machines) might return maybe 96%, and most are in the 94% or 92% range.   Someone needs to pay for the security cameras, fake volcanoes and free booze.  They only way for a physical casino to function profitably with better odds is likely to cheat somewhere.  (Or so I've read.  I don't gamble much and am not tuned in to the casino industry )

The only reason SatoshiDICE isn't paying out 99% is because they aren't being squeezed by a more aggressive competitor offering a 98.9% payout.   That day will come.  Because with an increase in play, both SatoshiDICE and some other competitor(s) can still operate profitably on a lower house advantage without cheating (which isn't really an option as it would be exposed them and they'ld lose all credibility in a matter of days.)

bitZino doesn't publish the odds to each of their games, I don't believe.  But the odds can be calculated.  For blackjack most of the rule variations are ones that favor the player:
 - http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/rule-variations
 - http://www.bitZino.com

So I can't say that bitZino games (blackjack, video poker, craps and roulette) have  payouts that are higher than a Vegas casino has because I haven't seen the odds (or performed the computations myself) but I would bet that bitZino can always beat Vegas casinos due to having such low costs, on a relative basis.   (Unlike bitLotto and SatoshiDICE, we don't know bitZino's revenues or profits.  I'm going to conclude they are still nowhere near recovering their investment for development but like D&T mentions, they probably didn't build all that intending to profit in 2012 but instead did all that beautiful HTML5 and rock solid back-end work for the returns they could see in 2014 or later, which could be substantial.)

Another provably fair game I'm enthusiastic about is King Coin.  The odds for that were just calculated (thanks dooglus) to be in the 96% range.  That makes me less enthusiastic about the game than I was originally, but again, those odds can be increased (which can be verified independently) and hopefully this entertaining visual game can join the stable of online gaming where provably fair gaming using Bitcoins beats any other online gaming options.

And that's what the owner of Bodog either doesn't realize (which I doubt) or wishes to not tout until he figures out a way to make some money from it.  He's welcome to try.  The barrier to entry for building an online casino game is not beyond what a skilled developer operating solo as as "nights and weekends" project can produce.  But with it being provably fair, math gives that alternative the same credibility as what gamers used to count on ...  the polished look and feel that established gaming companies provide.

There's a huge industry that has no idea that they are going to be sharing part of their lunch:
 - http://www.bulletbusiness.com/mobilegambling/index.php

Well, a writer for Calvin Ayre, Steven Stradbrooke, authored that post.

That's probably works as well as any other approach.    Some people might recommend avoiding a third-party source for blockchain and transaction data, but for amounts in the burgers and beers range, I would trust Blockchain.info's data for that.

The chart shows the weekend dip green light is (barely) on:


 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zig30-minzczsg2012-10-31zeg2012-11-16ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzcv

But I'm going to sit this one out.  We're now less than two weeks from the "halving" event, which has never occurred before and drops the daily amount of new coins introduced into circulation by 50% in an instant.  So I'm wary of there being a spark that ignites a rally -- we haven't had that over a weekend for a few months, but when a weekend spike happens, it is sometimes brutal.

Additionally, from another thread:

Make sure the clients are configured for outgoing communications only ( -nolisten ).  This is because knowing the IP address of the node, it becomes not terribly hard to perform a race attack to double spend.  And the way the Bitcioin.org client functions, the merchant might not even notice ... the transaction would just disappear as if it had never been made.

It might even be seen as a challenge by someone to be the first to pull off a race attack double spend against a bricks and mortar merchant.  If configured with -nolisten (and optionally, an outgoing connection made explicitly to a well-connected node), then the chance of a race attack succeeding is much much lower, to where the profit on the sale is likely orders of magnitude greater than any losses due to a race attack double spend.

Welcome.


Is this a personal project or through this large IT consultancy?

I hate to be a wet blanket on some light-hearted bet statements, but i don't think this bet statement is suitable for BetsOfBitco.in
 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=871

Technically, it should be disallowed because the outcome is easily manipulated.   

But even if it wasn't, the statement's scope is much too narrow in focus to be of interest to anyone except the two people in on the joke.

Further discussion of this topic here:

2012-11-12 American Banker: The Plot Thickens in the Bizarre Bitcoin Blackmail C
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=123956.0

Their terms of service are essentially that they can freeze the account at any time for any reason until you verify your account.

If they were to freeze the account and you would refuse to verify it, you would essentially then forfeit any funds deposited.

There are many cash out methods.  

Depending on where you are, there may be one or more local, in-person, traders willing to buy your coins with cash.
 - http://www.LocalBitcoins.com

You can also buy MoneyPak and use that to load a prepaid debit card (and from there, withdraw cash at an ATM, or do whatever.)

There is a service that will deposit cash into your bank account:
- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=82983.0

There are many options:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Selling_bitcoins

You can perform wallet surgery to remove a transaction so that the client will not attempt to re-broadcast it.  Pywallet gives a delete transaction option.


If the transaction did get relayed by other nodes, your client will probably discover that transaction and thus those inputs will again be locked.  But eventually this transaction will get included in a block.

You can check Blockchain.info to see if your transaction was relayed to a node that they listen to.
 - http://www.Blockchain.info

There are free relay nodes which will relay your transaction regardless of whether or not a fee was paid.
 - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Free_transaction_relay_policy

The right solution is the "child pays for parent", in which another transaction can be made (by the recipient of the transaction) and the fee paid in the second transaction will help cause the "parent" to be included in a block as well.  This is not yet available in a Bitcoin release.
 - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/1647

Square is now available in Canada.  2.75% is their rate in the U.S., not sure if it is the same in Canada.  You probably can't get a better deal than that.

Blockchain.info has been around for a long time.   They've been doing Pingit for a couple months now.


500 GBP max.

How about cash deposited at Chase?  Cash works.

  - https://bitme.com/