The Android RNG was flawed - it was announced across the top of this site that it was and that anyone who had a wallet generated from an android with the affected software should immediately make a new wallet and move their coins there. If people didnt' pay attention to that, they could be in for some pain. I'm a little surprised that more attacks haven't occured, honestly

Just a guess, but I think the site should be connecting to your routers external IP address. The router should allow port 8333 through its firewall and forward that traffic to your computer, which should also have port 8333 open on its firewall.

Do they still have that stat on their site that 70% of the world bitcoin trades go through them-? It's not showing on my ipad.  Frankly, I'm amazed that they exist still - I open an account and completed the KYC info, but all I've ever heard was what a chore it is to get money out, so I never proceeded in using them.

in one of friedcats updates, he noted that ASICMINER had investigated making a scypt product and decided it wasnt feasible.

as for litecoin difficulty and bitcoin asics - there was a flood of gpus leaving bitcoin for ltc once significant numbers of asics shipped. there cant be any others unless people are masochists, and older asics have no use in the litecoin network.

Say you know a particular vps was used to generate many wallets , and you know all the settings of that server (ram, HARDDRIVE, MAC address,etc), and rolled back your system clock to around the time that you knew it was generating its wallets. Would that increase your chances at all?

Hence, the need for legal counsel! OP mentioned doing the transaction without any, but hardly pushed for it. Of course, they seem to have been scared off from this thread a long time ago!

Even with escrow, the items you bring up (sellers competency) would be things that arise after funds have been distributed at closing.

In this instance, the OP was only offering a piece of land, not a building.

But either way, you really ought to do a home inspection prior to closing... If you're hoping to find all the issues you might face after you've already closed on the deal, you're doing it wrong.

And the OP originally came in saying they were attempting to cutout the real estate agent. They also said no need for escrow since it's a bitcoin transaction - and again, I will agree that there is more risk to the seller than to the buyer, who again, shouldn't be transferring Bitcoins until they've already assumed possession of the executed deed.

I dont' see the issue, AT ALL.

And i'll go further to say that if this isn't a perfect transaction for Bitcoin, then it it's dead in the water and has no value at all.

You have a title report. You have title insurance. And you have a signed deed in your hand before you even transfer a single bitcoin.

Where is the fraud to occur?

You're mis-seeing the risk

Here is a sample deed

You would first examine the property.

You would then engage a title company to do a title search and then buy title insurance.

The SELLER would then provide a deed along the lines of (and do consult with a lawyer so that you're sure that your deed is compliant with the laws of your juridstiction)

You would change it to be along the lines of:

[/i]

The SELLER executes the deed and delivers it to the BUYER. The BUYER then sends the bitcoins to the seller.

The SELLER is protected because, if the BUYER does not deliver (which is demonstratable - if the buyer says "but i did send those coins to that address", you can easily prove that that didn't occur) then the seller can prove they did not receive the consideration and nullify the transaction.

The BUYER is protected because they don't transmit the bitcoins until they have an all clear on the title and they have an executed deed in hand.

So yes, I think you're overstating the risk vastly. Again, real estate is an incredibly structured transaction with many fail safes along the way. The seller here is just proposing cutting out the real estate agent (who might take up to 8%) and a bitcoin escrow agent (another 1.5-2% apparently). 10% on $80,000 or $100,000 is real money if you ask me.

Now... would i feel comfortable purchasing a car that way? Maybe... not quite as comfortable, but i would consider it if everything else about he transaction felt legitimate.

Would i buy a rare gold coin that way? Or even just cash in the mail? Not a chance.

But real estate? Sure. Engage a lawyer, spend an hour or two explaining bitcoin, and have them draft a deed that is valid in your state, and you should be fine. If the transaction goes south, they fail to deliver the bitcoins and then attempt to file the deed, you might end up in court, but again, due to the way the blockchain works, whether you had to have it explained to a judge, a jury or a mediator, it would be easy to demonstrate the deed is invalid.

I *HOPE* that helps! 

If i thought there was a way to win in the mining game, short of being a chip developer selling to the masses, I would have no problem ordering a monarch from BFL. But i'm out of the mining game - I don't care if it's BFL, ASICMiner, Cointerra, or KNC. There is far too much hashing power hitting the market for anyone to have any confidence in their returns. Well, you can have zero confidence because you have no idea how much more is coming.

I've said before, with the Fed and Bernake, the entire world knows how many dollars are out there and how many more the Fed is creating a month. Yes, its inflationary, but we all have enough information to correctly value things in relation to the dollar.

Bitcoin - we know how many coins exist, we know the rate they're produced, and we know the maximum number. That's fine. And while we know the network hash rate and how fast its increasing, we have no visibility into how much more is coming online. We can guess, but that's all it is - a guess. On the mining front, it's essentially impossible to project anything meaningful. Which, I think, raises a big question mark, because without mining and people willing to continue investing in it, well, bitcoin loses it's use.

It's prisoners dilemma right now, and everyone is taking the choice of ratting on their codefendant.

The producers have no reason to stop - they're standing to make a ton of fiat money, so long as they can talk a good bitcoin talk (protecting the network, etc), and everyone else is spending more and more money to insure that they maintain a small slice of a pie that's going to continually shrink...

One of my firms clients bought a house last month, and we sent the funds straight to the escrow company.

By the point is, with bitcoin you don't need that step.

You draft your deed "for value received, xxx bitcoins transferred to xxx address, seller hereby... "

Seller can then sign it over to buyer. If buyer reneges, you might be the first court case, but it's simple to prove that the buyer did not transfer value and therefor the transfer is void. So, no, you don't need an escrow mechanism (and associated fee), when doing a sale via bitcoin. Now, it wouldn't be nearly so easy if buyer or seller had a mortgage involved. But in this case, the seller doesn't have a mortgage and he's looking for a buyer who won't need one also.

Despite so many peoples hope that bitcoin can overturn the system, the system can accommodate bitcoin just fine...

I don't think I'm missing anything. You're over complicating and suggesting the OP was advocating the buyer throw every caution to the wind, which he never seemed to be. No matter, he's long gone so there's no reason to continue arguing it.

I saw that, but again, didn't find that alarming. I'm positive a transaction of this sort could be accomplished with nothing but buyer, seller and title company. Of course the buyer is going to Missouri. Who in the world world but something sight unseen like that?

My vote is that you're way too skeptical. He's not saying abandon all the normal steps in a transaction, just the  ones that cost a lot.

If I had property to sell, I would feel 100% comfortable doing it this way:

You come visit the property.
If you like it, we draw up contract stating that for x bitcoins recieved, the propert is yours.
I sign deed citing or encompassing that contract and hand it to you. You send me coins.

So straight forward, I can't believe you're making an issue of it.

If I don't provide you deed and contract, you don't send coins. Buyer is protected

If I do that and you don't provide coins, it's simple to demonstrate that. Hence you cAnt file anything at the courthouse claiming that property. You want to fight it? I'll hire Gavin as an expert witness for the day to explain to the jury that if no coins appeared in my wallet, I Didn't get paid.

Again. Real estate is one of the most straightforward and structured transactions out there. If be more frightful buying a miner from asicminer than I would buying land, if I had that many bitcoins.

I read the thread, and it wasn't apparent that the op was saying " hey, send me bitcoins and I'll sell you some land". And if anyone does that, they deserve the loss just as much as they would if they mailed him suitcase of cash. And if there is anyone willing to send suitcases of cash, let me know, I'll give you my address...

He's not saying "to make things faster, let's not even do a title search", just trying to cut out the broker, which can take 5-8 % of the sale, and just targeting a community that likely has more than a few people sitting on large amounts of newfound wealth. Seems smart.  And it seems like contracts could be created to protect all parties involved

Ie :

Buyer proves they own coins by signing a message with the wallets key that owns those coins

Contract prepared which transfers property upon the transfer of the coins from that wallet to the address the seller specifies. Both sign. Deed prepared and executed. Bitcoins transferred. If the buyer fails to transfer the coins, then the transfer is null and void - the seller can easily show, via the block chain, that he never received the value that was originally agreed upon.

Again, very straight forward transaction. If bitcoin can't accommodate that, them I'd wonder what it's utility is.

I think incredible is not understanding the process at hand;

You go up check out the property. You like it, you engage the title company to do a title search. Once they determine that the selling party has right to transfer to the buying party and that everyone is moving forward, title insurance is bought. Then the closing occurs, generally funds are wired to an attorney trust account, documents signed, and then funds are released. If it was done for bitcoin, you could either send funds to an escrow agent, or work out another deal that is to everyone's agreement - I could imagine the seller could sign over the title, hand it to his or the buyers attorney under the instruction that it's not to be released until x number of confirmations have been received.

You're making this far more complicated than it had to be. And really, taken to its conclusion, doesn't do much for bitcoin - I mean, we already see people are wary of spending bitcoins on miners, either due to concerns of fraud or the worry that the miner won't produce the original amount of bitcoins spent over its lifetime, now we see someone afraid of conducting simple real estate transaction for bitcoin, which is itself one of the most structured transactions around. Pretty soon, one might ask if bitcoin is such a great currency replacement, why is it that people that own it are afraid to spend it, for fear of brain defrauded, etc?

No need for physical force, if i'm able to corrupt the system based on the rules of the system.

How do people get added to the blacklist? I assume someone has to do so manually? And how is a consensus reached? Votes? Do people have to register their real life identities in order to vote? Or do they just vote by registering?

It's way too easy to game this system. No need for physical violence or threat thereof. You simply threaten to make someones coin horde unspendable. Either by having lots of people register to vote you onto the blacklist (i assume that it would be done via email address or, worst, cell phone number), both are very easy to come by.

Explain precisely how do you stop this?

Then we should blacklist every coin that's ever been stolen via keystroke logger, Trojan, account hack, or anything else nefarious. Except that could do away with far more coins than the FBI got.

Or, you don't like a world with violence and cohersion? What are you options when you buy coins from me (or I otherwise find out your address) and send you an email - give me 10% of your total BTC holdings or else me and my entire syndicate will add your coins to the blacklist? What can you possibly do?  Sure, I dint have a syndicate currently, but if you allow for blacklisting, you'd better believe syndicates will pop up all over.

Think things through. To the logical final conclusion. It's not as cut and dried as you'd like.

I'm having issues, but not bitcoin related ones!

When i type on my keyboard, some of my keys randomly both enter the key that I pressed AND adjust the volume, either up, down, mute or unmute... even the icon appears on the screen as if i had tapped F10, F11 or F12, even though I am absolutely sure that I'm not... And it doesn't even happen regularly, just randomly (i can't predict which keys will trigger this happening).

PLEASE tell me someone else has seen this "issue"?

Im on a 2011 July Macbook Air, upgraded to Mavericks today, and that's when the issues started!

Only by osmosis of reading the same article and discussion threads; first time seeing that page. I'm gonna wager and say that he had far less BTC left over than that estimate. Id say I'd play with the numbers later, but there isn't really a pressing need or anything!

No, didn't spot that one... Do you have a link handy or should I click my way through there?