Correct.  They are an 'escrow' in that sense for the title.  But not necessarily the escrow for the money; as not all property is even necessarily sold for money.

Yes, the cut-off date is somewhat arbitrary.  Once you have a script that can produce the graph you can try different cut-off dates easily enough.  Also, it's probably better to describe this as a search for dead wallets, not so much dead coins.  How many coins are in all of those wallets that have had zero transactions for a very, very, long time? Inquiring minds want to know.  The 'days destroyed' graph on blockchain really doesn't do much for me.

I just want to know how many dead wallets (and their sum-total coins) are still out there month to month and day to day.  That's a graph blockchain should have.

John

I am of the opinion that a lot of the uncertainty can be resolved with statistical analysis of the blockchain.

It's a personal project I hope to spend more time on whenever I have some free time.

Here is what I would like to see.

A graph of stale coins that starts at 100% of all outstanding coins in January 1, 2013.  Then, each time coins associated with a particular address has any kind of a transaction then it is considered essentially 'alive' (no longer a zombie coin).  This graph would go down to land wherever we are at today (coins which haven't changed hands since prior to January 13, 2013).  It's important to note that if, say, a wallet address has a 1,000 coins in it then someone spends so much as 0.000001btc out of that wallet, it marks all 1,000 of those coins as 'alive'.  We are looking for wallet addresses which have been completely untouched since prior to January of this year.

You should then be able to do some statistics showing how many zombie wallets come to life over time and make some reasonable predictions about how many are likely to remain forever lost.

Are there lost/zombie coins after January 1 of this year?  Sure, some, but they are probably statistically insignificant compared to all of the lost coins back when they were essentially worthless and people didn't even bother keeping track of wallets.

My argument is this.  Any coins which existed prior to January 13, 2013 are potential zombie coins because they represent a massive multiplier value factor.  Most anyone who owned coins prior that date would have either sold them (to make a 10x profit) or possibly moved them to a newer wallet as a lot of wallet technology and discussion has evolved over this time period.

It would take an enormous amount of willpower not to sell coins which have become worth 10x or more what you originally paid for them or, at least, move them to a more secure wallet technology.

Realize too that I am not simply talking about coins which have been 'cashed out' for fiat; the simple act of moving coins from one wallet to another alone (even if it's a wallet owned by the same person) still shows that these coins are 'alive and well'.

Will we ever guess accurately what percentage of zombie coins are truly dead and which are just in deep storage waiting to come to life again?  I think using some statistical models showing how many come to life over time should allow us to make some informed speculation at least.  My personal guess is that majority of coins that have not changed wallets since prior to January 1, 2013 are likely completely dead/gone/lost destined never to come back to life.  By studying how many of them do rise from the dead, month to month, should give us a reasonable estimate of the rate at which zombie coins rise from the dead.

John

The actual transfer happens at a title company.  You sit in a room with an agent who confirms that the deed is transferred from person (A) to person (B).  At that time, the bitcoin is transferred to my wallet, I wait for confirmation, shake hands, end everyone is happy.

I take it few people in this thread making critical comments have ever bought or sold land.  It's really not that complicated.

John

Can you explain why it is risky?  A bag of cash could be counterfeited, a cashiers check could be fake, but bitcoin to my wallet address is much safer by comparison.  Just what is risky about accepting bitcoin in payment over, say, a bag of cash or a cashier's check?

Do you mean it is risky in that the price of bitcoin is volatile?  I can convert bitcoin to fiat easily enough; I do it all the time.

I would like to add to this, I purchased a 15 acre farm with a 100 year old farmhouse, and barn, based on a hand written note I signed.  No real estate agent was involved.  No title company either.  All I did was go down to the county courthouse and file a document.  I'm not saying I would recommend it, but since I was buying the property from my dad because he was dying of cancer and needed some cash fast, that is what happened.  My point here is this, you do *not* need a real estate agent, an attorney, escrow, or anyone else to sell rural property in the state of Missouri.  You file a transfer of deed document with the county courthouse and that's it.  Done. Sold.

Now, I would not recommend that course of action when selling property between most people. I would strongly recommend that the buyer and seller engage a title company.

I later sold that same property to someone else who saw a sign I stuck in the front yard, without a bank, escrow, real estate agent or anyone other than just a title company to file the paperwork with the county.

What I want to understand is why anyone here thinks you *must* have a real-estate agent, escrow, an attorney, a bank, or anyone else involved to file a sheet of paper with the county courthouse?!?!?

John

Ok, a little bit of background.  I'm 52 years old.  I own around $12,000 worth of bitcoin.  I've been a professional software engineer for over 30 years.  I have written open source bitcoin software.  So, I think I know a little bit about bitcoin.  Second, I have bought and sold numerous properties in my lifetime, some with, and some without, real estate agents; always with a title company to handle the transfer of deed.

I'm curious what do you think I don't understand here?

I have a piece of property.  I own it 100%.  There are no liens of any kind on the property.  I offer it for sale.  For cash or bitcoins.  I don't care.  I could sell it for a nice sports car if I wanted to.  I could sell it for whatever I wish.  It's my property, I can do with it as I please.  The buyer needs to know that the property deed transfers from my possession to theirs without any outstanding liens.  The title company, for a fee, handles this bit of paperwork.  Their interest in the transaction is simply that the deed is clear and that the new owner holds title to the property.  It is none of their concern whether I sold it for bitcoins or a kiss on the cheek.  We are paying them to make sure that the title is clear and changes hands.

So, my question remains, just what is different about paying for property with bitcoins versus dollars, gold bullion, sheep, or a pat on the back?

I can just give my property to someone else, but even then you still have to file the paperwork with the county for the deed transfer to occur.  

Why do I need escrow?  Why do I need a real estate agent?  Why do I need to involve a bank?  All I need is a title company to handle the paperwork.

Selling a few acres of land just isn't that complicated in rural Missouri.  

Since this is a bitcoin discussion forum, the real question at hand is this.  What is the difference between selling real-estate for bitcoin versus a backpack of cash?  Or, are you saying that I can't sell real-estate for a back-pack of cash either?

I've done this a bunch of times before, so please tell me what I'm doing wrong here....

John

I wouldn't expect anyone to buy a piece of property without looking at it first and, most of the time, having the sale takes place in person (though this is not always done, sometimes the buyer just sends a legal representative).  To do a real estate transaction you use a title company to actually finalize the deal.  They will do a deed search to make sure that the property is legally defined, owned by the person who says owns it, and has no liens.  They handle signing the documents and doing the actual legal transfer.  The title deed company gets paid several hundred dollars for this service and is designed to protect both the buyer and seller.  And, with vacant land, these kinds of transactions are much simpler than if a home is involved. 

I never meant that anyone would just send bitcoin to my wallet and expect a deed to the land to show up in the mail.  What I meant is that the transaction could be done without involving banks, or escrow, or real-estate agents, and that is kind of a cool thing.

My question is why do you think doing a real-estate deal with bitcoin would be any different than doing a real-estate deal with a briefcase of cash?  The bitcoin is a tad bit safer I would think.

John

What do you mean?  I own the property outright.  The only thing we have to do is set up a title exchange, there will be some small fee for that, but that's all you need to do.  Because we will be using bitcoin we don't even need escrow or anything.  We just need someone to do the title-deed process.  I've sold property before that I owned outright without real-estate agents, it doesn't have to be that complicated.

John

I don't get all this criticism of coinbase.  People gotta see this through their eyes.  The number of people trying to rip them off must be overwhelming.  I have bought all of my bitcoins through them at competitive prices and, since I'm a long-term investor not a day trader, I haven't had any issues with waiting for my bitcion to come through.  I always get it at the price when I placed the order. I don't know why so many people are so impatient when they must realize that coinbase has to interact with the absolutely obnoxious existing banking system and fiat regulatory environment.

If you want instant gratification of cash for bitcoins, do it in person.

John

I know there are a bunch of you guys sitting on stacks of bitcoins that you bought, probably for $1 apiece, back a few years ago just waiting for something cool to buy with them.  How about this?  Five acres of land in Lake of the Ozarks Missouri with over a $1,000 foot of shoreline all for just 585 bitcoins (relative to today's current exchange rate).

You gotta admit, owning a piece of land that you can build your dream home on with your bitcoin fortune is probably pretty tempting.  No real-estate agent, no nonsense, just a straightforward sale from me to you.  Send 585 bitcoins to my wallet and we will get the title transferred over into your name. 

I've held this property for a number of years, it has relatively low taxes (just about $350 a year).  My wife and I bought it when we originally thought we would build a retirement home there.  However, since then, we have changed our idea of what retirement looks like.

Here's the link to a website I posted with information about the property.  Feel feel to contact me if you have more questions.

http://lake-of-the-ozarks-lakefront-property.blogspot.com/

Yes, she does a wide variety of things.  If you click on the 'video' section you can see her demo reel to get a sense of the range of her work.  As her site grows I figure she will upload a greater variety of pieces.  She just started with that particular series of 'ghost cats'.

Thanks,

John

Here's a serious question.  Anyone who ever used Silk Road (not me) is probably panicking a little bit, wondering if now that the Fed's have the servers whether or not somehow their transactions can be tracked.  Anyone who was a SR user and is cashing out *now* is leaving a trail that the feds could follow.  Wouldn't caution and prudence of an SR user be to *not* move into fiat at this time?

(It's also worth noting that the guy they caught was fairly reckless so it throws in to question how secure SR really was under the hood...)

I store almost all of my bitcoins that I consider a 'long term' investment in paper wallets locked up in a safe.  The blockchain.info website has a great feature that let's you import 'watch' only addresses.  This is great, because you can track what is in your paper wallets and if, should the almost impossible happen, and someone make a transaction using your paper wallet private key you would get an alert notice.

However, there are a couple of key features that I can't seem to find on the site and/or the android app.

(1) I can't see any place where you can assign a human readable text label to these watch only addresses.  That would make the feature a lot more useful.

(2) When you are using the android app it acts like all of the bitcoins are available to spend, including the watch only addresses, but obviously they aren't since you haven't imported the private key.  It would be nice if the app made a clear distinction between the amount available to spend versus the amount stored in watch only addresses.

Anyone know if there is a way to do work around either of these issues?

Thanks,

John

Thanks all for the kind comments.

I've asked this question before and people just suggest I look at the bitcoin days destroyed chart, but that really doesn't display the data the way I would like to see it.

Here is what I'm interested in seeing.  Let's pick a point before when bitcoin started exploding in value; let's say around January of this year.

Here's what I want to know.  What are the total number of bitcions which have not had any transactions since that time; the outstanding 'hibernating' coins.

I would like to see a graph of the number of coins 'in hibernation' over time since then.

I know that 'days destroyed' somehow or another is supposed to kind of show this, but I would like to just see a straight graph of 'hibernating coins' over time since then.

So, on January 1, 2013 it would be around 10.5million btc and then the graph would go down to whatever it is today, representing coins which are still in hibernation.  I figure any coins which have changed hands this year are more or less 'alive' and the ones which didn't move since the beginning of this year are either (a) lost or (b) somebody is sitting on a pretty big treasure chest.  It would take a lot of will-power not to sell coins you bought at pre-2013 prices at pretty much any time the rest of this year.

If anyone knows how to produce such a graph I would be very interested in seeing it.

Thanks,

John

My daughter just launched a website to sell some of her art prints and I convinced her to start accepting Bitcoin as payment.  Her website uses 'Shopify' as the checkout service and they do not yet support Bitcoin directly.  Apparently a lot of people have been asking for this feature though.

In the meantime, if you want to buy one of her reasonably priced prints, just go through the whole checkout process and on the final page you will be able to pay with Bitcoin to her coinbase account.  However...because it's not totally integrated into the shopping cart system yet you will have to select the correct amount, it's not automatic.

Instead of just gambling your bitcoin away, and once you have eaten all of the Bee's Brothers honey products that you can, why not feed your soul with a little bit of artwork?

Thanks to anyone who visits the site.

http://laurenratcliff.com/collections/shop

Her artists demo reel is here:

http://laurenratcliff.com/collections/motion/products/animation-reel

If it's any help to anyone else.  I 'fixed' this by uninstalling the Android bitcoin wallet, then reinstalled it, and then imported my backup wallet.  Once it synced back up fully I was able to 'spend' my coins again.  I don't know how/why it got into that 'stuck' state.

However, I would still like to know how you could import the encrypted android wallet into *another* wallet application.  Maybe that's not possible, but it would be a nice feature to have.

Thanks,

John

I've been using the Android Wallet app for quite some time without any problems.  But, today, when I went to use it, it won't let me send any of my bitcoins.  I generally keep no more than about $100 worth of BTC on my phone at any given time, but still that's money I would rather not lose if necessary.

It shows how much BTC I have (0.49) but if I try to send money it says 'Available for Spending : BTC 0.00 : (BTC 0.49 waiting for confirmation)

If it's 'waiting' it's been waiting for a long time as I haven't used the app for quite a while.

Not sure how to get this kick-started again.

There is an option to 'backup' your encryption keys, which is nice, and I've done that, however, there are no instructions on how to load it into another app??  I tried doing google searches to find an answer to this question and I couldn't.

If I take the encrypted wallet file that it 'backed up', can I just copy it to my Bitcoin-QT directory and rename it as 'wallet.dat' and get access to it that way?  Is there some other app which can load this backed up wallet file?

This is with using the standard Bitcoin Android wallet app.

Any ideas how to get my $60 'unstuck' would be appreciated.

Thanks,

John

Reading this thread can be kind of amusing to a long-term bitcoin investor.

I'm sure there is a lot of fun (and profit) to be made day-trading bitcoin (or anything else I guess), but I've never done that, nor have I ever even attempted to do so.  It's just not my thing. I do play a game of poker socially from time to time and that's about as close as I get.

That said, I am still a bitcoin 'investor'.  I own a measly 100 bitcoins. My average buy price was at $100 apiece, that's 10k, which is a decent chunk of change to me.

I have only bought bitcoins, I have never sold them.

My intention is to sell my coins in about 2-5 years when I expect them to be either (A) worth at least a couple of times what I paid or (B) worthless.  I suppose I could make additional money day trading but, as I said, that's not my interest or expertise.  I got a day job I gotta feed.

I would also like to use them to buy stuff, but this reveals an interesting psychology about bitcoin.  

While you day traders churn the price for your entertainment and profit, it can make someone a little leery about using it as a 'currency' to buy things if their purchase also represents a loss.  

So far I haven't actually 'lost' any money because I haven't sold any coins.  I will only ever lose money if I sell them below the average $100 price I paid for them.  But, if I use my bitcoin as a currency to actually buy something when the price is below a $100, then I *am* 'losing money' on that purchase.  I would rather use fiat to buy it than realize the loss on my 'investment'.  

The idea that bitcoin is both an investment/speculation and a currency at the same time can sometimes seem a bit schizophrenic.

I had this thought the other day when people were freaking out about the most recent 'crash'.

"Freaking out because the price of bitcoin rises or falls on any given day is like freaking out about your Apple stock because Steve Jobs yelled at Wozniak in 1980."

See ya all in about 2-5 years......