https://www.westernunion.com/track-transfer?0

Also, I want to add that because this isn't anonymous,  it might not satisfy some of those on here who desire a totally anonymous system. However,  a large portion of the population really doesn't care.

Just don't do bitcoin transactions face to face in a big city. Big city police departments are the ones with all the time and resources to set up stings for prostitution,  drugs, bitcoins,  etc. Podunk towns with two cops don't have time to bother with setting up stings. That said, I wouldn't trade bitcoins at a dunkin donuts for that matter.

Google jury nullification.

There have been mention of a few flaws in your concept, mainly the possibility of a trader holding currency hostage. Since BTC is irreversible, it stands to reason that it should not transfer to the buyer's wallet until the seller receives his cash. There is going to be a lot of concerned buyers who will be too scared that the seller won't deliver or that they hold the BTC hostage, thus stopping many transactions from ever occurring. It takes a great leap of faith to wire funds to someone without being sure they will deliver.

I don't think escrow has to rely on SSLs, statements, etc. If you review what I wrote, you will see that the escrow gets what it needs from the parties to the sale. The seller of BTC would provide the info to receive the funds such as what Western Union requires. The buyer provides the information such as MTCN with information that matches the seller's name, WU agent location, etc. The escrow agent simply needs to verify this data. Since my idea incorporates multiple random escrow agents per transaction, it isn't subject to exploit by a single escrow agent working on behalf of one of the parties.

As far as Bitcoin removing the need for money transmitters like Western Union, I don't agree that this has to be the case. There has to be a way to get fiat into Bitcoin that makes fiat irreversible. Western Union already has locations worldwide and they provide a way for a person to receive cash that is irreversible. If they become less relevant as a transmitter because of the growth of Bitcoin, they can still adapt to the new market. They could very easily incorporate a way to directly buy bitcoin from them, essentially becoming an exchange and providing a trusted centralized option for those holdouts who don't trust p2p. Also, I don't like the idea of bank wire, no matter how many people say they are irreversible. Truth is, as long as a person gets money deposited in their account, their own bank can screw them and take the money back out and send it back. It might not be the pattern of business currently, but there is no shortage of stories where banks and other financial services screwed their clients. With Western Union, you can get cash without having an account that they jack the money out of and send it to collections when you take a principled stand against them.

I understand your concern about escrows. I wish they weren't needed. However, escrow provides a way for the buyer to be assured that the seller can't hold back the BTC. Each transaction is separately verified and the disposition of BTC is already pre-determined based on the escrow review. The parties to the transaction commit to the terms of escrow when they open the transaction. Escrow terms can be pre-defined such as whole release of BTC, percentage release, or no release based on the results of verification.

Too much current draw off the mobo for those two cards possibly. You should get powered riser cards. Search on here for a guy selling 1x-16x powered usb pcie riser cards.

You might need a dummy plug if windows is idling that second card. Is it the card that isnt connected to the monitor that is dropping down?

roughly 98%

I'm just thinking out loud here but maybe something can come of this.

Western Union has a way to send cash to their agent locations. These transactions can by picked up in cash by a person by simply presenting the MTCN (Money Transaction Control Number) along with ID at the agent location. Once cash is picked up, it is obviously not reversible. There's a period of about 3 days for the cash funds to be available for pickup. The downside is having to show ID.

My thinking is that there still needs to be an escrow system that works anonymously. The escrow system can rely on mining for escrow fees. A not-yet-solvable block can be created once Bob deposits BTC plus escrow fee and enters his first and last name. In order to be solved, additional information has to be input from the transaction. When Alice sends the Western Union Three Day payment, she gets a MTCN from Western Union. She then enters that MTCN into the client, the country it was sent to, and amount. She also must enter a BTC address to receive the BTC when the block is solved. Once that information is entered, A waiting period of 96 hours is created. This creates time for Bill to obtain the cash, making the fiat transfer irreversible. The escrow system encrypts all the information and checks Western Union online to verify the MTCN is valid and the receiver matches, etc. If it all matches, then the block becomes solvable. Once solved, the btc gets paid to the bitcoin address supplied by Alice. The escrow fee gets divvied up amongst those who solve the block.

This solution would have to integrate well with checking Western Union online. This might require people to do this manually. In that case it adds an actual human work component to the escrow system. Now of course, a person might just say yes or no to whether the transaction information on Western Union's website matches the information in the block. To facilitate this, I think several people would have to confirm the transaction. If your confirmation or rejection of the transaction doesn't match with the other transaction checkers, you lose points. Lose enough and escrows won't be assigned to you anymore. Truthful responses will be rewarded with small amounts of points, leading to more escrow verifications coming your way. Those who verify blocks, leading to them being solved, get a portion of the escrow fees.


I'm not a programmer and don't fully understand how blocks, etc., work so this might be full of flaws. Hopefully, not so many that it is useless even as a beginning concept.

What percentage of US Dollars were pickpocketed at some time?

Since Overstock uses a payment processor to accept bitcoins, essentially removing any risk of loss, they are not being hit by this downtrend. Well, except for any holdings in BTC that they possess. However, that was not a requirement in order to be able to accept BTC.

There are probably a few merchants that were taking a wait-and-see approach to getting on board with accepting Bitcoin. When they see that it is possible to accept Bitcoin even through a halving of the currency's value without risk of loss, they may be willing to start accepting BTC. You can't really do that with US dollars or any fiat currency for that matter. If the Fed Reserve decides to double the Dollar money supply overnight, merchants would have to double their prices. Since the payment processor takes on the risk of sudden fluctuations instead of the merchant and calculates the amount of BTC needed, the merchant will weather these types of storms without having to concern themselves with BTC's changing value.

I think merchant adoption rates will depend on how Overstock does through this downtrend, and it appears they are doing just fine.

If you want to mine, here is a simple way:

Get GUIMiner-scrypt https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150331.0
Very easy to use and it has presets for a lot of cards. Get the required downloads off that link.

Get multibit wallet. https://multibit.org/ and create a bitcoin wallet address

Mine on middlecoin pool http://www.middlecoin.com/ It's real easy to mine on with guiminer-scrypt. Just paste your bitcoin address and any password you make up into guiminer-scrypt and if you have a card that matches one of their presets, use the preset and off you go. Then just learn how to tweak settings and you will get a better hashrate.

This is essentially what I'm doing and I've managed to get my hashrate within 1khash of the top listed hash for my card here:  https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison

My recommendation is to not even bother with the nvidia card for mining. You could use that one for your display graphics and get a better gpu for mining. Best card for mining seems to be AMD HD7950 as it offers a high amount of hashes on a low power consumption.

If you decide to get a better gpu, you will need a new power supply because it seems that computer has only a 280 watt psu. Most cards recommend you having a 500w psu but you might even need a 750w. Your dell specs show the pcie slot to be 1 PCIe x16 full height graphics, -(H: 4.2" X L: 9") so make sure any card you buy fits within that. I would leave the cover off the case to not trap heat.

You should use powered risers and plug them in.

A typical house outlet in the usa is 120v and protected by a 20 amp breaker. That's about 2400 watts, or 2.4kw. That outlet is usually one of several in a branch of outlets. You have to factor for other loads besides your miner on that circuit. Total up all the watts on that branch circuit by turning off the breaker and seeing which outlets go dead and measure the watts consumed by each of those devices. While most properly wired homes have wiring that can handle 2x the breaker rating in terms of amperage,  you should not plug in more than 80% load for what that breaker is rated.

For a high drain device like a miner, it would be a good idea to have a dedicated outlet installed for it. If you go that route,  have the electrician run 12/4 wiring and put in two breakers and break the little metal tab off on the back of the electrical outlet. This will give you two dedicated circuits at one outlet for about 4800 watts.

As the ocean gets bigger, there is less fish per square mile. With just a pole in a large, ever-growing ocean, a small fisher won't catch enough fish to pay for his pole.

Then again, if you like to fish for fun instead of money,  then have at it.

Thanks. I figure not being a fool plays into it as well. I'm pretty web-savvy. I even alerted on here about a  mtgox phishing site buying sponsored ad space on google to try and get people who clicked on there instead of the real gox.

Mining bitcoins is a lot like fishing.  It starts out with hearing stories of people catching lots of fish and and selling them for lots of money and then you think you should do it too.

Try to imagine a small lake with about 21,000,000 fish. The first people to fish it were getting lots of fish but the fish weren't worth a lot of money yet either. Suddenly, the value of the fish goes up and now more people show up to fish. However, to keep too many fish from being caught too quickly,  the size of the lake adjusts every two weeks. Since the lake keeps getting bigger and bigger, the fishermen start using better tackle and more poles. Eventually,  they buy boats and trawlers, nets, etc. The lake is now an ocean. Soon, fishermen put their resources together to catch more fish and split the profits. All the while, the ocean keeps expanding, making fishing difficult for anyone who doesn't have the means to buy fancy boats, etc.

Enter your plans to mine:

You decide to get in on the fishing because the fish keep going up in value. Online you find a tiny boat and pole and buy them. Well, the local fishermen are fine with you joining their pool of resources but you quickly find out that your split of the fish isn't that much because you are only a small boat and pole, while they are bringing up large nets full of fish. If only you had the equipment they did. Then you come to the realization that your boat has been consuming gas this whole time. Well, you sell some of the fish you got but it isn't enough for gas...

That is bitcoin mining in a nutshell. If you can't afford the fancy trawlers, don't expect to catch much fish now.

Why not just buy some of the fish now and wait for the price to go up?

A password I've created shows on howsecureismypassword.net to need about 4000 years to crack on a desktop pc. Is that strong enough or should it be made stronger?

The dollar was doomed in 1913 with passage of the Federal Reserve Act.