As far as I can tell, the Forum Admins (sirius, theymos, and gavinandresen) have yet to post official guidelines on using the Reputation system. Please provide a link if I'm mistaken!

In my opinion, reputation should be based solely on quality posts vs. non-quality posts.

A quality post should possess some of the following attributes:

• contributes to discussion
• on-topic
• well-organized
• thoughtful
• interesting

Non-quality posts could be described as one or more of the following:

• troll
• flamebait
• off-topic
• illegible -- hurts my brain to read it

Basically, we should be striving for a higher signal-to-noise ratio. I've seen a lot of threads get derailed by off-topic conversations and emotional disagreements where the same points just get repeated over and over by a small handful of users. It's time-consuming to read through and puts a damper on meaningful discussion. If users were aware that they might lose points, they might think about starting a new thread or requesting a moderator to split them from the original thread.

It would also be great to provide a comment for a +1 or -1. If someone bothered to embed a URL to an article they mention in a post, you should be able to say, "thanks for the link to X -- good read!". When people know their effort is appreciated, they'll keep putting in that effort.

I think this could really improve the quality of discussion on these forums, but we'll need the admins to officially define guidelines for using reputation. Otherwise it will be meaningless.

So:

9050.03
+   0.05
--------
9050.08

I've executed some trades on bitcoin2cash.com without any issues. I've also withdrawn and deposited funds reliably. Sending cash took longer than I expected, but when I inquired by email I had a response within 24 hours (funds may take 2-7 days to reach an account).

Overall, I've had a very positive experience with bitcoin2cash.com and would recommend it. I increased my OTC rating to 2 this morning. Thanks and keep up the good work!

Technically, I think your Newbie status is based on how many forum posts you have made. Non-technically, posting an off-topic question like that makes you a newbie no matter how many posts you have 

The only restriction that I can think of is that Dwolla can only be attached to US banking accounts. Dwolla is also pretty new, so I'm not sure how mature their API is for automated transactions.

That said, I've used Dwolla to buy MTGUSD from traders on #bitcoin-otc and have been very pleased with the results. Definitely more appealing than setting up a Liberty Reserve account, in my opinion.

Would you consider accepting Stanley Nickels in exchange for your Schrute Bucks? 

How about going the opposite direction? Instead of removing shady merchants from bitcoin.it and expecting them to set up their own directory, why not just set up your own directory for non-shady merchants? Since this would be a new unofficial directory, you (or whomever has the initiative to set it up) can make the rules.

There's been a lot of debate about how much shady merchants hurt the image of the bitcoin community, but it's really a lot of hypothetical speculation on all of our parts (does anyone have concrete evidence one way or another?). What we need is an empirical test. If there really is an advantage to separating advertising for "legit" businesses apart from shady ones, then this new directory should surpass bitcoin.it and eventually obtain "official" status. Instead of debating endlessly on this forum, let's put the two ideas in direct competition with each other!

If you want a "City on the Hill", go find a Hill and build your own City!

Right. In general, I'm anti-censorship (especially on the internet). I think everyone has the right to have opinions and that trying to prevent the free flow of ideas is a Bad Thing. However, the wiki is a knowledge base. So filtering certain things out (not just drugs but all illegal activity) is not really censorship in my mind. This forum is the place for opinions, and I think that it should remain uncensored.

You and I are open-minded enough that we aren't put off by seeing illegal activity advertised on the wiki. But nothing we can do will change the fact that there are people who will get offended and bolt at first sign. I think you're arguing that we shouldn't really care about people like that adopting Bitcoin at this point. And that it's more important to attract people who understand the benefits of bitcoins whether they be alpaca farmers or meth dealers. However, I think removing drugs from the wiki will attract some "puritans" without losing any meth dealers. Win-win.

This hits home for me. I voted "Yes" because it was the right decision, but I'd change my vote to "No" because I'm now convinced its the smart decision.


This is pure speculation on my part, but I don't think that removing drug markets from the bitcoin wiki is going to have a big effect on the drug trade. I think that bitcoins offer a huge advantage over other currencies for black and gray market trading. The potential is so great, that I think sellers will still be able to attract buyers without being advertised on the wiki (through other means: forums, IRC channels, word-of-mouth, etc...).

Removing drugs markets from the wiki will not stop people from buying drugs with bitcoins (and I don't think it will really hurt sales, either), but it will give bitcoins a broader appeal. I think the benefit outweighs the cost in this case.

Could the 511.214 BTC sell order have been leftover from a larger dark pool order?

For example, Alice places a dark pool order to sell 2000 BTC at 1.6.
Bob places a dark pool order to buy 1488.786 BTC at 1.6.
Bob's order is immediately fulfilled and leaves a leftover dark pool sell order of 511.214 at 1.6.
Charlie places a dark pool order to buy 1000 BTC at 1.65.
Charlie's order is partially filled by Alice's sell order leaving a leftover dark pool order of 488.786 BTC at 1.65.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that! If I was having a bad day, I might flip the guy the bird and walk away, too. However, I wouldn't claim that I was acting in a rational manner.

In colloquial conversation, "rational" is often used to mean, "not crazy". In economics, "rational" has a stricter meaning. A rational actor is someone who will reliably act in his own self-interest given the information at hand and make decisions unemotionally. When I think of a rational actor, I think of Spock (Nimoy not Quinto).

I think Spock would accept $10 without question. Kirk, on the other hand, might take your route. Is Kirk wrong and Spock right? No! There's no right or wrong in this question. But only one of them is acting rationally (at least from an economist's point of view).

PS The fact that a rational actor is well represented by a fictional inhuman alien can explain why economists' predictions are sometimes way off base. Real people don't act rationally all the time! We're highly illogical.

Your definitions of "rational" and "self-interest" are questionable.

If someone was offered $10 for doing nothing, it would be irrational and not in his own interest to reject the offer (unless accepting the money would somehow be a burden on him).

Taking $10 is a direct benefit to you -- it's greedy, in a sense. Rejecting $10 is only in your self-interest if the pleasure you'd gain from another's suffering is of more value than $10... which would classify you as a sadomasochist ...not that there's anything wrong with that.

I think it's doubtful that you're a sadomasochist. More likely, you feel the need to teach a stranger a lesson for dealing you a perceived injustice. I think that's a natural response, but ultimately futile. In my experience, trying to teach a faceless stranger a lesson is like pissing into the wind.

I would accept your offer for $10, estevo.

I find the phrasing of the problem interesting. "She will give us $5000" is very important. Before hearing the rest of the problem, I'm inclined to feel like I'm about to receive $2500. When it turns out that I stand to receive $10 at the most, my immediate reaction is to feel cheated and insulted. I think this is a very irrational, but understandably human reaction. However, this is only because of an artificial feeling of entitlement. I didn't do anything to deserve any of that money, so why should I be upset?

In the end I think I'd realize that $10 can buy a 6 pack of good beer and that that's better than nothing.

Lesser amounts might change my decision, however. My rejection wouldn't necessarily be out of spite (which has been discussed here already), but because smaller amounts of money can't buy me much. For instance, $1 doesn't even get me a gallon of gas -- it's a waste of time for me to stand around talking with strangers for so little.

In the end, I think it just comes down to answering, "How much is $10 worth to you?". As an American with Australian roots, I tend to value money in relation to gas (USA) and beer (Australia). $10 can get me a useful amount of either 

Fair enough! I'd be willing to pay no more than 100 BTC, but 6 times out of 10 I'd pay via USD over BTC if given the option. Why? Because my income is in USD. Every bitcoin I own was converted from USDm -- which is a non-trivial process at the moment.

I found this statement interesting. I didn't understand why anyone would elect to pay more than 100 BTC. Then I realized that this makes sense for bitcoin earners -- consumers who gain bitcoins as income (ie miners). Bitcoin earners may be willing to pay a premium for the privilege of using BTC because it saves them from converting to USD or other currencies.

Not exactly. I'm looking for a discount (is 5% considered "steep"?) because I'm the flipside of a bitcoin earner; I'm a bitcoin buyer. If bitcoin earners are willing to pay more for convenience, then bitcoin buyers are willing to pay less for inconvenience. The earner can avoid exchanging currency by paying in BTC, but the buyer has already jumped through a few hoops to pay with BTC.

So as a merchant, you might ask yourself, "Are my target consumers predominantly bitcoin eaners (miners and other bitcoin merchants) or bitcoin buyers (everyone else)?"

Really? I agree that converting bitcoins to USD is non-trivial, but is it really expensive? CoinCard will buy BTC at market price for a transaction fee of 1.5% plus $1. One of the cool things about bitcoins is that there are very few barriers to entry. You don't have to be a Wall Street firm to set up an account on Mt Gox and convert bitcoins into USD at market price (0.65% transaction fee). There is a standing order on bitcoin-otc to buy MTGOX USD for 0.99 in return for Dwolla (1% fee). With a little effort, a merchant could convert BTC to USD at market price and pay 1.65% in conversion fees to get it into his bank account whilst building a good reputation on the web-of-trust.

I've also seen many users on this forum advocate the importance of setting up local bitcoin exchanges. A particularly motivated entrepreneur could elect to sell bitcoins face-to-face in his local community and convert BTC to USD at higher than market price. Bitcoin.local was set up for this very reason. Not only can a merchant convert bitcoins to USD cheaply (essentially a negative exchange fee), but he's also helping bitcoins get into the hands of more potential buyers.

You're right! It doesn't make any sense to sacrifice profits to avoid fees. What I meant to say was, "Would you sacrifice a higher cost (credit card fees) to pay a lower cost (conversion fees)?" My assumption is that converting bitcoins to USD is cheaper than paying Mastercard and Visa. If that assumption is right, wouldn't it make sense for merchants to pass on some of their savings to their customers? If that assumption is wrong, then bitcoins are not a viable alternative for merchants to do business (this seems to be your forgone conclusion).

"Bastard" is a poll choice? What does that mean? 

What I failed to convey was that merchants who accept bitcoins believe that BTC are a viable alternative to other payment methods. At any given point, a certain amount of their capital is locked up in bitcoins. Like you said, some of their bitcoins will have to be converted quickly to pay expenses, but if they're making a profit they can afford not to convert everything into USD. Bitcoins are undervalued at 1 BTC per 1 USD exchange rate. As a merchant builds up profits in bitcoins they should be expected to gradually gain value in relation to traditional currencies like the dollar. This is long-term potential.

Didn't you just say it's expensive to convert between USD and BTC? If bitcoins are a better way of doing business, then they will gain strength over USD over time. In that case, it's better to be a bitcoin earner rather than a bitcoin buyer.

I hope you're wrong, too! Merchants who accept bitcoins right now are "true believers" in some sense, but I don't think any of them would take bitcoins if they weren't in some way better than other payment methods (by better I don't mean in the "screw the Fed" sense or the "open source is cool" sense, but in the "I can avoid some PayPal hassle" sense). Your fear seems to be that it's expensive to convert bitcoins into traditional currency. I think I've outlined some good counter-arguments to that. But I think what we really need is for some actual Bitcoin merchants to weigh in on this thread and explain why they chose to accept bitcoins and explain how that's worked out for them so far.

I'd pay 95 BTC, too. Bitcoin is a new currency, so I think the onus is on the merchant to encourage buyers to use it over traditional currencies. This model is being used by Blue Canary Night Light who offer a 10% discount for buyers that pay BTC rather than USD.

At this stage, I think it's safe to assume that merchants accept bitcoins for at least one of the two following reasons:

• Bitcoins are more convenient for merchants than other payment methods (credit cards, PayPal, etc)
• They see long-term potential in the future of Bitcoins

Would you sacrifice some of your profit margin if it meant you didn't have to deal with credit card service fees and PayPal chargebacks? I would. I also think that 1 BTC will be worth more than 1 USD in the long-term, so I'd be willing to lose a little short-term profit now for long-term gain later.

Buyers won't catch on to new innovations unless sellers offer some sort of promotion or incentive for them to move out of their comfort zone.

This strikes me as very bad. I'm new to #bitcoin-otc, but if someone publicly admits that their GPG password is weak, that raises a red flag in my mind. If your password is easily crackable, does your web-of-trust rating actually mean anything?

If I talk to nster on #bitcoin-otc how do I know it's the real nster and not an impersonator? Does a challenge string clearsigned with nster's public key actually prove his identity? No. Not if I know that nster's private key is protected by a passphrase that can be brute-forced in only 8⁶ attempts.

Of course, I don't know that nster's passphrase is really that weak. The owner of the nster account on this forum is not necessarily the owner of the nster GPG key on #bitcoin-otc. For all I know, the OP is impersonating nster and trying to tarnish his web-of-trust rating.

I'm not trying to be hostile or antagonistic, so I apologize if I'm coming off that way. I guess I'm just trying to say that you're not going to gain any credibility among crypto-nerds by advertizing how weak your GPG passphrase is. Your public key is your identity. Protect it.

If you're comfortable with mailing cash to Canada, you might want to check out Bitcoin 4 Cash. It's run by TheMadHatter, a trusted member of the Bitcoin community.

I think "completely futile" is not a bad starting point. Like you said:

I haven't dived into the source code yet, but I imagine it wouldn't take too much tinkering to modify the standard client so that it could attempt a double-spend on the testnet. I think a developer could do this without too much effort. Conceptually, a Bitcoin network should be able to repel a double-spend, but someone should start gathering empirical data at some point (if the white hats don't get there first, the black hats surely will).

What happens when one node attempts a double-spend? What happens when multiple nodes are coordinated in a double-spend? How many bad nodes does it take for a double-spend to succeed (if any)? I think these questions have theoretical answers, but maybe its time to start gathering some hard data.

Keep us up to date if you decide to create something like this. I, for one, would be interested in what you find out. If I have time, I might like to help out. In any case, it sounds like a fun way to start getting familiar with the standard Bitcoin source code.

According to block explorer, your transaction was 12.111 kB (13 kB rounded up). According to the wiki, the standard Bitcoin client (0.3.20) will include 0.01 BTC per kB as automatic transaction fee. If you're code savvy, you can modify your client's default rules so that it doesn't apply the transaction fee, but your transaction may not go through until a block is created by a miner who is also not following the default rules.

What I don't understand is why your transaction was so big. At cursory glance, it looks like your transaction was aggregated from 90 addresses that each sent about 1 BTC. However, there are only 4 unique sending addresses involved:

• 1. 16u5Tq1A5sQhGF3C1M9aMQvjXb25NyTsrZ
• 2. 1BY19SCbjrbi8wtFnbMvC81R7cw5hnRQvv
• 3. 1BvzaqfYgTE1fkG5F6Nspw4wtnERGMwjAJ
• 4. 1KcfkMACYPCNxhFtAtEEZSH6JGqDoZtcq1

The majority of the transaction (71.14 BTC) came from the first address. Can anyone explain why that address was recorded seventy times in one transaction, instead of just once with the lump sum of 71.14 BTC?

Block 118197

If you really think it would be useful to have a program like this, put your bitcoins where your mouth is! Define some requirements and offer a bounty. Encourage others to contribute to your bounty and eventually a developer might take up the challenge and deliver.

If you end up going this route, you might want to consider moving this thread to the Project Development Forum. This is typically where users discuss bounties. There's also a wiki page.