I see the us= and them=  being 0.0.0.0.  That will normally show the external address, but if you have no WAN access, that would explain that.


The current block looks to be pretty close to being caught up (199,878) ... was that because you brought over a current blockchain?   Or perhaps is this problem intermittent where sometimes it is getting new blocks?

It looks like you are using Bitcoin.org client v0.7 on the wallet holding machine.  What version on the gateway machine?

Also, does your bitcoin.conf on each have anything regarding networking?

This is something I can't easily set up to try to replicate -- perhaps someone else can confirm that v0.7 has no problem connecting to a local peer when it has no external/WAN connectivity.

When you exchange cash when making a purchase from a store, you can then walk out seconds later with the item you purchased because the merchant now has the cash you gave in exchange.  A piece of paper used as cash can only exist in one place or another -- either in your purse or wallet, or in the merchant's cash register.  It cannot exist in both at any one piont in time.    There's no legal way that you can spend that cash at more than one store.  Cash then, cannot be double spent (excluding, of course, where cash is illegally being counterfeited).

Electronic cash accounting systems, such as those used by a bank, emulate that.  Before you withdraw cash at an ATM, your bank's accounting system will check to see the balance held in your account.  At the moment your withdrawal is processed, your account it debited.  That happens instantly rather than overnight or the next day because the the bank doesn't want to risk that you would visit another ATM and be able to withdraw more funds than you had in your account.  With that being instant, it prevents you from double spending funds from your bank balance.  In that way, the banks electronic cash systems emulate physical cash.

If there is a dispute, such as if the ATM thinks it spit out cash, but a malfunction resulted in no cash actually coming out, then the bank investigates and when warranted makes a correcting entry to the customer account.  The bank is the authority there.  The bank asserts "the truth" as far as its customer's account balances.

Bitcoin's architecture is such that there is no bank or anyone else with the authority to adjust balances.  There is no central authority.  The truth is determined from the consensus of computing work performed by miners who follow a specific protocol.    That computing work builds the Bitcoin blockchain.

When you first make a Bitcoin transaction and that transaction is broadcast to the network, "the truth" has not yet been established.  With Bitcoin's decentralized architecture, this consensus needs to form after your transaction gets included in a block and a chain of additional blocks extend from that.  At any point in time there could be two or more solved blocks at the same level in the blockchain competing to win this consensus.  At the time, there is no way to know which block will eventually attain consensus as being "the truth" and which blocks will lose support and become orphaned.

Only after the chain of blocks is extended with enough additional blocks on top is it then known which of the potentially competing blocks attained consensus and became "the truth".  The mathematics of the protocol show it to be safe to accept as "the truth" a block from the longest chain that occurred five or more blocks prior.  A block extended with five further blocks will show a total of six confirmations.

A Bitcoin exchange, just like your bank, cannot be exposed to the risk of double spending.  It will credit your account for the transfer of your funds only after it knows for sure "the truth", and thus it must ignore any blocks until they are part of the longest chain and have six or more confirmations.


Here is an interactive diagram that goes through the technical details of a Bitcoin transaction:

 - http://staging.spectrum.ieee.org/static/how-a-bitcoin-transaction-works


And here's the static image from that:



 - http://spectrum.ieee.org/img/06Bitcoin-1338412974774.jpg

Public service message:


 - http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/Using_bitcoin-otc#Risk_of_fraud

Does the gateway peer possibly have Windows firewall blocking incoming ports?

Can you telnet to it?  e.g,

 telnet 192.168.2.2 8333
If that cannot connect, then neither can the bitcoin client from your wallet holding machine.

At the time you didn't know the BTC/USD would rise from $5 to over $12.

But we do know what is happening in about 70 days -- the block reward subsidy drops by half in under a millisecond.

Maybe that cost $50 million to do, depending on how quickly these one million BTC were bought.  Which puts the BTC/USD exchange rate near $75, let's say.


So in the next 24 hours, 7,200 BTC of new supply arrives.  That is worth $540,000.   Presumably, miners absolutely thrilled with their newfound wealth will take out every bid that they can find.   And the price will start to drop.  Which will cause others to realize it isn't going up any more, and they sell.  And with no buyers ... the snowball back down turns into an avalanche.


Yup.


When the millionaires were buying.  Yup.




So then what do these millionaires do?   Well, what was the reason for buying the BTCs ... just to have them as a reserve in case bitcoins future goes well?  They sit on them then.       If instead they bought them as an investment, then they do what Intel does for its chips (invests in startups that do lots of computing requiring lots of CPUs), or does what Google does for its ads (invests in startups that generate new search and ad revenues), or what the financial industry does (pays K Street lobbyists to make it accepted as a parallel currency).  [They'ld probably have a lot more than $50M on the line though to even consider doing that.]

I think this thread is getting to be like one of those IRC conversation where people see answers to other people's questions and get confused thinking those answers were to their own questions.


Blockchain.info, can use yubikey.  If you lose the yubikey Blockchain.info can remove that restriction after you verify that you are truly the account owner (not sure how,... same IP as last, and sent to same e-mail address maybe?)  

As far as blockchain.info backup, that can be sent to your e-mail or to your dropbox each time it changes.   It is encrypted,. You can use that backup to spend your funds, but it isn't necessarily convenient.   Multibit will import a wallet backup from Blockchain.info I believe.  That backup does not require Yubikey, regardless if you had OTP/Yubikey protection enabled for login.

[I'm pretty sure on all this, not 100%]

Well, for Barclay's customers In the UK., yes.  For small amounts, it might be the cheapest way too (3.5% fee, rather than a fixed amount like a bank transfer requires.)

If I just created an account but entered an address that had previous transactions, should that appear in the chart?

If so, it isn't appearing for me.

Well, there are two separate things you might be misunderstanding.

Until block 210,000 (around the end of November), about 7,200 BTC are issued each and every day.  That doesn't matter if there are two thousand mini rigs operating or twenty thousand, they all are competing for the exact same 7,200 BTC that are issued.   Now that 7,200 number can fluctuate a little ,,,  if mining goes up 10%, there might be closer to 8.000 but then as soon as difficulty readjusts (in under two weeks at most) the rate goes right back to 7,200 BTC per day.

The second thing you stated was that as new supply rises you suspect demand rises as well.    Demand rises at a lower price.  So if there is someone wanting to sell aggressively, likely there will be more bitcoins bought at the lower price than would be bought at the higher price.  That is standard price elasticity, and demand for bitcoins is elastic based on price.


Ah ..., yes, there could be other reasons the price might go up.  You had made it sound like the difficulty going up also meant the exchange rate would go up and many miners get caught up with that misconception.

If the issuer reports financials, they would probably net the customers with debit balances with the amount from customers with credit balances and report a single amount on their assets side (e.g., as a receivable).  i.e., it probably is such a small amount that they can report it net, and not break it out on their balance sheet.

But who knows.
 


I've no idea.  Each time the issuer pays to settle a customer charte, that amount either comes from their capital or they borrow,   I would suspect your overpayment simply means they use less capital or borrow less as a result.     Maybe they put it into a separate account, ... I doubt it though.  

Yes.  I don't know if bitcoin-qt is in the path in windows where you can just run it from anywhere.  Try opening a command prompt, then:


If that doesn't work, you may need to first cd to the directory where the Bitcoin program reside.  (e.g., \Users\[your username]\Program Files\Bitcoin).

Maybe some Windows user here can give specific instruction.

It is probably such a minimal amount it isn't even worth tracking.

If the card is being used, the credit balance from the overpayment is reduced with each charge.

I read that with American Express if for a third month in a row there is a credit balance on the statement a check gets cut to bring the balance to zero.

You can PM me if you'ld like to know more.

Incidentally, these have all confirmed now .

The Ben Bernank says exactly that:



 - http://www.zerohedge.com/news/punchline-his-own-words-bernanke-advocates-blowing-asset-bubbles-antidote-depression

But consumers actually have to believe they are more wealthy.  Here's another recent article on that very topic:

 - http://www.zerohedge.com/news/retail-investors-just-say-no-bernankes-artificial-wealth-effect

My bank charges me a small but aggravating fee every month for me to store my cash with them so that I can withdraw it at an ATM every so often.  Apparently they charge this for all their customers who don't have large balance, rather than based on having a 100+ IQ.  But we all seem to accept it and keep paying.

FYI:

Trading has resumed.

 - https://bitfloor.com/market_data

ING is still listed as a deposit method.

There are people with concerns though as to the approach BitFloor is taking as there are accountholders who are being denied access to their funds, which may put other customer's funds at risk as well.

These ASICs are special-purpose, bleeding-edge technology that is depending the success of a paradigm-shifting innovation -- decentralized digital currency.

If you want guarantees, consider looking elsewhere.



Yup.

In 70 days, the block reward is going to drop from 50 BTC to 25 BTC, or about $43,000 per day worth of bitcoins issued at the current exchange rate.

Competing for those $43K worth are existing GPU miners, existing FPGA miners, new FPGA miners (and maybe a couple new GPU miners where electricity is cheap or free) , and a few ... well, more than a few ... perhaps a ton, of ASIC miners:

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#ASICs

Nobody knows whose will be first.

This is a question specific to Litecoin mining.  If you weren't aware, there is an Alternate Cryptocurrencies board just for questions like this:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0

You might find a response after moving the thread there.

You can move this topic there yourself, the link is in the bottom left.