Yeah, seriously. Each node must be able to handle 8Gbps if bitcoin ever operates at VISA levels. Even at the levels they speculate about optimizing it down to would be way above even what most companies can afford. Not that we will be going at VISA levels any time soon, but these issues may start to show way before that.

Because Truecrypt doesn't come with Linux and has to be installed separately, using its own installation method separate from the distribution's packaging system. It's quite a hassle for just encrypting one file, when there are more standardized solutions bundled with the distribution, ready to use.

Before you do, I should warn you: volume on Intersango is extremely low, which often results in higher prices than on MtGox. I think their interface is quite kludgy compared to MtGox. And their support person was not very helpful the one time I made a ticket (however, they are very helpful on IRC). But for their SEPA processing speed, I love them. And I really wonder what goes into MtGox' AML process that makes it so slow.

My last transfer to them took well over a week (8-9 days IIRC). Support told me it's because of their AML (anti money laundering) procedures. I've since switched to Intersango, where transfers take about two working days.

Some reasoning to go with that would be welcome.

That is probably the most deluded thing I've read around these parts. 1% of world GDP is 700 billion US dollars.

Costs nothing to be listed on localbitcoins.com, and while there may not be much happening still, you'll in some small part help the spread of bitcoin. Eventually someone near you will look for some btc, and if you weren't there he'd not bother. Soon there'll be more listings and you'll have helped build your local bitcoin economy.

Of course it's a coincidence. Just getting that money into an exchange that fast would not be possible.

Came to post this. The term is "newbie". While not all people may find "noob" diminutive, it certainly doesn't add any sense of seriousness. It's taken straight out of the gaming world.

Yes, I don't use Truecrypt myself, ended up using aescrypt for this. openssl is also an option as it supports aes password encryption of single files.

DeathAndTaxes, that makes the encryption design a whole lot more understandable. I understand now :-)

So you're a newbie newbie.

Yes, I stupidly meant public keys, not private keys. It seems to me that if the public keys were also encrypted, then someone who copied my wallet would not be able to tell what it's worth, at least not from the wallet alone. Granted, all the transactions are public on the blockchain, but they're not grouped together and linked to me like my wallet is to someone who stole it from me (yes yes, unless I publish my addresses because I want payments, and recycle it for all payments, but I don't do that).

You're all probably right that the attack I imagined is not very realistic, and there are other attacks in my threat model that I should be much more worried about. I'll keep that in mind. And it's certainly very handy to be able to browse the wallet with no password. But I'll still encrypt the whole wallet.dat with an external tool before backing it up to shared storage.

Just because some punk found a wallet.dat on my machine doesn't mean he needs to know what my private keys are, and thus how much the wallet is worth. He won't be able to touch them, but he was able to breach my privacy by snooping on my personal finance. If I had considerable funds, that may motivate him to install a keylogger on my machine or something.

I was planning on using just the standard wallet encryption before backing up my wallet.dat to "the cloud", but having learned this, I'll wrap it in an additional layer. Thanks for the clarification, guys (and your great work, Gavin).

I just encrypted my wallet (reference client), and I would have expected it to ask me for the password as soon as it loaded the wallet on startup, but it didn't. Instead, it only asks when I try to send btc. This seems to mean that if someone gets ahold of my wallet, they will be able to "read" it and see what it's worth. Then if it holds enough value, they can start brute forcing (however futile that may be, but whatever).

Am I misunderstanding something here? Do I have to put it into a truecrypt/encfs container to get the kind of protection I expected?

"Newbie" is a very established term for people new to a technology or an online community. It dates back to the early eighties. So it's not something to take offense in.

I was too polite to post that, but yeah, I wonder too ;-)

knight22, can you describe the process? Did you both bring laptops, or smartphones or whatever?

Thanks for the feedback. Interesting possibilities with the scripting system, I hope something comes of that. It really is a hard nut to crack, but I think it needs to be addressed, because bitcoin has to be useful in an "immediate transaction" scenario such as at the cash register. Those places could easily turn to a centralized clearing house to protect against it, which defeats some of the point of bitcoin.

If I ever sell my house for bitcoin, alright, I'll wait around for six confirmations :-)

You really have *no* idea what password you used? Did you wake up in back-alley this morning? :-)

You seem to be looking for a fast way to crack the encryption. Realize that if someone was able to provide you witih this, it would mean wallet encryption was fatally broken. And all signs says it isn't.