Hit Reload.  It's up.


Incidentally, ...  LR comes back and BTC/USD jumps 7% in a matter of hours?

Coincidence?

There are some great photos in this thread:

 A microscopic view of Casacius physical bitcoins
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=103464.0

Bah ... just a tease.



 - https://www.libertyreserve.com/en/funding

[Edit: How would you become "COMPLETELY verified"?]

Negatory.  Try to login:  Yup, it is up.

 - https://www.libertyreserve.com/en/login

Hit refresh

December 3rd now.    If it continues increasing, even to a lesser degree than we've been seeing recently, Block 210,000 will end up occurring in November.

 - http://bitcoinclock.com

Not general consumer foods, like you would get at a local grocery.

There are some offerings here:
 
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Consumable
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Home

What you might be able to do is use the cash-out to PayPal feature (e.g., from FastCash4Bitcoins ) for use with a number of sites that sell food and accept PayPal. If you have your own PayPal account then this works anywhere that PayPal is accepted online (or offline at the point of sale, which is going to be nearly everywhere once PayPal's retail rollout with Discover happens).

But even if you don't have a PayPal account this still might be useful.  Well, not useful for sites that require that you go through the PayPal checkout form (as you must sign into a PayPal account for that) but if the merchant accepts payment using PayPal and provides their PayPal e-mail address to you, then you can use this cash-out service and send the payment directly to them:
 - http://www.FastCash4Bitcoins.com

I've previously inquired with Alice.com, requesting that they take Bitcoin as payment.  Perhaps with enough inquiries they will add it.
 - http://www.alice.com/categories/136-pantry

BitPay says they are up to just about 1,000 merchants using their system.  That means they'll probably end up with a merchant or four that sells food.

There are several methods here:

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Buying_bitcoins

Including:

 - http://bitcoinsinberlin.com

and BItcoins Direct:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87094.0

You are describing the fee to register to list an asset (to do an IPO of shares).

The fee for trading (purchasing or selling shares) is a half a percent of each trade.

Those rates are based simply on the timing of solved blocks.  When your pool solves two blocks in row in 5 minutes (8X the rate it normally would) does that mean suddenly 8X the hashing work was being performed, or does it possibly mean there was luck?

Now there still is a backlog on BFL Bitforce equipment, so those shipments are continuing.  There is suddenly a bunch of hashing from "at least 450" FPGAs brought online thanks to a working bitstream:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94317.0

There are other ASIC ventures, perhaps one is further down the road than BFL?

Or, BFL which says October, really is on track and is testing.

All that's known is that if the BTC/USD settles in here at $10ish and difficulty rises further (or even hangs at this level), come block 210,000 there's going to be a lot of graphics cards hitting eBay.  I was expecting more GPU to be getting decommissioned by now but the rise in the exchange rate made it so they were decently profitable once again.

Well,right now at 17.67 Thash/s capacity (per BitcoinWatch.com) that means about 700 of the BFL BitForce FPGA mini rigs are all that are needed to achieve 51%.  If that much equipment was available (except it isn't), at $15,295 each only a little over $10 million would be needed to achieve 51%.

But what they can do with 51%?  Not much.

They can omit transactions from the blocks and they can go back some blocks and double spend transactions sent to them.  That's the extent of it.  They can't spend my coins.

So who can they double spend against?  Orders placed with online merchants for physical delivery requires a physical address.  It is not good for business if you are a bank and get caught doing something like this, so that's out.  So what businesses that are left for double spending against are the exchanges.  But exchanges have AML limits that cap the per-day withdrawal, even for trusted accounts.  

So for the attack to do damage would require the control of a lot of non-verified accounts.  I suspect the bigger exchanges would sense something is up if all of a sudden a lot of non-verified accounts were to suddenly request withdraws all at once.

A double spend attack might do damage to some exchanges and possibly harm those who had funds held at certain exchanges if those exchanges become insolvent as a result.  So the exchanges would learn and implement better detection to impose stricter withdrawal limits when the hash rate rises rapidly.  Or whatever.  But the banking industry wouldn't "kill bitcoin" as a result.

Now if they gain 51% and are not accepting new transactions in any blocks, then that would be disruptive.  It would be a shame if they went through all that work and an economic majority of the Bitcoin economy decided to hard fork and the algorithm was made to include one extra step, such as adding one more operation  e.g., sha256(LShift(sha256())) and that rendered those ASICs completely useless.

This is a temporary vulnerability anyway.  ASIC designs from more than one vendor are being worked on.  Once we get past wide distribution of ASICs, then there is no longer the risk of some vastly more powerful technology available to an aggressor attempting to thump what the free market has achieved.  (at least not until quantum computers arrive).

I wonder how long until someone tries an xray microscope (or whatever they are called) to see the private key underneath.

One thing that would be useful is a way people can redeem private keys to a destination address of their choosing.

It is a simple process.

One field is for the input of the private key (which can be scanned using a QR code).

A second field is for the Bitcoin address where the funds are to be sent (also could be a QR code scan).  (or SMS or e-mail address and send the bitcoins that way, or through Coinapult's API maybe?).

So the web app (which works well from a mobile as well) gets these two pieces of information, applies a small handling fee, and broadcasts the spend transaction.  (Use bitcoind v0.7 which lets you create and send a raw transaction)

Easy peazy.    Access EasyWallet.org from a mobile to see a mobile-enabled web site that does 90% of the UI for this:
 - http://www.EasyWallet.org

But nobody has done this yet for redeeming private keys.

There are reasons people wouldn't want to use this, as that private key is now compromised (as you have a copy of it), so a person would never want to use this for an address that they might receive additional funds at in the future.   But for something like a paper bitcoin from BitAddress.org, there is currently no easy way for someone to use that and redeem it and have the funds sent elsewhere.

You could even add features from there that make it even more useful.  For instance, let the user enter how much they want to redeem, and then ask for an additional address for where to send the change.   Or redeem multiple private keys at once, etc.  There are all kinds of uses for a stite (and/or mobile app) that does this.

He didn't mention which client he uses.   I wished he had, as now a bunch of people are going to go download the client to see if Marc's experience is accurate -- whether it truly is butter smooth.  Many of them will possibly not end up describing the experience with those same words.

But there are others who read that, numbering in orders of magnitude greater, and will take Marc's words at face value and associate Bitcoin transactions as being smooth and cheap.


Here's Marc's article from this week:
 - http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/lightning-fast-dirt-cheap-bitcoin-shows-what-banking-could-be-1052108-1.html


What is interesting is why Bitcoin gets the attention it does here.  The other topics discussed in this video were PayPal being accepted wherever Discover card is accepted by physical merchants and how Dunkin Donuts copied Starbucks by creating a mobile app for loading and spending from a stored value account.

Bitcoin got as much press time here as these developments by absolutely huge players in the payments space.  The editor's responsibility it is to make sure the readers (and viewers, in this instance) are aware of developments that could or will be changing the landscape in the banking and payments industries.  He gives little ole bitcoin, which sees just tens of thousands of transactions a day, top tier attention.

That to me is something fairly peculiar and interesting.

Sorry, had forgotten to report this.  Just did that now.

Issue #1725. 

 - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/1725

That's really difficult to know.  When most people ran their own node, node data (in the tens of thousands) would give that info.  As the blockchain got larger, more and more moved to SPV (e.g., Electrum, Bitcoin Spinner) or to hosted (shared) EWallets (e.g., Instawallet.org, or exchange accounts) or to hybrid EWallets (e.g., Blockchain.info/wallet).

One thing that most every user with a node has it as least one unspent output.  So we can know an upper bound.  In February there were nearly 3 million unspent outputs:

 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/2849/153

That is likely an order of magnitude or more than the actual number of bitcoin users.

Blockchain.info reports 25K hybrid EWallets having been creating on their service.  Some of these will be unfunded (either never used or all coins withdrawn and abandoned).  

So sorry if this is of little help.  That's the thing with a pseudonymous digital currency -- the data available or collected is of marginal use.

Oops, sorry.  Fixed.


v0.7 has a new method:

The gettransaction API method will give you this info for a a specific transaction ID.

See:

  - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/4458/153

BlockExplorer has had numerous performance issues and site outages.  

It is not built to be the backend for a commercial application.

Blockchain.info provides many of the same capabilities, but that service too has experienced service level issues:
 - http://blockchain.info/api/json_rpc_api

Are you reluctant to hosting a blockchain locally (via bitcoind)?  

Ah ... title shows customer reviews, not customer support.  Sorry.

E-mail is a horrible communications method though.  A ticket-based support tool might be something to prioritize.

Just to make sure you are not overlooking something obvious.  It is after eleven and closing in on midnight, you know this right?

 - http://bitcoinclock.com

At the stroke of midnight (less than 100 days away), the block reward gets cut in half to 25 BTC per block.

(i.e., unless you are paying like three cents a kWh or less, why would you be buying GPU hardware specifically for mining at this late state in the game?)