self-service vending

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The tree view (Dendogram) by Blockchain.info might help you understand it.

Here's an article:
 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/04/02/watch-bitcoin-robbery-in-slow-motion/

Here's the dendogram from the article:
 - http://blockchain.info/tree/2893660

So there is no relationship between a bitcoin address and a set amount of bitcoin for that address.  They don't work like denominations of currency.  The balance for an address is a summation of all unspent transaction outputs previously sent to that address.   Some of these totals will be really tiny amounts, and others will be very large amounts.


I'm not sure what scenario you might be thinking of.  With the bitcoin client you have receiving addresses.  You will receive any funds sent to any of those addresses.  Perhaps you are referring to when you have a hosted (shared) wallet with a third party provider?  Each one can handle bitcoin addresses in a unique way.   For example, with some services Bitcoin deposit addresses can be used just once.  So be sure to follow the correct method for the service you are using, if that is the case.


No idea, where did you come by that term?


Perhaps, but don't put too much value to this chart.  That BDD metric is not much of a reliable indication of anything -- as it can be manipulated to throw off speculators. (Someone with a large amount of funds can transfer an amount right back to themselves.  There would be a lot of BitcoinDays destroyed but no economic activity.)    At best is helps give an advance warning that someone might be moving bitcoins to an exchange and to pay closer attention over the next hours and days.

The right value will vary for each service depending on risk tolerance.

The widely agreed upon value is 6 confirmations.  Some services accept on 3 confirmations.  Others as little as 1 or 0 even, because they either aren't worried about double spends or operate in a way that protects against double spends.

If you are an exchange or anything like that, 6 is the number to use.   If you have a service that would benefit from faster confirmations it is a risk/reward determination.  Ecommerce sites might be fine with 3 confirmations.  If you have a service that has high margins and would benefit from giving credit for bitcoin payments instantly, then you might consider 0, though you'ld want to take the recommended precautions to prevent a race attack.

When in doubt, pick 6.

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending

Are you saying that a person can buy bitcoins from you through GCASH?

If so, then can I send that money to you through Remitly?
 - https://www.remitly.com/help/view/38

Remitly allows me to use a credit card when sending funds, so that's why it is interesting.

Will you be accepting bitcoin payments for purchases at your physical location/store as well?

There is a pretty low-tech method for doing this available now. 

Launch a mobile app (Blockchain for Android) .
Click Request money.
For the amount, click the pen icon to enter USD amount.
After entering the amount it will show a QR code.
Tap the QR code to make it larger and present that to the customer..

Using a web-based EWallet this can be done as well, use Preev to convert USD to BTCs:
 - http://www.Preev.com

Will there ever be a way to redeem a private key (e.g., scan a QR and redeem?)



Because Bitcoin Spinner uses deterministic keys, it couldn't store the private keys that are scanned.  But what it could do is create the transaction that spends the private key scanned to a new bitcoin address in the Bitcoin Spinner wallet.

This will allow Bitcoin Spinner to remain the only Bitcoin app I need on my mobile.

Ok, regardless of whether it is a new option or not, it was a well kept secret.    It is not mentioned in the list of options for "Add Funds".

So, just to clarify ... the Mt. Gox account owner can go to a Barclays without being a Barclays customer and still deposit cash and have it (less a 1.5% fee) arrive in the specified Mt. Gox account?

And there is no need to notify Mt. Gox about this?  Simply deposit cash and for the memo give the Mt. Gox account number (as described here?):
 - https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20490576-withdrawals-and-deposits

Take a 1,000 people all with 1.0 bitcoin, and 900 are speculators and sit on their bitcoins.  Just 100 use it as currency, exchanging these 100 bitcoins back and forth.

Now imagine scenario 2: There are 100 people, each with 10 bitcoins and all 100 use bitcoin as a currency, exchanging them back and forth.

There's no difference between the two scenarios -- they both involve 1,000 bitcoins, and there's the same level of economic activity between the two of them. The difference is that the velocity of the 100 coins in scenario one is much higher than the velocity in scenario two.

Your hoarding does not take coins from anyone else.  If that's what you want to do with them, that's perfectly fine. Enjoy!

So this is a new service for Mt. Gox. 

Any Mt. Gox accountholder in the UK can visit a Barclays and deposit cash and have that credited just as if it were a bank transfer, except that a 1.5% fee is subtracted?

Is this correct?

What cash is accepted, just GBPs?

There are a lot of unknown variables so that can't be answered.

Unknowns include:
 - When these might ship (BFL says October, they may be off by six months who knows),
 - The difficulty when you receive yours.
 - How many will be produced, before and shortly after yours.
 - The exchange rate at the time
 - Will there be competing ASIC delivered
 - Will FPGA shipments increase significantly prior
 - What is the exchange rate in the future, will it rise or drop after the high hashrate increases.

Regarding the fee:



Do I pay the fee regardless of whether anyone accepts my offer?

Say I want to offer a Buy to Open CALL:

  Aug-08 16:00 $10.50 CALL 10 (BTC)  and I give it a limit of $0.3. 
Plus the fee, that order will cost me $0.55.

And, since that is a horrible offer nobody takes it before the expiry date.  When that happens, do I get the $0.55 back or just the $0.30?

Is there anything unusual?  Are you using keys that you imported?   

There is a thread where problems like this can be posted but you aren't out of the newbie quarantine.  You can try to whitelist out, or else I can post in that thread a link to this one.

Also, just to confirm -- once you log in it shows connected (top right of the page)?  "STATUS: SUBSCRIBED TO WALLET"

You might even be able to vote for one:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77793.0

Receive a larger amount of funds (e.g., 1.0 BTC, then spend that amount + 1.00001 BTC  (or, 0.99951 + 0.00050 fee).  If losing 0.0005 BTC (or whatever fee it computes) in the end as a fee is not worth it to you, then nuke the wallet.

Grass roots means something natural and spontaneous, from volunteers.  This is different from a professional, consistent corporate message.  The message isn't being formulated and delivered from a central source so there will be multiple approaches and varying levels of effectiveness.

I'm guessing the poster wasn't quoting verbatim from this:
 - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Public_relations

Buy on the rumor, sell on the news.

If in December the block reward happens and there isn't a spike there could be some aggressive selling if the exchange rate starts to dip below these levels (at 2X the "stable" $5 range).

The metric to watch is how well bitcoin gains traction in its niches where it does well -- as a currency for online gambling, as a decent way for transferring money across borders, and yes -- as a currency used for "investing" in a new way, whether that be GLBSE cyber-equities or in a ponzi-like scheme.

Here's the daily diary for that metric:
 - http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular

What that chart doesn't show is what the value of the currency needs to be to support the economic activity for all these niches and other uses of bitcoin.  

It is entirely possible that 90% of the value comes from speculation and just 10% is actually needed to support the level of the economy that exists now.  So bitcoin's economic value today might be just $1.   So even if that economic activity goes up 3X, that brings the value only to $3, still well below today's $10.

The reason there is such speculation though is that if it is plausible that in a year there could be 3X current demand, could it be plausible a year after it would be 30X?   Or even later reach 300X (or more) versus current demand?   So there is a rational reason to explain fthe price premium each bitcoin carries today.

But nobody knows.  It is simply pure speculation.  But if you were to project out four months from now how many transactions each day occur and the average "output less change" for each transaction, then you could then make an educated guess about a price range that would likely be in the right ballpark.

Start using -rescan and it will create the blkindex.dat

Pull a blockchain from March 2012 from Sourceforge, which has the blkindex.dat.  Then update from there.  Still going to download a bunch, just less than starting from scratch:

 - http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/

What will be interesting is to see how the composition of mining changes.

When you had GPU miners that bought hardware using credit cards (or worse, their unemployment checks) and were using the mining proceeds to not only pay off the hardware but to pay for the electric bills, the lower the profitability the more inclined the miner would be to sell every bit of production, regardless of the price (which, in aggregate, caused even lower profitability).  

And now when profitability is rising, there is less need to sell because the payments and electricity can be paid using a smaller amount of the mining proceeds.  Thus there is a now a reluctance to sell as there is no immediate need to sell, and that is amplified with the expectation that there will be a higher price further down the road.  And this lower supply then does further cause a positive feedback loop and the exchange rate continues to rise.

When the 7,200 BTC per day of new bitcoins was inflating currency supply at the rate of 30% or more per year, the weak miners had a bigger impact a year ago than they do today.

Now with FPGAs, mining expansion today isn't being bought using credit card debt.  And the FPGA's efficiency means the electric bill is much less of a factor.  Those wtih paid-off GPUs and FPGA hardware are now "strong miners" and probably are holding onto their bitcoins.

But if the $179 coffee warmer ASIC is real, easy to use and can be produced in massive quantity, then this could once again get us back to that "weak miner" situation, where those mining with these will sell every bit of what is produced.     But come December the 25% per year currency inlfation will drop to 12.5% (when the block reward drop occurs) and thus even though these miners would likely be weak, the chunk of the 3,600 BTC per day that they sell really has little impact anymore.

Mining as a whole continues to have less and less impact on the exchange rate each and every day (presuming there is sufficient hashing to protect the bitcoin network, and we're so over-protected at this point it isn't even a consideration.)

Except that those bitcoins they would have gotten now go to someone else.  In the end, supply is the same.  Demand is the same.  Argument is invalid.