Sounds great. Will it also support smaller proposals like the above discussed "bitcoin:" handler or wallet encryption?
While I very appreciate all the hard work the developers put in, I sometimes don't understand their resistance to add elementary usability features like wallet encryption or an url handler. My idea was to break this resistance using a few bitcoins. Hmm, thinking of this, maybe the resistance is because they are just waiting for those bounties...

+1
We get a new block-chain ever other week. I suspect that most of those are just people that wants to be ultra early adopters, but got late on bitcoin. So the easy solution is start your own block chain.
 
I see. Good point.

Point taken. However, this was the reason me asking for a bounty site. I would probably spend a little on such point like this, and when others join with their bitcoins, it could make enough for some developer to say, hey I'll make this and take the bounty.

I am pretty sure that a trusted bounty site would be better than any new block chain.

I agree, but making it clumsy (drag an image) instead of intuitive (click a link) is not a solution. Just add a big red warning dialog, or whatever fits you, in your handler. But add the handler. <sarcasm>We should disable clickable links in the web browser, because a http link could send you to a child porn site, so a clickable link could make you a criminal.</sarcasm>

To have done it in a really secure way, multiple developers have to review and compile this on their own, and then publish the hashes. Automatic compiled binaries wouldn't bring that much, because you could just commit some "send all coins to me" code and everyone pulling the code would still have the same hash.
On a side note, I for one, would like to compile it using VS. As far as I have tested, your code does not compile out of the box using VS. It does using the mingw, which is really great. But to be honest, compiling and debugging is way to slow using mingw.

As long as your handler always opens up a dialog for sending bitcoins I think this is safe. Javascript cannot abuse mailto: torrent: and all the other gazillion registered protocol handlers, so why the bitcoin one? And most browsers open some "do you want to start..." dialog anyway. So I think, go ahead, register the handler. Dragging something around, while nice, is not a solution.

BTW, I follow your excellent development on bitcoin-qt. I constantly pull your changes and compile my client myself. But the average user cannot. Hence my point in making bitcoin-qt the official client.

Is there some bitcoin related bounty website out there? I mean a site where I can fund proposals by sending bitcoins.
If there is none, would anyone care to set up such a website?

Proposals where I would vote with my bitcoins:

1) Enable wallet encryption in the official client. It is in the code for some time, but I think it will not show up in some official client for some more ages using lame excuses.

2) Make bitcoin-qt the official client. From a users perspective it is way ahead of the current official bitcoin client.

3) Register a bitcoin: handler to be handled by the official bitcoin client. This should have been implemented since a few years. I can only guess that the developers haven heard about this new invention: clickable urls in web browsers </sarcasm>

4) Enable private key import. Eventually this would enable bitcoins "stored" on printed paper for savings. Code is in the repository since around February. Again I guess it will never show up.

5) Add a generate private key and import private key dialog to the official client. I mean not everyone knows how to use vanitygen or does even know what compile your own client means. With this I could create a private key that I just print on paper, send my savings to the related address and can later redeem it at any time by entering the private key. Would be a great yet simple system. Again I almost can hear some lame excuses.

As one can see, most of those would be more usability proposals than development proposals. I think we as a community have to "lead" our developers in those things, because, frankly, most of the times it feels that the (core) developers are living in there own world not understanding reality. Prime example wallet encryption. With this I am pretty sure allinvain would still have its 25000 bitcoins and could single handed pay a few full time developers.

The main point of such bounties would be, that as more people will join a certain proposal with there bitcoins, the "pressure" to the developers would increase to step aside lame excuses and just implement/enable things. And I am pretty sure that a lot of people would join, because some points have been asked for since ages.

Back to my questions, where do we have such a website?

Don't take BitcoinEXpress too serious, he works for Dwolla.

Best of luck BitcoinEXpress, I'm glad you took the advice.

Guys, it could be that BitcoinEXpress already recommended Dwolla to some of those investors, and is now trying to minimize damage to Dwolla, and  his own recommendation.

Public statement about chargebacks (Bruce having that Dwolla guy at the phone):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88zTVzT2vL0&start=1745
That Dwolla guy at first denied that they have chargebacks, and later acknowledging they have and apologized for lying to Bruce.
So basically Dwolla was afraid telling TH that they do chargeback, exactly the same like PayPal, Visa, etc.

Apparently Dwolla changed one of their single most important selling point: charge-backs. Dwolla altered confirmed transactions behind the back of TH. Dwolla did not respond to communication for 2 weeks. I don't know in what world you live, 2 weeks with increasing frauds is a very long time in the business world. Especially if the other party goes silent. You defending Dwolla inexcusable behavior, one is forced to assume that you are a Dwolla shareholder.


Well, I agree with that.

Keep in mind, that while good/bad luck averages out over just a few days, one has to constantly pay the 10% fee of a PPS pool...

As long as every merchant out there just takes the latest Mt.Gox price to compute a BTC price, price and value are more or less equal.

1) people new to bitcoin dont by 50 bitcoins, they buy bitcoins for $1000, at whatever the bitcoin price is of now. I doubt that there will be a price where no one want to buy a bitcoin anymore.
2) whenever there is a rally, people buy at an ever increasing price. And apparently no one is too high. Haven't observed this on ebay til now. And keep in mind that those rallies are usually stopped by some sellers that want to cash out.
So I think, speaking about bitcoins, the seller define the price, at least to a very large degree. I agree that this is different on ebay.

There are millions of bitcoins out there, there is no shortage. If everyone would still sell below $1, as it has been the case just some 3 month ago, the price would still be below $1. But looking at some charts http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360zigDailyzvzcvzlztgMzm1g10zm2g25 one can see that the higher price brought a lot more trading volume. So it seems that with bitcoins it is contrary than on ebay. A higher price seems to attract more buyers.

Well you as the seller define the price. The buyer is always bullish. Every time you sell some bitcoin (in the "hope" that the price goes down), you sell it to someone who thinks that the price goes up. So basically every buyer thinks that the price goes up. Or to put it another way, half of the traders think that the price will go up. Only the sellers keep the price low.
So the conclusion for sellers should be, that whenever one can sell at a certain price, that price was essentially too low, because whenever one buy at a certain price, this one thinks that it will go up, and therefor would have bought at an even higher price.

It comes down to this: If you and all others would have only sold at $100 and above, the price would now be > $100.



Well, I agree, especially on inexperienced traders.  Lets say the price is 14 and there is some buy wall at 13.5. Then those inexperienced traders believe that the price is falling, and hence they make it falling. While in fact the buyers at 13.5 think that the price will rice and they only want to buy cheap, because if the buyers would not believe in raising prices they would not buy at whatever price.

Actually it would not cost a single dollar to get the price to 21.5.
The only thing necessary would be all sellers increasing their price to 21.5 or above, and voila price would be 21.5.
But it seems that a lot of folks like to sell at lower prices, maybe to keep the price down.

And that is why I propose that a merchant (meze grill, grocery store) that needs an instant payment, could just check the transaction with the 3 big pools. If those would include it, the danger of a double spending is negligible.

Again, this would enable instant transactions for small amounts without the need of something added on top of bitcoins. It could easily be implemented in some merchant point of sale software. Or to put it in some other way, a lot of people think we would need easycoins, mtgox vouchers or some other things to "fix" this issue, while I believe we could fix it without anything on top of bitcoins.

Yes, one can double spend that way.
But for a Finney attack one has to generate a block. And for generating a block one has at the current difficulty test some 7000 Thashes on average before finding one. 2.6Ghashes/s are needed to generate one block per month.
So one has to buy some pricey equipment, then standby waiting around a month to double spend maybe 1 BTC within less than 10 minutes. Doesn't sounds like a good business plan :-)

We only need to know it a pool would add it, if this certain pool would mine the next block. So an attacker would have to invest some 7000 Thashes (at current difficulty) to double spend 1BTC. And it is not easy to prepare such a block, because one has to be faster than the rest of the network (currently at some 11 Thashes/s).
I am only suggesting to use this for your 1BTC payment at the local restaurant or other small amounts. For buying a car one still would wait for some confirmations.


Interesting idea. But you still would not know if the pool would include the transaction in the next block. This is the information to be known. If the lets say 3 big pool would include it in the next block, chances are very high that it will get included. Keep in mind that I am still only talking about those small 1BTC payments.

ButI doubt that the direct pool connection would work, because I doubt that those pools would accept millions of connections. So I guess a simple transaction check URL at the pools would be better.

To have pure bitcoin instant payments (no ewallets, coupons, etc) one has to accept a payment at 0 confirmation.
So the question is how can someone accept a 0 confirmation transaction? Well, first of all, especially for small amounts, it is
a lot safer than most think. One has to trick the network to be able to double spend.
But how can we raise the bar? These days we don't have a lot of independent miners, we have a few big pools.
Almost all coins come from one of those few pools. So if someone wants to "validate" a transaction at the 0 confirmation level, one has to ask the pools if this transaction would be included in the next block. And since we only have a few pools, and the pools are connected, this would be a very secure way to thrust a 0 confirmation transaction. So to double spend one would have to mine his own coins, without adding the specific transaction, and faster than the remaining network. However, at the current difficult level this is practically impossible.
I don't recommend such a system for larger payments, but for smaller ones.
We would only need to add some API to a few pools to query the transactions.

A lot of people love the pps (pay per share) system. And it seems that nobody can do the math and see that the pool gets more or less 10% from the miners. I guess those are the same miners that are happy when the newest mining gets them another 0.1% - switching pool would bring an order of magnitude more... It seems a lot of bitcoin miners like to pay the highest fees. One wonders how that fits in the bitcoin world.