Here is what a typical transaction using the blockchain.info looks like: https://blockchain.info/tx/58abba95b431e6260f9335acf0d00eb4f343389b47d7307c45eb5f73609d2762

If you look at the transactions involving 1ERj1taMSKngY9zngqkatxRXHFrJdSUsj1 (https://blockchain.info/address/1ERj1taMSKngY9zngqkatxRXHFrJdSUsj1) you will see that every time bitcoins are sent from the address, the change is returned to the same address. That is typical for a blockchain.info wallet, but it is not how most other wallets work.

Do you have insights into the short-term fluctuations in the price of gold? If not, then short-term would be more gambling than investing. Of course, the same could be said for long term.

Blockchain.info is different from most wallets in that it sends the change back to the original address.

Also, in case it isn't apparent, 1 mBTC = 1/1000 BTC and 1 bit = 1/1000000 BTC.

That's a surprisingly good explanation of how money and banking work.

My only complaint is that the narrator says without explanation near the end that reducing debt reduces the money supply and claims that a reduced money supply hurts the economy. I believe that is wrong, or at best it is not accurate. It is really the reduced lending that hurts the economy.

There are several factors that determine how quickly a transaction will be added to the block chain. One of them is the amount of the fee paid relative to the size of the transaction (in bytes). Others include how long the bitcoins have been at their current address and the amount of the transaction.

Bitcoins sent to an address will show up in the destination wallet within a few seconds, but will be shown as pending or something like that until there is at least one confirmation. A sites will credit your account according to its policy, which may require several confirmations. A confirmation takes 10 minutes on average but varies from a few seconds to more than an hour.

I'm starting to believe that you are being optimistic. Everywhere I see "Satoshi wrote blah blah blah" or "Satoshi wanted blah blah blah" or "Satoshi would blah blah blah". People seem to treat his writing like it's the Quoran.

Yawn.

He should consider himself lucky. This guy died from playing World of Warcraft: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2977817/Video-game-fan-coughs-blood-drops-dead-Shanghai-internet-caf-playing-World-Warcraft-straight-19-hours.html

To prove that the transaction occurred, show it in the block chain. To prove that the parties control the addresses involved, have them sign statements with the private keys.

The address is a "burn" address, which is an address that is chosen by hand and has an unknown public and private key. Bitcoins sent to it cannot be recovered. Why people are sending bitcoins to it, I don't know.

The undecodable output is data that the sender is storing in the block chain. Blockchain.info just doesn't know how to interpret the data.

This is a trick question. The core mechanism behind Bitcoin is the consensus of miners and full nodes. You can't have Bitcoin without it. For that reason alone, miners and full nodes must have all the weight.

Now, if Bitcoin used Proof of Stake, then it would be proper for the owners to have all the weight. However, some people would object because that would mean the whales would have the most weight.

There is no reason why exchanges, merchants, or developers, or any other group should have any special weight. There is nothing special about them, but more importantly there is no way to give them the weight.

That is possible, of course, but it is not guaranteed. Don't underestimate the power of the status quo. When the U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1971, one would have expected the value of a dollar to plummet to zero, since there was no longer anything backing its value and no reason to believe that its value could be maintained. Instead, the dollar kept most of its value and remains the world's reserve currency due to the power of the status quo.

In my scenario, the attack is not considered malicious.

I am also not convinced that a high hash rate secures the network as people believe. It is said that a 51% attack would not be cost effective, yet if mining is profitable for miners in general, then it would also be profitable for the attacker, assuming that the value of a bitcoin is unaffected by the attack. Keep in mind that in a 51% attack, the attacker could mine 100% of the blocks, not just 51%.

Here is a possible scenario: Bitcoin is widely adopted in the U.S., but at some point it encounters problems (continuing battles over block size I suppose). The U.S. government secretly builds enough mining power to successfully launch a 51% attack, and then one day hijacks the network. Tired of the problems, users would welcome a centralized solution, and they (and all of the full-nodes) accept the coup d'etat and fall in line. Assuming that mining is profitable in general, the U.S. government would realize a profit as the only miner.

For Bitcoin to truly be secured by POW, the cost of mining must be much higher than the block reward, and there must be other reasons for miners to mine that a single attacker would not benefit from. I believe that if Bitcoin becomes widely adopted and there are no strong reasons for miners to mine at a loss, then governments will become the primary miners and mining will be subsidized by taxes.

As someone else has already pointed out, if a single person such as Satoshi is needed to resolve this issue or any issue, then Bitcoin is a failure.

There are two problems with your instructions that make me doubt your expertise.

First, if you place a sell order at 0.00024985, then you are selling below the highest bids. That doesn't make sense. You can place an order as high as 0.00025002 and it will be executed immediately.

Second, by placing a sell order, you are not manipulating the order book or the market. You are placing an order, just like everyone else.
 

Yes, it is a very high risk on LBC, and experienced sellers take a lot of precautions to avoid it.

Yes. In the U.S., contact the FBI and the SEC.

No, they aren't stupid. It is purely business. The seller assumes the risk of fraud. PayPal has to side with someone, so they usually side with the buyer. They don't gain much from investigating.

Outside of ebay (craigslist, for example), there are man-in-the-middle scams. The scammer agrees to buy bitcoins from you and to sell something to someone else. They give the other person your paypal account. Then the other person sends you the money and you send the bitcoins to the scammer. When the other person doesn't receive the item they bought, they get contact PayPal and get their money back (note they were actually scammed in this case). The scammer keeps your bitcoins.

The scammer paying with Paypal simply contacts Paypal and says that his account was hacked. Paypal will then deduct the money from the sellers account and return it to the scammer. The scammer keeps the bitcoins.