Well now that BitCoin has collapsed (and refunded) there should be more time (and money) to focus on dating.

Brainwallets are only as good as the amount of entropy you end up with - there is no "best" solution to creating a good brainwallet but the more creative your ideas and the more effort you put into it the more secure a system you'll be able to come up with.

Another idea is to use a starting address (which you fund with a non-trivial amount) that is a seed for creating more secure addresses (I would recommend several rather than just the one). By keeping a watch on the starting address(es) if you see the funds go missing then perhaps you'll have time to move the rest of the more secure funds before they are found (of course if the thief knows you have set this up then it probably won't help).

Personally I think there should be a new coin every day - if that were to go on for a few weeks then no-one would ever bother looking at an alt coin again (unless it could *really* stand out from the other piles of crap being churned out).

I would take a long hard look at what happened with both Tradehill (version #1) and CryptoXChange before entering into this venture.

Both businesses were basically destroyed due to payment reversals (the former due to Dwolla in particular and the latter presumably because of criminal activity beyond their control). Also CryptoXChange was never able to get enough volume (and thus commission) to afford to provide a decent level of support (it was mostly just Ken himself) or to get the numerous problems with their trading software addressed.

If you are serious about the business then I don't know how you can say you have spent "two weeks" investigating this - I have spent well over a year (and become an active member of the forum) and am still only slowly putting together a Bitcoin business which has virtually no risk compared to that of an exchange (although I do admit that at times I work at a rather leisurely pace).

The feeling that I tend to get about "yet another exchange" is that it'll be another bunch of "cowboys" that are going to promise the earth, deliver very little and then go out of business before a year is up (hopefully without losing all their clients bitcoins and fiat).

Maybe a young reporter trying to spread some panic in order get some cheaper Bitcoins.

For a "solution" there would need to be a "problem" - yet as you are seeing from most replies few here actually see this as a problem (if some bitcoins get destroyed and the remainder are worth a bit more then most holders would in fact be happier and if transactions end up being generally in mBTC then just switch your client to display them as such).

As has been pointed out there already exists at least one alt-coin that perhaps does what you want and you are of course free to create your own - but trying to get such a fundamental rule changed in Bitcoin is simply not going to be accepted (and as also pointed out there is generally a new thread with the same sort of idea that appears every few months).

The blockchain is the key to solving the problem of "double-spends" and this is done through what is called Proof of Work - without this you simply could not have Bitcoin (so it really is an *essential* thing).

With no PoW (Proof of Work) you could simply broadcast 2 transactions using the same "coins" going to 2 destination addresses - and deciding which one is the "right transaction" would be impossible.

If you choose to use escrow then I would recommend John K member of this forum - but understand that even batch #1 Avalon was not 20 BTC so it would really make very little sense for someone to auction off an Avalon legit for 20 BTC.

BFL???

The OP was about Avalon.

And OP - you cannot get an Avalon for 20 BTC (the going price is well over 100 BTC now) so I think unfortunately you might have lost your BTC (although I hope not and if you haven't sent any then *don't*).

Although gweedo and myself do not agree on the simplicity of GPG (I think it is just too much for an average user) I do think that it is a more suitable tool than Bitcoin is for this particular job (as I think trying to use Bitcoin to accomplish this would actually end up being even harder).

The use of ECDSA for logging in is interesting idea (i.e. I like it) but I don't think that it will take off via Bitcoin as being the software to do it (i.e. it wasn't *designed* for this purpose at all and in fact the ability to sign messages was really an afterthought).

Left you busily typing away in the VPN sign in topic just so I could. 

@OP

As an example for Linux: walletpassphrase 'This "has quotes" in it'

and for windows: walletpassphrase "This \"has quotes\" in it"

(not sure about Mac but it is probably as per Linux)

You'll have to correctly escape and/or quote your passphrase (and that works differently for different OS platforms).

I am familiar with brainwallet but how is that going to be useful/practical for "signing in" to a VPN?

Hmm... so as I don't *have* Electrum it would be that either I have to start using it *or* run bitcoind in order to use your VPN... I would find that to be a little limiting (especially if I was using a laptop on holidays for example).

I think it's a great idea but *how* is the message signing exactly going to take place (i.e. are you expecting that they have bitcoind running in order to use your VPN)?

Nothing would stop them apart from the fact that if it is entirely mined by them it is essentially a centralised e-currency (and if you are going to have that then why bother with the mining at all as it is much cheaper just to "print your own" tokens).

As well as removing the wifi card I plugged both the LAN and modem sockets on an old notebook with "sawn off" mangled plugs.

I understand that Gox uses their own custom bitcoind - other than that I don't know much more (although I would be sure they are also using a separate DB to manage user accounts).

It doesn't have any support for passwords (so you need to use your own DB for that) - it is really just a way of putting labels against tx's (and "moves") and then being able to check "balances" (which btw can be negative).

I might be mistaken but I don't believe that many Bitcoin projects actually use the accounts feature.

Am pretty sure the information is stored in your wallet (so Berkley DB) but I have no idea how well indexed it is.