Thing is, that's not very user-friendly for grandma.

Honestly, the usable-by-grandma goal and the grandma-wont-lose-coins goal are mutually contradicting. I'm beginning to wonder if it's even worth trying to achieve both, and frankly if it's not, I'd vote for choosing the coins-are-hard-to-lose goal. Let someone besides the Satoshi client developers worry about how simple and accessible the technology is for grandma--I'm sure other client developers and companies can handle that just fine.

You should seriously consider changing the name of the app.

Just look into the MyBitcoin.com fiasco from last year, and I guarantee you'll not want to be associated with that label in any way.

Nice post!

Can't wait to listen to the interviews. FTL + Bitcoin always gets me motivated.

Let's hope it is.

Why do I trust it?

Because it's a peer-to-peer system that relies on math, not human behavior, to keep your money and transactions secure.

I listened to it being talked about on Free Talk Live as much as 2 years ago. Wish I'd been convinced of how good it was when I first heard of it....

Fine. Your opinion is noted.

See ya.

Not sure how you'd want to classify BitcoinSpinner (an Android app.) It charges a set fee of 0.0005 BTC per transaction, all of which goes to the miners.

And another successful transaction with CellCoin!

I send coins, the prepaid card code is sent back. What could be easier?

When restoring from backup, why not just have a text field as well and accept the same text that was generated when backing up?

Nice.

If he waits too long, the keys in your wallet may have become obsolete (this assumes you only use each address once and you go through over 100 addresses before he "pulls the trigger.")

...

Let's say I don't visit the forums. I have an older version of Bitcoin that I consider more stable and trustworthy, and the "bitcoin community" I get my info from is a small circle of friends and Bitcoin Magazine. We've not heard about "tainted coins."

Let's also say you have a website selling widgets. 50 BTC each, including shipping. But you have a small disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying you don't accept tainted coins, with a link to your blacklisted addresses. I don't see this disclaimer (or perhaps I just don't get it, since I'm not a thief, and no one I associate with is,) and send you 50 BTC for a widget.

6.2091 BTC of that transaction comes from an input that can be traced all the way back to the MyBitcoin.com nastiness. Your software (whether an extra program or coded directly into the latest Satoshi client) catches this.

Do you:

1) Send me the widget I paid for?

or

2) Ask for an address to refund my 50 BTC?

Yes, that's how to try to get around it, but once Mt. Gox starts "rejecting" (read: keeping for themselves) the coins at P because someone some time ago back said a transaction was a theft, how long can such a service remain viable? Why would they give you coins from Q and R when they know they can't use the coins at P?

True, the coins at P could be split to several addresses which are passed around on paper via private keys (similar to Casascius coins.) But if those coins can't be spent on the blockchain, and instead they require that one private key to be constantly passed around yet kept secret, that doesn't seem like a workable plan either.

Once someone chooses to believe in "tainted" coins (just like believing in "dirty money",) they'll be set on trying to "reject" any transactions even tangentially related. The best approach to dealing with this and avoiding having innocent people be defrauded and stolen from is to just ignore their belief and refuse to use code or services that implement their schemes.

Well, that's the problem, but apparently the solution is, to use the blockchain to declare unclean ALL other coins that may have ever directly or indirectly touched the "tainted" ones, no matter how much tracing back has to be done.

You would think the unworkability of this would be obvious, yet here we are, having to point this out to people who want to reject your money because it's evil. (And by "reject," they either mean keep or naively hand over to someone else, since they seem to know full well that a payment can't really be rejected, even though they keep using the word.)

Watching.

Yet another point the anti-bitcoin lobby refuses to acknowledge.

Bitcoins are controlled by private keys. Numbers. Information. They are accessed through information.

Someone claiming they had their bitcoins stolen, whether truthful or not, has about as much credibility as someone claiming someone copied their password, and used it to do such-and-such. There's no way to prove there was no collusion, or worse, that there was no theft by an outside party.

Anyone who wants to field an ever-increasing number of fraudulent claims of stolen coins begging for their addresses to be blacklisted, can go right on ahead. I'll pass.



No, it's not. It still just some idea in the minds of some people on this forum, and the fact that you're claiming it's a "fundamental part of bitcoin" just shows how far you're willing to carry this belief in this fiction.

Bitcoin addresses are hashes. They're information. When bitcoins are sent to an address of mine, there's nothing I need to do. In fact, there's nothing I can do to prevent it, regardless of how "unclean" someone claims the coins are. This is the fundamental design of bitcoin.

For this scheme to reject/return/destroy/whatever "unclean" coins to work, you have to write code. That code has to maintain a blacklist (seriously, a blacklist!) of addresses. It has to check the entire blockchain for any and all links to these addresses in all of your wallet's addresses in each block. It has to DO SOMETHING with the transactions, even if that SOMETHING is to just alert you. (Extra credit: guess what frauds are guaranteed if the SOMETHING is to forward the coins to the "rightful owners'" addresses!)

Then you have to incorporate this code into clients and/or apps and/or websites.

And you have to convince people to use it, and to use it properly, and to maintain their blacklists on their own (you're not looking to centralize a list, are you?)

And then you start begging the government to force it on others when everyone ignores your ideas and refuses to use your code.



There are no such thing as "unclean" coins. What there are are transactions that can be tied back to addresses that are alleged to belong to thieves. Which, unless we're talking one or two transactions back, doesn't mean much to anyone except to the anti-bitcoiners who are so convinced their good intentions will lead us to cryptocurrency heaven that they refuse to acknowledge the problems with the scheme.

If you want to believe in "unclean" coins, by all means, continue believing, and create code to implement that belief. Pardon us while we choose not to believe.



There are no such things as "bogus transactions" in bitcoin. There's just money moving around. And spam is prevented via transaction fees. If the fees are paid, there is no spam.

And to that point, what's the harm with him sending money to public addresses anyway? It's not as if your scheme falls to pieces if everyone finds they have "unclean" coins in their wallets, right? Oh, wait... maybe that's one of the issues you should be listening to us about in the first place.

And you're challenging his maturity level?

It's confirmed: the caramels are delicious! (Next time it'll have to be a larger order....)

Understood. Still, there are many transactions for which one confirmation is considered sufficient in Bitcoin. For a 4-minute-confirmation cryptocurrency that starts becoming as popular as Bitcoin, that shortened confirmation time is going to be a significant advantage, even if it's still 1 hour or more until the transaction can be considered "99.9% safe" or whatnot.

I think it's as simple as shorter confirmation times, easier home mining, and addressing Bitcoin's scaling issues. An alternative that deals with those (and can resist 51% attacks from those already invested in Bitcoin) would probably become nearly as popular, if not more so.