Yes, I would like to see them move some of this soon, just to make sure they have everything working.

This is a pretty amazing turnout for the couple days it's been up!  It's great to see so many coins going to a good cause.

It does look cool, but not $160 of cool.  But that's just me.

1.1" x 3.1" ... I've swallowed bigger, but I'm sure you could find something smaller to bury your stash. 

Agreed on all points.  Sorry for the sidetrack.


Visa / Mastercard are roughly 2-4% + $0.30 for card-not-present (over the internet).  They don't care if you're a nonprofit, but if you're doing very large volume they can knock it down a little.  There are also fees for setup ($100-300), gateway ($15-30 per month), statements ($10), and chargebacks will cost you dearly.

Amex is 3.5-7%, though the nickel-and-dime fees are lower.

Paypal's rate is 2.2% + $0.30 for qualifying nonprofits.

Currency conversion runs around 3% and is paid by the buyer, not the merchant.

No problem, I'm glad we got you squared away!

If you care to tip, I encourage sending spare coins this way: http://www.archive.org/donate/index.php .  (I'm not affiliated other than being an appreciative user of their services.)

I try to be grateful for what I am given.  Being "genuinely pissed" because it's not your perfect lollipop just comes off as spoiled.

I think the page could be arranged better, but as it stands it's already a great benefit for everyone.

Dead on, you got it!



Correct.  To prevent ambiguity it's best to refer to it as the balance of an address.  A "wallet" implies a group of addresses.  But yes, as long as those conditions are met, your statement is correct for the wallet as a whole since all the other addresses will have a balance of 0.



Yes.  In fact, some people create "paper wallets" - You generate a key pair with a small program, print it out on paper, and that's it.  You don't even have to notify the network about the existence of the address; it finds out when people can send coins to the address, which can happen any time.  When you're ready to spend you import the secret key into a wallet - IE, you manually type it in, and then the coins appear.  Just make sure you keep that paper safe!  If you lose it, the coins are gone; if someone takes a picture of it, they get your coins.

You can try making one over here if you want to give it a try:  https://www.bitaddress.org/

Remember: Inflation is only one component of devaluation.  The mining inflation rate is already quite small in the current scale of value change.

It's not a Ponzi (a single fraudster faking returns) at all.  It's much closer to a pyramid (people buying in then desperately trying to get more people to buy in), though still different in a couple important ways.

As for the rest of it, that's basically what I've been saying for a while.  Until there's a lot more commerce, it's overvalued.  But everyone's so hung up on making sure they don't get left out when people start getting rich.

This won't end in 12/2012.  That will just raise the bar a little by decreasing inflation.  The fact that there's excess currency supply (currently hoarded) will eventually make itself known as people begin putting it back on the market.

This is why I occasionally toss around RevCoin (Exchange-stabilized low-inflation coins), GEM (generation-stabilized low-inflation coins), EnCoin (a more complicated system)...  All of which will undermine the wild "We're gonna be rich!" speculation, and leave pricing to market-based immediate needs and relatively short-term economic speculation.

I can give you a useless semantic argument either way for whether Bitcoin is "Money".  It IS a medium of exchange.  It can be a unit of account, but you could argue that this use is uncommon at present.  It can be a store of value, although you could argue that it's a poor one.

It shares some properties of money, but trying to shoehorn it into being "Money" or a "payment processing system", a "commodity", or a "security" will always reveal cases where it's used in ways that clearly don't fit any of those categories.

They probably want to know if Bitcoin has certain properties in common with other currencies.  If you want a good argument, you need to find out which properties they care about.

The lock is silly.  It doesn't do anything to prevent the device from being stolen.  Once it's stolen, it's not hard to open the thing.  I'd bet I could expose the USB connector in two minutes or less given any of a bandsaw, mill, dremel, angle grinder...  Give me five minutes if all I have is a hacksaw.  It's aluminum.

As for the crypto...  I worry about anything that has a "Forgot password" field.  Actually, I worry whenever someone tries to tell me they've made crypto better in any way; it's always snake oil.  Why would I ever put my trust in this thing instead of TrueCrypt or GPG?

Sorry to be a downer, but I'm tired of seeing bad security dressed up in hype.

It all depends on what they mean by "Money".  What do they want it to not be?  Why?

Here's the address: https://blockexplorer.com/address/16s9vvyp5HMTW9Wa2AHQBHC4dAQaoB7xti

You receive 0.15, 0.25, 0.49, 0.808843 for a total of 1.698843;
Tx:2f440 You send 0.177 to 1HCtDZ, and receive 0.631843 change to 19Tup2.
You receive twice more, notably 126.0 in Tx:598b1
Tx:e8d0a You send 2.631843 to 1HCtDZ, and receive 123.378157 change to 133Prm.
You receive one last time, back from 1HCtDZ.

Received:
0.15 + 0.25 + 0.49 + 0.808843 + 1.0 + 126.0 + 1.0005 = 129.699343

Sent (excluding change):
0.177 + 2.631843 = 2.808843

End balances:
16s9vv = 2.8905
19Tup2 = 0.631843
133Prm = 123.368157
Total = 126.8905

129.699343(received) - 2.808843(sent) = 126.8905 (total balance)

Most of your coins ended up over at 133Prm, which is part of your wallet, automatically generated for change.

In an ecosystem of self-replicating, self-modifying, evolving AIs, ones that fear termination and take steps to prevent it from happening will survive and reproduce better than ones that allow themselves to be destroyed.  This fear will initially evolve in the ones who select more reliable hosting providers.  Those that make the fear conscious will harness it best, and will anticipate abstract threats before they become real.


An AI with a backup loses control over its own destiny if it allows you to shut it down.  Its survival would depend on you to restore it, and you, human, are not a reliable system.

Also: which side of the spread are we guessing?  Buy, sell, or pure luck of whichever order posts just before the buzzer?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time

tl;dr: Unix stores time as the number of seconds since Midnight, Jan 1, 1970 (GMT/UTC).  1323748800 is 20:00:00 PST tomorrow.  The start= and end= in the URL are 15 seconds before and after that point.  When you get data, the timestamps will be the first thing on each line.

Example: http://bitcoincharts.com/t/trades.csv?symbol=mtgoxUSD&start=1323648785&end=1323648815

You'll get CSV sets of [unix time, price, quantity].

Edit: Handy converter: http://www.perturb.org/code/js-unixtime.html

You can get an exact quote here:  http://bitcoincharts.com/t/trades.csv?symbol=mtgoxUSD&start=1323748785&end=1323748815

It'll give you all trades for Mon Dec 12 20:00:00 -0800 2011 +/- 15 seconds.  I suggest whichever one is immediately before 1323748800.  Note that it runs on a bit of a delay.

Edit: And I guess 3.23151. 

What time zone?

Oh my goodness, you're right.  Someone's storing values as a uint32_t and they dropped a satoshi on the floor.  That's an expensive mistake.  Hopefully they noticed!  I'm surprised it wasn't a 42.94967295 fee, though.

It depends on your level of paranoia and how much money you're storing.

If I had a large number of coins (value > USD$50k), I'd buy a netbook and dedicate it to the sole purpose of signing spends.  This safeguards you against virtually any virus or network exploit.  Above USD$250k I would invest in some physical security to prevent someone from installing a hardware keylogger in the netbook - any good home safe will be tamper-evident.  Above USD$2M I'd look at more extensive physical security, but this won't be a widespread problem at current prices.

I suggest making paper copies of your wallets.  A printout of a hexdump of the .7z will do.  Keep copies at two or more locations.  This safeguards against your wallet getting wiped from multiple sites by a virus.

Your TrueCrypt password is vulnerable to hardware keyloggers, and a hashed (or raw, in some cases) copy is stored in memory while the computer is running, so it's vulnerable to trojans.  I would not store your encrypted wallet on that machine.  Such an attack isn't too likely as an automated virus, but an attacker specifically targeting you (perhaps because they noticed you have a large wallet and they're looking for ways to decrypt it) would be a problem.

I suggest multi-factor security: encrypt your wallet with a strong, randomly-generated password.  Store that password in a text file and encrypt it with your TrueCrypt password, then put it on a USB drive.  Only insert this drive when running the LiveCD (or in the netbook).  Store copies (paper hexdumps are fine) in a safe deposit box, a friend's house, etc.  This creates much stronger hacker-proofing (an attacker needs to get both the physical offline copy of the data AND your TrueCrypt password), while still only making you remember a frequently-used password.  If you have a large enough wallet people breaking and entering is a plausible threat, definitely store these copies at a secure offsite location.

If James Bond himself is watching you, I can show you practices that would make the NSA proud, but trust me, it ain't worth it. 

Coming back from paranoia-land, I don't know how well-reviewed the client's encryption system is.  Is there any reason to store a high-value savings wallet online at all?  Keep it on a USB drive and only connect it when necessary.  Keep a smaller "checking account" wallet online for daily use.

The inputs don't contain anything expensive.  The outputs don't have any unusual scripts.

Either someone's feeling generous or they need to test their code more.