Kind of depends on how much life savings you have.  For me, it was none, so I invested on credit.  It's worked out spectacularly for me so far, and now my life savings IS in Bitcoin simply because I didn't have one before.

You're gonna have to explain a lot more about your project to interest them.

Had an offer via email, but he stopped responding.  Not sure about that one.  Anyway, domain is still up for sale.  Still willing to accept 3 BTC!

Anyone interested?  Is there a better place to post bounties?

EDIT: PROJECT CURRENTLY IN PROGRESS 9/8/14.

I cannot count the number of times that firstbits would have been useful to me personally, and I imagine to many others as well, so I would like to get serious about revitalizing the firstbits website.  I'd like it to be open source as well, so anyone can help improve the code or host a copy down the road.

The code should replicate the behavior as listed here:  http://firstbits.net/about.php

Basic logic should be as follows:
1) Gather all Bitcoin addresses from a block.
2) Compare first two characters of first address in the block to firstbits table.
3) If a match is found in the table, add another character of the address and repeat.
4) Once it is not found, add temporary firstbits into an array and move on to the next address.
5) At the end of the block, compare all temporary firstbits found from addresses in the block to each other.  Resolve any conflicts by adding characters to conflicting addresses.
6) Add completed list of firstbits to firstbits table.

Other requirements:
- Must store data in a MySQL database
- Must use either PHP or python (or both)
- Must be able to connect to a bitcoin daemon (bitcoinQT) to gather the addresses
- Must be able to compute and store firstbits with additional length (i.e. 1sgtspike and 1sgtspike5 must both return 1SgTspiKe5HHkjdSeD72q9WsiJhRiaxf9)
- Must be publicly hosted to github upon completion

Bounty: $200 of BTC.

Now I realize the bounty is low for a job of this complexity, so if someone else wants to help chip in a bit more to the bounty, please do so!  It would be greatly appreciated.

Any questions?  Any volunteers who wish to code this?

I wouldn't be surprised if it is more like 2M BTC lost.  In the first year+ of Bitcoin's existence (during which almost 2M coins were mined) it was nothing more than an interesting experiment.  The coins were worthless, and people treated them as such.  I mean heck, the first known monetary valuation wasn't until Lazlo's pizza, which was mid-2010, 1 and a half years after it started.  Not to mention than Satoshi himself mined a good 1M BTC, and I don't expect those will ever move.

Just my best guess on it.  I'd be willing to bet that 10 years from now, there will be at least 2M coins that haven't moved between now and then.

Those 7500 coins are included in the total lost.

Cheers, thanks!

#2 doesn't work either.  You may need to pay two people in quick succession without being able to pay them both at the same time.

"Here, hold on while I go to the next vendor booth over and buy a widget from him so I can pay you both at the same time."  Or the bar tab + taxi situation brought up by OP.  Or even forgetting to add something to your basket at the store - now you have to wait 10 minutes before you can pay for that last item that you ran to grab after you already checked out.

He last logged on to bitcointalk.org on April 9th, 2014.  I wonder what was going through his mind between then and now.  His last post:
In response to the question "Old people, how did you protect purchases before widespread use of credit cards?"

You're going wrong in saying that life savings = more than you could afford to lose.  In my case, life savings = pretty much nil.  I basically borrowed $1,000 to buy mining equipment to get Bitcoins.  But if I had lost it all, I could have still survived.  Likewise, most people can afford to lose their life savings.  It wouldn't be fun, but they could afford it.  That's why it's called savings.

I completely agree with you that no one should invest more than they can afford to lose.  But that's a completely different statement than investing your life savings.

Eh, my life savings amounts to diddly.  But I'm glad I put that diddly into Bitcoin in 2011... I may retire yet!

Thanks for the explanation DannyHamilton!

But will nodes relay a transaction with an outpuu from an unconfirmed transaction used as an input for another transaction?  I was always under the assumption such a transaction would not be relayed until the first transaction confirmed.

I'm not familiar with the dangers of transaction malleability and how it would apply here.  Can you elaborate?

It's not something the mainstream user should have to deal with though, not to mention that it could introduce additional fees to the user.  But yes, it seems like a decent option until something better comes along.

To be fair, I think he was talking about multisend.  Unfortunately, I haven't yet seen a mobile wallet that has multisend capabilities.  It seems to be often overlooked.

Well, exactly.  That's why OP is saying Bitcoin is going to have trouble going mainstream - because "cash is still the most effective payment method for everyday small payments".  Bitcoin still has its internet niche, but unless payments can be made flawlessly in meatspace as well, I tend to see Bitcoin as staying a niche currency and not going truly mainstream.


I am not certain.  We should seek out the truth.

Not as an input to another transaction.  I'm pretty sure even qt nodes would reject such transactions.

This works if you can pay them all at the same time.  But there are certainly instances where you might need to make multiple payments in quick succession without combining them.  Paying a bar tab and then a taxi is a good example.  Or even visiting a bunch of vendors at a street fair and buying things from each.

13-14 chars isn't bruteforceable.  You probably had some malware.

It is how Bitcoin works.  You have pointed out a very real shortcoming though.  I'm not sure how this could be fixed aside from allowing transactions to be created based on unconfirmed funds, which runs a risk of accidental double-spends.

If you have a minimum price, you should probably state it in the OP so you don't waste your time with offers you are unwilling to accept.