OK, I'm extending this for a few days, as I missed the questions.

Bitlaundry works as follows: It takes in a payment from you, then splits it up randomly into small chunks, and sends them out to a specified address at randomized times.

It can be set to split between multiple addresses as well, so it could be used for a 'drop here to pay everybody' solution.

It will work best if it has a significant number of people using it, as there's more mixing. This could be mildly mitigated by making a habit of sending itself (or rather a whole bunch of new addresses) the coins in random amounts periodically.

The fee is, of course, adjustable in the code. : )

I'll close this auction on Sunday night, May 9.

Mike, do you want the code as well? Python -> Google App Engine

where are you located?

In person might work.

Minneapolis and Denver.

I was thinking cash , but honestly mostly was curious what the demand for inperson transactions was.

I have up to 1,000 BTC in MSP beginning of this week, DEN end of this week, will trade for cash at Mt. Gox *1.2. PM me if interested.

I wrote up a bitlaunderer some time ago, and launched app.bitlaundry.com.

It's turned off now, but I BELIEVE I still have the code.

So domain for sale, make me an offer here or PM, include desire for code (if available) and offer for it as well!


Happy to escrow, happy to take payments in BTC.

To whomever was saying stocks don't trade for a percentage, they definitely do trade for a percentage -- you just don't see it because you don't trade on open book exchanges.

Real stock markets do charge a fee, and pass some on to market makers who speculate on the spread. All this of course doesn't show up to you if you click buy 100 shares of amazon at 'market'.

US Equities has the smallest cost of trades worldwide, roughly 65 basis points. European exchanges for equities is 90+BP, and others go up from there.

I suggested 90 bp to the Gox master, but 65bp seems eminently reasonable.

(And, p.s. volume is down dramatically, yow! Should be an interesting few weeks -- I wonder if volume / price will trend back up.)

Okay, I'm getting you current problem: it's volume.

Typically what lotteries do to drive volume is advertise the winners:

As in, "Hey everyone, SO and SO just won 100 BTC with a 2 BTC bet. In fact, everyone who bet one since there are so few bettors! Come try your luck!"


You could also advertise it more generally and allow people to buy BTC from you on the TAABL site at say a 50 or 100% markup over Mt. Gox, if they aren't inclined to go open an account and download the client. Then you could advertise the lottery more generally.

I'll bet more later, promise. Although for now, I'm down about 11 BTC. Sigh. : ).

Hi Red,

Well, the way the system works right now is that if you pump in 26, and send to say 10 recipients, they'd all get 2.5 or so; the system could easily randomize the amounts being sent -- that was on my post-launch list to do, and I'm reminded to implement that.

I also think that I will likely try and send these through mt.gox on their way out -- at that point, we'd be seeing some significant volume for other purposes.

This is lovely, thank you!

I'm working on running the transactions through Mt. Gox, although slowly, since there doesn't seem to be a large felt need for anonymizing right now.

Any votes on the next project? On my list is

1) Payment spreading -- essentially set up an address and a split, and the service will send out payments automatically on the split. As an add-on, people could update their destination address and keep the sender semi-ignorant of the final destination (subject to the correlation issues we've been talking about)

2) A digital escrow service -- would probably be buyer-friendly, require proof of shipping / then proof of mediation if dispute. This seems to be communicated as a large felt need for people who wish to buy with bitcoins.

Re: mybitcoin, possibly, BUT:

Do they delete all logs on send?

BitLaundry keeps no login or other account information, tracks no IP addresses, and only stores send information until a payment goes out successfully.

My original use case for BitLaundry was for a botnet owner. I think that it fills that need (however small) better.

Regarding more BTC in circulation, this is undoubtedly true, but one has to start somewhere.

Peter

p.s., yes, the example about 10 people was designed to help you understand the different parameters of the pay system, so splitting to more recipients costs a little more than sending to just one.

Red, in answer to some of your comments above, now that I've launched -- I agree that more people using such a thing makes it 'normal' and therefore not notable.

However, what I have been considering is whether or not just one person sending transactions through the system would provide similar benefits in this case. My current thinking is that, if someone wanted, they could trace back the block chain and see that most of the BTC came from the same set of blocks; in essence, "no", your final anonymity is only as good as your diversity of bitcoin sources.

Thoughts?

Yep, typo at the minimum calculation explanation. The calculator does the math right, though: for now to make it cheaper for people to try out with small amounts, I set the minimum at .02 BTC.

Regarding doing it yourself: This provides better decorrelation because your payments are getting mixed in with other people's. If you send a payment to address a, then to address b, then on to where you buy from, you have something very different than we have now with BitLaundry:

Address A-> B
B -> C, E (C is not related to you at all)
E -> over time F, G, H (all you)
I (Not related to you originally ) -> J (You).

This is better.

I've launched a sender / recipient decorrelation (anonymization?) service called bitlaundry: you can get access to it at https://bitlaundry.appspot.com/ or read more about it here at: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=963.0.

I appreciate all feedback and ideas!

Hi all,

I got interested in the idea of decorrelating senders and receivers of payments recently, so I created bitlaundry: https://bitlaundry.appspot.com/

It's in open beta right now, and works well (I'm currently laundering some bitcoins myself). I'm interested in all feedback and thoughts.

This is a pay service, it's priced at roughly 0.5% of the transaction. Eventually it will have a minimum 1BTC price for laundering, but right now while it's being tested, the minimum is 0.02.

From the FAQ as to why it exists:

   1. Imagine that Alice wishes to send BitCoins to Bob.
   2. Bob, sadly, is not well liked. Alice would rather not have anyone know that she sent Bob BitCoins.
   3. So, Alice puts Bob's address in the form at BitLaundry.
   4. Alice gets a one-time-use address from BitLaundry.
   5. Alice sends the money to that address.
   6. BitLaundry sends money out to recipients every 30 minutes.
   7. (But, it doesn't send out Alice's money immediately, that might be suspicious..)
   8. So, a random number of 30 minute segments later, BitLaundry sends the money out to Bob.
   9. BitLaundry then deletes the database link between the one-time-use address and Bob.
  10. Alice has sent money to BitLaundry, but people do this all the time. She's one of many.
  11. BitLaundry has sent money to Bob, but BitLaundry has sent money out to a whole bunch of other people as well.
  12. Alice and Bob are much less linked than they would have been otherwise.

There are also obvious benefits for Russian botnet owners, and possibly others. Let me know your thoughts!

Thanks for the reminder aceat. I'm still hoping to hear some news on this!

I have the analog right now for my linux boxen, although it's on an internet share: uncompress the client, set up the config file properly, install a recent block set, get the optimal configuration up and running, and cron a job to send me any generated coins. I call it my botnet script, although sadly for me, I own all the bots it runs on. : ).

If I administered a whole bunch of windows machines, I would want a similar solution is my point.

More than that.. I don't have all the numbers in front of me, but probably $1200-$1400.. One day this will be a tiny blip in the bitcoin trading universe. : ).