I have never found a Bitcoin program that I could use that I could send coins from one of my existing wallets. They all create a new wallet address and seem to have no way of "importing" a wallet.
Is this a limitation or a security issue?
You can technically import your private keys from the Bitcoin.org client's wallet.dat into Blockchain.info/wallet, and then use their Blockchain for Android app. One problem with doing that is they won't stay in synch. The transactions made later using the Bitcoin.org client will have change that goes to a new address. The Blockchain app on your mobile won't know about those change transactions and those amounts won't show on the balance in the app. There's also a technical problem that could arise from using the two wallets this way as well. Let's say you have the Bitcoin.org offline, and do some spending using the Blockchain mobile app. Then you launch the Bitcoin.org client but before waiting for the blockchain to get caught up you do a spend transaction that happens to choose coins that were already spent using the Blockchain mobile app. That transaction will sit there forever at 0/unconfirmed because it is invalid, and the Bitcoin.org client does not (yet) accommodate (i.e., remove) invalid transactions like this. I would like to be able to sell/use coins from my wallet as needed when I'm using my android devices. Blockchain lets you use the web browser wallet and the mobile app and synchronizes the two wallets. - http://Blockchain.info/walletAlso, Paytunia allows you to use the hosted (shared) web wallet in addition to their Paytunia mobile app (they both use the same Paytunia online account). - http://www.Paytunia.comFor convenience amounts, there is also Instawallet which has a mobile app as well (both use the same Instawallet wallet/URL): - http://Instawallet.org - http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paymium.instawallet&hl=en |
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Also, I've looked at CoinDL, but it doesn't suit my needs.
Due to fees, or the terms (e.g., content restrictions)? |
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Hey there,
Thought I would finally join a bitcoin related forum, and not just LR forums who have their fair share of bitcoin users. I have gained a lot of bitcoin clients now for our physical reloadable debit card program instantly funded by bitcoin so it is about time to make a presence on a popular bitcoin forum.
Looking forward to meeting a lot of bitcoiners here!
What LR forums are there? |
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If it's the address you provided and there is no tx ID, it seems they didn't send it yet.
The account history (selecting BTC tab) only shows address for withdrawals, not the tx ID. - https://mtgox.com/trade/account-history?currency=BTCyes. The destination address is valid. BlockChain pulls it up but says that it has zero transactions to it and has zero bitcoins recieved. So it is one of two possibilities, either 1.) Mt. Gox never sent it or 2.) it was sen but the address was for another Mt. Gox address and you didn't mark the "Open transaction" checkbox. Thus it never touched the blockchain. It's entirely possible they held the withdrawal. Did you by chance access Mt. Gox using Tor? The sign up page for Mt. Gox reads: "Please be advised that accessing your account via the Tor network and/or public proxies may result in a temporary suspension of your account, and having to submit AML documents." |
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You're essentially describing hawala. The difference is that in the remittance destination country, the roughh equivalent of a "hawalder" can work independently and doesn't need to have any trust relationship with the hawalder receiving funds on the other end. Where is the incentive to add the extra layer of using Bitcoins at both ends though? Lower fees for one. You can only compete with WU and hawala if you can offer the same ease of access - a dealer in virtually every neighbourhood.
I'm wondering how long it will take current hawalders to figure out they can use bitcoin to do deals on their own. Bitcoins don't yet have much value for the recipient of a remittance transfer but in bulk they do have value to an enterprising hawalder, such as being useful to pay for purchases made abroad or to sell to a local investor perhaps. a stand-alone money transmission service isn't going to be profitable in many regions.
That's the difference between Bitcoin and a Western Union. A WU agent location needs lots of volume to pay for the overhead. An individual who provides a method to cash out your bitcoins can be profitable on every trade. It doesn't need to be a full time operation or need to start out as a part time gig even. There no doubt are individuals with a little extra time and money that will do this exchange "as a favor" to be able to earn the 5% or 10% that doing so will bring. And then word gets out and in the following month there are two recipients who need this favor. And then it is four, then eight, and pretty soon this individual now has this sideline business doing cash-out service. Also, then consider how basic business sense starts to take over. If I am offering a Bitcoin cash-out service to you, and you turn around and use that cash to pay for your mobile phone refill, then why don't I just start selling to yo mobile phone refills for bitcoins, and earn the profit from that sale as well? |
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And yes, depositors do take a bit of risk as well, though a "One dollar of capital" policy instituted (and policed, on a nightly basis) essentially eliminates the risk to the depositor. So... what's your name on Tickerforum? Heh, well Karl came up with that as a name for it but the concept is pretty basic and nothing new. |
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I think it would be best to partner with a local operator of local currency exchange booths. They already have all the necessary licences and infrastructure.
What would the motivation be for the local operators to participate? They have a flow of customers because of the agreements they have with Western Union, etc. Not just any person on the street can do transfers for WU and other networks. I doubt these operators want to create competition that will cannibalize their business. Additionally, generally where remittance transfers are high (India, Philippines, Mexico, Bangladesh), the restrictions on the networks allowed perform exchange services are high as well. Now for bitcoin, there's no technical restrictions stopping anyone from performing exchange services. A person with a smartphone, a few dozens of bitcoins and a wad of local cash has the tools to become a solo operator providing exchange. Because most (nearly all) of the transactions will be cashing out bitcoins (e.g., from remittance payments or maybe income from microtasks or oDesk type of work) so this individual will end up needing to sell bitcoins to restock the wad of cash. This will create a distribution system where bitcoins flow up the distribution chain to larger exchangers who trade internationally. In this distribution chain then cash flows down to the local exchangers. If this network were to be built in this manner then it isn't a singe operator that can be forced to use official exchange rates and since a single party didn't have control throughout the distribution chain, a single party doesn't have the info for reporting the details on all transactions. The ability to know how much bitcoin-related activity is actually occurring would be difficult even. Bitcoin's nearly-free transactions make it so that there is no exchanger too small. Instead of there being formal currency exchange booths, there is an exchanger that your coworker is related to, for instance. So you trade with the coworker (for a small fee) and the coworker does the trade with the relative that does perform exchange. It probably needs to be these personal type of pre-existing trusted relationships otherwise the alternative, the craigslist model (directory of anonymous individuals pitching their offerings) simply provides criminals intending to steal a steady stream of unsuspecting marks. I don't know how you get from here (no awareness of bitcoin, no exchangers) to there (ability to ask around and end up where someone you know will trade with you, because they know someone who will trade with them). It probably won't occur quickly if left to happen organically yet at the same time that approach might take no longer than trying to get bitcoin exchange approved formally. There's one other angle though. The reason remittance payments are sent in relatively larger amounts (e.g., $250 at a time) is because the transaction also includes a fixed per-transaction fee, so sending a larger amount helps to make the overall fee on a percent basis lower. Since bitcoins can be sent in small transaction amounts the sender can help encourage bitcoin adoption by augmenting the traditional remittance payment by sending a small amount of bitcoins as well. If Western Union ends up costing 15% or more then it is in both the sender's and recipient's best interest to try to help bitcoin become a worthy competitor to the traditional money transfer services. Now with a Bitcoin SMS Wallet provider ( https://coinapult.com/sms-wallet ), there's an easy way to drive the adoption of bitcoin simply by sending a little over and seeing what the recipient can do with it. [Update: Coinapult is U.S. and Canada numbers only, but they are figuring out how to go to more countries.] |
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One problem that I see is that it is not anonymous.
There's another thread for BTCTip and I just suggested the feature to address that: Thanks!
If you have any recommendations on making the syntax clearer, please let me know.
Well, there's one other method. Simply giving me the option to instead send a tip using a form on your site. So I login, enter the amount and to which Twitter username to send the funds, you BTCTip takes it from there. You could even give a checkbox -- Tip anonymously That way the recipient gets your @mention and I never had to post any #btctip message that my followers had to read. |
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If banks will create Bitcoins out of nowhere do you plan for an option to increase the Bitcoin supply beyond 21 million in the future when banks have adopted Bticoin and now need more Bitcoins to meet demand for new coins, similarly to the existing money model ? Yes ?
No. That's because banks don't create bitcoins out of nowhere. It is the Bitcoin miners running software that follows the Bitcoin protocol who are the ones that create Bitcoins from out of nowhere. If a bank wants to acquire bitcoins to lend out, that bank needs to either raise capital or to mine for them -- just like how you or I would get them. The Bitcoin protocol allows for one block every 10 minutes. Currently the miner that solves the block is rewarded with 50 BTC, but soon that will drop to 25 BTC per block. And four years later, that will drop to 12.5 BTC per block. And four years after that, 6.25 BTC per block. And so on, until the reward approaches zero. At that point, just under 21 million BTC will have been issued. A miner can try to change the software, e.g., issue 100 BTC per block rather than 50. But that violates the protocol and none of the other nodes will accept the block and other miners would not build on top of that flawed block. However this "lottery" is a temporary mechanism as the main goal is to get existing Banks( or new specialized Bitcoin Bank ) issue these coins similarly to existing currencies ? Yes / No ?
A major detail you might be overlooking is that at the time a bitcoin is mined there is very little seigniorage. If you are GPU mining, you are only doing so profitably if you are located in an area that enjoys lower than average electric rates. If you are FPGA mining, you are less exposed to the cost of electricity (for now) but you are risking investment by putting money into something that has little value other than for bitcoin mining. Just like with other commodities, there are markets to obtain bitcoins. If you want to acquire a lot of gold, you don't need to dig a hole in the ground, you can go to the market and buy gold there. Bitcoin is no different. Bitcoins are fungible so it matters not if your bitcoins are freshly mined or acquried from the market. |
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thank you for your replies! how likely is it that two addresses will be used for a transaction?
That varies on the situation. If I have a dozen addresses with funds on them in my wallet, let's say with 2.0 BTC received to each address. If I then send out a 5.0 BTC payment (call that Transaction A), then coin selection in that instance will consume (use as inputs) coins from 3 of my addresses. So three out of twelve, in this instance, means there is a 25% chance that any two addresses would be linked together in that first transaction. In this instance, a 1.0 BTC "change" transaction will be returned to a new address in my wallet, but there's no way externally to know that this change was really sent to the same wallet as the remaining 2.0 BTC payments. So that's where linking change with subsequent spends from that wallet gets difficult. Let's say the next payment I made (Transaction B) is then a 3.0 BTC payment that included the 1.0 returned as change and another of my 2.0 BTC addresses. You might be able to say that this confirms your suspicion that a 2.0 BTC from Transaction A was from the same wallet as the 2.0 BTC spend as part of Transaction B. But you couldn't prove it because you don't know for sure that the 1.0 in change went back to the original wallet. These things all can help you to be able to point a finger, but alone they aren't enough to be considered as proof for anything. If the two addresses happened to be used as inputs together in a transaction, then they both came from the same wallet.
Is this true? I was under the impression that you can (by protocol, if not by existing software) have a transaction with 2 inputs from different wallets by exchanging signatures without exchanging private keys. There are use cases where this would be done with addresses belonging to different people. Heh, I wasn't aware of that or seen anything that would make that possible, but I don't know the details of the protocol at that level. If it were possible, then a service could really improve Bitcoin's anonymity by simply combining a bunch of unrelated inputs and a bunch of unrelated outputs to really disassociate the two. Interesting! |
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Just something like "Hi, my -otc nick is starsoccer9, and I approve of this message" and then sign that and post it here.
Well, that verifies the username in -otc WoT which the WoT already provides. What has not yet been verified is that the BitcoinTalk forum user starsoccer9 is the same individual as -otc WoT user starsoccer. So a message for that would be something like "my bitcointalk forum username is starsoccer9, i operate BTCHardware.com" and signed. It then is easy to verify that the message could only have been signed by the real -otc WoT user starsoccer ( using the public key from http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewgpg.php?nick=starsoccer ). This then allows a buyer to consider the trust history from the -otc WoT ( http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=starsoccer&sign=ANY&type=RECV ) before making a purchase here on the forum or from BTCHardware.com. |
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Addresses are not traceable until they are spent. If the two addresses happened to be used as inputs together in a transaction, then they both came from the same wallet. That's why there is a "coincontrol" feature coming in a future release of the Bitcoin client, so that spending can be done in a more deliberate manner so that the coins can be spent without getting combined. Other than that, it gets to be difficult to associate two addresses. There are clues that can be used though. For instance, here: - http://blockchain.info/tree/5484758That shows the spending by the Bitcoinica hacker. It is safe to assume each of those were to the same wallet or to wallets under control of the hacker. So even though they are two separate addresses, an assumption can be made about them with a fairly high degree of being correct even though they have not yet been spent. |
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From the photo: At Room 77, this cheeseburger will cost you 2 Bitcoin. That's about four Euro or five dollars. but then later in the article: "A Bitcoin- the exchange rate is actually four Euro or five dollars for one Bitcoin, so a cheeseburger would be two Bitcoin here." TL;DR: math is hard. |
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It only posts job listings, and doesn't serve the need for a directory of talent who are looking to provide services, contract/freelance, part time or full-time. Freelancer, elance, oDesk, etc. will not start offering Bitcoin as a payment method until they face competition that does. They are aware of Bitcoin, definitely. Here's a talk by Michael Levinson, VP of Product, oDesk. Notice that the bitcoin topic just keeps coming up over and over by those in the audience. - http://vimeo.com/29287295 |
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There's a small monthly fee to use this, it's also capped to a certain amount, and it now seems like they now also need some kind of verification process. So in other words, I don't think this will make a dent in the BTC market or volatility.
Heh, ya, not only is Dwolla Instant not giving Bitcoin a boost, their AML restrictions and imposing the 30 day delay on new accounts is noticably working against Bitcoin, at the present time. |
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