Most of the work is already done if you wanted to do this as an Android app as well ...

BitPay mobile app ..., open source, interfaces with InstaWallet

 - https://github.com/warpi/BitPay

The forum user for that doesn't show as being logged in since February.  There hasn't been anyone reporting having lost money when using them but the site did go offline for weeks and then came back, with no communication regarding the outage.  The domain is registered with privacy enabled, and there's no contact info shown on the site other than e-mail.  Generally, with bitcoin ventures the track record when these combinations exist has not been good:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=21544.0

If you are selling, generally the buyer is the one taking the risk when paying before shipment.

If the buyer sends bitcoins to you then there's really no risk to you (though some nutjob might try to claim you shipped an empty box and shame you to cough up some money, etc.)

The #bitcoin-escrow IRC channel along with ratings from the #bitcoin-otc Web of Trust (WoT) is probably the best place currently to find a trusted escrow that you can hire:
 - http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#bitcoin-escrow
 - http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/OTC_Rating_System

There is good information here:
 - http://wiki.bitcoin-otc.com/wiki/Using_bitcoin-otc#Safety:_avoiding_fraud

This issue (30-day restriction, SSN verification, & Dwolla hub enabled) can be verified by trying to send a payment to a bitcoin exchange.  Dwolla will display the following:



The restriction is universal -- it applies to every account.  But it is a restriction that occurs only when trying to send USDs to Bitcoin exchanges (or others where Dwolla has found risky with regards to ACH fraud or other reversals occurring.)

MegaMillions is simple to explain:  Go to 7-eleven.  Ask for quick picks and give X dollars ($2 or multiples of $2) to the cashier.  Wait until Tuesday or Friday of each week.   Either your pick(s) win the big jackpot (or smaller prize) or they don't.
 
BitLotto is (currently) simple to explain.  Send N bitcoins (0.25 BTC or multiples of 0.25 BTC) to Y address (using only the Bitcoin client or limited list of E-Wallets like Blockchain.info/wallet).   Wait until the first Friday of each month.  Either your payment you've sent won the big jackpot or it didn't.

Simple.


So would this be under the BitLotto brand?  Perhaps like you would be resuming a form of the BitLotto Jr. weekly draw?

But if you are going to use BitLotto's brand know that you would be de-simplifying the easiest (and largest) blockchain-based wagering out there.

Cash "uploaded"?   Cash from where?  

What is it that you are trying to do?  Move money from a bank to an exchange, or the other way around?  
(i.e.,  Transferred from an exchange?   Funds obtained using Dwolla Instant? Or transferred to Dwolla from a Bank transfer?  Or a payment received from another Dwolla user perhaps?)


You only need one bank account linked to Dwolla.  Actually, you can do account-to-account (A2A) transfers to another Dwolla user without a bank account linked even (with a few exceptions, recently added.  See last paragraph of this message).


If you were in the process of linking a bank account, that will take up to five business days.


Once you've started it, there's no "cancel" mechanism.  Dwolla is waiting on ACH to process the transaction with your bank.  I suppose if you never confirm the attempt to link an account (by telling Dwolla the amount it deposited to your bank account) it will expire eventually I suppose.  If you've removed the bank account before verifying it, obviously you'ld need to restart that process if you do eventually want to use it.


Until you have linked a bank account and gone through the verification steps, you can't withdraw your Dwolla funds to it.  It takes many days.  (Incidentally, PayPal, VenMo, Serve, etc, all use the same method for linking a bank account.)


You'ld need to wait the same amount of time to link a new account anywhere else as well.

So, your options are
a.) wait until you've successfully finished the verification with a new linked bank account (about five business days).
b.) trade your Dwolla USD with someone, e.g., on #bitcoin-otc marketplace  (though without an existing trust history, you might not find someone willing to do a trade.)
c.) wait (same as a. above)
d.) wait (same as a. above)

Since it is a new account, you probably won't be able to send the funds to a bitcoin exchange yet (Dwolla's new restrictions are that the linked bank account had to have been used to add funds at least 30 days prior to the account being useful for sending money to a Bitcoin exchange.)

2012-04-26 Be Your Own Bank: Bitcoin Wallet for Apple
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78152.0

Another weekend where conditions are not such that the weekend dip strategy is useful.

The weekend dip strategy involves talking a look on Wedesday evening (western timezones) or Thursday morning (eastern timezones) and finding the BTC/USD high in the previous 7 days.  If that number is below the BTC/USD in the previous 7-day period then a selloff is happening and a weekend dip has historically been the result.  Looking at the previous 7-day high shows a high of almost $5.50, which is above the previous period's 7-day high.  So as a result, don't look to the weekend dip strategy to indicate any action here as far as buy, sell or hold.  



 - https://i.imgur.com/TMisF.png

(useful 1-month chart here:
  http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg30zig6-hourztgSzm1g10zm2g25 )


The problem is, they've become even cheaper after you posted that.

Personally, I think the ACH fraud issue hitting the exchanges, first reported by Keyur at Camp BX, and something which coincided with changes at Dwolla is something that is having a bigger impact than the market accounted for.  Dwolla wasn't lightning fast for a new account (nearly 10 calendar days between first signing up and having bitcoins in-hand) but it was cheap and reliable.  That onramp to bitcoin has now seen the delay widened to 30 days for new signups, so that will probably cause many to not even bother.  BitInstant can pick up the slack, but the fees are more than Dwolla's $0.25.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a chance to buy under $5 this weekend.  The "weekend dip indicator" isn't useful for every weekend, it simply shows that historically, when conditions are right then more often than not a weekend dip will occur.  This doesn't happen to be one of those weekends where that indicator is useful.   Doesn't mean a dip is any less likely to occur though.

And it wouldn't hurt to have a few USDs, GBPs, or whatever sitting ready to be put to use if a weekend dip does occur though.

Right.

Today nobody can say with certainty how their mined bitcoins are viewed by tax authorities and regulators.  Are mined Bitcons a security, a commodity, or a currency?   When they are sold do you pay capital gains? If so, how do you determine cost basis?   Do you need to keep records of which bitcoins were sold and to whom, and to keep those records for 5 years?  Or are there thresholds, sell under $1K per day and nobody cares?

CoinLab's Jack Jolley was in the Treasury group at Microsoft.  I suspect there are now (or will be soon) some conversations that will result in a more clear understanding on these topics that will result from CoinLab's pioneering.


As the prices for used ATI GPUs are dropping fast (5970s selling below $300 on eBay, crikey!) the timing for this couldn't be any better!  Many Nvidia owners will be tempted to downgrade switch over to an ATI card so that they can get their in-game credits.    To a gamer the new card brings dual benefit, ... better payout versus the Nvidia card when using CoinLab software and a better gaming experience after the upgrade.

Any miner that might be considering selling GPUs in the next year will probably be benefiting thanks to this development from CoinLab.

At least paper gold, for instance, has some association with the underlying commodity (e.g., registered reserves held by COMEX) and there are tools used for manipulating prices controlling volatility by imposing margin limits, etc.
 - http://about.ag/futures.htm


And is making an arrangement for physical delivery something I can insist on, or instead would it be that if things got squirrely I would be forced to accept a cash settlement (possibly at a price that I might feel is below the prevailing market price at the time?)

After seeing what Chirpify is doing (providing a way for people with twitter accounts to sell stuff through tweets and then have chirpify take care of collecting the payment), I wonder if there is anything that BTCTip could do along the same lines.

(Incidentally, Chirpify just got $1.3 million in its first round of funding )

So right now, the primary use case for BTCTip is where a person with bitcoins gives bitcoins through Twitter to another person -- someone who might not even know what a Bitcoin is.

If the Chirpify concept were driectly adopted, here's what a solicitation might look like::
  "Selling used ATI 5870, for ~$145 worth of bitcoins.  Reply "bitcoinrocks" to buy for 29 BTC via @BTCTip http://pic.twitter.com/xxxxxx"

I'm not sure what Chirpify is doing to be able to monitor each @reply back to that user -- maybe they filter a feed from the Twitter firehose to monitor replies and take care of the transaction from there.  So to do what Chirpify is doing might be something a lot more complicated than it might seem.

But the take-away is that there is ecommerce that can happen through Twitter and BTCTip can help some of the ecommerce be paid for using Bitcoins.  So instead of just the BTCTip user sending out bitcoins, the user can request money as well.

Especially for digital delivery items:

  "Today's market update podcast reviews AAPL's quarterly results.  Send 0.1 BTC via @BTCTip and we'll send it to you."

Or for real-world situations as well:

  "Our shipment of the new widget has arrived.  Send 1 BTC via @BTCTip to reserve yours! #widgets"

That way the seller doesn't need to run any website, mess with any shopping cart software, upload to any third party site, etc.  And with the transaction the identity of the sender is known.

Anyone have any other ideas on how else Twitter and Bitcoin might intersect?

This isn't in the frequency ranges you are looking for but could be related to some degree:

- http://freenetworkfoundation.org/?p=859

Dwolla raised $5 million in round B funding from Union Square.  Fred Wilson, of Union Square has a pretty remarkable track record as far as making very smart early investments (i.e., Etsy, foursquare, Kickstarter, Zynga, Tumblr, Turntable.fm, Twilio and Twitter ... and now Dwolla).
 - http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2012/02/dwolla-s-series-b-three-things-it-means-for-dwolla-part-1


Every dime of funds at Dwolla are stored in FDIC or NCUA insured accounts.  Customers funds at MF Global did not (and were not) under that same protection.  (Not justifying Corzine's actions, just saying Dwolla != MF Global)


You said it yourself.  They cannot survive by charging only $0.25 per transaction and deal with mountains of fraud -- even if they pass on the losses when fraud does occur.  Survival requires making changes.  Creating this "30-day probation on new accounts" is simply a policy decision they have the full right to do.  They didn't say you can't withdraw the money in your Dwolla account and they did't put a hold on it -- they simply said it can't go to bitcoin exchanges just yet, if you've only just recently linked your bank account.


Create a bet on Bets of Bitcoin with that statement and I'll take the other side.
 - http://www.BetsOfBitco.in


April 17, 2012:
We regret to inform our users that there is a small delay in Dwolla withdrawals due to the large volume of pending transfers at the moment.

April 24, 2012:
Update: Transfers continued to be processed at a reduced speed because of the extremely large backlog.
We are exploring options with Dwolla to ensure that we have sufficient transfer capacity so that this does not occur again in the future.

 - https://mtgox.zendesk.com/entries/21290798-dwolla-delays
 

2012-04-25 Slashdot.org Bitcoin Mining Startup Gets $500k In Venture Capital
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78037.0

Hi,

Each time for over about a year now that I've paid my mobile phone service I've grumbled about knowing that my phone bill was higher than it needed to be because my mobile provider (T-mobile) was giving part of my payment (perhaps 2% or so)  to the credit card issuer.   Every time I vowed that if such a service wasn't coming soon I'ld be tempted to see one launched myself (even inquired with GPA as to what would be involved http://www.gpa.net/products/virtual_terminal.cfm ).

Well, fortunately BTCBuy.info just came out providing exactly what I need.

My first purchase went fairly smoothly!

Some feedback.

1.) The menu option on the site says "calling cards".  I consider these to be mobile wireless prepaid cards, so calling cards doesn't seem to be the right category.  I'm not looking for minutes for long distance phone calls.
 - http://www.btcbuy.info/CallingCards.cshtml

2.) When I was to choose which card, I wasn't sure if I needed "refill" or "plan".    I have a Pay as you Go (1500 minutes talk, text and web).  Since that is a monthly price, I ended up choosing "plan" and it ended up working.  Can anything there give help as to which T-mobile plans take which payment reload options?

3.) When I was asked for my e-mail address, I was wondering if that was required.   If I wish for that to be private, I suppose I could use a throwaway e-mail address but was just curious if that was simply for customer service issues should something come up.  (and, of course, the e-mail is necessary for getting the delivery of the e-card, I later learned.)

4.) After ordering, I was shown the bitcoin address that I was to send my payment to.  After I sent it though, I didn't know what to do next?  Should I refresh the page?  Should I check my e-mail?  What?  And how many confirms will it take?

The answer was ... wait two confirmations and check my e-mail -- I will get a confirmation of payment received, and then I will get another message with the purchased e-card.

5.) Which brings me to the last, but nowhere near the least important piece of feedback,
The e-mail sent to me had the T-mobile card's 14-digit "PIN" code that I use to reload the funds to the balance for my mobile account.   That code sent to me is a negotiable bearer instrument.  Whomever has access to that code can use it (with any user that has t-mobile phone service, for this specific card item that I ordered).   As we've learned with Mt. Gox redeemable codes, Instawallet URLs, and Coinapult claim tickets, ... protection of that code is of the utmost importance.  

SMTP, which is the protocol that e-mail is transferred using, is not a secure form of communications.  That t-mobile code in my e-mail was visible from the mail server wherever  BTCBuy's mail service is hosted, and visible in all the dozen or so routes the message took between BTCBuy and my mail server.    A network sysadmin willing to commit fraud or a contract tech support person from another country even could have at any point sniffed the network traffic specifically looking for the pattern: "from: *.BTCBuy.com". With those results the bad actor gets first dibs on all mobile phone prepaid card codes purchased from BTCBuy before the buyer ever sees them.

So, please reconsider the approach .  BitInstant is planning on making a change after recently considering how Coinapult delivers bitcoins through e-mail as CoinaPult's approach is exposed to the same risk (code stolen by someone sniffing the raw SMTP traffic).

BitInstant's solution (that it is currently in the process of implementing) is to give the user a 4 to 6 digit PIN# at the time of purchase.  This special code is then necessary before the purchased e-card's code is revealed.  Here's BitInstant's description:
 - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77194.msg858077#msg858077

Ideally, there is a flow that doesn't go through e-mail.  After sending the bitcoin payment I was hoping for a link that would be for a page that shows me the status of my transaction.  When BTCBuy considers my payment as having been completed (2 confirmations) I should then be given the code right there in the browser. [Update: Though this should only be served via SSL if the page contains sensitive information.]  Thus e-mail would only be necessary as a backup if I lost the URL.

Also, is 2 confirmations enough?  These codes are almost close enough to being hard money, where if there were an opportunity for double spending on two confirmations, this would be among the first services to be hit.  If the fulfillment is online, the purchase can be made anonymously, and the goods sold cannot be easily recovered if there is fraud detected then the transaction is not one that is suitable for 0/unconfirmed payments.  With this category specifically, even waiting for two confirmations might be insufficient.

At the same time, 2 confirmations is too long.   I wanted that code ASAP because I waited until my plan expired and am unable to make a call until I refill funds into my t-mobile account.  Optionally accepting a green address for instant credit might be something you could consider?   Or , ... perhaps you could accept also a redeemable BTC code from an exchange as that would be another way to give credit and complete the transaction instantly?

To conclude ... .AWESOME SERVICE!   I am so happy to see this come along!

Ok, so if the status is "Sent" then Get-Bitcoin should definitely have it.  
Make sure to give them the transaction id:
It will show as: Transaction ID:nnnnnn

And the URL for them to see that would be:
 - https://www.dwolla.com/activity#moneyin/detail/nnnnnn/1

For you to see that it would be:
 - https://www.dwolla.com/activity#moneyout/detail/nnnnnn/1

Ask Get-Bitcoin what they show for the status on that.


Oops, so there is one report of "pending".  I somehow missed that while the other reports ended up not being "pending", the OP's specifically had pointed out as "pending".  So we'll hopefully learn what that was all about.  There aren't any other confirmations of this happening yet though.

So far you are the only person to confirm this (  account-to-account transfer from a Bitcoin exchange arriving as "pending" ).

It the status still "pending" or has the status changed on any?

Not a bug report but a suggestion.

Compose needs some CSS love.
 - http://dev.glbse.com/user/mail/compose

Also color for status message after successfully changing password is red.  Shouldn't OK / success be green?

It's turning into quite a contest!

Now, going forward if mining keeps the target 144 blocks per day from here (yes, a big stretch but on average ... 144) the date for block 210,000 has moved later and now sits about noon on December 9th, 2012.  It was targeted at December 7th, at one point.

 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=312
 - http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png

Please log into Dwolla and click on the Payment activity tab (left side).  Then click on your transfer to Get-Bitcoin.  Then click on Details.
 - https://www.dwolla.com/activity

What does the status show?   If it says pending, then what does it show for "Funding source?"   If it doesn't say "Your Dwolla Balance" then what does it show for Date?