Stock exchanges have existed without government intervention, so it definitely works, though now it is mostly illegal.

You cannot send bitcoins using a paper wallet because it simply doesn't have the ability. In order to spend the bitcoins in a paper wallet, you must import the private key into a wallet that can send bitcoins.

Once you import the private key, you should destroy the paper wallet or at least store it very securely because anyone that sees it can still spend your bitcoins. Also, you shouldn't reuse the paper wallet because the key is now in another wallet and that might cause confusion.

Blockchain.info has a feature where you can "sweep" the private key. All that does is sends the bitcoins from the paper wallet's address to a new address in the blockchain.info wallet. In this case the paper wallet is no longer useful because it no longer contains any bitcoins, but there is no reason why you can't reuse it.

Lethn is complaining that you didn't actually provide the statement. Here is the missing statement:

That is absurd. You paid with Bitcoin, right? Confirmation of a bitcoin payment doesn't take a week, it takes an hour at most. He is stalling.

 I believe that Coinabul works like this:

1. You place an order and pay him in Bitcoin.
2. He converts the bitcoins to dollars and orders your item from APMEX.
3. After his check has cleared, APMEX ships him your item.
3. He receives the item from APMEX and then ships it to you.

My guess is that you can get the gold more quickly and more cheaply from APMEX, though you wouldn't be using bitcoins.

As pointed out before, the growth in energy usage by miners is limited by the value of the bitcoins received by miners. At a value of $40,000, the energy consumed is around 650 TWh, which by your calculation is only 0.003% of the total. 10% implies a value of around $1,500,000 per bitcoin, which is unlikely because at $1,000,000 bitcoin will have replaced all other currencies.


Right now you can get an ASIC miner for $100. I'm not convinced that cost of entry will be too high for most people, though profitability might be difficult for small miners because of economies of scale. Also, the cost of power limits only the miners, not the users.

The amount of electricity used by an ASIC is very low. The price of bitcoin would have to drop below $100 before power costs exceed the mining revenue. If the price does drop that low, then many miners will quit mining because it will no longer be profitable and the difficulty will drop. If the price drops but mining is still profitable, then the difficulty will continue rising, but not as quickly.

They should have invested in HSBC instead.

As I pointed out before, the cost of mining will approach the value of the mined bitcoins.

At $800 per bitcoin, that is currently about $1 billion per year and about 13 TWh per year (at $0.08/kWh). As the block reward drops, the amount of energy used would also decrease (unless energy gets much cheaper), except that the price of bitcoin will probably rise much more quickly.

If the price reaches $40,000 this year then the energy usage could be as high as 650 TWh, assuming there are no other limits.

Don't listen to these newbies. Spend it. If you want to save it, buy some more.

I do understand, but I was trying to write like a patent lawyer . In Armory's case, "sends" in #1 and #2 means "copies the transaction to a USB stick and tells the user to plug it into the other computer".

A lot of people are hurt by bubbles. Just look at the dot-com and housing bubbles. In fact, everyone is hurt by bubbles to some extent because bubbles create economic inefficiencies and wasted effort.

There is no strict definition of a bubble, but one defining characteristic is that a primary factor behind the increasing price is a widespread expectation of an increasing price. Bubbles burst when that expectation goes away.

So, a person (such as Shiller) that considers Bitcoin to be in a bubble believes that expectation of rising prices is the primary factor behind the rise in price. Now, who can argue that most people have not bought bitcoins primarily because they expect the price to rise? He has a very strong argument.

On the other hand, adoption will also drive up prices, and expectation of adoption does not make a bubble, unless perhaps the expectation is unrealistic. So, ultimately the test is whether or not adoption of bitcoin will soon be high enough to support the current price.

I believe that adoption will continue to increase dramatically, so I believe the current price is valid (if not low), and Bitcoin is not in a bubble.

The cost of producing a bitcoin tends to approach the value of a bitcoin because if it costs less than a bitcoin then more people will mine, raising the difficulty and thus the cost. If it costs more than a bitcoin then less people will mine, wihich will lower the difficulty and thus the cost.

The "code" is the first 8 characters of the bitcoin address. You can check its validity here: http://casascius.uberbills.com/

According to this site, the bitcoin address is 1Goe6LR2xP4Ss4g3KSLgPQ5vPmYWaZyZAh and the 25 BTC has not been spent.

The coin could be a counterfeit, but I don't see anything that indicates that might be.

I disagree.

1. Supply and demand works all by itself without intervention. In fact, intervention only creates problems. Just look at the dollar.

2. Knowing the number of spendable coins does not actually tell you enough about the supply. The "supply" is not a single value -- it is a curve, and knowing a single number doesn't tell you much about the curve.

3. We don't have a way to determine demand. Even if we did know the number of spendable coins, there is nothing we could do with that number.

X = offline computer
A = online computer
B = payee's address
S = secure storage on online computer

1. X creates the transaction X -> A and stores it in S.
2. A creates the transaction A -> B.
3. A sends X -> A and A -> B to the Bitcoin network.

Compare this to Armory:

1. A creates the transaction X -> B and sends it to X (via USB stick)
2. X signs X -> B and sends it back to A (via USB stick)
3. A sends X -> B to the Bitcoin network.

IANAL, but in my opinion, the only "novel" part of the patent might be S, but that is pushing it.

There are several online stores that accept bitcoin. You can spend it at overstock.com and tigerdirect.com, among others.

I you implying that the exchange rate dropped because Deprived has disappeared?

Something is wrong with the URL. I am unable to access that URL from my browser, so maybe the problem is simply that the site is down. It is also a good idea to have a backup pool to mine. If cgminer has problems with one pool, it can automatically switch to another.

You came to the right place! There is absolutely no possibility of anyone here giving you bad advice. I can't imagine why you would visit a CPA or a lawyer when you can get better quality advice here for free.

The price is unaffected by changes in the block reward or the difficulty. On one hand, some miners might lose interest in Bitcoin completely and sell everything, and that might cause the price to go down by an imperceptible amount. On the the other hand, slightly fewer bitcoins are available to sell and that might cause the price to go up by an imperceptible amount. Of course, those two factors might cancel each other out and nothing happens to the price at all.