I'm translating this into Dutch myself. Don't blame my grammar or anything if I screw up!
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BitCoin could automatically send random coins to a new address at random times. This would make knowing a coin's lineage useless to an attacker, since any of these new addresses could be actual people.
Then what if you'll keep running Bitcoin long enough? Will you get broke? (Or change the "random payment" amount to be very small.) And I thought the transaction amount was public anyways? Because if it is, then it'll make the function useless since any attacker could just check if the amount transferred is higher than the "random payment limit". I dunno, sounds like a bad idea to me.
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Damn, I was just too darn lazy to finish my Casino.
Ah well, I'll play in yours anyways, ha ha!
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Can't we force a user to use a new address for receiving payments? Every time a payment is received display another Bitcoin address in the address bar. (only transactions via Bitcoin addresses, NOT IPs of course, since that'd be useless, right?) The actual key would still be kept to ensure that the user would still receive payments of people sending to the same address. (We wanna minimize "lost" Bitcoins, right?) This yields a couple of questions: - Is this technologically possible? (Probably.)
- Is this bad to force it upon users? (Probably.)
- Should we implement such a feature? (I don't know, I wouldn't unless we don't have a choice, better half a defense than none!)
So, are there any alternatives to combat "coin lineage"?
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The points you mentioned are of high concern to me (and should be to the rest of the community.) Your suggestion of making the information that can found with/through digital forensics available to the user seems very good in securing Bitcoin. Maybe build a "paranoid mode" switch in Bitcoin that will immediately show all that info to the user! Also what seems like a good idea is to show that switch in a "first run dialog", but some people find that annoying. (I would too a business environment!) Maybe distribute a "Home" and "Business" binary that has the "first run dialog" and one without it, ofcourse in that order.
But, as this data is available, and people will trust Bitcoin (sometimes blindly), we'll have to warn users about pitfalls. Have proper documentation documenting everything, even for the "paranoid users". Users will have to learn how to make safe transactions, etc...
If someone screws up and gets screwed over by the justice system because he trusted Bitcoin blindly, he'll speak about it and Bitcoin will get a bad name.
My conclusion: the Bitcoin community needs to watch out for the losers dumb users lusers!
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is the gpu-computing-client compatible with the normal client so the gpu-generated bitcoins will emmit into the same pool as the cpu-generated ones ?
Yes, totally. It's just your GPU doing the work of your CPU.
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I'm not familiar with the algorithm, but if it's possible, I think it would be best to just alter the regular client so that when it starts up the first time, it grabs the most current block and verifies blocks in reverse order while also continuing to verify new blocks. That way Bitcoin could start generating blocks immediately.
Good idea, but we would need some form of indicator it did that to the user, and warn the user about the potential hazards. (Atleast, that's my idea.)
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Well, what if the main website gets hacked and the blocks you are downloading are not the original blocks? I mean, this makes the network a hell of a lot of insecure.
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Actually I do not. I was thinking about something like 100 BTC per game. And no cheating! Note: I can't play until next weekend...
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Anyone interested in playing chess against me for bitcoins? (ps: I wanna play as black! )
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Can you upload a screenshot? It'd help out great.
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Bitcoin works with asynchronous key encryption, right? (If I'm not, please correct me!)
Can't we just put a simple button in the GUI that checks how much money we have by checking all the blocks if they belong to the user, or not?
Or am I talking gibberish and don't I fully understand Bitcoin now?
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o_O
That's about what my face looked like when I read that. So eh, what do you mean "merging Bitcoin with other p2p projects"? Like Bitcoin+Bittorrent?! "build the official-p2p-currency" for what? Warez4Bitcoinz?
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Bad idea, BUT it is possible to make a "Chat" button on the main page of bitcoin.org (here). Then a Java IRC client is on that page so people will not have to install a client, or if they can't they can just chat on that page. That's the closest thing what I'd approve of. (not like I'm that important, but what ever! ) Anyhow, integrating other services in the Bitcoin client is bad. Bitcoin is a finance application, not an entertainment one! And in my opinion, it only stays a finance application.
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Is this going to happen again?
If you organize something again I would participate.
I would too. Maybe I should host one, (I wont play myself, to avoid "scamming" claims), anyone interested?
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I've thought about ways to do a more cursory check of most of the chain up to the last few thousand blocks.
Sounds like a good idea, although you'll skip checking block, right? And that doesn't sound safe for high-value transactions. So I suggest we do implement it, but give the user the option to turn it on, but leave it off by default for now.
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I'd buy you a Domino's for you, if I knew how to pay from Europe! (Like, how is Domino's pizza in the United States gonna receive my payment?, Credit card?)
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Right now there isn't a port number setting to do that. It's a feature yet to be implemented.
So, if I somehow I forwarded port router:8333 to bitcoinhost1:8333 and router:8334 to bitcoinhost2:8333, we get undefined behavior? Because that seems like trivial to me, to keep track of port numbers in any p2p app. Sorry about that, must've been drunk when I wrote that.
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I suggest we disable IP transactions while the user uses a Proxy! Just to be on the safe side.
That's a good idea. At the very least a warning dialog explaining that it'll connect to the IP and send the information cleartext, giving the chance to cancel. Note: I also suggest we show the warning everytime and do not give the user an option to disable that. (Like a checkbox that is marked "Show this warning everytime I use a proxy and send an IP transaction.". That'd be bad in my opinion, a user would disable it and forget about the proxy he's connecting through!)
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I feel obligated to post this in this thread to. Using Bitcoin over Tor might be dangerous. (It doesn't have to though!) Say I am an exit node listening for bitcoin transactions and grab them? Or is everything public/private key encrypted?
Actually no, transfering coins via IP address isn't encrypted. When you transfer coins to an IP, the recipient creates a new address just for that transaction and tells you to transfer coins to that address. A malicious exit node could sniff all Bitcoin traffic and intercept those transactions easily. So for everyone: DO NOT USE IP ADDRESSES AS DESTINATIONS, ALWAYS USE BITCOIN ADDRESSES. Here is the message: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=129.msg1123#msg1123
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