Take the Bitcoin address you accidentally mistyped (which now owns your bitcoins) and put it into a vanity address generator. The generator will create and test private keys until it finds one that produces a public address matching the one you're looking for, at which point you have the private key to reclaim your funds. Of course, you may need to wait several thousand years to find a match. there isn't sufficient energy in our sun to power a perfect (in the theoretical physics sense) computer that could attempt even a trillionth of 1% of possible addresses before our sun burned out. ... FYPFY. Baring a cryptographic flaw being discovered in ECDSA there is no possibility of ever recovering lost bitcoins. Well not until man is able to harness power sources many hundreds of magnitudes more powerful than our star. |
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Nobody can say for sure however there are a variety of potential solutions and ultimately the future may involve more than one.
The first thing to consider is "what is a micro transaction". The term is vauge and means a lot of different things to different people. Payments in the $1 to $5 range are inefficient for credit cards and Bitcoin competes well here. Payments in the $0.10 to $1.00 range are more challenging for Bitcoin and may require some alternative thinking. Payments in the $0.10 or smaller range likely are a bad fit for Bitcoin as the processing costs for a $0.10 tx is the same as a $1 mil tx.
Some back of napkin ideas for handling micro transactions.
1) It is likely that micro payments will be accepted as 0-confirm. The value of double spending them is negigible compared to the effort & cost. While these transactions will be lower priority a smart vendor could operate under a business model where they get paid "eventually". There will always be blocks that have extra space during off peak hours.
2) For some types of high frequency micro transactions there is the possibility of random payment. i.e. instead of paying 1 bitcent per action you pay 1% chance of 1 BTC per action. This reduces the number of transactions (and thus cost and thus fees) by a factor of 100.
3) It is very likely that over time higher level functionality will use bitcoin as a foundation. Much like you don't use the FedNet national banking network directly applications you use do give you access to it indirectly. Some will cry "centralization" but they seem to forget Bitcoin is about freedom (as in free speech not free beer). Unlike the current banking network where gaining a seat at the table is essentially impossible the open access of the network will create potential for real competition among providers of indirect services.
4) This is an area for an alt-chain to shine. No not LTC (which is simply a copy of BTC with all the same limitations). An alt chain built from the ground up to handle micropayments would be an ideal "side kick" to Bitcoin. In theory there are lots of exciting ideas which could be explored. A very short block time (say 30 seconds) introduces problems of chain fragmentation but that is less of a danger in a network designed for low value transactions. Using a periodic ledger to compress all prior tx data into current ledger of values (which is only used once hundreds of blocks deep) would reduce the storage costs of the chain. It may even be possible to design an alt chain with no independent currency. A chain that for example required destroying Bitcoins to fund (i.e. destroy 1 BTC to generate 1000 microCoins in the altchain). To date alt-chain have been disappointing pump and dump copies but if there is market demand I would expect to see some micro-transaction alt-chain take off
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It also provides for a more useful platform for automation. For example via RPC a merchant can get a unique payment address for a customer. No password is necessary thus no password is at risk. The website can run all day processing hundreds of orders and checking for funds and confirmations. The password is only necessary to remove funds from the wallet.
This "warm wallet" approach presents a much smaller attack surface than either having a decrypted hot wallet or a wallet where the password is on the web server.
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Bitcoin is gone, I can see its obvious and inevitable now... The price going up is the first sign of its ultimate failure, and I am so confident that this is the case, I have actually deleted my entire wallet.dat file and all the bitcoins there... Games up guys, time to move to the next project!  I am sure nobody will miss the 9 bitcent lost forever. How about next you delete your forum profile? |
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Worry about real attack vectors not fake ones.
No thief goes around reading wallets and then brute forcing the big ones. If you have a strong passwords and you system isn't compromised in some other way brute force is pointless. I don't mean pointless like man this is going to be hard pointless I mean the attacker will die of old age even if using an entire botnet for the next 5 decades pointless. If your system is compromised (malware, or weak password) then a theif is going to steal your wallet even if it only has a couple bitcoins.
If you lose funds it almost certainly due to:
a) weak password. Even w/ key hardening a weak passwords can be defeated by brute force or dictionary attack. (If your password isn't on any password dictionary and is more than 8 characters containing a mix of symbols you likely are safe).
b) keylogger on your system (if you give the attacker your password it doesn't really matter how you protect the wallet)
c) bitcoin specific malware (such as the one that changes copied addresses to the attacker's address).
d) not maintaining recent backup (coins lost not stolen).
truecrypt isn't going to protect you from any of those attack vectors. So if you want spent time and energy "protecting" yourself from imaginary attack vectors well go ahead. As an alternative you can learn about real attack vectors and spend your time and energy making yourself better protected against them.
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I'm sorry for your luck.
You still aren't getting it. Luck has nothing to do with it. Find me a single person who had a US wire submitted in the last month go though in less than 7 days. |
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There is a checksum in the Bitcoin address. The network will reject funds sent to INVALID addresses (not to be confused with "VALID but not the one I intended to send it to" addresses).
The odds of accidentally mistyping an address and it still be valid is roughly 1 in 4 billion. So while the risk exists it is not really something to worry about. It is more common that funds are lost because they are accidentally sent to the wrong (properly typed and valid but not intended) address.
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This is good advice. The USPIS is very good and very patient. How exactly is that good advice? Bitfloor doesn't accept Money Orders so they will be returned. It waste both the user and operator's time and money. |
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As for the bad luck comment, that was about the wires. If you're doing greater than $10k, then blame the US government.
Filing a SAR takes about 2 minutes. Nobody anywhere on the planet considers 14-21 day delay acceptable. Blaming it on US govt is just dumb. Do you honestly think all of the estimated $40 trillion in international wires are delayed 14-21 days. >$10K in transfers requires REPORTING. It doesn't require freezing funds. It doesn't require unexplained week long delays. IF funds are held by the US govt then how can MtGox customer service offer to cancel the wire and immediately process the withdraw by BitInstant? Hmm? That would be a felony under US law. |
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International Wire :
1. Yes a small number is affected, but this should be solve normally by the end of July maximum early August. Also please remember that yesterday (Monday 16) was a public holiday in Japan so our bank did not processed anything yesterday.
2. Random checks. I am not sure if you are aware but sending money to the US can be subject to random checks and delays when it reach a certain threshold (10,000 USD) in either one withdrawal or several ones that combined reach this amount. Things are that unlike other companies that can send 100,000 USD or 500,000 USD to the US, most of them send it to one and one account only, while in our case we are sending that much to thousand of people make is it, in the eyes of banks and authorities a little bit suspicious, explaining the random checks. Think of it as when a plan arrive at immigration in a country... There are random checks on your person or your luggage. Please stop lying to our faces. 1) "A small number". Strange that not a single person has ever reported getting a wire of any significant value sent in say 7 days. Anyone? Anyone reading this thread in the last month have you had a US wire take "only" 7 days? In this thread and the half dozen other ones on the topic there are dozens and dozens of reports of delayed wires. AFAIK not a single person saying "hey I got lucky mine only took 4 days". If small number means 10% one would expect that from the 90% getting ultra fast wires SOMEONE would be reporting it somewhere. 2) Bank Holiday. That is just insulting. When wires are taking 2-3 weeks it isn't caused by the occasional bank holiday. Your wire times are so long that any occasional bank holiday falls into the standard deviation on your wire delivery times. 3) Random checks? Once again unless the random % is 100% that doesn't exactly explain it. Every single wire of significant value is delayed. 4) This has absolutely nothing to do w/ AML because your customer support continually offers to cancel wires and withdraw funds by other faster methods (bitinstant). If funds were held for actually AML check offering to assist your customer with evading AML reporting is a felony in both US AND Japan. So please please stop with the lying! |
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Wires. Dwolla has become a pain in the butt, and it's not MtGox's fault that they changed their TOS.
Let me guess you actually have never used a wire from MtGox? My last 4 wires were 18 days, 15 days, 20 days, and 14 (and still not processed) days and those results aren't atypical. Wires are running 2 to 3 weeks (yes weeks not days) and it has been that way for months now. One of the wires was made the same day as a Dwolla withdrawal and the wire (which I paid $40 in fees) took 4 days longer than Dwolla. |
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9 post? check
$500 in BTC? check
Paying with reversible funds? check
"Hmm"
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A feature request. Can 2 factor authentication be limited to just withdrawals?
A "bug fix" request. The deposit page STILL doesn't have routing (ABA) information. Most domestic banks don't use SWIFT codes, don't have an option to enter SWIFT codes, and if they do charge higher international wire rates. It is simply confusing to end user to not include routing (ABA) information.
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Blatant trolling is blatant. Honestly OP is just a bunch of unsupported accusations. Shtylman made a single statement that "Banks allow negative balances" and the OP spun that into an entire conspiracy theory. I am not sure what that means. But I can tell you that I got 0 letters. I have checking accounts in Chase, HSBC, ING. And overdraft was always by default on all of my accounts, I had to call them up and remove that feature from all of my accounts.
That was because when opening the account you consented to the credit check and pledged allegiance to their right of offset. The bank account opening forms in the USA are very long and very confusing. They however are legally significantly different than e.g. forms required when opening stockbrokerage accounts. Which has nothing to do with nothing. Your entire baseless accusation was based on upon a statement made about BANKS not BROKERAGES! |
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How do you reach the conclusion that Bitcoin meets the definition of money under the legislation: (n) "Money" means a medium of exchange that is authorized or adopted by the United States or a foreign government. The term includes a monetary unit of account established by an intergovernmental organization or by agreement between two or more governments. Which government, intergovernmental organization, or agreement between two or more governments has authorized or adopted Bitcoin as a medium of exchange? |
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When BFL started to accept pre-orders for FPGA Singles end of 2011, Bitcoin price kept rising until it reached "$7.25". Such rising period took around 3 months, and when BFL started delivering the Singles, BTC price started to move down slowly toward $4. Correlation != Causation (and in this case they aren't even correlated). |
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Indirectly >$10, >200K blocks and >10M coins do creates some psychological effects.
$10M * 10M = $100M coins in circulation. 200K blocks is ~4 years. Bitcoin being collectively worth $100M after 4 years does put some doubts into the critics. That is pretty large and pretty long run for your average internet HYIP or Ponzi scam. Collectively that is a lot of money "voting" to stay and doing so for a significant amount of time. Granted past performance is not indicative of future success but it certainly provides a more significant foundation than 0 blocks and ~0 btc money supply worth ~$0.00.
I would say money supply (I hate term market cap) staying above $100M for multiple months after the first subsidy cut would be a huge confidence booster for people interested in Bitcoin for a variety of reasons. $100M is probably the largest psychological number other than the prior peak of $32 per BTC. Then again I hope someday we are wondering when Bitcoin has a $1 billion money supply.
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Bitcoin isn't money at least not under any definition of any existing law. Bitcoin isn't stored value by this or any existing definition because there is no issuer. Per your quote "“Stored value” involves monetary value representing a claim against the issuer that is stored on a digital or electronic medium and accepted as a means of redemption for money or as payment for goods or services. What issuer? You have 1 BTC who is your claim against? Who can you require redeem it for cash value? The reason for regulating stored value issuers is because the stored value by nature requires a level of trust. Consumers are buying this stored value product with a naive expectation they money will always be there. The delayed nature of the redemption (revenue up front, liabilities in the future) is perfect setup for crooks to collect the money and then walk away leaving the consumer holding an empty promise and no value. That dynamic doesn't exist with Bitcoin. There is no guaranteed value. There is nowhere you can seek redemption. There is no issuer. While the CA government could certainly make Bitcoin illegal the langauge of the law as quoted above doesn't. (Also please use quote tags if they are quotes. Makes it hard to read when your text and the quoted text are all jumbled together.) |
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Would you buy a Jalepeno if it made $0.67 per day?
Yes to help decentralize and protect the network. I would imagine a lot of people would. I won't however pay for one and wait x months till BFL gets around to actually delivering so I will be waiting probably until 2013. |
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Well BitInstant fees are kinda high so I can understand the utility of larger MP. It isn't that hard to sell a $200 to $500 MP. However these deals for $25 to $45 MP? That is 11% to 20% markup right there. We stopped accepting MP a long time ago (and if we ever accepted them in the future it would have a minimum) but I get at least 2 PM/emails a day asking about buying coins and most are $20 to $50 MP.
I have to imagine they aren't scams. It is pretty had to pull off a scam w/ MP (especially if you provide a receipt) and the dollar amounts seem too low to make it worthwhile.
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