I know why the pole's ice will be melting away...

Don't waste your time...

My GPU crunches about 15.3 MKeys/s with oclvanitygen, everything longer than 1BoatSLRHtKNngkdXEeobR76b53 was rejected as too long (I had to cut away the last seven chars) and 1BoatSLRHtKNngkdXEeobR76b53 alone is about to take ~4.021*10^30 years for 50% probability to find a match. And that's not even guaranteed ... 

The probability to find the private key for a given Bitcoin address is mathematically not zero, but as said before, there is not enough energy and maybe time in the universe to succeed such an attempt.

Don't spread bullshit because you don't know how to create split key vanity addresses without the need to trust the creator in any way.

At Vanity Pool you can have a vanity address created for you in a secure way (split key technique) that only you can use this address properly, no one else can steal your Bitcoins from such a vanity address. No one else than you has the necessary private key for such a properly created split key vanity address.

I wonder how uninformed the OP is...


On request I can make any valid 2-8 chars vanity address securely for the recipient, it depends on your offer and how difficult the address turns out to be. I will use the split key technique, so no need to trust me in any way.

The OP isn't very informative on what happened to the full extend.

I can't remember having read which windows version he uses. This could be vital info.
If it's any recent version with standard setup of primary partition C:\ he might use "recent version" feature for the Bitcoin folder to extract any older/recent version of wallet.dat, even if it got deleted. I would try that first (in the non-destructive way). But read next paragraph first and obey the advise.

But the very first step to do is to make as early as possible a complete image backup of the Windows partition which holds the vital data.
It depends on how many Bitcoins might be in danger, but I'd do that even for less than one Bitcoin. The basic idea is to be able to recover a known starting state before tinkering with the system while trying to fix the issue. If you do something wrong, breath smoothly, and recover your old state to start again.

The OP said that his Bitcoin client started to reload the blockchain. (We still don't know which version of the Bitcoin client the OP uses. You get the point? Pretty scarce information policy by the OP... why that? Do I smell something fishy? Strange that a lot of other posters didn't mind to ask obvious questions...). I have no idea why the Bitcoin client felt the need to reload the blockchain, but again valuable information isn't available to judge. (OK, OP might not be expert enough to know what is important and what isn't.)
The walled.dat might be just fine. As long as the blockchain data hasn't been downloaded, I guess, the Bitcoin client won't show much to be in the wallet.dat (I might be wrong here, as it could flag the Bitcoins in the (old) wallet.dat as still unconfirmed.)
As others said, normal client won't touch the data directory in any harmful way.

I won't emphasize too much on the unspeakable stupidity to not have any backups, especially when substantial amounts of Bitcoins are in question. So, I guess you don't care much about the data on your hard drive which could fail at any time, btw. I have seen hard drives passing away, though not completely by surprise. Well, it happens here and there...

I hope you can recover your lost data and I wish you learn your lesson to show more respect to your valuable data goods on your hard drive. Not all data deserve it, Bitcoins surely do!

Alphanumeric pw? I hope it wasn't something like: 123wizzarD
Leaked password lists show so much ingenious creativity...

Was your pw absolutely unique, never used before somewhere else?

How about security status of your computer and your email account and it's pw complexity?

So many questions remain unanswered by your minimal info.

  Wow, I'm really impressed! Didn't think this needs an official announcement.

BTW, who decides what a competent authority is?

THIS! Soo true...

The bar is pretty high in the sky for more mad excuses from Mt.Gox. Can't wait for the next silly story.

U.n.b.e.l.i.e.v.a.b.l.e

Switch off your irony detectors for a few seconds, it might break otherwise.

My first thought was: Wow, that's something the world has been waiting for!

You can safely turn back on your various detectors.
I am an European citizen and live in a country where I'm glad that access to guns is far more restricted and regulated than in America. It's my personal opinion and I don't agree with American culture to allow relatively easy access to guns for virtually everyone. I don't blame you for this. It just feels scary for me.

Sure, we have crime and people get shot here, too. I don't know exactly if more or less, it surely depends where you live, both in Europe or America.

But here in my capital town I feel more safe to know that if someone's freaking out, he doesn't need to just open the drawer an pull out some guns and automatic stuff. Some people and criminals have weapons, fortunately they are scarce here and I'm happy with that.

I probably am exaggerating things a bit, so take it with a grain of salt...

Peace!


But still interesting that his selling did grow because of Bitcoin and he had chosen to add it to his online shop. Unfortunately this interesting topic was not much elaborated further...

Nein, warum sollte Eligius einen erst noch zu findenden Block im voraus bezahlen? Solange der Pool nicht weiß, wieviele Shares beackert werden mussten, ist nicht bekannt, wieviel insgesamt irgendwann für den nächsten gefundenen Block zu zahlen ist.

Die Vergütung für einen gefunden Block kann erst verteilt werden, wenn ein Block auch gefunden wurde.

Das von dir zuletzt gesagte, bringt es so einigermaßen auf den Punkt. Schnelle Blöcke bringen dem Pool Überschuß, der zum Abbau der Warteschlange verwendet wird, die wiederum durch langsame Blöcke, für die statistisch zu viele Shares beackert werden mussten, gefüllt wird.

Wenn ich es jetzt noch richtig in Erinnerung habe, zahlt Eligius einen nur von der Difficulty und dem Blockreward abhängigen Anteil pro eingereichtem Share. Statistisch braucht es X Shares um einen Block zu finden.

Braucht Eligius mehr Shares, also Y > X, um einen Block zu finden, können nicht alle, die Shares eingereicht haben, ausbezahlt werden, weil der Anteil pro Share nicht ständig wechselt. CPPSRB zahlt nicht mehr aus, als durch den Blockreward eingenommen wird, es soll für den Pool-Betreiber kein Risiko aufkommen, wenn mal Perioden mit sog. "bad luck" anstehen. Die, die nix bekommen konnten, weil nur ~X Shares ausbezahlt werden können, wandern mit den noch nicht ausbezahlten Shares in die Auszahl-Warteschlange.

Braucht Eligius weniger Shares, also Y < X, denn bekommen alle, die für diesen Block geschuftet haben, Ihren Anteil und es bleibt etwas übrig, das dann zum Ausbezahlen der Warteschlangen-Shares genutzt wird.

Mag sein, daß ich das Eligius-Schema grob vereinfacht habe, aber so hängt es noch in meiner Erinnerung. Eligius ist nach meinem Verständnis ein guter und fairer Pool. Schürfte ich noch Bitcoins, dann bei Eligius. War dort immer OK...

Hast du verstanden, nach welchem Schema Eligius ausbezahlt?

Wenn der Pool derzeit statistisch weniger Blöcke findet, als zu erwarten wäre, dann verlängert sich die Warteschlange, bis alle ausbezahlt werden können.

Ui, eine CEX-Sockenpuppe, die im Eifer vergessen hat, das Kind beim Namen zu nennen. Geh' nochmal ein bißchen üben...

Are you sure your "lost" 55 BTC are truely lost in the terms of the OP? I'm asking because your signature speaks of lost coins due to a compromised mining pool. Have your coins been stolen or has someone lost control of your coins because the associated private key(s) are gone forever and there is definitely no way to recover them?

It's important to remember that Bitcoins are never truely lost or destroyed or deleted in a technical sense. All you loose is the control to spend them should you ever loose the last copy of the private key of your various bitcoin addresses that hold some coins. Every minted Bitcoins lives happily in the blockchain. The question is: who has the private key necessary to spend them?


Couldn't this be corrected if necessary? I guess, Satoshi doesn't care much about those first coins...

Consider making your merchant script more 'smart'! Despite the inability (and sometimes intention) of customers to send proper payments, you should think of how much is missing (total percentage) and is it worth the hassle with the delayed and pending order.

Compare it e.g. to bastards from hell PayPal. They deduct a noticeable percentage as fee. If the percentage you miss is below that, don't care and swallow it. At least with Bitcoins noone can freeze your account or charge back the payment. That alone is worth it over fu***** PayPal.

No, as far as I remember cold storage refers to offline handling of a bitcoin wallet, i.e. it is not used on an online computer which has a 'hot' wallet.

Offline generated paper wallets can be also seen as cold storage. You can deposit bitcoins inside from hot wallets. As long as the associated private keys of those paper wallets aren't imported to an online bitcoin client or get stolen, they remain safe cold storage.

I may be wrong, please correct me. I don't own enough bitcoins to go through all this hassle. I care a lot for the security of my computer and don't blindly click here and there or install unsafe crap from anywhere that screams at me to do so. (Consider using safer and less prominent OS than Windows...)

@miaviator

Then you were pretty lucky, indeed.

My AMD 5770 crunches about 15.5 MKeys/s and, oh yeah, once I was lucky too on the vanity pool. It made me happy to see that something unusual happened that day. Always a nice surprise.

Unfortunately most work is way out of near reach and heavily underpaid for the amount of work needed to find a solution. Sure, with a tremendous amount of luck it might work out, but you can't rely on that.

When I'm in the right mood and bored of other mining, I'll point oclvanitymine @ the pool and hope for some lucky day. 

PayPal is such a bunch of greedy, selfish retarded freaks...

Point is, whatever PayPal thinks is fine for them, seems to be rediculous for those who bring them the money. Does this understand anyone? Even worse is, you can't argue with them, only clones and drones on the phone, not to speak of automated funny email answering bots.

Sue PayPal? Haha, good luck, make the lawyers happily suck your last drop of blood...

Not to say that I've been through all of this, up today I could dodge some bad nightmares with PayPal, but if you have trouble with them, they suck, really suck. They freeze your account and wait until you beg on knees and swear the hell out of your mind

They dominate the market and they piss on those who bring them the money, fucking lots of money. And still everyone happily uses them (mainly because of nonexistance of a real competitor with adequate market penetration). Strange world and I wish PayPal to go down and burn in flames as they deserve it.

Did you use strong and unique password for your coinbase account and associated email account? (Unique means: never ever used for another account!)

Are you sure the computers from which you had access to coinbase are not compromised with some malware/keyloggers/whatever malicous?

Did you ever have access to your coinbase account in an unsecure network, e.g. public (W)LAN?

Did you access your coinbase account with your smartphone? Do you know all your apps on your smartphone?

Disclaimer:
I don't know coinbase, so still I can't see who is to blame here or how you actually lost your bitcoins.


How do you know who is the thief, provide more details on this!

Bitcoins are never destroyed, you can only loose control of them, i.e. you can't spend them anymore! Simple fact, as long as there is a single copy of the whole blockchain anywhere on this planet or universe, all ever mined bitcoins are happily there and waiting to be spend. Guess, some of them will wait forever unfortunately...

If your last copy of your wallet.dat gets destroyed/deleted and you loose the private key(s) for your various bitcoin addresses (no brain wallet, no paper wallet, nothing left, zip, nada), then you can't spend them anymore. The bitcoins are still there, they are not destroyed, nor deleted.

Though there is still a ridiculously small, rather theoretical, chance to regain control and ability to spend by finding the appropriate private key(s) for your bitcoins. The probability is not 0, but very very [repeat 'very' as much as you like] close to zero. You can assume safely, it's currently not possible and I don't see a way this will change in the near future.

To be usable as alternative proof of work your proposal must have the fundamental property to be fast and easy to check if a solution is valid and of course that finding the solution is arbitrarily hard.

I understand what folding proteins is about, but I don't see how it applies to the needed properties as proof of work.

How can you proove fast that a submitted solution is actually one that is valid compared to other submissions?