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I've gotten so many good replies for technical questions before that I have to abuse the good brains on this forum some more.

Why is it hard to track backwards from public address to private key?
I don't have a higher degree in math, but in the kind of math I'm used to, if I have a formula and the unknowns, I'm usually able to solve this given a little time.
Why doesn't this hold true in cryptography, and especially in elliptic curve cryptography?
Why is it hard to find the private key when you have both the formula and the output?

Ok, that's cool. I got a bit afraid for a second.

How do I go ahead if I want to create my own address like that?
I want the address without the private keys.
Are there some tools that allow me to create the correct checksum?

How in the world did that address come into being?

http://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE


I'm trying to brute force a simple bitcoin address of 6 or 7 characters, and it takes quite a bit of computer power. If someone can brute force such an address, why can they not just brute force my address?

What data type is used in Bitcoin to store the value of a transaction?

I doubt it's double or float due to rounding errors. My guess is that it's integer or long with a system for moving the decimal. Can someone help explain this?

I tried Google, but it said just "I don't know".

Thanks.

Thanks for replies.

I think at least you should get up an alert in Qt, saying that "you've now added some new addresses, and you should take a new backup."

I've taken backup now because of this, and my computer didn't crash before I got it done. Have to say I like armory better when it comes to backup and stuff like that.

As I understand, and to my experience, in Armory you can take a single backup, and the program will be able to regenerate all addresses in a wallet based upon this one backup. It means that you can take one backup when you create the wallet, and that's all you need. It will use the information from the first address as a seed to generate the next, so you don't risk loosing the other private keys.

Is there something similar implemented in the Qt client? Or do I have to back it up every time I create a new address?

What information is used as seed when I generate a new address in the Qt client?

Thanks, that's really clear and good answers.

I read something like the following, and I'm wondering if it's correct:

When mining, the hash is not known beforehand, but some kind of product is known. I think the product is the number of 0's before the rest of the hash string. So for example this hash:
http://blockchain.info/block/000000000000039ce32a9b18b1c676f14658ee02ae15dd5791f8604ae2d31968
will only be valid when it has 13 0's before the rest of the string.
This means that except from all the 0's in the beginning, there is no known method for predicting the content of the rest of the string before it's been generated.

Thanks for any feedback.

By the way, what is the function of the Merkle Root?

And another: It seems that going from 13 to 14 0's in the beginning of the hash is a quite large adjustment; about 8%. How can the network adjust difficulty just a few percent up and down?

Thanks again.

Why is it a bad thing? You don’t have any argument to support your hypothesis. Why is it horrible that technology gets cheaper? Why is it negative that information becomes cheaper and more available? This is deflation in practice, and I have a hard time understanding why you think this is such a bad thing.

I assume that those arguing for "recycling" of bitcoins after a certain period of time are the miners. The miners will collect extra revenue if they can recycle bitcoins, but this is at the expense of the rest of the economy. Lets say that 100 years goes by, and BTC is still operational. An address containing 10 000 BTC has not been active since 2009, and now everyone agrees that those funds are "expired".
In 100 years there is a very high chance that mining is a very small niche of the bitcoin economy, since they have to continually increase productivity, like everyone else in a free market. So perhaps the transaction costs are down to 0.001%, as opposed to todays 1% (http://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction).

What will happen at this point is a close approximation to what's happening today with QE. Today the bankers gain massively by being first in the queue for the fresh money. We see this with the banks receiving billions and billions in fresh funds from the FED. The losers are the savers of currency, and the people who are last to get their hands on the new currency. By the time that the last person gets their hands on the newly minted currency, the prices has adjusted already for the extra currency in circulation.
So we should expect miners and people who can get their hands on newly minted “expired” bitcoins (like vendors to miners, like BFL) to like such an idea, while savers of bitcoins and non-miners will be opposed to this idea.
If we look at how much the miners stand to gain from such a future event in the Bitcoin economy, we should not be surprised that there will be some people who thinks this is a fabulous idea. Imagine that the miners are a tiny 0.001% of the Bitcoin economy, and all of a sudden they can strike it rich by being in the right place at the right time. 10 000 BTC in one big chunk.

I’m a miner, but even if the coins really are lost, this seems unethical to me. Lost coins are lost. Infinite deflation already happens in ALL computer/technology products, and I don’t see anything wrong with it. I love it when prices are falling, then I can afford more. It’s that simple.

I would hope that some smart guy here can answer the following:
Where are the unprocessed transactions stored?
When miners process transactions, the transactions obviously goes into the blockchain. But what about the low priority, high risk of spamming transactions? Do they go into a repository in a chain or stack of "unprocessed" transactions, are they just sitting on the local computer since no miners wants to process the low priority transactions, or something completely different?

Thanks for any answers.

I think that halving will cause the price to go up yes. Not like a price-shock overnight, but on the longer term; absolutely. And I would argue it's quite basic economics. By halving the bounty, inflation will drop in half. In 2011 the inflation was roughly 60%. In 2012 the inflation was roughly 25%. In 2013 the inflation will be about 15%.
The rough numbers are like this:

Year   BTC@end   multiplier year-over-year
2011   5000000   
2012   8000000   1.6
2013   10000000   1.25
2014   11500000   1.15

Someone who has the exact numbers please correct me.

The supply is decreasing on a technical level because there are fewer BTC produced.

When it comes to demand, I have a hard time seeing what would put the brakes on there. BTC remains stable, and it's possible to move in and out of the market with increasing ease. The currency becomes more and more popular, both among merchants and customers. As the mining revenues drop, mining will become less and less the center part of the bitcoin economy; they will in a few weeks drop to just 25% of the economy. So the miners will gradually lose their opportunity to sell large quantities of BTC, since their revenue goes down, at least in terms of BTC.

I might have overlooked some flows of money in and out, but I think the concept of looking at how the money flows is quite basic.

I am still looking for reasons that Bitcoin would drop. I think one such thing would be if a government banned the currency, I think that would send the price spiraling down. Apart from that, I cannot see any clear indicator, but please enlighten me if you see other hurdles for Bitcoin.

I'm looking for a secretary.

It's best if you have some useful skills, like for example accounting, programming, marketing skills, PR, creating reports... stuff like that, but not required.

If you don't have those skills, but you are interested in privacy, I have some easier work that requires less skills. We can discuss hourly rate and how many hours per day/week.
You don't need to know a lot about Bitcoin and cryptography, but a little computer skills like knowing Facebook, Twitter and the like is required.

Long term relationship preferred, I'm not interested in working with you for just a week or a month.

PM me if you are interested.

I've been looking for a secretary of sort.

It's best if you have some useful skills, like for example accounting, programming, marketing skills, PR, creating reports... stuff like that, but not required.

If you don't have those skills, but you are interested in privacy, I have some easier work that requires less skills. We can discuss hourly rate and how many hours per day/week.
You don't need to know a lot about Bitcoin and cryptography, but a little computer skills like knowing Facebook, Twitter and the like is required.

PM me if you are interested.

I suggest people can watch some videos while waiting.
I would suggest movies about bitcoin, so that newbies get some basic understanding.

Here are two for starters.

What is Bitcoin?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo

Some shameless self-promotion, more about privacy than Bitcoin, but you might find it useful nevertheless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPL5JvMKqQc

I give this guy thumbs up for good entertainment. 

Anyone giving him any bitcoins deserves to loose it.

Good story, thanks

Hey

From my former posts you can see that I'm serious and that I'm not going to post much rant.

I want to be the first to congratulate BFL_Josh (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97269.40) on his new job in BFL, since he starts his job today, Monday the 13.th of August.

I have also bought a BF Single, and want to be able to communicate with others who have bought the product in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77796.720

So I'd appreciate if you could let me in.

Thank you.

Edit:
I'm also using the default Bitcoin wallet, have Mt Gox account set up with payment system, a website accepting Bitcoin, so I think I have above average understanding of Bitcoin.