One respondent to that fake Satoshi message from the other day brought up the concept of a potential "node war" by way of spoofed version strings. He said,

Core could appropriate the version string of XT, making it impossible to know how much they are progressing and a losing bet to actually execute the fork.

Source: http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010252.html

I doubt Core would actually do something like this, but, if the version string actually has no bearing on the actual code running on a said node, then is this way of voting by node version string really a foolproof technical solution to achieving consensus? Can this sort of spoofing be a reasonable attack vector? Could there be, to counteract this, a more verifiable way developed to know that the version string being displayed *actually* matches the code that is being run underneath all the nodes?

I'm trying to test my watch-only wallet in Armory by creating an offline transaction that has no fee, but I can't get it to do so. Is this a limitation in the code? The wallet contains four received transactions, all with over 800 confirmations, and all of at least 0.01 bitcoins. I'm trying to send an amount equivalent to any of the various amounts that have been received, but Armory still requires a fee. I've tried both Advanced and Expert modes. Any help would be appreciated. I'm using the latest version on Windows.

When I go to Coinbase right now, I'm getting an SSL error, both in Chrome and in IE.  The Chrome error is the following:

Cannot connect to the real coinbase.com

Something is currently interfering with your secure connection to coinbase.com.

Try to reload this page in a few minutes or after switching to a new network. If you have recently connected to a new Wi-Fi network, finish logging in before reloading.

If you were to visit coinbase.com right now, you might share private information with an attacker. To protect your privacy, Chrome will not load the page until it can establish a secure connection to the real coinbase.com.

and

coinbase.com normally uses encryption (SSL) to protect your information. When Chrome tried to connect to coinbase.com this time, coinbase.com returned unusual and incorrect credentials. Either an attacker is trying to pretend to be coinbase.com, or a Wi-Fi sign-in screen has interrupted the connection. Your information is still secure because Chrome stopped the connection before any data was exchanged.

Network errors and attacks are usually temporary, so this page will probably work later. You can also try switching to another network.


Technical details

coinbase.com has asked Chrome to block any certificates with errors, but the certificate that Chrome received during this connection attempt has an error.
Error type: HSTS failure
Subject: ssl2000.cloudflare.com
Issuer: GlobalSign Organization Validation CA - G2
Public key hashes: sha1/CkQHDZZBx534FurkPPOxAec+llg= sha256/9sNPN+MqPO4Sk6kmD+TrLAwXS+7NqSfy9rBv3nBmpIs= sha1/eMdNeRjaGNOIt6gkHHXLb1A363o= sha256/OqqTlivI4taTCDJE1oq61tAsdnSQ/13Ibp0QKE1H7tc= sha1/h9vUX7CSjU4d+BVn5/Krr9YrZ3U= sha256/K87oWBWM9UZfyddvDfoxL+8lpNyoUB2ptGtn0fv6G2Q=

Is anyone else getting this? Hopefully it's just a misconfiguration of their certificates that needs fixing this morning and not a hack or attack on them.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100646558

While many investors hold some gold in case of financial calamity or a return of the rampant inflation of the 1970s, since 2009 Mr. Paulson has allowed clients of Paulson & Co to denominate their holdings in gold, rather than US dollars.

Mr. Paulson enthusiastically embraced the option, according to people familiar with the situation, and has about 85 percent of his personal capital in the firm linked to the gold price.

Talk about a big cat investor, treating gold as money...

The Bitfloor bid and ask indicators on the site seem broken to me (been stuck at $103.52 and 103.62, respectively, for a while now). In comparison, Btcoincharts.com seems to show the correct values for these on Bitfloor.

Has anyone released an app that runs locally and directly pulls data from an exchange ticker and then charts it with various options, so one doesn't have to rely on refreshing bitcoincharts.com? I'd think bitcoincharts would be interested in promoting such an app, as they wouldn't get so hammered like they have been.

As far as buying Bitcoins, if you want to get your cash in quickly (same day) to buy at a good price when it drops, there doesn't seem to be another exchange other than Mt. Gox that BitInstant supports, unfortunately. (Yankee or Gareth, are you listening?   I'm sure other exchanges would be interested in your services at this point.)

Some examples
Blockchain.info (not an exchange) also uses BitInstant to buy bitcoins for your wallet, but their price is currently the same as Mt. Gox's during the 12 hour closure, so I think they use a Mt. Gox account to purchase the coins for you.

CampBX takes Dwolla or KYC, but both take a number of days, less days if the funds are already in your Dwolla account, for instance, but it still takes time.

Bitstamp takes International bank transfer, so not really U.S. friendly for getting funds in to buy Bitcoins.

Coinbase (not an exchange) can only take deposits from your bank account directly into bitcoins, but that also takes time, and their own recent caveat is simply too much of a risk: you don't send dollars to the account and then convert, you can only send dollars for bitcoins at a pre-determined rate, or for now, even worse, an unknown future price:

How much bitcoin will I receive?

Due to higher than normal buy volumes, we are unable to provide exact price quotes right now.

Instead of pausing buys entirely, we decided to give people the option to purchase bitcoin at the market price in a few days. Once your USD funds arrive, we will exchange them to bitcoin at the market price at approximately Tuesday Apr 16, 2013 at 11:07AM PDT.

Note that you can cancel your order at any time up until your bitcoin arrive from the transfer history page.

The market price of bitcoin changes frequently. Below are some recent prices to give you an idea. These do not guarantee what the price will be in a few days.

Edit: Bitfloor uses LocalTill for cash deposits, e.g. Bank of America out of state deposit. It is usually confirmed in 30 minutes if received before 5pm. Supposedly, even Saturday morning deposits have gone through in 30 minutes.

"The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Bitcoin, the World’s Most Enigmatic Currency"
by Michael Zelenko

http://bullettmedia.com/article/the-rise-fall-and-resurrection-of-bitcoin-the-worlds-most-enigmatic-currency/

It mentions Bruce Wagner in the "fall" section, who, speaking of, still happens to be tweeting away and occasionally mentioning Bitcoin: https://twitter.com/brucewagner (I thought the guy had disappeared off the face of the planet, but I guess not).

Has anyone added an additional card to their machine using LP4 to 6 pin adapters to power it,  like the following?

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-6-Inch-Express-Adapter-LP4PCIEXADAP/dp/B0007RXDDM/ref=pd_cp_e_0

I've got a barebones machine with a 700 watt power supply that is currently running a single 5870, and am considering adding a second 5870 using two of those and one of the following: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150620516115&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT#ht_553wt_1140

Is this feasible?  Would it be a better idea to just sell the current 5870 and replace it with a 5970 if I can find a good deal on one?

In terms of wattage, my machine is currently using about half of the rated 700 watts (measured it using a kill-a-watt while mining at high aggression), so theoretically I should have enough power to add another 5870, right?

I had been trying to compare the growing number of mining pools and their features at one point, and there wasn't a concise table that summarized them. So, I decided to put one together:

http://pastehtml.com/view/awb1vg03r.html

Please help me fill in the question marks and fix any mistakes, as well as contribute information on any pools that I may have overlooked.

If you can post the info for me using the terminology of my table, I'll add it.  No disrespect intended here, it's simply that I've found that trying to track down the information individually for so many pools, and then translating it into the standard language of my table is MUCH more time consuming than is necessary.  I don't have the time to join every pool to figure out the features or read pages and pages of pool threads to track down the most up to date answers. If each pool expert can simply come here occasionally and give me their information in an organized post, I can easily add it, and everyone benefits.

Also, if you are a pool operator providing me with your info, be honest and help all of us out by providing ALL of the info (i.e. not just the green ones).  That way we don't get stuck with a lot of question marks.

Thanks!

Here's an idea to bounce around.  DynapowerUSA makes these TurboBox external PCIe enclosures, and one of their models, the NA211A, has a self-contained 220W power supply and a double-sized slot space for potentially a graphics card. These enclosures have the option of interfacing with a laptop over ExpressCard34 (!), or a desktop with a provided expansion card. At that wattage, might you theoretically drop a 6970 into this, or maybe a 6950 if you wanted to be safe? I really wonder if one of these would work to just plug into a laptop and mine with, or expand a desktop that is already at capacity or doesn't have a powerful enough power supply to add any more cards.

Here's the product page: http://www.dynapowerusa.com/dyna/ASP/CP_i_NA211A.asp

The problem seems to be their price point, though: http://www.mypccase.com/pcexbox.html

If these were a few hundred bucks cheaper they'd arguably be worth it, for the convenience of being able to use it with an older system you already own, and for the fact that it's self-contained. It might even save you power costs long term versus a full-blown rig if you could run it connected to a more power-conserving laptop over ExpressCard.


For more powerful options, they also make these (but they are prohibitively expensive, as per the same price listing above):
http://www.dynapowerusa.com/dyna/ASP/CP_i_NA250A.asp

NA250A-GPU

Desktop PCI-Express Expansion Enclosure, 1000W Single Power Supply with extra 8* PCIe connectors (6+2 pin) for up to 4 double width GPU cards


NA250A-PRO

Desktop PCI-Express Expansion Enclosure, 400W Single Power Supply for PCI-Express Add-on cards w/o requirement for extra power connector

On a similar note, it also looks like it might be possible to build yourself one of these from parts for much cheaper than any of the above by purchasing from the following people (they have the peripheral cards, the host cards, and enclosures, and you would need to add a power supply and I guess some sort of fan):

http://www.arstech.com/item-XPRS-PCI-Express-x16-peripheral-card-xprs_px_x16.html
http://www.arstech.com/item-XPRS-Host-card-ExpressCard-Notebook-xprs_host_ec.html
http://www.arstech.com/item-Enclosure-for-3-ISA-PCI-cards-isax3b1.html