I'm writing this here knowing it doesn't belong here (surely some other forum is more proper) but the words are coming to me so here's as good a place as any to draft this.

Bech32, please don't do it as written.  At least, please consider the carbon-based units in the Bitcoin ecosystem.  Us, like you and me.  The ones that provide the emotional component necessary for Bitcoin to succeed.  Bitcoin is succeeding not for being technically good alone, it's also got to remain compelling and salient and friendly and intuitive.

Reading about Bech32 leads me to believe that a whole legion of Bitcoiners who scan URI-less QR codes at PAL resolution with VHS cameras and 6502 processors are leading the charge to change Bitcoin so they never have to upgrade past the pre-Internet as they send their Bitcoins off a 64K floppy disk.  Everyone I know with a solid grasp of the alphabet is fine with mixed upper and lower case, and every mobile phone that can run a Bitcoin client also scans QR codes much larger than a Bitcoin address, reliably, without exception.

The Base58 pattern with a fixed prefix is very visually distinct and a welcome salience cue for cryptocurrency.  Going lower case and totally trashing that visual distinction frustrates us like Coca Cola deciding to change the flavor forever without asking us.

Please save us from having to learn a whole new set of heuristics just to recognize what our string of ASCII-coded binary stands for.  The address string with an approximate known length starting with 1 or 3 has worked for us so far.  If we have to learn it all over again, can it be something we already know?  Why "BC" for Bitcoin?  Could we have capital "BTC" or "XBT" followed by mixed case data. Our mobile phones have enough pixels to accommodate this extra character and definitely so do our minds if it can save us from learning not just 3-letter, but now 2-letter acronyms for each cryptocurrency project.

Please give us an encoding that spares us the confusion of having the lowercase letter L and the number 1 all in the same code.  I'm sure I will remember whether addresses always contain O's versus zeroes, ones versus L's, but I feel awkward expecting others to.  It sounds like "ok, so that's a "B-C-one, but after that first one, addresses never have any more ones, it's always an L after that one one, and we do it this way so it's less confusing".

Please let us keep our mixed case.  Trust us, we've got capacity for it, and so do our QR code libraries and our printers and displays.  If we're speaking codes the phone, our friends can handle the words "capital" and "lowercase" before each letter just fine.  Changing that conversation to "well I think it's an L after the zero, not sure if that's a 1 after an o, where are my glasses, maybe try both?  It didn't work?"... I hope it's easy to see how this is actually more frustrating.

Yes, we'd love it if we get error correction just in case we make typos and screw things up.  We don't want to send our money to the nether nulls either.  It's just, there are other pitfalls impacting our affection and wallets with a much greater damage coefficient than 1 over 4 billion, so changing how addresses look doesn't reassure us or feel like progress, rather how it feels is it steepens our learning curve.

If you let us move forward with you on a new address format, while maintaining our beloved Base58 (our CPU's still love us and are happy with the long division and the extra work parsing the mixed case), could I ask one favor?  Would keeping mixed case shorten the code enough to make extra room to pretend (for the sake of error correction) that each character has 64 possible symbols?  We could dedicate another character or two to the checksum to make up for it.

If it did, could we pretty-please have "Bech58" that maintains our mixed case look?  58 is not a round square number, but we're Bitcoin, we have our style, and we have a few billion in market cap to be able to afford a few CPU cycles to make our b-58 shine and make people think of their one and only true love of Bitcoin (or at least about money) when they see beautiful mixed base58 as a string.

Pieter and Greg, I know you'll settle for no less than a perfect Bitcoin improvement proposal and you have my respect.  Thanks for listening.

Can someone who knows better than me where a plea like this belongs, either copy it there or link to it here from there?  Thanks

I was just shown this... 

http://chasingcasascius.com

Hi everyone,

I'd like to feel out how much interest there is for one of the two 500 BTC bars that I made, one which is still intact.

The owner is a long time friend of mine who recently passed away.  His family & their attorney are interested in selling it and they're not sure whether they're best to try to sell it intact (logistically challenging for its value) or to break it open.

So I'm interested in gauging interest in the form of non-binding USD offers on the bar, either open or intact, and in the case of intact, offer could be "$X + 500 BTC" so as to offer price $X on the physical bar itself, the 500 BTC being merely a reimbursement for the bitcoins it contains.

I'm able and willing to certify the bar as the authentic original and also provide the story line for how the bar came to be created and the nature of my relationship with that friend, we go back about 25 years.

Presenting the 2014 Casascius St. Petersburg Bitcoin Bowl coin, to be used for the coin toss at kickoff!

This 1-ounce limited-edition fine silver medallion commemorates the first professional sporting event to take place under the banner of Bitcoin. It combines the face of the classic Casascius® physical bitcoin with the St. Petersburg Bitcoin Bowl logo on the reverse. Adorned with gold plating on the polished rim, the Bitcoin B, and the bowl logo, this is the only coin to be released by Casascius in the 2014 calendar year. This collectible coin does not contain any private key or digital Bitcoin value.

It comes shipped in a standard openable slab.





Buy now!  As advertised in Bowl Merchandise section on StPetersburgBowl.com.  Direct link to coin: https://www.strydeathletic.com/shop/bitcoin-bowl/bitcoin-coin/

To benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171207044206

I am thinking of coming up with a new encrypted minikey spec for physical bitcoins and secure paper wallets.  I wanted to think out loud a bit, perhaps in case there are any really good ideas it could include that I haven't thought of.  I want to include the core features of BIP38 but then also fix what might be its shortcomings.

Here's what I am hoping it would be like:

• 30-character code that starts with P (so, 29 random characters)
• The ability for a person to create the minikeys without knowing the password (they have only an intermediate code which gives them some salt plus G*constant, the ability to know/compute constant remains with the person generating the intermediate code)
• Uses scrypt for hashing the password and deriving the private key
• Tunable scrypt parameters
• The ability for the costly scrypt step to be outsourced (eg by a mobile device, to a web service), without giving that service the key/factors or any advantage other than the single exception of being able to bruteforce the key without the cost of scrypt if they were to come into possession of the complete key independently
• Typo detection on the password, that requires all the expensive computation to be done to know whether the check passes or fails

This coding scheme would ONLY be useful for generating new private keys and bitcoin addresses, not for encoding existing/known ones.

Twenty-nine random base58 characters gives about 169 bits, which I on a whim would think to allocate as follows:
9 bits - typo protection checksum
32 bits - salt chosen by the person who knows the password
4 bits - represents the version and selects the scrypt parameters
124 bits - entropy provided by the minikey creator who doesn't know the password

I'm hoping to hear constructive criticism of the feature set as well as the bit allocation I've proposed.

Hello everyone,

I need a Google spreadsheet or CSV file showing MtGox bid/ask by date dating back to Jan 2011.

Columns I need: Date, bid, ask, and any other info as available (vwap, etc.) and it is OK to take an average or a representative sample as long as the methodology is consistent for each day.

Bonus additional 0.05 BTC if I can get a version by hour instead of by date (so there's another column showing hour from 0-23, which will have 24 times as many rows as the first spreadsheet). (total 0.15 BTC)

First person to provide it in this thread and a payment address gets it!  I am guessing there are probably tools out there to put this together, but I would rather just pay for the help than figure them out at the moment.  Thanks in advance.

Μια μικρή ερώτηση από μένα που έμεινα στην Ελλάδα για 2 χρόνια και μιλαω και καταλαβαίνω ελληνικά, αλλά οχι αρκετά να καταλάβω τι φωνάζουν σε ενα συγκεκριμενο τραγουδι.

Στο τραγούδι «Zhou Tonged Cyprus Anthem», στην αρχή, φωναζουν κατι που για μενα μοιαζει «εχε παλι η ωρα δικη σας παν αγορα» αλλα φανερα δεν εχει καμια σημασια και ειναι καπως λανθασενο.  Μήπως καποιος μπορεί να μου πει ακριβως τι λενε;  Thanks in advance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetrFDhXit4

[UPDATE Oct 17, 2013: All remaining Casascius 1oz Silver coins are now goldplated on the B and on the entire rim (all the way from obverse to reverse!)]

UPDATE Oct 17, 2013: All remaining Casascius 1oz Silver coins are now goldplated on the B and on the entire rim (all the way from obverse to reverse!)

http://casascius.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/silver-coins-now-here/

I'm pleased to report that I'm selling silver coins again.

I am now taking orders for Silver Bitcoin Halfs: half a bitcoin on a half ounce of silver.  These come in a mint tube of twelve coins.  The coin is plain silver.

I am temporarily accepting orders for single silver coins.

I have one-ounce 1BTC coins in the works, as well as 0.1BTC silver coins (7.5g).  Just some final logistical details to work out on them.

Order at https://casascius.com

UPDATE: Got the 1BTC ounces too, and here's a photo!  (they both have the same Series 3 hologram)

The Bounty: One bag of 500 stickerable Aluminum Casascius Coins, including shipping.  These have the Bitcoin logo on the front, and a blank space for a sticker (up to 1.15" / 29mm in diameter) for you to print the content of your choice.

The Project: Fork BitAddress.org so that it can be used for printing full sheets of private key labels.

The Labels: http://www.onlinelabels.com/OL1025.htm



How it should work:

• The user enters label count wide and high per page (in this example, 6 wide and 8 high)
• The user enters width of label and horizontal distance between labels (as well as height and vertical distance)
• The user enters a horizontal and vertical positioning offset (so it works with their particular printer)
• The user should be able to print a sheet of private keys after having bought the product linked to above.

In addition, there should be an easy way for the user to copy a list of the Bitcoin Addresses to the clipboard, so he can bulk-fund the addresses with the amount of his choice.  The list should be available in two formats: one being a simple CRLF-delimited list of addresses, and the other being a preformatted command for bitcoind to fund all the coins in a single transaction, example:

Code:

sendmany "" "{\"1Address1\": 0.01, \"1Address2\": 0.01, \"1Address3\": 0.01}"

WHAT SHOULD GO ON THE LABELS:

This should be possibly up to user's discretion.  They will be a tight fit.  Some users will want QR codes and others will rather save the space.  Some users will want the Bitcoin address on the labels, others might view that as unnecessary.  I would think most users would want to enter a denomination to be printed, since the aluminum coins don't come pre-denominated.  I am open to any reasonable interpretation of what a user is likely to want.

[Please give me a text box where I can simply paste a blob of text consisting either of multiple bitcoin addresses (all to receive the same amount), or pairs of bitcoinaddress:amount, as a shortcut to construct a transaction with a huge number of outputs.]

I would like to make a simple feature request that would make batch distributions of bitcoins MUCH easier:

The idea:  Please give me a text box where I can simply paste a blob of text consisting either of multiple bitcoin addresses (all to receive the same amount), or pairs of bitcoinaddress:amount, as a shortcut to construct a transaction with a huge number of outputs.  Ideally, the blob of text will be the output of some script.  Parsing should automatically ignore whitespace and characters like commas or anything that is not a bitcoin address or a valid amount.

I can already do this myself with bitcoind (as it accepts bitcoind sendmany "{\"address1\": amount1, \"address2\": amount2 ...}") but this isn't mainly for me.  Ideally, I would like others to be able to create batches of stickers and then quickly fund a large list of keys with 0.01 BTC after having successfully printed them.  Funding these with individual transactions not only really sucks, it's far less efficient in block chain size versus having a single transaction with numerous outputs.

Hey everyone,



I finally have my first run of generic aluminum Casascius Coins that I expect I will be bringing to the conference.  These are pretty much the only coins I plan to bring.

These are meant to be low-cost physical bitcoins that can be used as restaurant tips and such.  The coins have no bitcoin value or denomination - they simply have a blank back - you add your own private key, promotional message, or whatever you want, by printing your own sticker.  Sooner rather than later, an open source program will allow you to print your own private keys on labels which you can stick on yourselves.  The front says Strength In Numbers BTC Bitcoin.  I have them as bare aluminum, and then anodized in several colors.

They are larger than my other coin products, but also lighter in weight in a rather obvious manner.  They are 1.5 inches in diameter.

I will have 80,000 of them.  They come in boxes of 5,000.  I am guessing there's a likely possibility I could sell them all.  I anticipate them retailing for no more than the equivalent of 0.50 USD each.

Ideally I would like to just sell them by the box to whoever might already be running a vendor booth there.  I don't see myself wanting to run around selling coin products, my reason for being there is to meet people and participate.

The purpose of this thread is to gather ideas and suggestions for how I might sell them.  Are you running a vendor booth and would you like to carry these?

I wanted to throw out a reason I thought Apple might be weighing for not accepting iPhone wallet apps, that has nothing to do with "censorship", that we should be keeping in mind as we put effort into Apple's policy.

To be clear, I do not believe that Apple has an agenda against Bitcoin that would fit any "conspiracy theory": I am thoroughly convinced that their difficult-to-understand stance is based on articulable business reasons they choose not to share.  It's reasonable - they are a business after all, they are not the government.  I am also going to assume that competition with their in-app purchase system, the iTunes store, and the theory that they might want to start their own "credits" of their own are not the concern (I really don't think they are, and the reasons why are complex and outside the scope of this thread).

For the sake of this thread, these assumptions will be held as true, hence the self-moderation flag.  If you must challenge them, please start a new thread.

A Bitcoin wallet app on the iPhone will bring into focus the security of the platform itself, for better or for worse.  With the homogeneity of the iOS platform, a popular installed base of Bitcoin wallets is a magnet for intrusion and theft, which in all probability will succeed at about the same rate jailbreaking succeeds, and stopping it will be about as fruitless as Apple stopping jailbreakers.  I would expect it to be a miserable failure, barring any fundamental change to the way security is done on iOS.

The fact that a rash of incidents of bitcoins being stolen from iPhones is something that would directly reflect on Apple's reputation and is something they have every right and reason to consider.  To the extent they are forward thinking enough to consider this now, and to the extent they consider their brand and reputation in the marketplace (whatever that is) to be high business priorities, blocking apps for this reason represents a rational self-interested position they have every right and responsibility to pursue.

If this is true, then an Apple wallet app that avoided storing access to bitcoins anywhere malware could get to it would be a different class of app.  Instead of being a wallet, if such an app sent bitcoins directly from a paper wallet (carried by the user, read via the camera just before the transaction), immediately returning the change somewhere safe and forgetting the private key, the risk exposure of a user in the event of an intrusion would be limited to that of the next paper wallet he allowed the phone to see.

In the event of an attack, the user's ability to detect the attack would be immediate (his payment to his merchant would fail in an obvious manner), and assuming he doesn't keep his whole bitcoin stash on a single paper wallet carried in his pocket, his exposure would be limited to what's almost certainly an insignificant fraction of his wealth... i.e. that which he is already willing to carry as cash in his pocket anyway.

Since only a very small percentage of iPhones will have their cameras pointed at a paper wallet at any given moment, the risk of Apple waking up to find millions of customers angry about their Bitcoin wallets being stolen from their iPhone all at a single moment - due to a clever exploit of some sort - will be eliminated to near zero.

The attack surface on a compromised phone would also be sharply narrowed if things were done this way.  Getting access to the camera at a specific moment while another app is controlling it is far more difficult than getting access to a file sitting like a duck in the file system.

To the extent this is a concern of Apple, this would be a plausible solution.  Since such an app would have no wallet capabilities of its own, Apple might not even consider this a "wallet app" and might let it fly right under the radar today were it submitted.

[ENDED - ENDED - ENDED]

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Hey everyone, ENDED - ENDED - ENDED

I want to buy about 500 BTC or so, but don't want to mess with MtGox at the moment.
I'm willing to pay a slightly above market rate for the convenience.  Looking for offers,
either fixed price or in terms of MtGoxLast +x%.  This message is inviting an offer,
rather than an offer itself.

I am able and willing to pay any of the following ways: wire transfer (USD to US bank
account), mailed/overnighted US personal check, or gold coins (below).

This is how I anticipate doing the deal: if I accept your offer, I will compose and sign an
agreement to pay as agreed, which will include the bitcoin address for you to pay, as well
as a PGP and/or Adobe PDF digital signature (your choice).  You send BTC, and then I
deliver as agreed.  I am accustomed to doing deals like this and it has been successful
for me in the past.

You are paying first, but holding a legally enforceable agreement that is pretty generous
to you if I were to default.  Here is a sample agreement to pay: (note this is if I were selling
BTC, but I am actually looking to buy BTC... so any actual agreement shall be modified
accordingly)
https://casascius.com/AgreementToDeliverBitcoins.pdf

I'm willing to pay the wire/overnight fees to someone willing to sell me all 500 BTC at once.
I'm willing to entertain multiple offers of at least 100 BTC but ask that you either accept a
mailed personal check, or cover the cost of the wire or overnight if you desire it.
Or the shipping on the gold coins.

I have some Austrian Philharmonic 1oz coins I am willing to part with, they are brand
new in four mint tubes of 10.  They are 2009 year.  I would be willing to sell these for
gold spot against MtGoxLast.  I'm still paying you a premium, but in this case, the
premium on the coins above gold spot value is what you are getting.  If you're able to
satisfy my entire desire to buy bitcoins today, I will pay for insured Registered Mail
shipping to any US address.

Please feel free to make your nonbinding offer in the thread, and to put an expiration
time on your offer if you wish.  It's possible I might accept more than one.  I don't
consider any deal done or committed until the moment you send BTC to an address
I have signed in a valid unexpired agreement to deliver.

Thanks in advance.  Those of you who recognize the value of buying (or selling) BTC
this way, feel free to copy any part of my post and/or anything you see me doing that
works for your own future deals.
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[Add a mandatory merge-mining feature to Litecoin so that it is always "merge-mining" Bitcoins, just for pretend, in hopes that one day Bitcoin will have the option of "let's subscribe to the Litecoin chain"]

Quick rant: I have always viewed Litecoin as a detraction from Bitcoin and have refused to make mass quantities of physical Litecoins as a result.  I have viewed Litecoin as nothing more than a hedge against Bitcoin seeing a 51% attack due to choice of SHA256 as an algorithm.

But:  I believe I have thought of an idea that would make Litecoin far more important and relevant in the Bitcoin/cryptocurrency ecosystem, by being as ready in wait as possible in case Bitcoin really does experience a 51% attack.

In a nutshell, I view a Bitcoin 51% attack as eventually possible, for one reason:  ASIC production efficiency scales far more than linearly with the amount of money an actor is willing to put into it; a bad actor with $1 billion to 51%-attack Bitcoin with its own custom ASICs will be far more than ten times as effective than ten bad actors with $100 million.

Anyway: here is the idea:  Add a mandatory merge-mining feature to Litecoin so that it is always "merge-mining" Bitcoins, just for pretend, in hopes that one day Bitcoin will have the option of "let's subscribe to the Litecoin chain" (as a secondary means of block validation) as a way to resolve a future 51% attack on Bitcoin's SHA256-based chain.

Here is sort of how it would work:

1. Add a new requirement to the Litecoin chain such that a valid Litecoin block must contain either a record of the most recent Bitcoin block header hash, or a repeat of the hash found in the prior Litecoin block (with a limit of repetitions).  Litecoin blocks that contain outdated Bitcoin intelligence should be disfavored by nodes capable of detecting that.  Further impose the requirement that Bitcoin block headers must be represented contiguously in the Litecoin chain - Bitcoin blocks cannot be skipped (which shouldn't be a problem, when Litecoin blocks happen 4x as often as Bitcoin)
2. In the event there is an active Bitcoin block chain fork, the requirement is loosened such that the Bitcoin block header hash requirement can be satisfied by any leg of the chain, not just the one Bitcoin considers valid.
3. Add a feature to Litecoin clients that allow Litecoin users to decide to prefer or not-prefer branches of a Bitcoin fork while one is in progress.  The default for this should always favor the Bitcoin leg with the most longevity, and should disfavor long chains that suddenly appear to replace a large amount of the known Bitcoin block chain.  The user/miner/pool-op should always have an easy way to have the final say, such as by pasting in a preformatted message either exiling or checkpointing Bitcoin blocks.

Anticipated benefits:

1. Bitcoin users would have a ready made remedy to a 51% attack that they can switch to:  Bitcoin users can simply add the requirement that if a Bitcoin block header hash makes it into the Litecoin chain, that its proof of work should be given a bonus.  Litecoin community could create and maintain pulls to the Satoshi client that cause it to subscribe to the Litecoin chain and incorporate it as intelligence toward block validation and resolving block chain forks.
2.  Bitcoin would have an easy way to add an emergency upper bound to block creation, just in case an enormous amount of power suddenly appeared.  By turning on an optional must-appear-in-Litecoin requirement, the Bitcoin community could switch on an upper bound of 1 block per 2.5 minutes if it was deemed necessary.
3. Litecoin would be seen as far more important than a wannabe bitcoin knockoff without added value by those who see it that way.
4. Bitcoin's blockchain would be re-democratized to CPU/GPU users without forcing the Bitcoin community to switch to scrypt, they'd have more decentralized influence on bitcoin than those with the means to buy/make ASICs
5. The legitimacy of Litecoins would increase greatly - people would see the value of Litecoins in their role of protecting Bitcoin, and would potentially vote for the longevity of Litecoin by offering to accept LTC for goods and services, thereby increasing their value.
6. I'd start making Casascius Litecoins if you guys did this and did it well.

I'd call the concept "marriage-mining".  By doing something like this, LTC gives a nod to BTC's importance while adding synergistic value to BTC that LTC can benefit from by association.

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April 13, 2013: Auction for 10 rolls of fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins.

See my blog, http://casascius.wordpress.com

Minimum bid: face value (50 * 1BTC = 50 BTC per roll).  Please bid in 0.1 BTC increments.
Shipping cost is a flat $35 for US Registered Mail, $50 for international Registered Mail,
regardless of the number of rolls won.

Unless otherwise specified, you are bidding for ONE of the eight rolls.  You can bid in any of
the following ways:

1. "I bid 51 BTC for any available roll".  If your bid wins, you'll win one roll.  You will not get
to choose which roll you get.

2. "I bid 51 BTC for roll 13B-A."  You will either win roll 13B-A for 51 BTC, or you won't.

If you post more than once with a bid that exceeds your prior bid, I will probably deem your
new bid as a replacement of your old bid.  Please be clear, preferably repeat all of your active
bids with each subsequent bidding post.

Unlike my last auction, the price you are bidding is your MAXIMUM bid.  The price the highest
bidder will actually pay is the second highest bid plus the minimum bid increment (0.1 BTC), plus
shipping.  All other bidders will pay their actual bid plus shipping.

The end time of this auction is April 14, 22:00 UTC forum time (approx. 24 hours from
now),  but any valid bid will extend the auction to 2 minutes past the timestamp of the post
containing the bid.

Roll 13B-A: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13B
Roll 13B-B: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13B
Roll 13B-C: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13B
Roll 13B-D: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13B
Roll 13B-E: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13B*
Roll 13C-A: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13C
Roll 13C-B: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13C
Roll 13C-C: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13C
Roll 13C-D: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13C
Roll 13C-E: Fifty 1 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 13C*

Note that A,B,C,D,E are not sequential: all of them are essentially random selections from the
200-300 coins that were made from each lot (max 300, actual production varies based on
mistakes, discards, etc.)  Of all these coins, they are essentially identical, other than that the
13B's were made just before the 13C's were made.

Of rolls marked with *, I may use some coins from other lots in the event that the lot runs out
before I can get the full 50 coins from it.

I reserve the right to cancel the auction if necessary for reasonable cause, as an escape
hatch just in case I've missed something critical.

Secure payment addresses (if you win more than 1 roll, OK to combine into single address)
(Please wait until winners are ranked before paying an address.  Please contact me if you
would like a different, non-published address, PGP signed of course).
Winner 1: 1HfCxfgt8kJacsyqv3aQSFe6kWkroGuCqh
Winner 2: 1JbtsGjn8fFcfw9HsxXK1TifCXVraED7go
Winner 3: 1JM3xXKM7Tw7XFgU6Rcj1kjDwTw9TqSgzJ
Winner 4: 1JpJQtGZn9Xq8UfoGD6EMjeyb6puJyzYjV
Winner 5: 1K556SsV2KD2YnCsBxYcdnp424H5fHjaQF
Winner 6: 1K8bGgT5ak9mGQfeqnsidyDjdPKMntABYn
Winner 7: 1KYhA2iCxAa5MitT1PDF8yzvDqYrvdJyPv
Winner 8: 1MVQQiSTkDc99xYSvV2ypxmzMoqRPbUcmi
Winner 9: 1NhaxekzZoBzbrXxCXGbWW5ShZK7CkDc4Z
Winner 10: 1NtsifrHAxhDpAngsS9Bd43Ak55AXCPaBw
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April 13, 2013: Auction for 10 rolls of fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins.

See my blog, http://casascius.wordpress.com

Minimum bid: face value (50 * 0.5BTC = 25 BTC per roll).  Please bid in 0.1 BTC increments.
Shipping cost is a flat $35 for US Registered Mail, $50 for international Registered Mail,
regardless of the number of rolls won.

Unless otherwise specified, you are bidding for ONE of the eight rolls.  You can bid in any of
the following ways:

1. "I bid 26 BTC for any available roll".  If your bid wins, you'll win one roll.  You will not get
to choose which roll you get.

2. "I bid 26 BTC for roll 125-A."  You will either win roll 125-A for 26 BTC, or you won't.

If you post more than once with a bid that exceeds your prior bid, I will probably deem your
new bid as a replacement of your old bid.  Please be clear, preferably repeat all of your active
bids with each subsequent bidding post.

Unlike my last auction, the price you are bidding is your MAXIMUM bid.  The price you will
actually pay is the second highest bid plus the minimum bid increment (0.1 BTC), plus shipping.
The end time of this auction is April 14, 22:00 UTC forum time (approx. 24 hours from now),
but any valid bid will extend the auction to 2 minutes past the timestamp of the post containing
the bid.

Roll 125-A: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 125
Roll 125-B: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 125
Roll 125-C: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 125
Roll 125-D: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 125
Roll 125-E: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 125*
Roll 126-A: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 126
Roll 126-B: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 126
Roll 126-C: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 126
Roll 126-D: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 126
Roll 126-E: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 13, 2013, with address prefix 126*

Note that A,B,C,D are not sequential: all of them are essentially random selections from the
200-300 coins that were made from each lot (max 300, actual production varies based on
mistakes, discards, etc.)  Of all these coins, they are essentially identical, other than that the
125's were made just before the 126's were made.

Of rolls marked with *, I may use some coins from other lots in the event that the lot runs out
before I can get the full 50 coins from it.

I reserve the right to cancel the auction if necessary for reasonable cause, as an escape
hatch just in case I've missed something critical.

Secure payment addresses (if you win more than 1 roll, OK to combine into single address)
(Please wait until winners are ranked before paying an address.  Please contact me if you
would like a different, non-published address, PGP signed of course).
Winner 1: 17RWuDcCG4bjhJBjkRnhxsL7vUSLZHTwr8
Winner 2: 18Sn3b91EGxzp4GLMy55jQcg79Cz7yKC4v
Winner 3: 19jVgqNow55KdijKWy9eYAWbQjzkYwQsen
Winner 4: 1CuvCZnnbtwtiJcrk9PBhbSCUfTFsBZ1ez
Winner 5: 1CYRap77VRBrSnZ8VVAemtd6FH3nk6dqL2
Winner 6: 1D11atymJcMNmABWmKEwZiv1j1YwBmUCKW
Winner 7: 1DxRJVX64MwJV7voZKoqtvQyeDkKGM1JmB
Winner 8: 1FHTX6akEw5ZbrFZm5hSq6eayU7ko6hdve
Winner 9: 1GgES3zXHVdXhj12tSRxWABS7sEwLyRAAt
Winner 10: 1GhX5Z5LFVKnki9WCwHHZ5314vzg2TFNQF
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April 6, 2013: Auction for 8 rolls of fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins.

See my blog, http://casascius.wordpress.com

Am having problems with BitMit, thought I would try an auction here.

Minimum bid: face value (50 * 0.5BTC = 25 BTC per roll).  Please bid in 0.1 BTC increments.
Shipping cost is a flat $35 for US Registered Mail, $50 for international Registered Mail, regardless
of the number of rolls won.

Unless otherwise specified, you are bidding for ONE of the eight rolls.  You can bid in any of the following
ways:

1. "I bid 26 BTC for any available roll".  If your bid wins, you'll win one roll.  You will not get to choose
which roll you get.

2. "I bid 26 BTC for rolls 1, 2, 3, or 4."  If your bid wins and any of your chosen those four rolls is
available, you will win one of them.  You will not get to choose which roll you get.  If none of those
four rolls is available at the point your bid is processed, it will be skipped.

3. "I bid 26 BTC for roll 1."  You will either win roll 1 for 26 BTC, or you won't.

Roll #1: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 6, 2013, with address prefix 121
Roll #2: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 6, 2013, with address prefix 121
Roll #3: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 6, 2013, with address prefix 122
Roll #4: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 6, 2013, with address prefix 122
Roll #5: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 6, 2013, with address prefix 123
Roll #6: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 6, 2013, with address prefix 123
Roll #7: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 6, 2013, with address prefix 124
Roll #8: Fifty 0.5 BTC Casascius Coins made April 6, 2013, with address prefix 124

Auction ends April 10, 2013, 23:59 UTC.

After auction end, bids will be evaluated from highest to lowest.

I reserve the right to cancel the auction if necessary for reasonable cause.  If I do so, all bids are
cancelled.  I'm reserving this right simply because this is the first time I've done an auction like this,
and want an escape hatch just in case I've missed something critical, like leaving a way for more than
one person to be deemed the winner of the same roll of coins or something.
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[How Madoff Works]

How Madoff Works

1. You give Madoff your money, because you want your money to be kept safe, and maybe get a return.

2. Madoff takes your money and uses it to promote an unsustainable scam.  Your money slowly disappears.

3. Madoff pretends he still has all your money.  He tells you he has all of it in the form of statements, and gives it back to you when you ask.  You assume that's just as good as actually having all of your money.  You trust him, after all, he's clearly got money coming out of his ears.  It looks like he's got plenty to spare.

4. One day, Madoff's cover is blown, there's not enough money on the table to keep up the illusion of liquidity, and people figure out he's running a scam.  People figure out it's not safe to assume that just because you can ask for your money, and because he says he has it, that it's actually there, and actually safe.  They ask themselves how they could have been so stupid.

5. The end game is, everybody loses their money.  It's already been spent.  Madoff spent it.  No wonder he looked rich.

Question: When did Madoff steal your money?  Step 1, or step 5?

How Banking Works

1. You give a bank your money, because you want your money to be kept safe, and maybe get a return.  You also like the convenience of checking, debit card, and bill payment.

2. The bank takes your money and uses it for gambling.  When gambling pays off, the banker takes chips off the table in the form of a bonus.  When gambling results in losses, as it inevitably does, your money slowly disappears, just like with Madoff.

3. The bank pretends it has all your money.  They tell you they have all of it in the form of statements, and they give it back to you when you ask.  You assume that's just as good as actually having all of your money.  You trust them, after all, with all of those tall buildings and highly paid execs, they clearly have money coming out of their ears.  Surely they have plenty to spare.

4. One day, the cover is blown, there's not enough money on the table to keep up the illusion of liquidity, and people realize their own money is being used for somebody else's gambling.  People figure out it's not safe to assume that just because you can ask for your money, and because they say they have it, that it's actually there, and actually safe.  They ask themselves how they could have been so stupid.

5. The end game is, everybody loses their money.  It's already been spent.  The bankers spent it.  No wonder they looked rich.

* If you had $250,000 in FDIC "insurance", if you took a lesson from Cyprus, "insurance" doesn't mean "we'll cover your losses", it just means "we'll put you at the top of the list to get paid back whatever's left, as long as it's politically convenient to do so, and if not, or if whatever's left turns out to be nothing... oh well, our part is done!  You read the fine print, right?"

Question: When did the banks steal your money?  Step 1, or step 5?

Question: Why is banking legal but Madoff not?  (Presumed answer: Because there's a pretense that the gambling done by the banks is somehow sustainable, when we all know that a ponzi scheme is not.)

Question: If you decided Madoff stole the money in step 1, and banking stole the money in some other step, then what was the reason for the difference?

Conclusion: Quit occupying Wall Street: think for a minute and realize that step 1 is what allows both of these scams to take place.  That step 1 starts with YOU!  They can't scam you if you don't give them the product of your labor.  Free checking is never free, everything has a cost.  The cost of that convenience is the possibility that you will wake up one day and you will find out your money is gone after it's too late.  Today, it's already gone, they're just pretending it's still there while they still can.

[A semi-centralized temporary altcoin, pegged to BTC and backed by BTC,]

I had this idea that I thought might be a real feasible way to scale Bitcoin in a manner that allows an infinite number of transactions (including small ones) to benefit from blockchain confirmation, which is a finite resource.

I think most everyone who understands Bitcoin understands that it's not sustainable for every node to hear and relay a 1 kilobyte message each time anybody anywhere buys a pack of gum or a soda pop, or reads a newspaper article.  It's just not realistic and a terribly inefficient use of resources.  We expect transaction fees to eventually be a controlling force as to what's worth putting in the block chain, and at some point, that fee is going to exceed the value of many of the micropayments people would like to put through Bitcoin, making on-blockchain transactions of such a size totally infeasible.

Luckily, we have a lot of time to innovate before we ever get to that point.

There have been several proposals of parallel block chains, all technical based.  All of them have one problem or another that leads people to conclude the following: when we really hit the hard limit, we're going to have to have a bunch of web wallets and "MyBitcoins" that settle up against one another, so that micropayments become sustainable while being kept off the block chain.

I have yet another idea.  It exploits Bitcoin's multisig feature to achieve the trust.  A semi-centralized temporary altcoin, pegged to BTC and backed by BTC, operated by a group of trustees, decentralized just enough so that everyone can always audit its blockchain, and so that the trustees can't steal without overwhelming collusion, but centralized just enough so that block chain reorganizations on the altchain versus Bitcoin blockchain don't result in corner cases where the whole thing comes crashing down because they can't be reconciled.

Here is how it might work.  I, and nine other highly trusted but independent members of the Bitcoin, all take 10,000 BTC, and send it to a 6-of-10 multisig destination, where each of the ten of us hold one private key.  We publish a public agreement promising that these 10,000 BTC are held in escrow for the benefit of holders of our altcoin, and that when the altcoin scheme "ends" (more about that in a minute), we will reimburse the BTC to all of those holding the altcoin.

Then we start the altcoin.  Only the trustees mine it.  However, the mining is a bit different from Bitcoin.  When we mine, the consensus being sought isn't who has the most hashing firepower, rather, the ten of us publish signed messages indicating that we agree on the ledger of the altcoin.  We embed those messages in the Bitcoin block chain for the purposes of non-repudiation.  We embed those transactions in Bitcoin not by mining ourselves, but by broadcasting special transactions to Bitcoin, signed by our ten private keys, to give a nod to what the ten of us believe is the hash representing the top of the chain.  When a majority of trustees have signed an altcoin block by having their signatures confirmed in the Bitcoin blockchain, that altcoin block is deemed to have been mined.

In the altcoin, there is no coinbase reward, and no coins are created per block.  Rather, all of the coins are premined and start out in the possession of the trustees who put up the original 10,000 BTC backing their altcoin.  The trustees introduce them into circulation as par substitutes for BTC.  Transaction fees, if any, are charged strictly as the prerogative of the trustees who specified what fees would apply, in advance, in the original published contract.  Obviously, merchants must accept these low-fee altcoins as substitutes for BTC for them to be useful, but let's just assume merchants can and do elect to accept them, by using software that treats them as equivalent.

I mention that one day the altcoin scheme "ends".  An end game has to be a possibility for the altcoins to have any true BTC value: one day, they need to be redeemable for bitcoins, otherwise they're worthless.  Now, in reality, the scheme never has to "end", it simply must have the possibility of ending fairly and cleanly if everyone decides to dump it at once (unlike the fiat banking system, whose endgame is depositors lose their asses and the execs keep their profits).

If the altcoin ends, it ends when somebody ends up with a supermajority (or other appropriate threshold) of the unredeemed altcoins, proves he has them, and states his intent to redeem them.  An end might also be forced if a certain number of the trustees disappears or stops cooperating, e.g. they are observed to have stopped "mining".

This redemption process gets stipulated in the public agreement issued by the trustees.  Once the supermajority coin holder is properly acknowledged by the trustees as having the right to call a redemption, the altcoin chain shutdown can be scheduled.  All of the altcoin holders have some time period to send all of their altcoins to a preset coin-eater address (like the one resembling 11111114oLVt2), at which point, the trustees agree to reimburse bitcoins to those who held those coins, minus any fees.

The trustees use the multisig feature on the Bitcoins to ensure that all redemptions are either honest, or don't happen at all.  Deciding where to send the coins is simple and straightforward: if we can assume that users of the altcoin know the private key encumbering the altcoins just before they were sent to the eater, it can be assumed that a Bitcoin address based on that same private key would benefit the same person.  Simply take the altcoin address and change the prefix byte so it's Bitcoin, and send out btc.

Yep, I mentioned fees.  Only if appropriate.  The whole point of a scheme like this is to make small transactions remain sensible in an environment where the minimum Bitcoin transaction fee has risen enough to exclude them from ever appearing in a bitcoin block.  If someone starts a chain like this, they might stipulate that if the altcoin chain is ever "called" for redemption, that they will deduct a fee they consider appropriate, like 2% a year for the length of time the chain has been in operation.  Or, there could be a mandatory per-transaction fee instead.  This fee shall have been stipulated in advance in the original published contract agreed to by the trustees.  Whether or not the user community would tolerate such fees is outside the scope of my proposal: I assume that if the fee is intolerable, users won't participate in the altcoin.

Thanks in advance for your comments.