[Announcement]

Announcement



Dear customers,

In an ongoing effort to provide our customers with the best possible trading experience, we are pleased to announce several enhancements to our swaps system. As the swaps market continues to grow, we continue to be extremely focused on ensuring that it operates as fairly and efficiently as possible, while mitigating systematic risks to the greatest extent possible.

Self Funding: To the extent that a trading wallet’s collateral is the correct currency, it will now be automatically used to offset the position’s swap requirements. For example, if a trading wallet contains USD, and the position is long BTCUSD, the USD borrowing requirement will be reduced by the amount of USD collateral. We believe that this change will result in significant cost savings to traders and help make the closely watched aggregate swap statistics more meaningful. This new feature essentially allows traders to pay no swap interest when the positions size is less than their collateral, i.e., “unlevered” (provided, of course that the collateral is held in the correct currency), and avoids the clumsy process of claiming unlevered position as this feature effectively enables traders to perform the economic equivalent of a “partial claim” when the position is reduced in size of more of the correct collateral is deposited in the trading wallet.

Daily Settlement: Up until now, swap interest to liquidity providers has always been paid daily, but swap interest from traders is only collected when the positions is closed. While this makes sense from a certain perspective, it has the unintended consequence of effectively putting Bitfinex in the position of making 0% loans to cover the payments imbalance created by large “unrealized swap” balances, which really should be serviced by the P2P facility that we already have in place. Moreover, from a balance sheet perspective, we feel that it simply makes more sense to match the frequency of the collection and payment process. In order to implement this change, traders will need to select how they wish these daily payment to be made. The system will support a new variable for each position, “Swap Type”, which can have one of two values:

    Daily (default): Swap interest will be automatically deducted from the collateral in trading wallet of a daily basis. If the correct currency is not present, an appropriate conversion will be performed to satisfy the payment.
    Term: Swap interest will be capitalized in to position every night by automatically accessing swap offers to cover the required payment.

Existing positions will be phased into this process, with daily “catch-up” payments of no more than 10,000 USD.

Leverage calculation: The currency that is used as collateral for your open position(s) does impact your risk of default in case of a forced liquidation. If you have 3 BTC and take a 6 BTC position, your true leverage, regarding exposure to BTCUSD price, is 3:1, not 2:1. We thus will include the collateral that is not in the last currency of a traded pair as part of the position cost (ie all non-USD collateral for BTCUSD and LTCUSD positions, and all non-BTC collateral for LTCBTC positions).

Your tradable balance is equal to:

( Your leverage * your margin balance (in USD) + your unrealized profit + your unrealized swap) - your position(s) cost (in USD)

Today, your position cost is equal to:

( your position base price * your position size )

After this change, your position cost will be equal to:

(your position base price * your position size + (your margin balance in USD - your USD trading balance)

These first three changes will be active on the 21st of July, 2014.

Real-time Autorenew: In the past, the “autorenew” feature for offering swap liquidity was only processed once every 15 minutes, which could sometimes create an offer “vacuum” if large positions were being opened and closed quickly during periods of heightened volatility. We have reduced that interval to less than one minute as we approach a true real-time solution to this important feature.

Swap “Bot”: We will soon be offering traders the ability to automatically replace the swaps that fund their positions with cheaper ones should they be available at the same or better terms, eliminating the rather laborious manual process that is available today. There are many nuances to making this work efficiently and it will be offered on an “opt in” basis, but we anticipate that this feature will make the swap market much more efficient and reduce volatility in the average swap rates. We will provide further updates on the specific functionality by the end of July.

Once again, we wish to thank all of our customers for their continued loyalty, which, in recent months, has made Bitfinex the number one platform for BTCUSD liquidity as measure by trailing 30 day volume. We look forward to serving the community’s ongoing trading needs as we continue to update and improve our trading platform. As always, we welcome your feedback.

Best regards,
The Bitfinex team


---------------------------------------------------------


Hello everyone,

As our project has matured after 7 months of existence, I think it's time to open an official support trade out of the "Project development" section.

What is Bitfinex?

Bitfinex offers 3 main functions, working together. There is 3 different types of wallet, each one having a dedicated function.

The three main functions of Bitfinex
Bitcoins exchange

The exchange part works like any regular bitcoins exchanges: you put your offer to buy or sell bitcoins. When an order is matched against another, it is executed.
The exchange wallet type is used for this feature.

Margin trading

Our margin trading feature is unique in the Bitcoin world. Basically, it allows you to borrow funds from lenders (see next feature) to trade bitcoins. If you make a profit, you get the profit and pay the depositor interests. If you make a loss, you reimburse the depositors the whole borrowed amount + interests.
For example, let's say you want to open a long position for 100 bitcoins. That means you want to buy 100 bitcoins hoping to the price will go up. The system will automatically borrow for you 100 * the bitcoin price US dollars (let's say 1300 USD) from lenders, at the best rates available. Your position will have a maximum period (defined by lenders), after which you will have to reimburse the 1300 USD (close the position). Each hour you will be charged an interests rate going to your(s) lender(s). If later you want to increase your position, you can borrow more funds, which will have ther own maximum period.
At any time before the expiration date, you can close your position. This will reimburse your lender, and you will keep the profit.
The same goes for short position (selling bitcoins), where you borrow bitcoins instead of dollars.
If there is no lender available, you will not be able to open your position.
The trading wallet is used for margin trading. It does not serve the purpose of buying or selling bitcoins, it serves only as margin requirements; that is, even if you have 1000 US dollars in this wallet, if you open a 10 BTC long position, you will borrow the needed USD. Funds in this wallet are to cover for eventual losses that may occurs. When the maturated loss equals almost all your wallet balances, you may get a margin call and have your position force-closed to avoid further losses.

Lending

Our lending feature goes hand to hand with the margin trading feature described above. If you don't feel like a trader and/or prefer safer investments, this feature is for you. Bitfinex allows you, using your deposit wallets, to lend bitcoins and/or dollars to traders. You can put offers with your chosen terms (which rates, for how long, and how much). When an offer is taken by a trader, the money in your wallet will be used to buy or sell bitcoins, and a loan will be opened. When the loan expires (the trader closes his position), bitcoins are bought or sold back and money is reimbursed to your wallet.

Security

When it comes to security, we're always paranoid. We have unique security features in the bitcoin world, which are:

• A watch-only wallet (cold wallet) on the production server, to monitor bitcoins transactions without giving keys to spend them
• API keys
• Automatic backup of the database once a day
• Duplication of backup data automatically across 3 servers
• Paper backup of wallet and exchanges keys and passwords
• Incorporated in a business-friendly place

Cold wallet:

Your bitcoins are stored in a cold wallet, and the servers use a watch-only wallet, powered by Armory, to monitor incoming deposits. The wallet is handled by the Mav Armory Server script (open-source, you can find it here: https://github.com/thedawnrider/BitcoinArmory-Daemon).
On a dedicated and isolated box a hot wallet is running with a low balance for instant withdrawals purpose.

API Keys:

Neither the API keys (like currently the Bitstamp API credentials) are stored on the database nor the code anywhere on our servers.

Automatic backup of the database

Once a day, the database of the platform is backed up, encrypted and compressed as an archive. The passwords of users it contains are hashed.

Paper backup of wallet and exchanges keys

These crucial informations are printed on paper, which is kept with us in a physical wallet in bitfinex office. As well, the cold wallet is printed on paper, and Armory (the bitcoin client we use) allows to restore wallet from paper if needed.

Incorporated in a business-friendly place

To protect your funds as much as possible, we chose to incorporate our company in a business-friendly place. Thus, Bitfinex Limited has its office in Hong-Kong, with one of our associate living there. We have establish a good relationship with our bank to ensure the necessary legal protection for your funds.

Questions?
If you have others questions or suggestions to make, it will be a pleasure to receive them on contact@bitfinex.com!

[Meta-exchange]

Hello everyone,

As our project has matured after 7 months of existence, I think it's time to open an official support trade out of the "Project development" section.

What is Bitfinex?

Bitfinex offers 3 main functions, working together. There is 3 different types of wallet, each one having a dedicated function.

Meta-exchange
Bitfinex works as a meta-exchange. It allows you to acess the orderbooks of others main bitcoins exchanges to have the best liquidity possible, while keeping low fees. You can see the global orderbook of bitfinex combining all orderbooks available (level 2 order book).

The three main functions of Bitfinex
Bitcoins exchange

The exchange part works like any regular bitcoins exchanges: you put your offer to buy or sell bitcoins, on the global orderbook. You can choose to execute your orders only on bitstamp, or only on bitfinex, for example; that's the routing feature. When an order is matched against another, it is executed.
The exchange wallet type is used for this feature.

Margin trading

Our margin trading feature is unique in the Bitcoin world. Basically, it allows you to borrow funds from lenders (see next feature) to trade bitcoins. If you make a profit, you get the profit and pay the depositor interests. If you make a loss, you reimburse the depositors the whole borrowed amount + interests.
For example, let's say you want to open a long position for 100 bitcoins. That means you want to buy 100 bitcoins hoping to the price will go up. The system will automatically borrow for you 100 * the bitcoin price US dollars (let's say 1300 USD) from lenders, at the best rates available. Your position will have a maximum period (defined by lenders), after which you will have to reimburse the 1300 USD (close the position). Each hour you will be charged an interests rate going to your(s) lender(s). If later you want to increase your position, you can borrow more funds, which will have ther own maximum period.
At any time before the expiration date, you can close your position. This will reimburse your lender, and you will keep the profit.
The same goes for short position (selling bitcoins), where you borrow bitcoins instead of dollars.
If there is no lender available, you will not be able to open your position. Your order status will be "NO RESERVE ACTIVE", which means that it will be executed as soon as there is funds available.
The trading wallet is used for margin trading. It does not serve the purpose of buying or selling bitcoins, it serves only as margin requirements; that is, even if you have 1000 US dollars in this wallet, if you open a 10 BTC long position, you will borrow the needed USD. Funds in this wallet are to cover for eventual losses that may occurs. When the maturated loss equals almost all your wallet balances, you may get a margin call and have your position force-closed to avoid further losses.

Lending

Our lending feature goes hand to hand with the margin trading feature described above. If you don't feel like a trader and/or prefer safer investments, this feature is for you. Bitfinex allows you, using your deposit wallets, to lend bitcoins and/or dollars to traders. You can put offers with your chosen terms (which rates, for how long, and how much). When an offer is taken by a trader, the money in your wallet will be used to buy or sell bitcoins, and a loan will be opened. When the loan expires (the trader closes his position), bitcoins are bought or sold back and money is reimbursed to your wallet.

Insurance is available for lenders that want to enjoy a great interest rate without taking any risk of losing anything even in the unlikely event that Bitcoin price will collapse to zero within a matter of minutes (a.k.a. black-swan event). Lender that buy insurance are 100% guaranteed in their investment no matter what happens

Security

When it comes to security, we're always paranoid. We have unique security features in the bitcoin world, which are:

• A watch-only wallet (cold wallet) on the production server, to monitor bitcoins transactions without giving keys to spend them
• API keys
• Automatic backup of the database once a day
• Duplication of backup data automatically across 3 servers
• Paper backup of wallet and exchanges keys and passwords
• Incorporated in a business-friendly place

Cold wallet:

Your bitcoins are stored in a cold wallet, and the servers use a watch-only wallet, powered by Armory, to monitor incoming deposits. The wallet is handled by the Mav Armory Server script (open-source, you can find it here: https://github.com/thedawnrider/BitcoinArmory-Daemon).
On a dedicated and isolated box a hot wallet is running with a low balance for instant withdrawals purpose.

API Keys:

Neither the API keys (like currently the Bitstamp API credentials) are stored on the database nor the code anywhere on our servers.

Automatic backup of the database

Once a day, the database of the platform is backed up, encrypted and compressed as an archive. The passwords of users it contains are hashed.

Paper backup of wallet and exchanges keys

These crucial informations are printed on paper, which is kept with us in a physical wallet in bitfinex office. As well, the cold wallet is printed on paper, and Armory (the bitcoin client we use) allows to restore wallet from paper if needed.

Incorporated in a business-friendly place

To protect your funds as much as possible, we chose to incorporate our company in a business-friendly place. Thus, Bitfinex Limited has its office in Hong-Kong, with one of our associate living there. We have establish a good relationship with our bank to ensure the necessary legal protection for your funds.

Questions?
If you have others questions or suggestions to make, it will be a pleasure to receive them on contact@bitfinex.com!

Hello,

I'd like to present the latest addition to the margin trade feature on Bitfinex. It's works as a peer-to-peer lending, where borrowers use their loans to margin trade.

It'll give traders the ability to load margin in advance. Why? because you may want to have margin available without immediately opening a leveraged position.

Here is our new lending page:


If you have a "Trader" account, you will see the new "Loan" button, that will allow you to post a loan offer. If you're a lender, you'll see only the lending part.
There is now a new parameter for offers: the "Type". "Market" offers are filled with whatever offers is found (be careful when you use it, you don't want to lend 1000 bitcoins at 0% a year for 60 days). "Limit" offers are filled with your set rate or better.

A new table has been added, for traders, displaying the active loans.

On the sidebar, you will see the maximum size of the position you can open with your loans:


When you open a position, if you open more than what you have in loans, the active offers of the current credit book will be used (the current system of margin trading still works as is in other words).

Questions:
Q/How much can I loan?
A/You can loan your tradable balance in USD or BTC; Your maximum loan size is equal to your leverage multiplied by your trading wallet total balance (USD or BTC).

Q/How are interests charged?
A/Interests are charged every day from your trading wallet, from the moment a loan is opened and until this(these) loan(s) are used for trading (they are then converted into regular position credits). Then, interests will be charged as regular swap (as they are now).

Q/What changes for lenders?
A/ Lenders will have a better view of the current demand. They will be able to more easily fill the offers.

If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to come back to us. We hope you enjoy Bitfinex!

Raphael NICOLLE
Bitfinex team
https://www.bitfinex.com

[Funds need updated on January 11th 2013:]

Hi all,

We'd like to present you our lending feature on Bitfinex. On this platform we allow traders to open leveraged position by borrowing funds from our lenders. And because bitcoin is volatile, people are ready to pay a high rate to leverage their trade. Currently, lenders are USD at an average rate of 39% a year, and BTC at an average rate of 16% a year! And yes, this are real loan taken by traders.
But we don't want to advantage one side of the market so we try to keep balanced reserves of each currency. That's why we need additional lenders!

Funds need updated on January 11th 2013:
Current needs:
We currently need:
-Over 40 000 USD to lend on Bitfinex
-Over 700 BTC to lend on Bitfinex

Managed accounts

If you're willing to lend more than 2000 USD or 200 BTC, I can manage your account for you, for free. You will have an access to your account at any time on Bitfinex, but I'll manage your lending offers to maximise your return. You will be able to withdraw your funds by confirming your request by email and/or PM for additionnal security.

Questions:

Q:I want to be a lender, what do i do ?
A:Go to bitfinex.com, open a "deposit" account, add funds to your account and read this ....https://bitfinex.com/pages/iwantto#lend

Q:How are interest rates calculated?
A: The interest is set by the lenders and the supply and demand will determine which offers are accepted?

Q:Why don't I earn interest even if I have a positive balance on my account?
A: Because no one can guarantee that you funds will be used

Q: Who use my funds ?
A: traders who want to trade on leverage

Q:Why make this thread ?
A:Bitfinex.com dont want to encourage one side market and thus keep balanced reserves of each currency.

Q:What you will do to not advantage one side of the market?
A: Post regular updated about the general needs for funds if there is any imbalance on the system

For any other questions, please check:
https://bitfinex.com/pages/security for how secure Bitfinex is
https://bitfinex.com/pages/iwantto for general Howtos
https://bitfinex.com/pages/howitworks for how Bitfinex works
https://bitfinex.com/pages/faq for general questions
or https://bitfinex.com/pages/contact

Hi everyone,

Did you ever dream of buying or selling bitcoins with more liquidity than mtgox and less fees than their 0.6%? Don't search further, here it comes!

Bitfinex is not your typical exchange place. Here you can place exchange orders not only with other bitfinex users, but also with mtgox exchange place. That means more liquidity than mtgox and less fees! Only 0.4% for orders executed on mtgox and 0.1% (yes 0.1%) for orders executed against bitfinex orders!

Bitfinex offers you 3 feature: remunerated deposits, margin trading and regular bitcoins exchange. Since we're on the currency exchange forum I'll focus on the exchange feature.

To use this, you can register on bitfinex with an account of "exchange" level. You'll then be able to fund your account using wire transfer, mtgox code or bitcoins. As soon as your account is credited, you'll be able to start exchanging using the advanced interface below:


You can place market or limit orders, route your order (choose to only execute it against with mtgox orders or only with bitfinex orders), and you'll instantly see the market depth to choose the best moment to place your order.

Q: Is my money safe with you?

A: We use a unique feature for security: a watchonly wallet. Yes, no hot wallet at all. Bitcoins deposits are instaly credited, but withdrawals are manually processed once a day for security. Similarly mtgox api key doesn't grant the right to withdraw. And that's only the most prominent security feature! When it comes to security we're quite paranoid.

Q: Do you use my deposit to leverage the trades of margin traders?
A: Absolutely not. Account balances are separated in 3 wallets: deposit, exchange and trading. Only deposits funds is used to be lend to trader for margin trader. Your money on exchange wallets is with us and stay with us until you decide to use it.

Q: Can I use others features on your site?
A: Yes. Exchange account have access to deposit wallets, and of course you can register as a trader account to use the 3 features of Bitfinex

Any questions? Hit us on contact@bitfinex.com

.

Yeah I know it's not the ponzi rates you may find here. But if you have idle usd on mtgox, why not give them a little something to grow? I am always in need of USD for the platform bitfinex.com, where almost all users want to open long positions.

I currently offer 13.62% a year, compounded daily.

If interested, you can register on bitfinex.com or send me a PM if you don't want to deal with the website.

Thanks,
Raphael

Hi,

I'm crossposting my new service to speculate with leverage on the btcusd price: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=119745.0#new
He will certainly interest some of you

unclescrooge

[Meta-exchange]

Hi everyone,

Our project has grown quite a lot since when it started. As it is still in active development, I'm moving it to the project development section, and changing the OP to explain what it is now:

Bitfinex offers 3 main functions, working together. There is 3 different types of wallet, each one having a dedicated function.

Meta-exchange
Bitfinex works as a meta-exchange. It allows you to acess the orderbooks of others main bitcoins exchanges to have the best liquidity possible, while keeping fees lows. You can see the global orderbook of bitfinex combining all orderbooks available (level 2 order book).

The three main functions of Bitfinex
Bitcoins exchange

The exchange part works like any regular bitcoins exchanges: you put your offer to buy or sell bitcoins, on the global orderbook. You can choose to execute your orders only on mtgox, or only on bitfinex, for example; that's the routing feature. When an order is matched against another, it is executed.
The exchange wallet type is used for this feature.

Margin trading

Our margin trading feature is unique in the Bitcoin world. Basically, it allows you to borrow funds from lenders (see next feature) to trade bitcoins. If you make a profit, you get the profit and pay the depositor interests. If you make a loss, you reimburse the depositors the whole borrowed amount.
For example, let's say you want to open a long position for 100 bitcoins. That means you want to buy 100 bitcoins hoping to the price will go up. The system will borrow for you 100 * the bitcoin price US dollars (let's say 1300 USD) from lenders, at the best rates available. Your position will have a maximum period (defined by lenders), after which you will have to reimburse the 1300 USD (close the position). Each hour you will be charged an interests rate going to your(s) lender(s). If later you want to increase your position, you can borrow more funds, which will have there own maximum period.
At any time before the expiration date, you can close your position. This will reimburse your lender, and you will keep the profit.
The same goes for short position (selling bitcoins), where you borrow bitcoins instead of dollars.
If there is no lender available, you will not be able to open your position. Your order status will be "NO RESERVE ACTIVE", which means that it will be executed as soon as there is funds available.
The trading wallet is used for margin trading. It does not serves the purpose of buying or selling bitcoins, it serves only as margin requirements; that is, even if you have 1000 US dollars in this wallet, if you open a 10 BTC long position, you will borrow the needed USD. Funds in this wallet are to cover for eventual losses that may occurs. When the losses covers almost all your wallet balances, you may get a margin call and have your position force-closed to avoid further losses.

Lending

Our lending feature goes hand to hand with the margin trading feature described above. If you don't feel like a trader and/or prefer safer investments, this feature is for you. Bitfinex allows you, using your deposit wallets, to lend bitcoins and/or dollars to traders. You can put offers with your chosen terms (which rates, for how long, and how much). When an offer is taken by a trader, the money in your wallet will be used to buy or sell bitcoins, and a loan will be opened. When the loan expires (the trader closes his position), bitcoins are bought or sold back and money is reimbursed to your wallet.

You don't have the exchange risk when you lend with bitfinex. The exchange risk is taken on by the trader, and, in case his position loses money, he will cover the loss with funds in his trading wallet. If by any chances losses are greater than what the trader can afford, the loss is on Bitfinex, we will cover for the missing amount.
You can then see how the risks are minimal, while the rates are great (bitcoins price being very volatile, traders can afford to borrow at a high premium)

Security

When it comes to security, we're always paranoid. We have unique security features in the bitcoin world, which are:

• A watch-only wallet (cold wallet) on the production server, to monitor bitcoins transactions without giving keys to spend them
• Trade only exchanges API keys
• Automatic backup of the database once a day
• Duplication of backup data automatically across 3 servers
• Paper backup of wallet and exchanges keys and passwords

Cold wallet:

Your bitcoins are stored in cold wallet only, and the servers only use watch-only wallet, powered by Armory, to monitor deposit and balances. We have a bitcoind (official daemon) running only to handle the blockchain transactions), and the wallet is handled by the Mav Armory Server script (open-source, you can find it here: https://github.com/thedawnrider/BitcoinArmory-Daemon).
All bitcoins withdrawals requests are processed manually, once a day, every business day.

Trade-only API Keys:

The API keys (like currently the Mtgox API key) are stored encrypted on one of the production server. This key provides only right to get balances and buy and sell bitcoins on Mtgox. That's why you are able to deposit instantly using mtgox codes, but the mtgox code withdrawals are handled manually.

Automatic backup of the database

Once a day, the database of the platform is backed up, encrypted and compressed as an archive. The passwords of users it contains are encrypted

Duplication of backup data

As soon as a new backup is ready (database, log files,...), it is sent to others servers in 2 several physical location.

Paper backup of wallet and exchanges keys

These crucial informations are printed on paper, which is kept with us in a physical wallet in bitfinex place. As well, the cold wallet is printed on paper, and Armory (the bitcoin client we use) allows to restore wallet from paper if needed.

Questions?
If you have others questions or suggestions to make, it will be a pleasure to receive them on contact@bitfinex.com!

Hi all,

What the title says. Need to exchange 940 mtgoxeur for 1230 mtgoxusd via MtGox redeemable code.

Thanks
unclescrooge

-

.

Hi all,

I would like your inputs on bitcoin-accepting web hosting providers.

I'm searching for a VPS or shared host, for a website using PHP scripts but with no heavy load expected.

Which one are you using, which one would you recommend? Why?

Mods, if it's misplaced please move or delete the thread

Thanks
unclescrooge

-

Bonjour à tous,

Je viens de finir de traduire la version française de Bitmit.net, si vous voulez venir vérifier la traduction et me faire vos retours je suis tout ouïe

cordialement,
Raphael

Hello fellow bitcoiners,

I often read the blog ZeroHedge. They have a quite pessimistic but realist view on the economy, and some of the bloggers there often try to sell their "solution" to "protect your capital/wealth against the coming end of the world".

We can all agree that bitcoin is perfectly designed to be a great store of value, being non inflationary, so why not sell our own solution to protect others wealth? I think we can touch a public open to the idea of bitcoin. Plus bitcoin is also perfectly designed to survive a financial meltdown, as it doesn't need banks to operate. Bref, it's perfect for the target audience!

So whose up to write and submit an article to zerohedge? English isn't my primary language so I'm not able to produce a well-writen article?

Hello,

I like the charts displayed on bitcoincharts.com, but I wonder if there is a chart that displays global volume on various exchanges?

Raphy

Hello

I have somes questions for Nefario. I see that GLBSE is hosted in the US. It's not immune to a crackdown for whatever dummy reason the state can come up with (and considering bitcoin that not a foolish scenario). In such a case, have you an emergency plan? Do you keep a safe copy of bitcoin wallets and ownership of shares (and where?) to restore the website and/or give btcs back to users?

Also, would you considering moving on tor network?

And last one, what is GLBSE current status regarding the law? Are you registered,...?

I'm sorry to ask all these questions but I would feel more comfortable if your great market was protected against various attacks from the law or other.

Thanks
Raphy

Bitcoin wallet on memory card
Or how to get bitcoins to the physical world without smartphones or bank-like third parties.

Hello everyone,

To bring bitcoins to the physical world, we need a system that is largely available and cheap (exit the smartphones), and that keep the bitcoins spirit (no third parties involved in transactions) to make it resilient against States predation.

Bitcoin bills are a way to do this, but I've not been convinced by the security and the usability, and anyway I find credit card much more convenient.

So, here's my proposal:

You host your wallet on a memory chip card (or whatever) that you can carry around with you
When you wanna buy something, you insert the card into the vendor reader. This reader is connected to a computer on wich a special software is running. The software, when a wallet.dat in a memory card pops in, run a bitcoind instance with this wallet, to send the agreed amount.
For security, the user has to enter is passphrase (much like he would enter a PIN with a credit card). The bitcoins are sent. No need to wait for x confirmations. The buyer can take his bitcoin card back.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

I started this topic to hopefully transform this into reality. So what do you think? How to get this into a cheap yet effective system?

Raphy

Bonjour à tous,

Qui serait intéressé pour acheter des clopes ou du tabac en ligne avec des bitcoins? Si j'arrive à réunir assez de mon ça nous permettra de convaincre un peu plus facilement un venbdeur comme http://au-plaisir-de-vivre.be d'accepter les btcs comme moyen de paiement.

Alors allo,ns-y, qui est partant?