I would like to bet on the mid-term elections in the USA. Are there any long-running legit prediction markets that are somewhat liquid where I can do this?

I haven't paid attention to the Bitcoin gambling space for a while, so I am out of touch with the scene. How can I vet the site that I bet on? There seem to be a few Bitcoin betting review sites, but they all have affiliate links, so it looks like they will shill for just about anyone that gives them an affiliate deal.

I'm running Ubuntu and using Electrum 1.9.8. When I have my VPN turned on, the Electrum wallet says "synchronizing" for a few minutes, then gives up trying and says, "not connected." I have tried connecting to several servers and even made sure they were online at http://electrum.qc.to/

Anyways, if I turn off the VPN, then Electrum connects and synchronizes immediately.

Any tips on how to get it to work or settings I can check?

Thank you!

[cheap]

First off, all figures are approximations, so let's not argue over small differences in what I estimate.

Assumptions:
* Mining is a specialized business with low profit margins.
* The mining market is pretty efficient.
* Transaction fees currently paid to miners are negligible.

Therefore, we can approximate the cost to run the network as being roughly equal to the block subsidy.

Currently, the block subsidy amounts to BTC1,314,000/year.
Current bitcoin price = $500

Total cost to run the bitcoin market for a year, including electricity, hardware costs, opportunity cost from tying up capital: $500 x 1,314,000 = $657,000,000 to support the network.

Bitcoin promises low transaction fees as one of its main features, therefore without a block subsidy, and with Tx fees @ 0.5%, the Bitcoin economy would have to be:

$657 million / 0.005 = $131.4 billion to support the miners at current rates.

This is roughly the GDP of Slovakia or New Zealand.

For comparison, Ireland's GDP is about $190 billion.

Currently, we can not send cheap transactions, but we do send heavily subsidized transactions that are paid for with the debasement of existing bitcoins.

Discuss.

I'd like to get a rough idea of how many people were really impacted by the Mt Gox fiasco. I know we hear from a lot of people that lost money, but I wonder if there are few people affected that are just really noisy because they are justifiably angry.

The media throws around numbers like BTC800k missing, and to read this board or Reddit, you'd think that half of all people in Bitcoin lost something to Gox.

Feel free to comment below. Is Mt Gox really a big deal? Or a crisis manufactured by the media and rampant rumor mongering?

I've been around here long enough, so I guess it's time I made one of these threads.

Please post here if we have transacted together.

Here are my Bitcoin-OTC Ratings.

I live in the United States and I'm looking for a US-friendly exchange.

I used to trade on Mt Gox, but now that you can't get USD out of there, I don't want to do that anymore.

How about Bitstamp? Have any Americans had problems with Bitstamp? I heard rumors that many banks will freeze you account for receiving a wire transfer from Bitstamp, but I am skeptical.

I'm just looking for a place to occasionally sell Bitcoin, not day trading or making frequent withdrawals or cashouts.

Also, I do have a Coinbase account, but I want to save fees, and I want the ability to place limit orders, so that's why I'm looking for an exchange.

Thanks.

I'm not sure where this post belongs. Mods - please move if there's a better forum for this.

First off, I'm not the most technically inclined of people. I have been following the story of Mastercoin by listening to the Let's Talk Bitcoin podcast, I have read the Mastercoin whitepaper and a few forum posts around here and I still can't see how some of these things can happen. About all I understand is the sloganeering that "Mastercoin is to Bitcoin as http is to TCP."

I get it...Mastercoin runs on top of the bitcoin blockchain, I guess by embedding messages in transactions that a Mastercoin client can read.

What is this talk about people making their own currencies?

In the most recent Let's Talk Bitcoin show (Episode 64) one of the lead developers for Mastercoin was talking about how he had already written an "API coin." I have a decent idea of what an API is, but why would I want an "API coin?" What could I do with it?

Another example -- I hear about mastercoin-derived currencies that track the price of gold. How would such a thing be done? For a MasterGoldCoin, wouldn't someone have to hold a bunch of gold somewhere that backs his currency? What happens if the person is attacked like egold or the Liberty Dollar people?

I have more questions, but that should get us started.

It's minor but I wasted 15 minutes trying to get this to work. I'm running Ubuntu. When I try to make a "request amount," it will not work if I start with a decimal point (e.g. ".1"). In order for the amount to register, I have to include a leading zero: 0.1 works fine, but .1 doesn't.

For the purposes of this post, you should consider me a linux n00b. I'm running Linux Mint.

I can't seem to get the webcam QR scanner to work in the most recent version of Electrum. The help window tells me to install the zbar package and gives a URL to the zbar homepage.

Instead of using the download from that URL, I try to install whatever software I can via the official repositories. In this case, when I search the suppositories, there is about a dozen different zbar packages I can choose from.

python-zbarpygtk
libbarcode-zbar-perl
zbar-dbg

And so on.

If anyone can tell me what package(s) to install for Mint/Ubuntu, I would appreciate it. I already have the following installed:
libzbar0
zbar-tools

But I guess those two are not enough.

This is an older version of Mint running an LXDE, if it matters (does it?)

Thank you.

I went to bitcoinfoundation.org today and was presented with a CAPTCHA and a message saying that my computer is infected with Malware. I find this unlikely since I'm running Ubuntu. Is there something else that can be triggering this? Is there a Bitcoin Foundation webmaster that can give me some insight of potential causes?

Screen cap of the error message: http://imgur.com/mCabCmz

OK degenerates: I have BTC1.5 that says the price will crash harder when Gox reopens for trading. Can I get action?

Terms:
Mt Gox will reopen for trading in a few hours at 0200 UTC (10PM EST). They say their servers are bigger and better than ever.

I say the price will drop below $57/coin and stay there for at least 4 hours. The drop below $57 will happen within 24 hours of Gox reopening. If the price goes below the "strike price," and climbs back up, I can still win the bet if the price goes back down. If the price goes below $57 at hour 23, I can still win, but the price still needs to stay there for four hours.

Weird-ass orders where BTC0.02 get executed above $57 will not reset the game clock. We're betting on the market crashing or not; I don't want to quibble technicalities.

I'll send some PMs to see if I can find an escrow/referee and will update the thread when that happens.

In the meantime - would anyone give me action on this?

Mods - please move if you think this post is miscategorized.

The issue that is motivating this question is that I am transitioning from using Windows all the time to Linux. I want to start running the QT client in Linux, but don't want to redownload the blockchain. I have a current blockchain in Windows already.

I just upgraded to the 0.8.1 client on Windows. My understanding was that there is a new and improved way to store the blockchain. What confuses me is that after the Windows client finished reindexing, my Appdata\roaming\bitcoin directory ballooned from 8.5 GB to 17.2 GB.

So, to move from Windows to linux, which of these files or directories do I need to keep, and what can I safely erase?

In what directory should I place the necessary files? Will I need to rename or convert anything, or are the blockchain files the same across platforms?

I'm guessing blk00#.dat files may be important, or maybe I only need the blk00#.dat files that are saved in the ...\blocks\ folder? Can anyone help clear this up?

Thank you.

I know from time to time, some people will say 21 million is not enough coins and that we will need more. I strongly disagree.

But, just saying, what would it take to change the protocol so that mining will produce more than 21 million? Would it take 100% agreement among all nodes? 51% agreement?

Similarly, what if one day 7 decimal places is not enough and something like 10- or 11- decimal precision is required? Would it be just as difficult?

I ask because whenever someone brings up raising the 21 million cap, the unanimous answer among the knowledgeable is, "It ain't going to happen."

But they seem to think that increasing the decimal places is relatively trivial if that's needed.

Can anyone explain the difference?

This thread got me thinking of a hypothetical sconario: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144020.msg1527091#msg1527091

Right now, the miners on the network are processing 24.2 Thash/second.

What if someone bought all the bitcoins and put them into a single address? In response, all the miners redirected their mining power to cracking the private key to that address.

How long would it take for the key to be found with a 75% likelyhood?

Or is it a bad question because the sort of computation you do for mining is too different from cracking ECDA? Would mining hardware not be suited for the job?

[Issue #1 -Installing the OSes:]

I will give BTC1.5 to anyone that can get my computer to run Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.10 in a dual boot setup. I will pay 3 days after it's set up if there are still no problems with the installs. If the price of Bitcoins goes above US$20 then I will pay the equivalent of $30 in BTC. To accomplish this, we can use remote desktopping and Skype to communicate.

This is probably more complicated than it first sounds. Here are the details. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, since I am not a hardware guy. This is all my best guess.

My motherboard has the Intel Z68 chipset, and I have a 64 GB SSD that I want to use as the Windows cache drive. This complicates the installation because it's sort of, but not really, a RAID setup.

Issue #1 -Installing the OSes:

Here are the hard drives that concern the OSes:

• 64 GB SSD that I want to use as the Windows cache drive
• 500 GB internal SATA 3.0 WD black drive

500 GB hard drive partitioning - this drive is for system files and applications only
This is how I want the 500 GB drive partitioned:

• ~200 GB for Windows 7 and applications
• ~30 GB for "future use" where I can do stuff like install other linux distros to play with them
• Remaining space for whatever is appropriate for Ubuntu

Additional info: It would be nice if I could access files the Windows partition from both OSes, but this is not crucial. Anything on the Linux partitions can be ext3 or ext4, whatever it takes.

Issue #2 - My data and backup drives
I have all my data backed up on another internal HDD. Before, I had problems installing Ubuntu because of the "fake RAID" set up (google fakeraid) and I think it left a grub on this drive, because when I have it plugged in, I get errors about Grub recoveries or something. So I will need the grubs cleaned out of this drive, I think. We may be able to boot the system, and THEN plug in the drive as I think SATA drives are hot plug inable. This way it would not interfere with the boot and maybe we can clean out the grubs that way.

I am not going to run fakeraid on the system anymore since apparently, Ubuntu cannot handle it.

Right now I do have Windows 7 up and running with the SSD cache drive doing what it is supposed to. I tried installing Ubunto, but the installer did not see the drive, even though I was able to partition the unallocated space with GParted.

You should have some experience with dual booting on a Z68 chipset and SSD cache drive, or at least google about it to get some ideas.

Nothing on any of the drives is valuable, so if you want to wipe them and start from scratch, that's fine.

Do you need to know anything else important that I left out?

When replying, give me a brief rundown of your experience and knowledge level.

I am far from being the most computer savvy person on the forum. Does anyone have any opinions on Jitsi for secure communications? I haven't really seen much discussion about it on the Internet.

www.jitsi.org

Though I'm not a newbie, this question is sort of basic, so here it is.

I have some bitcoins at blockchain.info. I have the site email me my wallet backup any time that I generate a new address there. To my understanding, these backups are sent to me AES encrypted and the encryption key is the same as my password for logging into blockchain.info, right?

I also have 2FA set up at blockchain.info with Google Authenticator.

Now if the idea behind 2FA is that just a password is not enough security, it seems that having backups emailed to me partially defeats the purpose of 2FA in the first place, since the 2FA will do nothing for someone that may intercept a copy of the encrypted wallet file.

Am I wrong about any of this?

[Auction Terms]

Auction Terms
I have BTC142.84 in Hashking "guaranteed" funds that I would like to auction.

Minimum bid is BTC36 (25%). Bid increments of at least BTC0.5, please.

I will close the auction 36 hours from now.

Buying this debt will entitle you to anything that Hashking pays out on the debt. He has promised to make a good faith payment today, which is before the auction expires. If he does pay anything, the winner of the auction will be entitled to that payment.

All bids should be considered binding. Once you post your bid, you cannot retract it. Likewise I will not renege on selling the debt, even if HK wins the lottery and promises payment in full next week.

Edit: I am also willing to sell this in two "chunks" so in your reply, make sure you specify if you're bidding on half of the debt, or all of it.

Ownership Transfer
If HK establishes a procedure for changing withdrawal addresses, I will change the withdrawal address to one of your choosing. Until he does that, I give my word that I will pass along any payments to you myself.

Trust issues
Here is what I can do to show that I'm trustworthy.

I will give my name, employer's name, home address and telephone number to the winner of the auction, as well as a copy of government ID.

I will skype with you and do a "screen share" while I log into my Hashking account so you can verify amounts and payout addresses. You can then "watch" those addresses for incoming payments.

If it would make you feel better, I will also show a recent paycheck stub to show that I am not destitute and therefore, not the type to scam for a few hundred dollars.

OTC Rep: http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=IveBeenBit&sign=ANY&type=RECV

Thank you.

Hashking, Patrick, Victor, Ziggy & anyone else who accepts deposits:

I'm curious if any of you guys have seen a wave of withdrawal requests since the pirate chaos happened. I'm more curious than anything, because there's another deposit taker on these forums who was "not exposed to Pirate" that I always privately suspected of running a de facto pirate passthrough without his depositors' knowledge. This deposit taker went into default a few days after Pirate closed up shop, and blamed it on a sudden deluge of withdrawals in the aftermath of BTCST closing down. So I'm wondering if pulling your deposits is the new "thing to do," or if this phenomenon is confined to just this one deposit taker.

I also have mixed feelings about if I should have aired my suspicions and circumstantial evidence in public weeks ago. We've all seen how Micon & others approached their issues with Pirate and I think the resulting circus was bad for the forum's atmosphere. I didn't want to be "that guy" but I also don't want to see people get ripped off. So that's sort of a private ethical question that I'm wrestling with and would be interested in hearing any perspectives on that as well.

I'm looking at entering into a financial agreement with someone that will be denominated in USD but periodically settled in BTC equivalent.  Is there anywhere online where one can look up historical Bitcoin data for a specific date and time?

E.g. what was the price of bitcoin at 12 noon on August 4?

Any suggestions on how to word this or structure it into the contract?

Thanks.