OK, so I went to create a second HD wallet in Mycelium which goes as easy as one could hope it would. However, when I go to create a backup, it tells me I need a PIN. Well, OK, I'll throw a PIN in there. So now, it tells me I can't create a backup within two days of changing the PIN.

I understand that there need to be some protections but this just seems screwy to me. That I can't protect my wallet against loss or damage right away? I think this needs to be thought about a little harder.

Have RPC calls (or how the username/password are specified) changed? This was working fine until the upgrade.

If one attempts to make calls to the bitcoin API while it is still syncing, often (sometimes not), I will get a 500 error timeout. This will happen with commands such as getblockcount. Other times, I might get an error 28 (which I can deal with easily enough). getblocktemplate seems to always return (even with an error).

So my question is, what is the best way to avoid the 500 errors. Do I just need a longer timeout or is bitcoind pretty much "too busy" for the duration? Is there a strategy to use such as calling getblocktemplate first and if that doesn't return an error, I can proceed?

[open standards]

Just trying to compile bitcoind tonight and this is *still* an issue. This is just crazy, so many open standards for data storage around (XML, JSON, CSV even) and we're stuck with some obsolete binary format?

If you need the features of a database, fine, implement a database but don't tie it to a specific implementation, don't treat it as the wallet and don't expect it to be portable.

I have a bitchain-qt (0.10.1) which I have been running on Windows with an (fairly) up-to-date blockchain. I have some dev work I'd like to do on Linux (and for which a new wallet would be a good idea anyway) so I downloaded the latest (0.10.2), ran it to create the directories then copied rev*.dat and blk*.dat to a new directory and symlinked the blocks directory in ~/.bitcoin to that thinking that bitcoind would recognize the files and I could avoid having to redownload everything.

The problem is, it's still redownloading everything. It's even overwriting the files so I know it's not that I have some weird directory thing going on. Did I miss a step?

This is what an ls -lrt looks like when I run it on the directory. It's started redownloading right from the beginning...

Code:

[...]
-rwxr--r-- 1 user1 users   67108864 Jul  3 12:46 blk00244.dat*
-rwxr--r-- 1 user1 users    7340032 Jul  3 12:46 rev00244.dat*
-rwxr--r-- 1 user1 users  134214302 Jul  8 16:41 blk00000.dat*
-rwxr--r-- 1 user1 users   19922944 Jul  8 16:41 rev00000.dat*
drwx------ 2 user1 users       4096 Jul  8 22:16 index/
-rwxr--r-- 1 user1 users  134174148 Jul  8 22:16 blk00001.dat*
-rwxr--r-- 1 user1 users   16777216 Jul  8 22:16 rev00001.dat*
-rwxr--r-- 1 user1 users  265289728 Jul  8 22:18 rev00002.dat*
-rwxr--r-- 1 user1 users 2097439789 Jul  8 22:18 blk00002.dat*

If I'm just missing a something, could someone point me at a tutorial?

Note that I'm not worried about having to reindex, just don't see the point of burning bandwidth when I already have the data.

Overall a positive experience. I didn't really learn too much that I didn't know already but some really good speakers and good stuff going on. I'd like to open up this thread for possible comments and improvements (Note, I'm not connected with the organizers but hopefully they will see this).

One thing I think would really have improved the experience would have been some roundtables and/or workshops. This would allow some knowledge transfer in a way not afforded by panels (though the couple I attended were good). There were definitely a couple of newbies who were looking for answers but were really asking the wrong people in the wrong talks and in some cases got wrong answers (I think partly because the questions were not properly understood or the speaker didn't have a grasp on that aspect of the technology). I know a lot of us are used to doing this kind of thing online but if you have a bunch of people in one place, I think you may as well.

I would have liked to see some vendors actually selling stuff for bitcoin at the Bitcoin conference . OK, so the organizers can't just magic vendors out of thin air but possibly something could have been done. This would have allowed people to experience some real-life bitcoin purchasing and maybe provided photo-ops. This might have been a good chance for the Blockchain.info people to demo their new wallet. Anyone working on a Bitcoin vending machine?

Those are the two main things for now. Though I'd like to suggest the Opryland Hotel as a future venue for consideration. Pretty central to the US population (and close to me )

I'm looking at parsing through the blockchain and it seems like the insight API might be the best way to do so. Unfortunately, unless I'm missing something, there's not much in the way of documentation. There's a quick example of "this is how you access a couple of features" but no comprehensive list of API calls. Is there one hidden somewhere?

He started talking about it today briefly and was going to talk about it more, possibly with an "expert" but I had to go do something else (6CST hour). Anyone have an archive or a brief summary of what followed? All I got from what I heard was "Herp Derp, I know nothing/ intangible/ no one can explain it to me.".

Used to be that when you clicked on the "New" button on a thread, it would jump to the newest entry on the page once it loaded. Now it just sits there at the top of the page. Any chance the old behavior could be restored?

Thanks

Dear Redacted,

This is an important message from the team at CurrencyFair.

Following our initial assessment of regulatory changes in the United States,
including changes arising from the Dodd-Frank Act, CurrencyFair will temporarily
withdraw services for US residents while we consider these requirements and how they
impact our business model.

This was a difficult and very regretful decision but we are confident we will be
able to resume services in the future. The exact date of re-activation has not yet
been determined and may take some time. We appreciate your patience and will
continue communicating our status and expected return.

CurrencyFair is committed to providing an excellent service, saving our customers
money on every exchange while maintaining a strong compliance framework.

What does this mean for you?

Unfortunately, as of 31st December 2013 your account will be suspended and remain so
for the duration of the withdrawal period. We will accept deposits into your account
up until Friday 6th December 2013 and you can exchange and transfer up until 31st
December 2013. Any balance on your account after this date will be transferred back
to the account from which they were received.

If your situation has changed and you are no longer living in the United States,
please notify us immediately as this only affects US residents.

We would like to thank all our loyal US clients and again apologize that we will not
be able to assist you with your transfers for the duration of the withdrawal period.

Kind regards,

CurrencyFair

[0000]

So, wiki says

8 - Add the 4 checksum bytes from point 7 at the end of extended RIPEMD-160 hash from point 4. This is the 25-byte binary Bitcoin Address.

   00010966776006953D5567439E5E39F86A0D273BEED61967F6

9 - Convert the result from a byte string into a base58 string using Base58Check encoding. This is the most commonly used Bitcoin Address format

   16UwLL9Risc3QfPqBUvKofHmBQ7wMtjvM

So let's pop over to the base58check encoding page.

Take the version/application byte and payload bytes, and concatenate them together (bytewise).
Take the first four bytes of SHA256(SHA256(results of step 1))
Concatenate the results of step 1 and the results of step 2 together (bytewise).

So at this stage, we have 0000010966776006953D5567439E5E39F86A0D273BEED61967F6xxxxxxxx

where the xxxx is the four bytes of the sha of the sha.

Then

Treating the results of step 3 - a series of bytes - as a single big-endian bignumber, convert to base-58 using normal mathematical steps (bignumber division) and the base-58 alphabet described below. The result should be normalized to not have any leading base-58 zeroes (character '1').
The leading character '1', which has a value of zero in base58, is reserved for representing an entire leading zero byte, as when it is in a leading position, has no value as a base-58 symbol. There can be one or more leading '1's when necessary to represent one or more leading zero bytes. Count the number of leading zero bytes that were the result of step 3 (for old Bitcoin addresses, there will always be at least one for the version/application byte; for new addresses, there will never be any). Each leading zero byte shall be represented by its own character '1' in the final result.
Concatenate the 1's from step 5 with the results of step 4. This is the Base58Check result.

So there are two leading zero bytes. So this address would begin 11? But the address above begins 16. So this can't be right?

Then there's the bit on the page under "Encoding a Bitcoin address" that says "A Bitcoin address is the Base58Check encoding of the hash of the associated script." Script? The stuff on https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_Bitcoin_addresses doesn't mention anything about scripts.

Can anyone clarify this for me? I feel like I'm so close but it seems like there's a comprehension gap. These wiki pages really need some fleshing out but last time I attempted to create an account to modify a different page, there appeared to be no way to be able to.

EDIT: Nevermind, it looks like hex2bin must be used first. The wiki really needs updating.


So I'm working through the wiki

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_Bitcoin_addresses

I am at this point...

1 - Take the corresponding public key generated with it (65 bytes, 1 byte 0x04, 32 bytes corresponding to X coordinate, 32 bytes corresponding to Y coordinate)

   0450863AD64A87AE8A2FE83C1AF1A8403CB53F53E486D8511DAD8A04887E5B23522CD470243453A 299FA9E77237716103ABC11A1DF38855ED6F2EE187E9C582BA6

2 - Perform SHA-256 hashing on the public key

   600FFE422B4E00731A59557A5CCA46CC183944191006324A447BDB2D98D4B408

I got the public key OK, prepended the 04, didn't get the value. Needs an uppercase right? Still no value. So I cut and paste it directly from the page and put it in my code.

Code:

print hash('sha256',"0450863AD64A87AE8A2FE83C1AF1A8403CB53F53E486D8511DAD8A04887E5B23522CD470243453A299FA9E77237716103ABC11A1DF38855ED6F2EE187E9C582BA6") . "<br>";

Which gives

32511e82d56dcea68eb774094e25bab0f8bdd9bc1eca1ceeda38c7a43aceddce

Which, nicely enough is what I got from the uppercase value I generated so I'm not totally off-base but is not the value listed in the wiki. I'm sure I'm missing something. Can anyone tell me what?

Thanks

[also]

So you create a paper wallet. On the way to the bank, a super-government-spy-satellite reads your code. Or your bank's security is compromised or you just get lazy and leave the paper wallet on your desk and you have a break-in and it gets stolen. All your precious bitcoins are now gone.

So how about instead of creating a wallet, you create a transaction which can later be put onto the blockchain and will send the coins to a specific Bitcoin address? The transaction is signed so cannot be altered or redirected to another address. You don't have to worry about the security of your bitcoins so much because any potential thief not only has to compromise the security of your bitcoin storage but also of your target wallet (which could be a paper wallet, of course). I'd imagine the process something like this...


Store
1) Software generates wallet. RAM only if possible. Displays public address.
2) You send funds to public address.
3) Software generates transaction for sending funds to your target public address, does all necessary signing, converts to QR code (or whatever your preference is) and saves/prints/whatever.
4) Software wipes & deletes wallet

Redeem
1) Scan/convert QR code.
2) Paste here http://blockchain.info/pushtx .
3) Wait for confirmations.

Thoughts? Has this been done before?

Now go unload an extended magazine of bullets into the air...

http://news.yahoo.com/video/abc-news-plus-special-report-220000361.html

But the post office being what it is and all...









Feel free to use the above for non-commercial purposes (tips appreciated, of course). High-res versions available...

To a paper wallet. It's insane that my cellphone is worth more than my car.

http://bitcoin.org/may15.html

I don't like the language used. No one can "require" me to do this. I understand why I should and I will but the wording seems wrong to me. Opinions?

Been happily mining on this pool for a while. Today, checked in and nothing has been happening for a few days (not a biggie, I'm just mining casually). Checked the miner and was getting RPC connection errors. Saw on the page that that the stratum stuff is high availability and what I was using was not so figured it was maybe time to move to the stratum stuff. Upgraded to the latest guiminer and still connection errors. Is this pool broken? Is it something to do with the 0.8 issues? Any ideas? I tried rebooting in case it was something weird at my end. No luck.

$ ./poclbm.exe stratum+tcp://13qnEgPTxJW6mm88dLpnHXZyryN5EXBciq_64:pass@stratum.hhtt.1209k.com:3333 --device=0 --platform=0 --verbose -v -w 128 -r 60
 14/03/2013 19:30:43, ADL_Adapter_ID_Get failed, cutoff temperature disabled for 0:0:Juniper
 14/03/2013 19:30:44, started OpenCL miner on platform 0, device 0 (Juniper)
 14/03/2013 19:30:44, Setting server (13qnEgPTxJW6mm88dLpnHXZyryN5EXBciq_64 @ stratum.hhtt.1209k.com:3333)
stratum.hhtt.1209k.com:3333 14/03/2013 19:30:44, checking for stratum...
stratum.hhtt.1209k.com:3333 14/03/2013 19:30:45, no response to getwork, using as stratum
stratum.hhtt.1209k.com:3333 14/03/2013 19:30:55, Failed to subscribe
stratum.hhtt.1209k.com:3333 14/03/2013 19:30:57, IO errors - 1, tolerance 2
stratum.hhtt.1209k.com:3333 14/03/2013 19:31:07, Failed to subscribe
stratum.hhtt.1209k.com:3333 14/03/2013 19:31:09, IO errors - 2, tolerance 2
stratum.hhtt.1209k.com:3333 14/03/2013 19:31:20, Failed to subscribe

is the sound of a thousand GPUs being turned back on.

Well, are you?