I have seen several sites and contests that publicly announce a private key for an address. I tried using MtGox to import the key, but it waits for 6 confirmations before it sweeps the inputs into my account. I've never won these because there must be a faster way to import and spend. I tried importing using the bitcoin client, but it took 30 minutes to scan the blockchain and nearly froze my computer in the process. Blockchain.info has the ability to import keys, but I don't see an API for importing. What's the fastest way to import a private key and spend the inputs for that address? This looks like what I want, but it's not yet implemented and not sure how fast that would be anyhow: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45523.0 .