First, let me say, no coins are in the wallet in this directory, so I don't care if I've screwed things up.  (I'm on Windows.) I got lukejr's latest next test, and have been running that, but then when I opened up the standard 0.7.1 client, it is re-downloading blocks that I know the nexttest already downloaded. Is it messing things up to be running these with the same datadir option enabled? The colored coins Armory only reads the blockchain as updated from the 0.7 version, and I'd like to try that out.

Just wanted to spread this around os this guy can get the help he needs asap!...

I am traveling and am in a city in Brazil. My only credit card got cloned. I have bitcoins. How can I use them to get my hands on some fast cash to buy food, etc?

For ~ mtgox last price.  I can just scratch off the back and get the code and send it to you or mail the physical card for an addition 0.3 btc. 

Please PM if interested since I don't check the forums too often but will get an e-mail if I am PM'd.

For ~ mtgox last price.  I can just scratch off the back and get the code and send it to you or mail the physical card for an addition 0.3 btc. 

Please PM if interested since I don't check the forums too often but will get an e-mail if I am PM'd.

Ok, let me preface this by saying that I am not a programmer, nor do I know advanced math, but I know enough about computers and crypto that I have been in my head trying to logically design a protocol for a peer to peer poker network.

I think I have a good idea of how to do most of it-- there would be a poker pgp WOT, a bunch of secret-shared split poker network private keys, nodes that have high enough WOT trust to arbitrate disputed hands without even actually knowing any of the information (it would rely in part on fully homomorphic encryption), optional rake which goes towards miners and high-trust-level nodes, and many other features and ways to mix all of this together, but one of the main things necessary is a full public ledger which contains things like pgp identities, account balances, automated wot ratings, and other misc necessary info.

Most if not all of this could be automated and based on hand histories and the ledger (aka blockchain) could theoretically be just the clear-signed hand histories or something like that, however that does not at all scale.  If the thing ever got popular, the blockchain would grow to petabytes in order to have the necessary information.

So what I want to do is instead of having it be blockchain-like, instead use a fixed ledger (which can grow with more users) but where the data can actually be altered rather than simply added onto the previous data.  Now I know the ever-growing blockchain was the way satoshi could make bitcoin work, but I feel like it should be possible to do what I want, but I'm not positive of that.

So I'm hoping you guys might have ideas on how a fixed ledger could work.  One idea I have is in addition to the fixed ledger, a smaller blockchain that contains all the hand histories and other updates since the last ledger, as well as a hash or something of the ledger at that point, and then every so often all nodes with the full ledger and blochchain(s) attempt to update and use a logical clock to just let the first guy win, and there's no reward for being first (other than having to wait X time between updates), so the other nodes are happy to accept, and then just whenever the ledger is changed, and the rake from the new hands gets split up evenly among the nodes who have the full ledger.  Additionally, only people with X number of hands and no disputes and high trust ratings could be allowed to receive the reward and only their ledgers would be "official".  This would incentivise trying to avoid accusations of cheating and also running "full"clients (but still allow lite clients).  (And of course each person could still store their own hand histories forever.)

I'm just tossing things around in my head at this point, but I'd really like to try and figure this out.  I know I really don't know enough to be trying this on my own, but I figured it I could logically work out the entire protocol on paper, I might convince somebody to do it or more likely be able to start a kickstarter fund to hire somebody to do it.

Hello all, I am signed up for the crypto class, as I'm sure many of you are.  For those that aren't, I've compiled the videos, lecture slides, and the homeworks into a zip file.  (The course is free.)

I'm putting it up in hopes that some of you who missed signing up for it will want to sign up for the second course in January.  I didn't want to upload everything separately, and I didn't know how to use dropproxy for a folder, so it's all together in one big 1.02gb zip file, with md5 of  26f888fe90a5ecd48dee01e91f116f1c.  (I'm hoping some brave soul will download it and vouch that it's not a virus or anything.)

Once again, I'm not trying to take away by giving out this "pirated" materials--the course was free, and I'm encouraging people to sign up for part two (https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2)

So, if you guys are interested, here it is:

http://dropproxy.com/f/39

I just don't understand why people keep large funds locked up in exchanges.  If you are running a business, keep just enough to cover daily transactions online, and each day set aside 15 minutes to execute the necessary deposits and withdraws.

I'm a poker player by trade, and I don't bring my entire fucking bankroll when I play, because I know when I play I might get robbed or followed or god-knows-what.  I have cash at home and in safety deposit boxes and I have good credit with many casinos.  Most of my funds are directly and only in my control, but I know that for ease of use, some funds have to be in other people's control.  But I accept that I may lose those funds, and I only keep the bare minimum with other people.

Similarly, I spent a lot of time and money getting set up on PokerStars (I'm in the US) with fake docs, vpn, mail and phone forwarding, and a reliable route to get money on and off the site.  I keep the bare minimum necessary to play actually ON Stars, because I fully expect my account to be shut down sometime in the future.  I have it spread out in Moneybookers, ukash, linden dollars, other poker sites, prepaid credit cards, liberty reserve, and of course the majority is in bitcoin.  If one of these shuts me down, it sucks and it's a loss, but it's not the end of the world, and I am able to keep going.  I have spread myself out.  Heck, I may even start a side business of currency trading!

The point is, when you are running a business with inherent risk (this includes handling lots of money), you need to be secure.  I have chosen the putting my eggs in many baskets method, but I concede there is merit to the Mark Twain method ("put all your eggs in one basket AND WATCH THAT BASKET!").

But absolutely no method of security should involve having the majority of your working funds sitting on an exchange, or anywhere that is not directly and ONLY accessible by you.  That's just negligence.

There are plenty of ways to invest your money or use your money that don't involve that type of risk.  You want to invest?  Great, pile your USD into bitcoin and let it sit in a brain wallet for 5 years.  You want to day trade, great, day trade, but make sure the money is back in your account at the end of the day.  You want longer term investment?  Ok, then go with the biggest most corporate giant chain out there, because THEY can afford a hit, don't want to risk any smear on their reputation, and your small potatoes can easily be paid back.  Plus, security in numbers.

Whatever you are doing, make sure you understand the potential areas of risk, and how this affects you.  I have yet to see a bitcoin theft that wasn't caused by negligence and I have yet to see victims who didn't simply have a ton of money sitting on an exchange or on a computer accessible by other people (or a computer not firewalled or av'd).

When I want to convert USD to bitcoin, it's deposited, bought, and sent to my wallet in the same day, preferably in a few hours.  And it's done in chunks, so that if there is failure, only the current chunk gets caught up in it.  I'm not saying you need to do this, but leaving 5 figures or more just sitting on an exchange when you only need a fraction of that to do your business is just dumb.  And if you do need all of it for your business and you don't have other reserves, you're just plain gambling too high without the proper bankroll.  That's on you.

Bitcoin is as secure as it gets if you take the most basic of precautions.

Why aren't you?

Sorry about the cheesy caps in the title, I was trying to get the word "poker" to jump out at poker players.  I'm a US resident, and with some photoshopped documentation, mail forwarding, phone forwarding, VPN, and other precautions, I have set myself back up on online poker sites.

Right now getting money ON Party and Stars is fairly easy, and getting money off Party is reasonably easy as well.  (They don't have near the precautions and limitations Stars does.)  But the only site with any volume is Stars, so that's the place I have been playing.  I've managed to get moneybookers verified and some other methods used/verified as well, but I am still having to put in a significant amount of volume on Party in order to cash out regularly with ukash and debit card linked to account (via paypal and others) and whatnot.

And sending moneybookers to Virwox to buy SLL and trade for btc loses waaaayy too much.  I feel like my only other option is to look for things on ebay that I can buy with mb and then re-sell.  Or wait for the Series and just do large player transfers every summer, which will set off alarms on my account.

I know I'm disclosing a lot and running some risks posting this, but are there any other US players out there on Stars??  How are you getting money OFF the site?  All I want to do is play mah pokers!

And no, Micon, seals with clubs 10btc freerolls are not enough to live on.

How the fuck is this a good thing!?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/sroh6/blockchaininfos_excellent_customer_service_they/
https://i.imgur.com/uLvYF.png

Please PM me if interested.

Edit:  or best offer somewhere around Mt Gox last price...


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I have a $200 Amazon.com gift card that was given to me as a Christmas gift, which I'd like to sell for 50 bitcoins.  Please PM me if you are interested.

Unless you have a better forum/otc reputation than I do, I must ask that you be willing to send the bitcoins first.

I have one previous trade on the forums here-- I can't find the original trade post (it might be deleted), but the person I traded with left good feedback in the "List of Honest Traders" thread here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=484.msg276527#msg276527

and my otc ratings can be found here:

http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=luv2drnkbr&sign=ANY&type=RECV

(I'm not using forum code to make the hyperlinks because I am signing this message and don't want to muddle it up.)

Please PM me if interested... Thanks!


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Some poker buddies and I recently thought we saw a few people at one of our tables attempting to signal to each other, which is a whole different story in itself, but it got me thinking about communication.

We have all this great communication technology which allows us to talk to each other in an encrypted way, but one of the security flaws is that other people still know with whom and at what time we are communicating.  Sometimes even knowing who one is talking with is enough to discern an idea about the conversation, even if the actual message is still obscured.

(For example, if a terror suspect randomly called a suspected terrorist weapons dealer, that's reasonable evidence against both of them, even if the conversation is encrypted.  Also, as another example, somebody theorized that Satoshi was either from Western Europe or the Eastern USA based on the times of his posts.  So even if the communication is obscured, there is still information leakage based on many other factors.)

So I'm wondering if there's been any developments in the idea of obscuring the mere fact that you are communicating.  I can't off the top of my head see specific uses for this or what application of it would look like, but it seems intuitively like it should be a useful idea.

Off the top of my head, I feel like implementation of it would require a ton of data continuously streaming so that any communication is mixed in with white noise, or maybe piggybacking some kind communication on top of normal protocols.  But then, how do you alert somebody who doesn't know to be receiving without broadcasting the fact that you wish to talk to them to everybody?

Is this a dumb idea?  Are there uses for it?  What would it look like in practice?

This was just rumbling around in my head after our poker session and it FELT important, so I wanted to make sure I posted it and asked around before I just dropped it and forgot about it.

I don't understand.  One of the main points of Bitcoin is decentralization, but contributing to a pool allows for a 51% attack, even when the network grows bigger.  Also, you pay a fee to be a part of the pool.

So if you help maintain network security AND make more money by solo mining, why in the heck are you in a pool?

Is it for variance reduction (i.e. smaller more frequent payments)?

If that's the case, why has the entire community not switched over to the p2pool?

I don't get it.  I'm not a miner though.

Please PM me if you can help out...

Edit: Closed

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I have $166 left on my Cake poker account that I'd like to sell for 36 bitcoins.  Unless you have a higher bitcoin-otc reputation than I do or you can otherwise prove you are trustworthy, I must ask that you send first.  Otherwise, we'll do $25 increments over the course of a week (Cake only allows one transfer per day.)  Check my sig for my WOT, and of course feel free to search the forums for me.  I think I've done a few trades somewhere on here!

Please post here or PM me if you are interested...

Thanks!

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I will need one of these forms on money in the upcoming week, but I won't know for a few days which one I'll need.  I am hoping to do trades in $50 or $100 increments, unless you are reputable and it's WMZ or Ukash.  Please post an offer in this thread or PM me if interested.  Otherwise, I will close this and make a new post when I know which I'll need and how much.

So I got a PM from a guy wanting to sell me bitcoins and I send him Paypal.  His e-mail is from the Philipines, and based on the time stamps, he created his account 20 min before he PM'd me, put up 6 small dummy posts, and then PM'd me offering to sell.  Obviously this is scammy, but my question is not "is this legit"... my question is "am I protected?"

Can I somehow get in trouble for sending Paypal money to somebody if they have a bad reputation?  Is there some other way I can get screwed?

He has offered to send first, and wait for a few confirmations before I send $$.  I may still not do it because I don't really like helping obvious criminals, but then again, I am at the point in my life where I may decide I don't care where the btc came from.  I don't know.

Obviously, if there's a chance I get caught up in something bad, I 100% don't want to do it.  So, what are the chances this somehow goes bad for me personally other than my conscience biting me for helping out a probable scammer?

I have a Windows Server 2008 RC2 VPS that I would like to be able to tunnel my internet traffic through, but I am not tech savvy and don't know how to set it up.  I had a friend working on it and he installed some of the Routing and Remote Access roles, but some websites I read said you need to install something else first.  I could try to do the step by step instructions myself and pray it works, but really, I'd have no clue what I'm doing.  If you can remote desktop to my VPS and just set it up for me, and tell me what to do client-side to get it working, I'd be very very happy!

If you are interested, and think you can do it in a night, please PM me your price!  I'd like to do this ASAP!

I'm still fairly new to cryptography, but I feel like there's a way to implement this.  Is it possible with cryptography for multiple people to have one portion of a private key, and then they all interact somehow to find out what the public address is, and once that's done with, they cannot individually derive it again (or get all of the private key) without that same cooperation repeating?

This way, for example, Bob could get an address to send money to, for oh let's say a p2p poker client whose blockchain contains which parties have the necessary parts of a private key with X btc on it... and then when Bob later wants to cash out, he can simply request all the private key chunks from peers and then he pieces it together on his own computer.

So is it possible to derive a public key without any of the people who own a part of the private key being able to get access to it?  That is, is it possible put the private key together from separate chunks, do the steps to get the public key, and then display the public key and also the people who own bits of that private key, but without any of those people individually being able to know the full private key?

I feel like that might be possible, but I'm not sure.  (The "who is richer" problem is what makes me think this might somehow be possible.)  If it is possible, it could pave the way for p2p bitcoin poker without a server, and without having the blockchain contain every damned hand history...  and without having to send btc over the bitcoin network after every single hand or even after every single action within a hand.

What I'm thinking is, after a hand of poker occurs and is signed by all the players, the blockchain then simply records new balances for each player without the need for storing additional information.  So the blockchain has player balances, bitcoin public addresses of addresses in the "poker" network, and then along with each address, a list of users necessary to access that private key.  This way, the blockchain doesn't become unwieldy.

(Credit where credit is due:  I was reading about Open Transactions when I thought about the blockchain simply updating balances, which then lead me to the thought about how to deposit and cash out, which lead me to the distributed private key question.)

Until about a half a year ago, I was a liberal democrat.  Then I started to think I was a libertarian, then an anarchist.  Now, I've realized that I can't define it because what I want for myself is different than what I want for others.

(Not previously, but nowadays) I go to great lengths to preserve my individual liberty and pretty much don't think about laws or society in general.  I simply do what I'm going to do and interact with people in a manner consistent with my own morals, and I consider law only in terms of the hassle of its consequence and the chance of being caught.

However, I am very glad that laws and society and government exist, because I believe most people, if they acted freely because law and government were abolished, would act much less ethically than I would, and I think they would generally destroy civilization.  My life time experience with people has lead me to believe they will always put short-term gain and immediate self interest above all else, including long-term gains and interests.  In short, most people are stupid.

So as much as I find governments of all sorts to be grossly inefficient and I dislike many laws, I am very very happy to live in a society that has such things because most people are sheep in addition to being stupid, and I think these inefficient laws protect them and me and do more good than harm by being in place.  And it doesn't bother me at all that I pick and choose which ones I obey.

Is it weird or hypocritical that I go about my life freely without thought of governance but think it's a really good thing that others feel constrained by laws and government?

Or am I just some kind of psycho?  I really just don't trust the judgment of others.