Long story short, my brother tried to order a batch 3 unit back in March, but the website dropped his order.  It happens right?  Anyway, he is not on these forums, so he has been trying to get a refund on his own and was not aware of all the problems Avalon has been having (including refund scams), or the refunds that have occurred.  Mid November he finally got a hold Yifu and was told his refund would be sent, but he still has not received the bitcoins and no one at Avalon is talking to him anymore.  Now, I know he can be abrasive, especially when he is angry (which he is ), but he is convinced he is being cheated.  So he pulled together all his documentation to send to a lawyer who handles international lawsuits.  I managed to convince him to let me see if anyone has a better idea than a lawsuit 

So, is anyone else still having trouble getting refunds from Avalon?

It's not that big a security risk as long as you scrub the unencrypted wallet off of the drive (there are utilities for both Windows and Linux that will do this.)

You will run into trouble, however with the fact that the default wallet is only 100 addresses.

So, what I do, is use the bitcoind program's command-line option to increase the key pool size to a ridiculous size (say 400,000).  It will take a considerable amount of time to generate a wallet this big, but it will also take a long time to go through that many addresses.  It should just fit on a CD.  Create a CD iso image with the file and enhance it with DVDisaster for extra protection against degradation.  (You can find DVDisaster via google.)  Store it somewhere safe.  Like in your fire safe.  Then encrypt your wallet and scrub your drive.  When you get close to using up all the addresses, make a new wallet.  (But it will take a while with that many addresses.)

Yes, this is a Linux version.  You'll want to stop using the OS that's on the drive with the corrupted wallet as soon as possible to reduce the odds of lost data being over-written and destroyed.  The easiest way to do that is with a Linux live CD, so don't hold your breath for a Windows version, I doubt it's really worth the time.  (Although the program would probably compile and run under cygwin or mingw just fine.)


You should be able to erase the block chain files or copy the wallet to a fresh install to see if it's really the wallet that's damaged.  I recommend using a different machine if possible just in case.

To all of this add the fact that the proposed "solution" to question 3 doesn't solve question 3 since there would be absolutely no reason for anybody to start a node that wasn't a "validator" node.  Aside from the large bandwidth requirement that is...


The elegant solution for the question of how much the fees will be to devise a statistical tool for calculating how long it will take a transaction at a given fee level to be incorporated into a block given the fact that miners prioritise transactions based on fee level.  Once people have a way to see that, for instance, a fee of 1 will likely get a transaction into one of the next two blocks, and a fee of .01 will get it in within the next 10 blocks, and a fee of .0000001 will get it in sometime within the next year and a half, they will choose how much to pay depending on how quickly they need it done.  The system should find an equilibrium point from there.   

Thin clients, and the algorithm also allows entries involving addresses which have an available balance of zero to be "pruned" out of the block chain.  Assuming the statistics I saw last year on how many empty addresses there are still hold true, finishing implementing that would quarter the size of the current chain.

3.  The main issue I see here is that the official client doesn't have signatures (at least, not easily findable ones) available to verify that it hasn't been tampered with.  There could, therefore, theoretically be someone who hacks the mirrors or a malicious network admin who alters it in transit if it's downloaded over non-SSL.  But, since the protocol is open, any such problem is on a per-client basis, and there are enough people who *do* inspect the source code in at least a cursory fashion that any egregious theft attempt will likely be noticed and the community warned.  At which point the developers responsible would have a difficult time finding work ever again.  Assuming that it's not a matter of a government rubber-hosing them, in which case they're probably already having trouble finding work due to incarceration...

bitcoinmap.com shows a number of people in Britain who may be interested in selling locally for cash as well.

You can try bitcoinmap.com to find someone near you who would be willing to trade for cash.  Meet someplace public with security and wi-fi.  It's pretty hard for someone to rip you off under those circumstances.  At least, it's hard to do without ending up in jail for assault...

Most people here would probably be more interested in selling them for bitcoins than paypal.

So far as I know, nothing in the bitcoin software licensing prohibits you from selling copies or services.  You are merely prohibited from prohibiting those to whom you sell said copies from distributing copies to others, and required to provide source code.

Or, since the entire protocol is public, you could write your own software to interface with the bitcoin blockchain from scratch and license it however you want.  But, before you start, if it's a closed-source application the majority of the community will refuse to use it on principle.

The entry to the corporate world would be to start accepting bitcoins as a payment method and possibly using them for payments to others.  The barrier to that is the price instability.  Instability should decrease as user base increases, so expect adoption to snowball over time rather than increase instantly overnight.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25091.0


Currently there is no Windows version, but then you really don't want to be booting off the drive in question anyway, and my personal experience with windows CDs is that they tend to be flaky.  A linux live CD is easy enough to get if you have another computer and internet access.  Personally I used Mint Debian from linuxmint.com.


The post does a pretty good job of walking you through the steps, but I can clarify any of them that leave you with questions.  The program the thread is about will snatch anything and everything that looks like a bitcoin key off of the drive in question, so as long as they're still there and your wallet wasn't encrypted you should be able to get them all back.

The last time I looked, there was a plugin for zencart to handle bitcoin payments.  Zencart is a pretty flexible online shopping system that probably does everything you want.  Plus it's open source, so you don't have to worry so  much about the company going out of business and leaving you high and dry.

If you're already using something else it's probably not worth switching, but if you're just setting it up it's probably worth looking at.

Yes.  Bitcoind operates the same way.  It's the same program, but with only a CLI interface instead of both the CLI and the GUI.  Your best bet for doing what you're trying to do is probably to create a new wallet and transfer the required amount to a single address in it.  Then, when you send it on to the recipient, that single address will be the only possible source and all of the coins will come from it.


The simpler solution for the problem would be for the recipient to generate a new address and pass it to you and only you through a secure channel.  Then any coins showing up at that address almost certainly came from you, with a probability of exception so low as to not be worth calculating.

If neither of those solutions will work, then I'll need more details about just what you're trying to do.

Well, the most usual reason is that the client keeps a pool of addresses for sending "change" to when you send a transaction.  You can receive coins at any of those addresses, but they don't get put into your address book because most people don't care about the nitty-gritty details of how everything is getting shifted around when they send coins somewhere.  Depending on your client, you may be able to add them to your address book if you wish, but it's generally not worth worrying about.

If you launch the client with the -rescan parameter it should go through the block chain and figure out what the balances are for the keys you have.  If it still comes up with nothing then the program listed at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25091.0 will go through your whole disk and find anything that looks like a private key.  It seems to do a pretty good job if your wallet wasn't encrypted.

In the old days the BIOS chip was socketed, so you could, worst case, pull the chip out and reprogram it with a different device...

In the really old days, that was the only way to change the BIOS...

You're probably best off contacting the motherboard manufacturer's technical support since they're the ones most likely to have a list of all of its quirks and foibles and how best to work around them.  If you get stuck tell me the manufacturer and model number and I'm usually pretty good at being able to run down technical information.

It sounds like your backup is going to be fine and have all your coins in it.  If it doesn't, and you haven't monkeyed with the corrupted disk too much, it is sometimes possible to recover files and data from a messed up disk.  Let us know if you need help with that.

A-lot of Time & Trouble usually lives up to its name.  Unfortunately their scanning for botnets is most likely completely automated, and I doubt that they are competent enough to have the ability to enter exceptions.  Don't get too mad at them though, they are, at least, _trying_ to protect you from having your accounts hacked.  Even if they are failing miserably.

Be careful about having generation payouts go directly to online services.  Freshly generated coins don't always show up on some sites.

If you're in the United States, bitcoin2cash.com is about the most hassle-free service for cashing out bitcoins.  Not necessarily the cheapest, but the least amount of paperwork to fill out.

How to clear the transaction history is application specific, and I am not familiar with the Android application.  You might be able to find it in the documentation.  So far as I know the transaction will hang out in the network until it is either confirmed, or rendered invalid by you spending its source out from under it.  Most of the major mining pools won't accept transactions that don't have at least some minimum fee, so the transaction will likely hang out there until some solo miner picks it up.  How long that will take is rather unpredictable, anywhere from hours to months, but it should get incorporated into a block eventually.