Honestly, I have better things to do with my time.

I'm making such kits for a few of my old college roommates who trust me.  While I'm making them, I can crank out a few more.  But clearly, if you have $500K in Bitcoins, for heaven's sake don't be so lazy as to trust some anonymous person on the internet!  Frankly I don't want that sort of responsibility.  I don't want you coming after me if the method fails!

But if you're trying to stash a few hundred bucks for a rainy day, trusting some stranger on the internet isn't that far fetched.  Heck, unless you read and understood every line of code in Bitcoin client AND Linux AND your PC's firmware AND the C++ compiler AND the libraries, you are trusting someone!

So, unless you are desperate, please don't contact me.  I'm just trying to help people out, but I'd much rather not have the responsibility!

(is that better?)

Bruce,

Weren't you offered money to push TradeHill too?  Seems they are a sponsor of your podcast, and you actually pushed them on a thread with your referral code.  So much that people in the original thread thought that YOU were the creator of TradeHill (and I have heard and read that confusion from MULTIPLE people on here).

(see https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=13650.0;all especially messages 15, 19, 22, 33, and your ultra-hype intro message!)

I'm not saying you did anything wrong.  People can draw their own conclusions.  I just think transparency is a good thing. 

Bitcoin7 offered you money.  TradeHill offered you something, no?  Sponsorship?  A cut of everyone's trades who uses your referral code?  Money?

Not sure who you directed that to, but I would.

I think the real story is that it's possible for someone to amass a fortune in Bitcoins.  Some might even say that it's possible for "a fool" to amass a fortune in Bitcoins.  (I prefer to think of him as an unfortunate soul, because it could have easily happened to many different people.)


Look at how the downloads of Bitcoin have climbed since the story broke:

http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/?group_id=244765&ugn=bitcoin&type=&mode=60day
(scroll down for the stats)

The highest amount of daily downloads in June was June 8, 13.6K, until yesterday 14,8K.  Today well on it's way to a new high.

Edit of my edit:  I think this is an entertaining thread.  It starts with a discussion of how a Bitcoin Lottery could be run. After several messages, in message #4, a user who runs a lottery claims that it is cheat-proof, and bets his entire BTC fortune that I can't think of a way that he can pay himself without everybody noticing.

I proceed to give a method of how he can do that.  Some people agree and others disagree. 
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not accusing him of any wrong-doing; I'm wondering what consensus opinion is.

But it does bring up an interesting dilemma.

If someone runs a betting site, and he loses a very public bet in a forum and fails to pay up, can you trust his betting site?


A provably honest lottery site could be one that bet on the hash of an upcoming Block.  The Hex value of the Block Hash (or the last few digits) could be bet upon.  If you can name the last hex digit of block 131300 (or some future block, 2 blocks into the future), you get a 15 to 1 payback on your bet.  Name the last 2 hex digits, and get a 250 to 1 payback.  Bet correctly that a certain 3-digit sequence will appear somewhere in the Block Hash, leading zeros excluded, and you get $250 (or whatever makes it a near fair bet).

People can see payments into the lottery in the BlockExplorer, and can see payments out (which should be predictable, odds-wise).

You could even make it provably honest as a para-mutual, growing bet (like Power Ball or MegaMillions).  You buy a "lottery ticket", and your lowest numerical payment address recorded in the transaction is your entry.  If your payment address, written in hex, has its last N hex digits matching the Block hash, you win.  Otherwise the jackpot grows.  Users can watch BlockExplorer to verify that previous payouts were made.  (Of course, you can never prove that the Lottery Company won't run off on this next bet....)


The only real issues that I see with this are if there's a chain split.  So maybe payouts are delayed by a day to help fight that case.



Somebody get to work on this!

Don't be offended.  You asked for feedback, and I gave it.

I skimmed to the part where you said you made over six figures out of nothing (or however you worded that), and looked at the general layout of the page, and that was my reaction.

You can disagree, but I am not wrong (after all, it's MY impression we're talking about).

Reminds me of all of those scam and Get Rich Quick sites.

Random samples found from Googling "Get Rich Quick"
http://21butrich.com/
http://www.johnmeeker.info/

And showing a dotted-line cut out coupon on a screen to someone who will fall for Get Rich Quick Schemes is a bad idea.  They'll poke their scissors through their screen.

I doubt many of the people on this board are into Bitcoins as a "get rich quick" scheme.  Most see the potential to participate in something that is game-changing.  Sure, we all want to profit from it, but not in a scammy way.  And it's offensive to see Bitcoin portrayed as a scammy get-rich-quick scheme.

Ew.  I feel dirty after visiting that site. 

A few suggestions:

-  Consider whether you need date+time, or just date.  Think about your check register in your checkbook.  Do you write the time?  Maybe the month and day is sufficient (why waste space on the year or the time).  Maybe this is an option.

-  Why not keep a running balance?  Think about check registers or home banking sites, and how those look.  They have a column for the transaction amount, and then a column for the running total.

-  Do you really care about confirmations?  I'd get rid of that column.  Indicate whether it's confirmed, based on color or font boldness or gray-ness.

-  Allow the user to mouse over, or click on, a transaction to get the details.  Here's where you can put all the information that I suggest hiding, including the whole date and time, the Bitcoin Address, the confirmation count, maybe a memo field, etc.

---

Also, I realize I am probably in a minority here, but I think (optionally) allowing displays in USD is a GREAT idea.  It gets really complicated, but it would help my wife figure out Bitcoin!  International travelers like many of the readers here have a knack for different currencies, but here in the Midwest USA, if you aren't talking dollars, you may as well be talking kilometers.  I'd get the glazed over look when I say "I transferred 2 Bitcoins".. as if people have to convert it in their heads every time.

I would REALLY like a client that operates in dollars.  If I want to send the $20 equivalent in Bitcoins to someone, I want to type in $20.  And I want that transaction logged in my register as a $20 transaction (forever), so that when I look back on it in a year, I don't think "why did I transfer $423 to that guy?"  No, it was "$20". 

And I want to know my approximate Bitcoin balance in US Dollars.  Yes, I recognize that it's an estimate.  And I recognize that it fluctuates.  Maybe to "make it all add up", you add a line item at the top of the register that's the "currency conversion adjustment" which goes up and down as needed, so that the balance is accurate, and the totals add up.

Just a thought.  Go ahead everyone, tell me how bad of an idea that is.  I'm just trying to figure out how to make it friendly enough for my wife to use.

Why even have your "savings account wallet" online at all, EVER?  Create an offline wallet.dat file, stick it on multiple offline media in multiple locations (encrypted if you prefer).  So it's on 4 CDs and 2 USB devices spread out over 2 or 3 locations.

Anytime you want to add to your savings, send Bitcoins to that address, and verify the transaction in BlockExplorer.

You are correct.

I compared the bitcoin executable to the same version number that was posted on sourceforge. 
But then again, your question needs a blind trust in me (or some other auditor), unless you are willing to audit yourself.  In addition, this whole system is based on open source software that should be audited by a trusted auditor.  I didn't audit the source of Bitcoin, and don't personally know and trust anybody who did.  Did you?

The risk is that LinuxCoin ISO is spitting out "predictable" wallet ID's.  You can create your own wallet file manually if you want.

LinuxCoin was created by some people in the Bitcoin community with reputations.  I don't personally know drgr33n, gnukix, Davidonpda, or Xenland.  So don't trust my recommendation. Use your own judgment.  I'm not making paid endorsements, I'm just suggesting what looks like a reasonable path.

Please please please read the threads about CoinPal, and how he had so much fraud, and how he got shut down.

If you want to automate buying bitcoins with paypal, you should probably focus on automating the thing that people are doing successfully - buying bitcoins on eBay.  People are doing that now, presumably with some success.  Focus on helping people sell via eBay (with a quick setup of an auction, along with some "physical good" that can be shipped so there's no dispute).

You will get slaughtered by fraud if you try to sell via Paypal.  Don't do it.

Good advice, except that I am under the impression that Linux Live CD's (like LinuxCoin) can run entirely in RAM, and so no need to torch your hard drive.  The wallet.dat file never hit your hard drive.

In addition, you left off the implied step of not connecting to the internet.


You know, this sounds really hard, but it's simple.  Once you have the LinuxCoin ISO, it's a piece of cake.  Just disconnect from the internet, turn off your unsecured access points, and fire up LinuxCoin.  I thought it'd be hard, but I did it yesterday and it was REALLY simple.

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

A Bitcoin wallet contains[1]:

    your keypairs for each addresses
    transactions done from/to your addresses
    user preferences
    default key
    reserve keys
    accounts
    a version number
    Key pool
    Since 0.3.21: information about the current best chain, to be able to rescan automatically when restoring from a backup.


So a Wallet file contains all your transaction history (which is also stored in the Block Chain).  Of course, the Block Chain's version is the "official" version of the transaction history (so people can't modify their wallet to suddenly have more money).

It's possible to run bitcoin with the -rescan option to recreate your transaction history (a great way to recover lost coins), but this will only work based on what keypairs you have in your wallet.  So if you execute 200 transactions and then restore an old wallet, and then -rescan, you could be missing a lot of Bitcoins.

Send them to an online wallet or Mt Gox or something.

and then follow the instructions to create a secure wallet ASAP
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16457.msg226657#msg226657

We don't need another "allinvain" tragedy.

Looked good. 

Step 6 was blank.

1. Download LinuxCoin ISO.
2. Put LinuxCoin ISO on a CD or USB device
3. Turn off PC  (hard for you guys, I know!!!)
4. UNPLUG PC from Network, and turn off any wireless open access points
5. Boot from the LinuxCoin CD or USB device
6. Run Bitcoin Client - a random wallet is created
7. Record the Bitcoin Address (public key) that is displayed in the client.  You can write it down, or store it on a CD or USB drive that is "ok to contaminate".
8. Exit the Bitcoin Client
9. Store the wallet.dat file on multiple CD's and a USB device.  heck, print it if you want.  Virgin wallet files are small enough.  These are "NOT ok to contaminate".  Never let these touch a PC connected to the internet.
10. Power off your PC.  The wallet file Never touched your hard drive (since LinuxCoin is all RAM based).  
11. Remove all your media that is "NOT ok to contaminate"
12. Power up your PC as you normally would.


At this point you have a "savings account wallet".  Any time you want to put away money for a rainy day, send BTC to the address that you recorded in Step 7.  You can verify your account balance or see all transfers via BlockExplorer.

Take your CDs and USB devices and paper, and store them in several safe places far apart from each other.  Include instructions for your next-of-kin.

If you are super paranoid, feel free to encrypt your wallet (between steps 8 and 9) , but as others have said, this is risky in that you may forget your pass phrase.  My recommendation is that if you encrypt it, you store with it some clues to your pass phrase that only you would know.  For instance "My pass phrase is the one I used in 2011.  It has 8 words.  It has to do with my favorite song and that wench girl who dumped me in 5th grade" (or whatever)


Option 2:  If you trust me, contact me, and I'll create for you 2 virgin wallets, each with 2 CDs, a USB device, and a paper printout, using the above technique.  One is for you to practice with (maybe with .5 BTC, to make sure you can recover later), the other is your permanent Savings Vault.  I'll delete any copies I have, and so if you lose it, you're on your own (i.e. you're screwed).  The benefit is, you don't have to worry about the security of my copies.  You can randomly select one of the two as practice, to make sure that withdrawal from your "savings account" will be straight forward.

I'll do this service for anyone, for 2.5 BTC (while 1 BTC is in the $20 range), including shipping.  If you receive the package un-tampered, you should be safe.  Contact me if you are interested.

There are other posts on here that describe a better method for setting up a vault wallet.

See http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=17292.0;all

The BEST method (in my opinion) is to create your "vault wallet" when never connected to the internet, and never have it hit a hard disk.  In summary, if you download LinuxCoin, and put it on a CD or USB key, and boot from that, you will have a memory-resident version of Linux with the Bitcoin software.

Then start the Bitcoin client which creates a wallet file.  Terminate the program.  Put the wallet file on the USB drive.  Put it on a few CDs.  And write down the public key (the Bitcoin Address), or put the public key on a SEPARATE usb drive that you WILL allow to touch an internet-connected device.  Shutdown LinuxCoin, and your wallet file is gone, except for the CDs and USB drives.  NEVER let them touch an internet-connected PC (until you're ready to cash in your savings).

At this point, you have a wallet that has NEVER been touched by the internet.  Never been on a hard drive.  It's pure.  Toss that USB and CDs in a real bank vault (or two, separated by 100 miles), and you're golden.  Any time you want to move money to your savings account, simply send it to that public key Bitcoin Address.  Easy-peasy.


Now.. will Grandpa ever do that?
No, but Grandpa WILL buy a Savings Account kit from a trusted party.  The kit has 1 USB drive, a couple of CDs, and a public key.

Boy, this is tough.  Do I comment on the concept of someone named TheVirus writing code....
or, TheVirus saying *cough* *cough* ....

Someone (maybe me) will write a utility (or two) to do just that.
I was going to start with bitcointools: https://github.com/gavinandresen/bitcointools

With those tools, you can manipulate the wallet pretty freely.