Grocery stores solved this problem a long time ago, its called a check cashing card.
If you want to pay by check (at least in the days before automated check approval), you apply for a card, provide ID, address, possibly credit check, etc. Once you have a card, you can pay with a check. If your check is no good, they know how to send to collections.
Likely to be the same thing for bitcoin, at least for purchases above some amount.
Both bitcoin and fiat are irreversible. They have nothing in common with checks. In fact, cash can be counterfeited while bitcoin cannot. You should require an ID card for cash as well. Bitcoin is the only money that doesn't have counterparty risk. Both check and bitcoin are reversible and subject to fraud risk for some period of time. For bitcoin that time is minutes for checks it may be days or weeks (or possibly even longer). But for the purposes of grocery store checkout the effect is the same. |
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New update
That's great. What about the refunds that were promised? Requested on 2/7. Not received. |
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DO NOT be fooled by the "happy endings" posted in this thread, it`s just socks posting BS to get wheel in a few more suckers.  I'm not a sock. I did get my coins back (after two months of effort). Despite that I don't recommend using them until they get things working better. |
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The luck on BtC has been terrible the last 3 days, I have found zero blocks.  Very bad over the past five days. Nothing for 3 days and the one before that was 2 days (should be one per day on average). http://p2pool.info/ |
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If Mt.Gox survives then the Mt.Gox rates are valid because real transactions happen.
Eventually MtGox transactions may be valid but they haven't been valid for months because it has been effectively impossible to withdraw fiat from the exchange. So it is a trade not between USD and BTC but between "some odd unredeemable MtGox credit that might someday be worth USD" (some call this GoxUSD) and BTC. My suggestion would be to just remove the exchange rate. If people want a dollar value they can compute it themselves using whatever exchange rate they want. |
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No refund received by me. Requested feb 7.
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Certainly, but "connected right now" doesn't mean they are "the only nodes running right now". It is possible that blockchain.info is only connected to 0.01% of the active nodes at any given time.
By connected right now I meant connected to the network, not connected to blockchain.info. Since b.i only seems to connect to a few hundred nodes that's a useless estimate. Yes. I'd be very interested in any reasonably reliable source for a count of the number of active public nodes on the bitcoin network.
Can you code? I have an idea for estimating it from peers.dat but it requires some coding and I don't have time to do it. |
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Interesting. So my estimate of tens of thousands, seems accurate if we assume that "active" means "last connected within the most recent 24 hours". My thoughts that it's "more than 1%" seems to be off just a bit though.
I would agree according to that definition, although if you send a transaction and want it propagated through the network "within the last 24 hours" doesn't help. Connected right now is what you need. It does seem that blockchain.info isn't connecting to that many nodes any more so they aren't useful for counting currently connected nodes. I don't know of a better source, although it might be possible to get a better estimate by processing peers.dat from a well-connected node. |
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Acorrding to that link: Total Unique Ip Addresses: 3,207,595 Can't tell what percentage of those can be considered "active". I still suspect that the number is more than 1%. If you include "private" nodes, then I suspect that the number is more like 10% of that. Its cumulative and historic. If there are 50 nodes on a page. If you go down to page 1000 (50k nodes into it, so ~1.5%) those nodes haven't been seen in 3 days. |
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I think their list is pretty accurate.
I can't find their list. Link? The current list seems to be here: http://blockchain.info/connected-nodesOddly, they are only connected to 144 nodes. The last time I looked into this (when I realized my IP was being tracked) they had thousands of connections. Maybe they responded to the criticism they were hogging connections. Here's their log of nodes ever seen. I guess looking at some recent subset might be meaningful, but I don't know. http://blockchain.info/ip-log |
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Is there a reliable list of "public" full nodes?
Reliable in what sense? Nodes come and go, so it is probably impossible for the list to be completely accurate at any instance in time. Blockchain.info tries to connect directly to as many nodes as they can, and seems to often succeed. The fact that they often seemed to report the correct IP address on my transactions even across different networks, coffee shop wifis, etc. was what encouraged me to stop using bitcoind without tor. I think their list is pretty accurate. I also don't think that many end users run full nodes any more. Most people I meet seem to be using Electrum or Multibit (or a web wallet). |
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Hypothetically you could pay a peer in advance for the next 1000 transactions. The peer keeps a counter and stops relaying once the 1000 is up. Of course, in a p2p network you have to prevent cheating, etc. We agree this is unsolved.
Hypothetically, in the vacuum of space you could open your mouth and suck in a nice fresh breath of oxygen and nitrogen. Of course, you'd have to find a way around the laws of physics as we currently understand them. We agree this is unsolved. I provided a link to a project at least working on p2p payment for bandwidth. Unless you can provide a link to a project working on humans breathing oxygen from space these are pretty different. |
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There are not 10 million full nodes
Perhaps not yet. I'm not sure how we would know. "Full nodes" are available by public IP, otherwise they are private nodes. Public IPs can be collected from the network and counted. I think somebody (blockchain.info maybe?) publishes an approximate count. Last year the popularity of lightweight clients reduced the number of full nodes, although it may be on the way back up now. It's still pretty low. |
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It could be done in bulk, say one fee for every 1000 or 10000 transactions (or a probabilistic equivalent).
How would all the peers know if I previously paid the transaction relay fee for a transaction that I'm sending now? Hypothetically you could pay a peer in advance for the next 1000 transactions. The peer keeps a counter and stops relaying once the 1000 is up. Of course, in a p2p network you have to prevent cheating, etc. We agree this is unsolved. |
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If you want to guarantee that the miners and your intended recipient all receive the transaction, you'll need to pay a fee to EVERY single node on the network. If there are 10 million users all running full nodes, that would mean you'd have to pay a minimum fee of at least 0.00000001 BTC X 10 million = 0.1 BTC just for "relay fees". Then you'd have to pay a mining fee in addition to that.
It could be done in bulk, say one fee for every 1000 or 10000 transactions (or a probabilistic equivalent). So because I run a node I'd get a satoshi per 1k or 10k transactions. Wow, the new wealthy elite! Sign me up!  Danny's example was entirely hypothetical. There are not 10 million full nodes (I think there are a few thousand). In some hypothetical future where a satoshi is worth a penny and there are thousands or even millions of transactions per second... |
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I don't get those people who complain that ASICs won't ROI, and then they go ahead and build giant GPU farms that won't profit unless they can count on reselling their used hardware on eBay for >75% cost after 1 year.
You have absolutely no idea how GPU farming is profitable dont you? Not only it pays off in few months it continues to make good coin for more then a year and even after that you have good GPU and computer cards to use or to sell. With ASIC you have piece of hardware you can throw away. That has certainly been the case in the past. I mined on the same GPUs for almost 3 years, and they're still worth something. Past performance is no guarantee though. It is true they will generally have better resale value than ASICs. |
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would nodes getting a fee encourage a more robust network?
Possibly, but it would become EXTREMELY expensive. The smallest possible "fee" that can be paid with bitcoin is 0.00000001 BTC. If you want to guarantee that the miners and your intended recipient all receive the transaction, you'll need to pay a fee to EVERY single node on the network. If there are 10 million users all running full nodes, that would mean you'd have to pay a minimum fee of at least 0.00000001 BTC X 10 million = 0.1 BTC just for "relay fees". Then you'd have to pay a mining fee in addition to that. It could be done in bulk, say one fee for every 1000 or 10000 transactions (or a probabilistic equivalent). But the real answer is that no one has quite figured out how to build a p2p network that pays for bandwidth. It is a work in progress. See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=415100.0 |
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Grocery stores solved this problem a long time ago, its called a check cashing card.
If you want to pay by check (at least in the days before automated check approval), you apply for a card, provide ID, address, possibly credit check, etc. Once you have a card, you can pay with a check. If your check is no good, they know how to send to collections.
Likely to be the same thing for bitcoin, at least for purchases above some amount.
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 If only it was like this more often. It's pulled me from the mid94s for shares rewarded up to a little bit over 96%. I went from 90% to 94% Still low, but comes close to earnings in a PPLNS pool. Bad luck will produce bad returns on any pool, regardless of payout method (except PPS). For a long time I was above 99% on eligius, although now I'm down below 97% |
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1 share
sell
161VyAi9kr4ekN7yhPbQxjJu6LJV1WVcTN
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