At first glance, this could sound like a great way to store your money: pick an easy-to-remember, passphrase-like private key and you're done. Better yet, come up with an algorithm for hashing any ASCII string as a [1234567890abcdef]{64} string and you can literally store your money in your mind.
The problem with this approach is that your private key wouldn't be so random anymore, which reduces dangerously the number of possibilities, bringing it down to a brute-forceable set.
Taking it the other way round: if people start to generate addresses based on easy-to-remember private keys, then a group of people can start to pre-calculate the most obvious ones (the amount will depend on my computing power and how much time I spend doing it), check their balance regularly and take their coins.
This is only an impression, though – I didn't do any maths and might be totally wrong (which would be nice!). It would be interesting to check this assertion with actual numbers.
In this guide there are no passphrases, just 64 hex characters randomly chosen by the user To use passphrases you can use this, but the passphrase isn't enough to retrieve the coins. The program also prints a 10-digits number which is like an additional key, but much more practical because you can store it anywhere (mobile, postit) without being noticed as a 10-digits number is rather common You can also use the sha256 of one of your file to get a priv key Jackjack,
WOuld you be willing to update pywallet to support the import of the 22-character private keys I will be using on my physical bitcoins? I would like to encourage this (or a similar format) for other applications... 22 characters fits well on a small QR code without being ridiculously dense, yet still provides a decent amount of entropy (around 128 bits).
My codes are 22 characters, and the private key is simply the sha256 of the 22 characters as a string, with the following constraints:
1. the first character is always 'S'
2. all the characters come from the base58 alphabet
3. as a guard against typos, all my codes conform to the following rule: the sha256 of (string + "?") will be a hash that begins with eight zero bits (so, first byte is 00 hex). That is, the string with a question mark appended, so 23 characters.
4. they are printed in the coins in four groups - five,six,six,five characters so they fit on a circle. There are no separators or spaces between the groups for the purpose of the hash calculation, but the user might enter them anyway. Respond gracefully.
Why don't you use the privatekey format used by sipa's fork/vanitygen/pywallet/bitbills/etc which is a de facto standard? |
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After writing this I'm guessing we'll never run out of addresses any time soon (as in within the next 1000 years)
base 36 ^ 34 characters per address = 8.2089011515213367907186323883068e+52 possible address combinations right?
But is it possible to generate a new address and receive an addres that is already occupied by someone?
Say, if I generate an address, and someone else does the same and gets the same address as me by chance, then isn't there a major issue with the system there? Since if I deposit some bitcoins they'll show in both mine and his wallet?
Any thoughts on this?
Base36? Addresses are base 58 encoded: 9e59 addresses Actually now that I think about it isn't it base 62? Nope, no 1/I/O/0 |
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What do you want to do exactly?
Erase the 0/unconfirmed transaction from your wallet?
Sending the transaction without fee?
Sending the transaction even if it requires a fee?
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After writing this I'm guessing we'll never run out of addresses any time soon (as in within the next 1000 years)
base 36 ^ 34 characters per address = 8.2089011515213367907186323883068e+52 possible address combinations right?
But is it possible to generate a new address and receive an addres that is already occupied by someone?
Say, if I generate an address, and someone else does the same and gets the same address as me by chance, then isn't there a major issue with the system there? Since if I deposit some bitcoins they'll show in both mine and his wallet?
Any thoughts on this?
Base36? Addresses are base 58 encoded 9e59 addresses |
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Yes
The number of confirmations is the number of blocks your transaction is written in
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Maybe try "bitcoin -rescan"
Or if you use an old version of bitcoin, it may not tells you where fees are needed, so try sending with a 0.0005 fee
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Is pywallet windows 7 friendly or is this a linux thing?
I am fairly a geek and I still find bitcoin difficult sometimes... I can only imagine the ordinary person. This is why bitcoins are going for $25 on ebay. No one wants to sign up with weird exchanges and transfer money to 3rd world countries through middle men and install a thing that they don't understand that is not safe or encrypted and have to transfer between so many places.
This is what holds bitcoins back. It needs to be easy to the common person.
W7 friendly Two ways to use it: If you aren't afraid by the CLI you only need to install python 2.7 Otherwise you will need to install two more packages (twisted and zope.interface, just read the readme) |
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So when a pool solves a block and earns say 50.24 BTC... they still only distribute 50 BTC to the miners?
Is that the standard way of operating a pool?
Any pools out there that also share the fees?
Yes, keeping the fees is the common behaviour: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools |
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Is that kind of feature ever going to be in the mainstream software?
One of the devs has this feature in his fork for several months now, so I don't think so Maybe they think that importing private keys should not be accessible to average users (which is quite understandable) Thanks for the quick reply, it takes me 2 days to mine .25BTC, how hard can it be to import the bitcoins? (yes I am also searching the website and google). I built my first linux box in YEARS because of bitcoin, bitcoin is a great motivator for small IT projects.
What do you want to do? Import the bitcoins you mined in your wallet? |
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Could someone explain the point of this? Pardon me I'm relatively new to bitcoin. I did read some of the bitbill thread, but I don't understand why the OP needed assistance.
Thanks
When you buy a bitbill, you actually buy an address containing 20BTC and its private key (needed to use the money) But in order to use the private key (thus the money) you have to import it in your wallet, which needs either a python script or a bitcoin fork |
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404, but that looks awesome
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Hey Look At Me, I Love Typing Like That Too, It'S Kinda Funny Lol
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I read the thread you read, all it states is that 1.5 million BTC were mined in 2009. Are you saying that Satoshi is the only 2009 miner? Seriously? Come on...
Moreover, as NO FUCKING BLOCK was premined it is absolutely impossible to know how many blocks Satoshi did mine, and we just don't care because the point is that if YOU started to mine on 1/3/2009, you would have at least as many bitcoins as Satoshi
Mad not to be an early adopter? Don't say it's Satoshi's fault
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37333.msg458441#msg458441What does your post have to do with the fact that if Satoshi owns any amount as significant as the Ixcoin owner does (which is very probable), he could equally crash the market on his whim? How is the situation any different? Satoshi might have such an amount if he was the only 2009 miner Thomas does have it There's always a risk of an individual owning a huge amount of a cryptocurrency, so what? Let's get back to the good old dollar? We know exactly which blocks have been pre-mined by the Ixcoin creator and can track those coins. We can see if they are sent somewhere else than an address for a bounty. It’s transparent, and if he fucks up once, Ixcoin will be done.
I don't think tracking the outputs of 6000+ blocks is easy |
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Until then many of us will likely stay away from ixcoins given that you could potentially crash the exchange(s) with your large amount of ixcoins in one sitting. Do said people also stay away from Bitcoin, given that Satoshi probably owns 1.5 million BTC? I read the thread you read, all it states is that 1.5 million BTC were mined in 2009. Are you saying that Satoshi is the only 2009 miner? Seriously? Come on... Moreover, as NO FUCKING BLOCK was premined it is absolutely impossible to know how many blocks Satoshi did mine, and we just don't care because the point is that if YOU started to mine on 1/3/2009, you would have at least as many bitcoins as Satoshi Mad not to be an early adopter? Don't say it's Satoshi's fault |
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Also curious, how did you send the key securely to jackjack?
Securely sent via PM  Not a problem though because I import private keys faster than my shadow |
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about the double spending and counterfeiting. this isnt quite fool proof but does help a ton The first 8 characters of the public Bitcoin address are visible on the outside, pre-printed on the hologram by the hologram manufacturer. most addies can be verified by block explorer with just 8 chars. You could at least see if right at that moment there was exactly 1 coin in there. Now If I was a store.... I would break it open, import the key to a temporary wallet, and send that money immediately to a permanent wallet. This is so if he did actually counterfeit the entire coin, and still controls the private keys on his machine at home, the merchant can still get paid right away. there might still be a small window.. due to the time it takes to get confirmations, but hardly a window very large for him to run home and quickly do a double spend. I'm not sure how that all works so cant say for sure but it adds a layer of difficulty if merchants destroy them immediately. which would be good for casascius's bottom line.. " I would break it open, import the key to a temporary wallet, and send that money immediately to a permanent wallet." Sorry to still be so dense about this..... but how do you go about "importing the key to a temporary wallet" ? Am I missing something... I have the windows 7 client... is this only a linux thing? I see no option to import keys or scan key or manually enter a key... I am still lost as to how I get the 1 btc from the bitbill or bitcoin coin to my actual wallet that I use.... You can import keys with pywallet |
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from what I understand, gift payments cannot be reversed
I saw in another thread that gift payments can be reversed |
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I depends of what you want to do
If you only have the hash160 of your pubkey, I answered correctly
If you just want to convert an hex number to a base58 number, here's the process:
hex = "1d3f3a"
dec = 1*16^5 + 13*16^4 + 3*16^3 + 15*16^2 + 3*16^1 + 10*16^0
= 1916730
The rest is just some divisions (start with the power "number of digit in the hex representation"):
dec / 58^6 = 0. ...
dec / 58^5 = 0. ...
dec / 58^4 = 0. ...
dec / 58^3 = 9.8237......
so the first character is 9, and you substract 9*58^3 to dec -> dec = 160722
dec / 58^2 = 47.777.....
so the next character is 47, and you substract 47*58^2 to dec -> dec = 2664
dec / 58^1 = 45.931.....
so the next character is 45, and you substract 45*58^1 to dec -> dec = 54
the final character is 54
Your base58 number is [9-47-45-54], ie 9mov
Your calculator may not really appreciate the value of a 64-digit hexadecimal number though
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Add "00" before, and add the first 4 bytes of sha256(sha256("00" + hash160)) after your hash160 (the + is the concatenate operation, not sum) So you have [ "0065f2a3921afacd998e6c98a5aaa94325ed07ee14" + first4bytesof(sha256(sha256("0065f2a3921afacd998e6c98a5aaa94325ed07ee14"))) ] The address is just the base58 representation of the hexadecimal number above Base58 characters: '123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz' -pen,
-paper,
-calculator.
sha256(sha256("0465f2a3921afacd998e6c98a5aaa94325ed07ee14")) Lol If you really want to do it with a calculator only, there's a sha256 pseudocode here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2 |
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