Every payment method has costs.  With bitcoin, you as the customer are paying the costs directly.  With cash and credit cards, the merchant is increasing the price you pay for your purchase so that the costs of handling that cash or card payment is included in that price.

How does that cash you pay to a retailer end up being used by the retailer to pay the bills?   Perhaps an amoured car courier (e.g., Brinks truck) comes to pick up the merchant's cash deposit.   Who pays for that?   The consumer does, because the merchant adds the cost of the Brinks truck fee to the selling prices.

Taking this into account, the options at the counter might be:

Your purchase total: $50 USD
Pay with credit card: $50  [merchant pays 2.75% fee to Square])
Pay with cash: $49  [merchant passes on some of the savings from not having to pay Square]
Pay with bitcoin: $48.50 [merchant passes on some of the savings from not having to pay either the Brinks truck or Square]

Do you still see a problem that you are asked to pay a transaction fee that is valued about one penny?

Well, this last one was just over 13 days, but still enough to pull the date for block 210,000 to a November date ... November 30th!

Fortunately for GPU miners, the exchange rate has been rising too, so profitability is still pretty good:




 - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHVRMHpqWUJValI1RlZiaEtCT1RrQmc

 - http://blockchain.info/charts/miners-operating-profit-margin

There aren't that many transactions that haven't been included, just 250 at the moment:

 - http://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions


A future version of the biticoin client will likely be including the feature that lets you [edit: the recipient?] pay (or add to) the fee for a previous transaction.
 - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/1647

This feature is currently in an (unstable) test version fo the client:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110898.0


So a better solution is likely coming, some day.

Today, for the wagers you've already sent, there's nothing more you can do than just sit tight and wait for the transactions to get included.

Also, I see the address common to your problem transactions has 962 transactions from or to it, apparently many to SatoshiDICE.  

It is possible that miners are specifically lowering the priority of transactions to "popular" addresses.  I don't know any specifically doing this but an address being re-used hundreds of times in rapid succession is something that sticks out like a sore thumb.

How about in the Address Book?

With Bitcoin URIs, there doesn't need to be a widget per-se:

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/URI_Scheme

Make sure your client is not running already,

Then launch a command line / terminal.

From the terminal, run

  bitcoin-qt -rescan

If you need more specific instructions, will need to describe which operating system you are running (e.g., Windows 7, Mac, Linux).

The #bitcoin-otc marketplace features its Web of Trust (WoT) for recording and viewing trust history:

 - http://www.Bitcoin-OTC.com

Well, cashing out bitcoins to PayPal is easy because there's no risk to the buyer who is sending payment to you.  However, you are at risk of getting cheated by someone.

That's one reason commercial services that offer this are recommended, as they have a history of trust.

The problem is if you have just a small amount to withdraw, your choices narrow.

One automated method is:

 - https://www.nanaimogold.com/pp_exchange.php

However their fee is pretty hefty, especially as it follow an exchange rate that is not in your favor.  However, for a small amount of coins, this might be a convenient method.

You didn't mention where you are located.  Bitcoin Nordic also does cash out to PayPal. but only for EUR and DKK.   Minimum 1 BTC:

 - https://bitcoinnordic.com/sell/

VirWoX also does cash out to PayPal.  I don't know if they have a minimum:

 - http://www.VirWoX.com

And if none of those work well for you, there likely are plenty of willing traders on #bitcoin-otc but again, consider the trust history of your counterparty.

 - http://bitcoin-otc.com/

Are you sure you put the wallet.dat in the right directory?

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory

It that is the right wallet.dat the address that you received on should appear in the address book.

Waterproof paper might be desired:



 -  http://www.amazon.com/Rite-In-The-Rain-Copier/dp/B0016H1RYE

Essentially, yes:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54451.msg649253#msg649253
 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/2233/153

If I buy a piece of penny candy and pay with a $100 bill, then repeat doing so every minute for ten hours straight, the cash transaction log will show just under $120K of cash changing hands even though only $6.00 worth of candy was actually sold  (assuming there is still such a thing as a piece of candy that costs just a penny.)


Mixing has this same property.  To mix away a few BTC there might be coins that are hundreds of thousands of BTC in size, being chipped away a few BTC at a time.

But there are all types of areas that bitcoins can start to displace other types of large financial transactions.

Some businesses have no access to credit and are entirely dependent on customer cash flows. Because bitcoin transactions are lightning fast compared to traditional bank wire transfers, those businesses will start wanting to receive payment in bitcoin.  If work routinely stops because the needed money is tied up working its way through the banking system (which happens all to often, especially for flows that cross borders), Bitcoin helps to cut down dramatically on that idle time.

Another scenario might be for auctions, such as those for property.  Cash is risky to carry and inconvenient so the method that works is for there to be a requirement that bidders carry a cashier's check for some minimum amount (e.g., $5K USD for home sales).  That requirement increases the chances that the ultimate winning bid will truly carry through with full payment.    But obtaining cashier's checks is inconvenient and expensive as well -- especially for bidders who aren't regulars or don't necessarily plan to bid aggressively.   Bitcoin can serve as a convenient method to secure the winning bid while the winning bidder then goes to obtain a cashier's check for the full payment amount.

There will be a lot of scenarios where lots of bitcoins change hands and there is little visibility into why.

I'm remembering something more specific on it but don't remember the source.  They are aware of the demand and the issues:

I wonder if Turk ever knew that Ruxum was allowing funds to be added to their exchange using GoldMoney goldgrams account-to-account transfers.  (The goldgrams received by Ruxum were converted to USDs or other fiat currency and credited to the account.)

Oh, hello ...

A multi-page thread on this video, started about a week ago when the interview was announced.:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=109409.0

Ah, .. I just made the connection:

Looks like we have a celebrity among us!

- http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=5507

A blog post with some summary and commentary:




 - http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/31942156510

You can fabricate a transaction ID, so there is no guarantee that the transaction id is random.

The reason it doesn't matter to SatoshiDICE is because the bettor doesn't know the secret used in determining the resulting answer (a number, from zero to 65,535).  If just one bit to the transaction ID is different from another, the resulting answer ends up being a totally different number that is random(ish)ly generated.

At the end of each day, the daily secret that was used can be safely revealed, providing a method for the bettor (or anyone else) to verify the that each bet was addressed fairly.

Here's a thread addressing the use of SHA hashing as random number generation:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77206.0

They do that.  From another thread:

There really isn't much that can be done.  After the incident, withdrawals of USD funds were allowed and thus the exchange is likely left with few remaining USD funds (those by customers who haven't withdrawn yet, for whatever reasons).  BitFloor essentially was made insolvent the second the BTC funds were stolen but no creditors (a list that include those who had accounts with bitcoins) have yet taken legal action -- at least nothing that has been shared.

Roman is out of the country (presumably still), and BitFloor may not have had any assets in the U.S. other than the bank account holding customer's USD funds which is likely nearly depleted at this point.   Trying to resume running an exchange without the protection that comes after filing for bankruptcy would mean having to come up with 24,000 bitcoins from somewhere first.

There appears to have been preferential transfer that occurred, and the bankruptcy laws have clawback provisions:
 - http://www.thebankruptcysite.org/resources/bankruptcy/filing-bankruptcy/the-clawback-provision-preferential-transfers.htm

But paying to pursue that is likely throwing good money after bad.

If there are still some USD funds remaining in the exchange's bank account, perhaps a small claims court filing to recover losses from that might be tried.

Sorry to learn of your losses and sorry to not be able to offer much hope towards the recovery of the losses.