Sounds like a perfect place for a human ATM!

A few months ago was a StartupBus competition, and one of the contestants was Open Wallet app:



Here's their proof of concept video:

 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoRlyPZ3zJ0

I have no idea what they were going to use to settle payment to the party acting as "ATM".  I wouldn't doubt they were able to come up with a good solution for that ... and left it as "and magic happens here", after figuring out that PayPal wouldn't work for this.

If that was the hurdle these entrepreneurs couldn't solve, then had they considered using bitcoin as the settlement currency they might have been able to get funding, develop it and launch.

I was hoping something like this could be built by LocalBitcoins (or built by anyone and offered to those in LocalBitcoin's directory)
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=86012.msg1026722#msg1026722

But just as some hotels will let a guest write a check to receive cash, those offering travel accommodations could offer Bitcoin cash-out as a service.  Or their staff/concierge happens to know which individual(s) nearby offer this service.

Score one more for the Weekend Dip strategy!   (again, this is not something that occurs every weekend, but specifically when a downtrend exists and follows the specific criteria defining when the GREEN light should be flashing on or not.)  It has been profitable for like seven out of the eight times it has occurred so far in 2012.

After selling at $10.70 on Thursday when the weekend dip indicator flashed GREEN, there have been plenty of chances this weekend to get back in at under $10.


The exchange rate is over $10 now, and I'm locking in my gains here ($10.10) just to guarantee a roughly 5% gain (after subtracting trading fees).  While getting back in without waiting until Monday (bank holiday in the U.S.) might cause me to miss an even lower re-entry point, I'm looking at the absolutely pathetic trading volume and don't see sellers as being anxious to sell at these levels.  So I'm going to take a smaller, certain gain here rather than risk possibly having to chase a rally when I was instead hoping for another dip.

Those following the weekend dip strategy and who happened to have had perfect timing when buying their coins back at the weekend bottom (so far) of $9.75 saw an 8% gain (after subtracting for trading fees).

Is this with the Bitcoin.org client, or were you using the Blockchain.info/wallet or some other?

If you can't find a trade here, know that there is always:

 - http://www.BTCPak.com
 - http://fastcash4bitcoins.com

I just tried and it worked.  Clicked the INR tab, entered my e-mail address, entered my Bitcoin address, entered 15 BTC and then clicked Buy Bitcoin.

The next page had a deposit slip with account information to use when visiting an HDFC branch.

Can you try it again?


I'm sure your information is saved.  You will even need to send a scan of your receipt that the bank gives you after you've deposited by e-mail, so they'll definitely know your e-mail.  They are affiliated with CryptoXChange which has been around for a year now.

When you buy from a retailer, they dictate the price that you pay.  You can choose to buy at that price or you can leave without buying.  There is generally no haggling on price though.

Market exchanges like Mt. Gox don't set the price.  The price quoted comes entirely from a form of haggling by their customers.

Here's a video that explains how markets work:

 - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x871h9_real-world-economics-simple-supply_school (15 minutes - it includes a little propaganda at the end, sorry, but it was about the first decent video I could find that describes market price.)

So at Mt. Gox, customers put in buy orders and sell orders.  Each buy order indicates a quantity and price that the buyer is willing to buy at.  Each sell order indicates a quantity and price that the seller is willing to sell at.  

The point where the buying and selling meets without a sale happening is known as the "cross price"  (or sometimes called the "spot market price").  In economics this is called the "market equilibrium":



 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_equilibrium

A market exchange like Mt. Gox doesn't care what the market equilibirium price is because they get a commission each time coins are bought or sold.  

Other exchanges simply buy coins elsewhere and market them directly to customers at a given price.  Their price generally includes a markup on the price that they pay.  So the price will fluctuate because the price that they pay their supplier (e.g., when they buy from Mt. Gox) will fluctuate.


Now the reason the price at Mt. Gox's BTC/USD is always changing minute to minute is because there are always things going on causing people to want to buy or sell bitcoins.  Thus the market equilibrium moves based on market conditions.  This is not unique to Mt. Gox, nor to bitcoin exchanges.  This is how nearly all financial markets operate.



In order to sell your coins at Mt. Gox, you need to first deposit them with Mt. Gox.   So your funds can only be at one market exchange at a time.    So even though you might get a better price selling them at another exchange, for you to do that you would need to transfer them -- something that has a cost (in your time, at a minimum).  So markets aren't perfectly efficient as a result -- there will be a buyers who find they need to pay more at one market or sellers finding they need to sell for less when using a different market.  This too is not unique to Bitcoin or even to financial markets.  The price you see for a gallon of milk is different from one store to the next.  That too is an example of a market inefficiency.

Now there are traders who can make a profit by lessening these inefficiencies.  They do this by keeping funds on several exchanges at once allowing them to buy where the selling prices are cheap and sell where the buying prices are expensive.  The trading they are doing is called arbitrage.  The price differences between exchanges provide arbitrage opportunities.  There is a lot of that occurring, and there are sites that help provide information on these price differences:

 - http://nyse-group.de/bitcoin-arbitrage
 - http://bitcoin-analytics.com/#arbitrage

if you are only buying small amounts, not much of this matters.  But those doing large amounts of trading and wanting the best prices don't need to worry about going around to each exchange and trading at each -- simply trade at one exchange and let the arbitrageurs add liquidity.  These arbitrageurs do profit from it but probably less than it would cost trying to spread your trading across a number of exchanges yourself.


Except that performing that "exploit" is helping the markets by keeping prices in synch -- so we can know what price a bitcoin will fetch "at market",

So that's how various markets work.

The recipient's Spam folder is one possible destination.

When you say you contacted Coinapult, was it through their form?
 - http://coinapult.com/contact

If they replied by e-mail, it is possible the reply went to your spam folder?

(e-mail is teh suck for providing support.)

I submitted a comment in reply to the Forbes article:


A survey of these "provably fair" services so far includes:

 - BitLotto, blockchain based.  Uses the results of a state-run lottery and matches that against the blockchain transaction IDs from the wagers to determine the winner.  Each player competes against other players.
 - SatoshiDICE (and the knockoff/clone of it), blockchain-based.  Uses the blockchain transaction ID plus a secret that is only revealed after the bet.  Each player competes against the house.
 - BitJack21, client editable seed (in Javascript).  Each player competes against the house.  [may wish to read thread though before playing]
 - bitZino, client editable seed (in Javascript).  Each player competes against the house.

All of these are dependent on one thing though.  They use the results of a cryptographic hash and grab part of the result and that value is supposed to be random.   That's not the purpose of that algorithm though (to have part of the result be used to provide a random number).  I guess it is "close enough", but I haven't seen anything for or against the argument that this produces statistically random results.  I brought up this question here:

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

That being said, I'm a big fan of these "provably fair" systems.   I like how every single wager that has ever been placed with SatoshiDICE can be recalculated today to determine that the computation was performed correctly and that the payout was truly sent.

I've been trying to get bitZino to allow a player to add funds by scanning a private key/QR code and redeeming that.   That way, a person can purchase a bitcoin banknote with fiat and play, without really knowing what the heck Bitcoin really is.  They just know $11 today bought them 1,000 credits for use in wagering.  Cashing out to fiat too has ways that can be made easier as well (e..g, payout to a PayPal address, for instance, or having an Amazon gift ecode presented).

A few factors are in play.

There were a lot of options traded on MPEx in the last month and earlier today was the expiration.  Those with gains were mostly those who were short at higher levels.  If you went short then you certainly aren't of the mindset that sitting on those gains denominated in bitcoins would be a good idea, right?  So those are likely being liquidated now.

Intersango having no UK bank right now (Metro Bank no longer provides an account to them) is a disruption -- their BTC/GBP market was the third largest market for quite a while.

But the three day weekend in the U.S. is definitely a factor too.

The ponzi investors contributed to a lot of the BTC demand that helped to bring the BTC/USD up to $15 so it will take a bit for the price absent that demand to be discovered.

Bitcoin just had a couple weeks with a lot happening in online media ... the BitInstant debit card last week (which was a positive) and the ponzi story this week (which was definitely a negative).  So conditions were ripe for a little selloff here.

Those keeping their eye on the ball know that the block reward drop from 50 BTC to 25 BTC occurs in less than 100 days, regardless of the exchange rate.

Might as well vacuum up as many as you can with each dip because Bitcoin just keeps chugging along.  It keeps on going, with a greater variety and number of merchants, with more deposit and cash out methods from the exchanges, with improved and more secure client software and EWallet offerings, etc.

From the outside Bitcoin looks like a mess --  the exchange rate over the past weeks spiked to $15 and dropped down to about half that,... in just a matter of hours!  Then there still are hackings, scamming, ponzis, and wallet and software troubles.

But those actually using it are finding that Bitcoin does what it is supposed to do.  

• Non-reversible transactions.   Has anyone lost money to a chargeback on a confirmed transaction?   Of course not, there is no such thing with Bitcoin.
• Has anyone been surprised after sending bitcoin to learn that it cost $40 to send the funds, and that amount was subtracted automatically before the funds reached their destination?  Of course not.  That may be what banks do but with bitcoin the fees are known to the sender at the time time the payment is sent. The fees are trivially low anyway, nearly nobody even pays any mind to them.
• Has anyone had to wait until the next day or longer waiting for access to the revenues they received through Bitcoin?  Of course not. Unlike Square, or credit card merchant accounts, or checks deposited at a bank even, funds received through Bitcoin can be spent in about an hour or less.
• Has anyone not been able to send or receive bitcoin because the jursidiction where they live hasn't approved it?   Of course not, Bitcoin is universal -- anyone can use it, regardless of their geographic location and, to a large degree, economic status.

Now what many sellers this weekend do have is the cash proceeds from their selling which they plan to use to buy back their coins once the exchange rate drops even lower.  That's something a buyer eyeing these lower prices doesn't have as no wire transfers will clear until Monday (or Tuesday for those in the U.S. w/ the holiday)..

So it could easily be a bumpy weekend.

If you got the cash, there very well could be some good opportunities to score a nice return by Tuesday.

It that explaining today's outage, or a prior one?

Why are the buy and sell prices so "sticky"?

The BTC/USD spot market just dropped 15% but the buy and sell for the BUZ2 contracts dropped only a few percent ... (sell dropped from $13.5 to $13.3, and buy droped from $12.6 to $12.3 roughly)



Sell  Price    Buy
  1   13.57
  3   13.5  
 70   13.4  
100   13.39
  1   13.3  
      12.31    10
      12.3     30
      12.03    20
      12.02    50
      12       54

Range 11.6055 - 14.1845


Just to make sure I understand... so let's say  I sell one BUZ2 for $12.31 and have -1 contract.

And currently the spot price is $9.75.  Le'ts say the spot price doesn't move ... the spot price sits at exactly $9.75 until December 15th when BUZ2 expires.

Holding this BUZ2 through settlement then, does that mean I would get bought at $9.75?   (or am I only receiving the daily variation margin transactions ... which, in this case are $0 because I'm using the unlikely scenario where BTC/USD doesn't move up or down between now and expiration).

Ya, that's not right.  Blockchain.info/wallet has an offline mode.  Are you show it shows connected to your wallet?

There was a problem where Blockchain.info hadn't caught up to the latest block, but that appears to be in synch with the network now so that shouldn't be a problem.

Perhaps report your problem in the Blockchain.info support thread?
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40264.1340

From what I understand, a consumer paying with LiqPay cannot reverse the transaction.  Of course, if you pay using a credit card you can file a dispute and let your credit card issuer battle it out with LiqPay -- you may or may not get your funds back.  If the transaction required confirmation through SMS and your mobile happened to provide confirmation, you'll probably lose the "it wasn't an authorized payment" argument.

But I believe that the merchant that accepts LiqPay is exposed to the chance of a reversal when the transactions were fraudulent. (and account frozen if fraud happens more often than it should).

This is an issue that does not concern Bitcoin miners, and occurs with your specific alternate cryptocurrency.  Please move this thread to that forum boardl:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0

 (You can move a thread yourself, the link is in the bottom left.)

I was making the assumption that the transactions aren't being accepted by the network because they are invalid, and thus have no value.  I forgot though that if the transaction includes multiple inputs but includes even one that is invalid, the client will reject the entire transaction.  

So it is possible that you still have some of the coins yet, just that the client isn't giving access to them due to them being locked up in these transactions with invalid inputs.

Thus simply exporting the private keys and importing them into a new wallet.dat would solve that.

The lazy person's solution is to use Mt. Gox's "upload wallet.dat" method and let that redeem your funds for you into your account.

SatoshiDICE never got the transactions because they were never accepted by the network.  There is nothing SatoshiDICE can or should do as the Bitcoin transactions for your wagers never confirmed.

Now why this is happening?

What appears to be happening is that your client has some double spend transactions.

That can happen a few ways accidentally (e.g., you have two copies of your wallet.dat and are making spend transactions from both) or purposely (you have a script that tries to wager with SatoshiDICE and then also attempt to double spend the bets that lose via race attack, Finney attack, etc.   There are even situations where if you were specifically targeted, you could see funds on one confirmation but then when you spend them they are invalid -- but that is pretty easily preventable.  Here are the various methods:

 - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending#Attack_vectors

So, the end result is you have wagers that never got processed and never will.

Unfortunately, the Bitcoin.org client doesn't deal well with these -- there is no way to manually remove the transactions using bitcoind.

The easiest thing to do would be to send your remaining funds to a new address in a new wallet and start clean.

A way to fix the wallet you have involves perofrming wallet surgery to remove the offending private keys (using pywallet) and then rescan.

Until the day that they disable withdrawals and insist that you verify your identify.  That has happened to numerous individuals, regardless of the amount they are withdrawing.  The terms of service when signing up assert that they can require identity at any time for any reason, and hold your funds until you do so.


For Dwolla deposits to be credited, verified identity is required.  There appears to be more leeway for deposits of other methods (e.g., redeem voucher code, BTC deposits, etc.)

The typical consumer is going to plug that flash drive in and wait for an app to launch.  Are you going to go over and help them install the client, then copy over the blockchain and wallet to their new installation?

Do you warn them that if their computer system is infected with some malware that their wallet is at risk?

What might work better is to print up some Bitcoin bank notes using BitAddress:

 - https://www.bitaddress.org

Click Paper Wallet, then mark the checkbox for Art.  

This is the result:



Then you can fund the bills as you sell them.  Include instructions on how to redeem.  

E.g., MtGoxLive mobile client includes "Redeem".  Or MtGox.com website can redeem them.

Or Blockchain.info/wallet can import these.

etc.

[Update: Though this is more convenient, the important of a secure computer (or mobile) is still a factor and should be explained to anyone or included in your instructions.]

At one time the BitFloor signup page read:


I no longer see BitFloor's AML policy anywhere on the BitFloor site.  Is this published anywhere?

Quite simply, depositing cash at a bank or 7-11, Walmart, CVS is going to be the fastest and easiest way.

 - http://www.Bitfloor.com (Deposit cash at any Chase or Wells Fargo. No fee)
 - http://www.BitInstant.com (Deposit at major banks, 7-11, Walmart, CVS, Moneygram, etc., or in Brazil using Boleto or Banco Recomendito, or in Russia, using Qiwi or Cyberplat.)
 - http://www.CAVirtEx.com (Deposit cash at several banks)
 - http://www.Spendbitcoins.com (Deposit cash at a bank in Australia)
 - http://www.MrBitcoins.com (Deposit at a bank in U.S., India, Australia)
 - http://BitcoinNordic.com (Purchase CashU or UKash in dozens of countries)


The fees aren't trivial but you can use a credit card to purchase by using VirWoX where you can buy SLL using your Serve card as a credit card, then trade SLL for BTC:
 - http://www.VirWoX.com

This probably does't help you if you are looking to spend the coins anytime soon, but you can buy physical Bitcoin, paid for with credit card:
 - http://memorydealers.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=bitcoin



Or find a local trade:

 - http://www.localbitcoins.com

All kinds of options:

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