Falls du dir nicht sicher bist weil der Client hängt kannst du immer noch im block explorer nachschauen, ob die Transaktion tatsächlich bestätigt wurde:

http://blockexplorer.com/
http://blockchain.info/

I barely even knew such a thing existed until I tried to invest a small amount of money in zopa.co.uk (a p2p loans market) and wasn't allowed to because Equifax had no information on me. I found it bizarre that I would need a credit score if I am the one doing the LENDING but apparently that is the way of our byzantine financial system.

Never mind Equifax, I do value my bitcoin-otc rating and actively try to improve it. 

This example illustrates why Brazil is rank 126 (out of 183) on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index.

Red tape and regulatory overzealousness in Brazil is horrible. Doing any kind business there is more difficult than in English speaking countries. 

On the other hand, the market is less saturated, and there are more gaps and inefficiencies that present great opportunities for making money.  And Brazilians have a real skill for dodging the overbearing regulators.

That's why am I am certain bitcoin related business won't disappear from Brazil.

For my "current account" wallet, I use a dedicated netbook where I run nothing but the Bitcoin client.

The OS is an Ubuntu 12.04 custom install with the majority of default software packages removed. 

The ufw setup is as follows:


From time to time I run the Ubuntu updates; for this I temporarily change default outgoing to ALLOW.

My question is, is this setup reasonably safe against wallet theft by hackers or viruses, or have I missed something important?

Bitcoin can still absorb massive growth even with the current block size limit. Normal users who do a few transactions a week would simply crowd out low priority transactions such as SatoshiDice.

Say that an average "normal user" does about one transaction per day. The current "throttled" protocol could handle approx. 500,000 such users. 

Transaction fees needed for inclusion could rise, but higher transaction fees are less damaging to bitcoin's reputation than heist after heist being reported in the media.

That's why multisig is more pressing in my opinion.

So are credit cards.

What fraction of carders actually get caught?

Even if the credit card customer is negligent, it's usually the bank that takes the hit, and then socializes the cost among all customers. Very rarely the it's the scammer.

With bitcoin, at least I don't have to pay for other people's negligence. And yes, if you entrust tens of thousands of dollars to an alpha-web app run by an one-man enterprise then that is also a form of negligence.

blk0002.dat  has already grown 100 MB  

I my opinion, the minimum 0.01 BTC transaction output rule (fees or no fees) should be reintroduced.  Yes it would be a clunky solution but it would just be temporary and it would give the bitcoin infrastructure time to develop to a point where it can scale.

Spamtoshidice and friends are getting a free ride.  Yes, they are paying transaction fees. But transaction fees go only to the miners, but not to the rest of us who are donating our HDs.  10-20 GB a year isn’t that much but it’s enough to discourage casual users from running full clients and strengthening the network.

In a local wireless mesh network, bitcoin will keep working as long as just one participant creates a link to the main chain (eg. via satellite internet).

I wonder if a wireless mesh protocol can be designed where bitcoin is used to pay for bandwidth.

Instead of signing up for an ISP, people could buy these wireless boxes that they simply slap on their roof and start earning bitcoins by routing traffic.

This would be especially useful in poorer countries and rural areas.

The pirate party does have some "real libertarian" members, but most of them are leftists.

"Real libertarianism" is an extreme minority view in Europe, and that's why they will never have their own party.

The word "libertarian" doesn't even exist in the German vocabulary. There is only "liberal", which is used by moderate pro-market parties, and "freiheitlich" (literally: freedomist), a term which used to mean something like libertarian, but has now been hijacked by nationalist/populist parties on the authoritarian end of the spectrum.

Here is why I refuse to use services such as itunes:

Some of them embed watermarks in the downloaded mp3 files, forever linking them to your identity. This creates an unreasonable liability for me that is completely disproportional compared to the tiny amount paid for an mp3 file.

If I forget my smartphone on a train and then some jackass uploads my mp3s on bittorrent, then I will have to face a huge amount of legal trouble, prove my innocence, and possibly be sued for gazillions of dollars.

Call me paranoid but it's simply not worth the risk. True, the likelihood of the above happening is small, but the potential damage if it does happen is huge.

Even the services that say they don't use watermarks can't be trusted, because it's impossible to prove that something is not watermarked, and the MAFIAA has a track record of playing dirty.

That's why I would embrace a music download service where I could pay anonymously.  Bitcoin would be perfect for this.

This reminds me of the quote:

"If rape is inevitable, you may as well lie back and enjoy the ride".

This isn't a bitcoin specific problem.  Many books have been written on how to secure a web server.  I'm not sure if a universal guide would be useful.  Different architectures require different security measures. 

What would be nice is a preconfigured server optimized for bitcoin security and privacy.  Something like  tails except designed for running a simple bitcoin web app. 

The barriers to entry need to be lower.  Developing bitcoin-accepting websites shouldn't be an exclusive privilege of security experts.

Der Kurs hat wenig mit dem Gesamtwert der auf Mtgox angebotenen Bitcoins zu tun.  Das ist bei jeder Börse so. 

Nur weil Facebook am ersten Handelstag eine Market Cap von 90 Milliarden USD hatte, heißt es nicht, dass Facebook 90 Milliarden wert war, oder dass irgendwo 90 Milliarden USD eigelagert waren um die FB-Aktien zu decken.

The "internet industry" is a bit like the Wild West.  The frontier, which is still advancing into unknown territory, attracts the adventurers, visionaries, and outlaws.  But the further "East" of the frontier you move, the more conservative and risk-averse people become, the more regulated and tamed the industry becomes. 

The internet industry has been around for almost 20 years which is a century in IT.  Old, established players such as PayPal and Amazon are dinosaurs by now and probably not as eager for "disruption" and "embracing the new" as their reputation suggests.  Some people who themselves lived at the frontier when they were younger are now terrified by the scary stuff going on at the new frontier.

There are several levels of "bitcoin becoming illegal".

1 - Developers banned from working on the satoshi client.
2 - Distribution of satoshi client banned outright.
3 - Owning copies of satoshi client banned outright.
4 - Owning and distributing of the Chancellor block chain banned.
5 - Owning and distributing of any block chain banned.
6 - The entire Bitcoin protocol becomes illegal.
7 - ALL crytocurrency and Bitcoin-like protocols become illegal (including Namecoin, Litecoin, etc.)
8 - ALL virtual currencies and currency-like systems not approved by government become illegal.

Level 1-6 laws would not put the genie back in the bottle. People would simply work on new clients, start new blockchains, or continue paying with Namecoins or Bitcoins v2.

Level 6-8 laws would need to be extremely overreaching in order to work, and would cause a big disruption for already existing industries.

Even the banning of an entire communications protocol would be unprecedented, let alone an entire family of protocol. 

If laws become too overreaching, people start to ignore them.



Most occidental countries guarantee Freedom of Speech in their constitution. Some European countries guarantee Secrecy of Correspondence. In principle, those two should make Bitcoin safe.  In practice, governments shamelessly ignore those protections.   

I've been playing around with a 3D logo. Here is the preliminary result:

I suggest holding a logo design contest on 99designs.

It's good place to get some professional looking logos for a good price.  Minimum award is $300. I think we should be able to collect that much.

The advantage of using 99designs is that we can access a much bigger pool of (semi)professional designers than by just posting a bounty on this forum.  We will also have several designs to pick from and we can do a community vote to decide the winner.

Sehr gute und ausführliche Analyse.

Nut mit dem Fazit bin ich nicht ganz so einverstanden.

Ich finde nicht dass eine Aufsichtspflicht im Sinne der Nutzer ist.
 
Eine Aufsicht durch eine Trusted Third Party (muss aber nicht zwingend die BaFin sein) kann durchaus die Sicherheit und Qualität verbessern, besonders bei den größeren Börsen.

So eine Aufsicht erhöht aber auch die Kosten für die Börsen, und indirekt für die Kunden. Noch schlimmer, eine Aufsichtsplicht schafft hohe Einstiegsbarrieren und erstickt Innovation im Keim.

Gerade im Bitcoin-Universum wäre das gravierend, weil fast alle gute Ideen als kleine „Garagenunternehmen“ anfangen.  Wir wissen heute noch gar nicht, wie die wichtigsten Anwendungsbereiche von Bitcoin in 5 Jahren aussehen werden. Wir brauchen eine Wildwest-Phase, um so viel wie möglich auszuprobieren.

Die Kunden sind sich dem Risiko bei kleineren und neuen Dienstanbietern durchaus bewusst.  Sie sollten selber aussuchen können, wie viele Bitcoins sie den unbeaufsichtigten Börsen wie zB. Bitcoinica  anvertrauen.

Bitcoin decentralization is about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

Regardless of who you are, you are free to buy and sell as many bitcoins as you like, to mine, or to contribute code, without asking anyone for permission first.

In terms of outcome, yes the "natual outcome" is an unequal distribution of power,  but enforcing a perfectly equal outcome would require curbing the above freedoms for some bitcoin users. Where to draw the line?

I am not even sure if a perfectly equal power distribution is desirable.

People who own more bitcoin are typically more invested in bitcoin and more capable and motivated to defend it than casual or newbie users.

Just speculating ... why the sudden spike in transactions per day?

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

The spike in late 2010 was caused by a spammer/troll.

The spike in June 2011 was caused by a spike in bitcoin users after the media hype.

The current spike seems to have come out of nowhere. Any ideas as to who might be doing this?