And even then when the market eventually approaches saturation (you'll never keep getting the same efficiency increases) the difficulty will retarget accordingly to maintain the ~ 10 minutes between each block. Hence your difficulty will eventually slow down in its increases and may even fall. There is also always an incentive to mine - even when coin generation stops they will (hopefully) be paid in enough fees to have a reasonably large network.

I personally find that paper wallets are a mediocre solution. They look nice and are sort of functional (except you have to import the whole balance and then broadcast from a comp connected to the net which poses a security risk) and can be encrypted (with BIP38) if done correctly. You would be far better off looking at cold storage - have Armory/Electrum on an offline air gapped computer and use it to sign txs that you make on your online computer. That way you never have your private keys exposed on an online computer. I would prefer Electrum as you can backup your seed physically and thanks to its deterministic nature you'll have all your private keys even if your hardware fails.

This is the problem with most schemes offering 'insurance'. Even if they offered insurance for other cases (such as hardware failure) it's all to easy to claim it and go spend both. It just seems to be impossible to insure something that people cannot verify you have and verify that you have lost.

As I've stated before, by promoting Bitcoin in any way they will inevitably weaken the value of Paypal as a payment system. Unless they perceive that the revenue from running a Bitcoin exchange (which will be costly to get the appropriate licensing in place as well as legal agreements in multiple countries) will greatly outstrip the losses from a shift away from Paypal I'm doubtful they would actually do it. Not to mention, the market that Bitcoin reaches is still tiny in comparison to what CC/PP reaches at the moment.

I just don't see why PayPal would bother - all it does is promote an alternative payment system from their own and hence screw them over even more. If they charged fees by acting as an 'online wallet' then people would simply use their own clients (ie Qt/Electrum/Multibit) and avoid those additional fees. From PP's perspective all it is doing is possibly creating some drama and hype - but it doesn't really enhance it in any way. Not to mention non-chargeback transactions are completely the opposite of PP's mantra.

Well, I'm pretty sure everyone that has ever scammed has either said that or implied it. Doesn't really mean anything. As for your collateral - you'd need to list out what you would be willing to send to a reputable escrow, collateral in your own hand is not collateral. Mining power also doesn't represent collateral - you could just as easily switch to a different address.

People generally avoid giving out coins to people who gamble. Not to mention since you're adamant on not making a video you're probably not going to get the loan. If you want a non-collateralised loan at least follow the rules 

This is clear as day for anyone who actually took a moment to think about such a scheme. Not to mention if they could do it consistently they would've found funding from venture capitalists in no time rather than having to ask random strangers over the internet for money. It's surprising how many people let their greed overtake their logic.

Let's just assume you have infinite time and money. Your problem is still the fact that the house has a limit so hence you cannot actually bet an infinite amount as your capped. Basically, it's probably one of the worst long term betting choices - you will eventually bust it's really only a matter of time whereas you may take a small loss with flat betting instead.

Sure no problems. Happy to help people to the extent of my somewhat limited technical knowledge. If you need help don't hesitate to ask.

People prefer Qt because they feel safe (or to be a full node) using the reference client - although there are enough people reviewing the code for Electrum and Multibit that they are safe. If you're keen to get going then yes it would save you time to use a light client instead of waiting to download the whole chain.

I would advise against sending coins from your old client just in case it creates issues. Instead dump the private keys from those addresses as I mentioned above and then import them into your new client. You would probably have to wait about a minute for the client to connect to nodes but from there your coins should be spendable.

If you'd like to make sure you're secure I would advise Electrum - at the moment it is one of the few to be deterministic (meaning you can memorise/write down a seed and you retain the whole wallet) but that only works with new wallets and not imported addresses. Also if you're moving to a new client please password protect it - don't want some malware stealing your private keys.

How exactly does the payout work? If you win do you get paid in BTC at the equivalent price at the time of your bet or at the completion of the bet event? There is no option to be paid back in the same currency as you bet in?

No you won't need to send coins to yourself again. All of your coins will be in old your wallet as per usual, all you've done is updated the client so that its has all the new functionality and some of the implementation changes. Your wallet is simply a collection of private keys nothing more.

If you're determined to use Qt then I would think so. If you're willing to try using a light client which doesn't need to download the blockchain as it refers to servers as nodes to ensure that txs are legitimate you could look into Electrum/Multibit. But if you're in no rush then yeah it's fine waiting.

You should be fine to replace the wallet file that it generates (once run for the first time) with your own as long as the client is closed when you do so. You don't need to download the whole chain to change wallets but I'm not sure whether you can send coins without it.

If you're getting consistent corruption I would be wary of that computer - you could be experiencing hard drive failure. Best to make sure you have copies on your USB as you've stated. If it was a one time event it probably isn't so bad - doesn't hurt to take precautions though.

If he's on Qt I'm not sure whether he can actually send the coins until he's downloaded the blockchain and that might take a while since he's on the old version. Another option would be to export the private keys into a light client (ie Electrum) and use it instead - it's basically the same for most users except you don't have to download the whole blockchain (you aren't a full node). Or you could use it to send it to one of your deterministic addresses and not have to worry about having to backup as long as you have your seed.

This. I cannot stress enough how important it is to generate your own private keys. Please don't do it unless they support split key generation an even then make sure they are using it and not just lying.

If you have a decent graphics card, use oclvanitygen - it searches for more keys per second. Try checking out either sam7's or the Lifeboat one (the latter has improved support for AMD cards IIRC).

If I were you I would boot up your old version and copy the private keys with a balance in them. You should be able to use this command in Qt:


If you're not so paranoid I would just copy your wallet.dat (it's a .dat file by the way) to somewhere safe just in case it gets lost in the upgrade. You should be fine to upgrade to the newest version from there once you've made a backup.

Scammers these days. If you wanted to actually prove you have a minin operation of that scale you'd need to actually mine blocks for a week or so and provide us with signed message from the addresses which the newly mined coins were sent to. A copied image tells us you're a liar and a scammer.

It's a nice idea but I think not at the moment. Bitcoins and crytocurrency's are experimental at the moment and pale in comparison to the sheer size of fiat. I would say before we start teaching kids the merits of a system we need to actually show the system isn't a failure and in this case comes large consumer and merchant acceptance.

The use of 'too' is subjective - what exactly are you comparing it against? I don't have any exact figures but I would doubt Bitcoin mining would even represent 0.01% of electricity consumption of the world. While it might be high for an individual - there are far more who don't mine than do so I would think they would offset that. I'd be happy to be corrected if someone has clear figures.