The site is fixed and back up.


Cents sent.

I am responsible for FirstBits.com, sorry I didn't know about this thread until now.

Firstbits addresses are just an idea. The site is a sample implementation of the rule. The details of the rule can be found at firstbits.com/about.php

There are already plenty of good Bitcoin address shorteners if you want to trust someone to maintain their database and server. What I am hoping to provide is a way to have shorter addresses without a central point of failure. Right now we are the first and only place to do firstbits look ups, but I hope that won't be true for long. We are going to release the code really soon so it will be a snap to see that we do look ups correctly and even to make your own copy of the site. Hopefully this alleviates any worry that we would maliciously give out incorrect conversions.

Unfortunately we recently discovered that our database (essentially a list of addresses and the block number in which they first appear) was missing part of several blocks. We took the site down to recheck the whole database and add some checks so that it can't happen again.

Given the number of missing addresses and the number of look ups we've done it's unlikely that even one address was given wrong firstbits. If wrong firstbits were given that would still not have resulted in a problem because we would have made the same mistake converting back. Now there is a warning to recheck your firstbits. We're very sorry for the inconvenience and any worry. 

Good post. I was an online player and will be again eventually. Well, I guess I already am, I play some at betco.

The exchanges make great choke points right now because there is so much wealth to be converted. But eventually people will just live 'inside' bitcoin earning and spending without needing to convert. People who must convert will find a dealer much more easily than they can find weed. Right now there are only $100M worth of bitcoins spread around the world which means there can't be many deep reserves in each city, but when it is $100B there will be plenty of local liquidity. And I don't just mean geographically local. Everyone will have a cousin or brother in law who needs to or can go the opposite way.

This is a way better situation than PS or FT where there is one place where your cash is. Hit that point, done. With Bitcoin they get some inconsequential amount of flow and then they have to deal with a more dispersed trading situation.

I'm going to be in Vegas from July 13-20, maybe longer. I'd like to meet some bitcoiners.

I'd like to get this to whom it may concern at wikileaks. Anyone know how?

Is he referring to himself as "my client"?

That's where the black hole comes in. He'll use it to streeeeeetch out the first page.

Just to play devil's advocate. If everyone playing the lottery was doing it in pools then we wouldn't know the future of lotteries after lottery pools fell. Maybe people would switch to going alone, maybe they would quit.

Regardless, 'pools' the idea aren't going anywhere. Some particular pools might, but that's as relevant as a few office lottery pools being canceled.

+1 more to the OP


Come on. Is that granny's requirement for using paper money? Proof that no one is making more by magic? Granny doesn't have your suggested paranoid fantasy she'll use what you tell her is safe. The people who care if Bitcoin can be counterfeited are the people who know who to find out if that's actually possible everyone else always uses their trusted advisers.

How could I think that after what I said? You quoted it. I don't think affiliate programs are bad. I think hiring every person on the net to be your affiliate makes you look bad because the most visible affiliates will always be the most obnoxious.

Bah, that's another thing. Lower fees if you pick a spammer to pay?

I do think campbx is better than TH, but using the same terrible promotion method makes them appear at a glance to be the same.

If you want a bunch of affiliates, fine. But everyone? Maybe some draw the line somewhere before random spammers who uses leaked email lists?

Anyway, is this pointless to continue, they've already decided to do it.

Doesn't anyone else think this is trashy? Now we can have campbx spam everywhere we get TH spam, awesome.

You know what I associate TH with? Emails in my box from the MtGox leak.

I'm not saying all affiliate programs are bad, but automatically making everyone one of your 'affiliates' is reckless. It's no good to affiliate with everyone. Most people aren't competent to give you a good image, let alone the worst people.

"Google" isn't working on it, but a Google employee is working on it during paid time they have for independent projects. So it's not just code hosting.

I was just going to report this fail. The last thing you want people to see would be that you are gaming the system... to get them to see your thread about gaming the system. It's like a self referential fail.

I'm not saying it's wrong to influence something like this, but it's counterproductive when it is obvious. Maybe you should try a search term that returns good pages and already has a base of searchers - "Bitcoin".

How easy is it to look at what you are mining? Won't people see that they are working on a different block number than the current one? And shouldn't some people notice that they found blocks that don't show?

I agree the consequences are not dire and I'm not saying it's wrong or dangerous to use deepbit. I'm just saying as a non miner they all seem roughly the same, but since one has so much market share it must really be good in some way.

I was going to rebut the "takes a long time" point, but I just realized the 50% is a bit less magical than I thought. Sometimes it'll be quick (coming back from 2 confirms), but those are roughly the same times it would have been possible to double spend with 49% anyway.

Lol, I'm going to get a bunch of addresses tattooed all over and tell everyone I meet that it's practically necessary for using bitcoin and they should do it too.

Saying there is no difference between 49% and 51% is somewhat misleading. At 49% you might get lucky and have a double spend accepted sometimes, but at 51% you will absolutely always be able to get a transaction rewritten.

Regardless, even if 50% wasn't specially, which I think it is. When do you think is the right time to talk about about this? When one kid turns on a CPU since he could get lucky enough? Or when I have 90%?

I don't mine, but deepbit must be freaking awesome for fully half of the network power to not care about the chance that feds show up with weapons to deepbit's house. This wouldn't permanently damage damage Bitcoin, but it would be annoying and it would damage reputation.

The thing to know about this is that if it was foolproof any simpleton could apply it make vast wealth. Maybe there is some way to profit on average by reading charts, but if people were able and willing to write that way down for you the opportunity would already be gone.