|
Difficulty goes up or down to try to maintain an average of 6 blocks created an hour.
|
|
|
|
|
If your computer is not currently infected that will make your bitcoins as safe as the thumb drives and password are.
You can even send additional bitcoins to the same bitcoin address and when you next restore the wallet and download the block chain you will find your bitcoins waiting for you.
|
|
|
|
|
For mining bitcoins the value at the time you first got them minus cost would probably be considered normal income. Any increase in value between acquiring them and selling them would be capital gains. I have no training in the tax code but that is what I have picked up reading these forums.
|
|
|
|
|
On the positive side, if you can sufficiently document the loss you have one hell of a tax deduction.
|
|
|
|
|
MagicalTux mentioned a while ago that Mt.Gox has over 30,000 accounts.
|
|
|
|
|
There is in fact .00000001 less bitcoins in existence then displayed on bitcoinwatch because someone intentional created a block with a reward of 49.99999999 bitcoins. The network only checks to make sure that you don't reward your self extra bitcoins.
|
|
|
|
|
As I understand the history of the name, when the original owner created the exchange he used the domain because he already owned it and was not doing anything with it. When the current owner took over he kept the name the same because the reputation was the most valuable asset the site had.
|
|
|
|
|
There is a command line option to set the number of extra addresses to generate (-keypool=<n>). If you set it to 1,000,000 your computer is going to be crunching numbers for a long time to generate them all.
|
|
|
|
|
TrueCrypt has some nice features. Such as hidden volumes. You could keep a dummy wallet with a modest balance in the main TrueCrypt volume and you true wallet in the hidden volume in case you were forced to decrypt the file.
|
|
|
|
|
Receiving payments to a existing address will never be a problem.
They only time you have to worry about a wallet getting out of date is if it is a backup of a wallet that is in use. Then you must update at least every 100 new addresses.
You create a new address when sending coins (unless there is no change to be returned), after receiving coins at the currently displayed address for the first time, when you successfully mine a block solo, or when you click the new address button. When those things have happened a total of 100+ times any backup will have an incomplete set of private keys.
|
|
|
|
|
I can't recall anything in recent history that has infected the bios. I don't know if this is due to better designs or if it simply that any such virus is too hardware specific to be worth the time to create. You are probably more likely to get struck by lightning. Since I don't know how much money you are protecting, it is up to you to decide what is an acceptable level of risk.
|
|
|
|
|
That should be safe so long as you use that OS only for sending and receiving bitcoins. There is a remote chance of something nasty living in the motherboard bios or a GPUs bios, but it is very unlikely. Also it would be a good idea to make sure that the permanent drives were never mounted when running from the USB drive.
If you have $100,000 or more worth of bitcoins you should consider a complete dedicated system.
|
|
|
|
|
I think of it more as a bitcoin vault rather than a savings wallet.
|
|
|
|
The OP can prove that he has the private keys to the account the money was stolen from.
That means that we have two people claiming property, which is way better than nothing.
The issue is not proving he owns the addresses the bitcoins came from, the problem is he has no way of proving that he does not own the addresses the bitcoin went to. |
|
|
|
Mmmmm. How are you going to connect to the Bitcoin network with a non-networked laptop?
You only need to connect for the brief period needed to send bitcoins to you less secure spending wallet. Also you don't need to connect to the internet just to your primary machine that is running bitcoin. The main machine will relay transaction to the rest of the bitcoin network. You could even connect the two while your home network was disconnected from the internet. After the main machine is connected to the internet it can then rebroadcast the transaction. |
|
|
|
|
If you have a lot of money in bitcoin you should really consider dedicating a machine for a secure wallet. A cheap netbook, preferably small enough to fit in a safe, or a cheap desktop system.
|
|
|
|
|
The only security measure that matters is to run bitcoin on a secure machine. If the machine is secure no security need be built into the client. If the machine is infected no security in the software can protect you. All the hacker has to do is sit back and wait for you provide whatever is needed to bypass the security.
If you have more in bitcoins that you would be comfortable carrying as cash in your pocket or leaving sitting on your night stand, you need to set up bitcoins equivalent of a safe. A one use machine with full system encryption and no regular connection to any network. Create a second wallet on that machine and send most of your bitcoins to it. For best security don't ever connect it to the internet. If you need to send bitcoins from the safe to your spending wallet disconnect your home network from the internet and let your 2 copies of bitcoin just talk to each other. Once the safe has sent the transaction to your main computer shut down the safe and connect to the internet again. Your main machine will resend the transaction and then it can get in a block. You still need to create multiple encrypted backups of your safe's wallet.dat file to protect against hardware failure.
|
|
|
|
|
There is also the issue of password reuse.
kwukduck did you use the same password for Mt.gox and anywhere else?
|
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
