Printing Bitcoin Bills

[PrintCoins]

I am opening up physical bitcoin bill printing to others.

This will mean that you can easily create a dynamic pdf to generate these bills:



I will also provide help on the printing process. The cost will be 5 BTC and you will also need the following:

* A website (with a DNS registered to you)
* A color printer (I recommend Brother as their replacement ink is rather affordable - you go through a lot)
* 100% cotton paper 25lb or more in weight. Don't use wood pulp paper, it will fall apart in wallets.
http://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=100%25+cotton+paper
* A good paper cutter:
http://www.amazon.com/Swingline-ClassicCut-Guillotine-Paper-Trimmer/dp/B00006IATF/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1324645320&sr=8-5
search for "paper stack cutter" to get something that cuts more than a few pages at a time (you will have to pay a lot more for that).
* 25mm (1 inch) square tamper evident holograms stickers. You can use much larger ones if you like. You will need one for each side of the bill. A package of 100 generics should be about $6, but Casascius is creating custom bitcoin ones that will be marked with your site name. They are preferable.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=25mm+tamper+evident+hologram

[1713928994]

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[1713928994]

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[1713928994]

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[vuce]

I'm just wondering, without a trusted third party, how can someone trust the maker of these bills that the private key is really under the hologram?

[natman3400]

So your charging money for something i can do for free with scripts you can find if you Google hard enough (and on my black an white laser printer?)?
I'm not saying that this is a stupid idea, it is just not the best idea to try to sell something that is so easy to do on your own for free.
Works kinda like selling toast, It works if your a restaurant, but most people would rather make there own toast at home and save money.
Edit: I can just pop on over to https://www.bitaddress.org and then just photoshop in a little logo.

[PrintCoins]

I'm just wondering, without a trusted third party, how can someone trust the maker of these bills that the private key is really under the hologram?

Impossible to know. When you buy physical bitcoins off someone you are putting your trust into them.

The code to create the PDF will automatically generate the keypair and put the QR codes into the bill. It would take modifying the code to remove the private key. Though the printer could also scan the private key themselves to steal them (or also modify the code to make it record them).

That said, when the details of the algorithm are solid and can be translated into php or a bash script, I will be incorporating 3rd party private key addition to the bills (you would print a sheet, sticker it, send it to someone else to print over keypair two and they would sticker and cut it).

[PrintCoins]

So your charging money for something i can do for free with scripts you can find if you Google hard enough (and on my black an white laser printer?)?
I'm not saying that this is a stupid idea, it is just not the best idea to try to sell something that is so easy to do on your own for free.
Works kinda like selling toast, It works if your a restaurant, but most people would rather make there own toast at home and save money.
Edit: I can just pop on over to https://www.bitaddress.org and then just photoshop in a little logo.

If you are not willing to spend 5 BTC you can't eat my toast.

Obviously you value your time much less than others. This isn't really for end users, but for people that want to sell their own bitcoin bills. They will end up paying more for their paper than they are paying me. They get the ease of just entering in quantity and selecting denomination, and not having to do anything in photoshop. 400 Bills sent to the printer at a push off a button.

[natman3400]

So your charging money for something i can do for free with scripts you can find if you Google hard enough (and on my black an white laser printer?)?
I'm not saying that this is a stupid idea, it is just not the best idea to try to sell something that is so easy to do on your own for free.
Works kinda like selling toast, It works if your a restaurant, but most people would rather make there own toast at home and save money.
Edit: I can just pop on over to https://www.bitaddress.org and then just photoshop in a little logo.

If you are not willing to spend 5 BTC you can't eat my toast.

Obviously you value your time much less than others.

I'm half tempted to dig up that old script that did the exact same thing You are offering.
Maybe even take the two seconds to make it accept a logo option.
At least look at the community, most of these people are smart enough to work photoshop/gimp batch scripts and to use google.
I'm not saying don't do this, im just saying offering toast covered in gold leaf is better then selling plain toast (that we have to provide the jam for).

Thanks for at least reminding me that i never released the version of http://bitcoin.modernjob.info/print.html I made that prints the public key instead of the private key in plain text.

[onesalt]

I'm just wondering, without a trusted third party, how can someone trust the maker of these bills that the private key is really under the hologram?

Impossible to know. When you buy physical bitcoins off someone you are putting your trust into them.

The code to create the PDF will automatically generate the keypair and put the QR codes into the bill. It would take modifying the code to remove the private key. Though the printer could also scan the private key themselves to steal them (or also modify the code to make it record them).

That said, when the details of the algorithm are solid and can be translated into php or a bash script, I will be incorporating 3rd party private key addition to the bills (you would print a sheet, sticker it, send it to someone else to print over keypair two and they would sticker and cut it).

So what you're saying is there is no guarantee to their value, which makes them essentially worthless by virtue of being totally unreliable. good job.

[PrintCoins]

I'm just wondering, without a trusted third party, how can someone trust the maker of these bills that the private key is really under the hologram?

Impossible to know. When you buy physical bitcoins off someone you are putting your trust into them.

The code to create the PDF will automatically generate the keypair and put the QR codes into the bill. It would take modifying the code to remove the private key. Though the printer could also scan the private key themselves to steal them (or also modify the code to make it record them).

That said, when the details of the algorithm are solid and can be translated into php or a bash script, I will be incorporating 3rd party private key addition to the bills (you would print a sheet, sticker it, send it to someone else to print over keypair two and they would sticker and cut it).

So what you're saying is there is no guarantee to their value, which makes them essentially worthless by virtue of being totally unreliable. good job.

They are as reliable as the person that prints them. This is the nature of physical bitcoins.

[mc_lovin]

I'm just wondering, without a trusted third party, how can someone trust the maker of these bills that the private key is really under the hologram?

Impossible to know. When you buy physical bitcoins off someone you are putting your trust into them.

The code to create the PDF will automatically generate the keypair and put the QR codes into the bill. It would take modifying the code to remove the private key. Though the printer could also scan the private key themselves to steal them (or also modify the code to make it record them).

That said, when the details of the algorithm are solid and can be translated into php or a bash script, I will be incorporating 3rd party private key addition to the bills (you would print a sheet, sticker it, send it to someone else to print over keypair two and they would sticker and cut it).

So what you're saying is there is no guarantee to their value, which makes them essentially worthless by virtue of being totally unreliable. good job.

They are as reliable as the person that prints them. This is the nature of physical bitcoins.

Sort of like cheques?  Some people write bad cheques and some don't.  That makes sense...  The thing I like about this is that it's a shippable item that you can send on eBay with a tracking number and thus is no longer a 'digital' item and should fit into the rules.  I added PrintCoins to my list of available physical bitcoins on bitcointrading and I actually really like the idea. 

[natman3400]

I'm just wondering, without a trusted third party, how can someone trust the maker of these bills that the private key is really under the hologram?

Impossible to know. When you buy physical bitcoins off someone you are putting your trust into them.

The code to create the PDF will automatically generate the keypair and put the QR codes into the bill. It would take modifying the code to remove the private key. Though the printer could also scan the private key themselves to steal them (or also modify the code to make it record them).

That said, when the details of the algorithm are solid and can be translated into php or a bash script, I will be incorporating 3rd party private key addition to the bills (you would print a sheet, sticker it, send it to someone else to print over keypair two and they would sticker and cut it).

So what you're saying is there is no guarantee to their value, which makes them essentially worthless by virtue of being totally unreliable. good job.

They are as reliable as the person that prints them. This is the nature of physical bitcoins.

Here is one of those coating the toast with gold things.
You could act as a trusted 3d party that they send their bitcoins to, and you can ensure the bills are funded.

[mc_lovin]

I'm just wondering, without a trusted third party, how can someone trust the maker of these bills that the private key is really under the hologram?

Impossible to know. When you buy physical bitcoins off someone you are putting your trust into them.

The code to create the PDF will automatically generate the keypair and put the QR codes into the bill. It would take modifying the code to remove the private key. Though the printer could also scan the private key themselves to steal them (or also modify the code to make it record them).

That said, when the details of the algorithm are solid and can be translated into php or a bash script, I will be incorporating 3rd party private key addition to the bills (you would print a sheet, sticker it, send it to someone else to print over keypair two and they would sticker and cut it).

So what you're saying is there is no guarantee to their value, which makes them essentially worthless by virtue of being totally unreliable. good job.

They are as reliable as the person that prints them. This is the nature of physical bitcoins.

Here is one of those coating the toast with gold things.
You could act as a trusted 3d party that they send their bitcoins to, and you can ensure the bills are funded.

+1 great idea!  or make it so people can check the balance of the bill.  or can you already do that?

[PrintCoins]

There are two qr codes exposed on the right. One is just the pub address, the other is a direct link to the balance on block explorer.

[natman3400]

I'm just wondering, without a trusted third party, how can someone trust the maker of these bills that the private key is really under the hologram?

Impossible to know. When you buy physical bitcoins off someone you are putting your trust into them.

The code to create the PDF will automatically generate the keypair and put the QR codes into the bill. It would take modifying the code to remove the private key. Though the printer could also scan the private key themselves to steal them (or also modify the code to make it record them).

That said, when the details of the algorithm are solid and can be translated into php or a bash script, I will be incorporating 3rd party private key addition to the bills (you would print a sheet, sticker it, send it to someone else to print over keypair two and they would sticker and cut it).

So what you're saying is there is no guarantee to their value, which makes them essentially worthless by virtue of being totally unreliable. good job.

They are as reliable as the person that prints them. This is the nature of physical bitcoins.

Here is one of those coating the toast with gold things.
You could act as a trusted 3d party that they send their bitcoins to, and you can ensure the bills are funded.

+1 great idea!  or make it so people can check the balance of the bill.  or can you already do that?

You can do that by putting the public key/address into block explorer.
The problem is that printing bitcoins is easy, I have had a script to do it sitting in my home folder for quite a while.
If i wanted to, after he started selling his fancy script, I could just release my script for free and crash his business.
There is also the problem of trust, if any one can just buy a kit and print them, then you know someone is going to make a lot with public keys that don't correspond to the private key and then sell them for free money.
The solution is you sell your services as a trusted third party, they do the printing, get the bills just like they like them, then you check to make sure the private keys correspond to the public keys and put your signature (or some better identifying mark) only on the ones that do, then you send them back, they fund them and put the holograms on. Then the people can rest assured that because your mark is on the bill, that the address on the bill corresponds to the private key under the hologram.