Armory - Discussion Thread

[picobit]

Could you please add an option to Armory to allow the user to refuse to accept certain coins. If he receives certain coins, he sends them back right away.

Here is the full proposal: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110749.0

Thanks.

So if I buy coins from MtGox, and the guy who sold them to MtGox got them from a guy who got them from a guy who got them from a thief, then my wallet should reject the coins and send them back to MtGox' big common wallet?  No thanks, that sounds like an incredibly bad idea.

Any attempt to "taint" bitcoin will ruin their use as a currency.  Imagine if all US dollar bills with traces of cocaine were invalid.

[1713297855]

1713297855

[1713297855]

1713297855

[1713297855]

1713297855

[1713297855]

1713297855

[dellech]

...

so the unsigned tx has is located in the unencrypted data portion of the USB stick and can be accessed after you've booted up a desktop computer from the encrypted Linux OS on the USB stick, correct?  but where is the Satoshi client/blockchain that you need Armory to access?

running two separate computers is the very idea of Armory (one for the offline wallet and one for the watching-only wallet).

With my USB stick I could do everything on the same PC:
- boot normally from harddisk: internet connection, bitcoind and Armory watching-only wallet. Create unsigned tx and save to the fat partition on the stick
- boot from USB, sign the tx with offline Armory (this needs no block chain)
- reboot from harddisk and send the signed transaction

whenever the system is booted from its harddisk the wallet on the encrypted part of the stick is securely hidden

now that is a cool solution.  just to make sure i understand; when you boot from the USB, its like a Live CD session where everything is in RAM.  nothing touches the hard drive, right?

it is not necessary to have evrything in RAM - when I boot from USB the encrypted partition may be a writable file system and even contain a swap file if used on a PC with too small RAM.
The only important thing is that this encrypted container is not accessible when the system runs an untrusted/networked OS and I plug in my USB stick.

but once you unencrypt the partition can't malware on the computer reach your private keys?

The partition is unlocked in the boot process from the USB stick and is the root filesystem while using the offline wallet. The harddisk of the computer is not even mounted, so malware on the PC has no chance to run :-)

Of course you never unlock the partition on a running system, only cold boot from the USB stick itself

[unclescrooge]

Could you please add an option to Armory to allow the user to refuse to accept certain coins. If he receives certain coins, he sends them back right away.

Here is the full proposal: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110749.0

Thanks.

This is not feasible.  99% of users have encrypted wallets, which require unlocking to move any coins once they've been received. Many wallets are offline, and require a bit more work than typing a passphrase.

Second of all, this is not a feature for any baseline Bitcoin client.  This violates one of the core metrics of suitability for a currency: fungibility.  If I have 10 BTC, it will buy me 20 cheeseburgers, regardless of the transaction history of those 10 BTC.  No coins are worth more or less, any more so than $100 bill from my wallet is different than a $100 bill from a bank vault.

In the end, there's no benefit anyway.  If someone steals 1000 BTC they're not going to spend them directly.  They will mix them through 100 addresses with "non-tainted" coins, and 99% of users don't care anyway, so they will accept them as payment and mix them with more good coins from legitimate users.  The end result is that your client no longer believes that any coins in circulation are legitimate, and the only person you've inconvenienced is yourself.

If you would like to explore this idea, modifications could be made to notify you that somehow there's a relevant history to the coins you just received.  I'm sure someone could help you modify Armory to explore this, but I'm up to my eyeballs in core feature development, and making Armory usable at all.  This particular feature would be very low on the priority list.

+1, thanks for not following proposals like these.

[cypherdoc]

Could you please add an option to Armory to allow the user to refuse to accept certain coins. If he receives certain coins, he sends them back right away.

Here is the full proposal: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110749.0

Thanks.

This is not feasible.  99% of users have encrypted wallets, which require unlocking to move any coins once they've been received. Many wallets are offline, and require a bit more work than typing a passphrase.

Second of all, this is not a feature for any baseline Bitcoin client.  This violates one of the core metrics of suitability for a currency: fungibility.  If I have 10 BTC, it will buy me 20 cheeseburgers, regardless of the transaction history of those 10 BTC.  No coins are worth more or less, any more so than $100 bill from my wallet is different than a $100 bill from a bank vault.

In the end, there's no benefit anyway.  If someone steals 1000 BTC they're not going to spend them directly.  They will mix them through 100 addresses with "non-tainted" coins, and 99% of users don't care anyway, so they will accept them as payment and mix them with more good coins from legitimate users.  The end result is that your client no longer believes that any coins in circulation are legitimate, and the only person you've inconvenienced is yourself.

If you would like to explore this idea, modifications could be made to notify you that somehow there's a relevant history to the coins you just received.  I'm sure someone could help you modify Armory to explore this, but I'm up to my eyeballs in core feature development, and making Armory usable at all.  This particular feature would be very low on the priority list.

+1, thanks for not following proposals like these.

+1000

[Transisto]

My armory.exe 0.82.2a process use 1,346,720K in RAM

I have only one wallet with 2 transaction, Could the size of the bitcoin client wallet have something to do with it ?

Edit : I had it go to 1385mb by clicking a few menu. It would add ~2-5 mb per clicked menu and doesn't really come down.

Edit2 : Startup = 1minute, ram rise steadily to 1332mb, IO 70mb/s

Might be normal, but quite heavy compared to bitcoin-qt's 100mb.

[etotheipi]

My armory.exe 0.82.2a process use 1,346,720K in RAM

I have only one wallet with 2 transaction, Could the size of the bitcoin client wallet have something to do with it ?

Edit : I had it go to 1385mb by clicking a few menu. It would add ~2-5 mb per clicked menu and doesn't really come down.

Edit2 : Startup = 1minute, ram rise steadily to 1332mb, IO 70mb/s

Might be normal, but quite heavy compared to bitcoin-qt's 100mb.

This is the trade-off with keeping... a lot of stuff... in RAM.  I will be moving to a disk-based index, but that will trade Armory's RAM footprint for its disk footprint.  A lot of users have expressed that they like the fact that Armory doesn't duplicate blockchain data, and uses only about 30 MB on disk (making it very portable).

After beta, I will be switching to disk-based, which will duplicate blockchain data, but will tone down the RAM usage quite a bit.  But as said above, this will change the mechanics of Armory, and I didn't want t do that until after beta (and it might be a lot of work... but it will be leveldb which has been quite pleasant so far in my testing)

[ScarecrowMagick]

Unable to send transaction of 0.385 btc plus 0.0435 tx fee - get the following output:

(WARNING) armoryengine.py:5576 - Invalid script for input %d:
      Script:
         [PUSHDATA -- 71 BYTES:]
         3044021f03f64df18946adba7de630dcb6c296fb2afe1900152246a1851d4df569797d022100acb f8c492e9d01c0eea1620e96ba6bffda839f56528339408494aeaf8e22d14201
         [PUSHDATA -- 65 BYTES:]
         04cc067362adf38637085b8549ca30401733f91f5580438cc049fad1d6d7e7bdd6f569d1022bcb6 8ac4796501dadb7c02c44850995e801218a945f668ec72ea4ea
(WARNING) armoryengine.py:5578 - Spending txout script:
      Script:
         OP_DUP
         OP_HASH160
         [PUSHDATA -- 20 BYTES:]
         3e64ecac99bcce0b4c33fcfa489f9a70ce29bff8
         OP_EQUALVERIFY
         OP_CHECKSIG
(ERROR) qtdialogs.py:4860 - Problem sending transaction!
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/chuck/BitcoinArmory/qtdialogs.py", line 4850, in createTxAndBroadcast
    finalTx = txdp.prepareFinalTx()
  File "/home/chuck/BitcoinArmory/armoryengine.py", line 5580, in prepareFinalTx
    raise SignatureError, 'Invalid script for input %d' % i
SignatureError: Invalid script for input 167
(ERROR) armoryengine.py:481 - Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/chuck/BitcoinArmory/qtdialogs.py", line 4850, in createTxAndBroadcast
    finalTx = txdp.prepareFinalTx()
  File "/home/chuck/BitcoinArmory/armoryengine.py", line 5580, in prepareFinalTx
    raise SignatureError, 'Invalid script for input %d' % i
SignatureError: Invalid script for input 167

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/chuck/BitcoinArmory/qtdialogs.py", line 4850, in createTxAndBroadcast
    finalTx = txdp.prepareFinalTx()
  File "/home/chuck/BitcoinArmory/armoryengine.py", line 5580, in prepareFinalTx
    raise SignatureError, 'Invalid script for input %d' % i
armoryengine.SignatureError: Invalid script for input 167

I did a git pull and recompile this afternoon, but it still doesn't work.  Also have transaction for 0.4205 btc stuck in the internet for 3 days now. What can I do?

ScarecrowMagick

[etotheipi]

Unable to send transaction of 0.385 btc plus 0.0435 tx fee - get the following output:

...

SignatureError: Invalid script for input 167

...

Holy hell:  167 inputs!?!  To be honest, I would expect Armory to work anyway, but I also am not surprised that it didn't since this is a corner condition I haven't been able to test.  Do you mind sending me the log file and/or a copy of the raw transaction that has the bad signature?  If that's too much of a privacy concern for you, maybe I can find another way to debug it...

And wow for the 0.0435 transaction fee!  That transaction is probably 30 kB ...?!

[ScarecrowMagick]

Hi -

I sent you the tx raw data from the stuck transaction. How can I send you the logfile?

ScarecrowMagick

[etotheipi]

Mostly-random posting (updating you on what I have been doing instead of Armory developement):

I have been neglecting Armory completely the last few days, because I got nerd-sniped trying to figure out the investment quality of buying rental property.  This came up because my new fiance and I started counting up each others' financials and realized that a dual-income will leave some headroom for investing.  And we noticed some nearby properties that are going for super-cheap which we could rent out for much higher than the mortgage payments. 

So I spent the last few days diligently digging into IRS publications, and making spreadsheets to try to model the relative investment potential of the rental property, taking into account every relevant tax code.  Partially for curiosity, partially for education, but ultimately because it's feasible we could do this in a couple years.  What I found surprised me.  And I have included everything on this spreadsheet, which I am posting because others might find it useful, and the time spent making it would otherwise have been spent on Armory development, which is what you were probably expecting

I won't go into extraordinary detail about it here (off-topic!), but this spreadsheet assumes that the initial closing costs on the loan are your "investment", and compares your movement in net worth to a fixed-rate-of-return asset.  What's your overall equity&cash gain through an entire cycle of purchase, rent it out, pay taxes, sell it, and then pay more taxes?  For this particular property, it looks like approximately 11% annualized return for 10 years.  That's hardcore! 

It appears that house prices have dropped dramatically, but rent prices have not.  Perhaps this happened because the shitty economy has made it very difficult for people to do anything about the market inefficiency.  I'm sure many people see the opportunity but can't act on it because they can't get the credit, and/or don't have capital for down payment and closing costs

None of this constitutes financial or tax advice.  I just thought it might be educational, and I'm sure there's a lot of investor types reading this.  Perhaps you have some experience with this and will PM me your thoughts about it!

[kjj]

Mostly-random posting (updating you on what I have been doing instead of Armory developement):

I have been neglecting Armory completely the last few days, because I got nerd-sniped trying to figure out the investment quality of buying rental property.  This came up because my new fiance and I started counting up each others' financials and realized that a dual-income will leave some headroom for investing.  And we noticed some nearby properties that are going for super-cheap which we could rent out for much higher than the mortgage payments. 

So I spent the last few days diligently digging into IRS publications, and making spreadsheets to try to model the relative investment potential of the rental property, taking into account every relevant tax code.  Partially for curiosity, partially for education, but ultimately because it's feasible we could do this in a couple years.  What I found surprised me.  And I have included everything on this spreadsheet, which I am posting because others might find it useful, and the time spent making it would otherwise have been spent on Armory development, which is what you were probably expecting

I won't go into extraordinary detail about it here (off-topic!), but this spreadsheet assumes that the initial closing costs on the loan are your "investment", and compares your movement in net worth to a fixed-rate-of-return asset.  What's your overall equity&cash gain through an entire cycle of purchase, rent it out, pay taxes, sell it, and then pay more taxes?  For this particular property, it looks like approximately 11% annualized return for 10 years.  That's hardcore! 

It appears that house prices have dropped dramatically, but rent prices have not.  Perhaps this happened because the shitty economy has made it very difficult for people to do anything about the market inefficiency.  I'm sure many people see the opportunity but can't act on it because they can't get the credit, and/or don't have capital for down payment and closing costs

None of this constitutes financial or tax advice.  I just thought it might be educational, and I'm sure there's a lot of investor types reading this.  Perhaps you have some experience with this and will PM me your thoughts about it!

Your occupancy rate seems high, and your annual repairs numbers seem low.  (Not based on any hard evidence, just what my gut says, but my gut is very conservative.)  Also, you need to pay for management, either in the value of your time, or as cash to a service.  If you have good friends in need of a home to rent, and you don't mind losing them as friends, the management cost can be reduced considerably.

More on the occupancy rate.  A 95% occupancy rate doesn't mean that you earn 95% of the rent income each month, it means that you need to make the mortgage payments out of pocket for an average of 12 months over 20 years.  That means that you need $34k to close, not $22k, and you need to be vigilant about not spending that contingency fund on anything but mortgage payments, and you must replenish it first, before taking profits.  You must assume that those 12 months that you have to pay out of pocket will come at the absolute worst time, when you have both lost your jobs and don't have outside cashflow to make the payments from your regular income.

Also, you have to resist the temptation to dip into the repair fund for non-repair costs.  If you spend less on repairs for a few years than you planned for, you can bet that the water main under the front lawn is going to pop the following year and wipe you out, or a storm will send a tree through a wall, or something.  Don't expect to use your insurance policy to cover things that are really repairs.  You should probably also put a few years worth of repairs into the fund up front, further increasing your closing costs.

The good news will come a few years down the road, when you have multiple units and you can start to make reasonable expectations that the law of averages will be working on your side instead of against you.

Oh, and for the love of god, incorporate.  Hopefully a different company for each property.  Nevada has no corporate income taxes, and it is super easy to incorporate there.  Plus, you get to fly to Vegas to apply for bank accounts in person, which is always fun.  This may be futile though, since your state may hit you with corporate income taxes on the basis of the property under rental being in the state, even if you try very hard to properly establish a nexus in Nevada.  Check with your lawyer (and get a lawyer).  Take the corporation seriously, follow all of the procedures and your bylaws to the letter, do all of the paperwork by the book, don't commingle your funds.  When you get to multiple properties, have a corporation that owns the corporations that own them, and let that holding corp manage the pooled repair and vacancy funds.

Make sure that your accountant takes you out on the boat that you are going to buy him on the installment plan for keeping your books straight.  (And get an accountant.)

[bigasic]

Im not a technical person. I have armory installed and so far love it.. Is there a step by step post or listing where it shows you how to put you wallet or address on a thumb drive/cd and paper back up. and then totally delete that wallet and or address. then take the paper back up and get access to the coins?

I know it can be done. but I just need  to find if there is a step by step tutorial for dummies?, lol..  I just need to find the best/easiest way to take my coins and put them into cold storage and then easily put them back so I can trade/sell them..

Im just getting my feet wet with armory and need a little guidance..

thanks in advance..

AR

[kjj]

Im not a technical person. I have armory installed and so far love it.. Is there a step by step post or listing where it shows you how to put you wallet or address on a thumb drive/cd and paper back up. and then totally delete that wallet and or address. then take the paper back up and get access to the coins?

I know it can be done. but I just need  to find if there is a step by step tutorial for dummies?, lol..  I just need to find the best/easiest way to take my coins and put them into cold storage and then easily put them back so I can trade/sell them..

Is this what you are looking for?  http://bitcoinarmory.com/index.php/using-offline-wallets-in-armory

[etotheipi]

Im not a technical person. I have armory installed and so far love it.. Is there a step by step post or listing where it shows you how to put you wallet or address on a thumb drive/cd and paper back up. and then totally delete that wallet and or address. then take the paper back up and get access to the coins?

I know it can be done. but I just need  to find if there is a step by step tutorial for dummies?, lol..  I just need to find the best/easiest way to take my coins and put them into cold storage and then easily put them back so I can trade/sell them..

Im just getting my feet wet with armory and need a little guidance..

thanks in advance..

AR

I don't have a tutorial for what buttons to click, but I do have a conceptual tutorial on the website about Using Offline Wallets in Armory.  

If you want to know what buttons to click, just double click on the wallet you have created already and go to "Make paper backup on the right side".  To recover the wallet, you click on "Import Wallet" or "Restore Wallet" from the main window.  One of the options will be "Restore from Paper Backup."  Then you can enter everything on the paper backup to recover it.

The website linked above also has a section called "I'm Scared" which gives you a little guidance to make yourself more comfortable with the whole process.  

[etotheipi]

Your occupancy rate seems high, and your annual repairs numbers seem low.  (Not based on any hard evidence, just what my gut says, but my gut is very conservative.)  Also, you need to pay for management, either in the value of your time, or as cash to a service.  If you have good friends in need of a home to rent, and you don't mind losing them as friends, the management cost can be reduced considerably.

More on the occupancy rate.  A 95% occupancy rate doesn't mean that you earn 95% of the rent income each month, it means that you need to make the mortgage payments out of pocket for an average of 12 months over 20 years.  That means that you need $34k to close, not $22k, and you need to be vigilant about not spending that contingency fund on anything but mortgage payments, and you must replenish it first, before taking profits.  You must assume that those 12 months that you have to pay out of pocket will come at the absolute worst time, when you have both lost your jobs and don't have outside cashflow to make the payments from your regular income.

...

Oh, and for the love of god, incorporate.  Hopefully a different company for each property.  Nevada has no corporate income taxes, and it is super easy to incorporate there.  Plus, you get to fly to Vegas to apply for bank accounts in person, which is always fun.  This may be futile though, since your state may hit you with corporate income taxes on the basis of the property under rental being in the state, even if you try very hard to properly establish a nexus in Nevada.  Check with your lawyer (and get a lawyer).  Take the corporation seriously, follow all of the procedures and your bylaws to the letter, do all of the paperwork by the book, don't commingle your funds.  When you get to multiple properties, have a corporation that owns the corporations that own them, and let that holding corp manage the pooled repair and vacancy funds.

...

Thanks for the feedback!  The particular properties we're looking at are condos.  The by-laws of the condos are standard, which means that a $5k HVAC replacement is about as extreme as the repairs get, and that's probably once every 10 years (at most).  Anything more expensive than that is going to be covered either by HOA or insurance (i.e. every example you mentioned in your previous post).  If you add up all the appliances in a 1100 sq ft condo, it doesn't even add up to $10k.  So I think it's actually crazy to suggest I'd spend $17k over 10 years.  If I did, that would be a 99.5th percentile kind of thing.

The 95% occupancy accounts for time between tenants.  That is definitely not a down payment thing:  you might pay a little bit upfront while first finding a tenant, but once you have an income stream, the vacancy periods are covered by your profits to that point.  I don't need to contribute more money from my personal bank account to cover those, unless I was really irresponsible with the cash stream (which is the opposite of my financial personality)/  Though, perhaps I should add a little bit to the "cash to close" to cover the initial tenant search -- though even that may be minimal since I might find someone while waiting to close.

Also, this property would be in the same condo association as we already live in.  There's no necessity to pay a management company for one property that is across the parking lot.  If we start accumulating lots of rental properties, it might become worth it.    So, I totally agree with your assessment if this was a single-family home, but the variance on a condo is dramatically lower than on a regular house.  The HOA fees are a form of insurance.  Also, in this particular HOA, there has not been a special assessment ever in the 25 years since it was built.

However, I do like your advice about incorporating.  Again, it might be kind of overkill for a single unit, especially when it looks so cash-positive, but if we start really getting into it, it sounds like there's lots of options for "optimizing" our tax burden  Very interesting!    And thanks for the feedback.  I'll investigate Nevada tax code!

[kjj]

Thanks for the feedback!  The particular properties we're looking at are condos.  The by-laws of the condos are standard, which means that a $5k HVAC replacement is about as extreme as the repairs get, and that's probably once every 10 years (at most).  Anything more expensive than that is going to be covered either by HOA or insurance (i.e. every example you mentioned in your previous post).  If you add up all the appliances in a 1100 sq ft condo, it doesn't even add up to $10k.  So I think it's actually crazy to suggest I'd spend $17k over 10 years.  If I did, that would be a 99.5th percentile kind of thing.

The 95% occupancy accounts for time between tenants.  That is definitely not a down payment thing:  you might pay a little bit upfront while first finding a tenant, but once you have an income stream, the vacancy periods are covered by your profits to that point.  I don't need to contribute more money from my personal bank account to cover those, unless I was really irresponsible with the cash stream (which is the opposite of my financial personality)/  Though, perhaps I should add a little bit to the "cash to close" to cover the initial tenant search -- though even that may be minimal since I might find someone while waiting to close.

Also, this property would be in the same condo association as we already live in.  There's no necessity to pay a management company for one property that is across the parking lot.  If we start accumulating lots of rental properties, it might become worth it.    So, I totally agree with your assessment if this was a single-family home, but the variance on a condo is dramatically lower than on a regular house.  The HOA fees are a form of insurance.  Also, in this particular HOA, there has not been a special assessment ever in the 25 years since it was built.

However, I do like your advice about incorporating.  Again, it might be kind of overkill for a single unit, especially when it looks so cash-positive, but if we start really getting into it, it sounds like there's lots of options for "optimizing" our tax burden  Very interesting!    And thanks for the feedback.  I'll investigate Nevada tax code!

Just make sure that the funding is available for inter-tenant periods.  If you are thrifty by nature and have a lot in savings, you won't mind having that money in a designated account, and doing so will remind you that if you ever use it, you are dipping into a fund with a purpose, and that you'd better be pretty certain that the purpose won't show up when you least expect it.

The incorporation part isn't about taxes.  And actually, depending on your state, will probably make you pay more in taxes.  The real purpose is that you have unlimited liability for things that happen in your property.  Insurance policies have limits, possibly leaving you on the hook for the overage.  Having each property owned by a different corporation helps shield your other assets.  If someone falls in a house that you own personally, you could lose everything you own, including other rental properties and your personal assets.  If the corporation owns the house, and you are careful, it is hard to pierce the veil and expand the scope of the losses to the other corporation's assets, or to your personal assets.  It also provides some protection in the other direction, but is harder to set up properly.  In theory, it should be possible to get sued personally, and have your ownership in the properties shielded from that judgment.

By the way, I normally despise HOAs, but it sounds like yours could be great for what you want to do.

[etotheipi]

kjj,

Thanks!  This is all very good advice!  Please continue this in the Off-topic thread I started.  I would like to continue this discussion, but it's way off-topic for this thread!

Diving back into Armory tomorrow!

[Comodore]

Hello,
I miss date information http://bitcoinarmory.com/index.php/get-armory at the changelog. It would be very helpful in my opinion. Could you add it please?

BTW: Your client is amazing. Love the fact you have 64-bit version.

[LordMord]

Hello,
i wanted to use an old XP system for the cold Storage but after i installed Armory and want to start it i get an error messages that says the Application-Configuration is not correct and i should reinstall (which i tryed)

Should Armory work with XP and if so got any ideas what might be wrong.

[etotheipi]

Hello,
i wanted to use an old XP system for the cold Storage but after i installed Armory and want to start it i get an error messages that says the Application-Configuration is not correct and i should reinstall (which i tryed)

Should Armory work with XP and if so got any ideas what might be wrong.

Interesting!  I haven't seen this before.  For offline, there's no reason it shouldn't work, no matter how little RAM you have. 

Are you in 32-bit WinXP or 64-bit?  I imagine an error like that could happen if you downloaded the 64-bit version and tried to run it on a 32-bit OS.