Same, good transaction. thnx.

Lots of problems in the bitcoin world lately. It's sad because it really crushes confidence in the system and restrains further investment. First the largest online walet holder of bitcoins disappears 50,000+ btc gone then the third largest exchange has its wallet "deleted" losing 17,000+ BTC.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=32900.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=33457.0

It happens.

I am friend with Donald Norman who has been getting a lot of press with bitcoin. He is happy to answer some 2+2 questions and asked me to post this. He is a poker player (SmallFRYbigF on PS, TheDonald4Realz on FTP) and is a friend with many well known poker players (thailand 2p2er, Deldar182, RiverCrime, NMcNasty, and pretty much anyone from Liquidpoker.net), but for the last few months he is not playing poker anymore because he have gotten a lot of press. He is in with the 2p2 Thailand community as he used to live there as well and they can vouch for him as well as he is being an active and one of the most trusted members of LP for years ("StealCity"). You can see his press (Newsweek, WSJ's SmartMoney, Reuters, BBC, CNBC, Peter Schiff Radio Show, The Guardian, Independent...) and his projects at BitcoinConsultancy.com.
Their british exchange (britcoin.co.uk) has had hundreds of thousands of dollars of volumes and hasn't had any problems or security leaks like the other exchanges and they are just now starting up in the US as well with Intersango.us. Also their service for the foreseeable future is completely free.

Do not buy bitcoins with paypal or credit cards or exchanges that have had problems, paypal and credit cards do charge backs, so if you sell bitcoins for them you will basically be robbed blind and if you attempt to buy them you will have to buy them at over market value.

Anyone who trusts a Bitcoin business with anything they would care if it was lost is a complete fool. It is a cesspool of incompetence. That combined with anonymity and lack of recourse means a thieves paradise at worst and just plain incompetence at best.

Wonder where fizzwont is now. Glad I sold at 14! It was a fun party while it lasted, but someone remember to turn the lights out on the way out.

Britcoin has had its share of issues too: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?to...4032#msg364032

1) Adopt a currency that embraces decentralization
2) Centralize all your money
3) ?
4) You people are ******ed.

http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/841...ess-final-rule

doesn't sound good:

Considering this post from the owner of MtGox on the Bitcoin forums a few days ago:

how far are we from exchanging only accepting deposits from western union and shady transaction processors?

The first time I saw mybitcoin, I asked is this not dangerous to use. Can't the site just say they lost the bitcoin or say they were stolen and take everything. That is why the only places like wallets I would trust are exchanges and mining pools, because they have a large vested interest and generate income. They are not a place to store bitcoin.

Just like why poker sites are not place to store money. My only beef is security of the block, the size of the block, and the block chain growth. I wish they would bump the transaction fee to 0.1 and destroy it to create deflation. Also embed an ebay type store in the block, call it auctioncoin.

steelhouse,

I feel pretty confident that the only security solution you can trust right now is a personal one.

There's some good guides I can look up if anyone in this thread needs help setting something up. For almost everyone there's almost no value in keeping your coins ultraliquid, so just keep them on an $8 thumb drive.

There's no such thing as keeping them on an $8 thumb drive. You keep them on everyone who has the block chain.

The trouble is you need to keep a private key that is both backed up in several places, and not susceptible to getting taken by unwanted people. Those are two conflicting items.

As far as I know, there is no way to hand generate a private/public key pair. This means you must rely on a machine to do it. The machine must be trusted to not give it away to anyone else. You need to set up a secure machine and make sure all traces of the key are removed before ever connecting this machine to anything. If you have a dedicated machine that is not connected to the internet (and is never connected), you can do this. If you ever connect it, you need to trust that you removed all records of the key and that no malicious software was on the machine when the key was generated.

You can be *more* secure than most people by doing some of the steps above, although you still have some potential vulnerabilities. Add that to needing to having several backup copies of the private key in case one is lost (a $8 thumb drive seems like a terrible place to put all your eggs, although 5 of them might be sufficient).

Security needs to be extra effective since there is no way to identify who is stealing your coins. There is no recourse if you get them stolen. If you lose your key, you are SOL. The average person is not capable or not willing to spend the money (it's simply not worth it). This means you would have to trust others. In a mature market, that may be possible, but right now, it's quite clear how foolish it is to trust others in an anonymous decentralized system.

He means keep that key (which is in wallet.dat) on the thumb drive.

You can encrypt a file w/ arbitrarily strong password in seconds with 7zip. Then you can put it all over the place. I wouldn't even bother with local physical storage. 2 or 3 places online is plenty good enough.

I admit that this simple task is a bit much for common folk. This is part of the reason you can get such a good deal on coins now. Once there is a foolproof solution for the foolish masses the price will reflect that. Webcoin is making trust less solutions.

But the wallet was unencrypted on another machine somehow. Having the wallet somewhere else means nothing. If you delete your wallet, you at least are safe going forward, though. If you need to access it again, you'll have to go through all those hoops and transfer your wallet to a new one, and risk you have someone on your access.

Webcoin will be great until they forget to back up their site, or run off with everything, or just get hacked, like almost anything else that has taken off in the Bitcoin world.

There are also are a lot of alternative clients. Be wary of them. When the bitcoin client opens up it reads your wallet, it could also send your wallet to someone too. You can store your wallets on a usb and store them on non-connected computers. You can put say 20 btc in each wallet, and be careful not to overwrite other wallet.dat files. Then put them on an exchange like mtgox, when you need 20 of them.

There is no hurry to get into bitcoin. In fact I would wait two years, for most people. But remember, extending the debt ceiling just stole about $2000 out of every $10,000 in stocks, cash, or bonds you own. Even gold will have to pay the ravages of shipping, transaction costs, and capital gains.

I think this recent drop is a new law requiring exchanges to be registered?

Yes, you can play with bitcoin, but would you trust owning $5,000 in btc. I would never, so basically it is a toy currency.

gold, silver is constantly being pumped even in the 1990s it was pumped it has to be pumped or people would forget about it and it would be just lead. That is why, I would rather own some other commodity other than one that is pumped. My as well choose one that is at historic lows and demand is rising.

Bitcoin goofed it should not be a currency but a store of value.

Is this the new law you are referring to?

Webcoin won't be holding your whole key, you will have part of the key and a pin to access theirs. They will use nLock to automatically return your keys in the case of loss of server or crackdown on them or something.

The point is that there are solutions and they are being built.

So if they screw up and lose the part of your keys, you are SOL. Are they insured? Is there any way to guarantee they don't have your full key?

Trusting an amateur hour bitcoin business is playing with fire.

Needs more love

Nlock is part of Bitcoin and is a type of transaction that means the coins go to a backup address that you control after some specified amount of time. If they maintain control of the address they can continually reset that time, if they lose control you eventually get the coins.

I'm not saying to go with amateur hour guys. I"m saying there are pro solutions coming.

Clearly needs more love, but a thread full of kool-aid drinkers isn't the place to get it.

You eventually get the coins, if the backup address hasn't been compromised or lost.

What incentive is there for pro solutions to come? The only reason I can see is political reasons, or doing some kind of business where the type of benefits Bitcoin provide is something that you can charge a premium for (or otherwise wouldn't offer your service). It would have to be something that is relatively low cost to set up and maintain. Profitable businesses using Bitcoins are hard to come by. This becomes even more true as the market cap continues to shrink. The cost to sell any large number of coins would also be quite small as the market for buying and selling is extremely thin.

The best bet for Bitcoin is if organized crime started using it for transactions. Set up some front businesses that would not otherwise be profitable if not for laundering, move money through there, and Bob's your uncle. But they can do this with cash now. The main benefit is international transfers or moving long distances.

any thoughts on the open letter posted on mybitcoin right now?

it's entirely unclear why they went completely silent for so long, but at least they are trying to resolve it before offering any services again.

Just more confirmation on how ridiculous this bitcoin thing is.

is there some reason for the large price difference between mtgox and tradehill, why is there no arbitrage?
bid ask
mtgox 7.2 7.24
tradehill 7.53 7.85

Arbitrage is a complete waste of time. Have fun hustling for Happy Meal Money while dealing with lots of firms that you shouldn't trust very much