Sorry, I just realised what was up. When I installed Electrum, I DID in fact put a watching-only wallet on there, just as a placeholder before transferring the real wallets. It was watching the 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE address.

 

(This is all from memory at the moment as I don't have access to that computer right now, but will try to get it again in a few days)

Got hold of a family member's laptop. Had to wipe the Windows system partition and reinstall Win7 plus all the programs, I'm sure we've all been there.

Reinstalled electrum, the latest version, 2.9.3.

On opening it, was expecting to be told to create a new default wallet.

Instead I gazed upon a wallet that was neither mine, nor that relative's (I have theirs on a separate USB stick). It had over 13 BTC on it!
Naturally I first wondered if it was spendable (I'm only human) but no, it's seedless. It has transactions going back to June 2011 and up to just recently. There are several for 0.1 or 0.01 etc, and quite a few for 0.0000543 which IIRC was/is the minimum relay fee for the core client.

Can someone explain this behaviour? Is there some kind of 'test' wallet that electrum installs if it has nothing else to go on?

You should ask this in the Electrum sub-forum... or wait for a mod to move it for you.

Long story short - without your seed phrase you are screwed. *Possibly* you might be able to trawl the bytes on your mobile's storage drive, looking for a private key(s). It depends whether you encrypted your wallet (then it won't work), and how thorough the 'factory reset' was (if it overwrote every byte of space, you're screwed). Also you have to find an automated program that does this.

Can you remember *any* words of your seed? The more you can remember the more chance a 'brute force' search can find the right phrase - again you'll need a specialised program for it. Don't, of course, tell any of us here any words you remember.

Hi Crimbit, consensus is emerging (tee hee!) in this thread...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1457039.0

... that definitive proof has not yet been provided. SCW's blogpost isn't the smoking gun. I lack the time and will to follow the chains of reasoning in the 'is it or isn't it' show, so I defer for now to people who say 'it isn't'. Worryingly, Gavin Andresen thinks he's the real deal. I say 'worryingly' as I am a big-blocker and if GA has dropped the ball on this, whether innocently or out of motivated reasoning, it greatly damages 'our' cause.

(Digression: 'follow the arguments not the people' is great advice when the arguments can be fully digested by someone prepared to put in the time and effort, and where the questions and proposed solutions are clear-cut. But most real world disagreements are 'messy', and evaluating one's trust in the principal arguers is an imperfect but useful *and rational* way of doing inference)

Humans are curious.


If they send messages that have been signed using private keys associated with the early blocks. This is what is claimed to have happened.

Another reputable source here.

http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21698060-craig-wright-reveals-himself-as-satoshi-nakamoto

It says he published proof in a blog post. Doesn't seem to have a link.

Well, I know what *I'm* doing on the internet for the next hour!

(Or rather, until someone savvier beats me to it)

ETA apparently the above is a 'taster', the meatier article is:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefings/21698061-craig-steven-wright-claims-be-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin

Off to find that blog...

I just posted a link to a BBC article in the Press subforum. I don't think it's that nobody cares, it's just you and me are firsties. Seriously the beeb article is, like, 5 minutes old.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36168863

Thoughts? Where's the beef (i.e. messages signed with early block private keys)?

ETA: well the article claims such keys have been provided... I guess I'll wait until somebody somewhere actually publishes the signatures.

You have "legendary" under your name. I can sort of see why.

And now, I've been told by a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy in the NSA. Connect the dots, sheeple!

This topic has nothing whatsoever to do with calculus. If you meant 'math class', say 'math class'.

While I'm at it, the distribution of particles in a gas has nothing whatsoever to do with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, nor in fact with quantum mechanics itself. The old trope of all the gas suddenly coalescing on the left-hand side of the box is a *statistical* phenomenon, not a quantum one.

(my bolding)

On the offchance that this whole thing *isn't* some elaborate performance art, I thought I should address this bolded part.

It's just conceivable that we're all a bunch of raving misogynists who absolutely cannot cope with 'the radical belief that women are people too'.

But there is an alternative explanation - that we can see the difference between the motte and the bailey*. That, to put it coldly, we are all too aware that women are people too.

Anita Sarkeesian is a grifter. And she's not fooling too many people in the Bitcoin community. She is but one of a depressingly large number of worthless online personalities that have worked tirelessly to debase the concept of feminism, and make the word itself so poisonous to online discourse. Naturally anyone who thinks this "doesn't think women are people too", because that attempt at character assassination is what the whole damn machinery is for in the first place.


*http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/

What it is, is (I hope) the same as what the "cryptofeminism" account here is: satire.

Holy fuck, these scientitians have just BROKEN BITCOIN!


ETA: nevermind, I was too hasty.

It's not a camera.

But.... omg I hope they don't figure out how to attach a camera. Then Bitcoin is DOOMED.

This response is such a perfect match to the intellectual level of the OP, I'm in awe.

I've never understood why those against increasing the blocksize *insist* that their opponents are always about "paying for cups of coffee".

Not all consumer transactions are in the $1-$3 range. Strange to relate, but many things that people want to buy cost MORE than three dollars. Sometimes a lot more.
Why should an advocate of bitcoin-as-payment-network, concerned about their future ability to buy

a) a computer game,
b) the week's groceries,
c) a laptop PC,
d) their monthly mortgage/rent/utilities,
e) a used car,
f) a new car,
g) a mansion on a tropical island,

with bitcoins, always have to defend their stance as if they were talking about cups of coffee?

I look forward to a day when I can pay at least items in the categories (b) and (d) using Bitcoin. But no, ignore *everything* I just said, I JUST WANT TO BUY CUPS OF COFFEE.

Why do this?

If you advocate for small blocks you are not only forcing three-dollars transactions off the chain. You're going to restrict thousand-dollar transactions too, they'll just drop off the chain a little later. If you're fine with that, have the basic intellectual integrity to declare that you are. Don't distort the debate with frankly stupid memes about cups of coffee. CIYAM, can't say I know you that well but you seem like a decent sort and I'm surprised you'd frame things that way.

I agree with you that the benefits of BTC to purchasers have been oversold. One benefit though, is that if Bitcoin reduces payment processing costs for merchants, consumers should see these passed on as discounts on their purchases. But of course that relies on merchants passing on at least some of their savings, which too few are prepared to do.
Of course I understand shoestring operations may not be able to - if they're just baaaaarely above water with credit card processing fees, they're not going to get to hookers-and-blow territory when they accept BTC. But mortgage lenders, utility companies, supermarkets - they seem to me to be good examples of sectors which (a) can afford to pass savings on to consumers, and (b) will pretty much have to, to stay competitive, at least once the first snowball starts rolling.

Thanks for keeping us informed, Brad.

Yeah. So basically, just backup your private key!

In fact now that I think about it a bit more, that's exactly how I've been guarding my stash these last three years!

If I understand the OP correctly they seem to be asking for some way for the 'rightful owner' of a private key, who then has it stolen, to have some sort of fallback method of moving the coins without the private key.

For this to work there needs to be some sort of 'proof of identity' that the rightful owner could provide in lieu of the private key. In other words they need to have...

another private key.

This seems doable to me. Take whatever existing coins you have and transfer them to a new address by means of a 1-of-2 multisig transaction. Then, you need some way of separating the two private keys into two separate files (wallets or whatever). That might be the tricky bit - I've never done multisig transactions myself so I don't know how the major wallets implement them. You might have to 'hand-craft' a transaction. Finally you need to keep the two private keys very, very separate - like, one on your laptop in a wallet.dat, the other on some laminated paper in the household safe.

Then, when your laptop gets nicked, you use the key in the safe to move the coins. And vice-versa if the safe gets broken into. Of course there are failure-modes:
1) If BOTH your laptop and your safe get nicked you're effed.
2) If the thief spends the coins before you realise they're gone, you're effed.
3) You can't do all this retroactively. If the thief's already stolen your coins protected with a single private key, there's nothing you can do about that NOW, just do the multisig for your future coins.

So it now appears that my implicit defence of amaclin's character may have been premature.

No matter. Amaclin is still exposing shaky parts of the protocol, and doing so (so far) in an honest and transparent fashion, so regardless of the motivation, thanks!