On the buying from amazon:
Surly amazon would just have a public address which they declare is theirs. Then when you pay by bitcoins on amazon, after generating a new sending address, you tell amazon from what address you will be sending them payment, they associate that address with your account and send you an email as following:
Dear Customer,
This email confirms that payment will be send from: (sending address) to (amazons receiving address)
product:
date:
order number:
Amazon.

You send them the payment, the transaction can publicly be seen on http://blockexplorer.com and there we go, combined with the email there is proof and you are still anonymous because that sending address would only be used for amazon orders.

As I understand it (and I am new to this so I might be wrong) the best way to keep your bitcoins safe is to make your wallet in a live cd environment, make copies of the wallet on removable media and then send bitcoins to this account from a second account on your main computer (on which you only keep a small amount of bitcoins due to venerability to viruses) . However this means that you cannot check that your bitcoins have reached your account without starting up a live cd and reinstalling the bitcoin client and your wallet key.

Would it not be possible to generate a second key for your wallet that allows you only to view the account but not actually send any bitcoins, this would allow you to keep tabs on your main account without the risk of your wallet being stolen.

I imagine this feature might have other advantages to it as well.

Are all the major exchanges basically exactly the same or is it worth finding out the best one for you (what is the best one?)?
Also can an exchange such as Mt.Gox be trusted with my money in an account or are their any problems with that?

Thanks in advance.

I was thinking install it on a live cd so that there is no trace of it having ever existed on and it comes into no contact with a system that is possibly infected

Hi, all I have been trying to find out a bit about bitcoins but I still have a few questions:

1. Will mining become increasingly less profitable in the following years ?
2. Assuming you have no power costs then when (if not already) will it become unprofitable to mine?
3. Does the cpu contribute to mining hashes/s or just the graphics card(s) ?
4. If you are managing your own wallet then how do you go about buying and selling bitcoins ? Could you use a site like mtgox?
5. Lets say you install the bitcoin software on a live cd and generate a bunch of addresses, then how do you copy your wallet (where is the file located).
6. What are the predictions for the value of a bitcoin in the following years?
if you can answer any of the questions then your help would be appreciated.
thanks,

Ultimately, assuming that everything is as it seems, bendavis should give the coins back. I know that no authority is going to make him do that however if the case were to go into a British court (only because that is the only country that I have knowledge of) then it would be pretty clear that bendavis should give the money back, possibly with a small amount of compensation to bendavis from the exchange for having wasted his time with their mistake.

Seriously though, how could anyone honestly think that just because someone makes a mistake that it gives you the right to keep money, that you haven't done anything to receive, as a result.

so your saying that I should just mine with the computer as it is?

It was £1250 before OS
However that does include some unnecessary costs such as the HAF X case and raid system which where more for personal reasons than performance reasons (the friend I made it for wanted it to be something "special" ). Plus it was a little more than it could have been in return for making it very highly upgradeable.

Hi all,
Just decided to register on the forums because, although I have been aware of bitcoins for a while, only recently did I make a high end computer. The computer was not built with mining in mind and therefore it is a good all rounder rather than being graphics processing heavy.
The specs are as follows (as of yet nothing is over-clocked):
750
i7 2600k processor
asus p8z68-v pro mobo
2gb 6950 graphics card (potentially can be unlocked to 6970?)
16gb 1600mhz ram (ddr3 being at an all time price low)
3 * 1TB hard drives in RAID
1* Agility 3 120GB SSD
OCZ 850W  80+ GOLD RATED PSU
extensive air cooling

Is it worth mining with this rig, or investing in another 6950 in crossfire and mining, or would the power consumption be too high and negate significant profit.

Any help with really be appreciated,
Thanks