The shasum is not calculated from the zip, but the file bitaddress.org.html contained inside.

I wondered the same thing and found the answer here: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9112/how-can-i-verify-the-the-pgp-signature-of-bitaddress-org

Also, according to the interview nobody really knows what Dorian's been doing since 2001. He could have been working for CIA or NSA for all we know. Explains the "I'm no longer involved with it and cannot discuss it" part.

Suppose Dorian is the real Satoshi, and wants to direct attention away from himself. What will he do?

He'll post a message from a known Satoshi account, saying "I am not Dorian Nakamoto."

Think about that for a while

Looks like a nice service -- a couple of quick questions came to mind while I'm getting started:

Is there a particular reason I can't send bitcoins to myself? I just wanted to see how the thing works, and would prefer not to create a throwaway account for that.

I tried to transfer 0.1 BTC to my inputs.io account a while ago, but it isn't yet in my confirmed balance even though blockchain.info shows 3 blocks within the last 10 minutes. Yet the FAQ states that incoming transactions < 5 BTC only need 1 confirm.

Any chance to disable the PIN check for small amounts, like 0.001 BTC? Ideally I'd like a tipping widget with as little hassle as possible (security not a big concern - think Flattr)

It would be nice if the donate button were to also serve as a easy gateway for those users who don't yet have an inputs.io account. Instead of seeing "Register or log in", which tends to turn users away, you'd see something like "1) Got inputs.io? Log in here,  or 2) Send X bitcoins to this address and optionally enter your email to get a free inputs.io account". I imagine it would help newcomers to adopt the service.

1 @ 2.41

I commend the initiative.

There's too much altcoin noise here. After all it's bitcointalk.org

Yeah,

after a day or so of mining, I finally got one share in btcguild... worth 0.00000071 BTC. Hurray!

Funny to think that it's more profitable to spend your time at bitcoin faucets. Or to collect recyclable bottles and return them to the store. Well, it was a nice exercise.

Neat. I had no idea mining could be that simple.

I compiled the source on an OS X machine by downloading Mono SDK from http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html. The compilation step and running the compiled binary was as easy as:


Let's see if I actually manage to get any bitcoins with my 180 Kh/s miner

Next step: actually understanding what it does

I have to admire the preposterous way they make you jump through hoops just to re-enable access to your money. The classic "Write 100 times on the blackboard" punishment.


And this completes the shit sandwich.

Truly, this organization needs to die in a fire.

I'm glad we can all contribute to that end.

Oh,

and if you find a succinct and practical answer, you can probably score some points here:

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1389/how-are-public-private-keys-in-an-address-created/1715#1715

From what I've understood, private key is practically a random number, and you can generate the public key from it using elliptic curve cryptography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_DSA).

Here's some more information I found at the Bitcoin wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_Bitcoin_addresses, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Secp256k1

The exact algorithm in bitcoin context takes some effort to find (not to mention understand), but if you have the patience you can probably dig it out from the javascript sources at https://www.bitaddress.org/. (I found the link here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78132.0).

Interest in bitcoin seems to be heading down.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin&date=today%203-m&cmpt=q



Now let's compare with the exchange rate:



There seems to be a strong correlation, which broke down at about 14th of April when the exchange rate started to climb again. I wonder why?

I have noticed the same - no clear explanation on how the orders actually work. Perhaps that would be one competitive advantage over the existing players.

It just seems wrong to see bids exceed asks on an exchange. Why weren't those trades executed? I've also seen the exact same price on the bid and ask side, and wondered what went wrong.

(Yes - matching orders can be hard - like I wrote here...)

Consider this case (ignoring transaction fees for a second):

There are sell orders (1)  for 1 BTC @ 150 USD, and another (2) for 1 BTC @ 160 USD... Now someone wants to buy both of them. So he figures that it's a good idea to put in a buy order (3) for 2 BTC @ 155 USD. What happens?

If the exchange wants to be nasty, it can combine orders (1) and (3), buy the bitcoin from the seller at 150 USD and sell it to buyer at 155 USD. Exchange makes a profit of 5 USD and both the seller and the buyer got what they wanted (sort of). The leftover of the buy order (1 BTC @ 155 USD) is left on the order book.

If the exchange wants to be nice, it can combine orders (1) and (3), but this time decide that whoever comes later gets the better price. So the buyer gets 1 BTC at 150 USD, and the order of 1 BTC @ 155 USD is again left on the order book. This has the additional problem that the prices are indeterministic: if (1) is placed slightly after (3), the trade takes place at 155 USD - if not, it takes place at 150 USD.

So another solution is to execute the two best orders at the price halfway between bid and ask price. So the trade would take place at 152.5 USD.  

But none of the solutions gets the buyer what he originally wanted, i.e. 2 BTC at the average price of 155 USD.

So the "perfect" solution is to write a filling algorithm that goes through the sell orders starting from the most affordable, consuming bitcoins until the average price becomes 155 USD. (Yeah, he might've just put in a market order for 2 BTC, but what if he wanted to be *sure* that he'd get them at @155 or better?)

Or is it? Do you people actually care about this stuff?

(Because, damn it, implementing these kind of "perfect" things can get complex really quickly. Especially when you consider all of the different cases: usually the volumes between paired orders do not balance up, so you have to split orders into two; now there's three different ways how buy/sell orders are executed partially, then there's fees and balance reservations to consider, and then there are rounding errors... after a while you start to realize that it's actually quite a bit of work to make an actually working exchange. I wonder what all of those exchanges did that went belly up...)

That's probably the best way to prepare for the future right now. Will be placing that next to my wallet backups, just in case.

As a end note: with some more patience I would have found this thread, which has a link to some python code that supposedly performs the decrypting.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93040.0

It was short enough to read and verify that it doesn't seem to do anything too malevolent. Too bad I can't run it, since it reports "ImportError: No module named Crypto.Cipher". And finding out how to install python crypto modules -- well, if I had my life savings in blockchain.info's wallet, I just might have the time and patience how to do it...

But the point, I think, is that wallet backups - any wallet backups in the bitcoin ecosystem, not just those from blockchain.info - should be in a easily readable standard format, decipherable by (relatively) standard tools. If you have the password, you should be able to open them even if the original service provider hasn't been around in ages.

Hi,

I just created a wallet at blockchain.info. What a nice service. And it lets me backup and download an encrypted wallet. Even saves it to Dropbox automatically. Very handy.

Now, before moving my life savings to blockchain's wallet, I decided to prepare for the doomsday scenario: assume that blockchain.info suddenly disappears from Internet and I have an urgent need for my bitcoins. I have my wallet backups, and I know my password. Now how would I recover my private keys?

Attempt 1: I tried blockchain.info's own decrypt tool (https://blockchain.info/DecryptWallet.html) before, and it worked, but in the doomsday scenario it's gone as well. Unless it used a HTML5 cache manifest and is cached on my machine. Which is not likely. FAILURE #1.

Attempt 2: I recall that an alternative Bitcoin client could import blockchain.info wallet backups. So I google up "alternative bitcoin clients" and try the first one that I find, MultiBit. It does have the option to import my backup, nice. I choose the file, enter my password, click "Unlock"... Nothing happens. I click "Unlock" again. Nothing happens again. Either the software is buggy as hell, or the encryption format has been changed, or possibly it's just a trojan that just posted my password all over the internet. Anyway, FAILURE #2.

Attempt 3: I recall that the wallet was AES encrypted, and the filename being ".aes.json" supports that theory. Now I happen to be lucky enough to know that there's a tool called openssl that I can use to decrypt files, and I happen to have it installed as well.

I google "decrypt aes openssl", and the first hit gives me an example of decrypting an AES-encrypted file. I'm also lucky to know what a base64-encoded file looks like, and the backup definitely seems like one. So this should do:


I change the filename to "wallet.aes.json" and try that.


Uh, ok? Now could it be some other AES than this aes-256-cbc? Let's try all of them, conveniently listed on the same page: aes-128-cbc, aes-128-ecb, aes-192-cbc, aes-192-ecb, aes-256-cbc, aes-256-ecb.

Nope, none of them work. Could be that some other cipher would work. Or it might not. FAILURE #3.

I conclude that while blockchain.info is a nice service, it's not ready for prime time until there is an easy way to actually access your backups while the site is down (which, apart from the obvious risk of a warhead or an asteroid hitting the server, happens occasionally because of a regular DDOS). Perhaps the backups should come with instructions on how to decrypt them?

On "Overview" page, the rate of my BTC balance is $0.0000 - what does that mean?

http://cl.ly/image/311C083x371C