https://tests.bitcoin.it/w/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Biteasy&feedformat=atomBitcoin Wiki - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T20:23:45ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Block_chain_browser&diff=48402Block chain browser2014-06-26T06:46:16Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>A '''block chain browser''' such as [https://www.biteasy.com Biteasy.com Block Explorer], [[Bitcoin Block Explorer]] [http://blockexplorer.com/], [[BTCplex|BTCplex]] [https://btcplex.com] or [[Blockr|Blockr.io Block Explorer]] [http://www.blockr.io] is a program or web site that lets users search and navigate a [[block chain]]. Uses include:<br />
<br />
* checking [[address]] balances<br />
* tracking coin transfer histories<br />
* watching for [[transaction]] acceptance<br />
* monitoring the [[Difficulty|network hash rate]] and other statistics<br />
<br />
Block chain browsers typically offer:<br />
<br />
* a list of a chain's recent [[blocks]] [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/blocks]<br />
* transactions in a given block [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/blocks/000000000000038de79ce2e9032c16b81cb2c911a5f643b20e56d094597577f4]<br />
* links to the previous and next transaction involving each input and output [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/transactions/d286db5143e6a77acffc596b3d7a812f3199c04680e5f8b0788e67e6d3e987d6]<br />
* a list of all transactions involving a given address [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/addresses/1Biteasym3p5E4soZq8So6NjkjYugEnz2X]<br />
* current and historical address balances<br />
* a way to search for blocks, transactions, and addresses<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[:Category:Block chain browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Block_chain_browser&diff=48401Block chain browser2014-06-26T06:37:57Z<p>Biteasy: Updated links. None of them pointing to blockexplorer.com was working.</p>
<hr />
<div>A '''block chain browser''' such as [https://www.biteasy.com Biteasy.com], [[Bitcoin Block Explorer]] [http://blockexplorer.com/], [[BTCplex|BTCplex]] [https://btcplex.com] or [[Blockr|Blockr.io Block Explorer]] [http://www.blockr.io] is a program or web site that lets users search and navigate a [[block chain]]. Uses include:<br />
<br />
* checking [[address]] balances<br />
* tracking coin transfer histories<br />
* watching for [[transaction]] acceptance<br />
* monitoring the [[Difficulty|network hash rate]] and other statistics<br />
<br />
Block chain browsers typically offer:<br />
<br />
* a list of a chain's recent [[blocks]] [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/blocks]<br />
* transactions in a given block [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/blocks/000000000000038de79ce2e9032c16b81cb2c911a5f643b20e56d094597577f4]<br />
* links to the previous and next transaction involving each input and output [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/transactions/d286db5143e6a77acffc596b3d7a812f3199c04680e5f8b0788e67e6d3e987d6]<br />
* a list of all transactions involving a given address [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/addresses/1Biteasym3p5E4soZq8So6NjkjYugEnz2X]<br />
* current and historical address balances<br />
* a way to search for blocks, transactions, and addresses<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[:Category:Block chain browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Genesis_block&diff=48367Genesis block2014-06-25T21:29:01Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{stub}}<br />
<br />
A '''genesis block''' is the first block of a [[block chain]]. Modern versions of Bitcoin assign it block number 0, though older versions gave it number 1.<br />
<br />
== Main network genesis block ==<br />
[https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/blocks/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f The genesis block on Biteasy.com Block Explorer]<br />
<br />
Here is a representation of the genesis block as it appeared in a comment in an old version of Bitcoin ([http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/133/tree/trunk/main.cpp#l1613 line 1613]). The first section defines exactly all of the variables necessary to recreate the block. The second section is the block in standard printblock format, which contains shortened versions of the data in the first section.<br />
<br />
GetHash() = 0x000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f<br />
hashMerkleRoot = 0x4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b<br />
txNew.vin[0].scriptSig = 486604799 4 0x736B6E616220726F662074756F6C69616220646E6F63657320666F206B6E697262206E6F20726F6C6C65636E61684320393030322F6E614A2F33302073656D695420656854<br />
txNew.vout[0].nValue = 5000000000<br />
txNew.vout[0].scriptPubKey = 0x5F1DF16B2B704C8A578D0BBAF74D385CDE12C11EE50455F3C438EF4C3FBCF649B6DE611FEAE06279A60939E028A8D65C10B73071A6F16719274855FEB0FD8A6704 OP_CHECKSIG<br />
block.nVersion = 1<br />
block.nTime = 1231006505<br />
block.nBits = 0x1d00ffff<br />
block.nNonce = 2083236893<br />
<br />
CBlock(hash=000000000019d6, ver=1, hashPrevBlock=00000000000000, hashMerkleRoot=4a5e1e, nTime=1231006505, nBits=1d00ffff, nNonce=2083236893, vtx=1)<br />
CTransaction(hash=4a5e1e, ver=1, vin.size=1, vout.size=1, nLockTime=0)<br />
CTxIn(COutPoint(000000, -1), coinbase 04ffff001d0104455468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73)<br />
CTxOut(nValue=50.00000000, scriptPubKey=0x5F1DF16B2B704C8A578D0B)<br />
vMerkleTree: 4a5e1e<br />
<br />
The coinbase parameter (seen above in hex) contains, along with the normal data, the following text<ref>[http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKPTIP32510920090103 Reuters' reference on The Financial Times article]</ref>:<br />
<br />
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks<ref>[http://i.imgur.com/tWCACH5.jpg Front page of the London Times, 03 Jan 2009]</ref><br />
<br />
This was probably intended as proof that the block was created on or after January 3rd, 2009, as well as a comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.<br />
<br />
The first 50BTC block reward went to [[address]] [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/addresses/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa], though this reward can't be spent due to a quirk in the way that the genesis block is expressed in the code (this may have been intentional).<br />
<br />
==Raw block data==<br />
<br />
The [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52706 raw hex version] of the Genesis block looks like:<br />
00000000 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................<br />
00000010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................<br />
00000020 00 00 00 00 3B A3 ED FD 7A 7B 12 B2 7A C7 2C 3E ....;£íýz{.²zÇ,><br />
00000030 67 76 8F 61 7F C8 1B C3 88 8A 51 32 3A 9F B8 AA gv.a.È.ÈŠQ2:Ÿ¸ª<br />
00000040 4B 1E 5E 4A 29 AB 5F 49 FF FF 00 1D 1D AC 2B 7C K.^J)«_Iÿÿ...¬+|<br />
00000050 01 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................<br />
00000060 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................<br />
00000070 00 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 4D 04 FF FF 00 1D ......ÿÿÿÿM.ÿÿ..<br />
00000080 01 04 45 54 68 65 20 54 69 6D 65 73 20 30 33 2F ..EThe Times 03/<br />
00000090 4A 61 6E 2F 32 30 30 39 20 43 68 61 6E 63 65 6C Jan/2009 Chancel<br />
000000A0 6C 6F 72 20 6F 6E 20 62 72 69 6E 6B 20 6F 66 20 lor on brink of <br />
000000B0 73 65 63 6F 6E 64 20 62 61 69 6C 6F 75 74 20 66 second bailout f<br />
000000C0 6F 72 20 62 61 6E 6B 73 FF FF FF FF 01 00 F2 05 or banksÿÿÿÿ..ò.<br />
000000D0 2A 01 00 00 00 43 41 04 67 8A FD B0 FE 55 48 27 *....CA.gŠý°þUH'<br />
000000E0 19 67 F1 A6 71 30 B7 10 5C D6 A8 28 E0 39 09 A6 .gñ¦q0·.\Ö¨(à9.¦<br />
000000F0 79 62 E0 EA 1F 61 DE B6 49 F6 BC 3F 4C EF 38 C4 ybàê.aÞ¶Iö¼?Lï8Ä<br />
00000100 F3 55 04 E5 1E C1 12 DE 5C 38 4D F7 BA 0B 8D 57 óU.å.Á.Þ\8M÷º..W<br />
00000110 8A 4C 70 2B 6B F1 1D 5F AC 00 00 00 00 ŠLp+kñ._¬....<br />
<br />
Broken down it looks like this:<br />
<br />
01000000 - version<br />
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 - prev block<br />
3BA3EDFD7A7B12B27AC72C3E67768F617FC81BC3888A51323A9FB8AA4B1E5E4A - merkle root<br />
29AB5F49 - timestamp<br />
FFFF001D - bits<br />
1DAC2B7C - nonce<br />
01 - number of transactions<br />
01000000 - version<br />
01 - input<br />
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000FFFFFFFF - prev output<br />
4D - script length<br />
04FFFF001D0104455468652054696D65732030332F4A616E2F32303039204368616E63656C6C6F72206F6E206272696E6B206F66207365636F6E64206261696C6F757420666F722062616E6B73 - scriptsig<br />
FFFFFFFF - sequence<br />
01 - outputs<br />
00F2052A01000000 - 50 BTC<br />
43 - pk_script length<br />
4104678AFDB0FE5548271967F1A67130B7105CD6A828E03909A67962E0EA1F61DEB649F6BC3F4CEF38C4F35504E51EC112DE5C384DF7BA0B8D578A4C702B6BF11D5FAC - pk_script<br />
00000000 - lock time<br />
<br />
==Notes==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[zh-cn:创世block]]<br />
[[es:Bloque Génesis]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Genesis_block&diff=48366Genesis block2014-06-25T21:22:15Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>{{stub}}<br />
<br />
A '''genesis block''' is the first block of a [[block chain]]. Modern versions of Bitcoin assign it block number 0, though older versions gave it number 1.<br />
<br />
== Main network genesis block ==<br />
[http://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f The block on Bitcoin Block Explorer]<br />
<br />
Here is a representation of the genesis block as it appeared in a comment in an old version of Bitcoin ([http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/133/tree/trunk/main.cpp#l1613 line 1613]). The first section defines exactly all of the variables necessary to recreate the block. The second section is the block in standard printblock format, which contains shortened versions of the data in the first section.<br />
<br />
GetHash() = 0x000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f<br />
hashMerkleRoot = 0x4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b<br />
txNew.vin[0].scriptSig = 486604799 4 0x736B6E616220726F662074756F6C69616220646E6F63657320666F206B6E697262206E6F20726F6C6C65636E61684320393030322F6E614A2F33302073656D695420656854<br />
txNew.vout[0].nValue = 5000000000<br />
txNew.vout[0].scriptPubKey = 0x5F1DF16B2B704C8A578D0BBAF74D385CDE12C11EE50455F3C438EF4C3FBCF649B6DE611FEAE06279A60939E028A8D65C10B73071A6F16719274855FEB0FD8A6704 OP_CHECKSIG<br />
block.nVersion = 1<br />
block.nTime = 1231006505<br />
block.nBits = 0x1d00ffff<br />
block.nNonce = 2083236893<br />
<br />
CBlock(hash=000000000019d6, ver=1, hashPrevBlock=00000000000000, hashMerkleRoot=4a5e1e, nTime=1231006505, nBits=1d00ffff, nNonce=2083236893, vtx=1)<br />
CTransaction(hash=4a5e1e, ver=1, vin.size=1, vout.size=1, nLockTime=0)<br />
CTxIn(COutPoint(000000, -1), coinbase 04ffff001d0104455468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73)<br />
CTxOut(nValue=50.00000000, scriptPubKey=0x5F1DF16B2B704C8A578D0B)<br />
vMerkleTree: 4a5e1e<br />
<br />
The coinbase parameter (seen above in hex) contains, along with the normal data, the following text<ref>[http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKPTIP32510920090103 Reuters' reference on The Financial Times article]</ref>:<br />
<br />
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks<ref>[http://i.imgur.com/tWCACH5.jpg Front page of the London Times, 03 Jan 2009]</ref><br />
<br />
This was probably intended as proof that the block was created on or after January 3rd, 2009, as well as a comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.<br />
<br />
The first 50BTC block reward went to [[address]] [https://www.biteasy.com/blockchain/addresses/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa], though this reward can't be spent due to a quirk in the way that the genesis block is expressed in the code (this may have been intentional).<br />
<br />
==Raw block data==<br />
<br />
The [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52706 raw hex version] of the Genesis block looks like:<br />
00000000 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................<br />
00000010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................<br />
00000020 00 00 00 00 3B A3 ED FD 7A 7B 12 B2 7A C7 2C 3E ....;£íýz{.²zÇ,><br />
00000030 67 76 8F 61 7F C8 1B C3 88 8A 51 32 3A 9F B8 AA gv.a.È.ÈŠQ2:Ÿ¸ª<br />
00000040 4B 1E 5E 4A 29 AB 5F 49 FF FF 00 1D 1D AC 2B 7C K.^J)«_Iÿÿ...¬+|<br />
00000050 01 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................<br />
00000060 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................<br />
00000070 00 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 4D 04 FF FF 00 1D ......ÿÿÿÿM.ÿÿ..<br />
00000080 01 04 45 54 68 65 20 54 69 6D 65 73 20 30 33 2F ..EThe Times 03/<br />
00000090 4A 61 6E 2F 32 30 30 39 20 43 68 61 6E 63 65 6C Jan/2009 Chancel<br />
000000A0 6C 6F 72 20 6F 6E 20 62 72 69 6E 6B 20 6F 66 20 lor on brink of <br />
000000B0 73 65 63 6F 6E 64 20 62 61 69 6C 6F 75 74 20 66 second bailout f<br />
000000C0 6F 72 20 62 61 6E 6B 73 FF FF FF FF 01 00 F2 05 or banksÿÿÿÿ..ò.<br />
000000D0 2A 01 00 00 00 43 41 04 67 8A FD B0 FE 55 48 27 *....CA.gŠý°þUH'<br />
000000E0 19 67 F1 A6 71 30 B7 10 5C D6 A8 28 E0 39 09 A6 .gñ¦q0·.\Ö¨(à9.¦<br />
000000F0 79 62 E0 EA 1F 61 DE B6 49 F6 BC 3F 4C EF 38 C4 ybàê.aÞ¶Iö¼?Lï8Ä<br />
00000100 F3 55 04 E5 1E C1 12 DE 5C 38 4D F7 BA 0B 8D 57 óU.å.Á.Þ\8M÷º..W<br />
00000110 8A 4C 70 2B 6B F1 1D 5F AC 00 00 00 00 ŠLp+kñ._¬....<br />
<br />
Broken down it looks like this:<br />
<br />
01000000 - version<br />
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 - prev block<br />
3BA3EDFD7A7B12B27AC72C3E67768F617FC81BC3888A51323A9FB8AA4B1E5E4A - merkle root<br />
29AB5F49 - timestamp<br />
FFFF001D - bits<br />
1DAC2B7C - nonce<br />
01 - number of transactions<br />
01000000 - version<br />
01 - input<br />
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000FFFFFFFF - prev output<br />
4D - script length<br />
04FFFF001D0104455468652054696D65732030332F4A616E2F32303039204368616E63656C6C6F72206F6E206272696E6B206F66207365636F6E64206261696C6F757420666F722062616E6B73 - scriptsig<br />
FFFFFFFF - sequence<br />
01 - outputs<br />
00F2052A01000000 - 50 BTC<br />
43 - pk_script length<br />
4104678AFDB0FE5548271967F1A67130B7105CD6A828E03909A67962E0EA1F61DEB649F6BC3F4CEF38C4F35504E51EC112DE5C384DF7BA0B8D578A4C702B6BF11D5FAC - pk_script<br />
00000000 - lock time<br />
<br />
==Notes==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[zh-cn:创世block]]<br />
[[es:Bloque Génesis]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=List_of_address_prefixes&diff=43161List of address prefixes2013-12-15T14:48:08Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Blockchain-based currencies use addresses, which are a [[Base58Check encoding]] of some hash, typically that of a public key. The encoding includes a version byte, which affects the first character in the address. The following is a list of some prefixes which are in use.<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable" <br />
|-<br />
!Initial byte(s)<br />
!Leading symbol<br />
!Use<br />
!Example<br />
|-<br />
|0<br />
|1<br />
|Bitcoin pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>12CPLrAUPvhVwjZqBgww3sLdEg4Z888R1j</tt><br />
|-<br />
|5<br />
|3<br />
|Bitcoin script hash<br />
|<tt>3EktnHQD7RiAE6uzMj2ZifT9YgRrkSgzQX</tt><br />
|-<br />
|36<br />
|F<br />
|Friendly pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>Ff361bCr7k8aFHjseFxaYWaSpjfq9hVswD</tt><br />
|-<br />
|48<br />
|L<br />
|Litecoin pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>LhK2kQwiaAvhjWY799cZvMyYwnQAcxkarr</tt><br />
|-<br />
|52<br />
|M or N<br />
|Namecoin pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>NATX6zEUNfxfvgVwz8qVnnw3hLhhYXhgQn</tt><br />
|-<br />
|95<br />
|f<br />
|Fairbrix pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>fF6o8LeDAfswEpMbCW8BqaqmzMWS7TGgew</tt><br />
|-<br />
|97<br />
|g<br />
|GeistGeld pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>gQ8YScyiMUTart6kUJpzhjPzAKfiYAwooc</tt><br />
|-<br />
|98<br />
|g<br />
|Bitgem pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>gjscb64Dr7HkZDMP78r7TUqsk4xNQU4wb3</tt><br />
|-<br />
|105<br />
|j<br />
|i0coin pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>jWmCr5cKeQjV4iyfUyipfLGwVML8MvXhF2</tt><br />
|-<br />
|111<br />
|m or n<br />
|Bitcoin testnet pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>mkJ7Bf5chdfw61d1m7gnDVAQV3EQQAb8iz</tt><br />
|-<br />
|125<br />
|s<br />
|Solidcoin pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>sXNaMoYBocjcQJRLK53dkaQ5mWuKfvHB9f</tt><br />
|-<br />
|127<br />
|t<br />
|Tenebrix pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>tUK2EQTMF6cN6vuNEfJtVf1BMqarvEZJBL</tt><br />
|-<br />
|128<br />
|5<br />
|Bitcoin Private key (for uncompressed pubkey)<br />
|<tt>5Htn3FzuH3b1X5VF2zLTsAQzBcyzkZNJsa2egXN8ZFJTCqQm3Rq</tt><br />
|-<br />
|128<br />
|K or L<br />
|Bitcoin Private key (for compressed pubkey)<br />
|<tt>L1aW4aubDFB7yfras2S1mN3bqg9nwySY8nkoLmJebSLD5BWv3ENZ</tt><br />
|-<br />
|138<br />
|x<br />
|ixcoin pubkey hash<br />
|<tt>xoKDFH4uWpyzxUcCC5jCLFujRKayv3HHcV</tt><br />
|-<br />
|196<br />
|2<br />
|Testnet script hash<br />
|<tt>2MzQwSSnBHWHqSAqtTVQ6v47XtaisrJa1Vc</tt><br />
|-<br />
|239<br />
|9<br />
|Testnet Private key (for uncompressed pubkey)<br />
|<tt>91eWjgRmucdtYHpMdsHbn9h8UU8hdoMNSKj8p3QAj6VTLyBnjj6</tt><br />
|-<br />
|239<br />
|c<br />
|Testnet Private key (for compressed pubkey)<br />
|<tt>cNJFgo1driFnPcBdBX8BrJrpxchBWXwXCvNH5SoSkdcF6JXXwHMm</tt><br />
|<br />
|-<br />
|0x142, 0x143<br />
|6P<br />
|Encrypted private key ([[BIP 0038|BIP 38]])<br />
|<tt> 6PRVWUbkzzsbcVac2qwfssoUJAN1Xhrg6bNk8J7Nzm5H7kxEbn2Nh2ZoGg </tt><br />
|}<br />
<br />
Note that private keys for compressed and uncompressed bitcoin public keys use the same version byte. The reason for the compressed form starting with a different character is because a 0x01 byte is appended to the private key before base58 encoding.<br />
<br />
The following table shows the leading symbol(s) and address length(s) for 160 bit hashes for each of the possible decimal version values:<br />
<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
|-<br />
!Decimal version<br />
!Leading symbol<br />
!Address length<br />
|-<br />
|0<br />
|1<br />
|up to 34<br />
|-<br />
|1<br />
|Q-Z, a-k, m-o<br />
|33<br />
|-<br />
|2<br />
|o-z, 2<br />
|33 or 34<br />
|-<br />
|3<br />
|2<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|4<br />
|2 or 3<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|5-6<br />
|3<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|7<br />
|3 or 4<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|8<br />
|4<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|9<br />
|4 or 5<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|10-11<br />
|5<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|12<br />
|5 or 6<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|13<br />
|6<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|14<br />
|6 or 7<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|15-16<br />
|7<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|17<br />
|7 or 8<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|18<br />
|8<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|19<br />
|8 or 9<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|20-21<br />
|9<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|22<br />
|9 or A<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|23<br />
|A<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|24<br />
|A or B<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|25-26<br />
|B<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|27<br />
|B or C<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|28<br />
|C<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|29<br />
|C or D<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|30-31<br />
|D<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|32<br />
|D or E<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|33<br />
|E<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|34<br />
|E or F<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|35-36<br />
|F<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|37<br />
|F or G<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|38<br />
|G<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|39<br />
|G or H<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|40-41<br />
|H<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|42<br />
|H or J<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|43<br />
|J<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|44<br />
|J or K<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|45-46<br />
|K<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|47<br />
|K or L<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|48<br />
|L<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|49<br />
|L or M<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|50-51<br />
|M<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|52<br />
|M or N<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|53<br />
|N<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|54<br />
|N or P<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|55-56<br />
|P<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|57<br />
|P or Q<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|58<br />
|Q<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|59<br />
|Q or R<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|60-61<br />
|R<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|62<br />
|R or S<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|63<br />
|S<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|64<br />
|S or T<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|65-66<br />
|T<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|67<br />
|T or U<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|68<br />
|U<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|69<br />
|U or V<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|70-71<br />
|V<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|72<br />
|V or W<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|73<br />
|W<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|74<br />
|W or X<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|75-76<br />
|X<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|77<br />
|X or Y<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|78<br />
|Y<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|79<br />
|Y or Z<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|80-81<br />
|Z<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|82<br />
|Z or a<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|83<br />
|a<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|84<br />
|a or b<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|85<br />
|b<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|86<br />
|b or c<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|87-88<br />
|c<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|89<br />
|c or d<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|90<br />
|d<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|91<br />
|d or e<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|92-93<br />
|e<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|94<br />
|e or f<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|95<br />
|f<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|96<br />
|f or g<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|97-98<br />
|g<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|99<br />
|g or h<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|100<br />
|h<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|101<br />
|h or i<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|102-103<br />
|i<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|104<br />
|i or j<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|105<br />
|j<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|106<br />
|j or k<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|107-108<br />
|k<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|109<br />
|k or m<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|110<br />
|m<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|111<br />
|m or n<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|112-113<br />
|n<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|114<br />
|n or o<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|115<br />
|o<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|116<br />
|o or p<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|117-118<br />
|p<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|119<br />
|p or q<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|120<br />
|q<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|121<br />
|q or r<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|122-123<br />
|r<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|124<br />
|r or s<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|125<br />
|s<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|126<br />
|s or t<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|127-128<br />
|t<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|129<br />
|t or u<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|130<br />
|u<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|131<br />
|u or v<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|132-133<br />
|v<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|134<br />
|v or w<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|135<br />
|w<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|136<br />
|w or x<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|137-138<br />
|x<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|139<br />
|x or y<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|140<br />
|y<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|141<br />
|y or z<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|142-143<br />
|z<br />
|34<br />
|-<br />
|144<br />
|z or 2<br />
|34 or 35<br />
|-<br />
|145-255<br />
|2<br />
|35<br />
|}<br />
<br />
[[es:Lista de prefijos de direcciones]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Help:Getting_started&diff=43050Help:Getting started2013-12-12T12:10:38Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Here is a generic [[Bitcoin_Newbie_Guide|Getting Started guide]].<br />
<br />
* Get free bitcoins and learn to use them in 5 minutes: [https://trybtc.com TryBTC]<br />
* Start by watching [http://weusecoins.com/ this 2 minute vid].<br />
* Learn why it [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2834/what-are-the-perceived-advantages-of-bitcoin-as-a-store-of-value could be a good investment]<br />
* Learn why it's objectively [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/305/what-are-the-perceived-advantages-of-bitcoin-as-a-means-of-exchange better than as a means of exchange].<br />
* Get a [[Clients|client]] and try it out yourself (you can get a bit of free money from [http://www.bitcoinget.com BitcoinGet] or [[Bitcoin Faucet|The Bitcoin Faucet]]).<br />
* Use an online wallet that you trust. (Examples: [[File:Coinkite.gif|20px|link=https://coinkite.com/promo/beginners]] [https://coinkite.com/promo/beginners Coinkite], [[File:Bci.gif|20px|link=https://blockchain.info/]] [https://blockchain.info/wallet/ BCI])<br />
* Explore bitcoin with a [[:Category:Block chain browsers|block chain browser]] such as [https://www.biteasy.com Biteasy]<br />
* [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/ Ask questions]<br />
* [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/118/how-much-bitcoin-will-i-mine-right-now-with-hardware-x Can I generate Free Money on my computer?] - TL;DR - Not really.<br />
* [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ Read the FAQ]<br />
* [[Buying Bitcoins (the noob version)|Where can I buy bitcoins?]] (Hint: [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2293/how-can-i-buy-bitcoin-via-a-credit-card-or-paypal You can't buy them with Paypal or credit cards])<br />
* [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bonus_Programs Earn bitcoins through bonus programs]<br />
<br />
If you're looking for how to get started with Bitcoin-Qt, [[Getting started installing bitcoin-qt|this is the article you're looking for]].</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Help:Getting_started&diff=43049Help:Getting started2013-12-12T12:10:01Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Here is a generic [[Bitcoin_Newbie_Guide|Getting Started guide]].<br />
<br />
* Get free bitcoins and learn to use them in 5 minutes: [https://trybtc.com TryBTC]<br />
* Start by watching [http://weusecoins.com/ this 2 minute vid].<br />
* Learn why it [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2834/what-are-the-perceived-advantages-of-bitcoin-as-a-store-of-value could be a good investment]<br />
* Learn why it's objectively [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/305/what-are-the-perceived-advantages-of-bitcoin-as-a-means-of-exchange better than as a means of exchange].<br />
* Get a [[Clients|client]] and try it out yourself (you can get a bit of free money from [http://www.bitcoinget.com BitcoinGet] or [[Bitcoin Faucet|The Bitcoin Faucet]]).<br />
* Use an online wallet that you trust. (Examples: [[File:Coinkite.gif|20px|link=https://coinkite.com/promo/beginners]] [https://coinkite.com/promo/beginners Coinkite], [[File:Bci.gif|20px|link=https://blockchain.info/]] [https://blockchain.info/wallet/ BCI])<br />
* Explore the bitcoin blockchain with a [[:Category:Block chain browsers|block chain browser]] such as [https://www.biteasy.com Biteasy]<br />
* [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/ Ask questions]<br />
* [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/118/how-much-bitcoin-will-i-mine-right-now-with-hardware-x Can I generate Free Money on my computer?] - TL;DR - Not really.<br />
* [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ Read the FAQ]<br />
* [[Buying Bitcoins (the noob version)|Where can I buy bitcoins?]] (Hint: [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2293/how-can-i-buy-bitcoin-via-a-credit-card-or-paypal You can't buy them with Paypal or credit cards])<br />
* [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bonus_Programs Earn bitcoins through bonus programs]<br />
<br />
If you're looking for how to get started with Bitcoin-Qt, [[Getting started installing bitcoin-qt|this is the article you're looking for]].</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Help:Getting_started&diff=43048Help:Getting started2013-12-12T12:09:43Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Here is a generic [[Bitcoin_Newbie_Guide|Getting Started guide]].<br />
<br />
* Get free bitcoins and learn to use them in 5 minutes: [https://trybtc.com TryBTC]<br />
* Start by watching [http://weusecoins.com/ this 2 minute vid].<br />
* Learn why it [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2834/what-are-the-perceived-advantages-of-bitcoin-as-a-store-of-value could be a good investment]<br />
* Learn why it's objectively [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/305/what-are-the-perceived-advantages-of-bitcoin-as-a-means-of-exchange better than as a means of exchange].<br />
* Get a [[Clients|client]] and try it out yourself (you can get a bit of free money from [http://www.bitcoinget.com BitcoinGet] or [[Bitcoin Faucet|The Bitcoin Faucet]]).<br />
* Use an online wallet that you trust. (Examples: [[File:Coinkite.gif|20px|link=https://coinkite.com/promo/beginners]] [https://coinkite.com/promo/beginners Coinkite], [[File:Bci.gif|20px|link=https://blockchain.info/]] [https://blockchain.info/wallet/ BCI])<br />
* Explore the bitcoin blockchain with a [[:Category:Block chain browsers]|block chain browser] such as [https://www.biteasy.com Biteasy]<br />
* [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/ Ask questions]<br />
* [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/118/how-much-bitcoin-will-i-mine-right-now-with-hardware-x Can I generate Free Money on my computer?] - TL;DR - Not really.<br />
* [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ Read the FAQ]<br />
* [[Buying Bitcoins (the noob version)|Where can I buy bitcoins?]] (Hint: [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2293/how-can-i-buy-bitcoin-via-a-credit-card-or-paypal You can't buy them with Paypal or credit cards])<br />
* [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bonus_Programs Earn bitcoins through bonus programs]<br />
<br />
If you're looking for how to get started with Bitcoin-Qt, [[Getting started installing bitcoin-qt|this is the article you're looking for]].</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Help:Getting_started&diff=43047Help:Getting started2013-12-12T10:08:25Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Here is a generic [[Bitcoin_Newbie_Guide|Getting Started guide]].<br />
<br />
* Get free bitcoins and learn to use them in 5 minutes: [https://trybtc.com TryBTC]<br />
* Start by watching [http://weusecoins.com/ this 2 minute vid].<br />
* Learn why it [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2834/what-are-the-perceived-advantages-of-bitcoin-as-a-store-of-value could be a good investment]<br />
* Learn why it's objectively [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/305/what-are-the-perceived-advantages-of-bitcoin-as-a-means-of-exchange better than as a means of exchange].<br />
* Get a [[Clients|client]] and try it out yourself (you can get a bit of free money from [http://www.bitcoinget.com BitcoinGet] or [[Bitcoin Faucet|The Bitcoin Faucet]]).<br />
* Use an online wallet that you trust. (Examples: [[File:Coinkite.gif|20px|link=https://coinkite.com/promo/beginners]] [https://coinkite.com/promo/beginners Coinkite], [[File:Bci.gif|20px|link=https://blockchain.info/]] [https://blockchain.info/wallet/ BCI])<br />
* Explore the Bitcoin Blockchain with an online blockchain browser such as [https://www.biteasy.com Biteasy]<br />
* [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/ Ask questions]<br />
* [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/118/how-much-bitcoin-will-i-mine-right-now-with-hardware-x Can I generate Free Money on my computer?] - TL;DR - Not really.<br />
* [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ Read the FAQ]<br />
* [[Buying Bitcoins (the noob version)|Where can I buy bitcoins?]] (Hint: [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2293/how-can-i-buy-bitcoin-via-a-credit-card-or-paypal You can't buy them with Paypal or credit cards])<br />
* [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bonus_Programs Earn bitcoins through bonus programs]<br />
<br />
If you're looking for how to get started with Bitcoin-Qt, [[Getting started installing bitcoin-qt|this is the article you're looking for]].</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Wollit&diff=43046Wollit2013-12-12T10:05:20Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''A simple and secure web-based client-side encrypted Bitcoin wallet.'''<br />
<br />
<br />
wollit aims to facilitate mainstream adoption of Bitcoin by providing a simple, secure and clean way of sending, receiving and managing Bitcoin transactions.<br />
<br />
wollit also provides merchant functionality for utilising Bitcoin as a payment mechanism and offers developers full blockchain browser functionality<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Fees ===<br />
<br />
There are no fees for using wollit<br />
<br />
<br />
=== History ===<br />
<br />
The service launched in beta in May 2013<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Wallet Security ===<br />
<br />
* The wallet available from this service is considered a hybrid EWallet. <br />
* Bitcoins are not stored with wollit, but instead held in your browser. <br />
* There is an encrypted copy of your wallet stored on wollit's servers,<br />
* wollit cannot spend/lose of even access your Bitcoins.<br />
<br />
<br />
* aes encryption<br />
* iso10126 padding<br />
* 500 rounds of PBKDF2 on users password as key<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=== External Link ===<br />
<br />
[http://wollit.com wollit]<br />
<br />
[http://blog.wollit.com wollit blog]<br />
<br />
[[Category:EWallets]]<br />
[[Category:Wallets]]<br />
[[Category:Exchanges]]<br />
[[Category:Shopping Cart Interfaces]]<br />
[[Category:Services]]<br />
[[Category:Frontends]]<br />
[[Category:Clients]]<br />
[[Category:Mobile]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Coinkite&diff=43045Coinkite2013-12-12T10:03:30Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>==Coinkite==<br />
<br />
Coinkite<ref> (15/10/2013). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinkite Coinkite.] ''[[Wikipedia]]''.</ref><ref> (12/11/2013). [http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/11/12/bitcoin_entrepreneurs_want_to_put_virtual_coins_in_your_wallet.html "Bitcoin entrepreneurs want to put virtual coins in your wallet".] ''[[Toronto Star]]''.</ref><ref> (11/11/2013). [http://bitcoinmagazine.com/7449/exploring-the-bitcoin-alliance-of-canada-part-i/ "Bitcoin in Canada, Part I: Introducing the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada".] ''[[Bitcoin Magazine]]''.</ref><ref>nvK (10/11/2013). [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309431.0 "(ANN) Coinkite.com (Bitcoin Wallet+Debit Card+POS Terminals)accepting invites re".] ''[[bitcointalk.org]]''.</ref><ref>KYT DOTSON (22/10/2013). [http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/09/25/bitcoin-weekly-2013-september-25-lucky-gambler-makes-11k-btc-coinsetter-to-launch-soon-coinkite-brings-pos-solution/ "Bitcoin Weekly 2013 September 25: Lucky Gambler Makes 11k BTC, Coinsetter to Launch Soon, Coinkite Brings POS Solution".] ''[[Silicon Angle]]''.</ref><ref> (5/11/2013). [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Coinkite "Coinkite".] ''[[Bitcoin Wiki]]''.</ref><ref> (5/11/2013). [https://www.coinforum.ca/discussion/461/accepting-invite-requests-for-coinkite-com "Accepting invite requests for Coinkite.com".] ''[[coinforum.ca]]''.</ref><ref> (1/11/2013). [http://www.thebitpages.com/merchants/1076 "Coinkite".] ''[[The Bit Pages]]''.</ref><ref> (2013). [http://www.linkedin.com/company/coinkite "Company: Coinkite".] ''[[LinkedIN]]''.</ref> offers a number of useful [[bitcoin]] and [[litecoin]] services, including wallet and a hardware payment network.<br />
<br />
==Main features==<br />
* Powerful, easy to use web wallet. Receive and send bitcoin amounts from a web interface. Two factor authentication, memorable image (to resist phishing attempts) and many other security features are in place. Users are free of the burden of securing their own computer.<br />
<br />
* Point-of-sale payment terminal. Coinkite sells a hardware device, complete with QR scanner and receipt printer that can be used to perform bitcoin transactions without a computer and in a retail setting.<br />
<br />
* "Debit" Card. Coinkite offers all it's members a plastic card which can be used at the payment terminals, but is also useful anywhere as it was a bitcoin address in QR code on the back. Bitcoin sent to that address are linked to the user's Coinkite balance.<br />
<br />
==Services==<br />
<br />
* multiple sub-accounts for grouping funds (ie. "Savings", "Chequing")<br />
<br />
* all transactions occur in the public blockchain, and there is no "internal bookkeeping" of funds.<br />
<br />
* monthly, yearly and pay as you go membership plans are offered.<br />
<br />
* detailed transaction logging, real-time on-screen alerts as funds as received<br />
<br />
* multiple [[cryptocurrenies]]: bitcoin, litecoin, testnet coins are offered with equal features<br />
<br />
* Coinkite is the first Litecoin web wallet on the market (Oct 2013)<br />
<br />
====Services Links====<br />
<br />
* [https://coinkite.com/faq/money Online wallets]<br />
<br />
* [https://coinkite.com/faq/terminal Merchant Point-of-Sale terminals]<br />
<br />
* [https://coinkite.com/faq/terminal Bitcoin debit cards]<br />
<br />
==Unique [[BIP]] 32 Feature==<br />
<br />
Coinkite is internally based on BIP 32 [[Hierarchical Deterministic]] (HD) wallets. Each new member receives a "welcome email" which contains the "xpubkey" (extended public key) for their deposits, and an *encrypted* copy of the corresponding xprivkey. The xpubkey (used for both Litecoin and Bitcoin) can be used by the account owner to see all public keys associated with their account (both past and future). Combined with the "audit" feature, the user can fetch a list of all UTXO (unspent transaction outputs) associated with their account and verify the public key's subpath from the given xpubkey. Similarly, they can check the UTXO is correctly stored on the blockchain.<br />
<br />
<br />
Coinkite has stated that in the event of the closure or other failure of the business, they will publicize the symmetric key protecting the xprivkey values that have been distributed to members. With that key, each user could recover their funds by re-generating the private keys for each UTXO. <br />
<br />
<br />
The founders of Coinkite understood the inherent risk of trusting a third party with the private keys for your bitcoins, and this application of BIP 32 helps to address these concerns should the business disappear. The company calls this system "full reserve" since the users are in a position to verify that their funds are not being used for any other purpose than safe-keeping, while on deposit at Coinkite.<br />
<br />
==Debit Card==<br />
<br />
For a small fee (and included in some membership plans), Coinkite users may receive a physical card. This eases use of their Coinkite account at the POS terminal and the QR code on the rear is useful for making deposits.<br />
<br />
==POS Terminal==<br />
<br />
Coinkite sells a hardware device which can perform a number of transactions. It connects via GPRS (cell) or Wifi to Coinkite backend servers which perform the blockchain operations. It does not directly connect to the P2P network.<br />
<br />
Users can log into their Coinkite account at the machine, using either their Coinkite card (and a 4-6 digit PIN, plus optionally a 2FA token) or use a one-time QR code from the Coinkite website. Once connected to their account, they can perform many types of transactions:<br />
<br />
* print out their current balances<br />
<br />
* scan a QR and pay it using their balance<br />
<br />
* withdraw funds to cash (requires the retail to become the counter-party)<br />
<br />
* deposit cash (buying coins from the retailer)<br />
<br />
* make a printed invoice (ie. a unique bitcoin address for payment of a specific amount)<br />
<br />
* verify a payment has been received (by scanning any receipt printed by a Coinkite terminal)<br />
<br />
The POS terminal is also useful to enable the bitcoin-based retail business. Cashiers (authorized users) can print a receipt with QR code that maybe presented to customers as a bill in bitcoin to be paid. Once paid, using any bitcoin wallet of choice, the payment can be easily verified at the terminal by scanning it's QR code. The number of confirmations for the incoming funds is displayed and appropriate warnings are shown for zero confirmation transactions. It is up to the retailer to define their policy on number of required confirmations and presumably the size of the transaction will be a deciding factor.<br />
<br />
Other "non account holder" transactions that are possible:<br />
<br />
* print current exchange rates (Bitcoin vs. fiat) to a receipt<br />
<br />
* deposit cash into bitcoin/litecoin (ie. retailer is selling bitcoins)<br />
<br />
* coins are delivered to a URL or private key.<br />
<br />
* scan bitcoin QR to pay (retailer is selling bitcoins, paid directly to settle bitcoin debt)<br />
<br />
* scan to verify transaction (prints amount received, and confirmation status for Coinkite transactions)<br />
<br />
The POS terminal supports both Litecoin and Bitcoin for all operations. Coins can be delivered as a paper wallet, directly into a Coinkite account (must be pre-existing) or into web voucher (PIN code and short URL).<br />
<br />
==External Links==<br />
<br />
* [https://www.coinkite.com Coinkite Home page]<br />
<br />
* [https://www.coinkite.com/faq FAQ page]<br />
<br />
* [https://coinkite.com/promo/wiki Sign-up]<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references /><br />
<br />
==Images==<br />
[[File:Coinkite_interfaces.png|300 px|alt=Coinkite interfaces|Coinkite interfaces]]<br />
[[File:Bitcoin-pos-terminal.png|300 px|alt=Bitcoin POs Terminal|Coinkite terminal]]<br />
[[File:Coinkite_logo.png|300 px|alt=Coinkite logo|Coinkite logo]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Debit Cards]]<br />
[[Category:Wallets]]<br />
[[Category:EWallets]]<br />
[[Category:HybridEWallets]]<br />
[[Category:Mixing_Services]]<br />
[[Category:Exchanges]]<br />
[[Category:Shopping Cart Interfaces]]<br />
[[Category:Services]]<br />
[[Category:Frontends]]<br />
[[Category:Clients]]<br />
[[Category:Mobile]]<br />
[[Category:Hardware Terminals]]<br />
[[Category:Cryptobanks]]<br />
[[Category:POS]]<br />
[[Category:Bitcoin payment systems]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Bitcoin_Block_Explorer&diff=43040Bitcoin Block Explorer2013-12-12T09:51:34Z<p>Biteasy: Redirected page to Category:Block chain browsers</p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[:Category:Block chain browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Bitcoin_Block_Explorer&diff=43039Bitcoin Block Explorer2013-12-12T09:51:10Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[Block_chain_browsers|Blockchain Browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Bitcoin_Block_Explorer&diff=43038Bitcoin Block Explorer2013-12-12T09:50:48Z<p>Biteasy: Redirected page to Block chain browsers</p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[Block chain browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Bitcoin_Block_Explorer&diff=43037Bitcoin Block Explorer2013-12-12T09:50:26Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[BlockExplorer.com]]<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[:Category:Block chain browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Bitcoin_Block_Explorer&diff=43036Bitcoin Block Explorer2013-12-12T09:49:55Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[BlockExplorer.com]]<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[Block_chain_browser|Block Chain Browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=BlockExplorer.com&diff=43032BlockExplorer.com2013-12-12T09:47:00Z<p>Biteasy: Biteasy moved page Bitcoin Block Explorer to BlockExplorer.com: Current title is misleading as it implies that blockexplorer.com is the official Bitcoin Block Explorer, which is not the case.</p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.blockexplorer.com Blockexplorer.com] is an online [[block chain browser]] which displays the contents of individual [[Bitcoin]] [[blocks]] and [[transactions]] and the transaction histories and balances of [[Address|addresses]]. It is operated by [[User:theymos|theymos]].<br />
<br />
Each object is displayed in human-readable form, as a web page, and is given a URL. By using hyperlinks, it allows users to switch from seeing one piece of data to a related one, with a single click. Clicking on the hash of an object, will move to the page that displays its data. This way for instance, you can switch from looking at a transaction, to looking at the previous transaction which gave this transaction its inputs. All block data is visible, in human-readable or machine-readable forms, and even some information that is not actually part of blocks.<br />
<br />
It is mainly aimed at advanced users who already know what blocks are and what kind of information they contain, but a lot of helpful information is provided in tool-tips.<br />
<br />
A listing of "strange transactions" is displayed in the main page, along with listings of the latest and largest transactions.<br />
<br />
Bitcoin Block Explorer can also display information from the [[Testnet]].<br />
<br />
==History==<br />
<br />
Many of the real-time stats pages existed before Bitcoin Block Explorer at http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/q. ''getdifficulty'' and ''getblockcount'' were created around July 2010, with ''decimaltarget'', ''probability'', ''hashestowin'', ''nextretarget'', ''totalbc'', and ''bcperblock'' coming soon after. These pages were made in response to block and difficulty values being "hard-coded" into text on the old wiki, which quickly made the information obsolete.<br />
<br />
Bitcoin Block Explorer was first made available around November 2010 at http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/bbe. It was initially meant to be the Bitcoin equivalent of [http://torstatus.blutmagie.de/ TorStatus], dumping all important data about the network. After it became much more popular than the real-time stats pages, BBE was moved to http://blockexplorer.com/, and real-time-stats were moved to http://blockexplorer.com/q.<br />
<br />
==Interfacing with BBE==<br />
<br />
Use the [http://blockexplorer.com/q query pages] such as ''getreceivedbyaddress'' wherever possible. Note that these pages do not send a trailing newline, which may cause problems with your HTTP-fetching tool. When an error occurs, the result will begin with "ERROR:", followed by the error text. Your detection of "ERROR" must be case-insensitive. An empty result is also an error. Non-fatal errors will print query results on the next line after the error, though using this data is inadvisable.<br />
<br />
To get block or transaction info, first find the hash of the item. This is done by using the search tool, which is accessible through a GET/HEAD request. For example, to get the hash of block number 444:<br />
$ telnet blockexplorer.com 80<br />
HEAD /search/444 HTTP/1.1<br />
Host: blockexplorer.com<br />
<br />
HTTP/1.1 302 Found<br />
...<br />
Location: http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000cff43a64ec00bea1...<br />
The hash is in the URL listed in the "location" header. Use it to get the JSON raw block:<br />
http://blockexplorer.com/rawblock/00000000cff43a64ec00bea1...<br />
Transactions use a URL like this:<br />
http://blockexplorer.com/rawtx/cd5a933b2aec79c02f7ce36222930d4c85...<br />
<br />
If the search returns any status code other than 302, then the search is bad. A status code of 200 indicates that the search was ambiguous, and the page body will contain links to the choices. [http://blockexplorer.com/search/0x111111 Example of search ambiguity]. A search with no search terms will 302-redirect to the home page. Searches for valid block numbers will always redirect to the block with that number (ignoring all other search types), though you can force BBE to assume a hex value by preceding it with "0x".<br />
<br />
The shortlinks at the top of most pages are similar to searches. It is possible for shortlinks to be ambiguous, and they will likewise return a 200 status code in that case.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the JSON raw block/tx pages omit a lot of important information, and there is no similar page for addresses. A full XML interface is planned. Scraping the HTML pages is not recommended, as the layout can change at any time.<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[:Category:Block chain browsers|Block chain browsers]] directory<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/ Bitcoin Block Explorer main website]<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/testnet Version for testnet]<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/q Realtime stats and other queries] (RESTful)<br />
<br />
[[Category:Services]]<br />
[[Category:Block chain browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Bitcoin_Block_Explorer&diff=43033Bitcoin Block Explorer2013-12-12T09:47:00Z<p>Biteasy: Biteasy moved page Bitcoin Block Explorer to BlockExplorer.com: Current title is misleading as it implies that blockexplorer.com is the official Bitcoin Block Explorer, which is not the case.</p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[BlockExplorer.com]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Talk:BlockExplorer.com&diff=43034Talk:BlockExplorer.com2013-12-12T09:47:00Z<p>Biteasy: Biteasy moved page Talk:Bitcoin Block Explorer to Talk:BlockExplorer.com: Current title is misleading as it implies that blockexplorer.com is the official Bitcoin Block Explorer, which is not the case.</p>
<hr />
<div>Why isn't HTTP 300 (Multiple Choices) used for ambiguous searches?<br />
:I thought about it, but I decided that 300 is meant for different formats of the same data. From the RFC: "The requested resource corresponds to any one of a set of '''representations'''". [[User:Theymos|theymos]] 04:01, 24 January 2011 (GMT)</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Talk:Bitcoin_Block_Explorer&diff=43035Talk:Bitcoin Block Explorer2013-12-12T09:47:00Z<p>Biteasy: Biteasy moved page Talk:Bitcoin Block Explorer to Talk:BlockExplorer.com: Current title is misleading as it implies that blockexplorer.com is the official Bitcoin Block Explorer, which is not the case.</p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[Talk:BlockExplorer.com]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=BlockExplorer.com&diff=43031BlockExplorer.com2013-12-12T09:41:12Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>[http://www.blockexplorer.com Blockexplorer.com] is an online [[block chain browser]] which displays the contents of individual [[Bitcoin]] [[blocks]] and [[transactions]] and the transaction histories and balances of [[Address|addresses]]. It is operated by [[User:theymos|theymos]].<br />
<br />
Each object is displayed in human-readable form, as a web page, and is given a URL. By using hyperlinks, it allows users to switch from seeing one piece of data to a related one, with a single click. Clicking on the hash of an object, will move to the page that displays its data. This way for instance, you can switch from looking at a transaction, to looking at the previous transaction which gave this transaction its inputs. All block data is visible, in human-readable or machine-readable forms, and even some information that is not actually part of blocks.<br />
<br />
It is mainly aimed at advanced users who already know what blocks are and what kind of information they contain, but a lot of helpful information is provided in tool-tips.<br />
<br />
A listing of "strange transactions" is displayed in the main page, along with listings of the latest and largest transactions.<br />
<br />
Bitcoin Block Explorer can also display information from the [[Testnet]].<br />
<br />
==History==<br />
<br />
Many of the real-time stats pages existed before Bitcoin Block Explorer at http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/q. ''getdifficulty'' and ''getblockcount'' were created around July 2010, with ''decimaltarget'', ''probability'', ''hashestowin'', ''nextretarget'', ''totalbc'', and ''bcperblock'' coming soon after. These pages were made in response to block and difficulty values being "hard-coded" into text on the old wiki, which quickly made the information obsolete.<br />
<br />
Bitcoin Block Explorer was first made available around November 2010 at http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/bbe. It was initially meant to be the Bitcoin equivalent of [http://torstatus.blutmagie.de/ TorStatus], dumping all important data about the network. After it became much more popular than the real-time stats pages, BBE was moved to http://blockexplorer.com/, and real-time-stats were moved to http://blockexplorer.com/q.<br />
<br />
==Interfacing with BBE==<br />
<br />
Use the [http://blockexplorer.com/q query pages] such as ''getreceivedbyaddress'' wherever possible. Note that these pages do not send a trailing newline, which may cause problems with your HTTP-fetching tool. When an error occurs, the result will begin with "ERROR:", followed by the error text. Your detection of "ERROR" must be case-insensitive. An empty result is also an error. Non-fatal errors will print query results on the next line after the error, though using this data is inadvisable.<br />
<br />
To get block or transaction info, first find the hash of the item. This is done by using the search tool, which is accessible through a GET/HEAD request. For example, to get the hash of block number 444:<br />
$ telnet blockexplorer.com 80<br />
HEAD /search/444 HTTP/1.1<br />
Host: blockexplorer.com<br />
<br />
HTTP/1.1 302 Found<br />
...<br />
Location: http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000cff43a64ec00bea1...<br />
The hash is in the URL listed in the "location" header. Use it to get the JSON raw block:<br />
http://blockexplorer.com/rawblock/00000000cff43a64ec00bea1...<br />
Transactions use a URL like this:<br />
http://blockexplorer.com/rawtx/cd5a933b2aec79c02f7ce36222930d4c85...<br />
<br />
If the search returns any status code other than 302, then the search is bad. A status code of 200 indicates that the search was ambiguous, and the page body will contain links to the choices. [http://blockexplorer.com/search/0x111111 Example of search ambiguity]. A search with no search terms will 302-redirect to the home page. Searches for valid block numbers will always redirect to the block with that number (ignoring all other search types), though you can force BBE to assume a hex value by preceding it with "0x".<br />
<br />
The shortlinks at the top of most pages are similar to searches. It is possible for shortlinks to be ambiguous, and they will likewise return a 200 status code in that case.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the JSON raw block/tx pages omit a lot of important information, and there is no similar page for addresses. A full XML interface is planned. Scraping the HTML pages is not recommended, as the layout can change at any time.<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[:Category:Block chain browsers|Block chain browsers]] directory<br />
<br />
== External Links ==<br />
<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/ Bitcoin Block Explorer main website]<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/testnet Version for testnet]<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/q Realtime stats and other queries] (RESTful)<br />
<br />
[[Category:Services]]<br />
[[Category:Block chain browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Testnet&diff=43003Testnet2013-12-10T21:37:23Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>The '''testnet''' is an alternative Bitcoin [[block chain]], to be used for testing. This allows application developers or bitcoin testers to experiment, without having to use real bitcoins or worrying about breaking the main bitcoin chain.<br />
<br />
Run bitcoin or bitcoind with the -testnet flag to use the testnet (or put testnet=1 in the bitcoin.conf file).<br />
<br />
There have been three generations of testnet. Testnet2 was just the first testnet reset with a different genesis block, because people were starting to trade testnet coins for real money. '''Testnet3''' is the current test network. It was introduced with the 0.7 release, introduced a third genesis block, a new rule to avoid the "difficulty was too high, is now too low, and transactions take too long to verify" problem, and contains blocks with edge-case transactions designed to test implementation compatibility.<br />
<br />
==Differences==<br />
* Default Bitcoin network protocol listen port is 18333 (instead of 8333)<br />
* Default RPC connection port is 18332 (instead of 8332)<br />
* Bootstrapping IRC channel is #bitcoinTEST instead of #bitcoin (both on irc.lfnet.org). The built-in node list is disabled.<br />
* A different value of ADDRESSVERSION field ensures no testnet Bitcoin addresses will work on the production network. (0x6F rather than 0x00)<br />
* The protocol message header bytes are 0x0B110907 (instead of 0xF9BEB4D9) <br />
* Minimum [[difficulty]] of 1.0 on testnet is equal to difficulty of 0.5 on mainnet. This means that the mainnet-equivalent of any testnet difficulty is half the testnet difficulty. In addition, if no block has been found in 20 minutes, the difficulty automatically resets back to the minimum for a single block, after which it returns to its previous value.<br />
* A new genesis block<br />
* The IsStandard() check is disabled so that non-standard transactions can be experimented with.<br />
<br />
==Genesis Block==<br />
<br />
Testnet uses a different genesis block to the main network. You can find it [https://www.biteasy.com/testnet/blocks/000000000933ea01ad0ee984209779baaec3ced90fa3f408719526f8d77f4943 here] or [http://blockexplorer.com/testnet/b/0 here].<br />
The testnet was reset with a new genesis block for the 0.7 bitcoin release.<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
* [https://www.biteasy.com/testnet/blocks Biteasy.com Testnet Blockexplorer]<br />
* [https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/testnet-in-a-box/ Testnet-In-A-Box self-contained testnet]<br />
* [https://github.com/freewil/bitcoin-testnet-box Forked/Updated testnet-box]<br />
* [https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=4483.0 Test Network forum topic]<br />
* [http://tpfaucet.appspot.com/ TP's TestNet Faucet]<br />
* [https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/test/ Testnet Faucet (closed)]<br />
* [http://testnet.mojocoin.com/ Another Testnet Faucet]<br />
* [http://pool.qdoop.net:18331/chain/Testnet3 Testnet3 ABE based Block Explorer]<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/testnet Testnet Block Explorer]<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/testnet/q/getdifficulty Testnet current difficulty] As output by BitCoin's getDifficulty]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Technical]]<br />
[[Category:Developer]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Testnet&diff=43002Testnet2013-12-10T21:35:44Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>The '''testnet''' is an alternative Bitcoin [[block chain]], to be used for testing. This allows application developers or bitcoin testers to experiment, without having to use real bitcoins or worrying about breaking the main bitcoin chain.<br />
<br />
Run bitcoin or bitcoind with the -testnet flag to use the testnet (or put testnet=1 in the bitcoin.conf file).<br />
<br />
There have been three generations of testnet. Testnet2 was just the first testnet reset with a different genesis block, because people were starting to trade testnet coins for real money. '''Testnet3''' is the current test network. It was introduced with the 0.7 release, introduced a third genesis block, a new rule to avoid the "difficulty was too high, is now too low, and transactions take too long to verify" problem, and contains blocks with edge-case transactions designed to test implementation compatibility.<br />
<br />
==Differences==<br />
* Default Bitcoin network protocol listen port is 18333 (instead of 8333)<br />
* Default RPC connection port is 18332 (instead of 8332)<br />
* Bootstrapping IRC channel is #bitcoinTEST instead of #bitcoin (both on irc.lfnet.org). The built-in node list is disabled.<br />
* A different value of ADDRESSVERSION field ensures no testnet Bitcoin addresses will work on the production network. (0x6F rather than 0x00)<br />
* The protocol message header bytes are 0x0B110907 (instead of 0xF9BEB4D9) <br />
* Minimum [[difficulty]] of 1.0 on testnet is equal to difficulty of 0.5 on mainnet. This means that the mainnet-equivalent of any testnet difficulty is half the testnet difficulty. In addition, if no block has been found in 20 minutes, the difficulty automatically resets back to the minimum for a single block, after which it returns to its previous value.<br />
* A new genesis block<br />
* The IsStandard() check is disabled so that non-standard transactions can be experimented with.<br />
<br />
==Genesis Block==<br />
<br />
Testnet uses a different genesis block to the main network. You can find it at http://blockexplorer.com/testnet/b/0<br />
The testnet was reset with a new genesis block for the 0.7 bitcoin release.<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
* [https://www.biteasy.com/testnet/blocks Biteasy.com Testnet Blockexplorer]<br />
* [https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/testnet-in-a-box/ Testnet-In-A-Box self-contained testnet]<br />
* [https://github.com/freewil/bitcoin-testnet-box Forked/Updated testnet-box]<br />
* [https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=4483.0 Test Network forum topic]<br />
* [http://tpfaucet.appspot.com/ TP's TestNet Faucet]<br />
* [https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/test/ Testnet Faucet (closed)]<br />
* [http://testnet.mojocoin.com/ Another Testnet Faucet]<br />
* [http://pool.qdoop.net:18331/chain/Testnet3 Testnet3 ABE based Block Explorer]<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/testnet Testnet Block Explorer]<br />
* [http://blockexplorer.com/testnet/q/getdifficulty Testnet current difficulty] As output by BitCoin's getDifficulty]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Technical]]<br />
[[Category:Developer]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Block_chain&diff=42669Block chain2013-11-26T21:44:09Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:blockchain.png|thumb|Blocks in the main chain (black) are the longest series of blocks that go from the genesis block (green) to the current block. Purple blocks are blocks that are not in the longest chain and therefore not used.]]<br />
<br />
A '''block chain''' is a transaction database shared by all [[Node|nodes]] participating in a system based on the Bitcoin protocol. A full copy of a currency's block chain contains every [[transaction]] ever executed in the currency. With this information, one can find out how much value belonged to each [[address]] at any point in history.<br />
<br />
Every [[block]] contains a [[hash]] of the previous block. This has the effect of creating a chain of blocks from the [[genesis block]] to the current block. Each block is guaranteed to come after the previous block chronologically because the previous block's hash would otherwise not be known. Each block is also computationally impractical to modify once it has been in the chain for a while because every block after it would also have to be regenerated. These properties are what make [[double-spending]] of bitcoins very difficult. The block chain is the main innovation of Bitcoin.<br />
<br />
Honest generators only build onto a block (by referencing it in blocks they create) if it is the latest block in the longest valid chain. "Length" is calculated as total combined difficulty of that chain, not number of blocks, though this distinction is only important in the context of a few potential attacks. A chain is valid if all of the blocks and transactions within it are valid, and only if it starts with the genesis block.<br />
<br />
For any block on the chain, there is only one path to the genesis block. Coming from the genesis block, however, there can be forks. One-block forks are created from time to time when two blocks are created just a few seconds apart. When that happens, generating nodes build onto whichever one of the blocks they received first. Whichever block ends up being included in the next block becomes part of the main chain because that chain is longer. More serious forks have occurred after fixing bugs that required backward-incompatible changes.<br />
<br />
Blocks in shorter chains (or invalid chains) are not used for anything. When the bitcoin client switches to another, longer chain, all valid transactions of the blocks inside the shorter chain are re-added to the pool of queued transactions and will be included in another block. The reward for the blocks on the shorter chain will not be present in the longest chain, so they will be practically lost, which is why a network-enforced 100-block maturation time for generations exists.<br />
<br />
These blocks on the shorter chains are often called "orphan" blocks. This is because the generation transactions do not have a parent block in the longest chain, so these generation transactions show up as orphan in the listtransactions RPC call. Several pools have misinterpreted these messages and started calling their blocks "orphans". In reality, these blocks have a parent block, and might even have children.<br />
<br />
Because a block can only reference one previous block, it is impossible for two forked chains to merge.<br />
<br />
It's possible to use the block chain algorithm for non-financial purposes: see [[Alternative chain]].<br />
<br />
The block chain is broadcasted to all nodes on the networking using a flood protocol: see [[Block chain download]].<br />
<br />
[[Category:Technical]]<br />
[[Category:Vocabulary]]<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[BlockChain.info]] - Utility site and [[EWallet]] provider of similar name<br />
* [[Biteasy|Biteasy.com]] - Web based blockchain explorer<br />
[[ru:цепочка блоков]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Block_chain&diff=42668Block chain2013-11-26T21:43:47Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[File:blockchain.png|thumb|Blocks in the main chain (black) are the longest series of blocks that go from the genesis block (green) to the current block. Purple blocks are blocks that are not in the longest chain and therefore not used.]]<br />
<br />
A '''block chain''' is a transaction database shared by all [[Node|nodes]] participating in a system based on the Bitcoin protocol. A full copy of a currency's block chain contains every [[transaction]] ever executed in the currency. With this information, one can find out how much value belonged to each [[address]] at any point in history.<br />
<br />
Every [[block]] contains a [[hash]] of the previous block. This has the effect of creating a chain of blocks from the [[genesis block]] to the current block. Each block is guaranteed to come after the previous block chronologically because the previous block's hash would otherwise not be known. Each block is also computationally impractical to modify once it has been in the chain for a while because every block after it would also have to be regenerated. These properties are what make [[double-spending]] of bitcoins very difficult. The block chain is the main innovation of Bitcoin.<br />
<br />
Honest generators only build onto a block (by referencing it in blocks they create) if it is the latest block in the longest valid chain. "Length" is calculated as total combined difficulty of that chain, not number of blocks, though this distinction is only important in the context of a few potential attacks. A chain is valid if all of the blocks and transactions within it are valid, and only if it starts with the genesis block.<br />
<br />
For any block on the chain, there is only one path to the genesis block. Coming from the genesis block, however, there can be forks. One-block forks are created from time to time when two blocks are created just a few seconds apart. When that happens, generating nodes build onto whichever one of the blocks they received first. Whichever block ends up being included in the next block becomes part of the main chain because that chain is longer. More serious forks have occurred after fixing bugs that required backward-incompatible changes.<br />
<br />
Blocks in shorter chains (or invalid chains) are not used for anything. When the bitcoin client switches to another, longer chain, all valid transactions of the blocks inside the shorter chain are re-added to the pool of queued transactions and will be included in another block. The reward for the blocks on the shorter chain will not be present in the longest chain, so they will be practically lost, which is why a network-enforced 100-block maturation time for generations exists.<br />
<br />
These blocks on the shorter chains are often called "orphan" blocks. This is because the generation transactions do not have a parent block in the longest chain, so these generation transactions show up as orphan in the listtransactions RPC call. Several pools have misinterpreted these messages and started calling their blocks "orphans". In reality, these blocks have a parent block, and might even have children.<br />
<br />
Because a block can only reference one previous block, it is impossible for two forked chains to merge.<br />
<br />
It's possible to use the block chain algorithm for non-financial purposes: see [[Alternative chain]].<br />
<br />
The block chain is broadcasted to all nodes on the networking using a flood protocol: see [[Block chain download]].<br />
<br />
[[Category:Technical]]<br />
[[Category:Vocabulary]]<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[BlockChain.info]] - Utility site and [[EWallet]] provider of similar name<br />
* [[Biteasy|Biteasy.com]] - Web Based blockchain explorer<br />
[[ru:цепочка блоков]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Help:FAQ&diff=42635Help:FAQ2013-11-25T19:58:09Z<p>Biteasy: /* I was sent some bitcoins and they haven't arrived yet! Where are they? */</p>
<hr />
<div>Here you will find answers to the most commonly asked questions.<br />
<br />
== General ==<br />
=== What is Bitcoin? ===<br />
Bitcoin is a distributed peer-to-peer digital currency that can be transferred instantly and securely between any two people in the world. It's like electronic cash that you can use to pay friends or merchants.<br />
<br />
=== What are bitcoins? ===<br />
Bitcoins are the unit of currency of the Bitcoin system. A commonly used shorthand for this is “BTC” to refer to a price or amount (e.g. “100 BTC”).<br />
There are such things as [[physical bitcoins]], but ultimately, a bitcoin is just a number associated with a [[Address|Bitcoin Address]]. A physical bitcoin is simply an object, such as a coin, with the number carefully embedded inside. See also an [[Introduction|easy intro]] to Bitcoin.<br />
<br />
=== How can I get bitcoins? ===<br />
<br />
There are a variety of ways to acquire bitcoins:<br />
<br />
* Accept bitcoins as payment for goods or services.<br />
* The most common way to buy bitcoins are the [[Buying bitcoins|Bitcoin Exchanges]]<br />
* There are several services where you can [[Buying_Bitcoins_(the_noob_version)|trade them]] for traditional currency.<br />
* Find someone to trade cash for bitcoins in-person through a [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Directories local directory].<br />
* Participate in a [[Pooled mining|mining pool]].<br />
* If you have a lot of mining hardware, you can solo mine and attempt to create a new [[block]] (currently yields 25 bitcoins plus transaction fees).<br />
* Visit sites that provide [[Trade#Free_Samples_and_Offers|free samples and offers]].<br />
<br />
===Does Bitcoin guarantee an influx of free money?===<br />
<br />
Since Bitcoin is a new technology, what it is and how it works may be initially unclear. Bitcoin is sometimes presented as being one of three things:<br />
<ol style="list-style-type: upper-alpha;"><br />
<li>Some sort of online 'get-rich-quick' scam.</li><br />
<li>A loophole in the market economy, the installation of which guarantees a steady influx of cash.</li><br />
<li>A sure investment that will almost certainly yield a profit.</li><br />
</ol><br />
In fact, none of the above are true. Let's look at them independently.<br />
<br />
;Is Bitcoin a 'get-rich-quick' scheme?<br />
:If you've spent much time on the Internet, you've probably seen ads for many 'get-rich-quick' schemes. These ads usually promise huge profits for a small amounts of easy work. Such schemes are usually pyramid/matrix-style schemes that make money from their own employees and offer nothing of any real value. Most convince one to buy packages that will make them earn hundreds a day, which in fact have the buyer distribute more such ads, and make minute profits.<br />
<br />
:Bitcoin is in no way similar to these schemes. Bitcoin doesn't promise windfall profits. There is no way for the developers to make money from your involvement or to take money from you. That bitcoins are nearly impossible to acquire without the owner's consent represents one of its greatest strengths. Bitcoin is an experimental, virtual currency that may succeed or may fail. None of its developers expect to get rich off of it. <br />
<br />
:A more detailed answer to this question can be found [http://bitcointalk.org/?topic=7815.0 here].<br />
<br />
;Will I make money by installing the client?<br />
:Most people who use Bitcoin don't earn anything by doing so, and the default client has no built-in way to earn Bitcoins. A small minority of people with dedicated, high-performance hardware do earn some Bitcoins by "''mining''" (generating new bitcoins, see [[#What is mining?|What is mining?]]) with special software, but joining Bitcoin shouldn't be construed as being the road to riches. Most Bitcoin users get involved because they find the project conceptually interesting and don't earn anything by doing so. This is also why you won't find much speculation about the political or economic repercussions of Bitcoin anywhere on this site: Bitcoin developers owe their dedication to the project's intellectual yieldings more than to those of a monetary nature. Bitcoin is still taking its first baby steps; it may go on to do great things but right now it only has something to offer those chasing conceptually interesting projects or bleeding edge technology.<br />
<br />
;As an investment, is Bitcoin a sure thing?<br />
:Bitcoin is a new and interesting electronic currency, the value of which is not backed by any single government or organization. Like other currencies, it is worth something partly because people are willing to trade it for goods and services. Its exchange rate fluctuates continuously, and sometimes wildly. It lacks wide acceptance and is vulnerable to manipulation by parties with modest funding. Security incidents such as website and account compromise may trigger major sell-offs. Other fluctuations can build into positive feedback loops and cause much larger exchange rate fluctuations. Anyone who puts money into Bitcoin should understand the risk they are taking and consider it a high-risk currency. Later, as Bitcoin becomes better known and more widely accepted, it may stabilize, but for the time being it is unpredictable. Any investment in Bitcoin should be done carefully and with a clear plan to manage the risk.<br />
<br />
=== Can I buy bitcoins with Paypal? ===<br />
<br />
It is possible to buy [[physical bitcoins]] with PayPal but it is otherwise difficult and/or expensive to do so for non-physical bitcoins, because of significant risk to the seller. <br />
<br />
While it is possible to find an individual who wishes to sell Bitcoin to you via Paypal, (perhaps via [http://www.bitcoin-otc.com/ #bitcoin-otc] ) most exchanges do not allow funding through PayPal. This is due to repeated cases where someone pays for bitcoins with Paypal, receives their bitcoins, and then fraudulently complains to Paypal that they never received their purchase. PayPal often sides with the fraudulent buyer in this case, which means any seller needs to cover that risk with higher fees or refuse to accept PayPal altogether.<br />
<br />
Buying Bitcoins from individuals this way is still possible, but requires the seller to have some trust that the buyer will not file a claim with PayPal to reverse the payment.<br />
<br />
=== Where can I find a forum to discuss Bitcoin? ===<br />
<br />
Please visit the [[Bitcoin:Community_portal#Bitcoin_Community_Forums_on_various_platforms|Community Portal]] for links to Bitcoin-related forums.<br />
<br />
=== How are new bitcoins created? ===<br />
<br />
[[File:total_bitcoins_over_time_graph.png|thumb|Number of bitcoins over time, assuming a perfect 10-minute interval.]]<br />
New bitcoins are generated by the network through the process of "[[#What is mining?|''mining'']]". In a process that is similar to a continuous raffle draw, mining nodes on the network are awarded bitcoins each time they find the solution to a certain mathematical problem (and thereby create a new [[block]]). Creating a block is a [[proof of work]] with a difficulty that varies with the overall strength of the network. The reward for solving a block is [[Controlled Currency Supply|automatically adjusted]] so that roughly every four years of operation of the Bitcoin network, half the amount of bitcoins created in the prior 4 years are created. {{formatnum:10500000}} bitcoins were created in the first 4 (approx.) years from January 2009 to November 2012. Every four years thereafter this amount halves, so it will be {{formatnum:5250000}} over years 4-8, {{formatnum:2625000}} over years 8-12, and so on. Thus the total number of bitcoins in existence will never exceed {{formatnum:21000000}}. See [[Controlled Currency Supply]].<br />
<br />
Blocks are [[Mining|mined]] every 10 minutes, on average and for the first four years ({{formatnum:210000}} blocks) each block included 50 new bitcoins. As the amount of processing power directed at mining changes, the difficulty of creating new bitcoins changes. This difficulty factor is calculated every 2016 blocks and is based upon the time taken to generate the previous 2016 blocks. See [[Mining]].<br />
<br />
=== What's the current total number of bitcoins in existence? ===<br />
<br />
[http://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc Current count]. Also see [https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins Total bitcoins in circulation chart]<br />
<br />
The number of blocks times the coin value of a block is the number of coins in existence. The coin value of a block is 50 BTC for each of the first {{formatnum:210000}} blocks, 25 BTC for the next {{formatnum:210000}} blocks, then 12.5 BTC, 6.25 BTC and so on.<br />
<br />
=== How divisible are bitcoins? ===<br />
<br />
A bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimal places. Therefore, 0.00000001 BTC is the smallest amount that can be handled in a transaction. If necessary, the protocol and related software can be modified to handle even smaller amounts.<br />
<br />
=== What do I call the various denominations of bitcoin? ===<br />
<br />
There is a lot of discussion about the naming of these fractions of bitcoins. The leading candidates are:<br />
<br />
* 1 BTC = 1 bitcoin<br />
* 0.01 BTC = 1 cBTC = 1 centibitcoin (also referred to as bitcent)<br />
* 0.001 BTC = 1 mBTC = 1 millibitcoin (also referred to as mbit (pronounced em-bit) or millibit or even bitmill)<br />
* 0.000 001 BTC = 1 μBTC = 1 microbitcoin (also referred to as ubit (pronounced yu-bit) or microbit)<br />
<br />
The above follows the accepted international SI prefixes for hundredths, thousandths, and millionths. There are many arguments against the special case of 0.01 BTC since it is unlikely to represent anything meaningful as the Bitcoin economy grows (it certainly won't be the equivalent of 0.01 USD, GBP or EUR). Equally, the inclusion of existing national currency denominations such as "cent", "nickel", "dime", "pence", "pound", "kopek" and so on are to be discouraged; this is a worldwide currency.<br />
<br />
One exception is the "satoshi" which is smallest denomination currently possible <br />
<br />
* 0.000 000 01 BTC = 1 satoshi (pronounced sa-toh-shee)<br />
which is so named in honour of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of the inventor of Bitcoin.<br />
<br />
For an overview of all defined units of Bitcoin (including less common and niche units), see [[Units]].<br />
<br />
Further discussion on this topic can be found on the forums here:<br />
<br />
* [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=14438.msg195287#msg195287 We need names]<br />
* [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8282.0 What to call 0.001 BTC]<br />
<br />
=== How does the halving work when the number gets really small? ===<br />
<br />
Eventually the reward will go from 0.00000001 BTC to zero and no more bitcoins will be created. <br />
<br />
The block reward calculation is done as a right bitwise shift of a 64-bit signed integer, which means it is divided by two and rounded down. The integer is equal to the value in BTC * 100,000,000 since internally in the reference client software, all Bitcoin balances and values are stored as unsigned integers.<br />
<br />
With an initial block reward of 50 BTC, it will take many 4-year periods for the block reward to reach zero.<br />
<br />
=== How long will it take to generate all the coins? ===<br />
<br />
The last block that will generate coins will be block #6,929,999 which should be generated at or near the year 2140. The total number of coins in circulation will then remain static at 20,999,999.9769 BTC.<br />
<br />
Even if the allowed precision is expanded from the current 8 decimals, the total BTC in circulation will always be slightly below 21 million (assuming everything else stays the same). For example, with 16 decimals of precision, the end total would be 20,999,999.999999999496 BTC.<br />
<br />
=== If no more coins are going to be generated, will more blocks be created? ===<br />
<br />
Absolutely! Even before the creation of coins ends, the use of [[transaction fee|transaction fees]] will likely make creating new blocks more valuable from the fees than the new coins being created. When coin generation ends, these fees will sustain the ability to use bitcoins and the Bitcoin network. There is no practical limit on the number of blocks that will be mined in the future.<br />
<br />
=== But if no more coins are generated, what happens when Bitcoins are lost? Won't that be a problem? ===<br />
<br />
Because of the law of supply and demand, when fewer bitcoins are available the ones that are left will be in higher demand, and therefore will have a higher value. So, as Bitcoins are lost, the remaining bitcoins will eventually increase in value to compensate. As the value of a bitcoin increases, the number of bitcoins required to purchase an item '''de'''creases. This is a [[Deflationary spiral|deflationary economic model]]. As the average transaction size reduces, transactions will probably be denominated in sub-units of a bitcoin such as millibitcoins ("Millies") or microbitcoins ("Mikes").<br />
<br />
The Bitcoin protocol uses a base unit of one hundred-millionth of a Bitcoin ("a Satoshi"), but unused bits are available in the protocol fields that could be used to denote even smaller subdivisions.<br />
<br />
=== If every transaction is broadcast via the network, does Bitcoin scale? ===<br />
The Bitcoin protocol allows lightweight clients that can use Bitcoin without downloading the entire transaction history. As traffic grows and this becomes more critical, implementations of the concept will be developed. Full network nodes will at some point become a more specialized service.<br />
<br />
With some modifications to the software, full Bitcoin nodes could easily keep up with both VISA and MasterCard combined, using only fairly modest hardware (a single high end server by todays standards). It is worth noting that the MasterCard network is structured somewhat like Bitcoin itself - as a peer to peer broadcast network.<br />
<br />
Learn more about [[Scalability]].<br />
<br />
==Economy==<br />
=== Where does the value of Bitcoin stem from? What backs up Bitcoin? ===<br />
Bitcoins have value because they are useful and because they are [[Controlled Currency Supply|scarce]]. As they are accepted by more merchants, their value will [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_%28economics%29 stabilize]. See the [[Trade|list of Bitcoin-accepting sites]].<br />
<br />
When we say that a currency is backed up by gold, we mean that there's a promise in place that you can exchange the currency for gold. Bitcoins, like dollars and euros, are not backed up by anything except the variety of merchants that accept them.<br />
<br />
It's a common misconception that Bitcoins gain their value from the cost of electricity required to generate them. Cost doesn't equal value – hiring 1,000 men to shovel a big hole in the ground may be costly, but not valuable. Also, even though scarcity is a critical requirement for a useful currency, it alone doesn't make anything valuable. For example, your fingerprints are scarce, but that doesn't mean they have any exchange value.<br />
<br />
Alternatively it needs to be added that while the law of supply and demand applies it does not guarantee value of Bitcoins in the future. If confidence in Bitcoins is lost then it will not matter that the supply can no longer be increased, the demand will fall off with all holders trying to get rid of their coins. An example of this can be seen in cases of state currencies, in cases when the state in question dissolves and so no new supply of the currency is available (the central authority managing the supply is gone), however the demand for the currency falls sharply because confidence in its purchasing power disappears. Of-course Bitcoins do not have such central authority managing the supply of the coins, but it does not prevent confidence from eroding due to other situations that are not necessarily predictable.<br />
<br />
=== Is Bitcoin a bubble? ===<br />
Yes, in the same way as the euro and dollar are. They only have value in exchange and have no inherent value. If everyone suddenly stopped accepting your dollars, euros or bitcoins, the "bubble" would burst and their value would drop to zero. But that is unlikely to happen: even in Somalia, where the government collapsed 20 years ago, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_shilling Somali shillings] are still accepted as payment.<br />
<br />
=== Is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme? ===<br />
In a Ponzi Scheme, the founders persuade investors that they’ll profit. Bitcoin does not make such a guarantee. There is no central entity, just individuals building an economy.<br />
<br />
A ponzi scheme is a zero sum game. Early adopters can only profit at the expense of late adopters. Bitcoin has possible win-win outcomes. Early adopters profit from the rise in value. Late adopters, and indeed, society as a whole, benefit from the usefulness of a stable, fast, inexpensive, and widely accepted p2p currency.<br />
<br />
The fact that early adopters benefit more doesn't alone make anything a Ponzi scheme. All good investments in successful companies have this quality.<br />
<br />
=== Doesn't Bitcoin unfairly benefit early adopters? ===<br />
Early adopters have a large number of bitcoins now because they took a risk and invested resources in an unproven technology. By so doing, they have helped Bitcoin become what it is now and what it will be in the future (hopefully, a ubiquitous decentralized digital currency). It is only fair they will reap the benefits of their successful investment.<br />
<br />
In any case, any bitcoin generated will probably change hands dozens of time as a medium of exchange, so the profit made from the initial distribution will be insignificant compared to the total commerce enabled by Bitcoin.<br />
<br />
Since the pricing of Bitcoins has fallen greatly from its June 2011 peak, prices today are much more similar to those enjoyed by many early adopters. Those who are buying Bitcoins today likely believe that Bitcoin will grow significantly in the future. Setting aside the brief opportunity to have sold Bitcoins at the June 2011 peak enjoyed by few, the early-adopter window is arguably still open.<br />
<br />
===Won't loss of wallets and the finite amount of Bitcoins create excessive deflation, destroying Bitcoin? ===<br />
Worries about Bitcoin being destroyed by deflation are not entirely unfounded. Unlike most currencies, which experience inflation as their founding institutions create more and more units, Bitcoin will likely experience gradual deflation with the passage of time. Bitcoin is unique in that only a small amount of units will ever be produced (twenty-one million to be exact), this number has been known since the project's inception, and the units are created at a predictable rate.<br />
<br />
Also, Bitcoin users are faced with a danger that doesn't threaten users of any other currency: if a Bitcoin user loses his wallet, his money is gone forever, unless he finds it again. And not just to him; it's gone completely out of circulation, rendered utterly inaccessible to anyone. As people will lose their wallets, the total number of Bitcoins will slowly decrease.<br />
<br />
Therefore, Bitcoin seems to be faced with a unique problem. Whereas most currencies inflate over time, Bitcoin will mostly likely do just the opposite. Time will see the irretrievable loss of an ever-increasing number of Bitcoins. An already small number will be permanently whittled down further and further. And as there become fewer and fewer Bitcoins, the laws of supply and demand suggest that their value will probably continually rise.<br />
<br />
Thus Bitcoin is bound to once again stray into mysterious territory, because no one exactly knows what happens to a currency that grows continually more valuable. Many economists claim that a low level of inflation is a good thing for a currency, but nobody is quite sure about what might happens to one that continually deflates. Although deflation could hardly be called a rare phenomenon, steady, constant deflation is unheard of. There may be a lot of speculation, no one has any hard data to back up their claims.<br />
<br />
That being said, there is a mechanism in place to combat the obvious consequences. Extreme deflation would render most currencies highly impractical: if a single Canadian dollar could suddenly buy the holder a car, how would one go about buying bread or candy? Even pennies would fetch more than a person could carry. Bitcoin, however, offers a simple and stylish solution: infinite divisibility. Bitcoins can be divided up and trade into as small of pieces as one wants, so no matter how valuable Bitcoins become, one can trade them in practical quantities. <br />
<br />
In fact, infinite divisibility should allow Bitcoins to function in cases of extreme wallet loss. Even if, in the far future, so many people have lost their wallets that only a single Bitcoin, or a fraction of one, remains, Bitcoin should continue to function just fine. No one can claim to be sure what is going to happen, but deflation may prove to present a smaller threat than many expect.<br />
<br />
For more information, see the [[Deflationary spiral]] page.<br />
<br />
=== What if someone bought up all the existing Bitcoins? ===<br />
Bitcoin markets are competitive -- meaning the price of a bitcoin will rise or fall depending on supply and demand at certain price levels. Only a fraction of bitcoins issued to date are found on the exchange markets for sale. So even though technically a buyer with lots of money could buy all the bitcoins offered for sale, unless those holding the rest of the bitcoins offer them for sale as well, even the wealthiest, most determined buyer can't get at them.<br />
<br />
Additionally, new currency continues to be issued daily and will continue to do so for decades though over time the rate at which they are issued declines to insignificant levels. Those who are mining aren't obligated to sell their bitcoins so not all bitcoins will make it to the markets even.<br />
<br />
This situation doesn't suggest, however, that the markets aren't vulnerable to price manipulation. It doesn't take significant amounts of money to move the market price up or down and thus Bitcoin remains a volatile asset.<br />
<br />
===What if someone creates a new block chain, or a new digital currency that renders Bitcoin obsolete?===<br />
<br />
That the block chain cannot be easily forked represents one of the central security mechanisms of Bitcoin. Given the choice between two block chains, a Bitcoin miner always chooses the longer one - that is to say, the one with the more complex hash. Thusly, it ensures that each user can only spend their bitcoins once, and that no user gets ripped off.<br />
<br />
As a consequence of the block chain structure, there may at any time be many different sub-branches, and the possibility always exists of a transaction being over-written by the longest branch, if it has been recorded in a shorter one. The older a transaction is though, the lower its chances of being over-written, and the higher of becoming permanent. Although the block chain prevents one from spending more Bitcoins than one has, it means that transactions can be accidentally nullified. <br />
<br />
A new block chain would leave the network vulnerable to [[double-spending|double-spend]] attacks. However, the creation of a viable new chain presents considerable difficulty, and the possibility does not present much of a risk.<br />
<br />
Bitcoin will always choose the longer Block Chain and determines the relative length of two branches by the complexities of their hashes. Since the hash of each new block is made from that of the block preceding it, to create a block with a more complex hash, one must be prepared to do more computation than has been done by the entire Bitcoin network from the fork point up to the newest of the blocks one is trying to supersede. Needless to say, such an undertaking would require a very large amount of processing power and since Bitcoin is continually growing and expanding, it will likely only require more with the passage of time.<br />
<br />
A much more distinct and real threat to the Bitcoin use is the development of other, superior virtual currencies, which could supplant Bitcoin and render it obsolete and valueless.<br />
<br />
A great deal of careful thought and ingenuity has gone into the development of Bitcoin, but it is the first of its breed, a prototype, and vulnerable to more highly-evolved competitors. At present, any threatening rivals have yet to rear their heads; Bitcoin remains the first and foremost private virtual currency, but we can offer no guarantees that it will retain that position. It would certainly be in keeping with internet history for a similar system built from the same principles to supersede and cast Bitcoin into obsolescence, after time had revealed its major shortcomings. Friendster and Myspace suffered similar fates at the hand of Facebook, Napster was ousted by Limeware, Bearshare and torrent applications, and Skype has all but crushed the last few disciples of the Microsoft Messenger army. <br />
<br />
This may sound rather foreboding, so bear in mind that the introduction of new and possibly better virtual currencies will not necessarily herald Bitcoin's demise. If Bitcoin establishes itself sufficiently firmly before the inception of the next generation of private, online currencies so as to gain widespread acceptance and general stability, future currencies may pose little threat even if they can claim superior design. This is known as the network effect.<br />
<br />
=== Is Bitcoin open to value manipulation? ===<br />
<br />
The current low market cap of Bitcoin means that any investor with deep enough pockets can significantly change/manipulate the rate. Is this a problem?<br />
<br />
This is only a problem if you are investing in Bitcoin for short period of time. A manipulator can't change the fundamentals, and over a period of 5-10 years they will win over any short term manipulations.<br />
<br />
==Sending and Receiving Payments==<br />
<br />
=== Why do I have to wait 10 minutes before I can spend money I received? ===<br />
<br />
10 minutes is the average time taken to find a block. It can be significantly more or less time than that depending on luck; 10 minutes is simply the average case. <br />
<br />
[[Blocks]] (shown as "confirmations" in the GUI) are how the Bitcoin achieves consensus on who owns what. Once a block is found everyone agrees that you now own those coins, so you can spend them again. Until then it's possible that some network nodes believe otherwise, if somebody is attempting to defraud the system by reversing a transaction. The more confirmations a transaction has, the less risk there is of a reversal. Only 6 blocks or 1 hour is enough to make reversal computationally impractical. This is dramatically better than credit cards which can see chargebacks occur up to three months after the original transaction!<br />
<br />
Ten minutes was specifically chosen by [[Satoshi]] as a tradeoff between first confirmation time and the amount of work wasted due to chain splits. After a block is mined, it takes time for other miners to find out about it, and until then they are actually competing against the new block instead of adding to it. If someone mines another new block based on the old block chain, the network can only accept one of the two, and all the work that went into the other block gets wasted. For example, if it takes miners 1 minute on average to learn about new blocks, and new blocks come every 10 minutes, then the overall network is wasting about 10% of its work. Lengthening the time between blocks reduces this waste.<br />
<br />
As a thought experiment, what if the Bitcoin network grew to include Mars? From the farthest points in their orbits, it takes about 20 minutes for a signal to travel from Earth to Mars. With only 10 minutes between new blocks, miners on Mars would always be 2 blocks behind the miners on Earth. It would be almost impossible for them to contribute to the block chain. If we wanted collaborate with those kinds of delays, we would need at least a few hours between new blocks. <br />
<br />
[[File:TransactionConfirmationTimesExample.PNG]]<br />
<br />
=== Do you have to wait until my transactions are confirmed in order to buy or sell things with Bitcoin? ===<br />
<br />
YES, you do, IF the transaction is non-recourse. The Bitcoin reference software does not display transactions as confirmed until six blocks have passed (confirmations). As transactions are buried in the chain they become increasingly non-reversible but are very reversible before the first confirmation. Two to six confirmations are recommended for non-recourse situations depending on the value of the transactions involved.<br />
<br />
When people ask this question they are usually thinking about applications like supermarkets. This generally is a recourse situation: if somebody tries to double-spend on a face-to-face transaction it might work a few times, but probabalistically speaking eventually one of the double-spends will get noticed, and the penalty for shoplifting charges in most localities is calibrated to be several times worse than the proceeds of a single shoplifting event.<br />
<br />
Double-spends might be a concern for something like a snack machine in a low-traffic area with no nearby security cameras. Such a machine shouldn't honor zero-confirmation payments, and should instead use some other mechanism of clearing Bitcoin or validating transactions against reversal, see the wiki article [[Myths#Point_of_sale_with_bitcoins_isn.27t_possible_because_of_the_10_minute_wait_for_confirmation|here]] for alternatives.<br />
<br />
Applications that require immediate payment processing, like supermarkets or snack machines, need to manage the risks. Here is one way to reverse an unconfirmed payment:<br />
<br />
A [[Double-spending#Finney_attack|Finney attack]], in which an attacker mines a block containing a movement of some coins back to themselves. Once they find a block solution, they quickly go to a merchant and make a purchase, then broadcast the block, thus taking back the coins. This attack is a risk primarily for goods that are dispatched immediately, like song downloads or currency trades. Because the attacker can't choose the time of the attack, it isn't a risk for merchants such as supermarkets where you can't choose exactly when to pay (due to queues, etc). The attack can fail if somebody else finds a block containing the purchasing transaction before you release your own block, therefore, merchants can reduce but not eliminate the risk by making purchasers wait some length of time that's less than a confirm.<br />
<br />
Because pulling off this attack is not trivial, merchants who need to sell things automatically and instantly are most likely to adjust the price to include the cost of reversal fraud, or elect to use special insurance.<br />
<br />
=== I was sent some bitcoins and they haven't arrived yet! Where are they? ===<br />
<br />
Don't panic! There are a number of reasons why your bitcoins might not show up yet, and a number of ways to diagnose them. <br />
<br />
The latest version of the Bitcoin-Qt client tells you how far it has yet to go in downloading the blockchain. Hover over the icon in the bottom right corner of the client to learn your client's status.<br />
<br />
If it has not caught up then it's possible that your transaction hasn't been included in a block yet. <br />
<br />
You can check pending transactions in the network by going [https://www.biteasy.com here] or [http://blockchain.info here] and then searching for your address. If the transaction is listed here then it's a matter of waiting until it gets included in a block before it will show in your client. <br />
<br />
If the transaction is based on a coin that was in a recent transaction then it could be considered a low priority transaction. Transfers can take longer if the transaction fee paid was not high enough. If there is no fee at all the transfer can get a very low priority and take hours or even days to be included in a block.<br />
<br />
=== Why does my Bitcoin address keep changing? ===<br />
<br />
Unlike postal or email addresses, Bitcoin addresses are single-use.<br />
This means that whenever you want to receive a payment, you need to generate a new address.<br />
<br />
While it is technically possible to receive coins multiple times with a single address, this compromises your wallet's security as well as the privacy of the entire Bitcoin network, and also makes it impossible to know for certain who sent the coins or why.<br />
<br />
===How much will the transaction fee be?===<br />
<br />
Some transactions might require a [[transaction fee]] for them to get confirmed in a timely manner. The transaction fee is processed by and received by the bitcoin miner. The most recent version of the Bitcoin client will estimate an appropriate fee when a fee might be required.<br />
<br />
The fee is added to the payment amount. For example, if you are sending a 1.234 BTC payment and the client requires a 0.0005 BTC fee, then 1.2345 BTC will be subtracted from the wallet balance for the entire transaction and the address for where the payment was sent will receive a payment of 1.234 BTC.<br />
<br />
A fee might be imposed because your transaction looks like a denial of service attack to the Bitcoin system. For example, it might be burdensome to transmit or it might recycle Bitcoins you recently received. The wallet software attempts to avoid generating burdensome transactions, but it isn't always able to do so: The funds in your wallet might be new or composed of many tiny payments. <br />
<br />
Because the fee is related to the amount of data that makes up the transaction and not to the amount of Bitcoins being sent, the fee may seem extremely low (0.0005 BTC for a 1,000 BTC transfer) or unfairly high (0.004 BTC for a 0.02 BTC payment, or about 20%). If you are receiving tiny amounts (''e.g.'' as small payments from a mining pool) then fees when sending will be higher than if your activity follows the pattern of conventional consumer or business transactions. <br />
<br />
As of Bitcoin 0.5.3 the required fee will not be higher than 0.05 BTC. For most users there is usually no required fee at all. If a fee is required it will most commonly be 0.0005 BTC.<br />
<br />
=== What happens when someone sends me a bitcoin but my computer is powered off? ===<br />
<br />
Bitcoins are not actually "sent" to your wallet; the software only uses that term so that we can use the currency without having to learn new concepts. Your wallet is only needed when you wish to spend coins that you've received.<br />
<br />
If you are sent coins when your wallet client program is not running, and you later launch the wallet client program, the coins will eventually appear as if they were just received in the wallet. That is to say, when the client program is started it must download blocks and catch up with any transactions it did not already know about.<br />
<br />
=== How long does "synchronizing" take when the Bitcoin client is first installed? What's it doing? ===<br />
<br />
The popular Bitcoin client software from bitcoin.org implements a "full" Bitcoin node: It can carry out all the duties of the Bitcoin P2P system, it isn't simply a "client". One of the principles behind the operation of full Bitcoin nodes is that they don't assume that the other participants have followed the rules of the Bitcoin system. During synchronization, the software is processing historical Bitcoin transactions and making sure for itself that all of the rules of the system have been correctly followed.<br />
<br />
In normal operation, after synchronizing, the software should use a hardly noticeable amount of your computer's resources.<br />
<br />
When the wallet client program is first installed, its initial validation requires a lot of work from your computer's hard disk, so the amount of time to synchronize depends on your disk speed and, to a lesser extent, your CPU speed. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or so. On a slow computer it could take more than 40 hours of continuous synchronization, so check your computer's power-saving settings to ensure that it does not turn its hard disk off when unattended for a few hours. You can use the Bitcoin software during synchronization, but you may not see recent payments to you until the client program has caught up to the point where those transactions happened.<br />
<br />
If you feel that this process takes too long, you can download a pre-synchronized blockchain from [http://eu2.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/ http://eu2.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/]. Alternatively, you can try an alternative "lite" client such as Multibit or a super-light client like electrum, though these clients have somewhat weaker security, are less mature, and don't contribute to the health of the P2P network.<br />
<br />
==Networking==<br />
=== Do I need to configure my firewall to run Bitcoin? ===<br />
<br />
Bitcoin will connect to other nodes, usually on TCP port 8333. You will need to allow outgoing TCP connections to port 8333 if you want to allow your Bitcoin client to connect to many nodes. [[Testnet]] uses TCP port 18333 instead of 8333.<br />
<br />
If you want to restrict your firewall rules to a few IPs, you can find stable nodes in the [[Fallback Nodes|fallback nodes list]].<br />
<br />
=== How does the peer finding mechanism work? ===<br />
<br />
Bitcoin finds peers primarily by forwarding peer announcements within its own network and each node saves a database of peers that it's aware of, for future use. In order to bootstrap this process Bitcoin needs a list of initial peers, these can be provided manually but normally it obtains them by querying a set of DNS domain names which have automatically updated lists, if that doesn't work it falls back to a built-in list which is updated from time to time in new versions of the software. In the reference software initial peers can also be specified manually by adding an addr.txt to the data directory or via the addnode parameter.<br />
<br />
==Mining==<br />
===What is mining?===<br />
[[Mining]] is the process of spending computation power to secure Bitcoin transactions against reversal and introducing new Bitcoins to the system.<br />
<br />
Technically speaking, mining is the calculation of a [[hash]] of the a block header, which includes among other things a reference to the previous block, a hash of a set of transactions and a [[nonce]]. If the hash value is found to be less than the current [[target]] (which is inversely proportional to the [[difficulty]]), a new block is formed and the miner gets the newly generated Bitcoins (25 per block at current levels). If the hash is not less than the current target, a new nonce is tried, and a new hash is calculated. This is done millions of times per second by each miner.<br />
<br />
===Is mining used for some useful computation?===<br />
The computations done when mining are internal to Bitcoin and not related to any other distributed computing projects. They serve the purpose of securing the Bitcoin network, which is useful.<br />
<br />
===Is it not a waste of energy?===<br />
Spending energy on creating and securing a free monetary system is hardly a waste. Also, services necessary for the operation of currently widespread monetary systems, such as banks and credit card companies, also spend energy, arguably more than Bitcoin would.<br />
<br />
===Why don't we use calculations that are also useful for some other purpose?===<br />
To provide security for the Bitcoin network, the calculations involved need to have some [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/5617/why-are-bitcoin-calculation-useless/5618#5618 very specific features]. These features are incompatible with leveraging the computation for other purposes.<br />
<br />
===How can we stop miners from creating zero transaction blocks?===<br />
The incentive for miners to include transactions is in the fees that come along with them. If we were to implement some minimum number of transactions per block it would be trivial for a miner to create and include transactions merely to surpass that threshold. As the network matures, the block reward drops, and miners become more dependent on transactions fees to pay their costs, the problem of zero transaction blocks should diminish over time.<br />
<br />
===How does the proof-of-work system help secure Bitcoin?===<br />
Bitcoin uses the [[Hashcash]] proof of work with a minor adaption. To give a general idea of the mining process, imagine this setup:<br />
<br />
payload = <some data related to things happening on the Bitcoin network><br />
nonce = 1<br />
hash = [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA2 SHA2]( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA2 SHA2]( payload + nonce ) )<br />
<br />
The work performed by a miner consists of repeatedly increasing "nonce" until<br />
the hash function yields a value, that has the rare property of being below a certain<br />
target threshold. (In other words: The hash "starts with a certain number of zeroes",<br />
if you display it in the fixed-length representation, that is typically used.)<br />
<br />
As can be seen, the mining process doesn't compute anything special. It merely<br />
tries to find a number (also referred to as nonce) which - in combination with the payload -<br />
results in a hash with special properties.<br />
<br />
The advantage of using such a mechanism consists of the fact, that it is very easy to check a result: Given the payload and a specific nonce, only a single call of the hashing function is needed to verify that the hash has the required properties. Since there is no known way to find these hashes other than brute force, this can be used as a "proof of work" that someone invested a lot of computing power to find the correct nonce for this payload.<br />
<br />
This feature is then used in the Bitcoin network to secure various aspects. An attacker<br />
that wants to introduce malicious payload data into the network, will need to do the<br />
required proof of work before it will be accepted. And as long as honest miners have more<br />
computing power, they can always outpace an attacker.<br />
<br />
Also see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash Hashcash] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system Proof-of-work system] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA2 SHA2] and on Wikipedia.<br />
<br />
===Why was the "Generate coin" option of the client software removed?===<br />
<br />
In the early days of Bitcoin, it was easy for anyone to find new blocks using standard CPUs. As more and more people started mining, the [[difficulty]] of finding new blocks has greatly increased to the point where the average time for a CPU to find a single block can be many years. The only cost-effective method of [[Mining|mining]] is using a high-end graphics card with special software (see also [[Why a GPU mines faster than a CPU]]) and/or joining a [[Bitcoin Pool|mining pool]]. Since solo CPU mining is essentially useless, it was removed from the GUI of the Bitcoin software.<br />
<br />
==Security==<br />
<br />
===Could miners collude to give themselves money or to fundamentally change the nature of Bitcoin?===<br />
<br />
There are two questions in here. Let's look at them separately.<br />
<br />
;Could miners gang up and give themselves money?<br />
<br />
Mining itself is the process of creating new blocks in the block chain. Each block contains a list of all the transactions that have taken place across the entire Bitcoin network since the last block was created, as well as a hash of the previous block. New blocks are 'mined', or rather, generated, by Bitcoin clients correctly guessing sequences of characters in codes called 'hashes,' which are created using information from previous blocks. Bitcoin users may download specialized 'mining' software, which allows them to dedicate some amount of their processing power – however large or small – to guessing at strings within the hash of the previous block. Whoever makes the right guess first, thus creating a new block, receives a reward in Bitcoins.<br />
<br />
The block chain is one of the two structures that makes Bitcoin secure, the other being the public-key encryption system on which Bitcoin trade is based. The block chain assures that not only is every single transaction that ever takes place recorded, but that every single transaction is recorded on the computer of anyone who chooses to store the relevant information. Many, many users have complete records of every transaction in Bitcoins history readily available to them at any point, and anyone who wants in the information can obtain it with ease. These things make Bitcoin very hard to fool.<br />
<br />
The Bitcoin network takes considerable processing power to run, and since those with the most processing power can make the most guesses, those who put the most power toward to sustaining the network earn the most currency. Each correct guess yields, at present, twenty-five Bitcoins, and as Bitcoins are presently worth something (although the value still fluctuates) every miner who earns any number of Bitcoins makes money. Some miners pull in Bitcoins on their own; and some also join or form pools wherein all who contribute earn a share of the profits. <br />
<br />
Therefore, first answer is a vehement “yes” – not only can miners collude to get more money, Bitcoin is designed to encourage them to do so. Bitcoin pools are communal affairs, and there is nothing dishonest or underhanded about them.<br />
<br />
Of course, the real question is:<br />
<br />
;Can they do so in ways not sanctioned by Bitcoin developers? Is there any way to rip off the network and make loads of money dishonestly?<br />
<br />
Bitcoin isn't infallible. It can be cheated, but doing so is extremely difficult. Bitcoin was designed to evade some of the central problems with modern currencies – namely, that their trustworthiness hinges upon that of people who might not have users' best interests in mind. Every currency in the world (other than Bitcoin) is controlled by large institutions who keep track of what's done with it, and who can manipulate its value. And every other currency has value because people trust the institutions that control them.<br />
<br />
Bitcoin doesn't ask that its users trust any institution. Its security is based on the cryptography that is an integral part of its structure, and that is readily available for any and all to see. Instead of one entity keeping track of transactions, the entire network does, so Bitcoins are astoundingly difficult to steal, or double-spend. Bitcoins are created in a regular and predictable fashion, and by many different users, so no one can decide to make a whole lot more and lessen their value. In short, Bitcoin is designed to be inflation-proof, double-spend-proof and completely distributed.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, there are a few ways that one can acquire Bitcoins dishonestly. Firstly, one can steal private keys. Key theft isn't something that Bitcoin security has been designed to prevent: it's up to users to keep theirs safe. But the cryptography is designed so that it is completely impossible to deduce someone's private key from their public one. As long as you keep your private key to yourself, you don't have much to worry about. Furthermore, one could theoretically create a new block chain, but due to the way in which the block chain is constructed, this would be extremely difficult and require massive amounts of processing power. A full explanation of the difficulties involved can be found in the [[block chain]] article.<br />
<br />
Bitcoin can be ripped off – but doing so would be extremely hard and require considerable expertise and a staggering amount of processing power. And it's only going to get harder with time. Bitcoin isn't impenetrable, but it's close enough to put any real worries in the peripherals.<br />
<br />
;Could miners fundamentally change the nature of Bitcoin?<br />
<br />
Once again, almost certainly not.<br />
<br />
Bitcoin is a distributed network, so any changes implemented to the system must be accepted by all users. Someone trying to change the way Bitcoins are generated would have to convince every user to download and use their software – so the only changes that would go through are those that would be equally benefit all users. <br />
<br />
And thus, it is more or less impossible for anyone to change the function of Bitcoin to their advantage. If users don't like the changes, they won't adopt them, whereas if users do like them, then these will help everyone equally. Of course, one can conceive of a situation where someone manages to get a change pushed through that provides them with an advantage that no one notices, but given that Bitcoin is structurally relatively simple, it is unlikely that any major changes will go through without someone noticing first.<br />
<br />
The fact that such changes are so difficult to make testifies to the fully distributed nature of Bitcoin. Any centrally controlled currency can be modified by its central agency without the consent of its adherents. Bitcoin has no central authority, so it changes only at the behest of the whole community. Bitcoins development represents a kind of collective evolution; the first of its kind among currencies.<br />
<br />
==Help==<br />
===I'd like to learn more. Where can I get help?===<br />
<br />
* Read the [[Introduction|introduction to bitcoin]] <br />
* See the videos, podcasts, and blog posts from the [[Press]]<br />
* Read and post on the [[:Bitcoin:Community_portal#Bitcoin_Community_Forums|forums]]<br />
* Chat on one of the [[:Bitcoin:Community_portal#IRC_Chat|Bitcoin IRC]] channels<br />
* Listen to [http://omegataupodcast.net/2011/03/59-bitcoin-a-digital-decentralized-currency/ this podcast], which goes into the details of how bitcoin works<br />
* Ask questions on the [http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com Bitcoin Stack Exchange]<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[Man page]]<br />
* [[Introduction]]<br />
<br />
[[de:FAQ]]<br />
[[zh-cn:FAQ]]<br />
[[fr:FAQ]]<br />
[[ru:FAQ]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Technical]]<br />
[[Category:Vocabulary]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Help:Introduction&diff=42634Help:Introduction2013-11-25T19:55:48Z<p>Biteasy: /* Where to see and explore */</p>
<hr />
<div>The purpose of this page is to provide a general overview of the Bitcoin system and economy.<br />
<br />
==Basic Concepts==<br />
<br />
===Currency===<br />
<br />
Alice wants to buy the [http://www.grasshillalpacas.com/alpacaproductsforbitcoinoffer.html Alpaca socks] which Bob has for sale. In return, she must provide something of equal value to Bob. The most efficient way to do this is by using a medium of exchange that Bob accepts which would be classified as currency. Currency makes trade easier by eliminating the need for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence_of_wants coincidence of wants] required in other systems of trade such as barter. Currency adoption and acceptance can be global, national, or in some cases local or community-based.<br />
<br />
===Banks===<br />
<br />
Alice need not provide currency to Bob in-person. She may instead transfer this value by first entrusting her currency to a bank who promises to store and protect Alice's currency notes. The bank gives Alice a written promise (called a "bank statement") that entitles her to withdraw the same number of currency bills that she deposited. Since the money is still Alice's, she is entitled to do with it whatever she pleases, and the bank (like most banks), for a small fee, will do Alice the service of passing on the currency bills to Bob on her behalf. This is done by Alice's bank by giving the dollar bills to Bob's bank and informing them that the money is for Bob, who will then see the amount the next time he checks his balance or receives his bank statement.<br />
<br />
Since banks have many customers, and bank employees require money for doing the job of talking to people and signing documents, banks in recent times have been using machines such as ATMs and web servers that do the job of interacting with customers instead of paid bank employees. The task of these machines is to learn what each customer wants to do with their money and, to the extent that it is possible, act on what the customer wants (for example, ATMs can hand out cash). Customers can always know how much money they have in their accounts, and they are confident that the numbers they see in their bank statements and on their computer screens accurately reflect the number of dollars that they can get from the bank on demand. They can be so sure of this that they can accept those numbers in the same way they accept paper banknotes (this is similar to the way people started accepting paper dollars when they had been accepting gold or silver).<br />
<br />
Such a system has several disadvantages:<br />
* It is costly. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_funds_transfer EFTs] in Europe can cost 25 euros. Credit transactions can cost several percent of the transaction.<br />
* It is slow. Checking and low cost wire services take days to complete.<br />
* In most cases, it cannot be anonymous.<br />
* Accounts can be frozen, or their balance partially or wholly confiscated.<br />
* Banks and other payment processors like PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard may refuse to process payments for certain legal entities. <br />
<br />
<br />
Bitcoin is a system of owning and voluntarily transferring amounts of so-called ''bitcoins'', in a manner similar to an on-line banking, but pseudonymously and without reliance on a central authority to maintain account balances. If bitcoins are valuable, it is because they are useful and limited in supply.<br />
<br />
==Bitcoin Basics==<br />
<br />
===Creation of coins===<br />
The creation of coins must be limited for the currency to have any value. <br />
<br />
New coins are slowly [[Mining|mined]] into existence by following a mutually agreed-upon set of rules. A user [[Mining|mining]] bitcoins is running a software program that searches tirelessly for a solution to a very difficult math problem whose difficulty is precisely known. The difficulty is automatically adjusted regularly so that the number of solutions found globally, by everyone, for a given unit of time is constant: an average of 6 per hour. When a solution is found, the user may tell everyone of the existence of this newly found solution, along with other information, packaged together in what is called a "[[Block|block]]". <br />
<br />
Blocks create 25 new bitcoins at present. This amount, known as the block reward, is an incentive for people to perform the computation work required for generating blocks. Roughly every 4 years, the number of bitcoins that can be "mined" in a block reduces by 50%. Originally the block reward was 50 bitcoins; it halved in November 2012. Any block that is created by a malicious user that does not follow this rule (or any other rules) will be rejected by everyone else. In the end, no more than 21 million bitcoins will ever exist. <br />
<br />
Because the block reward will decrease over the long term, miners will some day instead pay for their hardware and electricity costs by collecting [[Transaction_fee|transaction fees]]. The sender of money may voluntarily pay a small transaction fee which will be kept by whoever finds the next block. Paying this fee will encourage miners to include the transaction in a block more quickly.<br />
<br />
===Sending payments===<br />
To guarantee that a third-party, let's call her Eve, cannot spend other people's bitcoins by creating transactions in their names, Bitcoin uses [[Wikipedia:Public-key_cryptography|public key cryptography]] to make and verify digital signatures. In this system, each person, such as Alice or Bob, has one or more addresses each with an associated pair of public and private keys that they may hold in a [[Wallet|wallet]]. Only the user with the private key can sign a transaction to give some of their bitcoins to somebody else, but anyone can validate the signature using that user’s public key.<br />
<br />
Suppose Alice wants to send a bitcoin to Bob.<br />
* Bob sends his address to Alice.<br />
* Alice adds Bob’s address and the amount of bitcoins to transfer to a message: a 'transaction' message.<br />
* Alice signs the transaction with her private key, and announces her public key for signature verification.<br />
* Alice broadcasts the transaction on the Bitcoin network for all to see.<br />
<br />
(Only the first two steps require human action. The rest is done by the Bitcoin client software.)<br />
<br />
Looking at this transaction from the outside, anyone who knows that these addresses belong to Alice and Bob can see that Alice has agreed to transfer the amount to Bob, because nobody else has Alice's private key. Alice would be foolish to give her private key to other people, as this would allow them to sign transactions in her name, removing funds from her control.<br />
<br />
Later on, when Bob wishes to transfer the same bitcoins to Charley, he will do the same thing:<br />
* Charlie sends Bob his address.<br />
* Bob adds Charlie's address and the amount of bitcoins to transfer to a message: a 'transaction' message.<br />
* Bob signs the transaction with his private key, and announces his public key for signature verification.<br />
* Bob broadcasts the transaction on the Bitcoin network for all to see.<br />
<br />
Only Bob can do this because only he has the private key that can create a valid signature for the transaction.<br />
<br />
Eve cannot change whose coins these are by replacing Bob’s address with her address, because Alice signed the transfer to Bob using her own private key, which is kept secret from Eve, and instructing that the coins which were hers now belong to Bob. So if Charlie accepts that the original coin was in the hands of Alice, he will also accept the fact that this coin was later passed to Bob, and now Bob is passing this same coin to him.<br />
<br />
===Preventing [[double-spending]]===<br />
The process described above does not prevent Alice from using the same bitcoins in more than one transaction. The following process does; this is the primary innovation behind Bitcoin.<br />
<br />
* Details about the [[Transactions|transaction]] are [[Network|sent and forwarded]] to all or as many other computers as possible.<br />
* A constantly growing chain of [[Blocks|blocks]] that contains a record of all transactions is collectively maintained by all computers (each has a full copy).<br />
* To be accepted in the chain, transaction blocks must be valid and must include [[proof of work]] (one block generated by the network every 10 minutes).<br />
* Blocks are chained in a way so that, if any one is modified, all following blocks will have to be recomputed.<br />
* When multiple valid continuations to this chain appear, only the longest such branch is accepted and it is then extended further.<br />
<br />
When Bob sees that his transaction has been included in a block, which has been made part of the single longest and fastest-growing block chain (extended with significant computational effort), he can be confident that the transaction by Alice has been accepted by the computers in the network and is permanently recorded, preventing Alice from creating a second transaction with the same coin. In order for Alice to thwart this system and double-spend her coins, she would need to muster more computing power than all other Bitcoin users combined.<br />
<br />
===Anonymity===<br />
When it comes to the Bitcoin network itself, there are no "accounts" to set up, and no e-mail addresses, user-names or passwords are required to hold or spend bitcoins. Each balance is simply associated with an address and its public-private key pair. The money "belongs" to anyone who has the private key and can sign transactions with it. Moreover, those keys do not have to be registered anywhere in advance, as they are only used when required for a transaction. Transacting parties do not need to know each other's identity in the same way that a store owner does not know a cash-paying customer's name.<br />
<br />
A [[Address|Bitcoin address]] mathematically corresponds to a public key and looks like this:<br />
<br />
:1PC9aZC4hNX2rmmrt7uHTfYAS3hRbph4UN<br />
<br />
Each person can have many such addresses, each with its own balance, which makes it very difficult to know which person owns what amount. In order to protect his [[Anonymity|privacy]], Bob can generate a new public-private key pair for each individual receiving transaction and the Bitcoin software encourages this behavior by default. Continuing the example from above, when Charlie receives the bitcoins from Bob, Charlie will not be able to identify who owned the bitcoins before Bob.<br />
<br />
===Capitalization / Nomenclature===<br />
Since Bitcoin is both a currency and a protocol, capitalization can be confusing. Accepted practice is to use ''Bitcoin'' (singular with an upper case letter B) to label the protocol, software, and community, and ''bitcoins'' (with a lower case b) to label units of the currency.<br />
<br />
==Where to see and explore==<br />
You can directly explore the system in action by visiting [https://www.biteasy.com/ Biteasy.com], [http://blockchain.info/ Blockchain.info] or [http://blockexplorer.com/ Bitcoin Block Explorer].<br />
The site shows you the latest blocks in the block chain. The [[Block_chain|block chain]] contains the agreed history of all transactions that took place in the system.<br />
Note how many blocks were generated in the last hour, which on average will be 6. Also notice the number of transactions and the total amount transferred in the last hour (last time I checked it was about 64 and 15K).<br />
This should give you an indication of how active the system is.<br />
<br />
Next, navigate to one of these blocks.<br />
The block's [[hash]] begins with a run of zeros. This is what made creating the block so difficult; a hash that begins with many zeros is much more difficult to find than a hash with few or no zeros. The computer that generated this block had to try many ''Nonce'' values (also listed on the block's page) until it found one that generated this run of zeros.<br />
Next, see the line titled ''Previous block''. Each block contains the hash of the block that came before it. This is what forms the chain of blocks.<br />
Now take a look at all the transactions the block contains. The first transaction is the income earned by the computer that generated this block. It includes a fixed amount of coins created out of "thin air" and possibly a fee collected from other transactions in the same block.<br />
<br />
Drill down into any of the transactions and you will see how it is made up of one or more amounts coming in and out.<br />
Having more than one incoming and outgoing amount in a transaction enables the system to join and break amounts in any possible way, allowing for any fractional amount needed. Each incoming amount is a past transaction (which you can also view) from someone's address, and each outgoing amount is addressed to someone and will be part of a future transaction (which you can also navigate down into if it has already taken place.)<br />
<br />
Finally you can follow any of the [[Address|addresses]] links and see what public information is available for them.<br />
<br />
To get an impression of the amount of activity on the Bitcoin network, you might like to visit the monitoring websites [[Bitcoin Monitor]] and [[Bitcoin Watch]]. The first shows a real-time visualization of events on the Bitcoin network, and the second lists general statistics on the amount and size of recent transactions.<br />
<br />
===How many people use Bitcoin?===<br />
<br />
This is quite a difficult question to answer accurately. One approach is to count how many bitcoin clients connected to the network in the last 24 hours. We can do this because some clients transmit their addresses to the other members of the network periodically. In September 2011 this method suggested that there were about {{formatnum:60000}} users.<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [https://www.trybtc.com/ TryBTC] easiest way to get started using bitcoin. Gives you free coins to create a bitcoin wallet and start spending.<br />
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo What is Bitcoin?] video introduction<br />
* Installing Bitcoin [[getting started]] <br />
* [[Using Bitcoin]]<br />
* A gentle introduction to Bitcoin - [[BitcoinMe]]<br />
* [http://coinlab.com/2011/12/bitcoin-primer Bitcoin Primer] from CoinLab<br />
* Another introduction, ''The Rebooting Of Money'' podcast is found at [[Bitcoin Money]]<br />
* A beginner's step-by-step guide to using Bitcoin, use of alternative wallets, and generally keeping your money and computer secure - [http://BitcoinIntro.com BitcoinIntro.com]<br />
* [http://howtobitcoin.info howtobitcoin.info] Directory of bitcoin links for beginners<br />
* Amazon Kindle Book [http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Step-by-ebook/dp/B00A1CUQQU Bitcoin Step by Step] $3.99 (USD). The author walks you step by step through getting started.<br />
* [http://dpassport.com/free-reports/Free-Bitcoin-Report.pdf Free Bitcoin report] by Brad Gosse and Jennifer Wozniak<br />
<br />
[[zh-cn:简介]]<br />
<br />
[[de:Einführung]]<br />
[[fr:Introduction]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Block_chain_browser&diff=42566Block chain browser2013-11-23T18:01:25Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>A '''block chain browser''' such as [[Bitcoin Block Explorer]] [http://blockexplorer.com/] or [[Biteasy|Biteasy Blockexplorer]] [https://www.biteasy.com/blocks] is a program or web site that lets users search and navigate a [[block chain]]. Uses include:<br />
<br />
* checking [[address]] balances<br />
* tracking coin transfer histories<br />
* watching for [[transaction]] acceptance<br />
* monitoring the [[Difficulty|network hash rate]] and other statistics<br />
<br />
Block chain browsers typically offer:<br />
<br />
* a list of a chain's recent [[blocks]] [http://blockexplorer.com/]<br />
* transactions in a given block [http://blockexplorer.com/b/133310]<br />
* links to the previous and next transaction involving each input and output [http://blockexplorer.com/t/2oajkZh1uz]<br />
* a list of all transactions involving a given address [http://blockexplorer.com/a/7Djn6doKaa]<br />
* current and historical address balances<br />
* a way to search for blocks, transactions, and addresses<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[:Category:Block chain browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Block_chain_browser&diff=42565Block chain browser2013-11-23T18:01:08Z<p>Biteasy: </p>
<hr />
<div>A '''block chain browser''' such as [[Bitcoin Block Explorer]] [http://blockexplorer.com/] or [[Biteasy|Biteasy Blockexplorer]][https://www.biteasy.com/blocks] is a program or web site that lets users search and navigate a [[block chain]]. Uses include:<br />
<br />
* checking [[address]] balances<br />
* tracking coin transfer histories<br />
* watching for [[transaction]] acceptance<br />
* monitoring the [[Difficulty|network hash rate]] and other statistics<br />
<br />
Block chain browsers typically offer:<br />
<br />
* a list of a chain's recent [[blocks]] [http://blockexplorer.com/]<br />
* transactions in a given block [http://blockexplorer.com/b/133310]<br />
* links to the previous and next transaction involving each input and output [http://blockexplorer.com/t/2oajkZh1uz]<br />
* a list of all transactions involving a given address [http://blockexplorer.com/a/7Djn6doKaa]<br />
* current and historical address balances<br />
* a way to search for blocks, transactions, and addresses<br />
<br />
==See Also==<br />
<br />
* [[:Category:Block chain browsers]]</div>Biteasyhttps://tests.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=File:Biteasy_logo.png&diff=42563File:Biteasy logo.png2013-11-23T18:00:26Z<p>Biteasy: Biteasy Logo</p>
<hr />
<div>Biteasy Logo</div>Biteasy