Maand: december 2016

I am learning about Bitcoin. I understand that bitcoins are stored on a ledger, and the ledger itself is widely distributed and available to all parties. I also understand that the ledger stores all the previous bitcoin transactions for all the bitcoins.

Suppose in the hypothetical future, everybody moved to bitcoins, with no USD or other fiat currencies. What would be the ledger size in bytes due to all transactions that happened within a year? If you were to record all past transactions from the time bitcoins started, so you could track it, it seems to me it would quickly become a huge network bottleneck, as the ledger is updated over the network. Even the size of the ledger itself might become a big concern over a few years.

Has anybody looked into this aspect of bitcoins?

I’m having a problem figuring out how miners solve the following problem:

Let’s say we have 2 miners: M1, M2.

M1 adds transactions A,B,C,D to their block. M2 adds transactions A,B,C to their block. For some reason, transaction D will come to M2 a few seconds after M1 received it.

Now, M2 solves the block and sends this block to everyone. Consequently, M1 throws their block away and starts working on new block.

Next, M1 adds transactions E,F,G to their block, whereas M2 adds D,E,F,G (M2 gets D now) to their block. Now, M1 solves the block first and broadcasts it. Therefore, M2 throws their block away and starts a new one.

In this case, transaction D won’t get in any block! (The problem is caused by network speed which caused the fact that D arrived at M2 a few seconds after it got to M1.)

So, how is this problem handled or avoided?

There are many Bitcoin exchanges in India but all of them require PAN or others documents to validate identity. However, the Central Bank of India i.e. RBI has not given Bitcoin the status of a valid currency so the exchanges shouldn’t ask for PAN Cards or other details but they do.

That’s my other question, are these exchanges authorized to ask for PAN card or other documents to verify identity since I am paying through my debit card or bank cccount so additional verification should not be necessary.

Is PAN card or ID card verification mandatory for buying Bitcoin from exchanges in India, even through the RBI hasn’t issued any such notification?

The is the only notification by the RBI related to Bitcoin I was able to find find: https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=30247

Can i compose a multisig address where one of the signatories is a multisig address?
In order to create a multisig address we need the pubkey of the signatories.

bitcoin­cli addmultisigaddress 2 
'["pubkey1", "pubkey2",..."pubkey(n)"]'

Is anything stopping me from using a multisig address as one of the signatories?

Essentially: can one of the signatories be a multisig address (one that currently starts with a 3).

Long story, but I need to restore an Electrum wallet (version 2.x). I have the seed, except the first word which got ripped off a legal pad.

So with 12 of the 13 seed words, what can I do to restore the wallet? I’ve tried to look at the word list and test possible 1st seed words, but haven’t had any luck. Is there another way to skin this?

Any ideas / help would be very much appreciated. Hoping this isn’t a costly mistake.

I use Gpg4win but I don’t know the step to verify the Bitcoin Core Release. can you give me the instruction how to verify released?

i git this resolte
C:\WINDOWS\system32>gpg2 –keyserver pgp.mit.edu –recv-keys 0x90C8019E36C2E964
gpg: conversion from utf-8' toCP720′ not available
gpg: requesting key 36C2E964 from hkp server pgp.mit.edu
gpg: key 36C2E964: “Wladimir J. van der Laan (Bitcoin Core binary release signing key) ” not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: unchanged: 1

In Bitcoin Core, is it possible to cancel a transaction whose status is:

"Status: 0/offline, has not been successfully broadcast yet"

The client hasn’t caught up with the network. It looks like it’s going to do that first, and then send the transaction.

Is that right, or is the transaction already irrevocable?

If I can cancel the transaction, what’s the best way to do that?

I tried abandontransaction but it gives the error:

Transaction not eligible for abandonment (code -5)

I require a library that I can create (and later import) a HD master key, which I will use to generate hundreds of addresses for both testnet and mainnet!

Ideally, I need a python library (but had trouble of finding a good library for both testnet and mainnet addresses.

An example of how to create testnet addresses would be greatly appreciated (default functionality seems to be for mainnet, e.g. pybitcointools)

Good libraries for other languages are also very welcome!

I’ve sent a transaction with Electrum, but accidentally included too little fee. What can I do to speed up the transaction’s confirmation or to replace it?

^{This is a complementary question to Why is my transaction not getting confirmed and what can I do about it? which answers the question’s broader implications and proposes mitigation mostly focused on Bitcoin Core.}

I want to know, what’s the maximum amount of addresses that Bitcoin Core 0.13 can manage?
All addresses should belong to the default account.

1. I want to use walletnotify feature
2. How startup time depends from the number of addresses my wallet holds?
3. How all other JSONRPC calls behave if my wallet holds many addresses?