[ANN] Instawallet is back, alive and well!

tvbcof

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Quote from: davout on May 01, 2012, 09:06:29 AM

Quote from: Trader Steve on May 01, 2012, 08:18:47 AM

Davout, if I understand it correctly, you are also developing the Paytunia ewallet. Out of curiosity, can you explain your motivation for developing two ewallets simultaneously? Would InstaWallet be your "simple" product and Paytunia be your "deluxe" product?

Both are deluxe

Paytunia is a more integrated approach, it integrates seamlessly with Bitcoin-Central.net, it gives you full account history and a bunch of additional features. It is mostly intended for long to medium term storage of funds, and mobile usage through the Android and iPhone app.

Instawallet is focused on "just working", you visit it, *boom* you have a wallet, you can access it on the go with FriendlyPay (released on the AppStore, and soon on Google Play). It gives instant gratification, you send funds to it, it's updated immediately with a comforting cash-register sound. It's targeted to newcomers, and paranoid advanced users (it's very lightweight, making it perfectly suitable for Tor access).

The big plan is to integrate these tools (and others to come) very tightly in order to provide a seamless experience for anyone who want to do business with Bitcoins or keep them as investment. There's gonna be more on all this soon

...or maybe the interest in obtaining Instawallet was as a way to fund someone's retirement?

apetersson

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seems the only viable option is to use html5 like easywallet.

it seems to me the vendetta is actually limited to bitcoin only. square, paypal don't appear to have these problems.

Boussac

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e-ducat.fr

Too late ! Friendlypay was pulled from the appstore today by Apple's bitcoin-cleaning patrol..

You can still find instawallet for android in Google Play !

davout

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1davout

Quote from: giszmo on May 27, 2012, 01:41:16 AM

May I ask you to put at least the information that can be found in this thread also on instawallet.org? I would find it appropriate to see more than just an email address that doesn't even specify if it's the admin, the owner or his uncle's friend. "An original idea by Jan Vornberger" pretty clearly indicates that Jan is not taking any responsibility, so who does?

I'm not sure about how the footer looked like when you posted your message, but now it says "Paymium".

Also if you use Instawallet on a regular basis and have an iPhone you'll want to download our iOS app

giszmo

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WalletScrutiny.com

May I ask you to put at least the information that can be found in this thread also on instawallet.org? I would find it appropriate to see more than just an email address that doesn't even specify if it's the admin, the owner or his uncle's friend. "An original idea by Jan Vornberger" pretty clearly indicates that Jan is not taking any responsibility, so who does?

Trader Steve

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"How do you eat an elephant? One bit at a time..."

Quote from: davout on May 01, 2012, 09:06:29 AM

Quote from: Trader Steve on May 01, 2012, 07:57:14 AM

A dual currency display option would be nice - like the one at EasyWallet.org. It eliminates the need for mental math currency conversions. Glad to see you are devoting resources to keep this alive. As I've mentioned elsewhere, banner ads and/or corporate sponsorship seem like good revenue models.

We're working on alternate designs for Instawallet, dual-currency display will be part of it.

Quote from: Trader Steve on May 01, 2012, 08:18:47 AM

Davout, if I understand it correctly, you are also developing the Paytunia ewallet. Out of curiosity, can you explain your motivation for developing two ewallets simultaneously? Would InstaWallet be your "simple" product and Paytunia be your "deluxe" product?

Both are deluxe

Paytunia is a more integrated approach, it integrates seamlessly with Bitcoin-Central.net, it gives you full account history and a bunch of additional features. It is mostly intended for long to medium term storage of funds, and mobile usage through the Android and iPhone app.

Instawallet is focused on "just working", you visit it, *boom* you have a wallet, you can access it on the go with FriendlyPay (released on the AppStore, and soon on Google Play). It gives instant gratification, you send funds to it, it's updated immediately with a comforting cash-register sound. It's targeted to newcomers, and paranoid advanced users (it's very lightweight, making it perfectly suitable for Tor access).

The big plan is to integrate these tools (and others to come) very tightly in order to provide a seamless experience for anyone who want to do business with Bitcoins or keep them as investment. There's gonna be more on all this soon

Excellent!

davout

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1davout

Quote from: Trader Steve on May 01, 2012, 07:57:14 AM

A dual currency display option would be nice - like the one at EasyWallet.org. It eliminates the need for mental math currency conversions. Glad to see you are devoting resources to keep this alive. As I've mentioned elsewhere, banner ads and/or corporate sponsorship seem like good revenue models.

We're working on alternate designs for Instawallet, dual-currency display will be part of it.

Quote from: Trader Steve on May 01, 2012, 08:18:47 AM

Davout, if I understand it correctly, you are also developing the Paytunia ewallet. Out of curiosity, can you explain your motivation for developing two ewallets simultaneously? Would InstaWallet be your "simple" product and Paytunia be your "deluxe" product?

Both are deluxe

Paytunia is a more integrated approach, it integrates seamlessly with Bitcoin-Central.net, it gives you full account history and a bunch of additional features. It is mostly intended for long to medium term storage of funds, and mobile usage through the Android and iPhone app.

Instawallet is focused on "just working", you visit it, *boom* you have a wallet, you can access it on the go with FriendlyPay (released on the AppStore, and soon on Google Play). It gives instant gratification, you send funds to it, it's updated immediately with a comforting cash-register sound. It's targeted to newcomers, and paranoid advanced users (it's very lightweight, making it perfectly suitable for Tor access).

The big plan is to integrate these tools (and others to come) very tightly in order to provide a seamless experience for anyone who want to do business with Bitcoins or keep them as investment. There's gonna be more on all this soon

Trader Steve

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"How do you eat an elephant? One bit at a time..."

Davout, if I understand it correctly, you are also developing the Paytunia ewallet. Out of curiosity, can you explain your motivation for developing two ewallets simultaneously? Would InstaWallet be your "simple" product and Paytunia be your "deluxe" product?

Trader Steve

hero member

Activity: 836

Merit: 1007

"How do you eat an elephant? One bit at a time..."

A dual currency display option would be nice - like the one at EasyWallet.org. It eliminates the need for mental math currency conversions. Glad to see you are devoting resources to keep this alive. As I've mentioned elsewhere, banner ads and/or corporate sponsorship seem like good revenue models.

davout

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1davout

Quote from: Stephen Gornick on April 30, 2012, 02:52:35 AM

Let me try being a little more clear with my question.

When I send bitcoins to my InstaWallet, someone is holding onto my bitcoins.

So if there is a problem, I might want to know who owns InstaWallet.

That is my question. Who (what legal entity) owns InstaWallet?

Paymium SAS owns Instawallet. I'm its CTO.
If you want precise legal information and access to incorporation documents you can have a look on the official French company directory at infogreffe.fr

Stephen Gornick

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Quote from: davout on April 30, 2012, 02:22:27 AM

Quote from: Stephen Gornick on April 30, 2012, 01:00:14 AM

Quote from: davout on April 26, 2012, 08:54:25 AM

Jan Vornberger, Instawallet's previous owner

The whois for the domain doesn't indicate a transfer, which presumably a new owner would want to occur. The site does now show Paymium of France as the copyright, but that's about the closest to indicating which entity now owns the service.

The whois shows Jan as registrant, and shows Paymium as technical and admin contacts. Looks correct to me.

Let me try being a little more clear with my question.

When I send bitcoins to my InstaWallet, someone is holding onto my bitcoins.

So if there is a problem, I might want to know who owns InstaWallet.

That is my question. Who (what legal entity) owns InstaWallet?

davout

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1davout

Quote from: Stephen Gornick on April 30, 2012, 01:00:14 AM

Quote from: davout on April 26, 2012, 08:54:25 AM

Jan Vornberger, Instawallet's previous owner

The whois for the domain doesn't indicate a transfer, which presumably a new owner would want to occur. The site does now show Paymium of France as the copyright, but that's about the closest to indicating which entity now owns the service.

The whois shows Jan as registrant, and shows Paymium as technical and admin contacts. Looks correct to me.

Stephen Gornick

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Quote from: davout on April 26, 2012, 08:54:25 AM

Jan Vornberger, Instawallet's previous owner

The whois for the domain doesn't indicate a transfer, which presumably a new owner would want to occur. The site does now show Paymium of France as the copyright, but that's about the closest to indicating which entity now owns the service.

davout

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1davout

Cross-posted from this thread

Apart from a couple things left to do the migration is now completed !

Left to do :

A very small number of accounts (less than 10) need some manual attention to reconcile operations that happened during the time span where bitcoind was listening but the database wasn't properly registering transactions. The accounts in question are identified, if you think your balance is not correct, and if it remains so after 48h have passed please contact me. The reason it might take up to 48h is that the old bitcoind must catch up with the chain after being shut down during the migration, it does so very slowly since it's packed with addresses and accounts. It must be up-to-date with the chain for transaction reconciliation to be accurate.
The current SSL certificate is valid for https://instawallet.org, a new one will be installed that also validates https://www.instawallet.org

What has been done :

The backend has been rewritten from scratch to make it much more scalable and responsive. It relies much less on bitcoind, which was a performance bottleneck and delegates the accounting to an SQL database. bitcoind is now only used to notify the backend of incoming transactions, generate an address for each account, and send funds
Generation transactions are now understood, that means that if you're mining at Eligius, your payouts will be available after 20 confirmations if you direct them to your Instawallet (generations usually take 120 confirmations to mature)
Balance updates are instant (as previously) but rely on websockets instead of long-polling (if your browser doesn't support WS it will degrade gracefully to long-polling or regular polling)
A comforting cash-register sound has been added, it plays when you receive funds (except on Safari for iOS)
Instawallet will now tell you about the confirmed status of your funds, previously you'd get an error message when trying to send, but you had no way to know whether funds were confirmed or not
The new API is fully backwards compatible with the original API, it will be deprecated at some point but for now it's good enough to me
The new server is a Intel Xeon 8-cores with 24GB RAM, and a lightning-fast SSD hard-drive. (The previous server had a single-core CPU, 1GB RAM and a regular HDD)
A paranoid firewall has been set-up, along with serious monitoring, and monitoring of the monitoring
An iPhone app is available worldwide, for free, in the AppStore, it's called FriendlyPay, it's awesome and it lets you carry Instawallet in your pocket, an Android version is almost ready

If there's anything that should be fixed you may comment here, drop me a line by PM, send me an e-mail at david {at} bitcoin-central.net, or drop by at the office in Boulogne, right near Paris !

I really want to thank Jan Vornberger, Instawallet's previous owner for being very available and responsive during the whole migration process, having thought of such a cool concept, providing me with loads of hand-crafted documentation, and more generally being awesome. He is a gentleman.

Thank you for your attention !

Boussac

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e-ducat.fr

Yes that's the original app until the new version (currently under test) is deployed (hopefully before the end of the week).

apetersson

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FYI: main domain seems to be working right now.

davout

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1davout

Quote from: apetersson on April 23, 2012, 07:18:56 AM

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/instawallet.org

looks down from here

It times out all the time, because the bitcoin client is choking on the huge pile of accounts it has to keep up to date.

It's been re-engineered and re-written from scratch.

The new version is already online for testing, be my guest Cheesy

https://instawallet.california.paymium.com

apetersson

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http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/instawallet.org

looks down from here

davout

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1davout

Quote from: EskimoBob on April 21, 2012, 10:21:37 AM

those spammers from India? Cry

they have been kicked out a long time ago

EskimoBob

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Quality Printing Services by Federal Reserve Bank

bitcoin-central.net? Oh shit, those spammers from India? Cry

RIP Instawallet.

davout

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1davout

Quote from: rjk on April 17, 2012, 01:34:07 PM

Will it emit mustard gas if an unsuspecting datacenter monkey pulls the wrong hard drive? Grin

You're not very far from the truth

rjk

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1ngldh

Quote from: davout on April 17, 2012, 05:09:24 AM

Please bear with us while our future beefed-up production server is being heavily firewalled, secured, booby-trapped and set-up for transparent replication to our failover servers.

Will it emit mustard gas if an unsuspecting datacenter monkey pulls the wrong hard drive? Grin

davout

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1davout

We can take support requests at [email protected] as we also have access to the current production server.
We'll probably keep a mention of Jan in the footer or elsewhere to credit him for his brilliant idea and its flawless execution !

Regarding the migration topic, it's in good progress. We want to have as little downtime as possible.

Please bear with us while our future beefed-up production server is being heavily firewalled, secured, booby-trapped and set-up for transparent replication to our failover servers.

jav

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Quote from: Stephen Gornick on April 16, 2012, 06:04:41 PM

I see the site still shows "©2011 Jan Vornberger" and the e-mail address shown (presumably for support) is still jan's.

Where should requests for support be directed?

Davout & co. are still in the progress of transferring everything to a new server. While that is happening I am still mostly dealing with support requests. Once the transfer is complete, they will change the footer as well.

Stephen Gornick

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I see the site still shows "©2011 Jan Vornberger" and the e-mail address shown (presumably for support) is still jan's.

Where should requests for support be directed?

Boussac

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e-ducat.fr

Quote from: evoorhees on March 27, 2012, 09:18:31 PM

Quote from: MysteryMiner on March 27, 2012, 01:16:59 PM

Quote from: davout on March 27, 2012, 09:23:30 AM

Quote from: MysteryMiner on March 26, 2012, 09:32:00 PM

Or is all transactions on instawallet logged?

Yes, transactions are all logged by the Bitcoin client itself. <3

The transactions to instawallet was mixed, my coins was transferred to another users account and when withdrawing I received another user's coins. I once followed the transactions of my coins stored on instawallet with blockexplorer.

So chain of transactions with coins purchased with my Mt.Gox account ends up being used to pay for killer wet job instead of buying ganja on SR. And I end up buying ganja with coins that was stolen from allinvain.

I'm pretty sure Instawallet is continuing to run exactly as it was, with no difference. But yeah it'd be good to get confirmation on your question. Instawallet also had the wonderful green address, so you could set up three accounts, send coins between them via green address, and if you do it in different amounts at different times, then I see no way to prove linkage.

It'd also be great if Instawallet would make a policy of destroying all transaction logs after 30 days or something.

Thanks for these suggestions: we will certainly consider them going forward but at the moment we are focused on mobile developments and on rock solid availability even when the service scales up.

clone4501

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It would be nice if Davout and team would add the fee option like in the regular client when rolling out a future upgrade.

jav - great service and thanks for the support and dependability.

evoorhees

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Democracy is the original 51% attack

Quote from: MysteryMiner on March 27, 2012, 01:16:59 PM

Quote from: davout on March 27, 2012, 09:23:30 AM

Quote from: MysteryMiner on March 26, 2012, 09:32:00 PM

Or is all transactions on instawallet logged?

Yes, transactions are all logged by the Bitcoin client itself. <3

The transactions to instawallet was mixed, my coins was transferred to another users account and when withdrawing I received another user's coins. I once followed the transactions of my coins stored on instawallet with blockexplorer.

So chain of transactions with coins purchased with my Mt.Gox account ends up being used to pay for killer wet job instead of buying ganja on SR. And I end up buying ganja with coins that was stolen from allinvain.

I'm pretty sure Instawallet is continuing to run exactly as it was, with no difference. But yeah it'd be good to get confirmation on your question. Instawallet also had the wonderful green address, so you could set up three accounts, send coins between them via green address, and if you do it in different amounts at different times, then I see no way to prove linkage.

It'd also be great if Instawallet would make a policy of destroying all transaction logs after 30 days or something.

MysteryMiner

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Death to enemies!

Quote from: davout on March 27, 2012, 09:23:30 AM

Quote from: MysteryMiner on March 26, 2012, 09:32:00 PM

Or is all transactions on instawallet logged?

Yes, transactions are all logged by the Bitcoin client itself. <3

The transactions to instawallet was mixed, my coins was transferred to another users account and when withdrawing I received another user's coins. I once followed the transactions of my coins stored on instawallet with blockexplorer.

So chain of transactions with coins purchased with my Mt.Gox account ends up being used to pay for killer wet job instead of buying ganja on SR. And I end up buying ganja with coins that was stolen from allinvain.

cbeast

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Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.

Quote from: MysteryMiner on March 26, 2012, 09:32:00 PM

Can I still use instawallet to anonymize transactions before sending them to Silk Road? Or is all transactions on instawallet logged?

Trollolololol

I am sure it has logged many transactions through TOR.

davout

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1davout

Quote from: MysteryMiner on March 26, 2012, 09:32:00 PM

Or is all transactions on instawallet logged?

Yes, transactions are all logged by the Bitcoin client itself. <3

MysteryMiner

legendary

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Death to enemies!

Can I still use instawallet to anonymize transactions before sending them to Silk Road? Or is all transactions on instawallet logged?

Trollolololol

alex44878

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Fantastic news! Congratulations to both teams for keeping such a simple and easy service available!

finway

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Great!

Boussac

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e-ducat.fr

@marked Thanks for pointing this out for Davout but he may have fallen in love with version 0.5.0 of the bitcoin client. I will sort this out tomorrow Wink

@D.H Thanks for reminding me that not everybody reads a thread before posting: jav did post the right answer to a question that could very well be the one I was trying to clarify

marked

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this is a slight aside, sorry:

The bitcoin executable links in the bottom left of the bitcoin-central.com front page need updating to the latest versions.

marked

D.H.

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Bitcoin.se site owner

Quote from: teflone on March 06, 2012, 03:58:40 PM

Will the wallets be left intact ?

The answer is 2 posts up.

Boussac

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e-ducat.fr

Quote from: teflone on March 06, 2012, 03:58:40 PM

Will the wallets be left intact ?

I have a friend that is clueless/lazy to move their 1 coin in instawallet

I am not sure of what you mean by this question?

teflone

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You're fat, because you dont have any pics on FB

Will the wallets be left intact ?

I have a friend that is clueless/lazy to move their 1 coin in instawallet

Tuxavant

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Bitcoin Mayor of Las Vegas

Wow! Great news! So happy!

jav

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Quote from: evoorhees on March 06, 2012, 12:20:03 PM

Can we get a confirmation that all the URLs and addresses are still valid/carry over? We don't need to create new accounts right?

We are still coordinating how to best do the transfer of ownership from a technical perspective. But for the moment these URLs and addresses indeed continue to be valid and should stay that way during and after the transfer.

cypherdoc

legendary

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that is good news! glad to hear Davout is involved. we haven't heard from him around these parts for quite a while but know that he is dedicated to Bitcoin!

Jav, you've been an honest an great worker for the community. please don't leave us completely.

Stephen Gornick

legendary

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Great news!

I'ld love to know if there were any metrics that can be shared. e.g., how many wallet URLs (funded at least once, or had funded balance before the pending shutdown announcement).

evoorhees

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Democracy is the original 51% attack

Instawallet has always been my favorite ewallet. I love the simplicity, speed, and lack of login required. It's simple, elegant, and a great way to introduce Bitcoin to new people.

Very glad to hear it's got a new home.

Can we get a confirmation that all the URLs and addresses are still valid/carry over? We don't need to create new accounts right?

gregwtmtno

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That's good news, b/c I blew it.

Boussac

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e-ducat.fr

On behalf of the team, I would like to once again thank jav for his dedication to this great project.
I am confident that he has many more ideas to further the development of bitcoin and wish him the best in his future projects.
From now on (well, more precisely from monday on) we will do our best to keep up with the expectations.
We are committed to this site as one of the easiest way to receive and send bitcoins.
Long live bitcoin and Instawallet!

jav

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I'm happy to announce that the team at bitcoin-central.net (the first open source bitcoin forex) is going to take over instawallet.org as of Monday next week!

Davout and his colleagues are highly motivated to maintain the free service available at instawallet.org since they believe it’s a great way to demonstrate the usability of the technology. I am happy that Instawallet has found a new home and that I can entrust it into the hands of such a capable team.

I understand that, following this acquisition, they will be announcing soon some new exciting bitcoin developments they have been working on for the past few months.

Meanwhile you can use the service, deposit or withdraw, as you see fit. Please note though, that the site's performance might be a little spotty with occasional downtime over the next couple of days as we are performing the transfer. After that it should perform much better again.

For those who may not be familiar yet with Instawallet (launched in April 2011), here is a reminder of the original announcement:

Quote

https://www.instawallet.org is an online wallet service which requires no signup. When you browse to the website, a secret link is created for you, which is the only way to access your wallet.

This service is mostly targeted towards people who are curious about Bitcoin and want to give it a try. These people often don't want to download software (the Bitcoin client) or even sign up for a new website. Here they can try out Bitcoin without having to jump through any of these hoops.

To that end I have tried to keep everything very speedy. The balance auto-updates as soon as you receive a transaction. You can get your first 0.05 BTC from a friend and donate it to the EFF in a matter of seconds.

Topic: [ANN] Instawallet is back, alive and well! (Read 10615 times)