Topic: Coming Very Soon, a real Bitcoin you can hold! (and is worth 1 BTC) - page 2. (Read 9237 times)

The problem is everybody seems to have a different idea of what the correct translation should be.

Vires in numeris is the only one where once upon a time there was consensus, even if it was incorrect or ill-founded.

And I believe Bitcoin has a long future ahead of it.  Me doing physical bitcoins is just to say "hey world, guess what, tangible bitcoins are possible, they're not just imaginary".  I will have simply pioneered the physical bitcoin (with all due respect to BitBills).  Someone else will do a leaner, meaner, badder, cheaper, more secure physical bitcoin...and they'll get the Latin right as well.

So what are your goals? I also support correct Latin translations

You will like this even worse: I am in the process of making even more elaborate coins with the same wrong translation in all its glory.

I just don't care.

Worrying about the translation is inconsistent with my goals in producing the coin.

...honestly, who cares?  Simple crap can be fixed simply...putting together a production process is step 1 to making a streamlined, cheap way to produce long term physical representations of BTC...the last thing we want are central bit coin banks to issue their own coins with no private key (only the promise to redeem them for one on demand)...the start of fractional reserve bit coin banking I think could end up being a very bad thing...

I like how casascius completely ignored the entire "wrong translation" situation...

I did think of it... which is why I went with regular inkjet on paper for the printing.  And the printing is relatively light, and combined with other printed marks I have made on the private key sheets that help me ensure they have been placed with the right pre-printed hologram sticker.

During the decision making process, I asked myself this same question.  I felt that if I used laser printing, that the fused toner could be detectable through ultrasound or that it might reflect some sort of radiation or have magnetic properties that could be detected.  So I completely steered clear.  And if I had done anything engraved, it almost certainly would be detectable in reflections of radiation.

So... I suppose I would be interested if someone finds a way.  I suspect these coins are going to be collected more than circulated, and a major objective I had in producing the coins is simply to seed the concept that Bitcoins can be tangible and can be a backing and they don't have to exist purely in cyberspace.

If someone finds a way to compromise my coins, their utility will be reduced somewhat - people just won't be able to circulate them amongst strangers.  I take comfort in suspecting that's not happening a whole lot, as compared to people giving away the coins as gifts or to people who they know.  (Example: I gave a family member bitcoins for babysitting...they would have done it for free but the circumstances dictated that paying them something was appropriate...and that something was bitcoins.)

Would there be any relatively common scanning technologies (such as those used at a forensic lab or for medical purposes?) that could read this code without tampering with the sticker?

can you make pound coins with this?

Makes sense. So a good business plan for a private company to do would be to get into the Bitcoin minting sector, and introduce this "tangible currency" to troubled third world nations who want to get rid of their dictators and want a free source of money. That would be one of the biggest goals people should be working on right now, is getting underdeveloped nations to accept this. It would be so easy to sell, but would obviously require money!

jackajck, a user called sukrim packaged our hopper into a nice *.exe for people that werent that technical. we use the same dependencies and it seemed to work very well for the windows noobs masses... not that it is all that complex.. You'd be surprised the many ways someone can screw it up. Might want to think about releasing something like that.

your app and his paper wallets and things go hand in hand(yeah i see tearing into the coins might be a problem).. it would help if it was a tiny bit grandma friendly.

W7 friendly
Two ways to use it:
 If you aren't afraid by the CLI you only need to install python 2.7
 Otherwise you will need to install two more packages (twisted and zope.interface, just read the readme)

Is pywallet windows 7 friendly or is this a linux thing?

I am fairly a geek and I still find bitcoin difficult sometimes... I can only imagine the ordinary person.  This is why bitcoins are going for $25 on ebay.  No one wants to sign up with weird exchanges and transfer money to 3rd world countries through middle men and install a thing that they don't understand that is not safe or encrypted and have to transfer between so many places.
This is what holds bitcoins back.  It needs to be easy to the common person.

Easy, just make new denominations when the time comes.  Although each coin costs the same to make, at the same time Bitcoin value rises, I am sure that eventually someone will be able to do it on a massive scale for cheaper.


I am showing the first 8 characters, this way it's highly improbable that someone else will generate and use an address with the same firstbits before I issue the coin.  I had to generate all the addresses in advance in order to get unique holograms with pre-printed addresses.  And having 8 characters also makes it far less likely that I will accidentally deposit the 1 BTC to somebody else's address.


You'll probably find that the effort of tearing into the coin will probably be much more than typing 22 characters on a keyboard, there is a hard protective layer on top of the hologram.  That said, I am still at the point where I could put them in as QR codes, since I have yet to put them in the coins (a process I am doing solely by myself).


I just simply use a copy of bitcoind with the import/export patch applied.  To use it, I generally just delete wallet.dat (yes), then start it up with an empty wallet and let the block chain catch up, then import keys, then spend the entire balance to some more permanent address so the wallet.dat is worth 0 again, and then shut down.  It's convenient - I never have to worry about the wallet going out of sync with the block chain, because I'm literally deleting the wallet every time I use it.

For the visible public key, you should just use the address' firstbits.

Portable coins are great for promotion 

The potential future issue of having a single tangible bitcoin to spend when its value has become high is not much different from the issue of wanting to buy a soda and just having a hundred dollar bill in your pocket. Assuming that the vendor will accept such a valuable item in the first place, they need to give you change. They might give you change in the form of tangible bitcents, bitdimes, etc. that would presumably be created if the value of a bitcoin goes through the roof and tangible coins become popular. Or they might transfer the change electronically. Or they might decline to accept it and ask you to go change it out for smaller denominations, just as a soda seller might decline to accept a hundred dollar bill.

Personally, I would have marked the private key as a QR code instead of or in addition to an alphanumeric form. In any case, I am interested in seeing how this new coin turns out.

Because Bitcoin is projected to deflate in the future, I don't know how well any of these "tangible" Bitcoin projects will do. What happens when Bitcoins are worth "thousands", how are you going to get change back for that coin? A deflationary system would only have a chance to work in the digital world, since a deflationary system will always require you to break off from what you already have.

You can import keys with pywallet

" I would break it open, import the key to a temporary wallet, and send that money immediately to a permanent wallet."


Sorry to still be so dense about this..... but how do you go about "importing the key to a temporary wallet" ?

Am I missing something... I have the windows 7 client...  is this only a linux thing?  I see no option to import keys or scan key or manually enter a key... I am still lost as to how I get the 1 btc from the bitbill or bitcoin coin to my actual wallet that I use....

about the double spending and counterfeiting.

this isnt quite fool proof but does help a ton


most addies can be verified by block explorer with just 8 chars.  You could at least see if right at that moment there was exactly 1 coin in there.

Now If I was a store.... I would break it open, import the key to a temporary wallet, and send that money immediately to a permanent wallet.

This is so if he did actually counterfeit the entire coin, and still controls the private keys on his machine at home, the merchant can still get paid right away.

there might still be a small window.. due to the time it takes to get confirmations, but hardly a window very large for him to run home and quickly do a double spend. I'm not sure how that all works so cant say for sure but it adds a layer of difficulty if merchants destroy them immediately.



which would be good for casascius's bottom line..