How do you transfer Bitcoins without an Internet connection? - page 2.

cdog

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Quote from: Gabi on June 19, 2013, 01:09:04 PM

Bad idea, whoever get their hand on the paper wallet is able to read the private key and steal the bitcoins. Send a transaction, no one can steal it

Whoever can get their hands on your paper dollars can steal them! The point is not using the internet.

I think we need bitcoin bills. 1BTC, .1 BTC, .01 BTC. If we had 1million BTC in physical bills in circulation, things would get interesting.

Anyone got a printing press?

sacko

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Quote from: Gabi on June 19, 2013, 01:09:04 PM

Bad idea, whoever get their hand on the paper wallet is able to read the private key and steal the bitcoins.

Use keyless paper bills.

Gabi

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If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat

Quote from: charleshoskinson on June 13, 2013, 02:45:24 PM

I think this question suffers from the XY problem (http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem). If you are attempting to physically transfer a set of Bitcoins, then you can simply sell a paper wallet to someone. I'd highly recommend Canton's paper wallet: https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/

Bad idea, whoever get their hand on the paper wallet is able to read the private key and steal the bitcoins. Send a transaction, no one can steal it

niko

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There is more to Bitcoin than bitcoins.

Quote from: uyjulian on June 13, 2013, 02:21:34 PM

How do you transfer Bitcoins without an Internet connection?

Use firmcoins.

uyjulian

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So... nice ideas! :-)
Thanks!

phillipsjk

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Let the chips fall where they may.

Quote from: CompNsci on June 15, 2013, 07:44:09 PM

What's wrong with a flash drive with the wallet.dat file on it?

You have to trust that the person who gave you the flash drive will not spend the coins.
You also need an Internet connection to actually check how many coins are actually represented by that wallet.dat

The real answer to the OP is that you really can't securely transfer Bitcoins without an Internet connection, however tenuous. It is one of the weaknesses of the system.

You can use an intermittent connection like dial-up, but you would either have to run a "lite" client, or have the block-chain mailed to you periodically.

CompNsci

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What's wrong with a flash drive with the wallet.dat file on it?

charleshoskinson

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Quote

For large amounts of data, SSDs on a plane is still more efficient than the Internet.

I'm sorry but I really couldn't resist:

nimda

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0xFB0D8D1534241423

Quote from: darkmule on June 15, 2013, 01:46:44 PM

I remember when they used to say the highest bandwidth connection was a station wagon full of tapes on the highway.

For large amounts of data, SSDs on a plane is still more efficient than the Internet.

darkmule

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I remember when they used to say the highest bandwidth connection was a station wagon full of tapes on the highway.

phillipsjk

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Let the chips fall where they may.

Quote from: ArticMine on June 14, 2013, 05:09:17 PM

Quote from: darkmule on June 14, 2013, 03:49:52 PM

Worst case, there's always TCP/IP Over Carrier Pigeon as described in RFC-1149.

... and under certain circumstances it can be faster than using certain ISPs. For example to transfer the entire blockchain to bootstrap a node. http://www.news.com.au/technology/pigeon-transfers-data-faster-than-south-africas-telkom/story-e6frfro0-1225771449209

If you read carefully, you will realize that they did not actually implement RFC-1149. RFC-1149 provisions a high latency, low bandwidth llink by printing black stuff on white stuff (paper).

In that story out of South Africa, they made a one-way, high bandwidth, high latency link. If anything, that story shows that RFC-1149 has now been made obsolete by flash memory. I ran the numbers for setting up a service here in Canada to get around high wholesale bandwidth costs: it actually made a stupid amount of sense (being price-competitive). The sticking point was that the Pigeons are a gimmick: since you need to use a courier to transport the Pigeons to their starting point. In that story they also did ~~not~~ appear to include the time required to read and write the memory stick. Most don't write faster than 10MB/s: which would actually be the major bottle-neck.

ArticMine

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Quote from: darkmule on June 14, 2013, 03:49:52 PM

Worst case, there's always TCP/IP Over Carrier Pigeon as described in RFC-1149.

... and under certain circumstances it can be faster than using certain ISPs. For example to transfer the entire blockchain to bootstrap a node. http://www.news.com.au/technology/pigeon-transfers-data-faster-than-south-africas-telkom/story-e6frfro0-1225771449209

threeip

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I think the problem this is facing, is that you need the unspent outputs from somewhere (ie online) before you can roll a rawtx.
Unless you can just fire off a privkey+outputaddress-esque combo and it just works? Undecided

tinus42

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Quote from: acoindr on June 13, 2013, 02:54:42 PM

I wonder what the durability of those coins are. Will the tamper-proof stickers last decades not to mention centuries?

Prophet

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Quote from: threeip on June 14, 2013, 03:41:11 PM

Quote from: darkmule on June 14, 2013, 01:09:05 AM

Quote from: threeip on June 13, 2013, 03:23:58 PM

Do you think there could be a passthrough service for people to send raw transactions (made offline) via postalmail/skype/tor/twitter and then be transmitted on the network? Would be nice for countries that block internet during unrest etc.

Anything that can take a rawtx printed in some standard font (preferably one optimized for OCR) and printed on paper, accept it into a scanner and dump it straight to https://blockchain.info/pushtx would do fine. An automated system could even feed the paper itself directly into a shredder afterwards.

Or something ugly like this;

https://i.imgur.com/6rHMbxL.png

Thousands of them generated by your wallet dynamically and encrypted for immediate distribution face to face, unlockable on receipt of transmission; the dynamic constrution of an off chain mini network. I believe adam back has already devised a method somewhere here on the forum.

malevolent

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- offline or off-chain transactions
- bitcoin private keys secured with one time pads that both parties have chosen beforehand by rolling a dice

darkmule

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Worst case, there's always TCP/IP Over Carrier Pigeon as described in RFC-1149.

threeip

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Quote from: darkmule on June 14, 2013, 01:09:05 AM

Quote from: threeip on June 13, 2013, 03:23:58 PM

Do you think there could be a passthrough service for people to send raw transactions (made offline) via postalmail/skype/tor/twitter and then be transmitted on the network? Would be nice for countries that block internet during unrest etc.

Anything that can take a rawtx printed in some standard font (preferably one optimized for OCR) and printed on paper, accept it into a scanner and dump it straight to https://blockchain.info/pushtx would do fine. An automated system could even feed the paper itself directly into a shredder afterwards.

Or something ugly like this;

worldtreasurefinders

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Quote from: uyjulian on June 13, 2013, 02:21:34 PM

How do you transfer Bitcoins without an Internet connection?

Physical bitcoins by Casascius, or any number of paper bitcoin notes you can buy on ebay or create yourself.

uyjulian

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Good ideas.

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