Bitcoin donation

gaekwad · 2014-05-02 12:18:12

I want to give some Bitcoin to the Textpattern project. Where should I send it? Is there an infrastructure in place to support this? If not, I’d be happy to help set it up and throw some coins in the pot.

philwareham · 2014-05-02 13:28:49

OK, I’m interested in using Bitcoin – I’ve heard a little about it but not used it. How would one set up an account for a project funded by donations?

gaekwad · 2014-05-02 13:35:50

I used Hive to create a Bitcoin account, and secured it with a non-trivial password. That’s a self-contained thing, though – if the software goes bang or I can’t get into it, I’ve lost everything. There are server-based wallets, too, but I’m not familiar with them.

As I understand it, all that’s required to accept donations is the sharing/publication of the account ID which is used as the target. When money changes hands (donation, payment, whatever), there’s a central ledger kept of the origin and target.

And Paypal don’t earn any money from the transaction, which is great.

Gocom · 2014-05-02 14:46:16

gaekwad wrote #280550:

There are server-based wallets, too, but I’m not familiar with them.

Those do go against the whole cryptocurrency idea and some were even implemented improperly as hell (we all know about that one disaster, that 450 million US dollar disaster). The point of Bitcoin is to not have any service that handles your assets, but instead it gives you yourself your assets that are then verified by crypto and you can keep them stored where ever you want in a single encrypted file.

As I understand it, all that’s required to accept donations is the sharing/publication of the account ID which is used as the target. When money changes hands (donation, payment, whatever), there’s a central ledger kept of the origin and target.

Yes, you just share the “address”; public key basically, and people can send coins to it.

After you have received Bitcoins, you normally exchange the Bitcoins to a other (real, more stabile) currency. It’s not recommend that you store Bitcoins in a wallet. Currently 1 Bitcoin exchanges to 450 USD.

And Paypal don’t earn any money from the transaction, which is great.

Exchanger can still take a cut, of course. And one problem is Bitcoins real value.

philwareham wrote #280549:

OK, I’m interested in using Bitcoin – I’ve heard a little about it but not used it. How would one set up an account for a project funded by donations?

There are no ‘accounts’ so to speak. Bitcoin, and other crypto currencies, work by using private keys at the background. You could think it as a huge global, distributed git repository.

To setup things, you just download any client (CLI or GUI) and generate a new address. It gives one for you and a matching private key. That private key then gives you access to coins that belong to your wallet. Done.

Most clients automatically support encrypting the private key with a password. The password clients ask is not related to Bitcoin in anyway or to any account. It’s just used to encrypt your private key.

Last edited by Gocom (2014-05-02 14:53:11)

philwareham · 2014-05-02 15:02:29

All sounds very complicated to me. I’ll stick with evil PayPal for the one or two donations I get a year. :)

Gocom · 2014-05-02 15:19:45

Currently we each have our own PayPal link on the donations page. We technically could also add each our own Bitcoin addresses on that page, but that might not really be the most helpful thing for those that want to donate.

That said, I do have a very rich (with 8bit air, that is) Bitcoin address: 1LSUKQoGbLJukYgQSKeTPe912keenCgovm, which anyone is free to use it instead of that PayPal link.

Last edited by Gocom (2014-05-02 15:27:38)

Destry · 2014-05-12 12:04:02

gaekwad wrote #280548:

I want to give some Bitcoin to the Textpattern project … I’d be happy to help set it up and throw some coins in the pot.

If 1 bitcoin is about 450 USD, just how many coins do you have, Pete? And how did you get them?

gaekwad · 2014-05-12 12:07:21

Destry wrote #280740:

If 1 bitcoin is about 450 USD, just how many coins do you have, Pete? And how did you get them?

Just shy of 1/8th of a Bitcoin – received as a bounty/tip for an ongoing project I’m involved in.

Destry · 2014-05-12 12:34:44

I’ve heard of these “mining rigs” or whatever, but I have no clue what they are. There’s a number of active Bitcoin communities on G+, but I don’t have the time to give the subject much focus right now. Interesting idea, though.

gaekwad · 2014-05-12 12:40:07

Some folks (or bots, more likely) are reportedly searching GitHub for working Amazon Web Services credentials, setting up Bitcoin mining instances and then leaving the account holder with the (considerable) bill for services after the fact.

Gocom · 2014-05-12 16:02:53

gaekwad wrote #280747:

Some folks (or bots, more likely) are reportedly searching GitHub for working Amazon Web Services credentials, setting up Bitcoin mining instances and then leaving the account holder with the (considerable) bill for services after the fact.

Mining is a term used to describe the process of adding new transactions to the block chain, freeing new currency to the market. It’s legal process and miners are rewarded for each new Bitcoin block they can generate. Mining is responsible for generating new Bitcoins.

Destry wrote #280745:

I’ve heard of these “mining rigs” or whatever, but I have no clue what they are.

Machines used to calculate the Bitcoin algorithm to ‘generate’ new Bitcoins. It’s equal to creating new currency.

gaekwad · 2014-05-12 16:47:41

Gocom wrote #280750:

Mining is a term used to describe the process of adding new transactions to the block chain, freeing new currency to the market. It’s legal process and miners are rewarded for each new Bitcoin block they can generate. Mining is responsible for generating new Bitcoins.

Yes. My point was that there are reportedly some unscrupulous folks who are using someone else’s AWS account without their knowledge to chew through the mining process. Amazon provide the infrastructure, the (unscrupulous) man in the middle gets the Bitcoin and hightails it out of there, unsuspecting punter foots the bill from AWS a few weeks later.

readwrite.com/2014/04/15/amazon-web-services-hack-bitcoin-miners-github#awesm=~oE4cODmhtcA0Ig
securosis.com/blog/my-500-cloud-security-screwup

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#1 2014-05-02 12:18:12