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Bitcoins get physical

casascius.com

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: Bitcoins get physical

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except I can't write down the serial number of my hundred dollar bills, give the bills to you and then spend them myself.

I think this is why you don't load them yourself. Essentially it is this company backing the coin, not you. When they send you a loaded coin it probably won't be loaded with the coin you bought it with. Another interesting property is that unlike a bank they cannot issue more money than they have assets, as each coin is linked to a unique private key. (assumes they are not just a one-time scam)

Casascius makes no mention of backing the coin whatsoever. You have to verify it upon receiving it unless you don't really care.

Re: Bitcoins get physical

#42
post #33

Even if you trust the coin issuer 100% to not keep a copy of the private key, these sorts of schemes only work until anyone anywhere counterfeits the first BitBill or Casascius coin. At that point, it becomes necessary that all of the other physical tokens in the world must then be immediately destroyed on redemption and validated as a normal network spend... Which defeats the purpose of these transferable tokens to…

What do you mean by counterfeiting? Do you mean selling coins online that don't have real codes? Because you certainly couldn't pay for goods with a counterfeit coin, since they're instantly verifiable.

Re: Bitcoins get physical

#43
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you gave someone the coin, it still doesn't confer ownership It does because the coin has the private key. Maybe it's better to think of it as a key to a (public) safe. The key represents the right to open this safe. So, by giving you the key, I give you the ownership to the content of the safe. (However, if I have another copy of the key it get's problematic.) > It's essentially an anonymous IOU Which is exactl…

except I can't write down the serial number of my hundred dollar bills, give the bills to you and then spend them myself.

I assume that when you by a good with a physical bitcoin, the seller would immediately verify the code.

Re: Bitcoins get physical

#44
post #7

What's the point? That just defeats the whole philosophy of anonymous cryptocurrency and... 25 physical BTC = 29.50BTC!! You loose money if you buy physical coins...

well..I like my money like I like my women..

Re: Bitcoins get physical

#45
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You loose money if you buy physical coins... Gold and silver coins also cost more than spot.

That's why gold and silver isn't used for coins anymore (except for special limited editions). Nowadays fiat money coins face value is much more than the material of which the coins itself are made.

Not always: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_Stat...

Re: Bitcoins get physical

#46
post #16
post #15

I don't get it. If I recieve a physical bitcoin, how do I know it was not previously "redeemed"?

To redeem the coin, you have to peel back a sticker. The hologram for peeled coins takes on a honeycomb appearance according to the link.

Oh, that makes sense.

So it is sort of "centralized" with the hologram makers, right?

Re: Bitcoins get physical

#47
post #42
post #33

Even if you trust the coin issuer 100% to not keep a copy of the private key, these sorts of schemes only work until anyone anywhere counterfeits the first BitBill or Casascius coin. At that point, it becomes necessary that all of the other physical tokens in the world must then be immediately destroyed on redemption and validated as a normal network spend... Which defeats the purpose of these transferable tokens to…

What do you mean by counterfeiting? Do you mean selling coins online that don't have real codes? Because you certainly couldn't pay for goods with a counterfeit coin, since they're instantly verifiable.

I could buy one of these coins, then make a thousand coins with the public key of that one coin on it, with nothing inside the tamper-seal.

The moment I start circulating them, this now means that everyone who wants to accept these coins needs to destroy them, reveal the private key, and transfer those coins.

That defeats the purpose of the whole tamper-evident system - the idea behind it is so that they DON'T need to be redeemed.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ne/the_parable_of_the_dagger/

They are _not_ instantly verifiable without destroying the coin.

Re: Bitcoins get physical

#48
post #33

Even if you trust the coin issuer 100% to not keep a copy of the private key, these sorts of schemes only work until anyone anywhere counterfeits the first BitBill or Casascius coin. At that point, it becomes necessary that all of the other physical tokens in the world must then be immediately destroyed on redemption and validated as a normal network spend... Which defeats the purpose of these transferable tokens to…

There are ways to build something like this to: 1) Audit the production process so keys can't be stored, if you trust the code (and the hardware) 2) Stuff coming from the production process goes into tamper-responding smartcards which can prove they are real devices and untampered (preventing counterfeiting and double spending)

At that point, as long as you trust the cryptography and tamper-resistance (of mint hardware and coin hardware), you can trust that a coin someone hands you is valid.

It's probably about $5-10 to make a "coin" with these properties, and $200-300k to make a mint. There are a lot of hybrid online/offline token based currencies which would meet the requirements, but assuming the right hardware, you can build the whole thing as a wrapper around arbitrary data.

There is still no real market for this, though.

Re: Bitcoins get physical

#49
The main problem is that you have to trust the person who minted the coin not to extract the value of the coin while it is in circulation. Eventually it should leave circulation, be converted back to virtual, and transferred to a safe address that minter doesn't have access to.

So, the thing that it is printed on should be really cheap, like card stock or just paper. It shouldn't be considered currency, but more like a check. People accept a check on the assumption it won't bounce because they know the person who signed the check to them.

When you get one, it should be off the person who wrote the check, and you should cash it immediately (transfer it to an address you trust).

I could see keeping a few business cards in my real wallet with public and private keys on them with empty addresses. I can load them on demand from my cell phone, and write the amount and sign them when I hand them to someone. This way I can give them money without them needing a digital device handy. I could even do this in advance in a few denominations for completely offline access, but it would still require the trust of two individuals on the same level as writing them a check.

In this case, obscuring the private key would be pointless since both people would have access to it.

Here is a good resource for printing address: https://www.bitaddress.org It has QR codes on it, so you can use the Android app to scan the pub key and transfer money to it. The addresses are generated client side with your browser, so they should be safe from snooping.

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