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You're supposed to pay to a bitcoin address included in their press release, and then notify them about this. For a major NASDAQ-listed company, this approach s

by haakon 13y ago

You're supposed to pay to a bitcoin address included in their press release, and then notify them about this. For a major NASDAQ-listed company, this approach seems startlingly half hearted.

nwh 13y ago
Ridiculous really. You use a new address every time, a single one for a company is not the way you're supposed to do it for many reasons, not the least being that you can't tell who paid for what.
- TomGullen 13y ago
  Can you please explain why one should use a new address each time? I keep hearing it but am not clear on why this is recommended.
  - ihsw 13y ago
    The alternative is providing the sender address so that their system can identify who paid and for how much, which results in you having to identify yourself before each and every transaction (probably through a user account setting or some other form you have to fill out). This is an extra and cumbersome step so it creates an incentive to maintain a singular and constant BTC address of your own. The rationale behind creating a new BTC recipient address for every transaction is that it doesn't matter who the sender is.
  - nwh 13y ago
    It simply just lets you know who paid you, and avoid exposing your entire revenue to everybody else to view. Additionally it makes sure that your clients aren't connected by their payments, it keeps their pseudo-anonymity.
  - clarkm 13y ago
    Would you want the balance of your bank account and its entire transaction history to be publicly accessible? That's the equivalent of only using one address for everything. When you use a separate address for each transaction, it becomes much more difficult (and in many cases impossible) to link the addresses to established entities. And even if you can, the additional knowledge gained is limited.
  - Groxx 13y ago
    Two major reasons, depends on who's telling. First and foremost is simplicity for the recipient: if wallet X contains the desired number of bitcoins, the sender paid. Unambiguously. Otherwise it's difficult to tell who sent what, since you might be sending any number of pieces of coins that all make up "your" transaction, which is complex / nigh-impossible to solve without other ways of verifying (such as including a message in the transaction). This is made even more complex if you receive many transactions from many people with a single address. Second is anonymity. If you reuse "your" wallet and it's ever connected to you, so is every transaction out of it, forever. If you value the anonymity side of Bitcoin, it's very important, but not sufficient. If you don't care about anonymity, the only other downside is that someone who gets your private key can wait until your wallet is bigger before stealing the bitcoins. If you constantly change addresses, the old private key is essentially worthless as soon as you make any transaction. Honestly that's pretty unlikely, and if they have your private key it's game over anyway, they can steal it all at any time they want.
- johndevor 13y ago
  Yes, but fundamentally they can now take your Bitcoins and provide a service in return. That's called trade. Anything beyond that basic exchange is nice, but akin to icing on the cake.
  - nwh 13y ago
    Well no, not really. How do you know a user has paid? Sure there might be a 1BTC transaction in the last 5 minutes, but is it the user who has just paid or somebody else who hasn't contacted you yet? Such simple issues are made simple by just using Bitcoin the way it was intended.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- drcode 13y ago
  The importance of unique bitcoin payment addresses is overstated. What Baidu is doing is fine, in my opinion, if their transaction volume is low. I think it is perfectly safe to have a single address and for someone to say "Hey, I just sent 66.32 btc to your payment address." In the one-in-a-thousand chance that someone else claims to have sent that money as well, you can just ask the sender to sign a message with the source address' private key. Still, I agree long term you'd save yourself extra work by setting up separate payment addresses.
  - 3pt14159 13y ago
    But it is public, all I have to do is be the first one to say that I sent them the money.
    - drcode 13y ago
      Yes, but Baidu Jiasule is an anti-DDOS system- If someone else comes along five minutes later and says they were wronged, you can just switch it over to the new person... There'd be nothing to gain by trying to cheat.
      - nwh 13y ago
        How do you prove who was right? You can't if the user isn't able to sign the address, in which case it just becomes a communication race condition.
        nikolak 13y ago
        You could ask the user via email to send some small, but "unique", amount of bitcoin from that same address again and then refund it after you've verified that the person emailing you is indeed owner of that bitcoin address.
        drcode 13y ago
        Why would a user not be able to sign the address? Every wallet I'm aware of lets you prove you originated a transaction by signing against the originating address.
- mrb 13y ago
  "you can't tell who paid for what" Actually you can. Vendors who do this require payers to use a built-in functionality in most Bitcoin wallet apps to cryptographically sign a message identifying them. However this is not very user-friendly, does not work when sending from a hosted wallet (no access to the private keys), and reduces anonymity for the vendor since everybody knows his main payment address.
ferdo 13y ago
It's a toe-dip in the water by a very large swimmer. A good sign for Bitcoin.
- vargalas 13y ago
  Good sign for Bitcoin. Very good. But not as good sign for the USA.
logicchains 13y ago
You wouldn't think such a major search company would allow one to watch movies or listen to copyright music free of charge just by clicking the 'movies' or 'mp3' search tags, but Baidu does (at least to residents here; I'm not sure if the same is possible for people outside of China).
- alive-or-not 13y ago
  Why would you not? Too much brainwashing TV maybe ...
  - logicchains 13y ago
    Maybe because it's hard to imagine an organisation being outside of the reach of the MPAA?
neals 13y ago
Interesting for us though, to see the transactions as they come and go... https://coinsheet.net/sh3vHPeZXJ https://coinsheet.net/sh3vHPeZXJ
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

by haakon 13y ago

You're supposed to pay to a bitcoin address included in their press release, and then notify them about this. For a major NASDAQ-listed company, this approach seems startlingly half hearted.

nwh 13y ago

Ridiculous really. You use a new address every time, a single one for a company is not the way you're supposed to do it for many reasons, not the least being that you can't tell who paid for what.

TomGullen 13y ago
Can you please explain why one should use a new address each time? I keep hearing it but am not clear on why this is recommended.
- ihsw 13y ago
  The alternative is providing the sender address so that their system can identify who paid and for how much, which results in you having to identify yourself before each and every transaction (probably through a user account setting or some other form you have to fill out). This is an extra and cumbersome step so it creates an incentive to maintain a singular and constant BTC address of your own. The rationale behind creating a new BTC recipient address for every transaction is that it doesn't matter who the sender is.
- nwh 13y ago
  It simply just lets you know who paid you, and avoid exposing your entire revenue to everybody else to view. Additionally it makes sure that your clients aren't connected by their payments, it keeps their pseudo-anonymity.
- clarkm 13y ago
  Would you want the balance of your bank account and its entire transaction history to be publicly accessible? That's the equivalent of only using one address for everything. When you use a separate address for each transaction, it becomes much more difficult (and in many cases impossible) to link the addresses to established entities. And even if you can, the additional knowledge gained is limited.
- Groxx 13y ago
  Two major reasons, depends on who's telling. First and foremost is simplicity for the recipient: if wallet X contains the desired number of bitcoins, the sender paid. Unambiguously. Otherwise it's difficult to tell who sent what, since you might be sending any number of pieces of coins that all make up "your" transaction, which is complex / nigh-impossible to solve without other ways of verifying (such as including a message in the transaction). This is made even more complex if you receive many transactions from many people with a single address. Second is anonymity. If you reuse "your" wallet and it's ever connected to you, so is every transaction out of it, forever. If you value the anonymity side of Bitcoin, it's very important, but not sufficient. If you don't care about anonymity, the only other downside is that someone who gets your private key can wait until your wallet is bigger before stealing the bitcoins. If you constantly change addresses, the old private key is essentially worthless as soon as you make any transaction. Honestly that's pretty unlikely, and if they have your private key it's game over anyway, they can steal it all at any time they want.
johndevor 13y ago
Yes, but fundamentally they can now take your Bitcoins and provide a service in return. That's called trade. Anything beyond that basic exchange is nice, but akin to icing on the cake.
- nwh 13y ago
  Well no, not really. How do you know a user has paid? Sure there might be a 1BTC transaction in the last 5 minutes, but is it the user who has just paid or somebody else who hasn't contacted you yet? Such simple issues are made simple by just using Bitcoin the way it was intended.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
drcode 13y ago
The importance of unique bitcoin payment addresses is overstated. What Baidu is doing is fine, in my opinion, if their transaction volume is low. I think it is perfectly safe to have a single address and for someone to say "Hey, I just sent 66.32 btc to your payment address." In the one-in-a-thousand chance that someone else claims to have sent that money as well, you can just ask the sender to sign a message with the source address' private key. Still, I agree long term you'd save yourself extra work by setting up separate payment addresses.
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  But it is public, all I have to do is be the first one to say that I sent them the money.
  - drcode 13y ago
    Yes, but Baidu Jiasule is an anti-DDOS system- If someone else comes along five minutes later and says they were wronged, you can just switch it over to the new person... There'd be nothing to gain by trying to cheat.
    - nwh 13y ago
      How do you prove who was right? You can't if the user isn't able to sign the address, in which case it just becomes a communication race condition.
      - nikolak 13y ago
        You could ask the user via email to send some small, but "unique", amount of bitcoin from that same address again and then refund it after you've verified that the person emailing you is indeed owner of that bitcoin address.
      - drcode 13y ago
        Why would a user not be able to sign the address? Every wallet I'm aware of lets you prove you originated a transaction by signing against the originating address.
mrb 13y ago
"you can't tell who paid for what" Actually you can. Vendors who do this require payers to use a built-in functionality in most Bitcoin wallet apps to cryptographically sign a message identifying them. However this is not very user-friendly, does not work when sending from a hosted wallet (no access to the private keys), and reduces anonymity for the vendor since everybody knows his main payment address.

ferdo 13y ago

It's a toe-dip in the water by a very large swimmer. A good sign for Bitcoin.

vargalas 13y ago
Good sign for Bitcoin. Very good. But not as good sign for the USA.

logicchains 13y ago

You wouldn't think such a major search company would allow one to watch movies or listen to copyright music free of charge just by clicking the 'movies' or 'mp3' search tags, but Baidu does (at least to residents here; I'm not sure if the same is possible for people outside of China).

alive-or-not 13y ago
Why would you not? Too much brainwashing TV maybe ...
- logicchains 13y ago
  Maybe because it's hard to imagine an organisation being outside of the reach of the MPAA?

neals 13y ago

Interesting for us though, to see the transactions as they come and go... https://coinsheet.net/sh3vHPeZXJ https://coinsheet.net/sh3vHPeZXJ

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]