On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 07:40:01AM +0100, Ramana Kumar wrote: > On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 9:27 PM, Robert Martinez <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 23/08/12 10:02, Ramana Kumar wrote: > >> Does anyone have other ideas? > >> > > That would be imitating flatter locally with bitcoin. > > Sure, that might be a good idea to imitate flattr without the fees. > I'm starting to have serious doubts about bitcoin as an acceptable > currency, though. > If anyone here knows better, let me know. These are the problems I've found: > ... > - It's necessary to download the entire bitcoin transaction history to > run a client, and that is quite large (>1GB). Apparently this is not true > in theory, but I don't see any good clients that don't do it yet. > > Arguably one can avoid the last problem by using a web service like > InstaWallet, but that requires one to trust that website, and it's > unsatisfying not to be running your own client whose source code you can > both read and understand.
Understandably, the 1Gb requirement could be a problem for constrained devices such as phones, however this could be another task potentially solved by something like the Freedom Box? If there was an Android client or web interface that allowed secure communication to your wallet stored on your own server that was a snap to get running, a 1Gb file wouldn't really be a problem and would remove the trust issue. I can't speak much of the bitcoin client source code readability problem you mentioned, however if bitcoin turns out to be the best way to deal with these kinds of payments (and I suspect it beats anything that will rely on trusting major credit card companies given what happened to wikileaks), perhaps someone can be sponsored to clean it up and properly document the spec? I'd chip in a few bucks on Kickstarter or something to see that happen. -Adam
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