Signholder Receives Over $24,000 In Bitcoin After QR Code Appears On ESPN | Hacker News Reader

Signholder Receives Over $24,000 In Bitcoin After QR Code Appears On ESPN

cryptojunky.com

123 pointsCryptoJunky39 comments

Silly story, but the implications are interesting.

Next natural disaster with global media coverage, banners and tents with giant, video broadcast-friendly "Donate Here" QR codes will sound like a good idea.

Which means that someone (or more likely, several ones) will quickly make scam replicas and ruin it for everyone.

I remain deeply skeptical of QR codes as a user interface.

They're just another representation of a long string or number... checking or verification can be built on top of it if needed by software.

They're worse because they're not human-readable.

It's easier to trick someone into scanning the wrong QR code than it is to trick someone into sending money to the wrong url, email address, phone number, etc.

The address or number they produce is human readable. If QR code clients don't show this then it's not a fault of the QR code system itself.

I wouldn't exactly call bitcoin addresses human-readable either.

True, but it's easier to tell 1d3af66... apart from 3e5d115f... than 2 QR codes, especially if the QR codes are separated by a minute.

Most QR code readers (phone apps, at least) will decode the QR code and display the text before doing anything with it.

As a confused Belgian, what is meant by "Unlike traditional bank accounts, where you would never share your account number on national television, Bitcoin public addresses are secure"? Giving out your account number in Belgium is pretty secure, nobody can do anything with it beyond putting money on it.

What's different in the USA? What extra info are you handing out by giving your account number beyond "this is a 'bank address' that you can use to send me money"?

If you have a bank account number and the routing number for the bank, you can place a "demand draft." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_draft

This is probably similar to "automatische incasso" which probably is also possible in Belgium. But note that an automatic incasso can be reversed, you just have to be aware that it's happening.

I guess that will change next year with SEPA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

The German equivalent is called ELV/Lastschrift and allows you to retrieve money from a bank account, but the owner can revoke that within a few weeks.

Japan also has a system to automatically withdraw money from someone elses account, eg for rent, but requires the account owner to authorize the other account first. does germany not have that step?

This looks like the Bitcoin version of the GoldenPalace casino buying the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich for $28,000. The majority of the donations were probably designed to attract attention and therefore help market Bitcoin.

Story about Bitcoin being a good thing on Hacker News. Cue negativity:

Comment negative about scams, silly stories and QR codes being bad - check

Deeply cynical comment - "They were probably donating for their own gain" - check

Skeptical comment that this isn't true - check

You're a cynical, negative bunch of pissants these days, HN.

Top comment outlining typical HN behaviour - check ;-)

PS. Bitcoin FTW.

HN encourages people to comment for karma without much regard to whether they have anything to say of consequence. I wouldn't have written this if I could downvote.

I'm not sure how you could look at HN and think it's anything but zealous about Bitcoins. You'd have to have some deep and powerful victimization complex.

I only ever see comments like yours on Bitcoin articles. Most every other article, HN is even more negative, and everyone goes along with it, but as soon as it's about Bitcoin, "How dare you say those things!" It's almost as if you've convinced yourself of Bitcoin to the point of not being able to handle anyone questioning it. Your mind just can't comprehend why anyone would not hold the same view as you.

I wonder what that sounds like?

No there's always a few posters that can't stop themselves from referencing tulips or pyramids. And humans remember unpleasant things better in the short term. So there you have it, the GP isn't irrational, but possibly hasn't done a statistical survey.

Hah, I see the same negativity in most HN comments, not just Bitcoin articles. The community is a cesspool of snide remarks, put downs and overbearing pseudo-intellectualism. Most days I've stopped reading comments entirely.

I think Reddit.com/r/Bitcoin is zealous about Bitcoins, not HN. And you know what? I prefer it. At least people there seem happy, unlike here.

YMMV of course...

I love how whenever a new technology comes out the amount of applications are never fully apparent.

When I first heard of bitcoin back in 2010 I thought it was a cool concept, but sending money to unknown people across the world? That never crossed my mind.

Now that I think about it, we do it all the time in the forms of charities. Tsunami victims on the other side of the world, a fund is set up to help them out, and most people might say, I'll chip in a dollar, but I can't be fucked to find out how, and sending a dollar is hard anyway. Then mobile phone operators started offering SMS payments, and people had a simple solution.

With cryptocurrency this solution is even easier. It wasn't until it actually happened that this clicked for me.

Consider telephone for example, initially it was used to talk to other people over a long distance, but it was thanks to that concept of sending information down a wire that made it possible today to eg. look at a live webcam on the other side of the world right now.

Imagine telling someone 200 years ago that you could talk/see a person on the other side of the world in real time. Remember, phones didn't exist, motion picture was unheard of etc.

They would think you are mad.

It would be as unbelievable as saying today you can use buy a Rolex watch made in Europe online and it would be teleported to your desk.

But who knows, maybe this will be possible in the future.

And maybe in retrospect it would have been obvious.

It's worth noting that a very large percentage of these donations are coming from a very small number of parties. Notably over $10,000 each from https://blockchain.info/address/1F8UFEeVJGXUzR9TWfBMkyqbipjM...

and

https://blockchain.info/address/1JSDMMDybTZ9nEZgMUtTXQSW4hGR...

I bet one of them is a winklevii

He's only keeping the first 2.26 bitcoins.

He's donating the rest (over 20 bitcoins) to Sean's Outpost, a bitcoin charity.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rs2zf/on_college_g...

Bitcoin unfortunately makes this feat very difficult to verify. We will never truly know how much of that $24,000 the poster controlled in the first place.

The blockchain has timestamps, so actually you can verify quite easily. Unless, for some reason, the individual is sending bitcoins to himself...

That is the implication. He got sent very large sums of Bitcoin, you would expect that he'd just get a bunch of small ones, but he got 2-3 large ones ($5,000 a piece).

Maybe from people who didn't realise how much they are worth?

Or perhaps they do and have quite a large number of them.

What number of people do you think qualify:

1) Have 5+ BTC 2) Recognize a QR code on a TV broadcast 3) Think to pause the tv broadcast, decode the QR code and send BTC 4) Completely unaware of the 1000s of news articles and broadcasts about the soaring value of BTC

Maybe he sent it to himself, maybe someone else was just very generous, but no one purposefully sent 5BTC without knowing it was valuable.

What exactly would be the point of sending BTC to yourself?

More publicity for bitcoin, to drive the price higher.

He's donating 20 of the 22 BTC to Sean's Outpost so it's unlikely he would've done that with the sole intention of driving the price higher.

https://blockchain.info/address/1HiMoMgBaAikFHgAt3M4YJtetp4H...

1HiMoM...

wonder how long he waited to try and get that as 1HiMom... before giving up

He certainly used Vanitygen https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen

"I made it with a vanity generator on an offline computer. I have the public and private key. No software is currently managing the wallet and its not online anywhere."

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rs2zf/on_college_g...

Looks like people are using the address to publicize messages now too.

"Public Note: Here's the money you asked for honey; please don't spend it all on strippers and blow like you did the last time. Love Mommy."

I saw that earlier in the day during College Gameday. I am surprised that the QR Code was readable though. Of course I was more interested in the Georgia Southern 1-0 In the SEC sign. http://30fps.mocksession.com/2013/11/30/georgia-southern-1-0...

This will give him even more donations^^

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