Here is mike's response to me via email:


Looks like I'm doing the exact same thing. Coins may exist unfunded if they are reported by the carrier as lost during shipment from mike to the original buyer and in no other circumstances. In a similar circumstance I would be doing the same as it makes the most sense.

If Mike chooses he can verify this quote as I have copy-pasted it here.

Keep in mind that this scenario has not happened for me. So my method of funding will remain until I can see a better way to go about dealing with a situation like this. Given ALL of my packages are going through USPS registered mail, it may be some time until I see this manifest itself.

If a package ever went missing or stolen through the carrier and I got confirmation (in writing as well) I would eat the cost and replace the package to the buyer.

Good point. Then the certificate and the list I provide will be sufficient.

Please note that I am shipping through USPS and not UPS.

I know there can be some confusion as they are similar in names. It is worth mentioning once again in case anyone missed it.

If you had read the OP in its entirety you would have known what was to be expected with this batch.

If what you claim is true then Mike has funded your coins before being delivered and confirmed. That is his choice obviously. It is not up for debate with this current batch.

I am also looking forward to getting my coins...any update as to when these begin shipping out?

These are sweet...I can't wait.

hmmm.  someone else used that same analogy just last nite 

I thought the assumption was smoothie would send unfunded coins. In such a case the attacker firstbits would be Labcd and smoothie would not even load the coin because it was reported "lost" by postal service recipient attacker. Therefore everything would look fine (even 10 LTC would be on Labcd) to an unsuspecting user only checking firstbits. Only upon redemption attempt would he find out the private key doesn't match (or when attacker moves the 10 LTC and the user checks the firstbits again).

Also: firstbits is handled a little differently by different sites. For example blockchain.info just searches for the first occurrence of a given prefix (no matter the length).

Why not just register the firstbits by sending like 0.001 ltc to each address and put the rest in later?

Good looking coins

I'd much rather have coins funded with a single output of 10ltc than some 0.001 + 9.999 thing and could care less about first bits. Printing enough characters to discourage a vanitygen prank is easy enough since the time to generate grows quickly with each char.