I'm guessing he's talking about the 0.15 portion that covers the cost to make the coins.

But if they drop below 1 BTC, I'll take em all!

By the way, the private key inside the coin is represented as 22 characters, rather than 50+.  To get the real private key, simply take the SHA256 hash of the characters inside the coin.  The characters are legible to the eye, and not any sort of QR code etc.  The reduced character count keeps it legible, but were it a QR code, it would drop the density and make it more readable.

The Casascius Bitcoin Utility can do this conversion and reveal the private key and public address, and hopefully the standard will be adopted by others as well (it's pretty simple and straightforward, and also includes a simple check digit scheme to prevent typos).

Sample: (formatted this way because it fits nicely on a circular insert)


Casascius Bitcoin Utility gives a matching private key and bitcoin address: 5JjDdAyDmwCsuDLgcd6aPdpS7kbPLE63pArUZPSYzLRkUHe3vp9 and 1GcJ96oXeaFzEZLox1VfjHbdYtzrSUC54

If you create a wallet, save the private and public key then shutdown and delete your wallet.  Now send it a BTC to the public address the Bitcoin network will process this transaction.

Later you go and create a wallet importing your previous private key, when the wallet finishes processing the block chain database you will have a shiny new BTC in the wallet.

This works on the same concept.

Pro's - ease of mind to people, it starts to feel more like the "real" money they use every day.

Con's -  It could be a con (after customer receives goods, the manufacturer transfers the BTC back because they still had the private key.
            Reportedly easy to counterfeit by creating your own custom holograms that are identical or near enough most wouldn't catch the difference.
            As from the above you could spend the same coin in multiple places and bypassing the safeguards of the Bitcoin network.


I think these are great innovations (Bitbill as well) combined they equate almost perfectly to today's monetary trading :-D ... as with BTC digital wallets they just have to address and ease security concerns and they would make for very solid business :-D

about the double spending and counterfeiting.

this isnt quite fool proof but does help a ton


most addies can be verified by block explorer with just 8 chars.  You could at least see if right at that moment there was exactly 1 coin in there.

Now If I was a store.... I would break it open, import the key to a temporary wallet, and send that money immediately to a permanent wallet.

This is so if he did actually counterfeit the entire coin, and still controls the private keys on his machine at home, the merchant can still get paid right away.

there might still be a small window.. due to the time it takes to get confirmations, but hardly a window very large for him to run home and quickly do a double spend. I'm not sure how that all works so cant say for sure but it adds a layer of difficulty if merchants destroy them immediately.



which would be good for casascius's bottom line..