[Noisebridge-discuss] Fwd: question about bitcoins (featuring Noisebridge accounting!)

[Leif Ryge]

[replying to private email on-list, but BCC'ing others to avoid revealing
Danny's list of people to ask about bitcoin]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 06:12:41PM -0700, Danny O'Brien wrote:
> Hellooo! Would you folks know a little about ascertaining a Bitcoin
> addresses' balance?

A bitcoin address is (generally speaking, in the simple case) a hash of a
public key. A bitcoin wallet contains one or more private keys.

Multiple [keys for] addresses in the same wallet have no relation to eachother
outside of the wallet. Different wallet software behaves differently with
regard to which addresses outbound transactions are sent from.

There are 5 outbound transactions from the Noisebridge address linked below,
but none are for the amount (4.46) that you sold on half of Noisebridge. So,
I'd assume that your wallet has been spending from Noisebridge's address when
you assumed you were spending from your own, and that the bitcoin you sold for
NB came from a different address.

To an observer looking only at https://noisebridge.net/Bitcoin and then
https://blockchain.info/address/1B5sJQ6Wu6AmK9xG5YTic4Nszw4PS7UMAM it appears
that Noisebridge has received 11.26075882 BTC and currently has 4.90885882 BTC
remaining, but from reading your message below we know that this is not
correct. So, hopefully you have at least 1.88971 BTC (the 6.79856882BTC you say
we should have minus the 4.90885882 that we appear to have) in your other
addresses.

In the future, I'd recommend that you or whoever handles BTC donations for an
organization like Noisebridge use a separate wallet to prevent (or at least
reduce) confusion. It's possible that your wallet software might let you export
the key for the existing NB address and then remove it from your wallet to
prevent any future crossing of the streams while continuing to use the same
address. Just be careful not to lose the key in the process!

In any case, I for one support your decision to sell Noisebridge's bitcoin now
at a price in the neighborhood of $628/BTC, assuming that there is some
immediate need for more dollars at NB which there must be since I heard there
is a fundraiser going on.

Thanks for dealing with this, and generously absorbing the mtgox loss yourself!

HTH,
~leif

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com>
> Date: Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 8:08 PM
> Subject: question about bitcoins (featuring Noisebridge accounting!)
> To: Noisebridge Discuss <noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net>, Andy
> Isaacson <adi at hexapodia.org>
> 
> 
> TL;DR: How do I find out how many BTC have been donated to Noisebridge?
> 
> So, some of you may remember that I have been the keeper of Noisebridge's
> bitcoins. I cashed 4.46219btc a while ago back on 3/29/2013 when  we were
> young and innocent at $89, and paid that to Noisebridge.
> 
> Later on, I *tried* to cash some more out, but cashing out in that case
> meant cashing out via mtgox, so that's all gone, never mind. As I've said
> before, I'll take the hit for that, and replenish Noisebridge's bitcoffers
> with my own hard-earned bitcoinage.
> 
> So now I'm looking to cash out the rest of our bitmonies. Unfortunately, if
> I look at the transactions on my own wallet's measure of incoming and
> outgoing payments, there's a bunch of bitcoin shuffling going on between my
> addresses and its not entirely clear how much of my account should be
> Noisebridge's. I vaguely remember Andy and others told me that that info is
> not very reliable for balances internal to a single wallet.
> 
> So what's the best way of me working out how much pretend libertarian dream
> money Noisebridge has?
> 
> This is the blockchain's tally of donations to the Noisebridge address:
> https://blockchain.info/address/1B5sJQ6Wu6AmK9xG5YTic4Nszw4PS7UMAM
> 
> Am I right in assuming that the total listed here (11.26075882BTC) is the
> total amount sent to Noisebridge (not including my wallet rearranging
> itself publicly)? Somebody let me know before I make a terrible financial
> error.
> 
> If I'm not, then I will shortly cash out 6.79856882BTC (which is 11.26.. -
> the 4.46... I sold previously) for the benefit of Noisebridge. That should
> be around 4,271 of your earth dollars.
> 
> Does that sound right?
> 
> d.