My usual sheriff was an old punk; we’d normally spend the walk to the bank discussing how best to make off with the loot.
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Yes, doing ‘the banking’ (or whatever). For some reason businesses appear to keep thinking that it’s a good idea to have that done by junior, poorly paid employees.
Slightly less so nowadays what with internet banking transfers but I can still remember being sent off as a trainee with a banker’s draft for a fairly large sum (admittedly not millions of dollars) to bring to another firm in order to complete a deal.
At least a briefcase full of dollars is handcuffed to your wrist. I spent the journey petrified that I’d drop the little piece of paper worth god knows how much to my client down a drain or see it flutter off onto the tube tracks to rest gently just next to the live rail. 
I was thinking more of currency or stock traders, fund managers, etc. People handed money to invest on other people’s behalf.
They have that weird role where they should care about the money as much if not more than if it were their own and yet, if they did, they’d almost certainly be sitting around with their underpants on their head, two pencils up their nose, saying ‘Wibble’ before lunch (which is for wimps, of course).
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Minimum-value expendable human shields.
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I have 0.1 bitcoin in Multibit wallet. The software is no longer supported. I cannot open the software as it looks for out of date java. The multibit website does not have import information into other software wallets.
Its only worth a few hundred quid now but one day it might be a small fortune too.
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How does your bitcoin gain in value? Is it due to people buying and selling coins in your chain?
The perceived value of a Bitcoin is the value of any Bitcoin. It’s basically a commodity that’s only useful as a currency.
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So the process of hacking the key out of the trezor involved some soldering and then some unix commands. I can understand asking for a video demo of the soldering from Saleem. But why on earth would Mark Frauenfelder want a video of the unix commands being entered?
Pure insanity. Ask for a text file giving step by step instructions, otherwise you’re introducing the possibility of human error in transcribing the commands off the video screen. Especially when it comes to unix commands, which often involve case sensitive switches and symbols that are easy to confuse like | vs l and so on.
When I google how to fix some technical thing on my computer or phone, the rising trend of late has been for Google to offer a video of the process rather than someone describing what to do in text, even for shit that involves typing in command lines or editing text files. I ascribed it to the rising tide of illiteracy, but if a highly literate nerd like @frauenfelder is asking for video demos instead of a document file for a sequence of Unix commands, then something weirder is happening in the cultural zeitgeist. Mark, can you explain to me your thought processes that led you to ask for a video and not a copy/paste-able document when it came to entering unix commands?
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What a great story!
Two comments:
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I love that your relationship with Cory is as strong as it apparently is. Your trust and confidence in him is very apparent. We all need friends like that.
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Stop spending your bitcoin! If the price of a bitcoin does go where a lot of bitcoin enthusiasts thinks it could go, those $5 Starbucks purchases are going to start to feel like $500 cups of coffee. You gambled $3000, clearly setting what your maximum loss could be. The possible upside is soooo much more.
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“Never cash out your gains” is a certain ticket to watching your investment become worthless when the inevitable crash happens.
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A combination of the two is best. I absolutely despise video tutorials, because most times they contain lots of information that is not of no relevance to me.Videos aren’t easily scannable, aren’t searchable, and force a specific order of operations on the viewer/student.
On the other hand, videos capture far more than a text description or a static photo would. They capture transition states and, intentionally or not, a whole lot of additional information that someone writing a text howto might not have thought worth mentioning.
There are advantages to both, but let’s face it: The real drivers behind video tutorials becoming the norm are that they’re a) faster to produce, and b) easier to monetize thanks to youtube advertising.
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I know what you are saying and I normally hate when people tell others things they surely know, but I get anxious when I hear stories about how easy it is to buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin.
Bitcoin surely will crash. My only point was that if Mark is wiped out, he loses $3k and that probably doesn’t really affect the course of his life. If you go with your gamble (I’d never call it an investment) then you might end up with a life altering sum.
I can see the advantage of adding a video to a set of written instructions. But getting only video instructions when you are paying $3000 for the instructions seems… foolish. Especially for linux command line instructions.
Since Mark’s purpose in buying the coin was to use bitcoin to buy stuff, it makes perfect sense to use it to buy stuff. He might want to cash out the excess value it has gained since he bought it, probably just after it peaks. But that’s up to him - it would also make perfect sense to treat that excess value is purely imaginary and continue to use it to buy stuff without regard for the market price of Bitcoin.
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Preaching to the converted here, believe me…
Proper use of the word “Epic.” It’s a particularly good read for we who see you as The Internets Maker-In-Residence.
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That was a great tale
The ever increasing timing mechanism would make a great premise for a science fiction story. Perhaps with higher stakes than $30,000. Maybe the protagonist would be motivated enough to figure out immortality. Or perhaps far-in-the-future generations of humans would continue the effort to unlock the device (I guess some contrivance would need to be introduced that prevents the advanced technology of the future from easily dealing with the problem). A failure means they won’t get to try again for millennia.
Or maybe someone already has written this.
It does remind me a bit of “The Accidental Time Traveler” where the protagonist jumps ahead by twice the period of the previous jump every time he pushes the button.
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@frauenfelder glad to see you in wired. I always appreciate your articles and contributions. 
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Well you certainly got the ‘hands on experience’ you wanted. 
Next thing to try: pick up your Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold that you are entitled to and exchange them for regular bitcoin. For me this was a fun project: a lot of work but learned a lot too.
I just never remember it. Saves time and memory.
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