IP transaction: Difference between revisions
→Status: Past-tense, the Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind client no longer includes support for IP transactions as-of v0.8.0. |
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Sending bitcoins to an IP address | Sending bitcoins to an IP address was a convenient way of sending bitcoins to a Bitcoin address along with additional information. | ||
* You contact the IP address to find out if they're actually running Bitcoin and accepting IP transactions. If not, no transaction occurs. | * You contact the IP address to find out if they're actually running Bitcoin and accepting IP transactions. If not, no transaction occurs. | ||
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* You send coins to this [[address]] in the normal way | * You send coins to this [[address]] in the normal way | ||
Unfortunately, the current implementation provides no authentication, so any "man in the middle" can intercept your Bitcoins during the transaction. When they see that you're sending a Bitcoin payment by IP address, they pretend to be the actual destination and send back ''their'' Bitcoin address. You end up sending Bitcoins to the wrong person. It's therefore | Unfortunately, the current implementation provides no authentication, so any "man in the middle" can intercept your Bitcoins during the transaction. When they see that you're sending a Bitcoin payment by IP address, they pretend to be the actual destination and send back ''their'' Bitcoin address. You end up sending Bitcoins to the wrong person. It's therefore no longer a good idea to send Bitcoins in this way, ''especially'' if you're using a proxy. | ||
==Status== | ==Status== | ||
Revision as of 20:21, 9 October 2014
Sending bitcoins to an IP address was a convenient way of sending bitcoins to a Bitcoin address along with additional information.
- You contact the IP address to find out if they're actually running Bitcoin and accepting IP transactions. If not, no transaction occurs.
- Your additional information ("from", "message", etc.) is exchanged with the server.
- The server generates a brand new Bitcoin address and sends it to you.
- You send coins to this address in the normal way
Unfortunately, the current implementation provides no authentication, so any "man in the middle" can intercept your Bitcoins during the transaction. When they see that you're sending a Bitcoin payment by IP address, they pretend to be the actual destination and send back their Bitcoin address. You end up sending Bitcoins to the wrong person. It's therefore no longer a good idea to send Bitcoins in this way, especially if you're using a proxy.
Status
Receiving transactions by IP address is disabled by default with the classic Bitcoin client. You can enable it by running Bitcoin with the -allowreceivebyip switch. This feature has been removed from the classic Bitcoin client, as-of v0.8.0[1]