+ 2 Bitcoins, if you don't know it, LEARN IT!
With a new year comes new laws, with these laws comes more regulation. Some sources have already discovered that their payment options are becoming smaller this year as anti laundering regulations are tightening their nooses and going to extreme lengths to flag receivers, stop transactions and freeze accounts.
With Bitcoins (BTC) there is no one to answer to, no IRS no Treasury Department, No one. It's completely untraceable and when done correctly anonymous as well. BTC is the way of the future.
Wrapping your mind around the concept of a currency that exist only digitally but can be kept securely hidden on or offline is the first real challenge and it's more of a challenge than I'm willing to commit to in this post.
Understand that BTC are not effected by local economy, it doesn't belong to any nation, it is the only truly universal currency around. It's value can drop or raise at an instant. The more people who use it, the greater value each BTC will hold. At the time this was written, BTC value was 14.2 USD per BTC
First thing to learn is how to have a wallet:
You can have an anonymous/disposable wallet or one linked to you, your name, your social etc. Each wallet can be used to transfer funds from one wallet to another.
Examples
http://instawallet.org Anonymous/Disposable NO LONGER ACTIVE
http://blockchain.info Anonymous
http://mtgox.com May require you to submit more info than you would like to verify an account, also a buying site
To understand our wallet in as little time as possible. we're going to use the following address as our wallet example.
Your wallet is comprised of two pieces.
Address (Used to receive deposits)
Private Key (Much like a password but far more complex and uncrackable)
There are:
1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976 possible bitcoin addresses.
Chances of generating the same one twice are very very very slim..it'll take years, more years than you have to live.
If you go to this address you will see a BTC address that is made to be used as a paper wallet.
http://bitaddress.org
I know what you're thinking "WAIT what's this about paper wallets!? Doesn't even sound possible!"
Well it is and I'll explain the best I can before leaving you to read the educational links listed below.
You will notice to sets of jumbled numbers/letters with a scannable QVC code. The first set in the top left hand corner is your address.
Now in order to access that address and remove funds you need to possess the private key located in the bottom right hand corner.
These are both case sensitive, when you generate an address offline you can use the address to send funds to (online) while keeping the private key tucked away off a computer and off the net.
I won't explain HOW to make a paper wallet, you can find that in the links I've provided. My goal here is to help you understand.
How an online wallet works is it combined the key and the address together. For example:
https://instawallet.org/w/rO2JBiWiSRU42e3vYbqcMqKvLW062UqWlQ
Bitcoin address: 1DsyfyL72ZNko36L6ra44h1VjxGy4FWEWM
Key is the url: rO2JBiWiSRU42e3vYbqcMqKvLW062UqWlQ
Now how do we get BTC? I'm not going into all the ways people get BTC but I'll mention the most practical way.
You buy them it's damn near that simple. You buy BTC from websites (or people) and you have them sent to your wallet.
Popular BTC distributors include the following:
https://Bitinstant.com (Very simple way to buy BTC from places like Moneygram, 7/11, CVS, etc)
https://Localbitcoins.com (Place to meet people in person and buy or sell BTC with cash)
I can't really go into much with the sites up top, they're self explanatory.
To sum it up
What is a Bitcoin: It's digital currency
How do I use them: You get a wallet and transfer to and from that wallet to another address
How do I get them: Bitinstant.com is the easiest way for most people
What if I don't want them, what then?: Sell them or use them, I'll even buy them.
Why should we use BTC: Because sooner or later the other payment options are going to become harder to use for both the buyer and seller.
Educational Links:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Understanding-Bitcoin/
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_bitcoin_works
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_chain
Paper wallets:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/15t8xx/explain_offline_paper_wa...
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet
http://www.slideshare.net/piuk/bitcoin-paperwallet
- Bookmark
- 2
- 0
where the f did Mtgox go? It's been a lil while since I've used the bitcoins...
Anongox is still there
Cant you do two payments on WU ? ( splitting up a large order )
You can and pay an extra 50 dollars for a transfer or you can buy bitcoins and pay at most 5% extra for conversion of money to bit coins. Beat the hell out of 15% for moneygram and 20% for WU for instant transfer. Seriously no benefit to using WU or Moneygram they need more personal info and its more expensive.
Stevebhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaxTcIcauCI
Maybe this is a stupid question. Is there any way to deposit into your bitcoins account/buy bitcoins online? with a debit/credit card?
Bitinstant you can pay at any money gram location.
Anybody know the fee's to add to Mtgox act via cash deposit such as CVS, Walmart, etc ?
I don't mean the 3.99% that zipzap gets you for.... I mean at CVS when you add funds via moneygram...
Any info would be appreciated.
AnonIIRC and it's been a while but with mtgox there are no fees for funding your account, the only fees you will receive will be from withdraws which is 1%
tryin 2 fund using bitinstant..... fee is 3.99 to add via cash. It says on mtgox that vendor has additional fee's
AnonI see, I thought you meant funding mtgox through your bank account.
How exactly do you do that? Via wire transfer? It says that their bank charges 1000yen for the wire. (don't have any clue as to how much that is).
I wanted something a little more readily available, not a 5-7 day wait.
Unless there is another way that I am missing.... if so, please let me know how. I have a mtgox act, waiting to get verified.
AnonFastest way would be a hand to hand transfer. Localbitcoins.com is a good place to find local people selling btc.
The business insider's article on mining bitcoins (thanks for the link P!) says the max number of bitcoins available for discovery is 21million bitcoins. Does anyone have any speculation on how long it will take to find all bitcoins and what will happen to the value of bitcoins after all have been found?
*Business Insider link available in P's topic page
To mine bitcoins is to 'hack' codes. The bitcoin mining program is a program to hack codes, which once hacked will release a bitcoin and in doing so another much harder code to hack will be generated ready for another pool of miners to hack. Since hacked codes are becoming more and more difficult to crack and more and more computing power is being used to hack these codes a timeframe when all the bitcoins have been mined is hard to estimate.
Also there is a program which you can download (which ive heard about) that analyses your computing power and estimates a timeframe for you to mine your first bitcoin.
Do you remember the name of the program?
thats not something I would recommend doing unless you have a secure server and lots of security... even if you are just looking at it I assume you are using Tor ....
mining or using a program to determine ability to mine?
Bitcoin...Your Complete Guide
so say you want to order $500 worth of whatever. you spend your money on the bitcoins you are going to pay with. then the price of them drops way down. you have to then buy more and lose money?
is this something that could happen?
seems like you could lose your money very easily before you have a chance to send it for products.Since the value can change so fast.
StevebBitcoins don't have a Federal reserve creating Billions of extra Bitcoins every month out of thin air like the US dollar does.
56tooYou forgot to mention the other side of the coin. What if you buy them and next day it goes way up??? LOL. That exact thing happened to me not long ago
if you buy add send them in the same day then you dont have to worry about that.
well if you buy them and send them off that shouldn't be a problem .. it isn't perfect but quite frankly we take the chance that you send them and by the time we get to cash them out we haven't lost our ass ...
Yeah I was thinking about that as well. The sources could get burned pretty bad if they get a lot of bit coins in their account or whatever and they lose value .
i would feel like im investing in gold or silver or some shit, with all the fluctuating prices
AnonI hear ya. So far it's been a good road up. With all the new companies accepting bitcoins I don't see it going down any time soon.
AnonAt the time this was written, BTC value was 14.2 USD per BTC
Current price is 27.5 USD per BTC
AnonIt's still rising. 23.75 and on a steady climb
It sounds kind of like buying stock to me. If it can fluctuate in value then is can bottom out one day.
i have been playing mmorpg online games for 6 years an as'n someone who iuse to buy and sell virtual items i can say that once people see even little bit of dip in the price , they all will panic sell . This whole bitcoin is one big pyramid scamm where only the bitcoin company owner or some clans will make tons of money .
AnonHoly shit, 25$ peak!?
I should put an automatic sales option on my coins for when prices do that.
Sell at 25, buy back at 20
Actually that peak is the volume
You both are correct. This candle stick chart has both price per bitcoin and volume sold on the vertical axis. Why? Because the more shares/bitcoin credits sold the price per share rises. All of this bitcoin stuff is interesting and it seems like a good alternative to WU. But I would be careful speculating and daytrading bitcoin. The FOREX market is unregulated, very volatile and the potential to make or lose money is high. Bitcoin is not even FOREX, you don't have to go through a broker to trade it so it in essence it is even less regulated than FOREX. People and business can promte the buying of bitcoin who have a vested interest in its price increasing. Don't buy into hype, look up "pump and dump." If you want to use it as an alternative to WU, then great do that. But if you want to daytrade look into FOREX or stock options.
It's in my opinion by looking at existing chart data, a sell off will occur sometime soon, lowering the price to some degree, and then the uptrend will continue. If wanting to speculate, wait till the sell off and then buy.
AnonBitcoins on the rise again. 21$ last I checked. A new high, this is great :))
56tooI hear you bro. I bought 475.00 a few days ago and I finally figure out where it was and lo and behold it gained like 50-60 dollars in value IN 3 DAYS!!!!
ThunderLightthanks
Very informative! I've wondered how bitcoin works.
I am all for this, the last cpl times had to go back and change this or that. I understand things happen but when I didn't mess up it is frustrating. I got a wallet today and gonna add coins. No more standing in line on candid camera for this guy! Thanks for the info....now somebody start accepting them and you got my business.
AnonI know, I hate sending people back to fix WU because the receiver was flagged. People are so intimidated by BTC. I had about 5 orders where the people said it was too difficult to figure out how to send BTC....
The process is the same as sending a moneygram when using bitinstant.
A few sources already take BTC
NDG
Androboy
Muta
American Kodiak
thanks Badger ;--)
good post! guys we cant express just how important it is for the community to adopt bitcoin and make everyone's life easier.
So how would one withdraw said funds from the bitcoins
Anonlots of different ways, bullion is one way to cash them out and keep a physical form of currency without putting yourself on a radar. I heard there was a place coming out with BTC debit cards.
Mtgox will allow you to cash them out at a fee.
awesome post, many thanks
Just curious, what other sites use btc as currency besides SR?
I think btc is a great idea and I am a fan but I think its use is very limited at the moment but It will probably catch on.
AnonHere's a list of some places that take btc. There are more and more legitimate companies starting to accept btc
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
Very good read, cant wait for src's here to start using this. I wont be asked if I know this person anymore haha