Bitcoin.

[DrP]

It's the currency that is all the rage these days, blowing up all over the internet in news stories and other places. Merchants are beginning to accept bitcoin and it is becoming mainstream...

BUT IT ISNT ENTIRELY MAINSTREAM YET.

Here is what a Bitcoin is:

Now you might be intrigued. It is a currency that is not governed by any laws and is entirely secure because of the permissions you have to give whenever bitcoins are transferred and every transaction can be reviewed by other peers. It is essentially a P2P Currency or "Cryptocurrency"-- basically across between a currency and a commodity.

There are various ways to acquire Bitcoins, but there are 2 main ways: You can Mine them or purchase them. Since Bitcoin is worth about $1100 now, purchasing them might be out of the question.

So we are going to stick with mining! It is a great thing to do and your computer does all the work, all you have to do is set stuff up and voila! You are making money from your computer.

Now, I would ONLY suggest doing mining if you DO NOT PAY for electricity! If not, then you should do a calculation here to see if it is profitable.

Bitcoin Terms
Mining - When your computer solves equations to figure out complex problems. These problems "chip away" at a block of bitcoins and when the Block is solved, the winner receives 25 bitcoins, and will halve as difficulty increases. This prize of 25 bitcoins will be divided according to the work you complete in the block.
hps - Hashes per second - this is the rate at which your computer mines bitcoins. You will be seeing Mhps (Megahashes) most likely
Address - And address looks like this: 1HKAyTTwTBWyipSDvvhpmXxzd99nCdA7Wp -- this is basically your account number and is encrypted for your personal use only

Bitcoin Wallets
So what is the easiest way to start getting bitcoins??? Download a Wallet. All the wallet can do is store bitcoins and you can send and receive them from other users. However, you want to get money from these right??? So here are some sites that you can register with to chage Bitcoin to your local currency

US Residents: Use Coinbase
Europe/Asia/Australia Residents: Use Mt. Gox
Canada Residents: Use VirtEx

Sign up and get everything in order. The great thing with bitcoin, you don't have to give much personal information. You do have to get "verified" if you want to buy and sell higher quantities of bitcoins.

OK!!!! So now you have a Wallet and an address to send and receive bitcoins, lets get to mining.

Bitcoin Mining
The miner I am going to be introducing today will work for PC and Mac. It is Java based so make sure you have the latest Java update!

1. Head over to BitMinter
2. Click Register

3. Sign up using whatever account you have
4. Create a username!! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. It will identify you in the mining client and will allocate bitcoins to you.
5. Copy your Address from your wallet into the "Auto cash out" section at the bottom of account settings

6. Download the client (v1.4.2)

7. Install the client
8. Open the client
9. Log in using your user name
10. START MINING!


FINALLY
Let me know if you have questions.

This has been created for general knowledge and to introduce people to the world of Bitcoin. Please do not invest without all the facts and with a general understanding. That's what this is supposed to help with
This has also been created to help those try and start mining!

[Yugi]

But then I remembered...... BITCOINS

[Waddle Bro]

What's the catch? There's always a catch.

[DrP]

What's the catch? There's always a catch.

Other than costing electricity, there isnt one.

It's too good to be true! But it's actually true

[Mashi]

how do i open the jnlp file i cant find java anywhere???

why was bitcoin made

[Winter]

because decentralized cryptocurrency sounds awesome

[Mashi]

i dont know what im doing but i made 6cus and 2/4 cores fear me
also i keep disconnecting whoops
and i solved the java problem thingy thx

EDIT: 2013.12.01 [12:34] Difficulty is now 707408283
I DID SOMETHING.

[Winter]

What?

6cus?
2/4 cores? you have an i3? i5?

You did what?

[SuperFireKirby]

What do I set my payment threshold as?

[Greg]

I'm pretty sure mining with a normal computer isn't really worth it anymore. You need a specialized ASIC miner to get any value out of mining since they generally mine 5000-50000 times as fast as a GPU. Given typical values for an NVIDIA GPU taken from here, ignoring the "rig cost", you're losing money. Even without the power cost you're making like 5 cents a year.

So yeah. Difficulty's just gone up way too much now that people with high-end equipment are all mining bitcoins.

[KefkaticFanatic]

^Yep.  All you're gonna do is constantly run your hardware at load which isn't that good for it, and spend a lot of power in the process.  This was something worth doing a few years ago, but not anymore.  If you plan on flipping it, then you should just go ahead and purchase some directly, but be aware it is a horrendously volatile "currency" which is primarily used as an investment source and not spent, and is pretty much guaranteed to crash tremendously in the near future.

Basically treat it as gambling and get out while you're ahead

[Mashi]

but if i leave my laptop on for a year i get like 100 dollars of free money!!!!!!!!!

[DrP]

What do I set my payment threshold as?

Set it as .01, it's the lowest.

i dont know what im doing but i made 6cus and 2/4 cores fear me
also i keep disconnecting whoops
and i solved the java problem thingy thx

EDIT: 2013.12.01 [12:34] Difficulty is now 707408283
I DID SOMETHING.

Yeah, you're not supposed to use your CPU for mining. It's the slowest of the 3 ways and it doesn't get you much at all.

With the increasing difficulty, GPU mining is becoming obsolete. I'm waiting to pull enough money together to buy an ASIC Card to put in my computer, but it costs $2800 for the one I want, though you could easily get a decent one for $249, which can mine at 5 Ghps.

But if you have free electricity, there's no harm in mining anything. 0.01 BTC = 115.00 thereabouts.

ALSO, there are so many things you can use Bitcoin to purchase -- the most notable is Gyft

but if i leave my laptop on for a year i get like 100 dollars of free money!!!!!!!!!

Like Kefka said, it WILL wear down your hardware, so I recommend only mining when youre sleeping or not using your computer for high powered tasks

[Mashi]

inb4 bitcoin was created from a collusion of electric companies

I'm a bit confused though; why does it take additional electricity?  And where does the electricity even go?

[DrP]

Because your graphics card is using more electricity, therefore your computer is using more electricity.

And I hate to break it to you, electric companies are already in collusion.

--
And from what I've been seeing, difficulty has been increasing more rapidly in the past month then ever before.

If you want to invest in ASIC Boxes/Miners, go here