Secure Your Bitcoin Wallet!

Here are some great links and tips for securing your own Bitcoin wallet.

Secure Your Wallet!!

Encrypting Your Wallet!!

Call For Secure Wallet Development!

Open for discussion on the secure wallet development; I have been working on my own solution for a bit now. Please comment with your experiences encrypting Bitcoin wallets!

Why Tim Fernholz is Wrong About Bitcoin

If you haven't, direct yourself over to the Tim Fernholz's article and read for a good laugh. Tim seems to believe some silly misconceptions, based on what he wrote. In his third paragraph, Tim suggests that Bitcoin is a scam. Well such a claim must provide evidence, otherwise his 'new source' is just spreading rumors.

"Each time bitcoins change hands, so does a transaction history encoded in a string of characters. This “hash value” or digest can be decoded by anyone with sufficient computer power and time to devote to the effort. When bitcoins are exchanged, a digest is broadcast to the network of users, a participant does the work of decoding the transaction history, and other users quickly confirm their history is accurate. (The decoders earn a 50-bitcoin bounty for their work.) This happens about once every 10 minutes. Everyone who holds the currency agrees on who owns what, which ensures people can’t copy-and-paste their way to millions or defraud other users without the whole network agreeing that it happened.

In other words, Bitcoin isn’t just a currency, it’s a massive experiment in group trust. It’s also a hint of the financial system to come and, ultimately, a scam."

Unfortunate for Mr.Fernholz's credibility, Bitcoin is not based on group trust. Bitcoin is based on peer reviewed open source, a very strict protocol and specific transaction script. Thus the cryptography applied in the transactions makes this a very difficult protocol to spoof, regardless of how many people are in on the 'scam'.

Reading his discussion of using Bitcoins for purchasing items, I was alarmed by a certain sentence: "So far, you can’t buy anything with bitcoins that you couldn’t purchase more easily with cash or a credit card." Okay? There are many incredible features of Bitcoins, but I don't think anyone has claimed one of them to be: you can buy things you cant buy with the US dollar...

Another blunder Tim makes is in his "economic" paragraph. He claims, "Currencies are most valuable when lots of people trust and use them frequently." So by this logic, the most exchanged currency is the most valuable? Wrong again. Currency is based of basic supply and demand principles which stem from more complicated factors, which has no causality to frequency of use.

In his next argument, he claims that Bitcoins wont work (whatever that vague term means) because it's benefiting to miners who have more computing power. All I have to say is that if the concept of using wealth to acquire more wealth is a new concept to him, I am just disappointed he is getting paid to write this stuff.

He then goes on to advocate the power of pools and how they can steal your money. Okay, if the pool owner changes their code to take a unfair amount they get one Bitcent from every user, which is a fairly typical cash-out amount, before everyone in the pool leaves and the owner is left with no more pool power, and a irreparably damaged credibility. Now who's really worse off?
I'm left with the inclination that Tim really hasn't read more then one or two articles before deciding to give his opinion to the world, but honestly, I'd rather hear what you think.

Meeting with Walt Oswald, Motorola Mobility CIO

Today I'll be meeting with Walt Oswald and I'm intrigued in chatting with a respected professional about his opinion of Bitcoins and how he thinks the early era of the Bitcoin will play out. If he has already heard of Bitcoins and has an opinion to share, it will certainly be a exciting discussion. On the other hand, if this is the first time discussing the innovative Bitcoin, then I hope he is as excited as me by the possibilities that can stem from the birth of the Bitcoin. More news to come after our meeting.

What Would You Do For Bitcoin?

One of the most fun and intriguing Bitcoin start-ups has got to be ForBitcoin.com. This is a truly entertaining forum. Between the gigs people post, and the gigs people look for, there are some truly hilarious posts. Recently a list was dumped with cracked user names and passwords for this forum; So if you had an account, change your credentials. I also had a few words with founder Brad Mills, and he gave me an awesome quote, "We want to support the bitcoin economy by creating a strong trade and services sector at forbitcoin.com! Day trading an mining are profitable, but we want to see what people will do for Bitcoin!"

BitNews

If you follow BitTalk at all, then you know today was the convo between Atlas and Bruce Wagner of The Bitcoin Show. This was a total fail of a broadcast. The show was constantly on and off air. The finicky nature made the entire program exceedingly difficult to follow, and to top it all off, the chat was frenzied with complaints. This happened off and on for a halfhour until the difficulties were finally quelled. Learn from those who have fallen before you gentlemen, don't run a live broadcast unless you can handle it. This downtime and chat frenzy was only followed by more complaints about how Atlas' homepage uses a javascript miner forcing visitors to mint Bitcoins for him. Please comment with your thoughts, and in the mean time, enjoy the full episode as well as some other quality Bitcoin vids.

Stay Updated!

The only way to win the game is to know the game. There are a lot of useful tools online that can help keep track of Bitcoins progress. With many sites that can help you easily monitor important statistics such as price changes and popular pools, if becomes much easier to be successful while wheeling and dealing in the quick moving Bitcoin economy. Much of the information is useful to experienced users, and some of it is useful for newcomers to Bitcoin as well.

Ultra Easy Ways to Get Free BitCoins

Wanna earn some Bitcoins the easy way? Setting up gigs at http://forbitcoin.com/ is probably the best thing you can do with your time. While the payouts seem small, it is an active entrepreneurial community, trading and supporting one another. Plus, you can always find really neat offers. Another great way to earn free money is to be tipped for what you are already doing. With http://www.youtipit.org/ you can easily receive donations to a secure account. You can always receive direct Bitcoin donations as well; For example: 1321oQefncfgsSALPe3sykGHQJinUcLnxj

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The New Way to Day Trade

This is one of those things in life that make business minded people smile. Bitcoins are a free market exchange paradise. Using software and platforms provided by Dwolla and Mt. Gox, (which I suggest everyone make accounts for, as it's free and easy) you can easily buy and sell Bitcoins for profit. Just remember people: buy low, sell high.

A Quick Look at Mining

Mining is the standard way people are able to obtain Bitcoins. It is the only way that Bitcoins are able to come in to existence. Bitcoins were created to unify the global economy and be a world standard. So the obvious mission is to spread the currency worldwide. They way that this is planned to happen is people are allowed to essentially mint their own money, creating a free supply of currency. You might wonder, then why does this money have any value? It is because the rate that Bitcoins are increasing in value is so constant, that anyone who gets involved in the market should create large amounts of wealth if they invest wisely. Mining is the secret behind the reason why this new virtual economy has, and will continue to blossom. The difficulty to obtain Bitcoins will increase as more Bitcoins come into existence. This will not only control this currency from inflating, but also create a push for more powerful computing hardware as users try to mine ever faster. Mining is the force behind this bold new currency.

Where can you Spend Bitcoins?

A currency is only as valuable as what it can be exchanged for. So what will Bitcoins get you? Well you can buy and sell Bitcoins for USDs. You can also use this portal to shop on both Amazon and NewEgg with Bitcoins. You can even buy webhosting with Bitcoin. Its used all over the web to trade video game currency as well. You can purchase music and cloths with BitCoins. You can even buy and sell services with BitCoins.

Overall, The Trade wiki has the best list of items that can be paid for with BitCoin.

How to Start Using Bitcoin!

Bitcoin code is entirely open source, meaning anyone can review the project's code for legitimacy. Coupled with Bitcoin's ability to generate 'proof of work', the currency is rather difficult to exploit. There are several ways to get started, but most people start with the official Bitcoin client. One of the best ways to make coinage, is through Bitcoin mining, so we will have subsequent and detailed posts on mining. For now though, you may want to set up a cloud wallet at places like MyBitcoin, or check out some secure storage options at Instawallet. I also advise you join the forum, as there is a lot to learn and people to network with. Keep checking back for more insight, links, and videos.

What Is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a revolutionary form of digital currency, invented by Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin, or BTC, is genius in it's design, due to it's grass-roots distribution style, as well as it's advanced application of cryptography techniques. This mathematical backing and lack of central control makes the Bitcoin market a very fair playing field, and thus very attractive.

"Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally
controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks
like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.."
--Satoshi Nakamoto

Bitcoin is the future.