How to get started with your bitcoins

Step 1 - Get a wallet

There are many wallets to choose from and here is my recommendation:


Web Wallets - Web wallets are the easiest & most convenient to use, but are potentially less secure than wallet software run on your own computer.

• Blockchain (Recommended)
• Coinbase
• Coinjar
• Coinpunk

Software Wallets - Software wallets are downloaded and run from your computer. They're considered more secure because the user has more control and doesn't depend on a 3rd party service. Most software wallets require nearly a full day constructing a local copy of the blockchain before use.

• BitcoinQT - The original Satoshi wallet from bitcoin.org
• Armory - (Recommended) Armory is the most mature full featured wallet. It rocks!
• Multibit - This is the easiest to use because it doesn't require a full download of the blockchain.

Mobile Phone Wallets - iphone & Android apps are available.

• Blockchain (Recommended)
• CoinJar
• Coinpunk (Use as a web application on iphone & Android)

Hardware Wallets - Hardware wallets are the most secure because they don't expose your private keys to the network.

• Trezor - (not yet available, coming soon)
• BitSafe - (not yet available, coming soon)

Step 2 - Get Bitcoins

Purchasing Bitcoins - Although it's not yet easy to buy bitcoins, it's getting simpler every day. Here are our recommendations:

• LocalBitcoins.com - This fantastic service allows you to search for people in your community willing to sell bitcoins to you directly.
• How To Buy Bitcoins - An international directory of bitcoin exchanges.
• Cash Into Coins - Recommended for fast, simple service.
• Coinbase - Bitcoin exchange based in the United States. (Highly rated).
• BitStamp - A multi currency bitcoin exchange based in Slovenia. (Highly rated).
• MtGox - A multi currency bitcoin exchange based in Japan
• CoinJar - CoinJar allows direct bitcoin purchases on their site. They're based in Australia but serve an international clientele.

Earn Bitcoins - Many people find that the best way to get bitcoins is to accept them as payment for the products or services they already sell. Just give your customers the option to pay in bitcoin.
To make it easy, you may want to sign up for a bitcoin merchant account which allows you to send invoices and integrate bitcoin payments into your online order pages for most of the popular shopping cart systems.

• BitPay - (Highly Recommended) - Merchant account services
• CoinBase - Merchant account services
• Coinkite - Merchant Terminal / POS system

Mining Bitcoins - Mining bitcoins requires an investment in specialized bitcoin mining hardware designed to process double round sha256 hash verifications at high speed. Many excellent systems are available.
It's important to point out that bitcoin mining is highly competitive and risky for would be participants. Please see this bitcoin mining page for more detail.
The manufacturers who have successfully shipped bitcoin mining hardware in volume are:

• Butterfly Labs
• Avalon
• BitFurry
• KNC
• AsicMiner

Step 3 - What can I do with my bitcoins?

Bitcoins can be used to purchase just about anything you want. Dental services, a brand new car, travel and even luxury real estate.
We recommend searching the merchant directories below to locate the merchants you're interested in. You can buy gift cards with bitcoin and spend them in most of the stores you already use.
Merchant directories

• coinmap - Find bitcoin friendly merchants near you
• bitpay merchant directory - Over 12,000 businesses and charities.

Gift Cards - Available from Gyft.com and spendable at:

• Amazon
• CVS Pharmacy
• Target
• Staples
• Banana Republic
• Sears

Bitcoin Store - Electronics & everything else for Bitcoin

• Laptops
• Televisions
• Home Appliances
• Everything else

Charity

• Bitcoin Foundation - The Bitcoin Foundation standardizes, protects and promotes the use of Bitcoin cryptographic money for the benefit of users worldwide.
• BitGive - BitGive is a non-profit foundation that is accepting donations from the Bitcoin community and providing charitable gifts to environmental and public health causes worldwide.
• Bitcoin Development Fund - A charity devoted to helping further the development of bitcoin, the open source community and causes of humanity.

Step 4 - Keeping up to date with bitcoin

Here are some good places to keep up with bitcoin news and discussion:

• r/bitcoin - Bitcoin links and discussion by the Reddit community
• Coindesk - An excellent source of bitcoin news
• Bitcoin Magazine - Insightful articles with deep technical credentials
• BitcoinX - Bitcoin headlines, market rates & charting resources
• The Video - An excellent primer for anyone curious to understand the bitcoin phenomenon

Advantages to using bitcoins

I spent some time thinking about it and came up with some advantages and disadvantages to using bitcoins over other versions of currency. Please comment with your thoughts, below.

Some of the following are major advantages of using Bitcoin versus other currency systems in the world:

• Taxes

There is no way for a third party to intercept transactions of Bitcoins, and therefore there is no viable way to implement a Bitcoin taxation system. The only way to pay a tax would be, if someone voluntarily sends a percentage of the amount being sent as tax.

• Third-Party Seizure

Since there are multiple redundant copies of the transactions database, no one can seize bitcoins. The most someone can do is force the user, by other means, to send the the bitcoins to someone else. This means that governments can’t freeze someone’s wealth, and thus users of Bitcoins will have complete freedom to do anything they want with their money.

• Bitcoins Cannot be Stolen

Bitcoins’ ownership address can only be changed by the owner. No one can steal Bitcoins unless they have physical access to a user’s computer, and they send the bitcoins to their account. Unlike convential currency systems, where only a few authentication details are required to gain access to finances, this system requires physical access, which makes it much harder to steal.

• Transaction Costs

Sending and receiving Bitcoins requires users to keep the Bitcoin client running and connected to other nodes. Essentially, by using bitcoins users will be contributing to the network, and thus sharing the burden of authorizing transactions. Sharing this work greatly reduces transaction costs, and thus makes transaction costs negligible.

• Tracking

Unless users publicize their wallet addresses publicly, no one can trace transactions back to them. No one, other than the wallet owners, will know how many Bitcoins they have. Even if the wallet address was publicized, a new wallet address can be easily generated. This greatly increases privacy when compared to traditional currency systems, where third parties potentially have access to personal financial data.

• Risk of “Charge-backs”

Once Bitcoins are sent, the transaction cannot be reversed. Since the ownership address of Bitcoins will be changed to the new owner, once it is changed, it is impossible to revert. Since only the new owner has the associated private key, only he/she can change ownership of the coins. This ensures that there is no risk involved when receiving Bitcoins.

Bitcoin Mining vs Freebees

I've been GPU mining for a month with my 90 watt laptop and have generated approximately 0.16 USD worth of bit coins, that won't be paid out until I hit US$7.00 worth of bitcoins. Unfortunately, doing the math, it will be quite a number of months of GPU mining before I'll hit the pay-out threshold.

TIP: Click SKIP AD in the top right!

In four days of using only TWO sites, I've generated twice as many bitcoins as GPU mining. You'll need to go to COINBASE.COM first to generate a wallet address to use. Look in my previous post on how to do that.

http://bitcoinreserve.org/ - my new favorite! Watch videos and complete surveys for satoshis, and you can earn a lot in a short amount of time!

http://freebitco.in is probably the better of the two since it produces about twice as many bitcoins as this one. EVERY SUNDAY I GIFT BACK 10% OF MY WEEKLY EARNINGS TO MY REFERRALS! SIGN UP WITH THIS LINK!
 
http://bitvisitor.com pays out every time you exceed 60 micro bitcoins (which isn't a lot, you can hit the threshold in a few hours of clicks. You have to wait five minutes between clicks, but it gives you a clear count down timer.
http://btcclicks.com is a third site that is halfway decent but the threshold for payout is higher and I haven't yet been paid by these guys. Can't solidly recommend, but they seem legit and the ads are short at about 10s - 20s each.

In short, if you are GPU mining, stop making that your focus now (running in the background in a pool like Slush's won't hurt) and click the links above. You won't get rich, but you'll generate a lot more bitcoin in the same about of time. Good luck, and enjoy the novelty of owning digital currency without spending real money! Happy New Year and may 2014 see the bitcoin further adopted as THE global currency!

Free Bitcoin Sites

Hey, thanks for visiting. I'll try to keep this short and sweet; after all, we're here for the free bitcoins, aren't we?

First, my favorites: (SKIP AD IN TOP RIGHT CORNER)


freebitco.in - this website has a simple RNG that awards prizes based on what you roll (every 60 minutes). BEFORE WEEKLY PAY OUT I GIFT BACK 50% OF MY WEEKLY COMMISSION EARNINGS TO MY REFERRALS! SIGN UP WITH THIS LINK!

BitCoin Reserve - My new favorite! Tons of videos and free offers to complete to earn bit coins! Word of caution: many offers that simply ask for an email address DO NOT PAY without customer service resolution. Recommend you take screen shots or capture video of your completion.

BitVisitor - sign in with your wallet and enter captura. This will bring you to websites and pay you for each visited. Although you have to stay on the site for 5 minutes, you don't need to stay on the page. Just remember to click NEXT to get paid. No email address harvesting and these guys pay at 100 uBTC.

BTCClicks.com - Another site that lets you view 10-20 pages per day and accumulate BTCs. Doesn't pay as well as BitVisitor, but it does pay. It took me almost 3 weeks to hit the payout minimum and it was about 1/4 what BitVisitor paid.

The rest, as far as I'm concerned, are in the category of "your mileage may vary". Quoted amounts are in mBTC - so pretty small sums.

30 Minute Rewards to coinbox.me

Can Has Bitcoin 
Free Bitcoins
FreeBTC4all 
The Free Bitcoins

More Coinbox sites:
BTC4YOU
http://www.bitcats.net/
http://freebitcoinlottery.com/  (5 tries per hour max)
http://www.bitcoinspain.net/
http://www.bitcoins4.me/
http://www.elbitcoingratis.es
http://www.srbitcoin.com
http://www.nioctib.net
http://www.virtualfaucet.com
http://www.thebitcoin.me
http://www.faucetbtc.com
http://www.redcoins.co
http://btcmine.net
http://bitcoins4free.me
http://www.greencoins.org/
http://www.thefreebitcoins.com/

30 minute Microwallet.org sites: possibly the two best out there!
http://www.payfaucet.com/
http://www.coinreaper.com/

60 minute Microwallet.org sites:
http://www.bongbitcoin.com/bongfaucet/
http://www.bitcoinfreebees.me/

1 Hour Rewards:

Bitcoins4me
Coin Ad
Daily Bitcoins
BitHits
http://freebitcoinz.com  - probably the best in the 24 hour catagory. Don't forget to click the EXTRA page!

Bitcoin Addict
BITCOINER.in <<APPEARS DEAD >>
BITCOINER.net
Bunny Run - Hah, fun!




I've been searching the internet for sites that meet my criteria for providing free bitcoins.

1) Minimal hassle to sign up. An email address and bitcoin wallet address are the most I'm likely willing to put into a site.

2) They actually pay.

Some things to keep in mind when visiting these sites:

• they're getting something from you for these bitcoins. Nothing, I mean nothing, on the internet is really free. 
• You will probably not get rich doing this. You'll earn more than GPU mining in a pool, but we're still talking about pennies here. This is more for the novelty of owning digital currency.

My one tip is, if you can't read the CAPTCHA on some of these sites, have it play it in audio or request a new image. Reduces frustration a LOT.

Some of the sites hold payment until you hit a threshold. You can find them at the very bottom if you REALLY want to milk the free bitcoin tit as hard as you possibly can, but don't expect to get paid for a long time from these sites.

Some sites use third party storage for the bitcoins until you hit a threshold. I'll try to group those all together so you can selectively visit sites for either coinbox.me (You'll get paid as soon as you reach 0.00005500 BTC) or Microwallet.org (Paid at 0.00005800 BTC). The good news is that neither of those sites require you to register or create a password, they allow you to enter your wallet address to check your balance and forward payment to that address once the threshold is achieved.

The first thing you need is a wallet address. I use coinbase.com where it's as simple as a login, email address and password. Go to account settings and select bitcoin addresses at the top in order to create your first address to receive payments. Once created, you'll want to copy that address to clipboard to use on the following sites.