Got questions about bitcoin? Ask them here.

And I'll be more than happy to answer them.

Yah right.

I dont know squat either but I'm pretty sure that our fellow ATSers can help us out.

Ok, I'll start.

How does one buy and sell bitcoins?

Lets say I wanted to buy a thousand bitcoins at the current market price.

Not sure whos paying $143 per bitcoin but someone has to be or the price wouldnt be as high as it is.

How would I do it? Whom do I pay? How do I receive them?

And then lets say bitcoin continues its explosive rise and I want to sell in order to realize a profit, then what do I do? To whom do I sell?

reply to post by gladtobehere


honestly,I don't know what bitcon is...i'v heard alot about it and are ignorant...should me worry?..will I get ripped?

When do you think the current bubble will pop? MtGox has the current value at $143 per coin. It was just $24 per coin 3 months ago. What's the deal with this sudden increase in price? Is it all speculators? I don't own a coin, but I was tipped 10 cents. My 10 cents is now worth 0.01201078 BTC $ 1.71. Pretty cool lol. I wanted to buy a few coins, but now I can't afford one. I am hoping for the bubble to pop so I can invest in a couple and wait for it to go back up. All I want is one freaking coin, I just cant afford it at the moment. I think BTC is here to stay so when it pops it will go back up and stabilize.

EDIT: If I owned some coins I wouldn't sell just yet. I hear in the next few years a coin could be valued at 10k per... What's your opinion? The only thing that stopped me from buying when it was $24 was I dont have a bank account and didn't know how to buy with out one, which I regret. Still dont have a bank account, but I have a blockchain bitcoin wallet.

There are a few 'exchanges' where you can deposit money and bid for bitcoins. Which one may depend on what country you are in and how you can transfer funds. MtGox is currently the biggest.
You can of course get a coin miner setup and mine your own.
You can check for local people that have bitcoins to sell and meet up with them for face-to-face transfers.
YOu can make good friends with people in the game and get enough trust so you can buy directly with things like paypal.

I highly recommend doing your homework first, get a personal wallet set-up and don't use online wallets any more than you can help. (bitcoin sites are currently popular hacking targets)

I'm not too knowledgeable on bitcoins, but I've very recently been looking into them with a buddy of mine, and we've basically been breaking it down so we may understand and use them. Better now, when Bitcoin is still in it's 'baby' stages. I'm definitely going to keep on it, I'd be more than happy to share what I learn!

As said before, the prices are all over the place. They're constantly changing, and yeah right now I'm unable to afford them, until I secure a job for more than a month. Bah!

By the way, I would suggest maybe downloading Bitcoinium or some other app that displays the Bitcoin scene. It covers just about everything you need to know, as far as price graphs, stats, charts, and other stuff goes. These are all displayed through the most popular or common bitcoin exchange sites. Of course, you can just check in with Mt.Gox and others and just check everything out there. But it is nice to have it on the go on my smartphone to keep up with it any changes.

My buddy and I are going to attempt to purchase some bitcoins very soon hopefully, learn the trade, all that hoopla. I'll be sure to stop by and share what I've found if need be!

Yeah i know its Wiki, but here ya go
en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by TopherWayne
When do you think the current bubble will pop? MtGox has the current value at $143 per coin. It was just $24 per coin 3 months ago. What's the deal with this sudden increase in price? Is it all speculators? I don't own a coin, but I was tipped 10 cents. My 10 cents is now worth 0.01201078 BTC $ 1.71. Pretty cool lol. I wanted to buy a few coins, but now I can't afford one. I am hoping for the bubble to pop so I can invest in a couple and wait for it to go back up. All I want is one freaking coin, I just cant afford it at the moment. I think BTC is here to stay so when it pops it will go back up and stabilize.

Well I've started to play with it again, did a test on a bitcoin for service website (watching short videos and surveys) to test that I get how the transactions work.

Got about 480 microbitcoins for it, but at the current rate thats bout 7 cents.

Haha.. how crazy it is to earn in cents and think it's working!

but yeah, you can get bitcoins without having to pay for them. and I have a lot of spare time so I can fill it with time wasting things that can be stored and forgotten..

reply to post by winofiend


Exactly! Say Bitcoin skyrockets into the thousands & i forget about it. my 0.01201078 BTC $ 1.71 might be worth a lot of money in the next couple of years! lol

reply to post by gladtobehere


This stuff is like a nightmare coming to life...

How do you use bitcoins for in-person transactions?

Will we need a bitcoin-encrypted-algorithmic-security-transistor stamped on our foreheads?

reply to post by Bleeeeep


Take a laptop and meet at a spot with wifi
Or exchange a password to an online wallet somewhere for money.

Originally posted by Bleeeeep
reply to post by gladtobehere

 

How do you use bitcoins for in-person transactions?

If you trust the person it's possible just to accept a private key from them. When you get internet access you can use that private key to access the coins. But if you want to be completely safe then an internet connection will be required.

reply to post by Chett


So both parties will require the "wallet" stamp to trade in the future?

Interesting.

I guess you didn't realize what I was implying. It's all good.

Bitcoin imo is an elitist currency, used by only those with a decent knowledge of computers....wouldn't that be a fair assessment ?

How can it be a currency for everyone ?

reply to post by ken10


Not sure decent knowledge of computers is actually elitist. How many people in the world have facebook and or twitter? The basic knowledge needed to live in the world has/is changing. I don't know how to hitch a horse to a buggy either ...

Personally I do see bit coins sitting on par with gold in the medium term. The one threat is in cracking the encryption as this will break all trust. How do you asses the rise of the qbit and is a new version of bitcoin needed to address this growing computational power?

Originally posted by Chett
reply to post by ken10

 

Not sure decent knowledge of computers is actually elitist. How many people in the world have facebook and or twitter? The basic knowledge needed to live in the world has/is changing. I don't know how to hitch a horse to a buggy either ...

Having facebook and/or twitter does not give you the qualifications to not only trade in Bitcoins but to keep them safe too.

I am on a pc and get along OK, but I know I don't have the skills to prevent my pc from being hacked, and have to rely on third parties to keep my pc safe.......I (like many others I guess) am not confident enough to participate in this scheme. So I think I'd sooner look to precious metals than this.

reply to post by ken10


You are probably both correct and wise. The vast majority of people don't day trade on the stock exchange or play with currency values on forex, for good reason. Bitcoins is young and it was developed mostly by 'geeks', I fully expect the day to come when its not much different than using CC on the net to buy a book from amazon, and that of course is still more than some folks want to do (or perhaps should do).

All that said, its exciting, new, and fun if you are into that sort of thing.

reply to post by ken10

I am on a pc and get along OK, but I know I don't have the skills to prevent my pc from being hacked, and have to rely on third parties to keep my pc safe.......I (like many others I guess) am not confident enough to participate in this scheme.

That doesn't matter, your bitcoin client should encrypt the wallet file, making it secure even in the case it gets stolen. Backing it up is the most important thing. Anyway if you're so bad with computers just use an online wallet service such as the blockchain.info wallet service. It's simple as pie.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder

Actually I suggest you don't use an online wallet, not to store anyway. Too many of them have been hacked recently.
Run wallet (bitcoin-qt is best I think) on your own computer, make an offline backup like a flash drive.