Have you heard about Bitcoin or Bitcoin Mining? Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency. Peer-to-peer means that no central authority issues new money or tracks transactions. These tasks are managed collectively by the network. A Bitcoin is the base currency of the Bitcoin market. It is like how we reference a Dollar or a Euro, and like the different currencies in the world, the Bitcoin trades at different values based primarily on speculation, supply and demand. One of the most attractive features of Bitcoins is that they are not controlled by any government. They cannot be artificially inflated or deflated. A monetary authority cannot pump more of them into the market to boost the economy. Basically, there is a set amount going out over time and as time goes on the amount entering the market decreases. The way that they are entered into the market is a process called “Mining”. Basically, computers solve mathematical algorithms to earn the Bitcoins. They are very complex and take a lot of computing power to solve. The more computers trying to solve the equations, the harder the equations become to solve, the less you get for mining. First thing you need to do is get a “Bitcoin Wallet”. Because Bitcoin is an internet based currency, you need a place to keep your Bitcoins. Got to bitcoin.org and download the Bitcoin client for your Operating System. Install it the client will begin to download the blockchain. Downloading the blockchain can take a long time and will be over 6GB of data. If you have data caps, it is recommended ordering a copy of the blockchain on DVD to keep from going over as it is growing exponentially. Click to order the bitcoin blockchain by mail. Once the client is up to date, click “New” to get your wallet address. It will be a long sequence of letters and numbers. One of most important things you can do is make sure you have a copy of the wallet.dat file on a thumb drive and print a copy out and keep it in a safe location. You can view a tutorial on how to create a secure wallet by clicking the link on the top of the page. The reason is that if you computer crashes and you do not have a copy of your wallet.dat file, you will lose all of your Bitcoins. They won’t go to someone else, they will disappear forever. It is like burning cash. Now that you have a wallet and the client, you are probably roaring to go, but if you actually want to make Bitcoin (money), you probably need to join a pool. A pool is a group that combines their computing power to make more Bitcoins. The reason you shouldn’t go it alone is that Bitcoins are awarded in blocks, usually 50 at a time, and unless you get extremely lucky, you will not be getting any of those coins. In a pool, you are given smaller and easier algorithms to solve and all of your combined work will make you more likely to solve the bigger algorithm and earn Bitcoins that are spread out throughout the pool based on your contribution. Basically, you will make a more consistent amount of Bitcoins and will be more likely to receive a good return on your investment. Most of the mining programs out there are pretty complicated to setup and will frustrate your average user. Recently a great program has come out to get the most basic of users started. The program is called GUIMiner. Click the link and download the program (Be careful, some of the ads are set up to look like the file download). Install and run the program and add in your information from Slush’s Pool. Remember that the user name is actually the worker name. The worker name will be your user name, dot, worker ID (username.worker ID) and the password from that worker ID.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:32:04 +0000
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