Repost: Best Bitcoin video ever.

I just recently watched a great video explaining some more confusing concepts in Bitcoin. Here is a great video that shows this. Some of the highlights to look for is:

• An explanation of the 51% attack ( it doesn't mention it by name, but you can figure it out)
• It shows exactly how bitcoins are transferred
• It explains the purpose of mining ( it actually has a purpose which I didn't understand before)
• Also public keys are randomly generated in your wallet. There is no confirmation with the network that the key isn't taken.

The Bane of the BitCoinminer

 This week I have experienced a nuisance of villainous proportions.

    

A problem that was born in the darkness....

Well, more the darkness itself, or even more accurately, the cause of that darkness, as I have lost power in my room for the past few weeks, which is quite obnoxious to say the least. Fortunately, its not all my room that has lost power, just half of it. I have been using for the past week one single outlet, with my route taking up one plug and my laptop the other. My desk being on the other side of the room just a distant memory of a time of more comfortable computer usage. So there I am, legs crossed sitting on my bed looking for a relatively smooth part of my mattress to us my mouse on. Perhaps its good I didn't go out and get a big asic yet as I would have no where to run it. But alas, it is fixed now, and I once again can enjoy the comforts of a desk as I use my computer.

 Well, on another note, as you may have noticed I have redone the Blog! Its now called Bitcoin Plus, as I will be talking about Bitcoins, among other things. If you have feedback, or want me to write about anything in particular, drop me a line, and I would love to get back to you.

Two Satoshi!

With bitcoins once reaching over a thousand dollars, they have quite a few interesting divisions to note, the smallest of which is: The Satoshi. Named after the mysterious and anonymous founder, the Satoshi is the nickname for the smallest division of a bitcoin which is .00000001 . Currently I have two pending transactions in my bitcoin wallet both of which are one satoshi each, and I am at a complete loss as to why! I think its almost counter productive to send that a small amount of BTC as the fee I think is higher than that. Bitcoins transaction fees are fairly small to my knowledge but have a fairly complex system of rules Oh well, hopefully it goes though, and if not, its not even  a cent lol.

Just for fun I think this is how transaction fees work :

148*I + 34*O + 10

This answer is in bytes. “I” is the number of inputs and “O” is the number of outputs. There is also a one byte variation for addresses that starts with 0x80

The transaction fee is for each KByte of the transaction, and 0.0001 BTC per KByte is the fee. Naturally the transaction size is rounded up to the next Kbyte.

The Bitcoin disaster!

Its common knowledge, you should back up your files. But, like many of the things we know we should do, but don’t ( flossing? lol pass) we often put it off. Well, Bitcoin wallets also should be backed up, and some wallets come with a digital backup included. Mine did not come with such a back up, and when I mentioned this to Jake he told me I should get a different wallet. I chuckled, I don't think anything will happen to me, not my wallet. Oh boy, was I wrong!

…

So a few months ago I downloaded the windows 8.1 preview. I hate windows eight, with a burning passion. The windows 8.1 update was supposed to make windows 8 less like windows 8, and it kind of worked. But the preview expired and once it did my computer needed a huge overhaul. This destroyed all the applications on my computer including… yep, you guessed it

my bitcoin wallet.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH I thought. In a frenzied state of panic, I turned to the microsoft forums in seek of counsel, (lol what a joke) which didn’t help. What I did end up doing was using Recuva, a software recovery program, to get my wallet back. As I dove into the depths of my computer, I hoped that windows hadn’t yet overwritten the data I required. For 60 long minutes, the program searched away, only to return with partially good news. I had to wallets, one with no money, and the other with all  the money. One was partially corrupted, and the other unscathed. I quickly restored the untouched wallet then put it in my new bitcoin wallet program. It then connected to the bitcoin network. More waiting… It then read my balance: 0 BTC. Crap! I thought. So I attempted to load the other corrupted wallet to no avail. Sweat built on my face as I realized my bitcoins may be lost in the void of cyberspace. Forever lost because I neglected to save my private keys somewhere safe. My hatred burned for Microsoft and the accused Windows 8! But then, a glimmer of hope… there was another file in my bitcoin wallet’s folder that I didn’t recognize. How strange I thought. I then attempted to run it with my wallet….

Success!

It Worked! I got my coins back all .0002077 of them ( or about 17 cents). And then we all lived happily ever after.

Note: there may have been some dramatization in the production of this blog.

RAWWWWW!

Today has been good. I woke up this morning and eat some cereal left behind from my roommate. It was a little stale, but who cares, it was free.

I went to the library later today and they were giving away t-shirt and little screwdrivers. All you had to do was go tour the library a bit and get 3 punches at each of the stations so I did. And I got a cool little screw driver.

Then I walked across the street to Panda express. I brought in my tablet with a email they sent me from free firecracker chicken. I don’t like Panda express much, but hey, free. Although, If I was Gordon Ramsey I might say, these bell peppers are completely raw!

***

Now I went to work that night expecting free food and I was sorely disappointed. Apparently Chinese new year is only to be celebrated at lunch time. In my despair I turned to another source of free things… the internet. I discovered the world of mailed free samples! Yes, that's right, free promotions sent right to your door! So naturally I signed up for like 12. I will hopefully get in the mail in the next week to 8 weeks all sorts of products, with varying degrees of usefully less to me, everything from cologne to children's chewable vitamins. I’ll report back on how it goes.

Now, for some shameless self promotion:

If you want to or have been thinking about Playing LoL here is my referral link, make an account, get me some free IP and other stuff:

http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c420b46bba64

Or if you want to make me 20 bucks, make an account with Capital one, you get 50 bucks free too. Just make an account with at least 250 bucks in it, make 3 debit card purchases and bam. Also you get .2% on your checking account, yes, interest on your CHECKING account. They also have savings accounts with .75% which is pretty good.

https://r.capitalone360.com/TLsKPtjDzX

Poor Ron Paul (Coins)

I first heard of bitcoins in an after dinner speech, a  bit of an informative comedy speech if you will. When it was first described that you can make bitcoins by mining them I was a bit confused. As I studied it more I learned, the algorithms that mining makes you do don’t actually do anything, there is no purpose to the process of bitcoin mining except that these imaginary bitcoins are produced as a  result of it. This is just the way that the supply of bitcoins is distributed, to those who spend the most money on asics and purposeless tech (with the exception of its ability to mine BTC).

At some point I realized that I GPU mining for BTC was impossible, I looked to other cryptocurrencies for hope. The idea is that newer cryptocurrencies do not yet have fancy asics to mine their coins. My brother, Jake, informed me that the ship has sailed for LITEcoins as well. So naturally I turned my attention to the newest of cryptocurrencies, Ron Paul Coins! I looked to the fact that the creators of the coin claimed a small amount of coins will be made, making they valuable “ like gold” as they proclaim on their  website. To which I said, heck yes! I thought there was a bit of an innate  value in the coin, in part, scratch that, wholly because of its name. I attempted to mine said coins and once again to my dismay it did not work.

I attempted to  download the zip file, containing the miner, from the most ghetto file directory I had ever seen. Chrome didn't like the file, saying it was malware. But I really wanted this to work, so I jumped on trusty old internet explorer which had no problem letting me download this virus infested software. When I extracted the file, I notice that there was no .exe miner in it. I was confused, and looked at the directory and sure enough the .exe was there. I unzipped again to see the file application appear for a moment then disappear. I then looked at my antivirus software, which was deleting the file as I extracted it. At this point I gave up. And thus ended my quest for RPC, in the conclusion that the whole coin is a scam. What an untimely end for poor Ron Paul ( or at least this coin that has no affiliation with him yet bears his name).

The fun of bitcoins didn't stop there! I just recently got my Nexus 7 in the mail, so the spread of bitcoins went there too. I now have a dandy bitcoin app on my phone. It is able to scan QR codes and make bitcoin payments. Of course, that is conditional on me possessing bitcoins, which I do not. So, its cool to look at I guess? I also downloaded a bitcoin miner, which I am still not sure how to work ( or in the case of my laptop, if it could even earn coins at its Mh/s).