BitBored

Well, it has been a while. However, it seems like the Bitcoin isn't up to much new lately, at least to me. MTGox is still in bankruptcy, and according today's issue of the NY times faces liquidation. Big investors like Warren Buffet warn against the bitcoin, and it faces new struggles in china. The price of bitcoins has been fluctuating like crazy, although I suppose it always has. I guess the only big change is that College humor has been making more videos about it. I think might be the fate of bitcoin, just a craze. We know the coin itself has no  intrinsic value. Its only value  is that which people give it. Thus, it is my prediction the value of bitcoins will again return to almost nothing at some point; it is only a matter of time. That's not to say we can't ride a wave of interest in the mean time! So enjoy CH:

CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Videos

Jake and Amir: Bitcoin, and MTGox

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6957821/jake-and-amir-bitcoin

CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Videos

It is always amuses me to see Bitcoin in popular media, like it Jake and Amir here. I thoroughly enjoy opening the New York Times and seeing Bitcoin on the front page of the Business section. My delight however, often turns to dismay as the contents of the articles generally aren’t the best of news. It would seem scandal and arrest shroud the bitcoin, from illicit silkroad activities to MTGox refusing to pay out bitcoins.

I was recently very tempted to by a Bitcoin at MTGox. Their price was  floating around 100 dollars a coin which is insanely low! In fact, it was probably too good to be true. All the other markets ate floating about $500 a coin. Due to “breaches in security”  they are now withholding bitcoins, thus  actually receiving the bitcoin in your wallet is doubtful at best. Can’t blame a guy for trying though right. It now seems MTGox's $100 price was too good to be true as they are now filing for bankruptcy.

Events like this however have made me begin to question bitcoins future. I always knew bitcoin was unstable, however, for some reason I thought it might be predictable unstable. I now I am starting to think that it is not, and if I were to make money or lose money with it, it would be purely luck.

Get your own pathetic scrape of bitcoin dust.

There exist many lists on the internet that claim to have free bitcoin sites ( http://www.bestfreebitcoin.com/ and http://free1bitcoin.blogspot.com/ being two of them). In my experience  however, many of these sites do not work. On the other hand, I have discovered two sites that do infact work and I have confirmed payments from.

Now, even though I saw these site do infact work, don’t get your hopes up too much.They pay in you μbtc which is one millionth, or 10−6   of a bitcoin. Furthermore, this is for 5 min of viewing a site. with a payout at 100 μbtc, which takes more than a day to get (as they run out of ads), by the time you reach that 100 μbtc, you will have more or less 7 cents. wow. So its not great. If you want some bitcoin dust to occupy your wallet, this is the way to do it though.

The first Site is:

http://www.bitvisitor.com/

Which I think Is the best. I have quite a few payments from there. It shows you your current balance on the page as you move to the next ad. It also remembers this balance if you close your browser or turn off your computer or whatever, so you will be there to hang around.

The second site, which seems to take a bit longer and often has more problems is:

http://earnfreebitcoins.com/

This has a lower payout at 55 μbtc, so it is less money, but in my experience takes the same, if not more time. This website also has a referral option, which give you 30% of the money your referrals make. Which might increase your earnings potential a bit. You can help me try it here if you are so inclined:

http://earnfreebitcoins.com?ref=1QCJQDD1qFP9ddELrdytUEaYVtNYt1i3Ki

(Note: Bitvisitor claims to have a referral program as well, but according to my internet sources and my own personal experience, it does not work.)

If you have any sites to add, feel free to comment. I will look at them and attempt to make them work. I have looked at quite a few sites already, so I may have information about these sites as well.

Ponzi schemes? Oo

Though the viewing of many bitcoin sites via the Bitvisitor, it has come to my attention, much to my alarm, that there is a prevalence of Ponzi schemes in the bitcoin community. Bitcoins, not being a recognized currency, can be gambled online. It also seems they are eligible for other forms of nonsense that are illegal for recognized currents, like Ponzi schemes. Currently I wouldn't trust a bitcoin anywhere but your own wallet ( and even then you probably ought to have number of security measures to keep others out and provide a backups for yourself if you lose it).

Update, I just found a website that literally is named BTC Ponzi 120%. I am shocked. I am completely at a loss of what to say. I mean this awful fairly easy to see though ponzi scheme are one thing, but THIS! This is a whole new level of terrible. I hope no one thinks that this is a good idea in the slightest. Wow, and I thought the Bitcoin community would be better than this. Hopefully all the transactions listed there are fake.

I went on to find countless other sites that are similar to this. Some say they are Ponzi schemes, others do not. Here is a disclaimer from one of the sites:

THIS IS A PONZI SCHEME

We want to be clear: This is a Ponzi Scheme - This means that the returns on your investments come from other investors.

As long as people invest after you, your payout is absolutely guaranteed!

Any deposit amount between 0.001 and 0.5 will be allowed!

To keep this system running, please promote it - So everyone participating will benefit from it!

Seriously? So everyone will benefit? haha. More like, the owners will benefit and the majority of people will be screwed. Sounds like a great deal to me.

But one level up from the ponzi scheme, actually, multiple levels up, is MLM . So the Banner I'm providing gives you free cryptocurrency everyday for free. You just need to sign up. You need to refer other people to it though in order to really get anything though, which makes in Multi-level marketing in my book. But with a sign up taking all of 30 seconds and free, it doesn't look too awful. Let me know what you think.

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.