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).

Bitcoins!!

So, lately I have been obsessed with BITCOINS! Recently people when people ask me what I did last weekend I respond, making bitcoins! Often times this results in some confusion on their part, then they will ask, What are bitcoins?

I attempted to mine some of this bitcoins. It didn't work. But I was still driven to get them. This is one of the videos that inspired me to try:

I setup an mining rig on my laptop and soon saw, I would never see a bitcoin like this. The amount of shares produced by my humble laptop’s gpu would never amount to anything recognized by the pools. But I didn’t give up! I then moved on to promotion sites as a source of bitcoin. I used www.bestfreebitcoin.com/‎ as a guide and used bitcoinvistor.com to try to get some coin. To do so, the website directs you to an advertisers’ sites and gives you a small about of BTC. In fact it is measured in μBtc. At this point I was like, whatever, I don’t know what that means, I just want COINS ( it means one millionth of a BTC or .000 001))!  So I looked a ton of sites. I mean like a 100 or some maybe, and I finally passed the 60 μBtc threshold they have for payment. I eagerly waited in anticipation of a big payout. The next day it came, and….. It was .08 cents! I wasn’t too sad, I mean, it was free and all.

I also learned that .08 value was actually overstated! They used MtGox market value of BTC in the valuing of my BTC, which isn’t accurate. Following the security breaches of the market, that site has fallen out of favor and is no longer used, meaning other sites like bitstamp are more correct and also valued my BTC at a whole penny less. Talk about being short changed.