Bitcoin Forum

Okay, after reading on Bitcoins for a couple days I think I understand it.

What is the best way to get money.  I know BitInstant is down and that was what I was going to do and send it to my email.  Don't matter credit card, debit, cash is the ways Id prefer.  I really don't want to trade someone in person, or sell giftcards and stuff like that.

Also, if the bitinstant service was up I would be able to send it to an email then get that code and place it in my wallet correct?

If I was to start a wallet in https://blockchain.info/wallet/ That would be a good wallet for me buy bitcoins and then send too that wallet?

Thanks

Do not use online wallets as your main wallet, You should always keep your main wallet offline, Ready to use on your main rig (or ready to use USB drive)

Go install a bitcoin wallet client, Like the standard Bitcoin client, Or something user created like Armory
Be careful of usercreated wallet software tho, Many of them can take all your coins with a simple "version update"

Best way to get money? (by selling bitcoins right?) Well i personally do nothing but P2P chat room deals, That way i pay no fees, get Exactly the type of currency and How i get it And everything is clear. But i have a Risk factor
another thing i do is use sites like this one https://fastcash4bitcoins.com/Default.aspx if i cant find anyone to talk to.

You can also try coinbase.com or instawallet, but as JackRabiit has mentioned, best is to keep it in a Bitcoin client.

Aren't ALL wallets user created?  Aren't the developers of the the "standard Bitcoin client" users too?

Okay thanks guys ill do that. Create an offline wallet for my main stash then a online one for online transactions which will not contain a lot of coins.  I have been reading about securing my wallet and how too so I got that down.

My only problem now though is buying bitcoins.  Buying through Walmart was good with bitinstant but it being down kind of makes things harder

This is what open source, peer review and code auditing are for. :)
Make sure you choose a client that has been sufficiently tested and peer-reviewed.

Bitinstant will be back up to purchase bitcoins directly to your wallet at some point. I made a post about this, and they said it will be back :)

Another way to get money is setup a Dwolla account, and link it to your bank account. You can start funding Dwolla as soon as you verify the transfers Dwolla will send to your bank. Usually takes 2-3 days. You can then fund Mt. Gox with the Dwolla funds, and vise versa. I recommend getting on that NOW because Dwolla will not transfer money to Mt Gox account without having a 30 days past from your first Dwolla deposit. (It can be a 1 dollar deposit if you wish)

While this isnt as fast as bitinstant, its something you should get the ball rolling on now, so the wait of the 30 days can start ticking away :)

Without a doubt, the best way to get bitcoins is to start offering an online service or good for sale.  And don't tell me that you have nothing to sell, because that's bs.  That Iphone 1 that you replaced with that Iphone4S, that you would otherwise probably give to your niece to use as a mp3 player; literally anything that you might consider putting up on Ebay.  Anything that you might put up on Etsy.  Extra tradable items for popular video games such as Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, Assasin's Creed, etc.  Bitcoin is rooted in Austrian economic theory, and as such, bitcoins are just a medium of exchange.  Products are paid for with other products, in the grand scheme of the economy, and we want to encourage people to engage in trade directly as well as become producers as much as they are consumers. 

Just yesterday, I bought a Horseless Headless Horseman's axe for TF2.

Yes that is fine to use.  They don't keep your unencrypted private keys on their server.

Cool thanks guys for everything.  This is what I'm thinking though, can you tell me if this could work?  If not I'll just wait for bit instant to be up again!

Could I buy Bit coin keys from


Lets just say I buy 5 private bitcoin keys from
https://bitcoinkeys.wildapricot.org/Products

Transfer those private keys to Mt.Gox to have a total of 5 bitcoins in my Mt Gox account.

Then transfer those to my blockchain.info wallet?  Will that work fairly quick?  Or does Mt. Gox take awhile?  I just made an account on there and it seems simple enough?


Thanks again guys for all your help, really helpful.

I don't know why they are selling keys instead of sending bitcoins. Looks a little suspicious. In case they are legitimate, you can claim private keys directly with blockchain.info web client, no need to use Mt.Gox for that. Just go to "Import/Export", "Import Private Key". Make sure to empty (sweep) the private key though so that the person who gave you the private key can't take the money.

Yeah, there is no legitimate reason to sell private keys online and a great many risks in trusting someone else to create your keys for you.  Those physical bitcoins are really just metal tokens with a hidden private key, so in person you have to trade private keys & you have to trust that the guys who makes those physical bitcoins is honest; but there is no reason to do something similar online. 

Cool thanks for the heads up.  I almost went though a couple hundred that could have got me scammed.
Only going to go with trusted methods and sites now.

Was thinking of going through Bit Instant.... from CVS to MtGox.  Then MtGox-->blockchain.info wallet.  Hows that sound?  That would take about a day for everything for the money to be in blockchain.info correct?  I need to buy something soon so this is probably the fastest way I think.

Also Moon, I played TF2 awhile back.  If you want I have some items you can have for free for helping me out I never play anymore.  I think a couple strange things like the knife and ambassador, and like 4-5 refined metals and some other things that you might want, let me know.

Edit...  Okay.  I figured it all out I'm pretty sure and going to do it tommrow.

-Goto BitInstant.  Pay from CVS (In cash) to MtGox account that I created today.

This is where I get confused.  Am I supposed to convert that fund that I got now in MtGox to bitcoins?  Or does it automatically do that for me.

-From MtGox withdraw and send to blockchain.info ewallet by entering my wallet address.

Thank you!

you can also buy from coinbase.com directly from a US bank account.

On MtGox you have to trade your dollars for bitcoins by placing a buy order.

You can place a Market order if you want it done instantly at whatever price people are currently asking.

Or you can place a limit order (by not ticking the "Market order" checkbox) where you specify the worst price you are prepared to buy at, but if you do that then you have the risk of nobody ever selling at that price.

Why? Provided that you can export and backup the private keys, wouldn't an online wallet (like blockchain.info/wallet or strongcoin.com) be just as safe?

I'm not sure about that. After reading their ads I'm under impression they say Mt.Gox does not wait for confirmations when importing private keys. Is that so? If so, then it is a security vulnerability in Mt.Gox, which they exploit to do faster transfers.

Make backups everyday!

Totally overkill, just tell windows task Schedualer to Copy(duplicate) the file once a week.
Done, Auto backup initiated

While it's true that Mt.Gox doesn't wait for confirms, the risk isn't with nor against Mt.Gox.  The risk of handling private keys is that the person you bought it from has retained a copy.  If you have the foresight to buy a private key in order to import it into Mt.Gox rapidly, then you have the foresight to simply send BTC to Mt.Gox at least an hour prior to a trade.  Mt.Gox imports private keys mostly so that people who have recieved a physical bitcoin can use it immediately with them, but that destroys the physical bitcoin.

It's also not a security vulnerability for Mt.Gox, it's a security concern for you.

The issue is that (generally speaking) online wallets keep the private keys on the server.  Even if the operator of the site (and all his employees) are trustworthy, if the server is hacked you could stand to lose everything that you have in the online wallet.  Online wallets certainly have their place, think of them as mini-Paypals, but would you keep your life's savings in Paypal even if you trusted them?  There is a precident as well, two major online wallet services have been hacked, and also Mt.Gox has been compromised once.  The more money that they concentrate, the tastier the hack target that they become.  What sum that you may have in your personally operated client wallet generally isn't worth the efforts, if they know that you have anything at all.  Mind you, some of them have learned their lesson, and have become relatively hard targets, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.  It is impossible to steal your bitcoins from your not running, not online and encrypted wallet.dat file.

That said, I don't entirely take my own advice here, as I have the majority of my funds in a BitcoinSpinner account attached to my android cell phone.  But the cavet there is that BitcoinSpinner uses a 'split wallet' design that keeps the actual private keys on my cell phone.  The risk for me, then, is the loss or destruction of my cell phone/memory card.

Really, the matter comes down to risk versus convience.  If your only dealing with a couple hundred dollars worth of bitcoins, and can afford to risk it, then an online wallet service is very fast and convient; like modern banking.  Often easier than Paypal.  But if you start to accumulate a very large value in that online account, perhaps a more secure 'savings account' is justified.  Either way, if something bad happens to the online service and you lose your shirt, don't blame bitcoin.

That is entirely not necessary for bitcoin.  Certainly once a week is more than enough.  I use Time Machine and don't even have to think about it, but if you're doing manual backups of the wallet.dat file the standard client creates 100 private keys.  So if you backup right after starting up, setting up, and shutting down the client for the first time; the client can completely recover from a catastrophic event as long as you have not exceeded 100 transactions since last backup.  You can also force the client to create more, and have mine set to 2000; which makes for a huge wallet.dat file but my disk drive is fat.

Okay.  So its safe to say tomorrow can I can goto CVS, use bitinstant to have money transferred to MtGox.  Then buy bitcoins on the market, then transfer them to my wallet in a fairly short amount of time (1 day)?

Thanks

The problem with this statement is that neither blockchain.info nor strongcoin.com seem to do that.

Wrong. Allowing PK import without waiting for confirmations on the emptying transaction carries the same risk as acceptance of any 0-confirmation transactions.

This doesn't make much sense either. The PK purchase is being advertised as instant. You don't need any foresight for that.

Yes, bitinstant tries to be, well, almost instant (it doesn't always succeed though :-\). It advertises expected transfer time on the order of minutes. You can do an instant trade on Mt.Gox as well, and an instant transfer of bitcoins to your wallet. So the whole thing should take minutes.

That may be true, but make certain.


Not for Mt.Gox.  Whether they create a transaction to empty the address or not, the risk is with you, not them.  If you put funds into Mt.Gox via a compromised private key, and then that address gets raped, it's you who loses money, not MT.Gox.  Sure you can get funds in fast in order to make a quick trade, but you can't also get the dollars out within an hour.

Perhaps you need the wisdom not to bite?

Oh, it turns out Mt.Gox does not accept PKs without confirmations. The argument is in vain, lol.

Thank you.  Well I messed it up, kept typing in the wrong pass to many ties and got blocked for 24 hours on mtgox! >:| Is bitstamp just as good and fast because I need to do it by noon EST tommrow?

Thanks