Bitcoin Forum

To win the prize, you must live 1 month off of purchases denominated solely in bitcoins.  This means:

Shelter, Clothing, Food, Heat, Water, Utilities, Transportation, Entertainment, etc.

Basically, if you pay for something, you must pay in bitcoins.  Buying pre-paid cards denominated in dollars, euros or pounds is NOT allowed.  Receipts will be helpful as a matter of proof; a daily blog about your Bitcoin life would also be nice (but where did you buy that computer?). If we clean up the details of the competition I'd be willing to fund 200 bitcoins of this person's life.  any other charitable forum members interested in backing this idea?


EDIT: Bitcoin's ball is rolling just fine without this bounty.  I pull my bounty offer and everyone else's that was on this post. 

I think it's a terrible idea, we need everyone we can get in the bitcoin community, we can't afford to have any of them starve.  :P

Now that doublec has ported Bitcoin to the N900 smartphone (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2125.0), I think the easiest way to live for one month off Bitcoin would be to send some coins to the phone and go on a road trip across the US.

Each night, stay at the home of a bitcoin user and pay them in bitcoins. Also pay them to drive you to your next destination.

With a bit of planning, it should be possible to travel from one coast to the other this way in a month.

That IS a great idea, that would have to be recorded on video! It would be major publicity for bitcoin!

"Across the U.S. with Bitcoin"

I can see the headlines already!

"In other news today a young person crossed the entire U.S.A, paying their way with a new kind of money called Bitcoins"

As editor of the Bitcoin weekly I demand to get the exclusive interview with whoever does this.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2491.0 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2491.0)

This guy might be the one to do this for bitcoins.   :)

I am starting a column about earning bitcoin. We'll see if I will become the first bitcoiner who made his living entirely off bitcoin.

I think this is a great idea too.  Not only because it might draw national media attention, but because it will almost certainly draw local media attention in each of the markets you visit.  Those small town newspapers and television stations are probably starving for human interest stories.  We could watch the increase in nodes on the bitcoin map as you make your way across the continent.

I'd wait for spring to do it though.  No point in needlessly freezing to death due to a logistical mixup.

Though that would certainly guarantee media coverage.

pro-tip:  save on heating bills by running a bitcoin-miner

We could call the whole thing "Bitcoin: the long march" ahahahahahha

This is a great publicity stunt!  I like it!  How many bitcoins does one need to survive for one month?

Given certain performance parameters I'd be willing to donate to this project.

One way to ensure compliance is to give out part of the bounty at designated stops along the way.

Applicants for this publicity stunt should outline how they plan to garner as much attention as possible for bitcoin from their escapades.

The trip is a great idea. Be sure to include Vancouver in your itinerary. I have a cozy space (nicely heated by miners) for you to stay.

Hey Guy's I happen to be a respected member of the Bitcoin community (ill get another trusted user to verify this account at some point), however I don't feel like I want all my itinerary plans connected to my other identity just yet.

I'm willing to take on this project! I have booked to go to Europe from the 16th of August to the 29th of October.  I'm arriving in Barcelona, and travailing from Span to France, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France, then back to Spain.

I can make a big project of this.  I'm willing to pay my own way, I have enough BTC to pay for everything quite easily.

A couple questions.  Promotion:  If everyone gives me good rates, :) I'll give the trade a good rating :)  The 200 BTC is not a huge bounty... so I'm not really in it to 'make' money.  However donations (to those who give me food, shelter, and host me) will always be welcome.

I'll be traveling with a friend, we are both in our early 20's.   I think that it would be lots of fun... and the bitcoin market will be developed enough by then to give a real good crack at it.  ;D

Oh, I'm planning to be in Munich when Oktoberfest is on... I propose that we make that an international Bitcoin meetup!  ;D  ;D  ;D

Curious-- How do you plan on going from France to the UK by using bitcoins?  I know of no bitcoin-accepting tunnels, airlines or ferries.

By 16th August there might be!


It will be a pleasure to have you visit, Satoshi.

Maybe, members of the bitcoin community would accept to buy some stuffs for you in exchange for bitcoin (acting as an intermediary).

This would be nice to have a bitcoin-couchsurfing website, where you could ask for your needs (foods, travel, sleeping location) and people could make some offers: (for 10BTC, I take you with my car at this place and bring you to the airport).

This would add a lot of value to the bitcoin economy, for sure.

Fair evade?  Ah, we will work out a way.  :) I think that we could make a big mission of it!  :) you'd be surprised how much 100BTC will get you in 6 months. :)

 ;D

I don't think it is in the spirit of the project I envisioned to be able to pay a bitcoin buddy 10 BTC to provide you food and transportation.  That's almost a worse outcome for the project than if you were to buy a pre-paid Visa. the project funding would just be going to your friends and not to real bitcoin merchants.   This isn't a project about going on a sweet bitcoin roadtrip culminating in a bitcoin meetup in some Euro-accepting bar.  You can do that in a different thread.  I'm talking about buying food and shelter from REAL bitcoin merchants, almost starving and freezing to death, living off of coffee and herbal tea driving around in an Australian '84 Lemon with an empty tank.

How is one going to find these 'BitCoin merchants' if not from within the BitCoin community?  Having a so-called 'euro-trip' that happens to promote the bitcoin merchants in Europe is a great Idea IMHO!  Maybe not as wicked as freezing to death... but who know what crazy stuff one can get up to on a euro-trip and some good quality BTC!

I definitely love this idea! This brings us to the point where we should have local BTC communities in order to offer that kind of service, actually. Cause I'm not flying to UK just for the pleasure of a ride with a chauffeur in style  ;D

The Free State Project in New Hampshire!

Get all the libertarians to use bitcoin, then you have a local bitcoin economy.  ;D

bitsurfing.com is available

Ha!

Hello, I'm new here. I've been lurking for months and just registered today (probably should have a long time ago, but...).

So this got my interest because I'm one of those libertarians in New Hampshire, and I can tell you there's already some interest in Bitcoin here. I don't know that anyone's yet offering services for BTC yet; most people are more focused on silver for face to face exchanges. But I'm already thinking about what I can offer for Bitcoins.

If most people there are using silver already, why don't you set up a exchange between silver coins and bitcoins? That would be a good way to introduce bitcoins to other FSP members.

By the way, how geek is the FSP community? I heard there were many.

I find the FSP movement really interesting and I wish you all success! (If at least it was not so close to the north pole I'd maybe even consider the hassle of trying to migrate to the USA, but I don't think I'd bear the weather! :D)

Haha, the weather is much better than trying to immigrate to the USA! (It's sunny and -2°C this afternoon. The high temperatures are supposed to be around 5°C for the rest of the week. Shorts weather!)

It's true, we do have many geeks in the FSP. Something about working with computers just seems to naturally generate libertarian thoughts. Or at least anti-authoritarian thoughts.

And that's a very good idea, setting up a silver-BTC exchange. I think I'm going to need more than 150 BTC to get started though! :)

Perhaps people intending on attempting this trip idea, should first start practicing convincing random sellers and service providers on your neighbourhood to accept BTC as payment, and once you are confident you can convince just about anyone then you start your trip.

hello error! I hang out on the free talk live bbs and free keene as terror australis . Glad you made it here :)

I agree that if anywhere was going to setup a local bitcoin exchange it would be NH.

Would use of "food banks" to avoid starving be acceptable?

I offer various foodstuffs and nutrition items for bitcoin, but that doesn't help me myself to attempt a challenge like this as I am the merchant.

I have a house in Sheet Harbour Nova Scotia that has no electricity so no problem with temptation to use electricity, vandals have trashed the main power board/system enough that I'd need a LOT of bitcoins to get an electrician to fix it and re-certify it.

There is a food bank within walking distance, and I have already established that I am qualified to avail myself of their services should I need to.

No electricity poses a challenge to the online documenting though. Does anyone offer mobile internet of some kind that will work in Nova Scotia, and supplies of batteries, for bitcoin?

I can ship good nutrition to people in return for bitcoin, so no need to live off teas and coffees, although I can also supply those.

(I can also offer internet connectivity and travel/accomodation products too it seems...)

-MarkM- ( http://www.amway.ca/MarkMetson/Shop/Product/Category.aspx/Batteries-Light-Bulbs ... )

It's your bounty, mpkomara, so of course you can set the rules. But consider this.

By the time it becomes possible to buy food and shelter from "REAL bitcoin merchants", then Bitcoin will already have arrived in the mainstream and this undertaking will not be so interesting.

On the other hand, we are now at the stage where no-one has ever lived for a month using just Bitcoin, no matter how they do it, so it is an interesting exercise. Even if someone buys food, shelter and transport direct from other Bitcoiners, what's wrong with that? Why should a purchase only be meaningful if it's from Wal-mart or McDonalds?

If you can buy your food from a merchant who accepts bitcoins and would offer others a similar rate for the same product, i think this would qualify as a proper bitcoin/food exchange with respect to this bounty.

So, for example, XS Wild Berry Blast Energy Drink from Markm's store is available for purchase using bitcoin (although i can't find the bitcoin option at checkout).  if you buy this drink from Markm for bitcoins, i would consider this valid for the bounty, since he is a bona fide bitcoin merchant.

I would not consider the following scenarios valid:

You message a bitcoin user who is willing to order you a Domino's pizza and pay Domino's in dollars, then you give the user some bitcoins.

You go to a soup kitchen and get food for free, and later donate some bitcoins to their cause.

The checkout on my Amway "personal site" is run by Amway not by me, so I cannot add currencies to the checkout.

Usually we either create people an account there if they aren't into doing the computer thing themselves and plug in their orders through that (like if doing home visits to people who hate computers, stuff like that) or if they want they can create their own account (making sure they sign up as my customer) and fill their shopping cart or set up their automatic orders then if they don't want to pay using a method Amway directly supports in it's checkout they can arrange another method (such as bitcoins) and as long as I have their login and password I can have my upline pay it with his credit card or I can pay it using PayPal. (The checkout might well apply your local sales taxes automatically so that it is all squeeky-clean legal. Amway is very careful about being legal...)

Refunds due to warranties would be sent by cheque in your local fiat currency, returns are by post office mail usually and they pay the postage on such returns. (Many products have 180 day empty-box guarantee, as the idea is to make it very easy to dare to try things until you find the things you like enough to settle on as your family tradition things to buy forever. ;))

Although the company (and reps) like to have customers just go to the site and do self-serve the fact is many customers do not and often those who do forget their account and who their rep (IBO) is and just create a new account that gets credited to some random Platinum level rep in their region. So it is actually quite normal that our customers don't even know about their account at the site it is just the mechanism we use to have their shipping address on file and a shopping cart dedicated to them. (You can put zero quantity of an item in the cart so as to remind yourself what you might someday want and stuff like that, it is persistent cart.)

At nanotube's suggestion I made a quick google sites page about accepting bitcoin:

https://sites.google.com/site/bitcoinknotwork/

*** NOTE the part about I can do lower prices on many items for people who use bitcoin ***

-MarkM-

OK, I'll put my bitcoins where my mouth is.

I'll give 200 bitcoins to the first person who lives for a month making all of their transactions in bitcoins.

They are welcome to buy things informally from their bitcoin buddies. They are welcome to get food from food banks with or without donating bitcoins. They are welcome to use fiat to charge up their phone credit before the month starts, or to pay for things like rent in advance.

But for the designated month all of the transactions that they make must be denominated in bitcoins.

I reserve the right to withhold the bounty if there's nothing avant-garde being done. For example, if a teenager just lived normally for a month, and their parents paid for everything using fiat currency, that wouldn't earn the bounty.

(If it's later than 1st June 2011 when you start this, check with me first to confirm that the bounty is still on offer.)

Heh, one could simply order pizza through a proxy buyer using BTC. Food problem solved.

Sure, and why not? That counts as "living off bitcoins", as far as my bounty is concerned.

Ah, but it doesn't count for mpkomara's original bounty.

Hell, even managing to pay some significant part of your monthly expenses in bitcoins would be an achievement. I wonder if I can convince my landlord to take some bitcoins....

I just heard from an old friend I had not seen in a long time. It seems he might be a potential tenant for my primitive rustic hideway, so I have suggested he consider using bitcoin for any financial aspects of such a spring break... Seems promising... A tenant who will pay bitcoin? Cool idea. :)

Of course he will probably earn it back and maybe more if he helps keep the place from falling down...

-MarkM-

I might take the challenge, but I need to figure out how to earn bitcoins first.
not sure what products or services I could provide
if you think of something let me know.
I don't have a computer powerful enough to generate any coin.

I imagine you're in a contract, but I've got a room open immediately for a free stater who pays bitcoin.

How much could you get by with in NH?

Room is likely taken, confirming tonight, not for bitcoin.


Bare minimum? Figure $400 for room+util, could probably eat on $150/mo if you were selective, get by with no car if you are in a city or can get groceries with a roomie or whatever. I'm sure a few more expenses would crop up, but $1k/mo should make you not miserable.

That's all guesses, I haven't been here long and haven't lived without my expensive family for a long time.

This is interesting.  I could do it, but it would be more "living off the grid with stuff I already own" and less "paying for rent and clothes with Bitcoins".

Heh, you could eat for $50 a month. Beef liver does the trick. If you can, shoot a deer and store it in your freezer.

If you buy the gun with bitcoins and store the meat in a refrigerator bought with bitcoins and pay for the electricity to run the refrigerator in bitcoins, then you are eligible for the reward.  As of right now, i believe you can do two of the three.

"Stuff you already have" won't count.  If you consume it, wear it or live in it, it must be purchased with bitcoins or have sprung up from the earth.

In theory, one could buy solar panels with bitcoins....

In order to make this possible, participants can complement it with free services such as: CouchSurfing for shelter, carsharing/hitch-hiking services for transport, etc.

Also, hacker squats (google for "hackerspaces" and "hacklabs") might get you free food or cheap food for BTC if you introduce them to the Bitcoin world and give them a talk about it.

I will do this!

Hi guys, I'm PLATO. I love this idea, and it dovetails nicely with a project I've been working on, called Subverse. It's in preliminary stages still... you can see some basic placeholder stuff that I've coded so far at subverse.info (http://subverse.info) and subvert.me (http://subvert.me). To sum the project up - there are thousands of websites who are trying to fix the world by educating the people (infowars.com (http://infowars.com), tragedyandhope.com (http://tragedyandhope.com), mediamonarchy.com (http://mediamonarchy.com), and cryptogon.com (http://cryptogon.com) to name a few of the best.) So far, these sites don't talk to each other - infowars users may well be unaware that mediamonarchy exists and vice versa. Subverse will be a unifying context of these independent media sources; a way to link them all together so anyone who wants to understand what's actually going on and how to fix it can look in one place.

All of these websites have interesting people working behind the scenes. I have been considering leaving my apartment and road tripping across the US, to meet all these subversives face to face. Doing it entirely on bitcoins makes this idea even sexier! I'm unemployed and am looking for patronage to make this idea a reality; now that bitcoins are around, this would totally work through micropatronage. ("Patronage" being the centuries-old idea that someone with money pays an artist's living wage so they can create their art; micropatronage meaning that if a bunch of people each send me a single bitcoin, I will be able to feed myself, run this site, and change the world.)

I'll chronicle my adventures in a blog as I travel, using a laptop and 3G tethered cell. While I'm not actually driving, I will be working on this Subverse project. My (empty so far) blog is located at therealplato.com (http://therealplato.com), and my twitter feed is at twitter.com/therealplato (http://twitter.com/therealplato).

I intend on couch surfing and camping for most of the trip, so the only things I will need to pay for are a 3G cell connection, gasoline, car repairs, and food.

My car gets about 15 miles to the gallon; it's about 2000 miles from east to west coast, gas is about $4/gallon, and bitcoins are currently about $.9/btc. The math works out to somewhere around 600 bitcoins for those 2000 miles. Food will probably run me 250ish BTC/mo, car repairs will hopefully be zero, and a cell connection will be something like 65 BTC/mo. I'll set up a counter on my blog showing my current bitcoin balance, along with histories of everything I buy with bitcoins.

At a minimum, I will need to garner enough support that I can find people every couple hundred miles who are willing to trade me gasoline for bitcoins. I have a couple hundred bitcoins of my own that I will spend initially; hopefully by the time those run out, more people will be willing to be my patrons.

Your thoughts?

[edit: I would love to stop by universities or other venues and speak about my experiences, as I travel past them!]
--
PLATO

as far as i know, there is a single car for sale using bitcoins.  it's in australia.  you can find the details in the marketplace on this forum.  you'd have to buy this car and use it for your road trip, and the gasoline you buy would have to be from a gas-for-bitcoin merchant (they don't exist yet).  again, the bounty i'm offering is not intended to support a road trip.  it is intended to show that there are enough diverse merchants that one could survive on bitcoins.

This is awesome .
You could sell adspace on your car in return for a magnetic car magnet with the sponsors logo/website. http://www.123print.com/Car-Magnets (http://www.123print.com/Car-Magnets) this one has free shipping.

Find a mobile provider who accepts bitcoins as your phone sponsor...


Setup a fivegrinder group for it imo. http://fivegrinder.com/help/start (http://fivegrinder.com/help/start)

At 15 miles to the gallon, with a cross country trip ahead of you, you may be better off just getting a new one. It will save you money in the long run anyway.

I have a 2001 coupe that has gotten me about 23 miles to the gallon on average (and I'm a pretty wasteful driver where gas mileage is concerned), and I plan to put it up for sale sometime in the next 1-2 months. I might sell it for BTC, but I'll have to talk it over with my wife first. If I do, I'll give you first crack at it.

still got a lien on it :-/

I get something in the neighborhood of 20+ though if I'm drafting trucks on the highway. I'm also not a very economical driver... although I expect to break those habits pretty quick over the next couple months.
I made a new thread for my trip since it appears to conflict with the OP's rules: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4752.0

Coming Soon: The Amazing Race: Bitcoin Edition ?

I'm canceling this bounty.  It would no longer be that noteworthy (to me, at least) if someone lived a month off of bitcoins.