Hello! Just joined and will be perusing the forums at length over the next couple of days. Realizing upon my initial lookaround that I probably should have joined up as soon as I got into bitcoin, but I'm not usually much of a forum/social network fan.

First of all, I see that there is an incredible wealth of info shared here. Even taking all the rapid changes in the cryptoworld into account (and posts that will be outdated because of the constant change), I'm sure I will learn a lot just by reading. So, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to share their knowledge with others.  

There are a lot of bitcoin stories out there. Here's mine.

I am a senior on a pension. As you all know, inflation has been insane the past few years, but my pension is fixed. People in my situation have been having an absolutely awful time just getting by. I have a tough time just paying my bills and keeping food on the table.

My great passion/vice in life is BOOKS. All my life I have adored everything about books, right down to the smell of them. My needs are pretty simple, but it was hell giving up books. Yes, I use my public library (a LOT!), but there are so many books they simply don't have. As my circumstances became more difficult, I found myself having to sell off most of my books... the loss still hurts.

So imagine how thrilled I was when I finally heard about bitcoin last summer... and that I could actually use it to purchase ebooks! OMG!!!

Now, I'm not very tech-savvy. My PC is old, and I don't have the hardware to mine, nor the know-how. I have never been lucky w/gambling, so I don't even try. However, I got on board with as many faucets as I could find, until I had earned enough to purchase a BTCClicks premium membership. I continue to earn tiny amounts of bitcoin via faucets and BTCClicks. I'm not happy about the mind-numbing tedium of these activities, but every time I do it, I just tell myself I'm getting a little bit closer to purchasing another ebook. My body may be getting pretty old, but my mind is still as sharp and keen to learn as ever. I need books in my life. They bring congenial companionship to my solitude.

Even if bitcoin never does anything more for me than allow me to continue purchasing ebooks, then it has enriched my life considerably. I just think it's absolutely amazing. Love it! My only wish is that I had heard about it and got on board a long time ago.

In the coming days I will be looking more closely at the forum for means of obtaining more bitcoins, as my shopping cart is always bulging but my wallet isn't. I just wanted to say that I have already peeked at a few pertinent threads and I must say the "get a job" refrain is pretty insulting. I know that young able-bodied people rule the world but they are not the only ones who live in it. So, please remember that there is at least one retired senior (me) here on the forum, who should not be told to get a job. I've done my time working, and working hard at that. Now I am just grateful beyond words that there is a way I can obtain new books once again. Even if they are only digital books, that I can't hold in my hands, and smell.  

Thanks again to all who have contributed to this forum, it looks like an excellent resource!

I had heard about Ripple and, after checking those guides I can see it'll be very important in the future.
Thanks for the information tokeweed.

tl;dr Hi, I like Bitcoin.

Greetings good fellows, my nickname is Zealous Zero (ZZ for short).

I'm very excited about Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that came out of the blue. I first heard about it a few years back when the faucets were giving around 0,1 BTC.
I'm glad to see that Bitcoin survived. It seems that it's worth quite a bit now (around $568, according to bitcoincharts.com) and there's even a bunch of new coins!

This proves how brilliant an invention it is and I do hope we will leave the current monetary systems in favor of digital currency.

Anyway, thanks for reading and have a good day.

is that really a threat to BTC ? Why it is better than BTC ?

Hi All,
I just read about allllll the news and research about bit coin mining.
My current spec is made for gaming i3570k OS win 7 with 8 gig ram and hd 7970.
residing in US, CA and electricity bill avg $30 month.
now i used all the calculator provided online but I want to see if someone with a similar rig etc actually found it profitable.
cause #1 wear and tear these gpu cards are expensive.
#2 all those statements saying pools are low and steady but still the amount shared is varied by workers so the x value is still unknown.
I still feel like theres alot to learn prior to mining so wondering if anyone out there could share their story before i ruin my 1.4k gaming rig lol. (could really use side money).
Bitstamp is buy/selling for ~$600 usd per coin?!?!? how would it usually on average take to farm that?.

now before people rage about using google I did, but their explanation is vague or very little detailed ( some too detailed ).

Thank you in advance for taking your time and reading!
Please share!

Your single 7970 will earn you about $5 bucks a day in bitcoin.

I started mining a long time ago with four 7970's. Today, I have over 50 GPUs hashing away, all from previous mining profits. My story is useless to you, because you are entering a totally different market.

You say "too detailed," but I say you haven't read enough. I have over twenty days of activity on my account, on this forum alone.

Really about all I can add to this...

Can you please share some legit bitcoin faucet sites, or sites where I can earn bitcoins. I just want to earn some bitcoins without buying it or mining first. Thanks!

It would be very hard to get profits from cloud-mining. Think twice before start doing it!

So which coin should it be oh great bitcointalk community?

This week I've played around with some coins, made some money lost some money right now I'm at net -1.03%, which isn't too bad (Maza coin was a bad idea).

I like coins that do something and have a community behind them like vert and doge BUT also like the thrill of coins like max coin (42 coin is a scam).

The amended US suit also added Mark Karpeles’ second-in-command Gonzague ***-Bouchery and Mt. Gox’s original founder and shareholder Jed McCaleb as defendants.

The Winklevoss twins peg it at $400 billion. SecondMarket's Silbert sees it at 5 percent of investments in gold - about $350 billion. Wedbush Luria says Bitcoin will take a bite of the $1.9 trillion financial gold market and both global foreign currency reserves (a $7.5 trillion market) and a safe-haven currencies ($4.3 trillion).

Bitcoin is essentially a modern  moneygram.


This example is based on bitcoin maintaining price stability which is likely to occur when widely adopted.

Any comments?

Thanks!