It all depends on how many views my articles on CCN receive and how well my shares at Bitcoin-Trader.com do. I make decent pay from all that, though I have quite a few things in the works to get me even more each day.

I'm not really sure what security measures Authy uses to verify phone number changes. I'm using Authy in several places, but I know that when I changed my number at one point, all I had to do was give them the new one and it took it. I remember wondering how that was even secure it all, but maybe it's secure in the background. It wouldn't be as popular as it is if it didn't have some kind of security behind it, but to answer your question, yes, Authy is 2FA. (Two Factor Authorization) The first factor is your username and password and the second factor is your phone with Authy sending you a OTP. (One-Time Pass)

You can learn what a lot of the payout types are on this site: http://www.bitcoinmining.com/bitcoin-mining-pools/

Most mining pools I've dealt with use PPLN or PPS. IMO the best way to start a pool would be to make it not have any fees at first if you can afford that. After you get maybe 100 miners on your network, bump the fees to 1% and leave it there. Let everyone know this is what you plan to do or all of your miners will leave and spout a bunch of FUD. (With good reason) People usually don't find free pools as it takes money to run them, but charging anything on only several miners isn't going to get you much money in the first place, so you should be able to get away with having your pool be free for a bit.

If your pool gains dubious amounts of miners, you'll get a lot of funds from just that 1%, so you might not need to ever increase that. Never go above 3% and only ever charge that if you're providing something no one else does. (Ex. IPOMiner searches for promising new coins so you can get in before the pump and you can profit from the dump. They're the only one I know of who does this and they can get away with a 3% pool fee.)

Your server should be fine to start with, though in time you'll be needing to upgrade most likely. I don't know much about running a pool, but I've been a miner for some time now and I know what makes for a good pool.

I had the issue with the 360 second wait as well. I'd say just tough it out or use Tor as suggested. I originally thought it was there for everyone due to bandwidth issues, but MiningBuddy clued me in on the fact that it's to prevent spam. As it doesn't seem like you're here to spam, I don't see the harm in avoiding the wait with Tor, though.

Aww! That made me all warm and fuzzy inside.

You can back it up with the private keys, yes. I've never actually used Multibit, but private keys are what each ADDRESS uses as proof that it's legitimately transacting with through address. Wallets contain your addresses, so if you don't want to back up every address with it's private keys, you'll want to back up your wallet file. (Bitcoin Core calls this "wallet.dat" and it's located in the user's data directory. I'm not sure what MultiBit calls theirs or where it's stored.)

For some reason I've really been thinking about hugs lately. =)

I prefer Bitcoin Core despite having to download the entire blockchain. It's the official wallet and therefore will be the most true to spec when new changes occur. With downloading the blockchain, I do my part as a node to help others to keep their transactions accurate. I also have Electrum and I recommend other people use that since it's a quick setup without the huge download.

SCAM big and pray you don't get caught. It's the American way. Hehe...

If it didn't, I'd be shocked, but as other replies have stated, it's all just speculation. I still say that the million dollar bitcoin is still plausible. The only question is how long will it take to get to those values?

If you're short on cash or you don't need the funds transferred right away, you can sometimes make the transaction without any fees. Personally, I set my fees to 0.0001 BTC per transaction as it's only pennies in today's market anyway.

If you're unskilled with understanding which coins will do well and which will fail, then your best bet would be to join a multi-pool. (multi-pool.us, CleverMining.com, etc.) Mine with a Scrypt ASIC and you'll make some profit. If you couple it with holding onto the amount of Bitcoin you trade your coins for, you could do quite well in the long run.

If you can tell which coins will be worth holding onto, or you just want to wait for that initial value jump that most coins have, you can use IPOMiner.com or if you're really sure of yourself, a dedicated pool for that coin. IPOMiner specializes in mining coins that have launched recently and look promising. If you sell at the peak in the value jump for that coin, you can make more money than mining with multi-pools that select coins that have already been around and just look for the lowest difficulty. Waiting for that initial value jump (the "pumped" value) requires constantly looking at charts every day to find out when to "dump" your coins to BTC. That's actually why some coins are even created in the first place.

I just wanted to point out that you can't "recover" your funds when you send them. The best you can do is ask the recipient to send the money back once they get it. Bitcoin works off of cryptography, not a central party managing your funds like banks do. That's the beauty of it. The people who process the transactions are called "miners." To send your transaction with a fee, you need to set the fee in the appropriate field on whatever wallet you're using for your transaction. If you add the fee to the amount being sent, you're sending the fee to the recipient as an overpayment. If you're using Bitcoin Core, you'll need to set up your fee in the options menu. If you need help with this, just ask and someone will tell you how o set the fees in whatever client you're using.

Edit: By the way, the reason for the 3 hour wait is most likely because you didn't set the fee properly and sent it without a fee. Miners process transactions with fees before they process those without. Be sure to set the fee properly so you don't have to wait as long next time. Bitcoin transactions often take only 10 minutes or a bit longer to confirm when set with the appropriate fee.

Sounds like you have a fun road ahead of you. I hope it works out well for you.

Blockchain.info is my pick. I didn't actually know there were other good explorers out there for Bitcoin, but after reading this, some of the others looks well designed.

BTC-e and Cryptsy are the ones I use primarily, but if I'm dumping coins that aren't on those sites, I have to go where they're traded. Cryptsy has a massive amount of coins to trade with and is the most practical, but sometimes having BTC-e's lower Bitcoin value or the like is favorable. BTC-e and BitFinex are actually lower than most trading sites because of the fact that they offer their traders leverage. This makes it so that someone with a leverage of x2 can trade with $200 instead of $100. While this sounds like a good deal, if you loose the $200, you have to pay back the $100 leverage. That makes for the value to be usually lower than other sites.

If you're asking in order to learn where you can get Bitcoin payments from, there are a lot of things you can do. Here's a list of what I'm doing and have done in the past.

1.) Bitcoin trading manually (You can trade Bitcoins on various exchanges and even arbitrage trade. (Exchange Bitcoins for another currency, then send it to another exchange to exchange it for Bitcoin again while making a bigger profit, and so forth. This is called arbitrage trading. Long term trading is more lucrative, but all trading is still gambling.)

2.) Get a job where your employer pays out in Bitcoin. (I work for CCN and we get our payments in Bitcoin.)

3.) Mine Bitcoin directly or indirectly. It's much more profitable to mine other currencies and exchange those for Bitcoin, than it is to buy expensive Bitcoin ASICS that net you about 3 BTC in a month.

4.) Bitcoin-Trader.com allows you to buy both trading and mining shares. I've purchased a few trading shares and every day I wake up and I'm told how much profit I have from them using my money to trade. The company trades with everyone's money and takes their cut before they pot the percentages earned. You can make or loose as much as 3% on your investment each day, but currently the percentages are around 0.87% or such. They unfortunately limit how many shares you can have, but right now I can't afford to max out my shares. They'll also close your accounts if you open multiple accounts as well. I still plan on investing more with them as I don't know how to trade well enough to make that kind of money on my own.

There are other ways you can make Bitcoin as well, such as bounty hunting. (There are a lot of bounties on this site where you can make X amount of coins for doing whatever the bounty poster wants you to do.) You could start your own business and charge for things in Bitcoin. Market to the news networks to see if they're interested, and you'll get a nice amount of traffic perhaps.

Just in case newbies see this thread and don't understand what "testnet" means, testnet is a way to test Bitcoin functionality without working with the official public blockchain. This means that any and all transactions through testnet are only usable within the testnet for testing purposes. While, in theory you could pay for things using the testnet, it's like accepting wooden nickles for your services. Sure, you get something, but it's just junk.

You can learn more about the Bitcoin testnet on the Bitcoin.it Wiki.

Many alt-coins exist, but the alt-coin boom brought in a lot of junk coins that don't really have any really purpose. There are still some great coins being released every now and again adding value such as P2P marketplaces, built-in wallet trading platforms via APIs, and some integrate ZeroCoin for added anonymity. I once heard someone explain it as "alt-coins are the testing grounds for new features." Even if the coin really sucks, it could have a few nice features that favored coins may some day implement.

Once companies start holding onto their Bitcoin instead of selling it all for other currencies, the downward pressure from that will be removed, causing a rise in the value of a Bitcoin. Also, as more people learn about Bitcoin and adopt it, there will be more buyers than sellers, making the value of a Bitcoin go even higher. Keep in mind that Bitcoin is currently in the same state that the internet was when it was green text on a black DOS screen. Just as the internet evolved, so will Bit[Suspicious link removed]gle didn't start off as a multi-billion dollar company, it started off small with a couple of college students who who founded the business. As the internet grew, Google adapted and became more than just a search engine. Bitcoin IS the internet of it's own market and as such has the potential to surpass what Google has even built as it has the potential for the whole world to use it as a currency instead of just the majority.

So, while the million dollar Bitcoin isn't far fetched, I'd say that once the companies stop selling off all of their Bitcoin as soon as they get it and more people adopt Bitcoin as a payment method, the value of a Bitcoin will probably surpass $10,000. This is a growing market, and having more businesses accept Bitcoin greatly enhances it's visibility to many people and it's validity as a currency, even if the companies don't keep the Bitcoin they have. These are just growing pains and will pass very quickly as companies start to hold onto their Bitcoins.