Here is a list of exhanges: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Exchanges

Also bitcoin-otc is an over-the-counter marketplace located in various IRC channels on the freenode IRC network. Take a look here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin-otc

You look really stoned. What does this have to do with bitcoin?

Check out localbitcoins.com to find local people that buy and sell bitcoins.

Edit: I understand now: "and send western union" means "send me cash via western union".

Bitcoin is a payment system. A person can send bitcoins to anyone anywhere and at any time directly without having to go through any company or organization. It is similar to other online payment systems except that it is completely operated and maintained by its users. It also has its own currency.


Most people think that Bitcoin is just a currency because that's all they ever read about. But, the payment system is far more important than the currency.

They all have an equal value: 0

This site is good for determining what to mine: http://dustcoin.com/mining

A share doesn't really have a difficulty. When you are mining, you are generating hashes. When you mine solo, you solve a block if you generate a hash that is below the target value (which corresponds to the current difficulty). The same thing happens when mining in a pool except that you get a share when you generate a hash that is below the target value that corresponds to the pool's difficulty. If the hash is also good enough to solve the block, then your pool has solved the block, too.

The pool's difficulty only affects the chances of getting a share. It doesn't affect the chances of solving a block.

Some pools allow you to set your own difficulty in order to allow low-powered miners to generate shares at a reasonable rate. Keep in mind that if you set your difficulty to 2, your shares are 1/4 as valuable as someone that sets their difficulty to 8.

There are about 55,000 transactions per day. Every transaction is somebody spending their bitcoins on something. Take a look at this chart: http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

They are.

Thanks Joel. That was a very clear explanation.

It unfortunate that the Mt. Gox reps were unable to come up with any explanation.

The Series 1 Casascius coins are not valuable because there is an error (technically, it is not an error because it is on every coin of the series). They are valuable because they are different and rare. People mention the error only because it is the easy way to distinguish them from the other coins.

If you want to make the coins more collectible, you can change the design every so often (every year, for example). You don't have to misspell something. That's a dumb idea.

It would have been notable if he had some personal knowledge to share, but he is only repeating things that he has read about or has been told by other people.

I would like to see the analysis behind your predictions.

You forgot about the part where the fad dies out and nobody cares about Bitcoin in four years because Paypal and credit cards are good enough.

You also forgot about the part where the Federal Reserve and ECB regulate the exchange of BTC and fiat in the U.S. and Europe so heavily that it withers and dies.

While your pie-in-the-sky/apocalyptic projections are possible, I think mine are just as likely.

stop pretending you don't

What does this number measure? What do you mean by the "quality" of the network? There are a number of criteria that could be used to evaluate the quality of the network, such as the resistance to a 51% attack, the maximum number of transactions, the number of nodes (or n²), or the average time to propagate a transaction, or its energy efficiency (H/E).

Money only has value when it is spent. It doesn't make sense to keep your money in the bank forever. If the money is never spent, it is effectively worthless.

Off topic.

No mention of Bitcoin.

The amount of bitcoins produced by mining is fixed. So when more people mine, then each miner gets less bitcoins. A couple of years ago when there were many fewer miners, a person could mine a large number of bitcoins with a single GPU. Now, you need a GPU or FPGA farm, or an ASIC miner to mine more than a fraction of a bitcoin each day.

These days, most people get their bitcoins by selling things or providing services, or by purchasing them on an exchange.

Unfortunately, you are still "wasting" energy. You could be using that energy to power your house instead.

It also helps in reducing the flood of questions that have already been answered a dozen times.

I suggest that you read the Litecoin forums: http://forum.litecoin.net/