Day 1 (Monday, December 5th)I learned about Bitcoins today. It looks really intriguing! I love the idea of a new currency not tied to the whims of fractional banking. I'm going to give this a try!
Setting up the wallet seemed easy enough. Did a bit of reading on weusecoins.com. I stopped at the
Bitcoin Faucet - ok, now I have .005 BTC. Hmm that doesn't seem like a lot. (Calculator) Ok, I have 1.5 cents. woohoo...
Day 2 (Tuesday, December 6th)I decide today that I want to buy some BTC. Go back to
weusecoins.com. Gosh, this documentation doesn't really seem very complete.
Do a bit of googling. Find my way to
Bitcointalk Forums. Spend about 2 hours reading about how to get started buying BTC.
Get an account at
MtGox, easy enough. Oh wait, I can't fund it with Paypal, Credit Cards, or even ACH Bank Transfers...
OK, since I'm in the US, I guess I have to get an account with Dwolla. Fuck, why do I have to jump through so many damn hoops!
Dwolla account done. I have to verify my bank account... should be easy enough.
What about Mining? That sounds interesting. (I spend 6 hours on the forums reading about mining while I wait...)
Day 3 (Wednesday, December 7th)Still no deposits from Dwolla to verify account. I'll spend some more time researching mining.
WTF, I need a degree in programming to understand this mining business... The newbie guides are somewhat helpfull, but very incomplete. I have to spend hours filling in the gaps.
A GUIMiner! OK, I think I can handle that. Fuck it won't work.
(6 hours of research later)
Ok, got the GUIMiner working. My GTX 570 is only crunching 105 Mhash/s and I read that it's not enough to go solo, so I join a pool.
Damn, my computer is noisy! Install overclocking software and find out my card is cranking away at 87C! Crank it down to the 70C range.
Shit, now I'm only mining at 65 Mhash/s
I'm not even sure what that really means, but I know it's a lot slower than what I've been reading about.
I'll just let it crank away overnight and see where I'm at.
Day 4 (Thursday, December 8th)Dwolla account verified! Initiate USD transfer. Transfer will be completed in 6 days! Fuck!
I guess it's back to mining.
Check on my mining progress and after 18 hours of mining I've made... 14 cents! WTF!
I guess if I'm going to take this serious I need to look into building a mining rig.
Shit... Plenty of pictures of rigs, but hardly anyone posting about their specs.
Do some poking around on the interwebs (newegg, amazon, ebay, etc for some vid cards). No one sells 58xx and 59xx or are out of stock... awesome...
Bid on a used 5970 card on ebay and win it. Awesome!
OK, now I just need to figure out how the crap to build a system around it.
Day 5 (Friday, December 9th)After spending another 3 hours reading the forums this morning, I decide it's time to post.
I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to computers, internets, and the like. I love the idea about Bitcoins. But it seems like there's an extremely high learning curve for someone to get started.
Anywho...
I'm going to probably build a mining rig. I'm a gamer and like to build computers so worst case scenario it won't go to waste.
I hope my MtGox account gets funded some time this year. I'd really like to be able to start purchasing and using Bitcoins (you know... if there's actually anything worth spending them on).
Oh, and if you have any advice for a struggling noob, feel free to send some my way.
Thanks for reading.
tl;drIt's fucking too damn hard to get involved with Bitcoins.
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