Doing a presentation on BTC for class - could use some advice, please!

[dancingnancy]

Who I am and what I am doing

I have been involved with BTC since right before the peak @ $30.  I started to dollar cost average then and continue to do so today.  For our ENCxxxx class, we need to give a presentation on something informative.  I thought this would be a great opportunity to promote bitcoin to a decent demographic (public institution).
As for my plans for the presentation, I want to hand out a USB stick to each person with their names on it before the start.  Then at the end, to show the tangible and dynamic nature of bitcoin, I wanted to transfer coins to their own personal wallet while I am at the computer/projector.  I plan on giving them .5 btc each.  More on this below…
I have about 10 minutes to do this .ppt presentation and wanted to spend about 2-3 minutes on the bitcoin creation/mining process.  Although I have been invested in BTC for quite some time, I really do not know a whole lot about mining, tbh.

What I need help with and what I can offer in return (although not much )

I wanted to cover a few things about mining.. basically probably some easy questions for most you could at least link me to or might have some interesting literature yourself on the subject. 
In exchange for your help, I am willing to promote your bitcoin/mining operation with signage (like jpeg ? on ppt presentation) or any other marketing materials you would like passed out that pertain to bitcoin/mining.  Anyway, I just have a few questions.. Or maybe you could suggest things to add for this mining part of the presentation…

1. What is the total computational power of the bitcoin network? 

2. If a single user wanted to start mining coins, what are the specs of a new mining computer, what is its computational power, how much avg electricity do you use per month?

3. What do you think is relevant or interesting about the mining / creation process?

4. I wanted to know a bit more about how the whole “pool” system works and that whole process.

Other things

1. Do you think transferring them each .5 btc is excessive?  I didn’t wanna sound cheap, but it also may be interesting to show how dynamic btc is by transferring them like .0001?

2. If I want to pull this off in real-time, I will need an application that allows me to copy/paste enter a string of addresses into the application with all the same amounts going to each wallet and send them out simultaneously.  Is there an application that allows you to do this?  All I have ever used is that bitcoin client that makes you download the entire blockchain.

3. What else do you think I should include on the USB?  I was going to put the presentation on there in addition to links to the bitcoin client etc..

4. Is there a fast way I can create all these new wallets for these individual USB thumb drives?



So, anyway, I guess that is about it.  I would greatly appreciate any advice or criticism.  I don’t have to present anything till the middle of November, so if someone did want me to pass out something etc. I would be willing to do that and have the time to receive the materials if need be.

Thanks for reading.

[crazyates]

1. What is the total computational power of the bitcoin network? 

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ is your friend. Right now the 3 day average of the network stands at just under 20GH/s. Now this is an estimate, and is subject to variations.

2. If a single user wanted to start mining coins, what are the specs of a new mining computer, what is its computational power, how much avg electricity do you use per month?

Right now? It's only profitable with ATI GPUs. The fastest GPU out there is the 6990, which can get 800+MH/s. A more common cards is the 7970, at 700MH/s. Both numbers assume overclocking.
Average electricity really depends on the card. One of the advantages of the 7970 is it's efficiency. Most 7xxx cards are around 3MHs/watt.
Most FPGAs are around 10-20MHs/watt.

3. What do you think is relevant or interesting about the mining / creation process?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification is also your friend. The way Bitcoins process transactions is secured using SHA-2 encryption to verify network activity. This part is equal parts economics and cryptography. Unless SHA-2 is found to be broken, then all transaction are recorded and encrypted by the entire network. At least that's my understanding of it.

4. I wanted to know a bit more about how the whole “pool” system works and that whole process.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Pooled_mining is another of your friends. My you have a lot of friends. Basically blocks take so much time to solve now that the difficulty is so high, that it is almost pointless for smaller miners to even try to solo mine. Pooled mining solves this by having everyone in a pool look for the same block, and when one is solved, everyone splits the rewards. Smaller miners get some BTC for their work, rather than nothing.

Other things

1. Do you think transferring them each .5 btc is excessive?  I didn’t wanna sound cheap, but it also may be interesting to show how dynamic btc is by transferring them like .0001?

2. If I want to pull this off in real-time, I will need an application that allows me to copy/paste enter a string of addresses into the application with all the same amounts going to each wallet and send them out simultaneously.  Is there an application that allows you to do this?  All I have ever used is that bitcoin client that makes you download the entire blockchain.

3. What else do you think I should include on the USB?  I was going to put the presentation on there in addition to links to the bitcoin client etc..

4. Is there a fast way I can create all these new wallets for these individual USB thumb drives?

Depends on the size of the class. I would transfer .1, and say "I just transferred approximately $1 USD to your bitcoin address. While this transaction is publicly recorded for authentication's sake, all user information is completely anonymous."

So you sound like you plan on having everyone in the class download and install a bitcoin wallet? Updating the blockchain and syncing with the network could take hours for each computer, but I don't know of any other way.

[Winterfrost]

So you sound like you plan on having everyone in the class download and install a bitcoin wallet? Updating the blockchain and syncing with the network could take hours for each computer, but I don't know of any other way.

The Electrum client would probably be good in this case, because it doesn't require a blockchain download. And it's only for a very small amount of coins.

[Graet]

hey I found this the other day
http://codinginmysleep.com/bitcoin-mining-in-plain-english/#more-886
It might help with some user friendly words on a complex subject
Good luck with your talk

Ask questions here or I can answer some in PM if you like

[dancingnancy]

Thanks for the links to statistics etc.

As far as the transferring of money.

What I wanted to do was

1.  Purchase 20-30 usb sticks.
2.  Put a unique wallet on all of these sticks
3.  Hand out the USB sticks to all people in the class before the presentation (everyone has their own)
4.  At the end of this presentation, I get on the internet (or open a standalone client) and quickly transfer "x" amount of coins
     to each wallet.

I probably did a poor job of explaining myself, or the process.  I am going to check out that Electrum Client as someone else stated.  I will get back to this thread later this afternoon.

Thanks for everyones help so far.

[BookLover]

2. If I want to pull this off in real-time, I will need an application that allows me to copy/paste enter a string of addresses into the application with all the same amounts going to each wallet and send them out simultaneously.  Is there an application that allows you to do this?  All I have ever used is that bitcoin client that makes you download the entire blockchain.

If it helps the Bitcoin-Qt client allows you to send coins to multiple recipients at the same time.  So you could prepare the transactions ahead of time, and just click the send button during the presentation.  If you want to demonstrate the complete process to send coins.  You could simple fill out all but one of the transactions before the presentation.