Several Bitcoin related questions

[jeffthebaker]

Hello, I am jeffthebaker, and I am fairly new to bitcoin. I heard about bitcoins in may, but only started using them late August. Now with the skyrocketting prices of the bitcoin, I have become more interested in the kyrptocurrency. I have several questions regarding bitcoins and this site, that hopefully someone will be so kind as to answer  

What is the best way to earn free BTC? Currently my only source of income is nightly freerolls on poker. I'm not looking to get rich off of free tasks, as I know that isn't exactly a plausible idea. I'd just like to have enough for betting small amounts on poker and occasionally making a deposit into my wallet. Preferably I'd like to stick to daily/occasional offers as opposed to constant watching videos, visiting faucets, etc.

Is there a palpable risk of bitcoin being abandoned? I understand that the amount of bitcoins in the world is a fixed number. That means unless everybody stops using bitcoins, the prices will continue to raise. I like the idea behind bitcoins in this essence. I see them as a long term investment in my case, but is there any risk that they will just be forgotten altogether?

What are the rules regarding referral links on this forums? I have several sites I'm affiliated with, and would love to get a referral every now and then from my signature, or posting on topics/creating new ones.

How long do you think it will take for bitcoin to reach 1000$ USD? I'm very curious as to how long this milestone will take to be achieved.

thank you for your help!
~jeffthebaker

***EDIT: forgot a question: Are bitcoin bank account sites that offer interest trustworthy? The high interest rates some of them pay out is very enticing, but could I potentially go bankrupt from them?

[ScripterRon]

I've been mining with a 5 GH/s setup.  This obviously is not the path to riches, but it is interesting and yields small amounts of BTC.  I also run a full bitcoin-qt client as a way to help the network, although I had to use Netlimiter to throttle it a bit so it didn't consume all of my bandwidth (15Mbit/s down and 1 Mbit/s up).

There is a bit of a feeding frenzy at the moment caused by the recent rise in the BTC exchange rate.  The result has been a significant increase in hardware prices as well as the growth in network hashing capability.  I don't think Bitcoin is going away but there is still a lot of work to be done for scalability (just take a look at github to see what people are talking about).  It will be interesting to see how things look next year.

I look at bitcoins as a speculative investment at the present time.  Yes, the number of bitcoins is fixed but the recent rise has been too rapid.  I expect it to decline at some point before resuming a more gradual increase.  Although I have been wrong about interest rates for 2 years now ...

Ron

[DannyHamilton]

What is the best way to earn free BTC?

You might as well be asking, "What is the best way to earn free money"

TANSTAAFL my friend.

Is there a palpable risk of bitcoin being abandoned?

Yes.

is there any risk that they will just be forgotten altogether?

Forgotten? Probably not.  I suspect it will end up in history books even if it is abandoned.

How long do you think it will take for bitcoin to reach 1000$ USD? I'm very curious as to how long this milestone will take to be achieved.

Impossible to predict.  My best guess is that it will happen sometime between a few seconds from now and never.

***EDIT: forgot a question: Are bitcoin bank account sites that offer interest trustworthy?

They are uninsured, unregulated, and are not audited.  They "owner" of the "bank" can disappear at any time with all the bitcoins they are "holding" for their users.  As such, I'd say that are almost certainly not trustworthy.