How to buy and use

[plmkop100]

So, I get access to SR and now need to buy bitcoins......

How the hell do I do this???

I have spent about an hour trying to find a way of doing this but no luck yet.

I want to buy in the UK with a credit card.

A couple of questions I have regarding this

• How much does a bitcoin cost?  I want to buy something that costs 7.5BTC
• What fee's should I expect to pay

Many thanks for my proper newbie question.  I used to be good with computers.....but that was when they needed plugging into your TV and the games were proper hard to finish...JSW!!!!
 

[BitVegas]

Currently one BTC is worth $25.44 USD

So 7.5 BTC is $190.80 USD

You can see the current price of BTC here https://mtgox.com/

I'm not sure of the best way to buy in the UK but I would check out www.localbitcoins.com. It works for me
Set up a free wallet at www.blockchain.info to hold all your coins.

That is everything you should need in simplest terms although I would recommend spending some time on these forums to learn what you can about them

[plmkop100]

Thanks bitvegas.

I have got a login on blockchain and will check out the the localbitcoins.

[DannyHamilton]

As has been mentioned here already, you need 2 things.

You need a bitcoin wallet to receive/store your bitcoin and to create transactions that send your bitcoin. For someone starting out, I'd suggest using https://blockchain.info/wallet for your bitcoin wallet.  You may also want to look into Electrum, MultiBit, Bitcoin-Qt, and Armory.

You also need to find a method of acquiring bitcoin.  Like any other currency there are several ways to acquire bitcoin:

• You can sell stuff you own and accept payment in bitcoin.
• You can provide a service that someone else wants and accept payment in bitcoin
• You can exchange your local currency for bitcoin using a bitcoin currency exchange
• You can beg for bitcoin and hope that some kind soul will donate to you.

For the moment, lets assume you are going to try and exchange your local currency for bitcoin.  You can look at https://localbitcoins.com/ and see if you can find someone local who is willing to meet up with you and exchange their bitcoins for your local currency.  You can wire money to https://mtgox.com/ and use the electronic currency exchange there.  I'm mostly familliar with options in the U.S. such as BitInstant and BitFloor.  A little bit of searching around the forums here and you should be able to figure out what options are available to people in the UK.

EDIT: As of 2013-04-17 BitFloor has ceased all operations.

[plmkop100]

Thanks all, I am getting there now with your help provided!!

[Regent]

I'm in the UK and I've found that the most convenient for me is to use Bank Transfer in the BlockChain.info.

[iHeartSmartArt]

Here is how i plan to buy Bitcoins. Basically just watch this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSmxbtFQlmg

• Starting an ING account online, only a few mins.
  
  Set up my current bank took,   2-3 days and i had to call my bank to get the exact numbers of two trail deposits from ING.
  
  Waiting for ING to accept funds from the other bank, another 2-3 business days.
  
  place your amount of USD you'd like to deposit in bitfloor before trading it for BTC,  get a slightly different amount to send from ING to bitfloors email, only a few mins,
  
  bitfloor has received your funds from ING, another 2-3 days
  
  buy BTC, few more mins.

i will store my wallet on one of these: USB FLASH 8G military grade 3 Faraday cage http://store1.imation.com/store/imation/en_US/pd/productID.254834000
    and use only Linux, i fear windows and mac laptops keylog will be searched by hackers for bits one day. at least use oricalbox 

[DannyHamilton]

. . . Basically just watch this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSmxbtFQlmg

Glad to see people are getting some use out of the video!  It makes creating it feel worthwhile.

However, I'm not sure if you can set up an ING Direct Electric Orange Account if you are not in the U.S. (Actually it is now a CapitalOne360 account as Capital One has very recently taken over ING Direct's business).