Introduce yourself :)

[manrus]

Bitcoin rulez !!

[JHen]

Good morning all

[SocialBonobo]

Hello, I'm the social bonobo, trying to get acquainted with digital coins... and with this forum.

[swazisun]

Hello,

I am interested in understanding bitcoin as I am keen to start accepting them.

Currently I am lost... I have a bitcoin client with a few coins in, it works, I just don't understand how.

yesterday i found a guide on here, today i can't find it?

[tynt]

Hi

Mining with 4x6870. Since almost all electricity comes from oil shale in Estonia, I guess I'm turning sedimentary rocks into bitcoins

[cccp]

Hi friends!
Good luck to all those who believes people but does not believe the state! 

[cubemonkey]

Lurker turned poster ...

So a couple of weeks ago, I met up with a friend I hadn't talked to in a while.  He gave me a gold bitcoin (not sure where he got it?), and went on to explain what bitcoins were.  Of course, I had all of the usual reactions.. "Sounds like a scam!"  "I now declare that grass grown on my property is worth $20 a blade"  "Who on earth buys them?"  "What are they good for?"  etc.. etc..  Being a true geek, I started asking about how to mine them.. and, well, to make a long story short, I ordered 2 6970's, and another 10 which show up today. 

My rough plan is to keep half, and spend and/or sell the other half of coins mined.  I think spending them at retailers which accept them is an important way to keep the economy going, so I'm definitely all about that.   I'll consider this whole experiment a success if the amount I spend and sell add up to the amount I spent on hardware.  From what I'm reading, GPU mining won't be viable for too much longer, but hopefully that point is far enough off to make this hardware investment worthwhile.

From a newbie's perspective, the biggest problem is reliably converting bitcoin to USD.   I need a good way to do that.  I know about mtgox, and dwolla.. and/or liberty reserve.  But all of that seems rather fragile, and I can't find any good alternatives.  Ideally I'd like a good solid way to convert a portion of bitcoins to cash and deposit the proceeds into an internet bank account with bill pay (so I can pay my electric bill, among other things).

For work I'm a unix admin.  Planning on helping people with linux stuff on the board here, once I'm released from newbie jail

I guess that's about it!

[Anenome]

Seriously, my name is Steve (anenome) and am new to this concept and don't really know where to start. Suggestions would be much appreciated (no smart-ass obvious answers!!! lol).
Actually, I'm in the midst of doing some design work for someone I met and he turned me on to this site (we seem to think a lot alike).
So anyway, I'm broke, on disability, was a writer/designer for over 20 years and now I freelance part-time.
I would love to find out the basics behind this if someone would be willing to volunteer a few minutes and shoot me an email to explain. In the meantime, I'll mindlessly wander around looking for answers to questions I have of yet to come up with.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this have something to do with being able to trade (or barder) services and goods from one person to another using bitcoins? Or better yet, maybe trading services? Am I close? If so or if not, please correct me and explain.
Like I said, I have no money to buy anything, but I'm a well-equipped writer and graphic designer with all the necessary graphic software from Adobe i.e. PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Acrobat, etc. to do a lot of design whether it be: flyers, stories, logos, press releases, page/brochure layout and design...pretty much anything. The only thing I got out of was designing websites for personal reasons.
I'm a major music freak, but not the usual. I'm more old school punk/alternative/indie/ambient etc. from the 70's on. Although the newest band I have in my collection is: Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols...early 90's. All newbies suck pretty much after that.
Would love to trade my services for other services or music or movies or bitcoins, etc.
Please help get me started.
Thanks to all.

Anenome

[ukz.imba]

hey all,

i just learned about bitcoin last month and got instantly hooked. im a student and wanted to earn some easy cash, it lead to mining btcs.

[TheDjinni]

Hi!

I've lurked this forum for a few months and I've come to like the amount of debate and discussion that goes on so I figured I'd join in on the growing community.  Bitcoin was really intriguing for me when I first heard about it, since I've studied a bit of econ, business, and computing.  I'm not one to trust on blind hope that bitcoin works and I don't like to leave any stones unturned if I don't fully understand something, so I'd like to think I know more than the average newbie about bitcoin.

I've since discussed bitcoin with people on other forums, but never really made an account here because I saw that newbies had restricted access.  I haven't looked at the source code or contributed any services to the bitcoin community, or even used bitcoin at all at this point, but maybe that will change in the near future...

[bou707]

Hi, I have been reading the forums for a while.
decided to join to learn more

[Psychonautchn]

Introduced to bitcoins several months ago, currently mining on a dual 5870 gaming rig I built for college.

[Nibbler]

I saw this all mentioned on the Something Awful forums, and while they're making a good bit of fun of bitcoins, it seems like a better idea than they're giving it credit for. I figured that with the recent market crashes, it's basically become affordable to outright buy bitcoins again, and I can't be the only one thinking that way. So I'm here to give it a shot, and see what it's all about.

[TheHumanatee]

Ok then. I just got into this in July after the flurry of news articles around Chuck Schumer etc. I started mining with a GTX260 @ ~50/mh, and a week later was running two 5770s on a cheap mobo with a sempron 140 : ) I was able to find a 5850 on craigslist, so I have 4 cards going and humming around 750mh/s. I still watch my movies through my gtx because id rather be mining 24/7 with the other cards.

I decided early on that even if I lost money on this it would be worth it. It's just plain fun. I like projects. And there's the possibility that the bitcoin/USD exchange rate will climb into 3 figures someday. Getting in now might still be considered early adoption a decade from now.

The depth of analysis, opinion, and technical details available about bitcoin and bitcoin mining is inexhaustible. So I can dig in and play with my rigs to eek out another 5% of performance, or just let them spin and read optimistic articles about the impending economic revolution, and fantasize about my small handful of bitcoins someday becoming a beach house. All generated from electricity paid for by my landlord.

Aside from any significant financial gain, which I have no firm conviction one way or the other on, and aside from the pure fun of getting the gear working and being a part of something very new, Bitcoin has led me to the following activities:

• Researching available GPU technology and its relevance and application to BTC mining
• Having an excuse to build a new machine
• Learning more about linux and installing a few distros
• Learning about video card bioses, flashing them, their editable elements, etc
• Trying to wrap my head around the proof-of-work and the mining process
• Learning the meaning of and tweaking command line flags in various mining kernels
• Setting up a VNC server/client
• Learning about CUDA and OpenCL
• Learning about fiat currencies and macroeconomics in general
• Building a personal online reporting page using my mining pool's API and jGraph to show my daily average hash rates, bitcoins earned, USD earned at current exchange rates, etc
• Learning about disk encryption, truecrypt, live CDs, dead man's switches, and other interesting stuff
• Babbling to my friends about this new cryptocurrency thing, its ramifications, and the culture surrounding it

If the bitcoins drop to $0.04 each and I have sunk $600 or so dollars into mining gear, well, I have some sweet ass video cards, and I've had fun, and I for sure won't have to look back in 4 years wishing to god that I had gotten in when BTCs could still be mined by individuals and were trading at less than $50 USD.

And although I can't claim to have any idea what will happen with all this, for the record: I don't think bitcoins will fall back to 4 cents. And if they do, I'm buying.
: )

[spoonman]

Hi all,
New member!

Am interested in BTC in general, but the trading API's for MTGox and other exchanges interest me more....

Hello!

[als-studios]

greetings,

[mrmiyagi]

Hi,

I have dealt with bitcoins since right before they went up by ~3000%. Unfortunately I didn't have enough spare cash to take the risk and invest at that time. I know all the basics about bitcoins and am always open to learn more.
The main reason I joined the official forum - I am going to be honest here - is that for someone living in central europe it still is a pain to easily obtain bitcoins in a reasonable time. I guess it takes about a week, which isn't too bad but if I want a certain amount and in that week the price of 1 BTC goes up by a couple of $ my calculations are all wrong again. (SEPA transactions with MTGOX are not working atm as well and "worst case til friday" is already the case)
So I was looking for easier ways to obtain some BTC (preferably with Paypal) and stumbled upon this forum again.

Looking forward to trading with good people on here and if you have some advise on how to get some BTC quick and reliable let me know.
Thanks

Regards

[malbritten]

Hello,
I enjoy bit coins very much thank you.

[smiles]

Allow myself to introduce .... myself!

Hailing from Canada, I am smiles.

Peace

[legili]

why hello there!

obviously i'm new, i'm from the netherlands and my name is the result of my fingers randomly hitting the keyboard(omglol so random...)...

so i did encounter my first problem... i'll be making a new thread for this in well i guess the newbies section...