Newb here, been reading for a week have a question or two!

[cyrus221]

So, I've been reading up on this for like a week, literally. I think I understand everything on how bitcoins are produced, transfers/transactions are arranged and so on. The one thing that is confusing the hell out of me is the concept of the wallet. While I understand its function (heh, a wallet/bank account... derp), I don't quite understand how they are produced and how to create new ones. Here's my questions:

1. How is a wallet created locally, IE on your computer. I know theres a wallet.dat in %appdata%\bitcoin but ... thats all I understand of it.
2. How do I my wallet ID (or whatever it is so people can send/I can send BitCoins)
3. Can I create more wallets on my own computer?
4. How does the bitcoin miner know where to send the bitcoins I generate? Can I change it deposits to in the middle of mining?

I had a couple other questions but they'll have to wait until I get a response. I did like 15 searches but I couldn't find anything relevant to my searches so... any help much appreciated!

[niko]

Also, note that there are various clients (in addition to the "reference" bitcoin.org client) that may be using different terminologies. For example, some use "deterministic" wallets, where the initial "seed" is used to generate pseudorandom sequence of keys as needed. The advantage is that you only need to back up this seed once, to be able to regenerate your wallet (all your keys) as needed.

This is in contrast with the reference client which generates a random new key every time, so its wallet is "just a bunch of keys" that all need to be backed up periodically (by default, there is always a pool of 100 pregenerated keys in the wallet of a reference client, so a backup is good until you've generated 100 new addresses/keys).

EDIT: just to make sure everyone understands - to spend bitcoins, you need the private key corresponding to the public key which corresponds to the address the coins were previously sent to.

Private key --> Public key --> Address  (these are all one-way cryptographic functions, practically impossible to reverse)

This is what a client takes care of, and manages all the keys, and keeps tabs on your total "balance".

[cyrus221]

The wallet.dat holds the private keys for the addresses you have created in the bitcoin-qt application, that allow you to create the transactions of the addresses. Without those keys you can't send bitcoins.

Okay, but when I open the file in notepad its not exactly readable... is that because it's all crypto'd out?

Just use the send tab in the application and put in the amount, with the address you want to send it too, and it will be broadcasted to the nodes, then once it has confirmations it will then be spendable for that address. To get bitcoins just have some one send them to your bitcoin address it would start with a "1".

Alright, I see that in the "receive coins" tab in the client, under the "address" field. Is that correct?

Look at armory it can make this very easy for you.

Ahh... downloaded and installed. Awesome!

That would depend on the mining pool, but if your very new, mining is not an option for you at this time.

I have 6 gaming computers in my house, all with AMD 6900+ series in them... I can modify it down to two rigs with 3 cards each (I'm a hardware enthusiast and I love max settings/resolution lmao). Is there some kind of restriction on mining that's going on right now?

Thanks to both of you for your replies!

[rhombus_77]

From everything I have read, mining with GPUs isn't cost effect now, or in the very near future.  Check out this mining calculator http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/.  Chances are you will be spending more on the electricity bill than you will earning.

[AnonyMint]

You only need to ask one question, is the guy on the left wearing a shirt or not?