New to bitcoins? Start here.

[th3hous3]

I know how hard it is to get started using bitcoin, and how frustrating it can be to just buy one!

So here's where you go to get started.

Wallet:

If you're yet to even get a bitcoin wallet, I recommend http://blockchain.info they have iPhone and android apps to help you manage your bitcoins if like me you're not always sitting at your computer.

To buy bitcoins with a credit card and get a wallet service, my new favorite is http://www.coinbase.com

Free bitcoins:

After you've made your bitcoin wallet, try some of these sites for free bitcoins:

Bitvisitor.com - visit sites for 5 minutes for an adverse of 8.8 uBTC
Earnfreebitcoins.com 26 uBTC per 3 minutes? Some please verify
Dailybitcons.org - every hour.
coinreaper.com - one stop for I think 8 sites
Coinurl.com -bitcoins for shrinking urls
[Will add more]

Mining:

Everyone wants to know how to do this because free cash! But what if you don't have a super computer?!?

If you have a basic computer(like most of us) I recommend joining http://mining.bitcoin.cz

There, you will be able to mine bitcoins(generate bitcoins and validate transactions) as a group, and all the profits will be shared based on the amount of work each worker did. My personal choice is RPCMiner(OSX)[ https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/RPC_Miner] but I've also heard of DiabloMiner.

If you don't want to download anything to you computer, but have java, the best place to go is http://bitcoinplus.com. Here you generate something like 0.0000036BTC per .58 hour(based on my computer). You can even have this site running on multiple computer to increase payout!

As more things come out, I will be updating this! Don't be afraid to correct me if something changes or new comes out!

If you liked this, please donate!

Bitcoin: 15oexMQ7E8RS1RAEVen4mUCw3rgiKaEnm3

Thanks for reading! Good luck!

[e777]

Great share.

[DGrandioseD]

Thanks for the help

[jaequery]

Nice, also take a look at this nice writeup of buying my first bitcoins from coinbase and bitfloor: http://bitkoins.com/discussion/119/how-i-bought-my-bitcoins

[evilpete]

Paper wallets: beware!

Bitcoin does not function like a bank or paypal.  An address is not an account - it does NOT have a balance.  This is an important distinction if you are tempted to experiment with paper wallets.  (Paper wallets should be considered an "advanced feature" anyway).

Bitcoin functions closer to a traditional physical wallet, except with secure digital signatures and a ledger.  An "address" is the public half of a key pair.  You keep the other half secret and use it to "sign" a transaction when you want to spend something.  This secret key is what is in that QR code you printed out.

When somebody pays you, they generate a transaction and digitally sign it and send it to the network to be recorded in this ledger (blockchain).  Your wallet and "balance" is merely the sum of all the things that have been paid to you that haven't been spent yet.

And here's the catch..  You cannot spend part of a transaction.  Just like you can't pay $2.50 in a shop by tearing 1/4 of a $10 note off.  If you have a 10BTC transaction available for spending and want to spend 2.5BTC, it works the same way.  A transaction is created so that the entire 10BTC is "spent" by having 2.5BTC go to the person you are paying, and the remaining 7.5BTC is paid to a new address that your client quietly generates.  Your client generally pre-generates about 100 "change" addresses in advance.

Understanding this is vital for safely dealing with paper wallets.  If you send 10BTC to a paper wallet address, that's fine.  But if you want to spend 2.5BTC of it, you import it into a client of some sort.  Spending 2.5BTC does NOT leave a balance of 7.5BTC on the paper wallet.. it is totally spent and the change is now on a new address.  That paper wallet is useless and "used up" at this point.

If you want to store the remaining 7.5BTC on paper again, you have to re-send it to a paper wallet address again, preferably a new one.  After all, the private key for the old paper wallet is now in digital form on computers now and reusing it kind of defeats the purpose.

There are other features that some bitcoin clients can do to help, eg: use a seed to generate keys deterministically, or have coin control features to have the change come back to the same address.  Don't assume.. check!

TL;DR Paper wallets are dangerous if you're thinking in terms of traditional accounts and balances.  People have lost a lot of money over this.  Don't be the next guy to report having lost $15,000 due to a paper wallet misunderstanding.

[hiima]

Paper wallets are meant for long term cold storage.

[biganth]

Good noob info, thanks.

[leijurv]

An address is not an account - it does NOT have a balance.

Er, actually it does. It is an account. You can receive payments to it and send payments from it if you have the private key.

A transaction is created so that the entire 10BTC is "spent" by having 2.5BTC go to the person you are paying, and the remaining 7.5BTC is paid to a new address that your client quietly generates.

You can just make two outputs, one being the person you are paying for 2.5BTC and the other being the paper wallet address for the other 7.5BTC.

[Franki23]

Thank you for the info, I was thinking it would be hard to obtain

[glt512]

tried all the free bitcoin websites. what does uBTC mean? micro bitcoin?

[jerkoff]

tried all the free bitcoin websites. what does uBTC mean? micro bitcoin?

I think so yes. One thousandth of a mBTC(milli bitcoin). With a coin at $150, a mBTC would be $0.15 and a uBTC would be $0.00015, in other words you need 60 of those before you even have one cent. Some sites pay 2 uBTC for some work, clearly not worth it.

[baad]

I know how hard it is to get started using bitcoin, and how frustrating it can be to just buy one!

So here's where you go to get started.

Wallet:

If you're yet to even get a bitcoin wallet, I recommend http://blockchain.info they have iPhone and android apps to help you manage your bitcoins if like me you're not always sitting at your computer.

To buy bitcoins with a credit card and get a wallet service, my new favorite is http://www.coinbase.com

Free bitcoins:

After you've made your bitcoin wallet, try some of these sites for free bitcoins:

Bitvisitor.com - visit sites for 5 minutes for an adverse of 8.8 uBTC
Earnfreebitcoins.com 26 uBTC per 3 minutes? Some please verify
Dailybitcons.org - every hour.
coinreaper.com - one stop for I think 8 sites
Coinurl.com -bitcoins for shrinking urls
[Will add more]

Mining:

Everyone wants to know how to do this because free cash! But what if you don't have a super computer?!?

If you have a basic computer(like most of us) I recommend joining http://mining.bitcoin.cz

There, you will be able to mine bitcoins(generate bitcoins and validate transactions) as a group, and all the profits will be shared based on the amount of work each worker did. My personal choice is RPCMiner(OSX)[ https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/RPC_Miner] but I've also heard of DiabloMiner.

If you don't want to download anything to you computer, but have java, the best place to go is http://bitcoinplus.com. Here you generate something like 0.0000036BTC per .58 hour(based on my computer). You can even have this site running on multiple computer to increase payout!

As more things come out, I will be updating this! Don't be afraid to correct me if something changes or new comes out!

If you liked this, please donate!

Bitcoin: 15oexMQ7E8RS1RAEVen4mUCw3rgiKaEnm3

Thanks for reading! Good luck!

Thanks for your help!

[czxtvr]

Excellent info.