Bitcoin stole my weekend!

[nextnonce]

A friend of mine introduced me to bitcoins a couple weeks ago and while skeptical at first, I was interested enough to look into it further.  I'm a huge fan of alternative currencies, especially considering the gross mismanagement of the USD and other fiat currencies. 

Two weeks.  That's all it took for me to go from a skeptic to sold.  "Sold" as in, spent-the-weekend-integrating-bitcoins-into-my-website sold (I used mybitcoin.com's nifty little shopping cart interface tool and tested it with my 0.05 faucet BTC).

My site is a browser-based MMO that draws many parallels to the bitcoin concept.  The big one is that all the in-game money is mined, requiring an expenditure of effort in the form of opportunity cost.  This gives the money a real value in the game compared to most MMOs where gold mostly trickles in automatically. 

Already my users are very interested in this "new mine" I've introduced that allows non-USD-paying players a chance to mine for valuable in-game capital using their CPU.  I'm very glad to have found bitcoin.org and am grateful for the opportunity to help promote it.  Thanks for reading.

[ryepdx]

Awesome! I'm going to have to go check out that MMO. :-)

Glad to have you onboard.

[theymos]

That game looks fun. I might give it a try.

Hopefully you informed your users that the chance of winning a block without joining a pool is very low.

[nextnonce]

Yes, I did say that it's a bit like mining for an orange, which is the rarest type of thing you can find in the game.  A few users have already looked into joining mining pools and are sharing that information with each other. 

[ericbomb]

Hey I'm one of those players, thanks japhet (thats what we call him over there) I'm sold on this too. Even trying something fun with bitcoins that I talked about in the off topic forums...

Anyway this is a cool thing you guys have I'm sad I didn't get in on it sooner.

[AllYourBase]

This game is cool; thanks for accepting bitcoins!  The more vendors the better! 

[Sultan]

I just started on your game, I'm liking it so far!

[JohnDoe]

I don't get it. How are you profiting if your users are mining independently? At first I thought you had set up a pool and gave out in-game gold in exchange for keeping the mined bitcoins to yourself but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[nextnonce]

Players mine independently for bitcoins and then trade with me in exchange for in-game credits.  Previously the only way to get credits was via PayPal.

[fatcom4]

Hi! I'm also a member on that site and though I didn't try the bitcoins feature because I'm 10 and there's a password that my parents have to type in before I install anything(and they make sure it's "appropriate" before they type it in), it sounds cool and if I somehow manage to install it somewhere, then

yay!

Dang this marquee thing is cool...    

[JohnDoe]

Players mine independently for bitcoins and then trade with me in exchange for in-game credits.  Previously the only way to get credits was via PayPal.

Oh ok, so just a regular payment method. The "new mine" thing made me think it was a pool.

Btw, your game looks very cool. I would try it out but I'm scared it might be addicting.

[Anonymous]

I was attracted to the pretty graphics up front.

Then when it came to geeky in-game jargon -- I ran away.

[Cryptoman]

I checked out your site.  Really cool.  I'll probably never have time to play, but it's great having you as part of the Bitcoin team.

[Distribution]

It sounds like you started just like me. A friend posted on Facebook about an anonymous and decentralized virtual currency, and ever since then I have spent hours a day learning more. I've purchased two video cards to start mining and I have offered some things for sale for Bitcoins (although not through my site...yet).

[FatherMcGruder]

Hi! I'm also a member on that site and though I didn't try the bitcoins feature because I'm 10 and there's a password that my parents have to type in before I install anything(and they make sure it's "appropriate" before they type it in), it sounds cool and if I somehow manage to install it somewhere, then

yay!

Dang this marquee thing is cool...    

You don't really have to install bitcoin. Just download the .exe and double click on it. Hopefully it will work. That said, you probably won't generate any bitcoins in the near future because the network already has lots of people competing for them.

[ryepdx]

Hi! I'm also a member on that site and though I didn't try the bitcoins feature because I'm 10 and there's a password that my parents have to type in before I install anything(and they make sure it's "appropriate" before they type it in), it sounds cool and if I somehow manage to install it somewhere, then

yay!

Dang this marquee thing is cool...    

You don't really have to install bitcoin. Just download the .exe and double click on it. Hopefully it will work. That said, you probably won't generate any bitcoins in the near future because the network already has lots of people competing for them.

If he's running Windows 7 they might have it set up to keep programs downloaded from the Internet from running or writing to the hard drive until approved by the administrator.

[FatherMcGruder]

There's got to be a way. Try putting a fine layer of dust on the key board. Get your parents to type in the password to install something appropriate. When they go away, look at the fingerprints to figure out what letters they've typed. Now, make an educated guess as to what the password is.

[theymos]

You can give yourself admin access from outside of Windows with this:
http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

There's no security when the attacker (you ) has physical access to the machine while it is being used.

[Anonymous]

Hi! I'm also a member on that site and though I didn't try the bitcoins feature because I'm 10 and there's a password that my parents have to type in before I install anything(and they make sure it's "appropriate" before they type it in), it sounds cool and if I somehow manage to install it somewhere, then

yay!

Dang this marquee thing is cool...    

If you are really 10, I have a word of advice for you:never let your curiosity die. Explore and learn all you can. You have pretty much all the time in the world and you are already self-aware. Time is a commodity and you have it in the distilled form known as youth.

[Garrett Burgwardt]

On another note, I'd recommend just telling your parents what it is and point them toward bitcoin.org. It's not a malicious program or anything so you should be able to get permission pretty easily.