Welcome to the forums fabiola! thought I'd just take my time to give you the low down on the industry at the moment and some general information, plus other new people might want to take a read.
Bitcoin MiningDon't bother investing any money into mining at the moment. The big players have taken over the situation, I'm talking mines that are worth hundreds of thousands if not millions. With the difficultly that has risen to a massive number you will never make a return on investment at the current Bitcoin price. Unless you would like just to do it as a hobby and learn how it works then go for it.
If you do want to try mining I would stay away from these companies:
BlackArrow
Butterfly LabsI'm sure there are lots of others but these two are in the lime light at the moment. So make sure you do your research before investing. Right now though I would suggest buying and holding or trading. The reason I say hold is because I would wait until the industry has matured a bit, there are a lot of start-up companies bringing out products with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of venture capital so it will be interesting to see what they bring to the table within the next couple years.
Bitcoin Infrastructure There are a lot of new Bitcoin companies out there that are making Bitcoin easier to obtain and easier to use. For example coinbase which allows you to buy Bitcoins right away into an account. Around some of these new companies such as Circle who are trying to introduce things like Bitcoin banking. Which I think is absolutely ridiculous, Bitcoin was never meant to be banked.
You need to remember that most of these companies have been started by ex PayPal or ex Visa/MasterCard employee's etc. and they want their hands on your Bitcoins. So do yourself a favour and BE YOUR OWN BANK. Use your Bitcoins with companies that you really think are giving you a good service/benefit.
Bitcoin Security I'm not going to go to in depth here as I'm not sure of your technical knowledge but I thought it would be a good idea to give you a base idea about Bitcoin security. What you need to know about is how to secure your wallet. I suggest if you have a wallet from Bitcoin Core wallet then you can encrypt your wallet. I suggest using a strong password, I'm talking at least 10 characters minimum, with special characters, capital, lower case letters and numbers. Write it down on a bit of paper to secure it offline so you won’t forget it.
If you want even more security in your wallet I suggest using Bitcoin Armoury wallet which will give you even more security options. If you wanted to go even further I would buy two USB sticks, use the Truecrypt (or VeraCrypt) software to create encrypted file containers on both the USB sticks, I would advise using three different types of encryption with again strong passwords, then back up a copy of your encrypted wallet to each USB stick and then store them somewhere safe. If you don’t know how to use the software there are plenty of guides out there, I’ll give you one for TrueCrpyt:
Link: http://www.howtogeek.com/108501/the-how-to-geek-guide-to-getting-started-with-truecrypt/I've heard of other possible attacks of people attacking your RAM while your wallet is open and is stored unencrypted but I can assure you that is a fairly sophisticated attack and I doubt you will have to worry about that. Just make sure you have decent anti-virus/malware software. I think on the forums some where there is a thread that explains how to 100% secure you’re Bitcoins. Here’s the link:
Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=17240.0-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope this gives you a bit more understanding on what’s happening in the Bitcoin world and a bit of information. If you want to help Bitcoin grow just try and introduce it to your friends, if you let your friends know about the benefits of using Bitcoin they are more likely to try it!
If you have any other questions just PM me and I will try and help.
