Just starting (5 years later) question about wallets

[Sharkiteuthis]

So I have minimal experience with computers and economics.  What could go wrong?
Hahah.
Anyway I have a few questions
I got a wallet through coin base bc they gave me a dollar.  I put 20 from my bank acct into it so that was fun.  I do have a few questions:
1.  Do accounts gain interest?
2.  Are there really only going to be 21 million?  What happens when they're all mined out .
3.  How many have been mined so far?
4.  How does one get them besides mining?  Just through selling goods/services? 
5.  I have the idea of what a faucet is.  Are there any good ones?

Anyway. I'm a town worker and scuba instructor in central connecticut. Any advice is appreciated.

[maokai]

I can answer some of your questions.

1. Accounts dont gain interest, its more of if the bitcoin value goes up based on how many coins.

Also 21 million is programmed  so yes this includes all the stolen bitcoins and miss coins out there as well. After when mining is over, transactions still need to take place and thats where miners are paid regardless.

[Kimowa]

So I have minimal experience with computers and economics.  What could go wrong?
Hahah.
Anyway I have a few questions
I got a wallet through coin base bc they gave me a dollar.  I put 20 from my bank acct into it so that was fun.  I do have a few questions:
1.  Do accounts gain interest?
2.  Are there really only going to be 21 million?  What happens when they're all mined out .
3.  How many have been mined so far?
4.  How does one get them besides mining?  Just through selling goods/services? 
5.  I have the idea of what a faucet is.  Are there any good ones?

Anyway. I'm a town worker and scuba instructor in central connecticut. Any advice is appreciated.

1. No accounts do not "gain" interest. This is different then how traditional banks work. If you really wanted to receive interest on your bitcoin you could deposit your money onto an exchange like bitfinex, however your money would be less safe then if you controlled your private keys.

2. Yes, no more bitcoin will be able to be mined once 21 million have been mined. Once all the bitcoin has been mined then the miners will no longer receive any kind of block subsidy (their reward by the network for finding a block) and will rely on only TX fees (what is paid to the miners in order to have a transaction confirmed)

4. The same way that you just acquired bitcoin, on an exchange (or a site similar to coinbase which is technically not an exchange), or by selling their goods/services for bitcoin

5. No. I would recommend you stay away from faucets. The amount that you receive is very small compared to the time required to "put into" them in order to receive funds.

[axel2078]

So I have minimal experience with computers and economics.  What could go wrong?
Hahah.
Anyway I have a few questions
I got a wallet through coin base bc they gave me a dollar.  I put 20 from my bank acct into it so that was fun.  I do have a few questions:
1.  Do accounts gain interest?
2.  Are there really only going to be 21 million?  What happens when they're all mined out .
3.  How many have been mined so far?
4.  How does one get them besides mining?  Just through selling goods/services? 
5.  I have the idea of what a faucet is.  Are there any good ones?

Anyway. I'm a town worker and scuba instructor in central connecticut. Any advice is appreciated.

If you are new, I'll give you some advice since I just got into bitcoin a few weeks ago.  I wouldn't leave any large amounts of bitcoin in your Coinbase wallet since Coinbase is an exchange and you don't have your private keys.  Small amounts of every day spending is fine to keep there, but if you want to invest in bitcoin for the long term, put it in an encrypted paper wallet.

[bornil267645]

Don't keep your BTC online, keep it in cold storage.

Sell regularly and try to invest as much as you can, But not more than you can afford.

Mining is not the best way to go right now given the current market price and electricity costs.

You can do signature campaigns.

Faucet is just a waste of time.

[zetaray]

There are only 21 million bitcoin, about 13.5 million has been mined and the last coins will be mined after 2100. Don't worry about what will happen hundred years from now, worry about buying bitcoin now.

[Wusolini]

So I have minimal experience with computers and economics.  What could go wrong?
Hahah.
Anyway I have a few questions
I got a wallet through coin base bc they gave me a dollar.  I put 20 from my bank acct into it so that was fun.  I do have a few questions:
1.  Do accounts gain interest?
2.  Are there really only going to be 21 million?  What happens when they're all mined out .
3.  How many have been mined so far?
4.  How does one get them besides mining?  Just through selling goods/services?  
5.  I have the idea of what a faucet is.  Are there any good ones?

Anyway. I'm a town worker and scuba instructor in central connecticut. Any advice is appreciated.

Hi welcome aboard.

Don't worry about being late ... there are still too many people not knowing about  
Perhaps you could utilize your occupation. Offer the scuba training for bitcoins (equal price), I would go for it if you were closer


1. No

2. Yes. Nothing special will happen. Miners just do not get block reward anymore (they get only transaction fees)

3. Little more than 13 mil. check https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins

4. Yes, selling goods/services and signature campaign (check this thread) is the best way. Also you can try faucets etc. but without tons of active refs you won't earn much.

5. IMO best faucets are freebitco.in, moonbit.co.in, 777bitco.in, btc25.net ... try landofbitcoins, thy have a great overview of faucets

aslo check on-line game freebitcoinminer ... it's much better than faucets  check their thread or my signature

[El Emperador]

So I have minimal experience with computers and economics.  What could go wrong?
Hahah.
Anyway I have a few questions
I got a wallet through coin base bc they gave me a dollar.  I put 20 from my bank acct into it so that was fun.  I do have a few questions:
1.  Do accounts gain interest?
2.  Are there really only going to be 21 million?  What happens when they're all mined out .
3.  How many have been mined so far?
4.  How does one get them besides mining?  Just through selling goods/services? 
5.  I have the idea of what a faucet is.  Are there any good ones?

Anyway. I'm a town worker and scuba instructor in central connecticut. Any advice is appreciated.

1. No, Bitcoin wallets don't gain interests. Anyway there are some altcoins which do.
2. Yes, 21 millions of coins is predetermined and cannot be modified.
3. We are already at about 13 millions of mined Bitcoins.
4. Yes, you can sell goods or services and earn Bitcoin in several other ways.
5. The best faucet is this one: http://freebitco.in/?r=135480


I also suggest you to read "Bitcoin PDF" by Satoshi Nakamoto: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

[dothebeats]

So I have minimal experience with computers and economics.  What could go wrong?
Hahah.
Anyway I have a few questions
I got a wallet through coin base bc they gave me a dollar.  I put 20 from my bank acct into it so that was fun.  I do have a few questions:
1.  Do accounts gain interest?
2.  Are there really only going to be 21 million?  What happens when they're all mined out .
3.  How many have been mined so far?
4.  How does one get them besides mining?  Just through selling goods/services? 
5.  I have the idea of what a faucet is.  Are there any good ones?

Anyway. I'm a town worker and scuba instructor in central connecticut. Any advice is appreciated.

1. Nope. accounts do not gain interest because bitcoin is designed to generate coins through a method called PoW (Proof of Work). If bitcoin is a PoS coin (Proof of Stake), then accounts would gain interest over time.
2. Yep. There will only be 21 million. No more, no less.
3. At the time of this writing, there are about 13 million coins mined so far.
4. One can get some bitcoins by selling product and services. Faucets are nice, too, but only if you have a great referral under you. If not, they only give you dust tx. You can also join a signature campaign if you reach at least the member rank.
5. There are good ones, like I said, if you have a good referral under you.

[DannyHamilton]

So I have minimal experience with computers and economics.  What could go wrong?
Hahah.
Anyway I have a few questions
I got a wallet through coin base bc they gave me a dollar.  I put 20 from my bank acct into it so that was fun.  I do have a few questions:

Be careful about who you get your answers from.  There are many inaccurate and misleading answers from some of those that have answered in this thread before me.

1.  Do accounts gain interest?

Accounts at Coinbase?  Not at this time.  Perhaps they will offer interest bearing accounts in the future, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Since most companies that offer bitcoin accounts are not regulated, audited, or carry any form of deposit insurance, you should be extremely careful about keeping your bitcoin balance in an account with a third party. It would be much better to keep your bitcoins in your own wallet.

2.  Are there really only going to be 21 million?

No.  There will be less than 21 million.  The exact amount that were initially expected to be created was 20,999,999.9769.  However, some have been destroyed, therefore there will actually be less than that in circulation when the block subsidy finally reaches 0.

What happens when they're all mined out?

I don't quite understand the question.  What happens when all the gold in the ground is mined out?  When there are no new bitcoins put into circulation (somewhere around the year 2140), then people will just continue using the bitcoins that already exist.  As some are lost or destroyed, as long as the demand stays the same the remaining ones will become more valuable (law of supply and demand). As such, people will use smaller and smaller fractions of a bitcoin to pay for the same value of product or service.  This is the opposite of inflation (where you have to keep spending larger and larger portions of currency to purchase the same value of product or service).

3.  How many have been mined so far?

Right this moment (block number 330476 is the most recent block to have been mined)?
The coin supply is limited to 18,256,650 BTC.   This is based on the max subsidy per block and the block height.  However the UTXO (set of all unspent outputs) is actually approximately 140 BTC less than that. Some of the difference may be due to OP_RETURN outputs (which are unspendable by protocol) having a value set.  This could be accidental or intentional.  Another source of lost coins is due to miners taking less than the maximum block reward which in effect "de-mines" an amount of coins equal to the difference between the allowed reward and the taken reward.

4.  How does one get them besides mining?

The same way one gets anything else of value in the world:

• Provide a product and accept bitcoins in exchange.
• Provide a service and accept bitcoins in exchange.
• Beg and depend on the charity in the hearts of others.
• Scam, Con, or Steal.
• Exchange another form of money directly for bitcoins.

5.  I have the idea of what a faucet is.

And you are better off because of it

A "faucet" is a scam where someone creates a website and pays you an unusably small amount of bitcoins to visit the website and see (or click on) advertisements.  They then get paid by the advertisers for getting the advertisement in front of a large audience.  Those being paid to visit the website are generally unaware that they will eventually need to pay a larger bitcoin transaction fee when they try to use the bitcoins that they received from the "faucet".  As such, they are surprised and disappointed when they eventually discover that the total transaction fees they have to pay are larger than the total bitcoins that they received from the "faucet", making the bticoins from the faucet all but useless.  Of course by they time they realize that, then operator of the "faucet" has already earned a sum of money from the advertisers from the earlier vists and no longer cares if that user never returns.

Are there any good ones?

No.  Just like there are no "good" ponzi schemes, or "good" con artist scams.  Sure, some people *might* occasionally come out ahead if they get lucky and are in the right place at the right time (and get out early enough, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a scam and you are better off avoiding it.

Anyway. I'm a town worker and scuba instructor in central connecticut. Any advice is appreciated.

Have you considered offering to accept bitcoins from those that pay you for SCUBA instruction?

[Simon8x]

Some exchanges (eg. Vircurex) do offer interests to deposits. You can also get some interests on some exchanges (eg. Bitfinex) by offering liquidity to margin traders. But exactly as DannyHamilton explained, you should be careful with them as these exchanges can be gone suddenly.