I have heard a lot about Bitcoin lately, but I don't really know what exactly it is. What is Bitcoin? Is it similar to Paypal or is it some sort of an online tool that you can transfer fund from your bank account or using a credit or debit card or something? If so, how does Bitcoin different from Paypal?
Bitcoin is a type of online currency much like for example the US dollar. Do you know about the concept of investing in foreign currency or in gold? It's something similar, you either mine or buy Bitcoins at a certain price and sell it off when the price rises. Bitcoins are mined with your GPU but they are so rare most people will join a group and do group mining. In my opinion, there are too many legal issues involved with Bitcoin mining nowadays that it's not worth it to join in.
You should be cautious when buy bitcoins as many people have reported trouble withdraw their USD from the Bitcoin exchanges. If you are looking to purchase goods and services in bitcoin however then you won't have that problem. You should also take note that at the moment the price of bitcoins is fluctuating wildly. I want to wait until the price is more stable before making an investment.
Bitcoin is an virtual currency, but it floats really fast these days. Last week it was worthing 800 USD (exactly, 1 Bitcoin was worth 800 USD) and then it dropped to 400 USD and now it's rising again and it's more or less 700 USD. So imagine an investor that bought bitcoins and in one week sees his investment dropping to half...! What kind of problems do you mention regarding the withdraw of the USD from the Bitcoin exchanges Hedonologist?
Indeed, it peaked recently in intraday trading at just over 1200 USD I believe. The problems that I mentioned are that some people are saying that the main exchange MTGOX, is requiring numerous forms of identification such as drivers licenses and utility bills for those wanting to withdraw large amounts, and even then it is taking between 2-3 weeks sometimes. From what I've heard it is a lot easier to deposit than to withdraw, although as I say if you intend to use the Bitcoin to make purchases you should be fine, it's just investors that need to be careful.
I have a friend that is currently working online (I think the concept he refers is mining), but I am not sure he has ever made an withdraw or a conversion of those Bitcoin cents into USD or to his bank account. I will pass him this intel, I'm sure he can make some enquires to the entity he's working with on how easy it will be for him to collect.
I've tried to set up my computer to do some mining but I didn't manage to do it at all Guess the fact that it's hard to do is why it is so lucrative.... All I managed was to install a bunch of stuff on my computer and watch lots of connection error messages
Here is a really good video from Khan Academy that explains what is bitcoin! Love this video [video=youtube;EA0LkCkvUeU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA0LkCkvUeU[/video]
I have some LiteCoins (another variant of BitCoin) floating around. I mined them myself. I am not sure what I will do with them. I'll probably just hold on to them and see how the price fluctuates. I think this is what happens with all people who have a digital currency. They wait for it to reach an unreasonable high value (which will probably never happen). Unless you have a huge amount of BitCoins, like the guy who bought a Tesla Model S with them.
Bitcoin is an open currency that has no limitations and is not made by one company. It can be sold and traded as you can with real money. That is it.
Bitcoin is basically a p2p form of payment. Think of it as an online, separate currency of its own. Right now, because of the volatility, many people are using it as a trading vehicle rather than to keep and store to use for purchases like people do with us dollars. People have bank accounts with which to store fiat. In bitcoin land, you have addresses. It's basically a long string of letters and numbers which act as the "bank account" in which your bitcoins are stored. Then you can send and receive bitcoins by using a bitcoin client that helps send bitcoins when you input the receivers' bitcoin address and the amount of bitcoins you wish to send.
