Well, there are a bunch of ways you can obtain BitCoin. You can buy them from an exchange. You can buy them from an individual. You can request to be paid for a service or product in them (as opposed to Credit card / check / cash) You can sell stuff for them (actual barter) You can get them given to you as a tip or gratuity for something insightful you may have posted on the internet You can get them from some places that give away Bitcoin as a promotion You can beg for them. There are even hackers that may encrypt your entire hard drive and blackmail you for them. (ok, there is mining but the cost to get into mining them is a few grand and you may never get a return on investment .. so I'm going to say not to try getting them this way unless you have free electricity, and don't care if you'll ever make a profit before your equipment becomes obsolete in 3 months) Oh don't attempt to buy bitcoin from an ebay seller. ebay hates bitcoin, and so does paypal. Many accounts have been frozen due to Bitcoin activity.
Bitcoin from exchanges This is how most people are going to obtain BitCoin. A couple of years ago, an individual could easily open an account at an exchange, fund it with money from PayPal and then just hit buy. Those days are gone. And so are a number of the exchanges. There have been a number of exchanges that have gone belly up, fraudlently obsconded with users money and BTC. Yep, I've lost a few BTC in the wild west so far. and Yep, it's painful (especially with their current value), but i learned to only have online what i feel i can afford to lose. The biggest exchange (up until a few months ago) was also the oldest. Mt. Gox. I'm not going to go into it's history, suffice to say, they are probably on their way out. Based in Japan, they are having troubles with US banking laws, have had several million dollars frozen here in the states. Currently Gox is having, some are surmising liquidity issues, problems with their exchange. I believe that their exchange design and operation is not up to the task of handling the volume. Their original design just couldn't scale and they are suffering right now. They've got a 50/50 chance of not being a viable entity by summer. Even if they survive, their trust factor in the BTC community is pretty much shot. (personal opinion) So, where can i safely get BTC? The answer is .. you can't. There isn't any safety in this. There are no regulatory agencies, no law enforcement, nada. You either trust the exchange or you don't. What? you are still wanting to get btc at an exchange? Probably the safest bet is CoinBase, it's not so much an exchange but a place to buy from in the United States, but they also hook up to your bank account and have some verification. Another US based company is CampBX, but they have put their operations on hold due to issues with US regulations. They were a licensed money transmitter following the US FinCEN and KYC rules, but it seems they are taking a pause to get some legal rulings clarified. Kraken out of San Francisco Then we have overseas .. oooh this is where it gets fun. You have BTC-e that is in Bulgaria BitStamp in the UK BTC China There have been others exchanges, some have been hacked and money stolen, some were setup just to steal your money, but those have currently disappeared. No recourse for those that had money/btc in them, just a lesson in what not to do .. like leave any money/btc at an exchange in your account unless you can afford to lose it. Then, there is another exchange, right in your back yard. Seriously, there might be a guy/gal in your town that is willing to buy/sell BTC with you, face to face. You'd need to check out LocalBitcoins.com: Fastest and easiest way to buy and sell bitcoins I'd just not do it in Florida, seems that the state has decided to enforce their money transmitter laws against bitcoin buyers/sellers. Anyway, with localbitcoins you'd probably want to check the users feed back, as you are going to be meeting them in a parking lot, local coffeeshop or their house to make the transaction. And, you'll probably need to be running a wallet on a smart phone if you want to confirm the transaction went through. Just a word of advice (learned by me so you don't have to) exchanges can change their policies overnight, either based on laws, regulations or threats by government. If you leave your money/btc in an exchange, it could potentially be frozen and you may not be able to access it. OR, the exchange could be hacked and everything stolen. If you are not actively using BTC, i suggest you move it to safer storage .. preferably, offline.
If you are a small business owner, you can use services like CoinBase and BitPay to accept BTC for your product/service. Apps are simple to use, can be incorporated into your website, and there are even some Point of Sale applications that have it built in. Services like BitPay, even give you the option to accept payment in BTC and have the cash equivalent transfered into your merchant account. Don't want to hold BTC because you think it's to volatile? No problem, set it up for full conversion. You don't have to be a believer in BTC to accept it. But if you accept it, you could be potentially expanding your market to new buyers that don't have cash/credit but have a lot of BTC in their wallets from mining operations. Oh, and the fees for accepting BTC vs a credit card .. you will come out ahead on that too.
Have you folks been watching the rise in BitCoin, worth, lately.... Impressive, if one has just a bit of a Speculation Attitude.....
Yep, watching it. 10% or so swings daily. Trend currently is up, but I'm not going to sell everything to buy all I can. It could go to the moon or to zero. I'll be happy if it stays the same. Excited if it goes up. But won't lose a bit of sleep if the grand experiment fails and goes to zero .. I'd be sad if it did though.
