Is it possible to mine Free Bitcoins using Software?
So you want to increase your Bitcoin wallet balance, you have been working hard and suddenly you come across a website that offers free Bitcoins by using a “BITCOIN MONEY ADDER” Software. You quickly click-through couple of links to download the software and Bam! you are either required to complete a Survey/Offer or send them your hard earned dollars to get a Serial key for the so called “BITCOIN MONEY ADDER” software to work. This doesn’t end here, you are probably going to complete their Survey/Offer and in the worst case you will send them money in the hope of getting your Bitcoin Money to be piled up with dozens of Bitcoin’s every day.
At
last you discover, it was all in vain. You didn’t get the Software key
as promised or the Software just doesn’t work. Lesson learnt.
Are these BitCoin Money Adder software’s Real?
If
you have been through the above Scenario, you would know that its all
SCAM. There is No way to increase your Bitcoin Balance Illegally,
besides you cannot hack your Bitcoin Wallet. Just leave these methods
aside and follow the legitimate ways.
These Websites Pretend of
having found an exploit to add balance to your Bitcoin wallet. According
to them, It doesn’t matter if your Computer is old, this program
(Bitcoin Money Adder) doesn’t use CPU or GPU to generate Bitcoin’s
rather it uses crypt logic from computer hardware to generate Bitcoin’s
block amount unit balance. That’s how foolishly they lure people looking
for Bitcoin balance.
The worst part is they accept payments in
the form of Bitcoin’s as well. By now you should know that if i have
found the exploit then why would i be letting other people know about
the exploit and demand money for it. Instead i would mine Bitcoin’s for
myself with the trick.
Why did they create this Fake Software?
Its
simple, They are making serious money from you. They either make money
by asking you to complete Surveys Or by actually asking you money for
the fake software. In the worst case, Some software’s are coded with
Malware that affects your PC and use your resources to mine Bitcoin’s
for the software’s authors.
Final Word: Stay away from easy money. You will loose what you have in your wallet.
We have collected five typical scams to remind you that
Bitcoin is just cash, and you should take care to use it as real money carefully. Most frauds and scams don’t happen because of the technology
involved but rather due to the underlying greed and callousness on the
part of the users.
There is something about Bitcoin that attracts all kinds of
scam artists and frauds. It even has the potential to turn secret
service agents into thieves.
Secret Service accounts theft
In December 2015 ex-Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges was
sentenced to nearly six years in prison after pleading guilty to money
laundering and obstruction charges in connection with the theft of more
than $820,000 in bitcoin from accounts connected to the Silk Road. Now
the US government believes that he may have been involved with additional thefts from the now-defunct online dark market:
"...the US had recently become aware of additional thefts
of bitcoins from Secret Service accounts, the facts of which led the
government to believe that Bridges, working with others, was also
involved in these thefts."
US District Judge Richard Seeborg, who presided over the
case, remarked that from what he could see, this crime had been
motivated by greed. “No departure or variance is warranted in this
case,” he said.
Greed and naivety feed thugs
Why Bitcoin attracts thugs? Very simply because of its very
nature. You can remain anonymous while conducting Bitcoin transactions
and there is no chargeback mechanism built into the virtual currency. We
would like to emphasize here the word currency because it is akin to
paying with cash. Reversals and chargebacks are more talk of the plastic
money domain.
A study done by researchers at the Southern Methodist
University in Texas, USA in January 2015 reveals a great deal about
common Bitcoin scams and how people fall victim to them. The research
was conducted by Marie Vasek and Tyler Moore and is titled There's No
Free Lunch, Even Using Bitcoin: Tracking the Popularity and Profits of
Virtual Currency Scams. The research revealed 41 scams that occurred
between 2011 and 2014 in which 13,000 victims fell prey to fraudulent
websites. The amount of money lost in this period was nearly a
conservative USD 11 million.
Typical Bitcoin scams
We looked at the findings of Marie Vasek and Tyler Moore
and here are their key findings. The common element among all these
scams though is greed and naivety on the part of the users:
1. Bitcoin Ponzi Schemes & High-Yield Investment Programs: If it is
too good to be true it probably is not goes the old adage and it is as
true today as it was in the past. When people are promised higher yields
on their deposits, they are often swayed by greed.
You should be wary of wallets that offer returns if you
keep money in them or if some investment program gives you way more
returns than the prevalent market rates.
2. Bitcoin Mining Investment Scams: A lot of mining
operations are alleged to be scams but to narrow down the definition
mining scams can be described as operations, which take a fee to mine
Bitcoin on your behalf but never deliver. Cloud mining particularly has
been in the eye of the storm. Researchers Moore and Vasek:
“Active Mining and Ice Drill are operations that raised
money to purportedly make ASICs and share the profits but never
delivered. AsicMiningEquipment.com and Dragon-Miner.com are fraudulent
mining e-commerce websites.”
3. Bitcoin Wallet scams: Getting
pickpocketed sucks but having your money vaporize under your very nose
is brutal. The usual modus operandi of scam wallets is that the victim
deposits Bitcoin into such a wallet and when it reaches a certain
threshold; the money is transferred to the scamster’s wallet. In its
analyses of fraudulent Bitcoin wallets, the report states that:
“We were able to analyze three of these services (Onion
Wallet, Easy Coin, and Bitcoinwallet.in), in which all transfers from
the victims were ultimately delivered to the same address held by the
scammer. These particular scams advertise themselves as offering a
mixing service that enhances transaction anonymity for customers. In
fact, all three services appear to be operated by the same scammer,
because the siphoning transfers all go directly to the same Bitcoin
address.”
4. Bitcoin Exchange Scams: Exchanges are
the point of entry into the Bitcoin universe and many victims of scams
are attracted to lower exchange rates, promises of anonymity or
offerings such as PayPal or Credit Card processing that other exchanges
may not offer.
Once the victim deposits payment for buying Bitcoin, they
never actually receive their cryptocurrency leaving them high and dry.
Most fraudulent exchanges seem to have a short life span.
5. Bitcoin Pishing Scams: Phising scams can involve emails informing people that they have been awarded or given bitcoins. They are told that they need to log into their bitcoin wallet through a link in the email that unbeknownst to them gives the phishers complete control the account.
Avoiding Bitcoin scams
It is advisable to thoroughly investigate the background of the
bitcoin-related company you are thinking of transacting with and look
for transparency in their dealings. Publicly available audits
can assuage doubt over whether a company is able to deliver what it
promises. Proof-of-reserves cryptographic audits enable companies to
publicly disclose their bitcoin holdings. Established forums like reddit
can help provide a balanced perspective on the legitimacy of a company.
The Bottom Line
As in the offline world, if it looks too good to be true, it is most
likely a scam. When dealing with bitcoins, it is best to treat the
currency as carefully as cash in the everyday world. If you lose it, it
is very unlikely that you will ever get it back.
Final Thoughts
While there are quite a few scams in the world of Bitcoin, you don't
have to become a victim. At the end of the day, you can avoid most scams
by simply being aware of them. With that said, if you're involved or
want to get involved in the Bitcoin movement, keep an eye out for the
scams above.
This article is a short history of Bitcoin. Our goal is to give the
reader a reliable abbreviated overview of Bitcoin. We will reference
places where the interested reader can learn more about specific topics
or dive deeper.
The history will be structured around Bitcoin’s trade price (as a
reflection of market sentiment) and page views of wikipedia (as a
reflection of broader awareness).
2008/2009: Bitcoin’s birth
In November 2008, someone going by the user name ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’
released a paper to a cryptography mailing list. The 9-page paper was
entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System“, and it laid out a vision for a distributed digital money system.
In January 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released the first version of the
open-source bitcoin core software on SourceForge and the bitcoin
protocol started running. Nakamoto mined the first 50 bitcoins. The
protocol was a breakthrough in cryptography, though it drew on
developments that had preceded it but hadn’t been combined yet.
Bitcoin ran quietly in the background—a topic of excitement and
fascination for a dedicated crowd of coders but largely off the world’s
radar. Discussion was distributed across different forums, and it wasn’t
until the end of the year that the first dedicated forum was
established. This helped coders could more easily coordinate with other
coders as the underlying code got tweaked. By mid-2009, people other
than Satoshi Nakamoto were actively contributing to the open-source
codebase in Github.
The protocol was a breakthrough in cryptography, though it drew on
many cryptography innovations that preceded it. A community of
cryptography experts and privacy advocates known as the Cypherpunks
(cypher not cyber) played a key role
in recognizing the technical genius of Bitcoin and understanding its
implications. Many members of this community would become torchbearers
later in Bitcoin’s history. As 2009 ended, Bitcoin did not have a ‘trade price’ and 309 people viewed the Wikipedia page.
2010: Bitcoin’s very early years
The Bitcoin ‘ecosystem’ was largely just a record of Bitcoin transactions (the blockchain),
a set of online forums where users communicated and organized
transactions, and the open-source software code. There were no wallet
services, payment processors, or real user interface beyond actual
command prompts and raw code. This limited involvement to a dedicated
and savvy crowd who organized transactions through online forums and
initiated them on the blockchain with code. For example, the first
commercial transaction took place in May 2010: a programmer in Florida
spent 10,000 BTC on a pizza.
However, beginnings of a market support system began to emerge. In
early 2010, the first exchange opened, which allowed structured trading
of bitcoins. The first “article” on bitcoin appeared on Slashdot and
stoked interest beyond the initial insider cryptocurrency crowd. Users
grew. In late 2010, Mt. Gox launched as the second exchange and became
the dominant place to trade Bitcoins for a couple years.
As 2010 ended, the price of 1 Bitcoin was $.3 and 309 people viewed the Wikipedia page.
2011: Bitcoin finds niche uses and awareness grows
In 2011, Bitcoin began to mature as a digital payment system, though its use was limited by the aspirations of early adopters.
The perceived anonymous nature of the digital currency made it
perfect for online black markets. That year saw the emergence of the
Silk Road, an ebay for illicit goods (predominantly drugs) that used
Bitcoin as a payment method. The Silk Road was one of the public’s
primary introductions to Bitcoin, prompting several politicians cast the
currency as a vehicle for money laundering and drugs.
Mainstream media also began covering it. Forbes, Bloomberg, and TIME all wrote articles. Politicians warned against it. Academics wrote about it. At the end of the year, CBS aired an episode of the “The Good Wife” that focused on bitcoin.
Other consumer services were also starting to emerge. WikiLeaks
started accepting Bitcoin donations. An iPad app was launched. Bitpay, a
service that let merchants accept bitcoins over the phone, was founded
and claimed to have 100 merchants. More exchanges opened, letting people
trade bitcoins for other currencies.
The Bitcoin code also underwent a major change. Through 2011, Satoshi
Nakamoto had overseen the maintenance of the codebase. Satoshi never
called or met anyone and only communicated on forums and direct
messages. In April 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote his last verified email,
leaving Gavin Andreson in charge of the project, and left, never to be
(verifiably) seen or heard from again. Andreson quickly selected four
others to share this responsibility and introduced some structured ways
of updating the underlying code.
“He told myself and Gavin that he had moved on to other things and that the project was in good hands.” – Mike Hearn describes the last thing he heard from Nakamoto
Also in 2011, the first alternative digital currency or “altcoin”, Litecoin, launched.
The world was in an awkward time in which financial markets were
doing well but workers were not. Occupy Wall Street started in September
and soon Occupy protests had taken place in almost 1000 cities
worldwide. It is easy to see how the idea of a bankless currency could
take root.
By the end of the year, the world was deeply ambivalent about the
digital currency. A currency for the 21st Century that could topple
banks? A tool for laundering money and buying illicit substances?
As 2011 ended, the price of 1 Bitcoin was $4.60 and 2185 people viewed the Wikipedia page.
2012: Bitcoin matures
Bitcoin was riding a wave of legitimacy in many circles, and these were having conflicting effects.
The currency became a popular target for hackers and thieves. Mt. Gox
had been hacked in 2011, and now more major attacks on exchanges and
other databases led to millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin theft.
Several Ponzi schemes ended with theft.
Black markets utilizing bitcoin as a payment method continued to operate. It’s estimated that $15 million worth of Bitcoin
passed through the Silk Road this year. A popular online gambling site,
Satoshi Dice, launched and flooded the bitcoin network with very small
gambling transactions (bets worth less than $.0001). This sparked a
debate on how to deal with such ‘transaction dust.’
More generally, the community was feeling the impacts of having no
central authority. There were no dedicated funds to support core
development of the code and no sanctioned gathering places places other
than online forums.
The Bitcoin Foundation
was also established. Its role was to fund core development, represent
the currency to governments, and conduct outreach and education. Late
that year, a Bitcoin exchange Bitcoin-central.net was licensed similar
to a bank in Europe.
As it garnered the attention of more governments, its legal ambiguity
became more obvious and more awkward. People were trading it like an
asset, using it like a currency, and downloading it like open-source
software. Gambling and the Silk Road didn’t help. Some services started
dropping bitcoin out of fear of its legality.
Broadly, this is a year in which the industry also saw the promise of banking the unbanked with Bitcoin. Forbes
runs one of the first mainstream articles discussing Bitcoin’s use in
remittance payments. WordPress started accepting Bitcoin, explaining
that traditional payment processor restrictions were preventing
international bloggers from participating in the blogosphere.
As 2012 ended, the price of 1 Bitcoin was $13.44 and 2809 people viewed the Wikipedia page.
2013: The world wakes up to bitcoin
2013 was one of the most tumultuous years for Bitcoin. It had two
period of incredible volatility in which people literally woke up to
almost 100% price increases.
The first occurred in early 2013. A bail-out deal between the EU and
Cyprus included a levy on bank accounts with sizeable sums of money,
inspiring Cypriot account holders to buy bitcoin en masse. The Bitcoin price almost doubles, and Cypress sets a precedent for using Bitcoin as a means of capital flight.
Bitcoin survived one of its first major crises of legitimacy this
year: the shutting down of the Silk Road and the arrest of its founder.
The government seized all assets and helped cement public association of
Bitcoin with online black markets. After a quick price drop, the price
quickly recovered, but Bitcoin has lived in the Silk Road’s shadow ever
since.
Globally, governments began to take Bitcoin more seriously but reactions were mixed.
The People’s Bank of China, after initially approving Bitcoin,
banned financial institutions from using it or working with customers
whose businesses involve it.
The US Department of Homeland Security declared Mt. Gox a ‘money
transmitter’ (a heavily regulated entity) and moved to seize some of its
assets.
US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) issued some of the
world’s first bitcoin regulation in the form of a guidance report for
persons administering, exchanging or using virtual currency. In
particular, exchanges must comply with money laundering laws and
register as Money Services Businesses.
The US Senate held a hearing which was (to the surprise of many) open to the long-term prospects of Bitcoin.
The second period of volatility occurred in November. In 30 days, the
price went from just over $100 to just over $1200. Searches for bitcoin
spikes. News outlets covered it. In 30 days, it went from a
successfully digital currency proof-of-concept to a new technology in
the eyes of the world. The price plummeted back down in December, but it
never stayed below $200 again.
The swell of popularity led to an explosion of “altcoins”—digital
currencies based on modified or different underlying protocols. Litecoin
had been the first, back in 2011, but 2013 saw hundreds of these new
altcoins launch. Many turned out to be scams, but many are also still
traded today.
As 2013 ended, the price of 1 Bitcoin was $764 and 26354 people viewed the Wikipedia page.
2014: Bitcoin beyond cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin
In early 2014, Bitcoin survived another major crisis of legitimacy:
the closure of Mt. Gox. Mt. Gox had been the longest-running and most
successful virtual currency exchange to date. It was a pillar of both
the bitcoin economy and the community. In February, Mt. Gox abruptly
shut trading, and leaked documents show it had lost 744,000 BTC
(approximately $40 million). Bitcoin naysayers had a field day on
forums, and it was widely seen as a blow to the digital currency’s
ability to operate safely without any oversight or regulation.
Governments began to pass regulation this year. The wild end to 2013
woke many regulators up to the volatility of this currency. The IRS
declared Bitcoin to be taxed as property. The People’s Bank of China
forced Chinese banks to close the bank accounts of major Chinese
exchanges, though many exchanges exploited legal loopholes to keep
operating. New York announced its Bitlicense: a legal licensing
framework for businesses that interact with Bitcoin and
cryptocurrencies. This is largely decried by the cryptocurrency
community. The dream of unregulated cash was quickly fading.
The currency also traveled more into the payment mainstream, and a
wave of major retailers accepted the currency. Overstock, Tiger Direct,
Newegg, Dell, and Microsoft all announced acceptance of Bitcoin. Near
the end of the year, a subsidiary of PayPal announced it will work on
integrating Bitcoin on their platform.
Another development in the world of cryptocurrencies is that many
many people began imagining Bitcoin without the digital currency part:
how could the underlying technology be used for other purposes?
A wave of new protocols emerged with applications beyond digital
currency, presaging a so-called “Bitcoin 2.0” era in which people would
repurpose blockchains (Bitcoin’s and others) to store all kinds of
information. Some notable ones included
Ethereum, a platform for software that could run on a distributed network.
Maidsafecoin, a protocol to allow distributed file storage built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain
Factom launches to create a data layer on top of the blockchain to enable simple, verifiable, and secure record keeping.
This reflected the rising awareness of what early enthusiasts had
thought: the technology of cryptocurrencies could be the foundation of
the next Internet. Today is like the early 90s, and in the coming years,
blockchains could remake everything. The idea was planted, but with it,
a sobering realization: this process would take time.
Despite these developments, Bitcoin’s price began a slow decline this
year that would bottom out in early 2015 below $200 and stay relatively
dormant for months. Part of this decline was a shift in capital from
bitcoin to other digital currencies. Bitcoin’s contribution to the total
market value of all cryptocurrencies fell from a higher of 95% in
August to 78% in December. Another was the realization that upending
global financial markets wouldn’t happen overnight. Bitcoin was not
above the law, and financial law was very complicated. Bitcoin had the
potential to be disruptive but disruption can be slower than founding
visionaries hoped. In many ways, cryptocurrencies faded from the public
eye.
AS 2014 ended, the price of 1 Bitcoin was $314 and 6162 people viewed the Wikipedia page.
2015: The business blockchain
The basic features of this industry mostly continued. Hacks and theft
continued, including a high-profile loss of close to $5 million from a
major exchange at the beginning of the year.
Regulators around the world continued to explore the implications of
this technology while also proving that users of Bitcoin are not beyond
the reach of the law. Ross Ulbricht, founder of The Silk Road, is
sentenced to life in prison without parole for actions that were “terribly destructive to our social fabric.”
Mark Karpeles, CEO of Mt. Gox, is arrested in Japan. Two federal agents
who stole Bitcoin during the Silk Road investigation plead guilty.
The biggest shift came from banks and industry. Many industry
executives began talking about “blockchains” and “distributed ledgers”
rather than Bitcoin. Microsoft launched blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS)
on its Azure cloud-computing platform. This allows companies to
experiment with blockchains and explore how they could be used in
different areas of their business.
This likely contributed to the growth in interest in Bitcoin among
the broader public and among traders. Bitcoin’s price began a steady
ascent as people started realizing Bitcoin and blockchains were still
around.
However, a crisis was brewing in the form of the “block size debate.”
The Bitcoin protocol was designed to process approximately 7
transactions per second; the blocks in the blockchain were not large
enough to store more. Members of the community realized Bitcoin was on
pace to reach that in 2015. If nothing was done, it could stymie the
currency’s growth in popularity.
What followed was a bitter and divisive debate about whether to
increase the size of the Bitcoin blocks (allowing more transactions per
second) or to reposition the Bitcoin blockchain as a ‘settlement layer’
while allowing other services to process transactions that happen
off-chain. In Bitcoin, there are no democratic rules, public sanctioned
spaces to gather, or Robert’s rules of order. Reddit, Bitcointalk, and a
couple other online forums were serving as venues for ‘public’
discussion, and the Bitcoin Foundation began hosting events toward the
end of the year.
No one could agree, and the debate was fierce. This deadlock struck a
blow to Bitcoin’s perceived legitimacy. If it couldn’t deal with a
challenge like this, how could it deal with others? People started
talking seriously about other currencies that might be viable
alternatives to Bitcoin. Ethereum topped that list, and in early 2016,
its price would increase tenfold.
As 2015 ended, the price of 1 Bitcoin was $426 and 4730 people viewed the Wikipedia page.
2016: A Year of Promise
It is too early to tell the story of 2016 for Bitcoin. Many of the
trends that coalesced in 2015 continued: more enterprise and corporate
interest in blockchain technology, more uncertainty over the block size
debate, and some price volatility.
Security remains an issue. Just this year, Gatecoin, a major exchange based in Hong Kong, lost $2 million and suspended trading. Shapeshift, a major US-based exchange, suffered a series of hacks in a saga that reads like a crime novel.
Broadly, industry players in finance and technology remain bullish on
blockchains and ambivalent about Bitcoin. More and more startups are branding themselves as blockchain companies
rather than bitcoin companies. A new ambivalence about Bitcoin has
emerged: not as a dangerous quasi-legal currency but as a good
proof-of-concept that ultimately won’t be ready for primetime. As they
say, “the pioneers get the arrows, the settlers get the land.” At a
premier industry conference, some compared Bitcoin to Netscape.
Hello and welcome to my video where I’m going to show you how to
create a simple and secure USB Bitcoin wallet. We’re going to create
this USB Bitcoin wallet
using MultiBit. MultiBit is a free open source program that’s
available for Mac, PC and Linux and we’re going to create this wallet
offline which is very important since malware and or potential hackers
would need to access your computer through the Internet in order to
steal your money. So, by doing all this offline we can really lower the
chances of getting hacked. Now I want to make a quick side note. I am
using a PC running Windows, but if you need instructions for a Mac or
Linux there’s a link in the video description for that. So, let’s get
started. The very first thing we’re going to do is download the MultiBit
wallet. And we can do that just simply by going to multibit.org.
Please take note of the https. That’s for secure connections and we can
download the MultiBit wallet from the right hand side. I’ve already
done that. Here it is. The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going
to plug in our USB drives. So, I have my USB drive I’m going to plug
it in right now. After we plug in our USB drive we’re going to run the
installer. And we’re going to install MultiBit. We’re going to go
through this wizard here, next, next, accept the terms, next. But
instead of installing it in C program files we’re going to click on
browse and we’re going to install it in our USB drive. So, here’s my
USB drive, USB Disk E. I’ll just click on that as you can see it’s
completely empty yours should be too. I don’t recommend using this USB
drive for anything else but this. And we’re going to just click on save
and we’re going to click on next. The directory already exist that’s
okay. We can click on yes. Keep everything the same, next. And that
should be it. It’s finished, next and we can click on done. Now here’s a little shortcut that popped up. It’s kind of
irrelevant, we could click on it. I’m going to just delete it. And I’m
going to manually navigate to my USB disk and here’s mine. Just click
on my computer USB Disk E and here is our MultiBit installation. Now
there’s one quick thing that we need to do in order to run MultiBit
locally on this USB and that’s right click anywhere in this folder.
Click on new, text document and we’re going to delete everything, even
the TXT part and we’re going to type this in multibit.properties. And I
made a typo. No, I didn’t. MultiBit properties. Click on enter and
we’re going to get a little dialog box “are you sure you want to change
it”. I’m going to click on yes. And that’s going to allow us to run
MultiBit locally. So now that we’ve done that let’s go ahead and run MultiBit. And
that’s going to be this exe file here. We can just double click on that
and that’s going to launch MultiBit. Now MultiBit is going to attempt
to sync with the network and I’m connected to the Internet right now and
I think it’s a good idea to sync MultiBit with the network. Let it
completely sync and once it’s completed syncing it’s going to say
online, synchronized with network. Now we’re going to close MultiBit
and we’re going to unplug our USB drive from our computer safely. And
we do that by clicking on this little white arrow, right clicking on the
USB and we’re going to eject the USB storage device. Now it’s safe to
remove this USB storage device I’m going to unplug it. Now I’m going to disconnect from the internet and I can do that just
by unplugging the cable or turning the switch on my laptop from my
wireless card from on to off. You can also right click on the network
icon down here in the bottom right, right click, open network and
sharing centers, change adapter settings. And we can right click on our
wireless adapter or our local area connection and we can click on
disable and that’s going to disconnect us from the Internet. Now it’s
important that we disconnect ourselves from the internet before we
restart our computer. Often there are programs that will start with
your computer and connect to the Internet immediately. So, we don’t
want that to happen before we can disconnect. So, we’re going to
disconnect from the Internet. Now let’s restart our computer and when
we do we’ll still be disconnected from the Internet. Okay, now that we’ve plugged in our USB back into our computer we’re
going to navigate to our USB drive. So, here’s my USB drive right here.
Once again we’re just going to double click on the multibit.exe file.
That’s going to launch MultiBit. Now it’s not going to be able to
connect to the network, but that’s okay. We can still create a new
wallet. So, let’s click on new wallet and we’re going to create a new
wallet. Let’s call this my USB wallet. And I’m not going to save this
in my documents and I’m not going to save this on my computer. I’m
going to save it in my USB drive because that’s what I’m going to be
removing. So let’s make sure that we click on our USB drive where we installed
MultiBit. Click on save. Now it’s going to generate a new wallet for
us. Now that we’ve created a new wallet we need to password protect it.
So, let’s do that by clicking on file, add a password. And we can
just type in a password here. Now this is the most important part of
the tutorial because the password is the only way somebody could hack
and get the coins. So, it’s up to you to use a password that has never
been used for anything else before and is at least ten characters long
and it contains uppercase and lowercase letters. It contains numbers
and symbols. So just to give you an idea this is an example of a strong password.
So, you’re going to want to write that password down because if you
lose the password you’re going to lose all the money in your wallet.
There is no forgot password link or anything like that. There’s no way
to get the money back. That’s just the way Bitcoin works. So, make
sure you write the password down and keep that safe. After we add a
password, we can click on add password to wallet and it’ll change this
icon here to a lock. And so now we’ve got a password and we’ve
encrypted our wallet. So, even if somebody were to get one of our USBs
and get our private keys to our wallet they still can’t get the funds
because they don’t know the pass phrase. And so that’s why we want to
make it as difficult as possible to guess, to hack and we don’t want to
store it with the USB drive. So we’ve added a password. Now let’s
click on the request tab and let’s create a few new public addresses. So we’ll need to enter in our password to do this and let’s create
five receiving addresses. These are public addresses. Click on create
new and it’s going to generate five new addresses for us. Click on
cancel. So, these addresses here – this is how you could send money to
the wallet. That’s the only thing that these addresses could be used
for and you could click on one of these addresses and you could go over
here and click on this magnifying glass and you could take this QR code
and you could put it anywhere. You could put it on a website and you
could say “hey, we’re accepting donations” or “we’re accepting payments”
and what have you and people can use this QR code to send money to the
wallet. So now that we have some addresses we’re going to close MultiBit and
I’m going to actually safely eject my USB drive. Right click, eject.
And now I have my wallet on my USB drive in my hand. It’s in my hand
right now and I made it offline. And so I could now send money using
any of those public addresses that I just created to the USB stick
that’s in my hand. This USB stick doesn’t need to actually be anywhere
for me to receive the funds. So, let’s just do a little test. Let’s
take it a step further. Let’s pretend that somebody or ourselves wanted
to send money into this wallet. So, I’m going to send 50 cents into
the USB stick that’s in my hand. And so we’re going to check that.
Okay. So, I’ve just sent 50 cents to my USB Bitcoin wallet using one of
those public addresses that we created. And now let’s go ahead and
pretend that we want to send the money now out of our USB wallet. So,
we’re going to need to connect to the Internet to do this. So, let’s
just say this is even a completely different computer and this is a week
or month later. So we’re on a different computer and this computer that we’re on is
going to have Internet so let’s re-enable the Internet here. Okay.
We’ve re-enabled the Internet and now let’s reconnect our USB Bitcoin
wallet. There we go. Okay. So, now it’s time to retrieve the funds
from our wallet and we’re going to send them out of the wallet. And we
can do that by opening up the USB. There it is right there. Here’s the
shortcut multibit.exe, we’re going to just launch that. And because
we’re connected to the Internet we’re going to be able to synchronize to
the network. And you can see that the money is already in here. So,
the second that we’re able to connect to the Internet the money will
appear in our wallet and that’s really all we need to do. Now we can
just simply send the 50 cents to another address and we can do that just
by pasting a Bitcoin address in this field and then clicking on send
and that’s how we would send the money out of the wallet. Now there’s also something that you could do is check the contents of
the wallet. So, let’s just say you have – you’re not sure how much
money is in the wallet. You know, people or yourself have been sending
money to the USB wallet and you’re not sure how much is in it. You
could always just take one of your addresses and you could just copy it
and you can head over to blockchain.info. Once again please take note
of the https and just take your public addresses and you can paste them
or type them and we can just search and we can see how many transactions
and for how much.
So you can see that no transactions have been made with the address
that I just punched in. But I have six. So, which address did I just
use? Well, you know, to be honest I don’t remember so if I wanted to I
could just simply copy each of these until I find the one that I just
used which is this one. And you can see that it just had one
transaction, total received 50 cents. So, this is a way to check how
much money is in your USB Bitcoin wallet without having to plug in your
wallet and sync to the internet. So, I just wanted to point that out. I
created six addresses right here. You could use one. But that’s how
you could check the balance of your wallet without actually needing the
USB device.
So also I just wanted to make one final note. You should back up
your USB drive so that if anything happens to it you have a second or
third or even a fourth backup copy of your USB drive that you can fall
back on and use to recover your funds. So, to do that you would just
simply plug your USB drive into your computer and you would just copy
the contents, right click, copy and then you would paste them into a
fresh second USB drive. So, I just wanted to point that out and it’s
very important to do that as well. Okay. That’s how you create a USB
Bitcoin wallet and that’s fairly secure and we made it offline. So, I
hope you enjoyed the video. I hope you are able to follow along. If
you have any questions or comments like always please feel free to leave
a comment. And yes, thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you in
the next video. Written by WeUseCoins
Earn Bitcoins by accepting them as a means of payment 🏬
Earn free Bitcoins by completing tasks on websites ✔
Earn Bitcoins from interest payments %
Earn Bitcoins from mining 💎
Earn Bitcoins by getting tipped 👏
Earn Bitcoins through trading 📈
Earn Bitcoins as a regular income 👨
Earn Bitcoins from gambling - not suitable for everyone 🎰
1. Earn Bitcoins by accepting them as a means of payment 🏬
In my opinion, the best and easiest way to earn Bitcoins is to accept them as a means of payment. If you have a small business,
the integration is done quickly and easily. No matter if you have a
brick and mortar shop or an online business, no matter if you sell goods or services.
You just have to complete the following three steps:
Get a free online Bitcoin wallet from Coinbase. If you're not sure what a Bitcoin wallet is,
check out What is Bitcoin. There are also many other providers apart from Coinbase.
When you sign up with LocalBitcoins
you will also get a free bitcoin wallet with a broad range of
functions.
Find out which works best for you. And remember, no wallet is
absolutely safe, so be careful with your money. Especially make sure you
keep
your Bitcoins stored safely in at least 2 or 3 different places.
Display a QR-code with your Bitcoin address next to your cash register. There are two options here.
When you have your wallet, go to a section that says 'Receive Money' or 'Add funds' or something similar.
There will usually be a QR-code that has your Bitcoin address encoded in it.
Print out the image with the QR-code and place it next to your cash register. Your customers will typically have a
Bitcoin app installed on their smartphone where they can enter the value of the purchase in USD or EUR.
Their app calculates the corresponding
Bitcoin value. It automatically takes the current exchange rate to get the right amount. On your wallet account you can
check the confirmation of your incoming payment.
Some wallets offer a 'Receive Money' functionality. When you
earn Bitcoins by accepting them as a payment method on a more regular
basis
it comes in handy when you use a button called 'Create Payment
Request'. Here you enter the Bitcoin amount the customer has to pay and
it will show the
corresponding QR-code automatically. This way the customer
doesn't need to enter an amount which makes the payment for
them more convenient. For this method you
need to calculate the Bitcoin amount from your USD or EUR price
before you can enter it for the QR-code to generate.
Display the 'Bitcoin accepted here' logo
at the entrance to your shop to show everybody your innovative
payment integration.
That's it. It's so easy, start to earn Bitcoins by selling goods
and services today!
This is just a quick description how to earn Bitcoins by accepting
them as a means of payment. These links are also helpful:
The Bitcoin Wiki Trade page shows you which other businesses already accept Bitcoin.
Add your shop here to get more publicity
Coinmap is an OpenStreetMap where you can see the geographical distribution
of Bitcoin accepting businesses. Add your shop here as well
There are many other lists and indexes where you can add your shop. I find the two mentioned ones to work best so far.
If you have one that you think is really good and complete, contact me. I will be happy to add other links here.
2. Earn free Bitcoins by completing tasks on websites ✔
There are many websites which offer you to earn free Bitcoins.
With most of these sites, the concept is
that you visit the site and just for looking at it you get a small
amount of Bitcoins. The concept has something in common with watching
good old free TV.
You watch a lot of ads and inbetween you get something you actually
want to see, like a film or music clips.
While this is a legitimate concept, the return on your invested time is very little.
So when you earn Bitcoins from these advertising sites, the Bitcoins
actually come at the cost of your time. As the saying goes 'there
is no free lunch'. But see for yourself, here is a list of some of the
sites that I find interesting
BitVisitor :: Earn Bitcoins for watching websites or videos.
Every page is shown for five minutes.
Then you can click 'Next' for confirmation and move on to the next
page. What I like about this site is that payouts come within roughly
an hour.
This is a major advantage compared to other sites that pay
Bitcoins for completing tasks. Also, you don't need an user account
here, you just enter
your Bitcoin address. The amount of Bitcoins you can earn here is
limited though. Per five minutes you get something like µBTC 100
(that's 100 microcoins or BTC 0.00001)
which means that your hourly payout is something like BTC 0.00012.
That's not too much money but it is a start to make you first Satoshis
and get familiar with Bitcoin.
And note, payout per five minute period varies. So the above
calculation only holds if the average payout per five minutes is µBTC 100.
freedigitalmoney.com :: Earn Bitcoins by getting rewards fo
purchases made in Bitcoin.
On this site you also don't need a user account and just have to enter your Bitcoin address to earn Bitcoins.
CoinWorker :: Earn Bitcoins by completing analytical tasks.
A user account is required here. I haven't tried this service but
payouts seem to be a bit higher than with the aforementioned sites.
Bitfortip :: Earn Bitcoins by answering forum questions.
This is a nice service because it brings people together who are
interested in Bitcoin and many other topics. At the same time it allows
to pay rewards in bitcoin for answering questions.
This is something that would not have been possible without a
currency like Bitcoin that has low transaction
fees and instant transfers
Earning Bitcoins from completing tasks on websites is a viable option to actually earn some
Bitcoins, but don't expect your income to be very large.
I regard it as a first step to get familiar with Bitcoin in general.
Also, it is interesting to see what kind of services are enabled
through frictionless money transfers.
3. Earn Bitcoins from interest payments %
If you already have some Bitcoins, put your Bitcoins to work for you. Earn
Bitcoins through interest payments by lending them out.
Lend directly to someone you know. This allows
you to assess personally, whether you regard the borrower as
trustworthy. Then the two of you
only need to agree on the terms like duration and interest rate and
off you go. The drawback is, however, that you probably will not have
too many acquaintances who
match your amount, duration and interest rate requirements. But
it's a nice way to earn Bitcoins.
Peer to peer Bitcoin lending websites with listings from various borrowers are another option. Bitbond
is such a peer-to-peer lending site. Borrowers publish funding
requests
and you can contribute to their loan. You can fund small portions
of many loans and thereby diversify default risk.
Bitcoin loans usually work the same way as fiat currency loans. The
borrower gets a certain amount of money over a specified time
and repays the money with interest. There are two things you need
to be aware of when you lend Bitcoins. The site needs to be trustworthy and
the borrower needs to be trustworthy. When the site assesses the creditworthiness of their applicants
the information given about borrowers can be more credible.
A Bitcoin banking like model. Here you place
your Bitcoins as a deposit with a site that pays you a fixed interest
rate on these deposits. As everything
here, this method has advantages and disadvantages. The good thing
is, that you don't need to diversify your Bitcoins over many borrowers.
You just place your Bitcoins with your
Bitcoin bank and that's it. You earn Bitcoins as a steady stream of
interest income. However, be very careful. In the previous case of peer
to peer lending you diversify your
lending activity over many borrowers. In the banking model
you trust one single borrower which is the bank.
If they don't do a good job in managing your Bitcoins, everything
can be lost at once. That's because the bank takes you deposits and
invests them in assets, the most important assets usually being loans.
If they do a good job you are fine
because you simply collect the interest payment. If they don't do a
good job you take the hit. An there is no deposit insurance in the
Bitcoin world, too.
To sum it up, Bitcoin lending is a good way to make more
Bitcoins from what you already have. And please notice this disclaimer: only lend through sites that
you trust. Such sites will comply with the usual requirements that you expect from non-Bitcoin related sites as well. That means they have
proper terms and conditions in place, they disclose their status of incorporation and contact details. Some sites in the
Bitcoin world do not do this and in the end people wonder what
happened
to their Bitcoins. Therefore, when you earn Bitcoins from Bitcoin lending
watch who you deal with and only use Bitcoins which you can afford to lose.
4. Earn Bitcoins from mining 💎
Bitcoin mining is the process by which new Bitcoins are generated.
When you perfom mining, your computer adds new Bitcoin transactions
to the block chain (a public ledger where all
Bitcoin transactions are stored) and searches for new blocks. A
block is a file that has the most recent Bitcoin transactions
recorded in it. When your computer discovers a new block, you
receive a certain number of Bitcoins. Currently a block contains BTC 25.
This number changes
throughout time and gets smaller by the factor 0.5 every four years.
Since bitcoin mining has become a hardware intense and therefore expensive process, most individual miners join a so called mining pool.
One of the mining pools you can conect to is
BitMinter for
example.
By providing computing power to their pool you can earn Bitcoins
from mining without the need to build your own big mining farm. There
are entire communities around
Bitcoin mining and besides the fact that you earn Bitcoins it's also
fun. You meet new people online and get in-depth knowledge about
Bitcoin as a protocol and technology.
If you want to earn Bitcoins through mining, be aware that it is a costly and time consuming process. Read the respective introductions and
manuals to learn more about it. This website is a
good starting point. Unless you are mining just out of curiosity and want to get to know the
technology, it is important to make a cost / benefit analysis. Hardware prices, electricity costs,
bitcoin difficulty
and the Bitcoin value influence the profitability of Bitcoin mining.
If all this seems interesting to you and you want to
earn Bitcoins from mining make your first calculations on the Mining Dashboard.
5. Earn Bitcoins by getting tipped 👏
When you earn Bitcoins through tips, it is much like accepting
Bitcoin as a means of payment. You need a wallet, a QR-code with your
Bitcoin address on it and the people
who can potentially give you a tip need to be aware of it. There are
various places where you can receive Bitcoin tips.
Again, your shop is the first thing to start with in case you have one. It's just a bit simpler because since tips are voluntary you don't
really need to check the incoming payment and the exact amount. Simply display the QR-code and check each day what came in.
With tips, the nice thing is that you don't necessarily need to have a shop. A blog
for instance or any other website is sufficient.
You can display the QR-code or just your Bitcoin address at the
bottom of your page or wherever it seems convenient and let people
decide how much
they want to tip you. You can also view how this looks like in the
footer of this German blog bitcoins21.
Another really cool way to get tipped online is ChangeTip. This service allows you
to integrate tips on all major social networks, YouTube and GitHub. Very nice!
Imagine you have a restaurant and want to encourage your customers to tip with Bitcoins, there is this nice service:
bctip is a website where you can print little
paper vouchers that have a certain Bitcoin balance
on them.
When your customer has one of these, he or she can simply give it
to you or your employees and you can redeem it like a coupon.
6. Earn Bitcoins through trading 📈
Some people would say that trading is a form of gambling. While
there these two things have something in common, there are also
fundamental differences.
When you gamble (and assuming that it's a fair game) you have a
certain probability of winning and losing. When you trade assets, this
gets much more complex.
I don't want to go into too much detail here. I just want to outline
the concept how you can
earn Bitcoins with trading.
The safest way to make money with trading is through arbitrage. In short, this means
that you see an opportunity to buy an asset in one place for a
certain price and sell it immediately at another place for a higher
price. It is important that
you know you can sell the asset immediately at a certain price. If this does not hold, then we are talking of speculation - or gambling if you prefer.
The Bitcoin world, in my opinion offers such arbitrage
opportunities. But they are not as simple to execute as it might seem at
first sight. Price differences between exchanges
often come for certain reasons. The speed of fiat money transfers
and access restrictions are just the most striking ones. You have to
find out the concrete opportunities yourself.
One place to start is this thread on Bitcoin StackExchange. Also, not every opportunity is available to everyone.
Go and have a look at the price differences between exchanges and check out if you can find opportunities.
If you want to give arbitrage a try, you need to get Bitcoins almost instantly. One of the few sites where you don't need to sign up is
bit4coin. If
you spot an opportunity and want to act on it immediately, this is a way
to get a hold of Bitcoins fast.
If you manage to earn Bitcoins from arbitrage, this can be very
profitable after all. But start cautiously as it really does require
some experience.
The other way to earn Bitcoins from trading is simple speculation. In this case you would buy Bitcoins,
wait until the price increases, then sell for a fiat
currency. When the price drops again, you buy more Bitcoins and
start all over. For this to work out you either need to be very lucky or
capable of predicting the future.
There are people who are good traders and who can recognize
patterns from price charts. But that's something very specialized and
I'm not sure if I believe in this. So for me,
if you want to earn Bitcoins from this form of trading it could also
be categorized as gambling. And actually it's even more risky if you
compare it to a fair game where
you know your odds. When you speculate with assets, you can extract
your odds from historical prices. But never start believing this would
tell you something about the future reliably.
7. Earn Bitcoins as a regular income 👨
Getting your monthly paycheck in Bitcoins is probably the steadiest way to earn Bitcoins. There aren't many organizations who would pay you in Bitcoins but
there are some at least. And maybe there will be more as acceptance increases continuously. Gavin Andresen, core Bitcoin developer of the
Bitcoin Foundation stated in this
interview
that he gets paid in Bitcoins. And chances are, that when your employer accepts Bitcoins
they might be willing to pay you in Bitcoin, too.
Apart from being employed by a company or a non-profit you can be
self-employed and get paid in Bitcoins.
Being a freelancer has multiple advantages. You can for example earn
Bitcoins conveniently from home by participating in this
bitcoin affiliate program.
You can also work from home for others. Here is a list of sites
where you can search job offers
or where you can post an offer yourself. It's a very convenient way
to earn Bitcoins, because many jobs can be completed from home.
Bitcointalk Forum Services Section
is another starting point to look for job listings
that are paid in Bitcoins. Some of the jobs are done easily
within a short amount of time so it's a good way to earn Bitcoins
quickly.
Jobs 4 Bitcoins on reddit has a focus on job listings for programmers. But again, it's not purely
programming and it's definitely worthwile to browse through the different offers.
BitGigs is an online job board with many diverse job offers. The variety is reall amazing so go check it out.
Coinality
has a different approach by not simply listing jobs where you can earn
Bitcoins, but displaying them on a map.
This comes in handy when you are interested in a local job
somewhere near you. The number of listings could be higher but when it
keeps growing it will become more interesting.
XBTFreelancer
is another job board for gigs that are paid in Bitcoin. These jobs are
mostly
also software related. If you have programming
or other IT related skills it is therefore probaly easiest for you to
earn Bitcoins with your experise.
Then of course, you can start your own Bitcoin related business and earn Bitcoins this way. Either as a fully fletched business of goods
or services or you could run a website and place ads from
CoinURL. If you want to start or already have a brick and mortar shop check out the earn Bitcoins
downloads. The flyer shows you, how easy it is to integrate Bitcoins payments in your shop.
8. Earn Bitcoins from gambling - not suitable for everyone 🎰
To be honest, I'm not a big friend of gambling. But it is a way
to earn Bitcoins so in order to make this list complete it needs to be
mentioned here.
However, I won't list any links to gambling sites here. It's fairly
easy to research them if you are interested. And if you clicked on some
of the above
links you probably already came across some Bitcoin gambling sites.
