Last time I thought I trusted a site I lost around 1000€ \o/

Bitcoin mining, US based.

Well,what's up with Bitcoins?What are they for?

BitCoins are used as an electronic currency that can be sent anywhere at any time directly from person to person, circumventing the banks and their morality policing and fees and other nonsense.

They tend to have a bad reputation with the uninformed and people who don't take necessary precautions because they're so volatile, can potentially be used for illegal activities, and are fairly easy to lose if you aren't careful with them. The volatility issue seems to be working itself out over time, all currencies can be used for illegal activities, and you should be careful with any money you have, so I don't personally consider these concerns to be much of an issue.

They're probably the only sure way that furries have of doing business without some huge company deciding the art is obscene and refusing to allow transactions, since the use of BitCoin circumvents them almost entirely. The biggest issues are that depending on where you are in the world it can be fairly inconvenient or even difficult to actually obtain any Bitcoins, and that they're not the most user friendly experience. They take a little bit of research to understand properly.

https://bitcoin.org/en/getting-started

Its a scam currency praised by internet libertarians.

It is mostly used for illegal transactions like dark-net drug purchases and the like, where the buyers and sellers dont want there to be any kind of paper-trail that would come from using banks or paypal.

Well,I would not use it for black market or anything bad.

Shocker, that has been done with physical and digital money since it was invented. We should outlaw it.

People can use cash for real-life transactions, but they have to withdraw the cash first and that creates a paper-trail.

You also cant transfer cash money from the comfort and safety of your home, and its a bad idea to send it through the mail... mail a large amount of cash inter-state and you could draw the attention of the FBI, as your illicit activities fall under federal jurisdiction.

the thing with the internet dark arts is that they couldn't care any less that you think it should be illegal, because they are going to do it anyways -and- get away with it

nanny nanny booboo, stick your head in doodoo

I got mine the old fashioned way! Donned a mining hat and a large pickaxe.

Coinbase and Coinbase Exchange, US-based.

Coinbase is safe, but requires jumping through quite a few hoops first for verification. LocalBitcoins (LBC) is an attractive option if you want to deal with other people directly because it offers escrow functionality. It's also faster. Problem is that you have to be careful, and watch out for "too good to be true" deals. There are scammers there.

Bitcoin is a scam

Why do you say that?

Probably because it's true :^)

I see. How so?

Just about every major bitcoin exchange has either been brought down by the FBI for illegal activity or taken the money and run once they got significant holdings.

Bitcoin is essentially people learning the hard way that currency regulations exist for a reason.

This is pretty much the case. Its incredibly easy to get heisted. And if you try to ask for help you basically get laughed at.

Interesting as a concept but for a lot of reasons it doesn't really work out.

Not really? A basic level research can show you that it isn't any more of a scam than traditional money is.

What is a scam are illegitimate businesses starting up around bitcoin, and trying to scam you of your bitcoins for profit. But this happens with any currency, it doesn't make the currency a scam it makes the scam artist a scam. And honestly the scam-artist problem with bitcoin hasn't really been a problem at all for years now. There are so many trusted sources now, some of which have FDIC backing. I get the impression that you might have heard about bitcoin years ago early on, assumed it had problems and then assumed such a thought is still current.

I have nothing to add but some humor!

Don't Understand Bitcoin? This Man Will Mumble An Explanation At You

Attempted mining, but at this point it's not worth the time as each block is so large to complete.

I'm part of a large bitcoin mining conglomerate in the form of Scrypt.cc. You invest Bitcoin and get a small amount of their total processing power allocated to your account. It pays out every ten or so minutes, and has a ROI of about two months, I think it was? In the three or so years I've been using it, I've never really had a problem with it. There have been some minor hiccups (like recently, when their power went out and caused a massive panic and price crash, but everything went back to normal within a fortnight) I will admit, but overall, they've been pretty damn reliable

Stole them.

I mine... mine. >.>

Even with guides, I can't wrap my head around it. The fact that the value fluctuates so much worries me greatly. Plus, I can't really seem to understand what gives this value.

It has value because it takes effort to get them, it's no different to the other currencies (which are also mostly digital)

It actually has been incredibly stable the past 6 months, and is starting to behave more like an actual stock/asset in price:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bit.....zm1g10zm2g25zv

That said until the adoption starts becoming even a quarter of what something like gold or silver or your average stock has in adoption numbers, it is going to be (relatively) easy to move the price up and down if you have a few tens of thousands of dollars to blow, which is why it has been traditionally volatile.

To actually help, I've gotten mine from Coinbase. It is by far the best and most trusted US source for Bitcoins, plus easy as hell to set up.

If you live outside the US, then Bitstamp is trustworthy. There are a few other exchanges/brokers that are trustworthy too, but honestly I don't really know them because I'm from the US (so I only really know about the US ones).

Actually, it appears coinbase has expanded to 25 countries:

https://www.coinbase.com/global

That said the ease of just setting up a bank account and hitting buy might only be something you can do in the US.

UK based here, and we've had good luck with EU-based Bitstamp.

Don't. Don't do bitcoin. It's not necessarily a scam, but events have shown it to be incredibly rickety and barely functional. Maybe in 5-10 years as the people involved actually figure out what the fuck they're doing, it'll be usable. In the meantime, as annoying as it is, you're better off using conventional regulated currency.

Coinbase here, too.
Of course, I've not had the best trading luck!