Fun With Bitcoin For Beginners: Part Two

The whole Bitcoin (BTC from here on) seems to be moving into a higher gear.  There have been some a few developments that might very well be of interest.

zerohedge.com has been ablaze with comments, pro and con re BTC.  Despite hyper-bloviating from one breathless BTC fan, it really looks like there is a solid base here for wider BTC acceptance.  Rumor has it (and I have read two accounts, but I cannot confirm they are true though) that China is very interested in becoming King Of Bitcoin.  I do not know if this interest from China is from their government, probably.

***

To learn about Bitcoin (BTC), it helps to play with BTC.  The first hurdle is to get some!  In my last article on BTC, I mentioned that my "Original Donor" gave me some after showing me how to open a wallet (start by downloading "Multibit 0.5.14" software, download Java if prompted (I was), and then go from there).  It is not hard, I was able to do it, and I was terrible with computers in college (1970s)...

But, other than a donation, how do you get more BTC?  The most common way (other than "mining" them, with those specialized ASIC computers) is to buy them from the exchanges (Mt. Gox for example).  BUt, Mt. Gox is now mired in becoming a "bank", as our .gov wants them to operate as a bank (at least in sopme respects, including supervision to prevent money laundering, etc.) because to cash BTC in, they pay by wire transfer, very bank-like...

But, I am exploring two other ways to get BTC, for cash.  I have found a guy who has at least occasional BTC for sale.  I have mailed him some cash, and when he gets it, he will send me BTC.  Over the Internet, straight to my wallet.  Sending CA$H by mail has certain risks of course, and is also inefficient in the time sense, he has to wait to get my cash, I have to wait for then to get my BTC.  At this point that is OK with me though, because I am experimenting with BTC (donating and learning more).

The other way I am looking into finding a "cash market" for BTC is to locate Bitcoin users in my city.  How?  Well, I have talked some of this over with a young computer guy (who did not know about BTC as it turns out, but he is interested now!) who has a group of hacker friends.  In such a group, it is likely that at least some of them will know about BTC.  If so, then we can get a nucleus started re buying and selling BTC.  Quietly.  For cash.

Cash and Bitcoin is a powerful combination.  While I like gold more than the next guy, gold transport (say taking 20 ounces out of the USA on an airline flight, which introduces the Customs reporting requirement as well as the real risk of theft by our very own TSA) has its issues, you can put a near-limitless amount of BTC on a flash-drive.  The only problem is then how do you then get cash (or spend) the BTC you now have "over there".

I am working on that.  Once I have some answers or good ideas, I will let you know.

***

I am in regular email contact with a guy whom I will call "Bitcoin Insider" (B.I. from here on).  He really knows this subject well.

Recently I asked him if BTC was nearing "critical mass", that is, if BTC was ready to storm across the stage and "change everything".  He said not yet, that BTC is gaining momentum as people look into it (people like me) and start using it and spreading the word.  Zero Hedge's recent article (the one that I wrote about in my other BTC article) really caught my attention, but this has not yet gathered worldwide major attention (although I just saw that alternative financial newsletter "The Daily Bell" had an article on BTC...).

Some time ago, I asked him about the mining process and how BTC are made and awarded.  He told me that his computer has to work long and hard until it accomplishes enough work (and he has a pretty good rig IIRC), and then he is awarded 25 Bitcoins.  I imagine that is a LOT of work for 25 BTC (@ some $800 per BTC today, that's $20,000 worth...).

[Ed. Note: I sent a draft of this to B.I. for his review.  He came back at me with an important clarification re mining for BTC]:

This is correct for "solo" mining. In the first two years of
Bitcoin, this is what most people did. Anyone attempting this now
can expect to wait months or years to be lucky to hit the correct
solution to the math problem. It's also possible for them to work
away diligently for 10 years or more and not ever be the first
miner to solve the math problem. It's all luck and statistics. The
greater your hash rate, the more likely you will be rewarded with
the generated coins. If you're never first, you get paid zero. Most
people are now part of a "mining pool" They join their computers
together with hundreds or thousands of others and share in the
generated Bitcoins. If there are 1,000 equally powerful mining
computers and one of them solves the math problem, then the lucky
computer gives the generated Bitcoins to the mining pool owner. The
mining pool owner then splits the proceeds to reward each of the
participants with 0.025 Bitcoins minus a commission of a couple of
percent to the person or group who is running the pool.

I also asked him if each Bitcoin was a "whole unit", that is like a normal coin, one "chunk" (although digital in this case).  Here is his clarification (I deleted part of this paragraph to reflect his clarification):

The "whole unit" starts as the mining reward, currently 25
Bitcoins. Yes, it can be broken into 25 pieces of which each 1.000
Bitcoins then becomes a "whole unit", but there is nothing special
in a single Bitcoin. This differs slightly from a one ounce gold
coin which is clearly a "whole unit" and cannot be divided further
without damaging the specialness of the whole unit.

I then asked B.I. about an idea both the young local computer guy had re setting up a mining rig, perhaps with Butterfly Labs hardware (they have advertised their ASIC computers at Zero Hedge).  Here is part of B.I.'s reply (edited by me, emphasis mine as well):

Inform your computer guy not to deal with Butterfly Labs. They have
failed to deliver for the past year. [...]  Now they won't even
refund any money to customers and they are not happy. He has an
active order placed last week with another company. If they
deliver, I'll let you know. I don't believe the return on
investment is positive anymore for mining. I think it's much better
to just buy Bitcoins directly and hope that they go up in price.
There's already a nuclear reactor's power output powering all the
miners right now with no need to add more miners to it. Of course
all existing miners say these things to try to keep out fresh new
competition.

So, Butterfly Labs, with prominent ads and all, may not deliver on the gear they sell.  Also note his comment on the "...nuclear reactor's power output powering all the miners right now...".  I have read that it looks like fast chips (and LOTS of them) AND cheap electricity will be the only economical ways of mining BTC in the near future.

I also asked B.I. what he could find out about a recent transaction or two I have done, as well as other transactions from my wallet that I showed at the top of my last article.  First is me setting up a question or two, then his response.  I have edited both my questions to him and his replies back.  Note that I invited him to poke around to see what he could find out, as part of the whole payment process is public record.  How much?  That I do not know well, I have an idea or two, but I need to learn more.

Me to B.I.:

OK, the below information is for my new wallet [...]:

Bitcoin wallet number:  1 [...] 2iB  

My name for above:  [...] 332

I created another wallet as well.

Since you know more about BTC than anyone else I know, I invite you to dig around the blockchain (etc.) to see if you can see things, and then let me know!

If you let me know, I can add that info as well to my upcoming article. I will call you "Bitcoin Insider" unless you object or suggest otherwise [...]

Part of B.I.'s response:

Here is what I learned about your address through public
information:

From https://blockchain.info/address/ [...] have 0.05 Bitcoins in your wallet at this address. They came
from the address 1P11zA1GaJcyjc7oVt1jVQvWcPoW12sv5R, which I know
to be your original wallet. This means that anyone who can tie your
..v5R wallet to you personally, now also knows that you are
associated with ..2iB but not necessarily that you own it. It could
belong to someone in China you sent a payment to. If you want to
break this linkage to be more anonymous, you should create a new
address and send the Bitcoins through some kind of anonymous mixing
service into the fresh new address. The easiest way to do this is
at a gambling site (usually the dice type) on bets that pay out
slightly less than 100%.

Note what he was able to find out.  Not all that many people could do that (and I gave him some info to start with, he even had my original wallet address from earlier communications).  More from B.I.:

Your transaction of transferring these 0.05 Bitcoins was
incorporated into Block Number [...] and you paid a fee of 0.0001
BTC to the miner that registered this block. The miner is a member
of the BTC Guild as part of a mining pool. The miner broadcast this
block from IP Address [...] which appears to be from
[...] using internet service
provider Cox Communications. Your transaction has an identity
number of
7e [...] cb which is kind of like the 6 digit verification number my bank gives
me when I make an online bill payment.

You've made 19 transactions with your ..v5R wallet address and
there are currently 0.0644 BTC remaining at this address. [...] you may have more Bitcoins
in your wallet (that I can't easily see, but I could trace all the
transactions manually to determine) because your wallet software
will be adding up the sum of the Bitcoins in all the addresses
inside your wallet and putting only the total sum on the screen to
show you.

[...] 332 is invisible and will only exist inside your wallet
unless you tell people about it. Sure, you can call me Bitcoin
Insider. Sounds kind of like Watergate's Deep Throat.

Note a few things:

1)  Transaction costs of 0.0001 BTC for a transfer of 0.05 BTC (0.2%, very low)!

2)  There seems to be a "BTC Guild"...

3)  He was able to get info on my receipts of BTC and payments (donations at this point) from/in my original wallet relatively easily, and if I had had more activity with this wallet that he did not know about, well, he could find that too.  It is important that we all understand what is available to the (informed) public, and what is not.

4)  NOT mentioning your wallet publicly apparently gives you more cover, more anonymity.

I would like to thank my virtual friend "Bitcoin Insider" for his kind help in allowing me to unravel more about BTC.  I hope to get to meet him someday (he is not located in my city).

***

Over the past few days I have been running fiatleak.com's streaming service (one picture was Zero Hedge's own screen shot that I copied from them).  As I ran the service for a while, I would notice occasional patterns.  Sometimes (late afternoon, US time) there would be big movements (lots of BTC purchases) from the exchanges.  Here is a nice shot I took when a stream of BTC purchases was coming from the US$ (*click* on any image for a better view):

"A Golden Shower on the US Dollar"

fiatleak's first upgrade (since I first visited their site after ZH's article). Note the size of the little circles is roughly equivalent to the size of the BTC being bought at that moment.  Also note that small green writing (horizontal, to the right of some "Bs", this indicates BTC of 1 BTC or larger.

And their latest upgrade (all these changes have been made in the past few days.  Note that the site now shows day/night, where the sun and moon are -- the sun is just west (left of Peru/Bolivia here, the moon is just east of the Philippines).

Here is what happens when China comes out to play!:

The above is fiatleak's newest version (23 Nov 2013).  China's largest BTC transaction that I saw scroll by was for almost 70 BTC ($56,000!).  Remember, fiatleak.com shows ONLY BTC transactions through the exchanges, it does not show mining BTC nor spending BTC...  Note that the total 3635.3 BTC was bought in about 54 and one half minutes (that is a rate of roughly $3,000,000 per HOUR).  Also note that it was late Sat night / early Sunday morning, yet they vastly exceeded BTC transactions through the exchanges.

When China is really rockin', they buy about 1.5 - 2.0 times the USA (although above example shows Chinese buying is much more).  My rough calculations (over various periods over various days) are that China is a bigger player in BTC than the USA, perhaps by 50% - 100%!

***

Here are some interesting links I have picked up over the past few days, I have not had enough time to judge them nor even digest them...:

Rick, proprietor at uscyberlabs.com (and all-around good guy, he commented at my last article, interested parties should check out his site) sent me the below tidbit, I am not sure what exactly this means, but this will interest some of you:

http://getaddr.bitnodes.io/233/

This is the 2nd biggest private- p2p network ever created in the history of the world next to the Internet. Another aspect is the message feature of a transaction, used with a hash you can notaries documents. I mean any web document, word, power point, video, photo of husband cheating on wife, picture of a Twitter Tweet or any web object can now have a Notary digital seal that will live forever in the blockchain. my loco Bitcoin buddy says, the Bitcoin blockchain is the next best thing next to gravity. especially for the financial world....;-}

More links for those interested to check out:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/zyd7t/bitinstant_speaks_at_the_nacha_the_north_american/

http://bitcoinnews.com/post/31752272424/voorhees-brazil-payments-forum

http://bitcointalk.org

btcmiami.com (they will be hosting a big BTC conference in Miami Jan. 25 - 26, 2014)

localbitcoins.com (not as easy to use as I had hoped, so I bailed, may check 'em out again)

btcpost.net/index.php

bitcoinnews.com

coinabul.com and  goldsilverbitcoin.com both claim to take BTC for gold silver.  But, caveat emptor!  I have heard two bad reports re coinabul.  The recent volatile pricing in BTC may keep BTC -- PM deals from actually happening...

I could go on and on with BTC websites, but the above will get almost anyone started.

How's That Obamacare Working Out For You?

By now, many of us have heard that, well, that the website healthcare.gov (the portal to Obamacare and the state exchanges) is not working well.  Click the link and try it, see for yourselves!  I heard to day on the radio that only 27,000 people in America have been able to sign-up for Obamacare (the numbers are disputed).  That is less than 0.1% of Americans, less than one in a thousand!  And of these 27,000 -- very few have paid anything yet.

And those who did put their information up there at healthcare.gov?  I have heard that the site will be a "Hacker's Paradise" with all that yummy information to steal, millions of identities at risk...  Any of you considering signing up at the website, please keep this in mind.

I also heard that enormous "DDOS Attacks" (Distributed Denial Of Service -- mass internet -- attacks, 1000 times the number of "hits" compared to amazon.com's servers) are hitting the site.  I asked the guy who told me this where they were coming from: China.  Imagine that, China is helping to bring down Obamacare, perhaps we should thank the Chinese hackers...

Yesterday I heard that NO ONE in Oregon has been able to even sign up.  A friend of mine less than a  month ago got a letter from major health insurer Aetna informing him that they were dropping his family's insurance...  We were assured (Blue Cross Blue Shield) that we would be kept on, whew!  Our rates went up 16% vs. 2012, and we expect a BIG increase in January.

(All images courtesy of zerohedge.com)

Yes, it is going to hurt.  And it already HAS hurt millions...

Former President Bill Clinton:

When Bill Clinton has to ask someone else not to lie (!), you know something really bad is going on.  And it is bad.

Retiring Senator Kent Conrad (D - North Dakota) said that Obamacare was going to be a "trainwreck".

Current Senator Mary Landrieu (D - Louisiana) is running away from Obamacare as fast as she can.

And they voted for this turkey of a law (and the Supreme Court found it constitutional only after Obama's minions argued that it WAS a tax (the individual mandate penalty), after Obama himself said it was not...  Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D - California, then Speaker of the House, actual quotation differs slightly): "We have to vote for this bill to see what is in it."  The Obamacare bill was nearly 2000 pages long.  Now, counting the regulations that have been issued, we are up to a mighty 20,000 pages!  Do you know what's in there?  The lobbyists do.  The IRS does.

So, let's see.  If any of us decides NOT to be insured, we will be hit with penalties that within a few years will be 2% of our income!  For no insurance!

***

Since I personally have not yet felt the lash of cancelled insurance or been forced to attempt to sign up at the website, I will have to go with articles that appear to be describing the situation as it really is.  But, right before I do, please note that President Obama is now down to a 37% approval rating (recent CBS poll), the lowest George Bush ever got (and Bush was savaged by the media, Obama has been propped-up by the media).

From http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-20/obamacare-shock-one-california-employers-terrifying-true-story:

Our employees share of the premium goes from $7/week for the cheapest plan to $30/week. 95% of my employees were on that plan.  Remember, we used to pay 50% now we pay 91.5% and the premiums still go up that much!!

The  cheapest plan now has a deductible of $6350! Before it was $150. Employees making $9 to $10/hr, have to pay $30/wk and have a $6350 deductible!!! What!!!!

They can't afford that to be sure. Obamacare will kill their propensity to seek medical care. More money for less care? How does that help them?

Here is the craziest part. Employees who qualify for mediCAL (the California version of Medicare), which is most of my employees, will automatically be enrolled in the Federal SNAP program. They cannot opt out. They cannot decline. They will be automatically enrolled in the Federal food stamp program based upon their level of Obamacare qualification. Remember, these people work full time, living in a small town in California. They are not seeking assistance. It all seems like a joke. How can this be the new system?

From http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-20/obamas-success-story-woman-repriced-out-obamacare, whoops (emphasis NOT mine):

Meet Jessica Sanford. Upon the rollout of Obamacare she was 1 of maybe 5 people in the entire nation who was able to access the website and actually sign up through one of the state exchanges. In her case, it was the Washington exchange.

She was so thrilled about her purchase that she wrote a letter to President Barrack Obama expressing her undying gratitude.

Since her letter was quite possibly the only positive letter the Administration received, the President proudly read it aloud during his Obamacare speech on October 21st.

The only problem is that a few days later she was repriced out of Obamacare. So she’s now uninsured again…

The Obama Administration has had some three years to plan the opening of this program.  The website was budgeted at some $93 million, and wound up costing $530 million!  And the ones putting together the website, yes they are Obama cronies.

Yes, Obama cronies.  "Chicago Style" politics.  Corrupt to the core.

***

I wrote in June, 2012 that Obamacare was going to be a disaster.  Voting for Obamacare went strictly along party lines (ALL Democrats voted for it, more recently 39 Democrats in the House voted for a One Year Extension re the Individual Mandate, looks like those 39 are worried...).  But, not even I could predict that just the roll-out of the website would be such a disaster!

Unless it was planned this way.  Majority Leader Harry Reid is on record as saying that Obamacare is just the first step   I have heard various reports that they knew that Obamacare and healthcare.gov were not ready, but rolled it out anyway.

Could it be that Obamacare really was designed to fail, and fail quickly?  And thus lead to "Single Payer" (European-style) health care?  That is what the Democrats have wanted since FDR.  And what Ronald Reagan warned us about in 1961 (thanks, Ryan!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgx9qpCsfX0

Fun With Bitcoin For Beginners

Let me start with this:

1P11zA1GaJcyjc7oVt1jVQvWcPoW12sv5R

(You do not have to send me any money, but feel free if you would like, I would encourage anyone so inclined to send me a really small but unusual amount, say 0.00173 Bitcoin for example and email me the information if you would like, particularly if you would like to mentioned (or not) here at my blog)

That is a genuine Bitcoin wallet, in which you can send me a rough equivalent of money.  At least if you know how.  And in this article I hope to tell all of you just enough to get started on the Bitcoin Trail.

It's a complicated topic, but Bitcoins ("BTC" for short) are a type of digital encrypted currency, this is one part of what deep-thinkers call "money", BTC does serve as a "Medium of Exchange" (one of the three roles of money). Germany in August 2013 (in the wikipedia article referenced below) declared BTC to also be a "Unit of Account" (the second attribute of "money").  No one has yet said that BTC would be the their role of "money ("Store of Value", gold is probably the best Store of Value there is).  BTC's price are extremely volatile, in the past year or two the price per Bitcoin has varied from around $5.00 each to about $365 (now).  So, buying or holding should be viewed as speculative, unless you are doing immediate transactions (buying or selling stuff, donating, etc.) or experimenting with the system (like I am).

Bitcoin is "safe" in one important sense: it is essentially impossible to decrypt (and so, steal) them.  But, BTC are NOT completely anonymous, in the screenshot further below, BTC creation is tracked by country, this is "sort of" public knowledge.

***

Here's a place where you can see how much a Bitcoin is worth, along with some other monetary instruments:

http://ounce.me

I donated 0.01 BTC to this site, although I was unable to put in a screenshot below.  In case YOU want to donate (as I did, hah!), here is their BTC wallet:

1ozMe81f5oUjCbtJUrFNfSHUfrmBGdedo

You should go check the site yourselves, I could not get a useful screenshot, but the site shows several handy (for many of my readers anyway) handy quotations ($-value of BTC, as well as the four US-traded precious metals (Au, Ag, Pt, Pd), crude oil (W Texas Intermediate) and the US 10-Year Bond Yield.  It also shows the price of gold and silver in BTC.

To bad I could not get the screenshot in, it is close to elegant, take a look!

***

Bitcoin was invented in 2008 (at least the concept) by "Satoshi Nakamoto" (they say) and involves a very complicated and hard-to-crack encryption system., reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin.  Wikipedia also had this nice little item re Paul Krugman, who does not like BTC...:

Economist Paul Krugman has been critical of Bitcoin, suggesting that the structure of the currency incentivizes hoarding^[88] and also stating its value from the expectation that others will accept it as payment.^[89] Krugman considers it wasteful to spend real resources, such as electric power, on the creation of Bitcoins.^[90]

I am not a fan of Paul Krugman, in fact I usually "take the other side of the bet" (assume he is lying), so his distaste for BTC might actually be a positive...  Mr. Krugman!  Doesn't printing money use up real resources as well?

***

I was given 0.11 BTC (worth, roughly, $35!) by a guy whom I will call the "Original Donor"or O.D. for short.  He gave them to me, sent to my Bitcoin wallet at the top of this article.  He told me to go forth and "do things" (my words) and then write it up.  This has encouraged me to look into a number of interesting little niches, that technophiles will likely enjoy.  Because BTCs are divisible to eight digits (meaning you can give tiny quantities), 0.11 is more than it sounds.

O.D. also helped me to set up my BTC wallet (account) set up, I went looking for people who would accept a free gift of BTC!  I expected Zero Hedge would be a good hunting ground for Bitcoin recipients, went into the Zero Hedge "Chat Room" and inquired if anyone wanted free BTC.  Within about 15 seconds "qqqqtrader" put his wallet number out, so he (she?) was the first recipient, I sent 0.01 BTC (worth about $3.50).  I wound up giving similar amounts to two others as well as the the lucky "Atm0sphere" who got 0.019, I will get to that in a little while.

1MZoWrZRqmX4Uu1XN6Hsgqk7pA44NnUksM   -- qqqqtrader

13hxDqmZCdWixu2ydAciyVH5CbBtyjQ3Ym   -- WAMBACHUMBA

1FcuSYzb7EZREsBvAmQ298z6DDpxfwQZam   -- OldE_Ant

19GZ1VKUbK6TQYwzqd92ewRuE42rNRF6xo   -- Atm0sphere

(I also sent 0.01 BTC to my O.D. to continue my testing)

All of the above received (except Atm0sphere) received the same 0.01 amount.  The first three received theirs within about 30 seconds or so.  The next evening, Atm0sphere wanted a donation, so I sent him 0.01 as well.  But, this one did not go through in seconds like the others did...  I waited a few minutes, looked at my Multibit Client and tried to see what was going on.  The transaction was not being confirmed.  Ahh.  So, I told (ZH Chat) that I would try again, but with just 0.005 BTC, as my account was (and is) being drained...  Still, the two transactions were hung-up somewhere there in Cyberspace, so after a few more minutes, I tried again, but with 0.004 BTC.  Total: 0.019.  Just then he told me that the BTC had finally landed into his wallet, I then went to my Multibit account, and saw, yes indeed the BTC were transferred OK.

Lesson learned:  If you send out BTC, wait half an hour so before sending any more!

Since then, I have sent BTC (0.01 in each case) to the O.D., as well as to two interesting websites (ounce.me) and the interesting site mentioned recently by Zero Hedge.  Here is a most interesting screenshot that Andrew Hodel sent me of his http://fiatleak.com website (click on the image for a better view, I would strongly encourage everyone to go have a look at fiatleak.com, as when you seem the streaming content, some of what you see below becomes clearer...)::

There is a lot going on the above (again, please go to the site yourself!).  First, note that service shows near-real-time of BTC transactions around the world.  That big green number (+4888.1 BTC = approx. $1,784,000) refers to the amount of BTC sent from when you started looking at it that session (that is, it refreshes the screen from "zero" each time you go).  I would guesstimate that it took perhaps 60 - 90 minutes from when Andrew opened his session until he took that screen shot.

The red letters refer to currency, each is the local one used there.  USD is in US dollars, CNY is Chinese Yuan.  The little red number under USD (561649.48) means that $561,649.48 was converted from dollars into BTC.  In some 60 - 90 minutes...  The little green number under the 561649.48 refers to the number of BTC being generated (here: 1641.93 BTC).  China has even more impressive numbers (again, here): 4,635,429.7 Chinese Yuan (approx. $760,000) with a 2936.02 BTC.  China and the USA are by far the biggest users of BTC, here approximately 93.5% of the world total!

I will mention a three other features of the fiatleak screenshot above.  First, the little orange circles with a "B" in them are Bitcoins being created from local cash (left arc represents the past several seconds of US BTC creation), the two to the right are Chinese, and the one "over Italy" is in the Eurozone. Second, the little gold dots running along just above the currency symbols are BTCs being made.  The higher the little dot, the greater the amount.  If the amount is enough, the vertical green numbers appear, you can see a pair of BTC creations of about 48.5 BTCs ($17,700 each) each towards the left ("under Baja California" and "left of Peru").

I would strongly urge any of you who "do" BTCs to donate to Mr. Hodel, here is his BTC wallet:

1DUtwZkDZTy4ZDNzE7mDZ4r9QRZc2D8kCC

I sent him 0.01 BTC!

***

Results of my own (non-scientific) investigations among acquaintances regarding use of BTC were disappointing.

a)  I asked ALL of my Facebook friends (74) if any of them wanted any free (0.01) BTC.  Results?  0 /74

b)  I asked ALL members of my Joke List (about 52 members) if they wanted the same.  Results: 0 / 52

c)  I asked three members (a friend, an AT&T cellphone store and a Starbucks cashier) if they had even HEARD of BTC.  Results: 0 / 3

d)  I asked ALL members at pmbug.com (a gold-oriented forum-style website, 565 members signed up (so let's call it 250 active members), everyone should check it out as well).  Results: 0 wanted any BTC

So, among those I know (there is a fair amount of duplication in the above), Total:

74 + 52 + 250 = 376 people had their chance to get free money, NONE wanted it.

3 people I talked  with: 0 of them had even heard of BTC...

***

Bitcoin is very technical...

First I had to find a Bitcoin client-side program, my O.D. suggested Multibit 0.5.14, so I went to download it.  The download went fine until my computer then told me I needed to download Java (owned by Oracle now, it is some kind of computer language that can be run on many types of devices).  OK, OK, I downloaded Java as well.

After all of that, Mutlibit privides a desktop icon that allows you to start using BTC immediately (assuming you have any to spend or you can get someone to send you some).  After I was ready. the O.D. sent me the 0.11 BTC and told me to go forth and use them...

And so I have.  I have 0.02 BTC in my wallet.  That may not sound like much (it is worth some $8 if I read correctly this morning), but, I can chop my donations to 0.002 or even much less...

Here is an example of Multibit Raw Transaction Details (from me to "qqqqtrader"):

ab49600e12a0d32f8377d0298d1d9363c0a66049823d7599017831671a419d63:

Seen by 4 peers. Appeared in best chain at height 268931, depth 436, work done 52894100447296009660.
       from 1P11zA1GaJcyjc7oVt1jVQvWcPoW12sv5R / ca95255e10d533385e2d741f52c1c24c5191a82f8ecfb66796b5b933bd7f3fb6:0
       to 1MZoWrZRqmX4Uu1XN6Hsgqk7pA44NnUksM 0.01 BTC
       to 1P11zA1GaJcyjc7oVt1jVQvWcPoW12sv5R 0.0899 BTC Spent by 06f2fd676764a7f139b1d5c78da6aa216ef42acabd63b201197ae186a3e786e1

***

I was asked (by Comment at Zero Hedge) by "Bindar Dundat" if BTC was suitable for investment.

At this point I would respond "No".  There is too little history of BTC and the prices of Bitcoins are hugely volatile.  "Buy BTC at your own risk!"

***

That is enough for one article on Bitcoin.  I will be exploring BTC websites as well as seek out BTC users in my city for more information and maybe to buy some more.  I really need to buy something real, that will be an important test for me (and typical people, not just people who are very knowledgeable about technology).

That will be my next article on Bitcoin...

Your comments and emails to me are extremely welcome!  This is for my education, as well as for those of any of you who would be interested.

Fiesta Criolla!

We celebrated a Peruvian-style "Fiesta Criolla" during the weekend.  A gloomy and rainy Saturday did not appear to much matter to our happy little party (10).

We had visitors in from Peru and Indiana, and they wanted to celebrate!  My wife's two sisters were in town (Lily (left) up from Peru -- she came to Chachapoyas with us, and sister Anita (center) down from Indiana).

"Tres Hermanas"

Red and white are the colors of Peru's flag.

Arrival of local celebrity "Norma G." with her latest beau Jorge (driving).  Her Mercedes is in the shop, and she was not happy about that:

The women attendees (women just come out better in photos than men do, no?).  Note all the yummy Peruvian food all spread out there, mmm...  Juanita U. at left and Norma G. at right:

It was also Anita's husband's birthday!  Happy Birthday, Stan!  That pastry is called a "Pavlova", and has become trendy in Peru.  We bought it from a local patisserie:

A Peruvian-style "Happy Birthday" serenade to Stan, that is Antonio U. playing the guitar, and Cesar in the center:

Yes, there was dancing, but no karaoke (both are popular in Peru).  After all, the party lasted only five hours, shame on us!  We ALL had to dance, most was to Peruvian music and Salsa.  But, almost all the pictures I took do not reflect what dancing is (dynamic)!  Here are Anita and Antonio dancing "Marinera", one of many dance styles from the very diverse country of Peru: