Earning BitCoins - Websites and the little things

If you are hungry for some BitCoins naturally you'll go google "Earn BitCoins", "Get Free BitCoins". You are going to go through a bunch of websites, some of these sites are genuine enough, but you have to remember to find and read the little things.

There are some websites which tell you to earn BitCoins by watching a video, or by installing this Java Plug-In in order to "mine" with your CPU. You'll think, hell yeah, give me some BitCoins, and quickly register yourself as a user, set your computer up to earn some BitCoins for a few hours, you return and get all excited about all of the BitCoins you've earned. You wish to withdraw them.

Now some websites can be a little greedy. For your own sake you will want to check out their withdraw fee's, and minimum withdraw amount.

If you just want to earn a small amount of BitCoins, and yes, even a small amount of BitCoins can take it's time to be earned. Then when you want to withdraw, you just want your mini amount of BitCoins. But the site denies you to withdraw, because they have a withdraw limit of 1 whole BitCoin. Then when you do, they take 0.1 BitCoin in withdrawal fee - well, that was a waste of time.

I'll be making a post with pros and cons about sites which I've used to earn small amounts of BitCoins.

Mining - How to mine for BitCoins (GUIMiner, Mining Pool)

As explained in my former post, mining helps out other people getting their transaction done, with the use of the resources from your computer.

For mining you can choose between a variety of applications out there to mine with. Personally I use GUIMiner, the newest version didn't really work out for me, so I went in search through a lot of Forums and found out that the version 20110701 generally worked better, and it did for me too.

After downloading and installing. When opened it should look something like this:

*The tab "DeepBit" next to "Default*" is a saved miningprofile I've made.

A short explanation of all the things you see, with an example of mining with a mining pool. 

"Default*"-profile: There's made an profile for you by default, here you can setup your mining profile. It's nice to have the possibility of making different profiles, because if you work on your computer while mining you might want to set the mining a little down, or if you want to let it mine all night while you sleep, you may want to set it as high as possible to get the most out of everything.

Server: When you click here, a list of different servers should appear. (Servers and ports for these are already implemented in the software) 
You will use this if you want to join a mining-pool. You can pick one and then click on the blue link on the right, to get more information about the mining-pool. Different mining-pool's have their own set of rules/fees and such, so it's good to check out before joining.

Eg. at the server DeepBit, you need to get registered on their website with an email and password. Your email is your username, and that email is the same you have to type in, in this program. Along with the same password you registered it with. Remember to add a payment address in order to receive your BitCoins.

Notice: Each servers have their own form of login. This means that your DeepBit-login cannot be used for the other servers. If you want try out different servers, you need to create a new user for each of them on their website.

Device: Here you chose your video card. The video card you chose is the one that is going to do all the mining work for you.

CPU Affinity: "In the old days" most mining was done with the CPU, today it's mostly done with the video card (GPU). Depending on the amount of cores you have the more check boxes will appear. Eg. Quad core: 0 1 2 3. This means you can choose the amount of cores you want to use for mining. 

Extra flags: This is to setup limitations/get the most out of your video card. Forum thread about flags.

Balance: Some servers provide you with an API key. This key can be inserted in the GUIMiner, it enables the balance, which shows how many BitCoins you have earned so far. You insert the API key by going to the bottom of the GUIMiner window, and choose the button in the middle. It will pop-up with a windows where you can put in your API key. 

Start Mining!: As it says - begin to mine!

There is a FAQ about GUIMiner to be found.

Mining - Before you start mining (GPU)

Mining with the use of your video card.

Before you setup your computer for mining, a good thing to do is to check what video card is in your computer. (Why? Because it's nice to know if the juice is worth the squeeze) If you don't remember the name of your video card, and don't want to tear your computer apart, an easy way to check is: 

For Windows PC (The path depends on your Windows OS but it doesn't vary that much)

For almost any Windows OS
Press "Start" -> "Control Panel" -> "Device Manager" -> "Display adapters" 

For Windows 8
Move the pointer into top-left corner -> "Settings" -> "Control Panel" -> "Device Manager" -> "Display adapters" 

Now that you've clicked "Display adapters" open, an icon with the name of your video card should now appear below it.

Check if your video card is listed here. 

(Use CTRL+F and type in the number of your video card to find it quickly in the list. Eg. for NVIDIA GTX285 just type in GTX285.)

If your video card isn't listed, don't give up on all hope just yet!

The list may not be entirely complete, if you think you have a powerful video card, which you use for heavy gaming, I'm quite certain it qualifies. 

Any video card can be used, but the more powerful it is, the faster and easier the BitCoins are earned.

Mining - What is it?

What is Mining?

It's a way to earn BitCoins. You "mine" by using a program such as GUI Miner. The program uses the resources from your computer's video card, and uses these resources to process transactions for people who want to transfer BitCoins to other people. In return of using your resources for making all of this happen, you get BitCoins.

 

Why is it called mining?

Picture yourself mining for a diamond. You have to mine a certain amount of layers to get to the diamond. Each of these layers tells you that the diamond, is in fact a diamond, and not a fake one.

When mining for BitCoins, these layers work as security layers. Making sure that there can't be transferred any counterfeit.

This means that you contribute in verifying all transactions.

A longer but very simple explanation can be found here.

Wallet - Receive BitCoins with BitCoin-qt

How to receive BitCoins with the use of BitCoin-qt.

The first time you open the tab "Receive coins" the array will either be empty, or contain one label with an addresses made default by the program. 

An address looks similar to "1JjjEUyvUpFc3aptAxWiqJG21AH571UuWn". It is used to receive BitCoins. Sort of like a bank account number, you give it to the person who is going to transfer money to you.

I will recommend, in order to keep track on where you get money from, that you make a new address for every firm/person you receive BitCoins from.

If you're going to receive big amounts of BitCoins make several address. Eg. PersonA #1, PersonA #2 etc. 
Just in case somebody gets a sniff about you've received tons of BitCoins, and trakcs down who you are, and tries to hack your wallet on your computer.

There's no harm in making a lot of addresses, as long as you make it easy for yourself to keep track on them by labeling. You can always delete them, but keep in mind, the address still exist, it will still be able to get BitCoins send to it, but nobody is ever going to get it, since it isn't owned by anybody. If you gave that old address to a friend, and he/she transfers BitCoins to it - it's just too bad fella. Remember to inform them about the current address you use to receive their BitCoins.

New Address: Press the button with the green plus sign on it and a new windows will pop-up. Here you can write a label (write a name or anything that makes you know what you use this address for) An address code will automaticly be generated for you, press "Ok" and it will appear in the array.

Typo fail : You just made a new address the receive payment from your friend...Oh no wait, there's typo in the label you made, and your friend is already sending BitCoins to you...and because you are a little CDEO like me, you'll do anything to correct it. You can.
Simply right-click the label, select "Edit" and you can edit the label.
This edit of the label will have no impact on the transfer at all, since the address generated remains the same even though you rename the label.

BitCoin Wallet - Store your BitCoins with BitCoin-qt

How to store your BitCoins when using the software BitCoin-qt as your wallet.

After downloading and installing, when you open it for this first time, it will begin to download "blocks" you will see the process of the download as a green bar in the windows center bottom. This will take some time, depending on how fast they transfer the block to you, and how fast your internet speed is. Some say it took them an entire day, personally it took my 8~ hours of sleep and then it was done, while running on a download/upload speed of 50Mb/10Mb.

The first frame you'll see is the overview window. 

Balance: Your current amount of BitCoins

Unconfirmed: BitCoins you are going to receive, but haven't been confirmed yet. When they confirm they'll be added to your Balance

Recent transactions: All movement (transfered to/transfered from) of your wallet will be listed here with date, time, amount of BitCoins and the sender/receiver.

For more details of transactions ID, address, number of confirmations. Go to the tab "Transactions", select the transactions you want to see details for, right-click and select "Show transaction details".

Number of transaction: Will show a number of all the transactions made for this wallet.

BitCoins - You need a wallet for them

You can't just have all your BitCoins lying around, get them stored in a wallet.

Choose your wallet wisely.

There are several software applications which you can download and use as your wallet. After going around the webs I chose the software BitCoin-qt, which seemed as the most trustworthy program, and has been working like a charm since I got it. As mentioned in my former post, you can make a back up file of your BitCoins (there is a back up option in BitCoin-qt). Then if you have to upgrade your OS you can store the back up on a flash drive.

If you don't like having a software applications that stores your BitCoins directly on your computer, there are other but risky options. There are sites such as instawallet, where you have your wallet in the browser. I admit it is smart to be able to access your BitCoins from any computer, just by using the browser. Keep in mind your BitCoins are then stored in other people's hands, if something fails on their site/server, it is your lost, it is not their responsibility to restore your lost BitCoins.

If you just want to test out how a wallet works and looks like, sure you can just try instawallet.

Once you enter the site instawallet it immediately directs you to a unique generated address just for you (still on their own domain) This unique url-address is the address to access the inside of your wallet, in here you can receive and transfer BitCoins.

Keep two important things in mind:

Save the url/bookmark it.
The reason it's important to bookmark/write down the url-address is because, if you loose it, you don't have any chance of getting back into that wallet. So if you stored BitCoins in it, you can't ever access or claim them. Any one can say: "Oh hello instawallet.org, I made a wallet on your site, and I had like 50 BitCoins, could you give me the url-address?" Nobody can see it is truly yours/who it belongs to, and therefore anybody can claim it's theirs.

Never share the url/bookmark.
Don't ever give the url-address to anybody. It would be like going to the local library, log into your bank account and then just leave it, while it's still open there, free for anybody to transfer money from your account to themselves.