Tfw want to mine bitcoin

>tfw want to mine bitcoin
>tfw dont have money
>tfw dont have the sheer hardware required to mine

is there any good way i can get bitcoin that doesn't involve mining, I want to buy a decent computer

Pic unrelated, but this is hopefully a nice board

>tfw I don't even know where to start.

are coins just a meme?

i was hoping that I'd be able to use my regular shitty laptop and get a little bit of coin, I can't find any good guides on getting coin without mining, that dont look like a scam

;-;

plz Veeky Forums anons help me

Captcha: select all images with money

You wont make more than the cost of electricity unless you have custom hardware and know exactly what you're doing.

Misread.. idk maybe do work and ask to get paid. Idk how you can have no money so ill assume you have some.. learn poker and play on betcoin.ag

I have a decent pc, so mining wouldn't be that bad for me.

A guide on how to mine or where to buy coins would be nice Veeky Forums anons.

I have a few thousand to invest in what could be the currency of the future.

seconded, a general guide for bitcoin would be nice

Want a Bitcoin condensed from someone who uses it daily? Say yes and I'll type it up.

No bullshit info

Yes, please.

for sure

Build an online service that takes bitcoin for payment.

Maybe build something that lets other people sell things they create for bitcoin, and take a cut? That way other people do the work, and you just skim a bit off the top.

you idiots that are looking to mine with a PC missed that boat a long time ago..

CPU is shit tier for mining because it's all went GPU based..

GPU is shit tier now because of FPGA and ASIC boxes...

Unless you want to sink thousands into specialized hardware and you have cheap/free electricity, you will not make you money back...

You would be better off taking all that money you would waste in trying to mine and actually buy the damn coins with it and wait for SHTF or 20 years...

Mining bitcoin on your personal computer is not worth it.

Even if you beat electricity costs somehow and have a very high end PC, you will spend a LOT of time and end up making something like 50 cents a day all while stressing your hardware and running your fans at full volume.

The only two actual answers.

So I'll start from the top, simple info.

Bitcoin: Decentralized currency, miners verify transactions, blockchain. I expect you to know this if you're interested. If not, google.

Mining: Verifying transactions by finding blocks which reward you with Bitcoin. The blockchain has a target time to find each block (~10 minutes) which has a "difficulty" that changes to meet this time goal, relative to the amount of hashing power in the network.

Mining used to be profitable on CPUs and GPUs, but now even with the best gaming hardware you still earn minuscule amounts while also wearing out the components. Now things called ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Chips) do mining, and they're built solely around finding blocks, meaning they have superior "hashing" power, or calculations per second.

ASICs do billions, or potentially trillions, of "guesses" per second, and heavily outclass normal hardware, which can do maybe a few hundred thousand each second. They also cost thousands of dollars, for good ones, for the most part. They also suck electricity like your mother sucks dicks on the corner, so they do have fairly expensive operating fees. Cheap electricity is best, so places like China excel with maintaining mining farms.

Those are where miners make their money.

1/? because I have no idea how much space is left.

this exactly. Bitcoin miners don't just have their dell laptops mining during their off hours, they have literal CPUs on motherboards programmed to mine to on separate processors and pool all coin fragments in the same place/wallet.

Do you understand the concept of mining bitcoins and what a 'block' is?
If not, look it up and the come back OP

okay I said CPUs but now these ASIC boxes are the new shit. Basically, hardware to mine bitcoin is constantly improving and updating and whatever you thought you could mine on is likely obsolete

Thank you user. I appreciate the time you put into the response.

Currently mining is out of the equation then.

If I were to outright buy coin(s), would I see profit in the near future? i.e six months

Blocks currently award miners 12.5 BTC per block, so you receive something like $9k if you find a block. This, however, is a challenging feat, considering the size of the network. This is where "pools" come in.

Pools are groups of miners that work together to find blocks, and the rewards are distributed based on the amount of power you put in when it comes to mining. Put in 1%, get 1% of the reward, and so on. These pools are massive, however, so it is unlikely you will hit 1% percentiles unless you make this your business.

That's mining in a nutshell. Difficult to get into without a lot of starting capital and cheap electricity.

Now, exchanges.

There are a few "good" ones, BTC-E, Bitfinex (which was recently hacked but is on the road to recovery) and Bitstamp make up a majority of the exchange marketshare. Some "periphary" exchanges, like Coinbase, exist, but they have weirder values and different volumes, so not necessarily good. The first three are like "Alpha" stock exchanges, Coinbase is Beta, and so on.

The first three are where I recommend online purchases, but physical transactions to exist.

LocalBitcoins is a website that is like a craigslist for Bitcoin, full of gloryholes but none of them are real. The good news is, if you get a decent response from the person you're buying from, chances are they're legit, just make sure to meet in a public space and if they say no, fuck that shit.

That's most of what you asked, if you have more questions just ask.

Yeah. Antminer S7's or whatever are the newest good boxes from what I've heard, but development looks like it is slowing (at least for public markets) so you might see the divide between boxes start to taper off.

Moore's law looks like it has burned through ASIC development in the public eye, but no guarantee. I don't follow it closely enough.

See As for profit, that depends on the market. It's in a weird place because it isn't going down yet and it is pushing highs not seen since back after the fall from $1,200, so it's a crapshoot right now to be honest. It's not necessarily a bad investment, but there are a ton of risks involved and the market loves to fuck my investments here and there.

Understand the risks, if anything I would recommend day trading them so you can avoid any major losses, assuming you know what you're doing.

Man, that's a ton of info.

You shed some light on exchanges, which I was on edge about. I had no idea that Coinbase was a "beta" exchange.

Do you have a preference on a wallet?

Blockchain.info if you're new to wallets, do everything they say and make sure it's all secure. Get a desktop wallet eventually if you think you can keep it safe. Coinbase is sending signals it's about to be fucked by the IRS so I'm fully avoiding it now, got my stuff out a while ago anyways.

For desktop, Core or Electrum, however you really have to see what is still being updated now. I don't use one (and I should probably) but I hear of updates being stopped on some wallet every few weeks. Bitcoin.org has a decent list, google them from there.

As for Coinbase being a "Beta" exchange, that's more my opinion but it probably aligns with what others say. It's values vary anywhere between $5 and $30 from the average of Alpha exchanges and the volumes seem to be noticeably smaller.

I do some exchanges on what could be called a Gamma exchange, very small volume and very weird pricing. Only worth it because not American, and it isn't too shitty with the B/S spread.

You're an unsung hero my friend. All of this info to help a stranger.

The process of buying would be
>Create btc-e account
>Link wallet
>Buy coins
>Coins are in my wallet?

Is it really that easy? And what about selling in the future?

Essentially, but it's more
>BTC-E Account
>add juicy shekels
>buy
>withdraw to wallet
Literally that easy. Just make the details are right and don't rush anything.

Coins are in your wallet after about 30 minutes, that's the downside of the blockchain. Transaction confirmations are a bitch when it comes to time, but it's 100% secure. Same for outgoing transactions, but again, it depends on the block rate.

Also, read up on fees. They mean a lot when it comes to the speed of transaction confirmations.

-

For selling, it's like how you bought them, just in reverse.
>Send coins to exchange address
>Sell
>See shekels
>Withdraw shekels to PayPal, Wire Transfer, whatever they offer.

Might be slightly different than that, but it's basically the same thing.

Again, attention to the details.

Fuck I should specify exchange addresses and wallet addresses.

Wallet addresses are like your blockchain.info wallet, which can change (but the previous addresses will always send money to your account, never someone else's) or the address in your core client.

Exchange addresses are like wallets assigned to your account, those rarely change and incoming coins must be sent there for them to be registered as yours.

>is there any good way i can get bitcoin that doesn't involve mining, I want to buy a decent computer
You could buy them on coinbase.
You could accept it as payment for goods or services.
You could autistically collect scraps of pennies from faucets and then gamble them on altcoins.