by Tamara Pitelen
Are bitcoins the future of money or are they a bit of a con? Tamara Pitelen tries them out for size.
I’ve been hearing a lot about bitcoin lately. Apparently this is the currency of the future. Fast forward a decade or two and currencies like the euro and swiss franc will be history, we’ll all be earning and spending bitcoins. That’s the theory from what I can gather… but I’m not convinced so far.
What are bitcoins? The first decentralised digital currency, the pundits say. Essentially, they are digital coins you can send and received via the internet into and out of your online bitcoin wallet.
Bitcoin cheerleaders say it’s a new kind of money and ‘the biggest opportunity for innovation that the world has seen since the industrial revolution. An idea whose time has come!’
It all sounds great but how do you earn and spend these bitcoins? I figured the best way to understand bitcoins is to use them. So, to find out what it was all about, I first downloaded the software at www.weusecoins.com to create my online bitcoin wallet. This also gave me a bitcoin address, which is: 1JfhhT1PAW8quKCt4qbbvg61nfS54Y4NVx. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
Ok, I’m ready to spend but my bitcoin bank account is empty, which begs the question, how do you earn bitcoins?
One way you can earn them is by watching videos at www.cointube.tv which is where I watched someone called Chef Ricardo making home-made Jamaican-style vegetarian pizza. Chef Ricardo’s video was 10 minutes 51 seconds long. I don’t think Chef Ricardo is really a chef. He’s a guy who’s making a pizza in his kitchen using ingredients out of a jar. Frankly, life is too short to watch this stuff.
Worse, despite the website promising to pay me 20 uBTC* for stealing that 11 minutes of my life, the money did not turn up in my Bitcoin Wallet.
I went to several other websites that claimed to offer ways to earn bitcoins but for one reason or another, none of them worked. These included: www.iwantfreebitcoins.com, www.coinvisitor.com, www.bitcrate.com, www.coinad.com, www.netlookup.se... There are hundreds more websites that claim to give ‘free’ bitcoins in return for doing things like filling in surveys, downloading software or Facebook apps, staying on a website page for three minutes, or watching videos but in my experience it just never worked out to be that easy. For example, I started filling in a survey at www.abitback.com but a few pages into the survey – at the nationality question – the survey suddenly stopped and I was basically told I didn’t fit the brief of the people whose details were desired. At other websites, I was told ‘this offer is not available in your country’.
During this afternoon of experimentation, I earned BTC 0.000008 for viewing a website page for one minute at www.earnfreebitcoins.com. So I watched that page a few more times until I’d racked up the mighty total of 0.000012. Next, at www.bitcoin4you.net, I earned BTC 0.000028 for looking at a website page for three minutes.
In the end, after an afternoon’s work, I’d had earned the princely sum of BTC 0.00004. What can you buy with that? One of the online stores that accept bitcoins is UK-based www.somethinggeeky.com where a Mr Zombie geek mug sells for £8.99. I’d need BTC 0.13 to buy that mug since £1 is worth about BTC 0.01. Unfortunately, my BTC 0.0004 is worth less than one pence.
Worse, it turns out the bitcoin network won’t relay transactions that have a payment of less than BTC 0.01 unless you pay a transaction fee of at least BTC 0.0001 (that's 100 uBTC) per kilobyte. So if I earned 200 uBTC, I’d have to pay a fee of 400 uBTC just to send it somewhere! In other words, the rewards of my afternoon’s toil would be spent on transaction fees.
So far, my verdict of bitcoin is ‘a bit of a con’. Am I missing something crucial about this ‘money of the future?’ Tell me where I’m going wrong! Email me at tamara@cpifinancial.net
*1 mBtc is Btc 0.001
1 uBtc is Btc 0.000001
http://www.cpifinancial.net/blog/post/22566/tried-and-tested-bitcoin-for-beginners
Are bitcoins the future of money or are they a bit of a con? Tamara Pitelen tries them out for size.
I’ve been hearing a lot about bitcoin lately. Apparently this is the currency of the future. Fast forward a decade or two and currencies like the euro and swiss franc will be history, we’ll all be earning and spending bitcoins. That’s the theory from what I can gather… but I’m not convinced so far.
What are bitcoins? The first decentralised digital currency, the pundits say. Essentially, they are digital coins you can send and received via the internet into and out of your online bitcoin wallet.
Bitcoin cheerleaders say it’s a new kind of money and ‘the biggest opportunity for innovation that the world has seen since the industrial revolution. An idea whose time has come!’
It all sounds great but how do you earn and spend these bitcoins? I figured the best way to understand bitcoins is to use them. So, to find out what it was all about, I first downloaded the software at www.weusecoins.com to create my online bitcoin wallet. This also gave me a bitcoin address, which is: 1JfhhT1PAW8quKCt4qbbvg61nfS54Y4NVx. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
Ok, I’m ready to spend but my bitcoin bank account is empty, which begs the question, how do you earn bitcoins?
One way you can earn them is by watching videos at www.cointube.tv which is where I watched someone called Chef Ricardo making home-made Jamaican-style vegetarian pizza. Chef Ricardo’s video was 10 minutes 51 seconds long. I don’t think Chef Ricardo is really a chef. He’s a guy who’s making a pizza in his kitchen using ingredients out of a jar. Frankly, life is too short to watch this stuff.
Worse, despite the website promising to pay me 20 uBTC* for stealing that 11 minutes of my life, the money did not turn up in my Bitcoin Wallet.
I went to several other websites that claimed to offer ways to earn bitcoins but for one reason or another, none of them worked. These included: www.iwantfreebitcoins.com, www.coinvisitor.com, www.bitcrate.com, www.coinad.com, www.netlookup.se... There are hundreds more websites that claim to give ‘free’ bitcoins in return for doing things like filling in surveys, downloading software or Facebook apps, staying on a website page for three minutes, or watching videos but in my experience it just never worked out to be that easy. For example, I started filling in a survey at www.abitback.com but a few pages into the survey – at the nationality question – the survey suddenly stopped and I was basically told I didn’t fit the brief of the people whose details were desired. At other websites, I was told ‘this offer is not available in your country’.
During this afternoon of experimentation, I earned BTC 0.000008 for viewing a website page for one minute at www.earnfreebitcoins.com. So I watched that page a few more times until I’d racked up the mighty total of 0.000012. Next, at www.bitcoin4you.net, I earned BTC 0.000028 for looking at a website page for three minutes.
In the end, after an afternoon’s work, I’d had earned the princely sum of BTC 0.00004. What can you buy with that? One of the online stores that accept bitcoins is UK-based www.somethinggeeky.com where a Mr Zombie geek mug sells for £8.99. I’d need BTC 0.13 to buy that mug since £1 is worth about BTC 0.01. Unfortunately, my BTC 0.0004 is worth less than one pence.
Worse, it turns out the bitcoin network won’t relay transactions that have a payment of less than BTC 0.01 unless you pay a transaction fee of at least BTC 0.0001 (that's 100 uBTC) per kilobyte. So if I earned 200 uBTC, I’d have to pay a fee of 400 uBTC just to send it somewhere! In other words, the rewards of my afternoon’s toil would be spent on transaction fees.
So far, my verdict of bitcoin is ‘a bit of a con’. Am I missing something crucial about this ‘money of the future?’ Tell me where I’m going wrong! Email me at tamara@cpifinancial.net
*1 mBtc is Btc 0.001
1 uBtc is Btc 0.000001
http://www.cpifinancial.net/blog/post/22566/tried-and-tested-bitcoin-for-beginners
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