Bitcoins

I recently became interested in bitcoins. Bitcoin is an experimental, decentralized, digital currency. If you have bitcoins you can buy stuff with it. If you don't have any you can trade dollars for it, or you can try prospecting for it. This blog post doesn't intend to explain the how and why of Bitcoin. There are plenty of places on the web to read about it. I'd recommend starting here or here. Rather, I thought I'd share my experiences with it.

I first heard of bitcoins sometime last year, but I didn't give it much thought. Then in March of this year I heard that they were trading for about $40 which was nearly four times what they were worth when I first heard of them. Not even a month later, I learned that they were trading at around $90. This information aroused the interest of the gambler speculator venture capitalist in me. I didn't yet know where to get bitcoins, or how to keep them, but I knew I wanted some.

Fortunately my son is a bit of a bitcoin SME. He has been monitoring them for some time, and is the one who first brought them to my attention. After advising me that Bitcoin was indeed experimental and cautioning me against investing any money that I couldn't afford to lose completely, he agreed to acquire some for me and keep it safe until I learned the ins and outs of bitcoin ownership.

So on April 3rd, I became the owner of 7.78528750 bitcoins. I installed a bitcoin wallet on my computer so I could manage and secure my bitcoins. Bitcoin is like cash in a lot of ways, one of which is that if you don't take care to keep it safe, someone might just take it. I installed the Bitcoin Ticker app on my phone so I could check the value of my bitcoins every day. As I watched the trading price of a bitcoin continue to increase, I started wondering how I could get more. I'll tell you about that in episode 2.

[End of episode 1]