What are BitCoins

What are BitCoins?

Well, the easiest way to explain it, is that it is an anonymous currency.
We see that all the time with BitCoins. That does not gives us enough information to understand them, or even use them.

So what really is a BitCoin?
Well, a BitCoin is a coin, that is almost completely anonymous. You have no name, you have no traces, you have nothing to know who is who in the BitCoin world. BitCoins usually consist of a long 30+ character wallet address. The wallet address is the way BitCoins are sent and received. You wallet is something only you have, and no one else can have. Your wallet is a once and a life time item. If you were to have a wallet with one coin in it, clear off your computer, and reinstall your BitCoin wallet, you would never have it again. BitCoins are almost %100 anonymous. There is no login, or signup. You are given an address and that is that.

But, lets get more into what BitCoin is and how you can set it up.

First you will want to go to BitCoin.org

You will want to download the latest BitCoin wallet from the link given on the homepage. It will almost always link to a third part site such as source forge. This is %100 normal.

You will want to double click the file that they gave you to open up.

You will then install it to wherever you would like. If you don’t know where, just hit next.

It will then ask you to choose a start menu folder.

Choose one, if you don’t know what this is, just hit install.

Then hit next. It should prompt you to run BitCoin, so allow it to do so.

It will most likely start in your dock.

Double click in the icon.

It should open up your wallet. If this is your first time, the wallet will have to sync up with their network. The network is a peer to peer network. So, you will download blocks from someone, most likely BitCoins servers. Nothing bad can happen, no one can edit the files, so it is okay to download them. Its always good to have your wallet open and downloading the newest blocks

Here are ways to navigate through your wallet. If you have BitCoins, and would like to send them to someone, go to the send coins tab.
You will input their wallet ID, label them (keep them in your address book for future payments), and then enter the amount you would like to send.

There are three different types of BitCoin currency. They all add up the same amount of USD, but have different meanings.

If you would like to receive coins, you can go ahead and copy the address that they gave you.
If you want to make a new address for the specific transaction, or transactions, go ahead and hit the new address button.

This can be useful for keeping you anonymous. Tracking your BitCoins and where you get them from. You may want to keep your donations on one address, and personal coins on another. They are always in the same wallet, but the address is just a way of getting them sent to you

It will then make your address, and alphabetize them too. While I was making a new wallet for this tutorial, the client stopped responding. The BitCoin client isn’t the most stable thing out there right now. This is pretty normal for BitCoin, don’t worry though, all your coins are safe in your wallet.

Next, you have the transaction tab.
The transaction tab well, shows all your transactions. It shows what wallet ID your received them with. It doesn’t show you the sender, it shows you the amount you received, and the wallet you received it with. Or, the wallet you sent it to, and the amount you sent. BitCoins cannot be refunded. Once BitCoins are sent, you can say goodbye to them If you happen to get scammed with them, you can never re recover them.

Then you have the address book tab

This goes back to the sending tab where you have the label area.

This is so you can keep your payments, or friends in order. Warning: Not all address stay the same. It is highly recommended that you ask the person for their address every time before you send a payment. Some people get a new address for every payment and drop the old one. Be sure to stay safe!

Lastly you have the export tab, not the export tab is your wallet. It brings open a save tab. As I said above, you and only you have your wallet. If you happen to clear off your computer you will never have it again. But, here is your wallet. If you ever clear off your computer, have a hard drive failure, or just want to take it to a new computer here is your solution. It saves your wallet, and allows you to open it in another place. This can be useful, and highly dangerous. You wouldn’t want to misplace it, or let someone else have it. I would suggest keeping it on a flash drive that only you use. You wouldn’t want any cloud sharing services to open your files and steal your wallet. Always keep a backup in multiple spots.

But, is there more than this lame client? Can I keep my coins somewhere safer, and easier to manage. Actually yes!

One of the best ways (I think), is to keep them in an online BitCoin bank. This is pretty much a BitCoin wallet, that only you log into. I highly recommend https://blockchain.info. for their features, and high security measures

Go on their website, and hit wallet to sign up.

Go ahead, and hit start new wallet.

Your alias is kind of like a username. This makes it easier to find your wallet when logging in. You would hit wallet, then type in your alias, or identifier. If you don’t give yourself an Alias, you will have to remember you BitCoin wallet ID. You can do that for top anonymity. You password is just so you can log in, it is required.
You can have a password between 10 and 255 characters. If you want to make sure your wallet can most likely only be signed into by you. Write all your passwords into one big password.
Such as, FreedomHackerhackfreedoms
I don’t use any of those as passwords, but you can just put multiple passwords into one for top assurance. Warning: Do not lose this. They keep nothing other than BitCoins. They crunch all their data, so if you lose your wallet or password, you can never recover your coins.

If you did not add an identifier, this is what you get, a long encrypted identifier.
Go ahead and hit open wallet.

Feel free to set up any of the following things on the side. BitCoins don’t always have to be anonymous, so feel free to add SMS verification, and many other things. No one else can get that information unless the log into your account. So keep anonymous, and use a very very strong password.

This is what you should see when you log in. If you want others knowing you use BitCoin, feel free to tweet it out for some free coins.

The wallet works the same way as the BitCoin client, but is much faster, and easier to use.

Again, with the import export button. If you would like to import your home wallet and have your address book, and transactions then import it. Or if you want your online wallet to be your home wallet do so. If neither, just send the coins to the online wallet if you want to feel safer.

On this site you can send through email, SMS, or Facebook. You can link this BitCoin address with almost everything you want, or can keep it fully anonymous.
If you would like to make sure you payment can not be traces, use the anonymous tab. It will send your payment through multiple address, mix up the hash, then get it to the receiver. This is recommended to be very safe when completing transactions.

You can also make yourself an anonymous wallet that does the same when receiving money. The wallet will expire in X amount of days, unless told otherwise.

As you can see, I keep many address for many different things. One is to keep transactions for my website.

If you would like to see how serious the website is on security check their Anonymity page here https://blockchain.info/wallet/anonymity
If you would like to check anyone’s address (whether they use the site or not) type https://blockchain.info/address/ then out the address, after /address/

If you want to learn how to get free BitCoins click https://freedomhacker.net/free-bitcoins/
If you would like to donate to me or test blockchain out
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