Get your hands on some Bitcoin (sometimes for free)

Bitcoin seems to be making the headlines again with the the exchange rate of nearly $1500:1BTC *.Additionally there has been a lot published on Blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin- but I’ll cover that in another blog. Having been asked a few times about how to buy Bitcoin I thought I’d give you a quick overview.

First of all you will need a Bitcoin wallet to store your stash. The easiest way to get started is to use a hosted wallet such as Coinbase* or Blockchain.info

This will store your Bitcoins and have facilities to receive and pay out.

Now you need to get some Bitcoins to put in your wallet.

Buying Bitcoin

The quickest way is to buy some. If you have a Blockchain.info or Coinbase* wallet you can do this after logging in and you can pay for them either by credit card or bank transfer. Alternatively, you can but from Local Bitcoins – this is a local marketplace for buyers and sellers of Bitcoin.

Mining Bitcoin

This is the traditional way of getting your hands on Bitcoin. The simplest way is to use a consortium such as Genesis Mining. Here you can buy a share of the mining operations and as soon as you have accrued a certain amount it is paid straight to your wallet. When you buy enter this code fl4R29 and you’ll get a 3% discount. You can also mine other coins such as Ether and Darkcoin.

How about some Bitcoin for free?

You will find many places that will offer to make you a fortune in Bitcoin – the majority are scams, the old adage ‘if it looks too good to be true, then it is’ is well worth remembering. But there are some sites that are genuine, although none will make your fortune – they will make you a few pence a week if you are persistent enough – but it’s a fun way to put your toe in the water. Here are a couple we have tried and confirmed that they do do what they say on the tin:

Moon Bitcoin : You can claim some Satoshi (1 Satoshi = 0.00000001 BTC) every 5 minutes. It increases while you don’t claim, but the rate decreases the longer you leave it. They make their money from adverts, so there are lots of adverts on the site. You also have to do a Google Captcha each time you claim – that can get decidedly irritating, but we can see why they do it. How rich will you get? Let’s say you are really keen and claim every 5 minutes for about 10 hours a day – you’ll pick up around 3,000 Satoshi a day + bonuses (see below), so lets say 3,500 or 24,500 a week … and that is worth about £0.21 ($0.26) at today’s exchange rate.

This can increase through bonuses that are applied – there is the daily loyalty bonus: you 1% extra for every consecutive day that you make a claim up to 100% – but miss a day and that goes back to the start. The referral bonus, for introducing another customer; an Offer bonus for taking part in surveys or buying something; and a Mystery bonus which is a random bonus added to each claim.

Free Bitcoin : this one is a bit more fun. Here you get to roll the ‘dice’ (which you can do every hour) and the value you roll will determine how many satoshi you win. The number of satoshi is linked to the dollar value of Bitcoin so it does fluctuate (a good way to keep an eye on the BTC exchange rate). The largest prize is worth $200 and the smaller prizes are a fixed percentage of that. On top of this every time you roll get tickets in the weekly lottery and reward points you can trade for bonuses. On top of this you can bet your winnings on the Hi-Lo game where you can choose the odds you play for. They publish the code they use so you can see it’s fair.

Please note that this is for information only and not a recommendation to buy or sell Bitcoin.

* May 3, 2017 16:27 $1481.00 CoinBase
* if you use this link we will both get $10 worth of digital coins when you have bought $100 worth