Bitcoin for donations?

[FrankBuss]

Dave, do you accept Bitcoin for donations, too? Unlike Paypal, it is available in any country with Internet access, the donators can be anonymous if they like, and there are no fees for the sender and receiver (well, a donator should give a small amount per transaction to the miners for running the network, but it is not required). You can even create a QR code with a bitcoin address, and then it is a one-click with a bitcoin wallet application on a mobile phone for people to give you money. But it is a bit volatile, if you want to convert it to fiat money.

[Spikee]

He could use bitpay to process the money directly to AUD bank account, they only take 1%.

[EEVblog]

I keep hearing about Bitcoin, but really don't have much clue.
Is it as easy as simply signing up and putting a donation link on the website?

[newtond]

It is simple as you said to get the donations. It´s not simple to convert bitcoins in to actual currency. It´s an unregulated trade market so anything goes...

[Bored@Work]

I keep hearing about Bitcoin, but really don't have much clue.
Is it as easy as simply signing up and putting a donation link on the website?

No, no central signing up. You need a bitcoin client, aka wallet. That you download from the Internet, wherever you find one. Or if you like it even more shady, have someone run an online version for you on a web site.

The wallet is what you use to transfer bitcons, and what keeps your received bitcoins. You need to guard it, this includes the computer it runs on, like your first born. But unfortunately it needs to have Internet access. A bitcoin client comes with a bitcoin "address". A butt ugly string of characters looking random. That address is what you post. For convenience you can also post it as a QR code.

To get the stuff converted into real money you need to trade your bitcons with some bitcoin exchange of your choice. All the exchanges are apparently unregulated and are run by fine, upstanding gentlemen *cough* *cough*.

[EEVblog]

To get the stuff converted into real money you need to trade your bitcons with some bitcoin exchange of your choice. All the exchanges are apparently unregulated and are run by fine, upstanding gentlemen *cough* *cough*.

Sounds safe as houses! 

[Bored@Work]

To get the stuff converted into real money you need to trade your bitcons with some bitcoin exchange of your choice. All the exchanges are apparently unregulated and are run by fine, upstanding gentlemen *cough* *cough*.

Sounds safe as houses! 

It is perfectly fine. Recent events are just one big government conspiracy 

[Noize]

Is this true?

http://rt.com/usa/bitcoin-exchange-seized-crackdown-begins-334/

[Nermash]

Yep, US Gestapo does not like bt transfers funding various criminal activites. Hard cash only!

[SeanB]

Why do you think they went in and took out A certain sock puppet they made, he wanted to sell in Euros.........

[FrankBuss]

Is this true?

http://rt.com/usa/bitcoin-exchange-seized-crackdown-begins-334/

Well, it is a bit exaggerated. The problem is, that Dwolla is a service provider at Mt. Gox, who does the transfer between bitcoin and USD. "unlicensed money transmitting business" in the article is better explained in this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/05/15/the-feds-are-cracking-down-on-mt-gox-not-on-bitcoin/ which has a link to the official warrant PDF file, too. Dwolla didn't register properly as a money transmitter with the Treasury Department, but they do work as a money transmitter (see page 4 of the PDF).

And the quote from Senator Chuck Schumer is just hilarious: "Literally, it allows buyers and users to sell illegal drugs online, including heroin, cocaine, and meth, and users do sell by hiding their identity through a program that makes them virtually untraceable". That's right, but so does paper money. And looks like you don't have to use Mt. Gox, in Australia a Google search shows http://www.bitinnovate.com , but I don't know this service. Can't be much shadier than Mt. Gox

I keep hearing about Bitcoin, but really don't have much clue.
Is it as easy as simply signing up and putting a donation link on the website?

Yes. As answered by Spikee, you can use Bitpay. There are even car dealers who use this service:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1blys0/overland_park_jeep_dodge_chrysler_ram_now/
It's as easy as setting up an account at Bitpay and registering an AUD bank account with it. They give you a bitcoin address, which you can post on your website. If someone transmits bitcoins to this address, it will be converted to AUD by Bitpay and transfered to your bank account (minus 1% fee).

If you want to own your own bitcoin, like paper money in a real life wallet, maybe to try paying something with it (for example Worpress and Reddit accepts it), then you could do what Bored@Work advised. You could either use a local client on your PC, like the official Bitcoin Qt client from http://bitcoin.org , which needs 16 GB harddisk space because it needs to download all transaction in the bitcoin network (which initially needs some hours). With this client you can create your own bitcoin address, which you post on your website. When someone transfers money to it, you'll see it in the client. Your wallet can be password protected and can be backuped anywhere (it's 128 kB on my PC).

Or you could use a webservice. A nice one is http://blockchain.info/wallet/ The advantage is that it is easier to use. The disadvantage is, that it is an external provider, so it could be shut down by government, in contrast to your own wallet on your PC. They would need to censor all internet transfers worldwide to prohibit bitcoin. Currently there are thousands of miners worldwide (that's the people you create new bitcoins and who are needed to do bitcoin transactions on the network), with a computing capacity of more than 1 exaflop: http://www.kurzweilai.net/bitcoin-network-speed-8-times-faster-than-top-500-supercomputers-combined

BTW: you can even print your own bitcoin money, instead of using just boring Bitcoin wallet data backups: http://www.bitaddress.org

[olsenn]

Bitcoin is more of a collector's currency at the moment; only really used to buy drugs on the Silk Road marketplace, and occasionally some T-shirts etc. The concept behind bitcoins is more appealing than bitcoins themselves.

Bitcoins are "mined", just like gold is mined from rocks. However, this process involves brute forcing trillions of possible hashes until a successful one is found... like scratching lottery tickets. Due to the time and electricity costs in maintaining the computers/FPGAs/ASICs used to do this, there is a certain minimum value of a bitcoin which represents how much it costs on average to actually find a bitcoin. Once found, these bitcoins are stored in an online wallet, and they may be transferred from one wallet to another via a secure peer-to-peer (bittorrent) network.

What is most loved as well as most hated about bitcoins is that they cannot be taxed, traced, or regulated, and there is no central authority that manages the transactions who can confirm that person X transferred N number of bitcoins to person Y in violation of treaty Z.

[EEVblog]

Bitcoins are "mined", just like gold is mined from rocks. However, this process involves brute forcing trillions of possible hashes until a successful one is found... like scratching lottery tickets. Due to the time and electricity costs in maintaining the computers/FPGAs/ASICs used to do this, there is a certain minimum value of a bitcoin which represents how much it costs on average to actually find a bitcoin. Once found, these bitcoins are stored in an online wallet, and they may be transferred from one wallet to another via a secure peer-to-peer (bittorrent) network.

Ah, the penny (bitcoin) just dropped.
I thought this "mining" business was just hackers/enthusiasts attempting to steal/acquire/find bitcoins in some way, but it's an actual integral part of the system that essentially establishes the value. So even the person who invented the concept has the same chance of getting bitcoins as everyone else.
Makes sense now.

Anyhow, I now have a bitcoin account and wallet you can donate to if that floats your boat:
1KgAGM3BPP6tCAYaVX4trELx3vUTmg4C4x

[FrankBuss]

Ah, the penny (bitcoin) just dropped.
I thought this "mining" business was just hackers/enthusiasts attempting to steal/acquire/find bitcoins in some way, but it's an actual integral part of the system that essentially establishes the value. So even the person who invented the concept has the same chance of getting bitcoins as everyone else.
Makes sense now.

Right, and the 1 exaflop computing capacity is really impressive. But it is not really that much floating point operations, because bitcoin mining needs only integer math, and there are special ASIC rigs sold, which mines bitcoins very effectively. But the algorithm is fixed at 25 bitcoins per minute, so this is the reason for the race for computing power. The more computing power someone has, the higher is the probability that he/she (or mining pool) mines new bitcoins.

Anyhow, I now have a bitcoin account and wallet you can donate to if that floats your boat:
1KgAGM3BPP6tCAYaVX4trELx3vUTmg4C4x

Nice. You already got some bitcoins:
https://blockchain.info/address/1KgAGM3BPP6tCAYaVX4trELx3vUTmg4C4x
Keep in mind that all transactions for one bitcoin address are public. Can't be tracked back easily, but anyone can see how much you got. That's the reason why some merchants uses individual addresses for each customer or even for each transaction.

[justanothercanuck]

Can someone tell me why the world should even care about bitcoins?  I can't pay my bills with them, nor can I use them to buy a newspaper, and they're a waste of electricity to generate. 

[ddavidebor]

It's an interesting experiment

[tom66]

Pay anyone, anywhere, even if certain world govt's or companies don't like it?
Lower transaction fees than PayPal etc.?

[FrankBuss]

I think money like bitcoin is the future. Bitcoin's a dollar bill, with a teleporter built in (to quote Dan Kaminsky: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/lets-cut-through-the-bitcoin-hype/ ). More and more people use it and it is possible to live just from it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/05/09/25-things-i-learned-about-bitcoin-from-living-on-it-for-a-week/ And no government can dictate, that you can't withdraw money from ATMs anymore and that you have to give away 60% of your money to rescue some banks, as seen in the Cyprus crisis. And finally there is no central authority which can print bitcoin to make it less worth.

That said, still an experiment and if a government decides that it is illegal, they can't do anything to your money, but they could sueing companies (in their country) who uses it in public. Time will tell if anarchic peer-to-peer money is better than controlled fiat money.

[ejeffrey]

Due to the time and electricity costs in maintaining the computers/FPGAs/ASICs used to do this, there is a certain minimum value of a bitcoin which represents how much it costs on average to actually find a bitcoin.

This sets a maximum value, not a minimum value.  i.e., if I want to exchange dollars for bitcoin, I would should never pay more than it would cost me to mine them.  Like all fiat currencies there is no minimum value, as the hash values have no intrinsic value (i.e., they cannot be turned back into computational cycles).

The cost of mining does contribute to the value: it creates a scarcity which is necessary but not sufficient to establish a non-zero value -- lots of things take money to produce and have no value.