Here are two interesting articles I stumbled across today that I wanted to share. Enjoy!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/12/03/the-tricky-business-of-taxing-bitcoin/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/03/heres-what-critics-miss-about-bitcoins-long-term-potential/
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
BTCJam Lending Updates
So, I've been on BTCJam.com for a bit over a week now lending out some of my bitcoins and so far it has been a pretty darn positive experience for me; I would very much recommend it! I am planning to update this blog with some of the statistics from my lending so that it may, hopefully, help someone, somewhere.
*Please note, this is not intended to be lending advice. This is all just my personal experience with the site*
So, as of now, I have 16 active loans in which I have invested, I have 6 pending loans and I have 5 repaid loans.
My 16 active loans are a combined .27 BTC - so not a whole ton of money invested on my part. Of those 16, 1 is late; currently by 3 days.
Of my 5 repaid loans, 4 of them have been paid off early. I find this pretty encouraging. From what I can tell of the community most of the people involved take this very seriously which is great. Currently I am sitting at a very pleasant 12.92% return on my loans. Now, I'm no economist or accountant (though I would love to learn more about all that!) I am pretty sure 12.92% return in roughly 2 weeks is a whopping 336% return over the course of a year. (12.92% / 2 = 6.46% per week * 52 weeks = ~336%. Please correct me if this is not actually how this works; but it makes sense in my head!). This number would be even higher if I hadn't invested in a "MtGox Linked" loan which, while it increased the dollar value of my holdings, did reduce my bitcoin holdings. You can read my previous BTCJam posting for more info on the MtGox Linked loans.
My personal goal with my investments has been to get in on pretty much anything that is offering over 4% and I have been investing on average .0139 BTC in each loan. As I get paid back, I have just been rolling my investments over in to new loans. As I get more comfortable with all this I expect that my average investment will probably actually go down to about .01 BTC. I think its a little safer to keep the money spread out a bit more and by spreading my money out it means I will theoretically be getting payments more frequently as well as loans mature on different dates. I have also been investing almost exclusively in 15-60 day loans; however BTCJam allows for loans as long as 1 year. I expect I will also begin investing in some longer maturity loans as time goes on so that I can try and keep up this rate of return.
Here's my list of folks who have paid back on time or early thus far:
Gappie
VictorBC
keknow
Just
The Fabled (1st payment was a day late, but paid off the whole loan at once 3 weeks early)
And investments which may have been a mistake:
Futures (currently 3 days late)
Happy bitcoining (totally a verb)!
www.btcjam.com
*Please note, this is not intended to be lending advice. This is all just my personal experience with the site*
So, as of now, I have 16 active loans in which I have invested, I have 6 pending loans and I have 5 repaid loans.
My 16 active loans are a combined .27 BTC - so not a whole ton of money invested on my part. Of those 16, 1 is late; currently by 3 days.
Of my 5 repaid loans, 4 of them have been paid off early. I find this pretty encouraging. From what I can tell of the community most of the people involved take this very seriously which is great. Currently I am sitting at a very pleasant 12.92% return on my loans. Now, I'm no economist or accountant (though I would love to learn more about all that!) I am pretty sure 12.92% return in roughly 2 weeks is a whopping 336% return over the course of a year. (12.92% / 2 = 6.46% per week * 52 weeks = ~336%. Please correct me if this is not actually how this works; but it makes sense in my head!). This number would be even higher if I hadn't invested in a "MtGox Linked" loan which, while it increased the dollar value of my holdings, did reduce my bitcoin holdings. You can read my previous BTCJam posting for more info on the MtGox Linked loans.
My personal goal with my investments has been to get in on pretty much anything that is offering over 4% and I have been investing on average .0139 BTC in each loan. As I get paid back, I have just been rolling my investments over in to new loans. As I get more comfortable with all this I expect that my average investment will probably actually go down to about .01 BTC. I think its a little safer to keep the money spread out a bit more and by spreading my money out it means I will theoretically be getting payments more frequently as well as loans mature on different dates. I have also been investing almost exclusively in 15-60 day loans; however BTCJam allows for loans as long as 1 year. I expect I will also begin investing in some longer maturity loans as time goes on so that I can try and keep up this rate of return.
Here's my list of folks who have paid back on time or early thus far:
Gappie
VictorBC
keknow
Just
The Fabled (1st payment was a day late, but paid off the whole loan at once 3 weeks early)
And investments which may have been a mistake:
Futures (currently 3 days late)
Happy bitcoining (totally a verb)!
www.btcjam.com
Monday, December 2, 2013
Cointube (Update)
Looks like cointube.tv lowered their payout to 5 uBTC per video watched - probably something to do with the rising value of bitcoins? Still... Sad :(
Friday, November 29, 2013
China is the key to the rapidly rising price of bitcoins?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/buyer-beware-bitcoins-fate-could-231628139.html
Just an interesting article I found which I wanted to pass along. Its true, the price has risen at astonishing speed, especially over the last couple of weeks. Here's hoping that the "Cautious nod" from the Chinese government translates to a continued increase in value!
Just an interesting article I found which I wanted to pass along. Its true, the price has risen at astonishing speed, especially over the last couple of weeks. Here's hoping that the "Cautious nod" from the Chinese government translates to a continued increase in value!
Thursday, November 28, 2013
BTCJam
Alright, its been hectic with the holidays coming up but I will do my best to keep some updates coming. Sorry!
In addition to my other posts I have also been doing some mining out of our apartment and, now that I've earned a bit I realized I needed to do something with my BTC... and thats when I found BTCJam.
www.btcjam.com
The short version: BTCJam is a P2P bitcoin lending site. You invest some BTC (or fractions there of) in loans of your choosing which are listed on the site. All payments are handled through the BTCJam site, so after you create an account you actual send the bitcoins you wish to invest to them, and then do all of the investing in to individual loans through the site. It has a very user friendly interface and so far my experience has been 100% positive.
When users list a loan, they include how much they would like to borrow, the time period for re-payment, and the interest rate they are willing to pay. Each individual investor contributes a fraction of what is being asked - essential crowd-funding bitcoin loans. The borrower will also usually include a note as to what they want to use the loan for. Most of the ones I am seeing are for "reputation building". After you invest in a loan, and are repaid (or not, as sadly some users do default) the expectation is that you will leave feedback about the borrower. Essential, these "reputation building" loans are just to get good feedback, so that the borrower can ask for bigger loans and/or a lower interest rate for future loans.
When searching for loans to invest in there a number of way to filter the results. By Amount @ Interest, Payment Type, % Funded, Loan term, User reputation & BTCJam Rating. I generally use the "% Funded" filter so I can invest in loans that are close to going live; as obviously the sooner the loan is fully funded the sooner I'll receive my payment. Also, its a good way to see what other users think is trustworthy / worth investing in - because those are the ones that get funded the most quickly.
Another quick note, some loans are listed as "MTGox Linked" which means that the value of repayment fluctuates depending on the value of 1btc versus another currency, such as the US Dollar. Given that the price of Bitcoins has been SURGING in a huge way lately its likely that an investment in one of these will result in you receiving fewer bitcoins than you initially invested. However, if the price were to drop, you would receive proportionally more - so its a valuable tool for hedging against price moves.
As of this writing I have invested in 21 loans. 10 of them are still pending (meaning they haven't reached their funding goal), 10 of them are active and 1 has already been repaid. Sadly, my 1 repaid loan was MTGox linked so I ended up losing .009btc; however, in US Dollars, I earned 6% which isn't bad.
I've made a pretty excel spreadsheet for keeping track of my investments. As I get more experience with the BTCJam website I'll keep it updated and maybe share some of my results here - such as good people to loan money to, % of investments which were defaulted on, overall % yield, etc.
I haven't tried borrowing any bitcoins yet through the site as I don't really need them... but I'll probably try that whole part of the system at some point soon and add an update for that as well.
www.btcjam.com
Happy Thanksgiving for those that celebrate it!
In addition to my other posts I have also been doing some mining out of our apartment and, now that I've earned a bit I realized I needed to do something with my BTC... and thats when I found BTCJam.
www.btcjam.com
The short version: BTCJam is a P2P bitcoin lending site. You invest some BTC (or fractions there of) in loans of your choosing which are listed on the site. All payments are handled through the BTCJam site, so after you create an account you actual send the bitcoins you wish to invest to them, and then do all of the investing in to individual loans through the site. It has a very user friendly interface and so far my experience has been 100% positive.
When users list a loan, they include how much they would like to borrow, the time period for re-payment, and the interest rate they are willing to pay. Each individual investor contributes a fraction of what is being asked - essential crowd-funding bitcoin loans. The borrower will also usually include a note as to what they want to use the loan for. Most of the ones I am seeing are for "reputation building". After you invest in a loan, and are repaid (or not, as sadly some users do default) the expectation is that you will leave feedback about the borrower. Essential, these "reputation building" loans are just to get good feedback, so that the borrower can ask for bigger loans and/or a lower interest rate for future loans.
When searching for loans to invest in there a number of way to filter the results. By Amount @ Interest, Payment Type, % Funded, Loan term, User reputation & BTCJam Rating. I generally use the "% Funded" filter so I can invest in loans that are close to going live; as obviously the sooner the loan is fully funded the sooner I'll receive my payment. Also, its a good way to see what other users think is trustworthy / worth investing in - because those are the ones that get funded the most quickly.
Another quick note, some loans are listed as "MTGox Linked" which means that the value of repayment fluctuates depending on the value of 1btc versus another currency, such as the US Dollar. Given that the price of Bitcoins has been SURGING in a huge way lately its likely that an investment in one of these will result in you receiving fewer bitcoins than you initially invested. However, if the price were to drop, you would receive proportionally more - so its a valuable tool for hedging against price moves.
As of this writing I have invested in 21 loans. 10 of them are still pending (meaning they haven't reached their funding goal), 10 of them are active and 1 has already been repaid. Sadly, my 1 repaid loan was MTGox linked so I ended up losing .009btc; however, in US Dollars, I earned 6% which isn't bad.
I've made a pretty excel spreadsheet for keeping track of my investments. As I get more experience with the BTCJam website I'll keep it updated and maybe share some of my results here - such as good people to loan money to, % of investments which were defaulted on, overall % yield, etc.
I haven't tried borrowing any bitcoins yet through the site as I don't really need them... but I'll probably try that whole part of the system at some point soon and add an update for that as well.
www.btcjam.com
Happy Thanksgiving for those that celebrate it!
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Cointube
More free bitcoins!
Check out www.cointube.tv if you want some more easy free bitcoins. On this website just enter your wallet address and watch a video and boom, free BTC. Payout is 20 uBTC per video watched and they pay out once per hours, regardless of the amount. All you have to do is enter a captcha between each video. Usually after watching a few it brings up a message saying they are out of videos and asking you to check back in an hour. Generally speaking this seems to be true and you can make between 60 and 180 Ubtc per hour no sweat. Again, this isn't much in the grand scheme of things but its not bad considering how little work is involved.
Check out www.cointube.tv if you want some more easy free bitcoins. On this website just enter your wallet address and watch a video and boom, free BTC. Payout is 20 uBTC per video watched and they pay out once per hours, regardless of the amount. All you have to do is enter a captcha between each video. Usually after watching a few it brings up a message saying they are out of videos and asking you to check back in an hour. Generally speaking this seems to be true and you can make between 60 and 180 Ubtc per hour no sweat. Again, this isn't much in the grand scheme of things but its not bad considering how little work is involved.
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Bitvisitor (Update)
Looks like Bitvisitor has changed so that they now send payment every 60 uBTC. Sadly, in addition to this, they also seem to have lowered the payout per site visited :(
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Coinbox.me
Another neat and relatively painless way to earn a few fractions of a BTC are through visiting one (or a lot) of the numerous bitcoin faucets out there. Basically, these faucets pay you for visiting the site and entering a captcha & your bitcoin wallet address. I assume that they can afford to do this because the websites tend to be absoloutley plastered in ads - but I haven't yet been able to actually find any in-depth information on them.
While there are a ton of them out there the best I have discovered so far are those associated with coinbox.me (www.coinbox.me). As of these writing there are 18 sites you can visit which pay out .00000030 or .00000050 BTC each. Each site can be used once every 30 minutes. There is also a banner at the top claiming that "more sites and bigger rewarda " are coming soon - both of which I hope are true. When I first started my bitcoin kick each of these sites was paying out .00000500 BTC per visit... Then it went down to .00000250, then .00000100 and now here we are today. I suspect this has something to do with the meteoric rise in the vale of Bitcoins over the past 2 weeks but I again can't say for sure.
The reason I prefer these sites to any of the other faucets I've found is because they are all linked to coinbox. Most faucets won't actually pay you until you reach a certain threshold of BTC earned - in most cases this is .00005500 BTC. Given the low payouts, this can take a lot of visits to achieve. With all the sites connected to coinbox, there is still a minimum payout but it is much faster to reach that point. Hopefully that makes sense?
Bitvisitor (continued)
I just discovered that they have an android app for Bitvisitor and got excited... Until I realized its a pain in the ass. Between sites on bit visit or you are required to enter a captcha. Makes sense, dont have a problem with it. However, on the android version, it doesn't resize correctly so your keyboard covers the captcha text you are supposed to be entering! You can just memorize the few character before pulling up the keyboard of course but still. Color me disappointed!
Bitvisitor
So I stumbled across Bitvisitor (http://www.bitvisitor.com/?ref=1JLE7dhhcUVhnDAkPZ7bEiN6wYDnFPfcvQ) the other day and was pretty skeptical, especially after I didn't receive payment the next day even though I viewed a number of sites through their service. However, since then I have become convinced that it is actually a super easy way to earn a few BTC without doing much work (because I have been paid!)
Basically, bitvisitor takes you to websites that pay for this service - and pays you for sitting with the website open (and theoretically looking at it) for 5 minutes. So far I have earned about .0003 BTC this way (which, at the current exchange rate of $416/BTC is roughly 13 cents). As I mentioned, it isn't much money but given the amount of "work" involved its hard to go wrong there. I have a page open in another tab right now as I write this!
Payouts for each site viewed range from about 9.6 uBTC to 57 uBTC and payouts occur every day, assuming you have reached a minimum of 100 uBTC which is generally pretty easy to do.
There are two annoying things about this site in my opinion. The first is that every time you select "next page" it actually opens a new tab in your browser. Is this a big deal? No, not really, but it is kind of annoying. The second is that there isn't a way to view your current balance - which is actually annoying. I haven't tried keeping track of my page views versus my payments so I am assuming that they are paying my correctly but there isn't a way to be sure. And, there isn't a way to see how much you've earned in a day; for instance, to see if you've crossed the 100 uBTC threshold needed for a payout and if you'll get paid that day.
Overall, this is an easy way to earn a few cents of extra money in my book. If you're new to bitcoin or want to earn some bitcoins on the side or some reasons I can't think of I would recommend Bitvisitor.
http://www.bitvisitor.com/?ref=1JLE7dhhcUVhnDAkPZ7bEiN6wYDnFPfcvQ
Basically, bitvisitor takes you to websites that pay for this service - and pays you for sitting with the website open (and theoretically looking at it) for 5 minutes. So far I have earned about .0003 BTC this way (which, at the current exchange rate of $416/BTC is roughly 13 cents). As I mentioned, it isn't much money but given the amount of "work" involved its hard to go wrong there. I have a page open in another tab right now as I write this!
Payouts for each site viewed range from about 9.6 uBTC to 57 uBTC and payouts occur every day, assuming you have reached a minimum of 100 uBTC which is generally pretty easy to do.
There are two annoying things about this site in my opinion. The first is that every time you select "next page" it actually opens a new tab in your browser. Is this a big deal? No, not really, but it is kind of annoying. The second is that there isn't a way to view your current balance - which is actually annoying. I haven't tried keeping track of my page views versus my payments so I am assuming that they are paying my correctly but there isn't a way to be sure. And, there isn't a way to see how much you've earned in a day; for instance, to see if you've crossed the 100 uBTC threshold needed for a payout and if you'll get paid that day.
Overall, this is an easy way to earn a few cents of extra money in my book. If you're new to bitcoin or want to earn some bitcoins on the side or some reasons I can't think of I would recommend Bitvisitor.
http://www.bitvisitor.com/?ref=1JLE7dhhcUVhnDAkPZ7bEiN6wYDnFPfcvQ
Welcome
Okay so I've written a few random things years ago (that you can view if you look at my old blogs) but this one actually has something of a purpose. I've recently taken a big interest in bitcoins as, despite all the problems that people have pointed out with the system, I find it both fascinating and potentially a big new thing. So, this blog will probably be dedicated as a place to put all of the random bitcoin information I find as I float around the web. Hopefully this information will be useful for other people. I plan on posting links, articles, etc. and hopefully then providing my own views/experience with whatever it is I'm posting. Always happy to answer questions so feel free to post a comment and ask!
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