Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: masta on April 10, 2013, 02:33 am

Title: What are Bitcoins?
Post by: masta on April 10, 2013, 02:33 am
I have recently stumpled upon tor and I am still very new to the whole deep web and getting drugs in your mailbox set up.

To be blatant: What are bitcoins? Where do I get them and store them? What is the currency exchange rate for USD to bitcoin? and, What are their sole purpose?

Any help would be appreciated in my search for enlightenment.
Title: Re: What are Bitcoins?
Post by: styossarian on April 10, 2013, 03:52 am
>What are bitcoins?
arbitrary units of value.

>Where do I get them
you can either exchange goods, services, or other currency for them, or you can "mine" them by setting up your computer to constantly verify other transactions, which, over time, generates more coins for the bitcoin economy (the actual mechanics are slightly more complicated)

>and store them?
you may hear that bitcoins are stored in "wallets", but this is just a metaphor. in actuality, bitcoins are stored in a giant record of every single bitcoin transaction in the history of bitcoin called the block chain, which is distributed P2P so that all bitcoin users have a continuously updated copy of it which they verify between each other. there is even a web site where you can browse the block chain, and it even has a thing where it shows live transactions as they happen. each transaction record ties a bitcoin to a public key. this key is used as an "address". the "wallet" is really just the private key that matches the public key and makes it possible to sign a transaction to prove it is authorized. you can either store the wallet file (private key) on your own computer, or you can use one of many online wallet services that do this for you. since you can generate as many key pairs as you want, you can have an arbitrary number of wallets. many programs exist for managing wallets on your computer, there are apps to store wallets on mobile devices, bitcoin exchanges will provide wallets which they deposit or withdraw bitcoin into/from when you convert between bitcoin and other curency, SR creates wallets for your account to use when you purchase items from vendors.

(note: if you are confused by terms such as "public key" and "private key", go read the wikipedia article about public key cryptography. then go post in the newbie pgp thread)

>What is the currency exchange rate for USD to bitcoin?
i haven't checked in a few days but it's in the $150-$170 range. possibly higher. when i bought my coins last year, they were only $11 each. for the first year of bitcoin, they were under $1. in 2011, the price quickly rose to a peak of $30 in June, then a number of wallets/exchanges got hacked and the price fell to a few $ in a matter of days.

>and, What are their sole purpose?
to facilitate commerce. which is the purpose of all currency. what makes bitcoin unique is that, like fiat currency (virtually all government-issued currency) it has no intrinsic value (or even physical representation), but because it is completely decentralized it has no regulating agency that controls how much it is worth.

also a note about bitcoin anonymity: while your wallet's "address" (public key) does not intrinsically contain any identifying information, that doesn't necessarily make bitcoin an anonymous system. in fact, since all transactions are public, anyone who knows your address will be able to see all the transactions you send or receive. so if you have a wallet that you make public (say, for a "legitimate" business--there are very many that accept bitcoin--or if you are wikileaks or some other organization that collects bitcoin donations) and then you transfer money from that wallet directly to another wallet that you intend to use anonymously, and then from there you spend them for things you don't want (certain) people to know about, it can be very simple (for trained professionals) to figure out the connections just by analyzing the transaction graphs (there was a paper published about this, it's available online). SR's way to counter this is to automatically create a whole bunch of single-use wallets and make lots of very small transactions between them and other wallets before transferring the funds to the receiving party--essentially a very sophisticated form of money laundering. still, with enough resources, it is theoretically possible to trace the relationships between seemingly-anonymous wallets, because after all, EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION MADE IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF BITCOIN IS PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE.

(disclaimer: everything in this post is off the top of my head. i did a term paper on bitcoin last year, but i am in no way an expert on the subject. there is a pretty good wiki at bitcoin.it and also several sites that promote the bitcoin economy which would have more information.)
Title: Re: What are Bitcoins?
Post by: kidd0 on April 10, 2013, 04:15 am
where can i find the silk road website? :-)
Title: Re: What are Bitcoins?
Post by: Stealth Kr00zer on April 10, 2013, 04:33 am
Styossarian's answer was pretty good at answering your questions for a basic understanding. Except BTC are at $232 USD right now. The high today was $240, and the weighted average is $218. SR  uses the weighted average, since BTC can be volatile. (The low today was $180)

Now...STOP!!!! Do more research. Don't go around asking random people for information you can get yourself. THAT IS HOW YOU GET SCAMMED!!!! It sounds like you know you need to learn more, which is a good thing. Read the FAQ on SR, and check out bitcoin.it if you want to learn more about bitcoin. Don't visit that site now. You shouldn't even trust me that the site is legit. Don't click any links outside SR, and don't visit clearnet over tor. Assume any site or service mentioned is a scam until you've verified it yourself. If you do, you will find bitcoin.it has more than you would ever want to know about bitcoin.

You should also think about security. I use a very stripped down FreeBSD operating system that I installed on a USB. It connects to the internet and does some packet filtering inside a jail. I tail a few log files to make sure nothing weird is happening. On top of this I open two linux virtual machines. One that connects to the Tor network and takes care of all the routing within Tor. The second one forces all traffic through the first VM, and is where I actually do my browsing. The VMs are isolated from the base system, and everything disappears when I shut down. The USB is encrypted for extra security. My setup is extreme, but not that difficult. At the very least, you should do better than simply running Tor Browser Bundle on top of windows. Disable java, since it is not needed in SR. You do need java to post in this forum, so you should isolate any activity on the forum from activity on SR.

That might sound difficult, or scary, but it's not as bad as it seems. Once you have a good feel for everything, check the forum for vendor reviews, and make a purchase when you feel confident. Buying drugs easily and having them delivered fast is a very attractive idea. Don't let it lead to bad decisions by acting to quickly.

Good luck. This place is great.
Title: Re: What are Bitcoins?
Post by: Stealth Kr00zer on April 10, 2013, 04:38 am
where can i find the silk road website? :-)

YOU ARE GOING TO GET SCAMMED!!!!!

Asking something like that means you have not taken even a short amount of time to find it yourself. It is posted everywhere in the forums, along with several posts about phishing scams. For the sake of answering your question, it is:

silkroadvb5piz3r.onion

DO NOT GO THERE!!!! DO NOT TRUST ME!!!!!

Read the forums and verify it yourself. If you copy and paste that and log in then you are stupid, and you deserve to get scammed. I am not lying, but you need to verify it yourself. You probably need to do a lot more research as well. If you do get scammed though, just remember I WARNED YOU!!!
Title: Re: What are Bitcoins?
Post by: RevDrGod on April 10, 2013, 05:16 am
You can buy coin off site at places like Bitinstant, Bitfloor, Mt. Gox, or you can go to Silk Road and buy from reputable vendors there such as Bit Mogul,  CoinXchnage, sugar momma, and freemoney will deliver
Title: Re: What are Bitcoins?
Post by: styossarian on April 10, 2013, 06:18 pm
just remember the first rule of using the internet: the more personal information a site asks for, the more legit it is. personally i only go to websites that ask for my name, address, date of birth, full social security number, passport number, bank account, driver's license, 3 major credit cards, debit card PIN, mother's maiden name, the name of my first pet, the name of my third-grade teacher, and my private pgp key. why would anyone ask for that if it wasn't to safeguard my identity from people trying to pose as me? and just to make sure it's not too much of a hassle, i keep it all in one big plain-text file that i burned onto 50 mini cd-rs in case (just in case i lose a few) and labeled each one "ST. YOSSARIAN'S IDENTITY INFORMATION BACKUP" so i remember what it is. i try to always keep a copy in the pocket of every single one of my shirts. i'm pretty sure that i can trust the dry cleaners because they smile every time i drop off or pick up the laundry, and besides, their business is doing *really* well so must be honest because otherwise they wouldn't make money.

all dry, scathing satire aside, it's one thing to be a noob to things like pgp or unix or tor, but if you don't know how to safeguard your own information on the internet then you reaaaaally don't belong here. just my ฿0.02 (which I guess would be over $4 right now)

edit: dr. god, how do you buy bitcoin from SR if you can only pay for things with bitcoin on SR? you would have to be "bob" himself to sell something to someone for the SAME EXACT FUCKING THING
Title: Re: What are Bitcoins?
Post by: styossarian on April 10, 2013, 06:34 pm
You should also think about security. I use a very stripped down FreeBSD operating system that I installed on a USB.

*clears throat*
if you really cared about SECURITY, you'd use OPENBSD instead


 ;D

but no, that is also a very good point, although very off-topic. for people who are not unix-savvy, i would recommend tails since it is pre-configured with nice things like a very convenient gpg applet, noscript, virtual keyboard, and it wipes the system memory when you turn it off. also they have a pretty tight release schedule and notify you right away when you have security holes, and they make important things easy for noobs and less-important but useful things easy for experienced linux/unix users.

BUT DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT