What is Bitcoin? and How do you mine it? Well, this video will go over Bitcoin mining and show you how to set up Bitcoin Mining Software on your computer. Bitcoin is a digital currency, which is supported by a P2P network of computers across the internet that act as servers to process the financial transactions of this currency. Some believe Bitcoin is a Scam, or Ponzi scheme, but once one understands the concept of Bitcoin, it is clear that it is not. While the uses for Bitcoin are virtually infinite (paying for goods, services, or money laundering, gambling and drug smuggling) it's structure remains concrete and open source. However, the VALUE of each Bitcoin is disputable. In theory, Bitcoin becomes harder and harder to mine, which means it takes more and more energy (electricity for your computer/"mining rig" to run) to process Bitcoin and solve "Blocks" of data. Therefore, the price of Bitcoin may be related to the price of energy and the cost of maintaining this network. While it is easy to assert that there will be additional computers added to the network daily, which would ease the work load on the initial nodes, one can only speculate that the price of Bitcoin MUST increase over time. Especially when power costs in the foreseeable future will be rising.
Currently, only 21,000,000 Bitcoins can be created, but that I guarantee will rise, as many are hoarding the coins and there just simply wont be enough to go around and not enough work, or transaction data, for the increasing number of miners out there.
Specialized computers and "Mining Rigs" are becoming available from companies such as Butterfly Labs and others, which harness ASIC technology. ASIC means application-specific integrated circuit- so these devices are engineered to mine Bitcoin and only mine Bitcoin. This creates an extremely powerful, and efficient machine, over 100x times more efficient than current setups. These machines are said to be able to mine Bitcoin up to 50 GH/s (if that means anything to you, but it's A LOT) extremely efficiently! More efficient than any desktop computer rig. None of these super computer miners have been shipped/received and it is still extremely uncertain whether these companies are scamming people or not. (I wouldn't PRE-order a $3,000 machine promising me all the money in the world, but many are)
SO - If these machines come to market, they will truly dominate all others and render most other PC's/Rigs worthless. Anyways, enjoy the video!