Small Businesses and Bitcoin

Hello, I'd like to offer my opinion on bitcoin from a unique perspective. I am starting a small business. We made our first ever sale this week! However, I want to start planning ahead strategically when it comes to customer acquisition, so I've decided to investigate bitcoin.

When I first heard of bitcoin, it was an obscure concept that was mostly considered a way for hackers and drug dealers/sellers to transact with each other. However, it has since become apparent that an efficient universal payment system shouldn't just be left to the rogues of the internet. That's where I come in.

I am excited to bring bitcoin payments into the beginnings of my business. This will give me the opportunity to make international transactions incredibly quickly and cheaply. This aspect of the bitcoin system is what makes it tick in an economic sense. It is far better for me to allow bitcoin transactions, rather than credit cards. The fee is paid by the buyer, and he/she can choose what to pay, so it removes the onus of responsibility for that side of things from me. It also protects me from scams resulting from credit card chargebacks, which means I don't have to have as much fear when reaching into less developed markets. This, in turn allows me as a businessman to be more aggressive.

Another handy feature of offering bitcoin transactions as a small business, is that I reach an entire subculture of potential customers and partners who are already excited to support merchants as a vital part of the community. This means that I will have customers that buy from me only because they pay me in bitcoin. This is certainly a strategic decision that will guide the direction my marketing goes, so I'm excited to take the plunge.

There are two areas that still present challenges and unknowns to businesses when dealing in bitcoins. The first, and most important, is the volatility associated with bitcoin. Unfortunately, volatility is fun for gamblers, but not very good for business. The saying in Finance circles goes, "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." Therefore, I have to find a way to keep my bitcoin accounts stable in relation to the currencies that I use for brick and mortar activities (this is still a work in progress).

The second risk is the general discontent that nation-states have with bitcoin. I plan to legally report all income gathered via bitcoin and pay all applicable taxes. However, governments are being proactive about regulating the finance sector to make it hard on bitcoin merchants. If the banks I use wish to discontinue their services because I take nontraditional payment methods, I will have a very messy situation on my hands. However, I have hope that rational regulation can allow legal businesses to use this technology for the good of the economy.

All in all, this is an exciting chapter in my life and I am thrilled to be taking bitcoin along for the ride!

Mining Vs Shares???

Mine vs Share That is the question.  

The mainstream option that most earners choose is to Mine bitcoin with their own hardware.  I don't need to give you a rundown or an explanation of how mining has changed or what difficulty is or what equipment to mine with because there are already far too many other blogs, forum posts, forum replies, IRC rooms, and chat boards where you can even earn Btc, full of people who are immensely helpful.  

Basically if you choose to go with the mainstream route you will be buying either FPGA hardware or ASIC Hardware.  Since BTC difficulty is growing  as what feels like an exponential rate, it makes no sense for new entrants to purchase FPGA hardware as it is currently 10X the cost for the same amount of hashing power that ASICs deliver.  Unfortunately, the only currently available unis that fit the criteria of >5GH equipment are sold by ASICMINER which can cost more than twice as much as competitor's orders*  I left the previous sentence with an asterisk to make the point that the other units available are only pre-orders with the bulk of them not available for receipt or delivery until the next year at minimum.

Furthermore, there are other small issues that need to be carefully monitored as a bitcoin miner:  The temperature of your equipment (too high and it could be possibly a fire hazard or at the very least have an increased rate of hardware errors) the pool work rate and connectivity (I have found that my hardware hash rate is higher than the pool's assigned work rate and have yet to determine what the cause may be -- Update will follow once discovered), and I have found that a mechanism to automatically resume mining upon power failure is essentially necessary to circumvent Human error or Mother nature level mistakes.  

Lately I've determined that there is a common theme in the mining equipment and securities industry:  >5GH hardware  is hard to come by without substantial upfront cost, often in the form of over-inflated block eruptor prices, ASICMINER 10GH/ Blade prices going for 5900 USD when you could instead a spot in line for you to purchase a WHOPPING 300 GH/s of hash power offered by the two smaller units offered by KNC Miner. anticipated for late October or early November and still save yet two hundred dollars.   Many different small and medium sized companies are following the same model premium on "mining shares" that pay a distributed payout of earnings.  I've also seen that many of the cloud hashing options available begin in September.  These offerings include MinerLease (who uses BFL hardware), CloudHashing (hashpower on order), and Pyramining which appears to still be ordering FPGA power in tandem with ASIC power.  

Finally, if you are interested in the idea of a mining contract but want a smaller cost, many individuals will choose to purchase BFL hardware, AVALON Hardware, or KNC hardware as an initial investment where you as a separate private buyer can buy permanent shares on individual mining hardware via a group-buy.  This method may involve cost of electricity and maintenance and is not recommended unless money is not available for purchasing hardware outright.     

If by chance you were reading this looking for financial advice - dont.  I have none to offer as I am not licensed to do so.  For myself though, I prefer wanting to purchase my own hardware as I can control which pools I choose to mine with (or choose to run solo instead with no fees involved).  The reason for this is that dollar for dollar, Mining contracts stack up comparatively to FPGA equipment or ASICMINER equipment,  all of which cost 10X more than ASIC hardware mentioned prior.  The opportunity cost that many will brag about is that these ASIC units that I am recommending may not be available and that it is naive to think they could be available within the promised time-frame as this has been repeatedly shown to be the normal occurrence in the Bitcoin ASIC Hardware industry.

This article was written by Frankenmint.

Reposted from Canarymine.org with permission.

Methods to earn free Bitcoins!

Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency. It was introduced on 3rd January 2009.Bitcoins are being used by a lot of people. Bitcoins are generally mined. They are mined using CPUs or GPUs. But at the moment, mining with home PCs are not profitable. So people are mining with monstrous rigs. Rigs have a lot of GPUs connected to it so that it can mine at amazing speeds. But a lot of people cant afford rigs. Here are the methods to earn Bitcoins for free without mining:

1. CoinChat (The best)

CoinChat is an online chatroom in which people discuss about various things. The members in CoinChat are very friendly and helpful. There are moderators in it who are always ready to help. One can earn anywhere from 0.00002 to 0.002 Bitcoins for a post. One can earn a lot with CoinChat in a short period of time.

Sign up here: http://coinchat.org/r:Aero

2. Bitvisitor

Bitvisitor gives you free Bitcoins for visiting sites. One can earn anywhere from 8 uBTC to 80 uBTC Bitcoins. They payout once you've reached a balance of 100 uBTC.

Bitvisitor: http://www.bitvisitor.com/

3. Faucets

Faucet sites pay about 1 uBTC or more once in every 1 hour or less.

A few Bitcoin Faucet sites:

http://www.bitcoinforest.com/
http://faucet.bitcoin.st/
http://www.landofbitcoin.com/
http://faucet.bitcoinworld.me/

Python Programing Language

What is Python?

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language designed by Guido van Rossum. 

Hello World in Python:

A "Hello World" program just takes a line of code in Python.

Hello World in Python:

print "Hello World"

Best Browsers of 2013

Browser is an application which we use to surf the internet, download files, bookmark sites, etc. Here are the top 5 browsers of 2013:

1. Google Chrome:

Chrome is a fast, safe, easy to use browser. Its interface pretty good. Its the best and most popular browser at the moment. Google Chrome for Windows was released on 2nd September, 2008.

Download Chrome here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.75 Review

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware:

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is an application that scans and removes viruses, malware etc. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is very helpful when you want to keep your computer malware free or to clean a infected computer.

Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware: http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Review:

Interface:  

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware's interface is pretty clean, simple, easy to use and to navigate.