Bitcoin wallet syncing with network
My second Popforms assignment told me to free-write for 5 minutes, but I think I can do a little better.
First experience with bitcoins
I’d like to talk about how I got started with bitcoins a couple of months ago. The first time I heard about bitcoins, they were trading at just around $2. It seemed like an awesome idea, I quickly set up a wallet and a miner to start generating them. I mined a couple of them and read through the protocol documentation and code. Then I completely forgot about them, since at the time there were no applications or uses other than circle-drooling about them at meetups.
Big mistake
The next time I looked, they were trading at $1000 a piece. Unfortunately, by that time I lost my digital wallet, and along with it the chance to use the balance for a luxury month-long vacation to East Asia. I’m pretty sure many have experienced a similar face-palm moment. One interesting point to mention, is that when a bitcoin wallet is lost, whatever balance was on it is unrecoverable, that chunk of currency being forever lost and taken out of the maximum of 21 million coins that can exist (based on the protocol).
Getting re-started
A couple of months ago, I gave it another try. The last big crash just happened and the price was down to ~$500 a pop, so I bought in. The easiest way I found to do this was to register with Coinbase. They are a web-based wallet which fully manages whatever bitcoins you own, and allows you to receive and send coins anywhere you want. My first big qualm was that the security of my money was guaranteed by a startup, and given the frequent and recent bitcoin thefts and hacks, I was not fully confidence that one day everything doesn’t go poof. My other concern was their verification process. They required a multitude of bank accounts, credit cards, and address verification in order to let me purchase a small amount of coin. Wasn’t the idea that it was an anonymous currency? Sounds more like they have an integrated API with the NSA and IRS.
