There's a digital gold rush sweeping the globe as investors try to cash in on Bitcoin, the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency. Getting involved yourself is easier—and riskier—than you think.
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As with any exchange or speculative market, trading in Bitcoin is a risky venture that could cost you real money—and lots of it. So the most important advice is to proceed with caution. If you're game, though, here's what you need to know to get started.
How Bitcoin Works
Bitcoin is a currency much like any other, albeit digital. It can be saved, spent, invested, and even stolen. The rise of Bitcoin, the most widely circulated cryptocurrency, began in 2009 by someone (or someones) using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. It came to prominence earlier this year when its value suddenly jumped 10-fold from $2 to $266 between February and April, with a peak market valuation of more than $2 billion.
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As a cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is generated through the process of "mining"—essentially using your computer's processing power to solve complex algorithms called "blocks." You earn around 50 Bitcoins once a block has been decrypted. The catch? Depending on how powerful your CPU is, solving a single block can take a year or more. Another means of obtaining Bitcoin is to simply buy it, exchanging physical currency for digital at a Bitcoin exchange like Mt. Gox or Bitstamp, or through a service like BitInstant.
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How Bitcoin Exchanges Operate
The simple answer is: just like physical currency exchanges. You're essentially buying one currency with another. The relative value of a nation's physical currency is a reflection of the country's economic and financial health, especially since we moved off of the gold standard. The U.S. dollar, for example, is worth more than that of the Mexican peso due to the discrepancies between the two countries' economies—therefore you can buy lots of pesos for very few dollars (the dollars being relatively more valuable).
The same holds true for Bitcoin, except that its value comes not from an industrial economic base but from the work performed by your computer. That means it can be traded like a commodity, no different than pork bellies or Florida oranges.
That said, exchanges like Mt. Gox act as intermediaries for currency transactions, converting wealth from Bitcoin to US dollars to other national currencies, back to dollars or Bitcoin. And that's how you make money. By exploiting the constantly shifting relative values of various currencies, savvy investors can make a tidy sum simply from moving money around these markets, in a process known as arbitrage. But they can lose it just as easily.
How to Become a Player in the Bitcoin Market
So, even knowing the risks involved you still want to foray into the Bitcoin Market. There are a number of ways of doing so, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Mine It: The easiest—but slowest—way into Bitcoin is to mine it. Set up a dedicated computer to do nothing but decrypt Bitcoin blocks, install some Bitcoin-mining software and let it do its thing. Again, doing so on a mid-range desktop could take upwards of a year or more to fully decrypt a single block. That's not going to be worth the time or effort.
If you want your coins faster, it's going to cost you; purpose-built mining rigs start around a few thousand, like the $2,400 128 GHs Bitcoin Miner from Advance Mining Technology, and only go up from there. You can also build your own rig, however mining cards such as the Monarch BPU 300 C from Butterfly Labs aren't much cheaper.
Basically, mining Bitcoin has gotten to the point that it's almost impossible to recoup your investment. So maybe you're better off not going it alone.
Gang Up: You can also join a mining pool. These Internet-connected computer clusters break the work of a block into pieces that are shared among the group. Once the block is decrypted, the resulting Bitcoin is doled out according to how much work your rig contributed. There are a number of variations to this basic model, however, depending on how the pool is set up. Bitcoin.it has an expansive listing of popular mining pools with explanations of how each operates, pays out, and taxes users for their participation.
The level of security among pools also varies greatly, from simply requiring a BTC username to requiring a 2-Step Google Authenticator code before paying out. Luckily, given the anonymous nature of Bitcoin, you generally won't have to include any personable, stealable, information. Still, money and complete strangers can be a particularly combustible situation.
Play the Markets: The fastest—but riskiest—method is to go straight to the markets. So, say, for Mt. Gox, the reputed "world's oldest and largest Bitcoin exchange," you first have to sign up, create a user name and then respond to the confirmation your email verifying your address.
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