Until the taxi driver starts talking to you about bitcoins, you are safe to buy.
This is the part I don’t understand though. Who is “They”? I mean, if I’m a good programmer, what’s to stop me from just coding a bunch of coins into my wallet? And on the other side, when “they” issue more coins, where are they coming from, how are they authorized and who decides who gets them?
These are very interesting questions, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. The guy(s) that invented the idea of bitcoins really just invented a program. Once he was good with the system he developed he released the code to the world for everyone to see - open source. This was five years ago. People quickly adopted the notion and started mining. As described above and elsewhere, this is really just dedicating your computing power to help maintain the virtural infrastructure of the bitcoin economy.
It’s the program that determines who gets newly mined bitcoins so there’s no wizard behind the curtain. You can’t issue them yourself because everything is completely transparent. Every bitcoin has a unique identifier and you can trace its entire history. You would have an easier time trying to counterfeit dollars using your inkjet printer.
The idea of bitcoins seems much more complex than it actually is. That’s what fascinates me most about the whole idea - it’s amazingly simple.
Does anyone use bitcoin? My go-to poker site started pushing deposits/withdrawals on bitcoin with restrictions on using regular withdrawals without bitcoin. The non-bitcoin withdrawals were already odd as they would overnight/FedEx me a check from a canadian holding company (different company each time, random names), which my bank sent to risk mgt dept each time (and because it was an international check), taking 2-3 weeks to clear. It took me a couple of hours to figure this out yesterday. I finally made a bitcoin transaction, but was wondering what you use for withdrawal? I signed up for Coinbase and withdraw is not currently an option. How easy is it to convert to cash?
I guess I could save bitcoin, but the concept is foreign to me. I would prefer to use bitcoin as a medium and link it to cash.
No one uses bitcoin?
a friend of mine put 5% of his net worth to bitcoin when the price was around $300 to 400 last year. he was asking me for advice when it hit $1000, naturally i told him i wouldnt even buy it at $300. his dad told me they were going to keep it until it hits 2k. naturally i laughed and said best of luck (you dumb fuck). they were unsophisticated investors, and the reason why they were cheering it on is because they had a bitcoin mining operation so i suspect a bit of a conflict on their end. anyways, now they are sitting on $1.2m profit and they already locked their principal investment by selling that portion. DAFUQ!!
^ Seems like your rich friend can afford to take such risks.
#FreeCvM
Way back in the day, when bitcoins were going for under $1, one of my buddies was hitting up everyone he knew for $1k to build a mining rig. I passed cause it sounded shady and he dropped the idea cause no one would lend it to him and enough people convinced him it was a bad idea.
Thats gotta hurt him. Likely would have sold them long ago to buy a pizza or something, but holding on to a few would be nice. I owned like 25 coins at one point to buy some drugs on silk road when they were like $15 bucks a piece. Had like 2 left sitting in a wallet when the price jumped to 250 or so (back in 2013/2014 not positive) and was thrilled. Spent it all on more drugs, but those drugs were my free bitcoin drugs and thus much better. I like to think I would have held on to some, but tbh I probably would have lost the password to my bitcoin wallet and they would be gone anyway.
can you actually convert bitcoins to cash these days?
yeah, he’s pretty sore over it, about the money and no one having confidence in his call. He’s had a lot of hard times in life, would have been so cool to see him make it big, even if I wasn’t the one to fund it 
thats a shame, i dont know anyone involved in bitcoin that early, would be really neat to have known about it in those days. I follow it from a distance as i find the idea of it pretty interesting but dont bother investing/mining and anything at this time is so advanced you need a ton of capital to mine
Yea pretty easily, coinbase and some other sites let you set up with you bank account and can usually get approved in a day or so. Once you link you bank account you can buy/sell as you please (although bank account settlement times seem to be pretty large. You can pay a 3% fee and use a credit card to get your bitcoin instantly if time is of the essence. Its A LOT easier than back when i got involved and you had to use all these shady payment processors like Dwolla