Bitcoin Mining Comes to Florida’s Gold Coast

What if you created a currency that is not controlled by any government or central bank? What if this new currency is controlled by the people and its value determined by them not the US Federal Reserve? What if this currency can be used by anyone, anywhere to purchase anything?

Welcome to the brave new world of “Bitcoin Mining.”

Click on the logo to learn more.

A newly launched Sarasota, Florida headquartered company is offering ordinary citizens the opportunity to get into the world of “Bitcoin Mining.” The company is appropriately named BeAMiner.com. Their website states:

BITCOIN MINING FOR THE MASSES
Be a Miner and earn BitCoin. We have removed the complexity of mining bitcoin by eliminating the barriers of entry. Now anyone can mine BitCoin.

I asked Rich Swier, Jr., the founder and CEO of BeAMiner.com, what does it mean to be a miner? Swier stated, “A miner is a person who contributes processing power to help run the bitcoin system, and in exchange we get paid in bitcoin …  the machines that run the network are very sophisticated and expensive, and the software is complex … and so the common person can’t participate in mining … anyone can have a wallet and accept, buy bitcoin … and use their phone/computer to hold their bitcoin. Being a miner is more like being part of the peoples Federal Reserve.”

Swier explained, “There is real value in being a miner because it takes a ton of processing power to run the network, which is distributed across thousands of machines (peer-to-peer network) … which means real $$$ in hardware, power costs and people’s time. So essentially the value of the bitcoin right now, at least, is built upon the significant investment to build and run the network by people called ‘miners’ … who are the ones with high-end computers processing transactions. As the currency matures, then other factors play a stronger role (e.g. transactions, exchange, merchants accepting, etc) … but right now it’s still early, thus the volatility and risk.”

Who Created the Bitcoin? “It was created by a group of mathematicians in Japan, no entity owns it or runs it … it is a pure peer-to-peer network, much like the Internet itself. I am not a developer, but I am a miner. I have a bunch of machines that support the network. No more than 21 million bitcoins will ever be issued. Currently, 12 million have been issued. A bitcoin can be subdivided to .0000001 and sold.” he said.

The Bitcoin has now almost overtaken gold in value. A single bitcoin currently trades for one thousand two hundred dollars – just shy of an ounce of bullion. RT spoke to Dr Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation about the currency. One advantage, he says, is freedom to spend your money any way you like. Richard Stallman on good things and bad things about Bitcoin:

Bitcoins can become the future of global commerce. What’s in your wallet?

VIDEO: What is Bitcoin? The below video is a short animated introduction to Bitcoin, made possible with donations from the Bitcoin community.

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