It has now been three weeks since I’ve had my BC Wallet, and as of today I have a total of 0.05847316 BTC! ($12.10 based on todays Mt. Gox exchange rate of $207)

It doesn’t seem like much, but when I first started learning about BC it was trading at about $65, so my cache would have been worth about $3.80. Now if my predictions are correct the value of BC will only rise and it has the potential to reach prices of $10,000 by 2025….which would value my little cache at $584. Far Fetched? Not really.

Future Value Calculator – This nice little calculator will help you visualize how the value of BC will rise with relation to the percentage of the world population using it. We all understand BC to be a finite currency; there will only be 21 million BC produced. So as more people adopt crypto-currency over the next several years, the value will rise. We see it today with BC breaking $200 and still climbing.

So when I first set up my wallet I tried to figure out how to start filling it. I soon learned that there are many ways to do this. The first and obvious choice was to mine. I wont go into what mining is all about, there are tons of articles that dedicate themselves to the art of mining. I will say that the initial investment for the proper equipment was cost prohibitive for me.

The other options are to earn Bitcoin or buy them.

Here are a few things I learned about buying: First if you are in the U.S. its not easy to set up an account with one of the exchanges. I tried unsuccessfully to set up an account with Mt Gox . I’m still waiting to see how the exchanges evolve. I may try again in a few weeks with an exchange that is a little more U.S. friendly. So far I’m keeping an eye on Coinbase. If and when I do choose to start buying in earnest I think I’ll go through LocalBitcoins. This site allows buyers and sellers to meet and trade fiat currency for BC within their local community. BUYERS BEWARE: Look for sellers that have positive feedback and good reputations. If you do happen to buy locally, please leave feedback about your buying experience. This will help the community and build good reputations for those that deserve it.

Now a few things I learned about earning Bitcoin: If you compare the rate at which you earn dollars with that at which you earn Bitcoin, you will quickly see that you are getting paid at a rate FAR blow minimum wage… by a factor of thousands! You cannot make a career (yet) doing menial tasks online. However, you can keep your wallet growing by performing some tasks on a daily basis. Take a look at my wallet balance: 0.05847316 BC ($12.10)… of that balance 0.04847316 BC ($10.03) came from performing tasks, mostly watching videos. I hate to use the term “earn” when I describe collecting BC from these sites. I prefer to use the mindset that I’m collecting “interest” for my wallet. I figure since I am my own banker I’ll have to do a little bit of work to keep my BC balance growing on a daily basis; I now have about $10.03 worth of “interest” on a wallet that started with 0.00 balance!

The first site I visit is Bitcoinget. This site has the easiest format for getting started and collecting BC. No registration is required; you only need to have your wallet address ready (copy and paste). Once you have entered the site onto the Home Page, add it to your favorites/bookmarks, this way you wont have to keep entering the wallet address each time you visit the site. Here are a few things I learned about this site: Videos are the easiest tasks to complete. YOU DONT NEED TO WATCH THE WHOLE VIDEO! It is only necessary to watch the first 30 seconds in order to get credit for the video. The current payout for each video is 30uBC. Another thing I learned is that videos will appear and disappear on the task list throughout the day. If no videos are listed just hit your refresh button a couple of times until one pops up. The nice thing about Bitcoinget is that you do not need to enter a captcha each time you refresh the page. You need only enter the captcha when you have watched 30 seconds of a video. Another trick I learned has to do with the task list: There have been times when I open the video task list page and there are 6 videos ready to be watched. After watching the first video and returning back to the video task list sometimes one or two or even all of the other videos have fallen off of the list. My trick is to keep that list open and open each video in a separate tab or window (right click), watch the video then close that window/tab and go back to the original open list to the next video. This little trick has allowed me to vastly increase the number of videos I can watch. You may have noticed that there is a task list on this site. My opinion is that the tasks are not worth the effort unless it pays more than 120uBC for a given task. Most of the tasks are not worth it. HOWEVER, every now and they have tasks that are very easy and pay out well. A recent example was a quick and simple survey that asked a few questions about Thanksgiving foods and traditions, that was worth 200uBC. Another good task involved coding statements made by British politicos into either economic or social categories and was worth 600uBC per task. Bitcoinget seems to have the highest payments and are relatively fast. usually within 24 hours.

Another site I visit is called Bitvisitor. This site will pay out for visiting certain sites for at least 5 minutes. The payout starts out at about 120uBC for the first site visit, then it will steadily decrease with every visit. So the first visit may be 120uBC, then 96uBC, then 45uBC, and so on. I will typically go about 6 visits deep then stop until the next day. Bitvisitor does not pay out a whole lot but it does pay out FAST. You can expect payment the same day you paid your visits.

Cointube is another site that pays for watching videos. They pay 60uBC per view which is probably the highest for a video site, HOWEVER, the videos here are few and far between. You can refresh your page until a video appears, but a captcha must be entered each time you refresh the page.

Faucets: What can I say about faucets…. Don’t waste your time on them. There are hundreds of faucets out there and each has its own way of operating. These sites are very similar to site visits however they pay much less.

I hope that some of this information was useful. If you have a suggestion about new sites please leave a comment and share it!