Welcome

A friend and I would like to offer you a chance to test drive bitcoins to consider their potential. Many of the adverse comments on Zero Hedge appear to come from people who haven’t done much research on bitcoins or actually tried them out. No catch: you are welcome to continue criticizing bitcoins in your Zero Hedge posts if you still aren’t convinced of their merits.

Background

In the early days of bitcoin, Gavin Andresen offered free bitcoins from “The Faucet.” It’s how I obtained my first bitcoins. As an automated delivery system, the Faucet kept getting hacked and had to be turned off. We’re offering something similar, but manually operated.

Free Bitcoins

In the Leave a reply field below, post your Zero Hedge member name and your bitcoin receiving address. If you don’t want to use your member name, just pick something random that you can remember. The current payout of 0.011 was selected to allow several plays of low odds Satoshi Dice (see below).

Donations Requested

Donations to the pool by bitcoin supporters are most welcome. We are just low “Thousandaires” (a cool term used by one of the posters) and have to work in order to buy our gold, silver, lead, wheat and bitcoins. Transparency is assured by using Bitcoin Block Explorer. The size of the pool can be viewed by entering the receiving address 17HjSoTUfMDDXygtq2TdzPyPLoG8FaVE5r into the search window. We initially seeded the pool with 0.40 bitcoins. Amounts above this value were provided by other donors. Once I distribute the bitcoins, anyone can check the addresses posted into the reply field below to confirm that I actually sent all of the bitcoins to the intended recipients.

How To Create A Bitcoin Wallet

There are three types of wallets:

Web based wallets where the blockchain resides on a server. Best for new users and grandparents.

Computer based wallets which download the blockchain. Best for people who are technically savvy and connect it at least weekly to maintain the blockchain.

Offline wallets which require an online computer and a second offline computer that never connects to the internet to certify the transactions. Best for people who have large amounts of bitcoins and are very concerned about the security of their bitcoins.

Go to Bitcoin Wallet and select Start A New Wallet. Pick an Alias and a password. Your Alias could be your Zero Hedge Alias. Your password should be long like a sentence. Enter the Captcha code and create the wallet. Copy and paste the multiword hint offered to you somewhere safe, or write it down. You will then be presented with a log in screen. Enter your password. Be sure to write your password down somewhere safe.

Just below “This Is Your Bitcoin Address” you will see a bitcoin address something like: 17HjSoTUfMDDXygtq2TdzPyPLoG8FaVE5r Enter this address into the Reply field at the bottom of my article. Wait patiently and some bitcoins will appear in your account shortly after I manually send them to you. When you send bitcoins from this Bitcoin Wallet, there is a default transaction fee of 0.0005 bitcoins (it can be changed, but this is a good amount to use). If you send 0.01 bitcoins, 0.0105 will be deducted from your wallet. This transaction fee goes to the miner who recorded the block your transaction was registered into.

What Can I Do With My Small Amount Of Bitcoins?

If there are a large number of requests and few or no extra donations, the amount of bitcoins you receive will be too small to purchase very much. However, there are still things you can do that show the strengths of micropayments. Here are a few examples:

Gamble

SatoshiDice It’s like a slot machine or craps game with a 98% payout ratio that uses low minimum bets. You could get lucky and multiply your bet as much as 64,000 x. My intention is to give everyone enough to place a bet here. If you can score with a ten fold increase you could play on the next two suggestions.

Poker You probably won’t receive enough bitcoins from us to play, but $10 worth would get you into the game.

Bets Of Bitcoin Place small bets on sports, financial or other world activities. An example: “Germany will stop using the Euro or re-introduce the D-Mark as national currency by July 1st 2013” The minimum bet is 0.10, about ten times higher than I’m currently passing out.

Digital Goods

Coindl Buy e-books, music or photos. Some items ask you to choose your own price. It could be very low and still benefit the author.

Real Goods

Bitcoin Auction You could win an uncontested auction with a tiny bid. Shipping and handling would also have to be paid and would be more than we will be giving out.

Buy real items from Amazon.com through a gift certificate provider who accepts bitcoins. See my review on a rifle scope I bought with bitcoins. I normally use Amazon.com to cash out of bitcoins by purchasing something useful. I buy bitcoins from my son who operates a bitcoin mining rig.

Donate

Wikileaks 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v

Archive.org 17gN64BPHtxi4mEM3qWrxdwhieUvRq8R2r

Freedom Box Foundation 1MyZjxnLgun6APrDkkh7ffrQJyy6xbuDho

Many others

Tip Good Comments On Reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip/comments/13iykn/bitcointipdocumentation/ Minimum tipping amount is USD$0.10

Conclusion

Don’t forget to write down the password to your wallet. It’s best stored in a fireproof safe next to your silver coins. If you lose the password, your bitcoins are gone and can never be retrieved. I believe we should all advocate for complementary currencies such as gold, silver and bitcoins. Thank you for considering bitcoins.

Payout Status

6:00 PM Pacific 20 April 2013: The first 5 requests were sent 0.015 bitcoins. You can verify by entering their addresses into Bitcoin Block Explorer I’ll check back in a few hours to see how many new requests are pending.

08:50 PM Pacific 20 April 2013: The next 13 requests were sent 0.011 bitcoins. This should be enough for several plays of low odds Satoshi Dice. Good luck!

07:51 AM Pacific 21 April 2013: Only enough funds for 7 more requests, unless someone donates a few more bitcoins to the pool. I could pass out even smaller amounts that would be too low to do anything but donate, or buy a pay as you wish e-book. Does anyone have an opinion on these options? Thanks.

08:32 PM Pacific 26 April 2013: Down to the last 0.012 bitcoins. A successful distribution.