There’s a huge buzz around Bitcoin because it only exists online. It can be generated, traded and used to buy things over untraceable online transactions. Want to know even more?delve deep to get you all the answers.Your first step is to sign up at www.coinbase.com or any other international digital wallet that accepts Bitcoins. Once you sign up, you’ll get a unique Bitcoin address — essentially a long string of alphanumeric characters that you will need to use for each Bitcoin transaction. Note that creating a Bitcoin address is free and they can even be created offline using freely available software tools such as Armory (www. bitcoinarmory.com). Each Bitcoin address is also case sensitive, which means that manually entering it during a transaction is not advisable.Being a digital currency, you can easily carry thousands of Bitcoins in your phone or any sort of electronic storage device. Any transaction you do using Bitcoins is untraceable and there are no taxes involved. Unlike physical currency, Bitcoins cannot be easily stolen because theft requires access to your authorised physical device to transfer them. You should also know that once you transfer or receive bitcoins, the transaction cannot be reversed because the 'ownership' of the Bitcoins changes instantly. Lastly, there is no restriction on age or country for a person to use Bitcoins — it is not liable to any government or financial institution making it accessible to everyone.There are a number of places where you can spend Bitcoins. If you’re a user of Wordpress or popular websites like Reddit, 4Chan, The Pirate Bay, EZTV and The Internet Archive, you can use Bitcoins to make donations. If you’re into online storage, you can upgrade the 50GB free storage that Kim Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz offers with Bitcoins. If you like trying your luck, you can try Bitcoin gambling at places like www.satoshibet.com and www.bc-casino. com. And just a little bit of digging will even throw up shopping websites like www.somethinggeeky.com that accept Bitcoin payments.The biggest pitfall with Bitcoin is the volatility. Within this calendar year itself, Bitcoins have been valued at 8 $ to 1 BTC while at the time of writing, it’s actually closer to 105 $ USD per Bitcoin. Since supply and demand of Bitcoins is not monitored by any central authority (what some consider its main advantage), there is low liquidity. Add to that the problems with any digital currency (frequent hacking attempts, confusion among buyers/users, oscillating interest levels) & you end up with high volatility. And since Bitcoin transactions are not easily traceable, they can be used for laundering money and for all manner of illegal online transactions such as buying drugs or illegal databases.The Bitcoin phenomenon is growing at a rapid speed, but it is still not accepted by most major retailers in the world. At the time of writing, we could not locate any physical or online stores in India that accept Bitcoins. If you want to use Bitcoins on international websites, you can use them for donations and purchases here: http://goo.gl/Pf6ppa. You can also view physical stores all over the world that accept Bitcoins on www. coinmap.org. There's no harm in trying to mine some Bitcoins yourself (see box below) and if the value jumps, you'll end up with more than you thought you had.Bitcoin was introduced in 2008 as a peer-to-peer, electronic cash system by an anonymous group of individuals who used the pseudonym 'Satoshi Nakamoto'. Satoshi can be loosely translated as wisdom or reason, so it's another clue that the name is not real. In essence, Bitcoin is a decentralised currency that is created, used and controlled by its users. The Bitcoin network is designed to have a finite supply of 21 million Bitcoins. The system automatically regulates the generation of Bitcoins to ensure a steady growth of the currency with minimal inflation.Tokyo-based Mt. Gox (www.mtgox. com) is the largest Bitcoin exchange there is. It’s also one of the most reliable places to buy Bitcoins. You can create an account and start buying Bitcoins using your own currency in a few minutes. The website always displays an exchange rate and can show you a chart with historical exchange rates. If you want to see the value of a Bitcoin against your own currency, head to www. preev.com. At the time of writing, 1 BTC is equivalent to Rs 6,491.Cyrptocurrency is a form of digital currency used over the internet for trading or payment for services. The currency is finite in number to keep inflation rates low and uses peer-to-peer transfer technology. It is encrypted using cryptography for security and hence cannot be easily counterfeited. It can be transferred from a computer or a smartphone to another anonymously and cannot be tracked. The value of such a currency is usually determined by supply and demand — similar to precious metals like gold.Broadly, there are three ways to get Bitcoins without actually converting them from another currency. You can visit websites like www.bitcoins4.me & www.thefreebitcoins. com to simply get free Bitcoins periodically (actually you only get some Satoshi, usually every 30 minutes). These websites are colloquially referred to as ‘faucets’ because they keep giving out Bitcoins for very little effort. They earn money from advertisers and share a small portion of that with visitors. They usually don’t work if you have ad-blocking extensions installed in your web browser. If you have an ad-blocker installed, a notification will ask you to disable it so that you can receive the payments. The second way to earn Bitcoins is by renting out a portion of your computer’s CPU power at www.coingeneration. com (a.k.a. Digital Generation) in return for Bitcoin payments. The amount you get is usually very small and you need to evaluate the cost of powering your computer vs the amount of Bitcoins you earn. If you have a more powerful computer with dedicated graphics card(s), you could earn more by using GPU mining. There are also hundreds of websites where you can watch videos or visit other websites to earn Bitcoins. Search for ‘Bitcoin mining’. As always, you start by signing up and entering a previously generated Bitcoin address.