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I’ve been involved in bitcoin since it had it’s last bubble in 2011. I did the whole “Bitcoin Mining” thing with tons of GPUs and Linux setups. Did I make a ton of cash off the new gigantic change in value? No. I could’ve, but unfortunately I did not. I also haven’t lost anything in Bitcoin to date.

Bitcoin in general, is most similar to what is called a “Penny Stock”. These types of stocks can swing wildly and are the opposite of conservative investments. The only way to “invest” in bitcoin is with money you don’t mind losing, it’s still very much in its infancy.

Bitcoin Mining

It seems like people always think oh boy free bitcoins let’s all go mine.

First of all what mining does is maintain the cryptography of the Bitcoin network. You are basically brute forcing the network to find an answer based off the difficulty. If you find the answer you are given a reward. The reward is halved every so often. When I started mining it was 50 BTC. Due to the difficulty being so high, bitcoin mining pools were formed so all the hashing power could be combined and then distributed out based on how much power you contributed to finding the solution. GPUs (Graphics processors like ATi/AMD Radeons, specifically) were found to be much more efficient than CPUs for breaking cryptography.

I’m here to tell you mining is a pain. I did it for about 6 – 7 months in 2011. I had a 6990 and 6x HD5830′s. I still had trouble getting it to cover electricity costs at some points. Granted, I sat on the bitcoins for a long time till the price went up and then sold so the video cards, electricity and computer hardware were all paid off. Would I do it again? No.

Keeping machines up and mining is not all that easy to be perfectly honest. The new ASIC miners are the only things I’d really mess with these days, but really I’ve completely lost interest in mining. If you want to mine, go ahead just realize it isn’t all that easy and it’s not really much fun once you get past the idea of playing with expensive hardware. There’s lots of people that would mine even if they were going negative, just like there’s lots of people that do the other distributed computing projects for free. (Folding@Home, etc)

If you could just set it and forget it, then yea, the ROI isn’t really that bad for the investment cost, but in general with computer hardware you can’t just forget it. You have to monitor it. Now, there are interesting ways to monitor it, but you also have to deal with the heat that these things push out. All in all, unless you’re running a data center I don’t think it’s really that great of an idea.

Here’s my main issues with Bitcoin as it is today:

1. It’s hard to buy.

You have to link a bank account and go through ACH transfers, plus you have to go through new verifications on Mt.Gox and other exchanges.

Why is it this way?

Well, the way the USD currency network is setup things can be reversed. With bitcoin, it can’t be reversed. Once you have bitcoin in your wallet, it’s yours. Think about it as having paper dollars in a wallet, if you give it to someone, it’s gone. The same principles apply to bitcoin, only it’s electronic and can be sent long distances.

2. Value swings.

Now, you might think, well this is why people are buying it. They want to make a lot of money off bitcoin. Well that doesn’t really make a good currency, now does it? The Dollar, even though it loses value consistently, at least day to day it stays relatively stable. That means that if you plan to purchase something in the next few months in general the item is going to cost the same or only a little bit more. With bitcoin, who knows what the value is going to be in a month or two the item could cost you 20x more or 20x less in a few months.

Now, if Bitcoin gets big enough, and I think this will only happen if issue number 1 is fixed, this problem will largely go away. In the mean time, you have to keep dollars in an exchange, buy bitcoins right when you want to buy something or send money and the receiver has to exchange it immediately for their local currency or else they might lose a bunch of money.

3. Theft.

Now, with banks, credit cards and such, money is insured or can be reversed. Having a pile of bitcoins sitting around is the same idea as having a bunch of USD under your bed. Granted, you can use various encryption methods and make copies to send around all over the place, but what normal user is going to want to go through this? There are new programs like the Armory, but largely I still don’t see a “normal” person using things like this.

Conclusion

If you don’t understand what I’m talking about here then stay away from Bitcoin, it’s not for you. If you’re a tech geek then sure, you probably can jump through all the hoops and use this currency, I know I did even when it was much less developed. Is it a revolutionary piece of technology? Really only time will tell. I would guess that either A. Bitcoin will get much more mature and products/services will launch making it very easy for the normal person to get and use or B. Another currency will come out that allows the average person to easily use it. Until i see joe blow down the street using bitcoin, it has not gone “mainstream”.

#1 Kindle Fire, Full Color 7″ Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi

The Kindle Fire is a tablet & e-reader combo. You can do more with it than just read books/newspapers like the original Kindle. Movies, TV shows, apps, games, songs, books, newspapers, audiobooks, magazines, and docs are all available on the Kindle Fire.  You can also search the web with it. This does come at a cost, however. The Kindle Fire uses an IPS display rather than E Ink, which is much more comfortable to read from in the light. So kindles definitely still have their place.

#2 Panasonic Lumix TS20 16.1 MP TOUGH Waterproof Digital Camera with 4x Optical Zoom (Orange)

The Panasonic Lumix is an affordable, waterproof 16.1MP camera. You can’t go wrong if you use this on vacation – this way you don’t have to worry about your camera getting wet and having it ruined. It’s also shockproof, dust proof, and freezeproof. So taking it out to the beach, skiing, or whatever you want to do on vacation – this camera should be able to put up with it without issue.

#3 Garmin nüvi 1450LMT 5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator with Lifetime Map & Traffic Updates

GPS is hot. Seems like almost everyone has one, whether it be on a phone or a dedicated unit like this one. Of course, this unit will perform much better than a phone ever could – it’s designed to be a GPS only unit. It has plenty of features and will get you to your destination easier than ever.

#4 Sony BDP-S590 3D Blu-ray Disc Player with Wi-Fi (Black)

This not only plays Bluray but Netflix as well as many other Apps. If you don’t have a smart TV then bluray players usually can meet this need sufficiently. This one has everything you need and more. It is also 3D compatible – so if you happen to have a 3D TV you’ll need this to play your 3D bluray movies.

Anyway, that’s about it for 2012 so far. Let’s see what the rest of the year has to offer.

Here’s a list of the best MP3 players currently on the market. These are the top MP3 players that get the highest ratings. At some point, MP3 players switched from being just music players to having games, internet, and more all on one device.

#1 ARCHOS 5 Internet Tablet 500GB

The Archos 5 Internet Tablet has 500GB of storage – really this should be plenty for almost anyone. It features 10 hours of audio or 4 hours of video on a single charge. It works on the Android operating system, so it’s more open source friendly than iOS based devices. It features HD Multimedia on a 5 inch touchscreen, Internet web surfing, Web TV and Web Radio, Media Club, GPS, TV-Out, tons of applications and several add ons.

As far as android MP3 Player devices go – the Archos 5 stands out among the rest.

#2 Zune HD 32 GB Video MP3 Player (Platinum)

What this one has going for it is it’s size and weight. It’s lower weight than the previous MP3 Player listed, but has a bit less features. First of all, it only has 32GB of storage. While the other one is almost a full fledged handheld computer, the Zune is highly portable. It has an OLED screen, an app store, and most features you would expect in an MP3 player from today’s world. It’s simple and elegant.

#3 Archos 32 3.2-Inch Internet Tablet with Android

This one is kinda in the middle of the other 2 listed above. It only has 8GB of storage, but it’s very similar to Android phones on the market. It can run Android Apps, has a video camera, and pretty much everything else you’d expect to be on a smartphone.

#4 SanDisk Sansa Clip 2 GB MP3 Player – Black

If you want something cheap and portable, look no further. The SanDisk Sansa is what you’re looking for. It has only 2GB of storage, but it’s small, can be clipped, plays music, and it’s cheap. So if all you want is to be able to play MP3′s like the original iPod, you can get that for about $35 – 40.

A megapixel, in general terms, is just 1 million pixels. What does this mean? Well consider your computer monitor. It has a resolution of 800×600 let’s say. That means it has 480,000 pixels. If you happen to have seen an 800×600 display, you could probably get close enough to the screen to actually see a “dot” of color. That is basically what a pixel is.

In terms of megapixels on digital cameras, it has to do with how much color and data from the lens it can pick up. If you take a 12MP picture you can blow it up to a really large size and put it on your wall if you wanted, but a 1 MP camera would look blurred and distorted at larger sizes.

Nowadays, with cameras almost always being above 6MP or even 9MP, megapixels don’t matter as much. Picture quality is more important. If you happen to be familiar with computers, this is kinda similar to the MHz race, where MHz or RAM don’t matter as much as optimizing clock cycles.

If that made no sense, don’t worry. The main thing to take away is that you need to look at the picture quality the camera can actually take rather than the megapixels it says on the box. My phone for instance, can take 9MP pictures, but in general they look like crap.

Don’t be fooled by the megapixels on the box. Go for quality of the photos being taken.