Try Bitcoin
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trybtc.com
The simplifications in this explanation are ultimately damaging.
A real wallet does "hold" cash, but a Bitcoin "wallet" only holds keys & relevant history information. (It would make as much or more sense to say the balance is actually "held" by the globally replicated network.)
A "Bitcoin wallet" is not just (or even mainly) a "file", but the active software which gives you the power to spend your balances. It is atypical (and against best practice) for a "Bitcoin wallet" to be represented by a (single, distinct) Bitcoin address.
Confusion over these points have cost a lot of early adopters a lot of Bitcoins, to theft or complete destruction.
(Personally I think the very term "wallet" should be discarded, because the notions of 'physical containment' and reification-in-a-single-place that creates are counterproductive. Perhaps it's too late to fix that, though.)
I'm using Safari 6.0. If anyone can remember one of those services that captures machine information I'd be happy to use one and post that here.
If i could buy bitcoin with my CC online like i can pay for anything else with my CC online, then there'd be a lower barrier of entry.
There are a number of services that will be opening their doors in the coming months that will lower the barriers to fiat <--> btc conversion.
Sell, not buy. There's no obvious risk to buying BTC with PayPal, if anyone is foolish enough to sell them that way.
When buying anything else with bitcoin, it's generally hard to resell the item, and make your money back. With the amount of credit card fraud, buying bitcoins with a stolen credit card would mean sites offering this service would have too many chargebacks, and they would have to charge a 5% fee on top of the 3% VISA already takes. Few people are going to want to pay an 8% markup on money. Money has a very definite price, they're not like other goods. You can see that you're paying a hefty markup, and people don't like that.
Bitstamp allows you to buy bitcoins by wiring money to them: https://www.bitstamp.net/help/how-to-buy/
It might be me, but I really don't see why wiring money is so hard. I just log into my online banking site and set it up, takes a couple of minutes.
I recently set up a US bank account at Wells Fargo. Today I needed to pay someone (in the US) from it, and after fruitlessly searching for a way to transfer money to another account was told by customer support that the only solution was to do a wire transfer. At a cost of $35 and having to visit a branch to set this up.
They did have something called SurePay that involved sending someone an email or SMS message, but my beneficiary is a corporate so this isn't really an option. SurePay also seems to be limited to very small amounts.
Given this is free and simple to do in every other country I've banked in (NZ, Aus, UK and Canada), I'm still suspicious that I'm missing a something on the internet banking website. Any suggestions?
I'm sure a lot of people will do exactly the same. You might want to not give out the 500 uBTC so easily / fast, I doubt much of that will ever be used.
Another solution is to update the donate screen to be donating all 500 of it, that way it's completely used up by the end of the demo.
I got a 500 Internal Server Error when I clicked to sign up for Coinbase though (http://trybtc.com/ajax/coinbaseregister). My account still got created and I managed to get it back by requesting a password reset from Coinbase.
I would say this is fishyfish.
One issue is that the sign up and claim link to register with Coinbase seems to be be stuck, or else is taking over a minute. (Edit: still got the email from Coinbase)
How have reactions been from people who aren't already familiar with Bitcoin?
Reactions from newcomers are almost all positive. They like the interactivity, graphics, and ease of use. Theres plenty of negative feedback from BTC pros when it comes to how we oversimplify technical details (these are all intentional), but I believe this is essential to onboarding people who aren't familiar with BTC.
Sometimes you'll need to go through some hoops to verify your identity, and you'll likely end up getting a bank transfer (as opposed to PayPal, etc).
Given that coinbase pays for referrals, that makes sense, but it nonetheless seems tacky.
You don't have that much - please visit the Buy/Sell page to add more funds to your account..
Any Suggestions?
No thanks.
I don't know why you were banned, and I can take downvotes for irrelevance to the article, but I feel I should let a 3+ yr user with over 10,000 karma that they're posting to the aether. (I wish there was a better way to do this).