Tuesday, 17 January 2017

How to Use Bitcoin in Nigeria | What is Bitcoin (BTC) | How does it Work?

Have you ever Wondered how to use Bitcoin in Nigeria?… What is Bitcoin and How does it Work here in Nigeria?…
This article is here to answer those queries…
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is monetary platform that is controlled by no one…
No one?
What does that mean?
Bitcoin users controls the system, its termed a decentralized system...
Bitcoin is a currency that is growing daily and it is represented by BTC…
Bitcoin is used for online shopping where you transfer bitcoins from your bitcoin wallet to another user’s bitcoin wallet…
Let’s use an image to describe what bitcoin is…
Wait bro…
What is a bitcoin wallet?
I have skipped that part… I’m sorry
In simple term, a bitcoin wallet is just like a bank not visible one but like a store for your money where you can easily receive and send bitcoins from…
You can easily buy and sell Bitcoins in exchange for Naira online but you must have a bitcoin wallet…
OK bro, How do I create a Bitcoin Wallet Account in Nigeria
Bitcoin Nigeria Wallet Registration
You can register for a secured bitcoin wallet with Blockchain or Coinbase because it is very secured..
We are talking about money here … *Lol*
·         Register for a bitcoin wallet with Blockchain or coinbase.
·         Email verification message will be sent your mailbox
·         Confirm by clicking the confirm button
To see your bitcoin wallet address
Oh… What is bitcoin address?
Bitcoin address is like a bank account number ….
The bitcoin address is an identification for your bitcoin wallet in which will be requested for when buying or selling bitcoins …
Now we know what bitcoin wallet is…
What is the concept about Bitcoin
·         Bitcoin was created to ease stress of carrying money about, your bank is on your phone or computer not a building
·         Coinbase provides a bitcoin wallet app where you can easily buy and sell bitcoins..
·         Bitcoin runs under a system known as crypto-currency.
·         Crypto-currencies only exist as computer codes; they are not less real than paper money is (fiat currency).
·         It has the advantage that a very large sum can be carried around in your mobile phone, without inviting undue or silly attention.
·         The decentralized nature of bitcoin is another benefit it has over normal currency.
·         Bitcoin is made possible by the blockchain technology created by the inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto.
·         The most important benefit of bitcoin is the peer-to-peer nature without central
governing body; it also involves the absence of a third party when sending money.
·         The flow is usually from the sending wallet to the receiving wallet at almost no charge.
Bitcoin rate is higher than any currency in the world…

There is no rule against the transfer of bitcoin unlike other currencies…

Tuesday, 10 January 2017

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, created and held electronically. No one controls it. Bitcoins aren’t printed, like dollars or euros – they’re produced by people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world, using software that solves mathematical problems.
It’s the first example of a growing category of money known as cryptocurrency.
What makes it different from normal currencies?
Bitcoin can be used to buy things electronically. In that sense, it’s like conventional dollars, euros, or yen, which are also traded digitally.
However, bitcoin’s most important characteristic, and the thing that makes it different to conventional money, is that it is decentralized. No single institution controls the bitcoin network. This puts some people at ease, because it means that a large bank can’t control their money.
Who created it?
A software developer called Satoshi Nakamoto proposed bitcoin, which was an electronic payment system based on mathematical proof. The idea was to produce a currency independent of any central authority, transferable electronically, more or less instantly, with very low transaction fees.
Who prints it?
No one. This currency isn’t physically printed in the shadows by a central bank, unaccountable to the population, and making its own rules. Those banks can simply produce more money to cover the national debt, thus devaluing their currency.
Instead, bitcoin is created digitally, by a community of people that anyone can join. Bitcoins are ‘mined’, using computing power in a distributed network.
This network also processes transactions made with the virtual currency, effectively making bitcoin its own payment network.
So you can’t churn out unlimited bitcoins?
That’s right. The bitcoin protocol – the rules that make bitcoin work – say that only 21 million bitcoins can ever be created by miners. However, these coins can be divided into smaller parts (the smallest divisible amount is one hundred millionth of a bitcoin and is called a ‘Satoshi’, after the founder of bitcoin).
What is bitcoin based on?
Conventional currency has been based on gold or silver. Theoretically, you knew that if you handed over a dollar at the bank, you could get some gold back (although this didn’t actually work in practice). But bitcoin isn’t based on gold; it’s based on mathematics.
Around the world, people are using software programs that follow a mathematical formula to produce bitcoins. The mathematical formula is freely available, so that anyone can check it.
The software is also open source, meaning that anyone can look at it to make sure that it does what it is supposed to.
What are its characteristics?
Bitcoin has several important features that set it apart from government-backed currencies.
1. It's decentralized
The bitcoin network isn’t controlled by one central authority. Every machine that mines bitcoin and processes transactions makes up a part of the network, and the machines work together. That means that, in theory, one central authority can’t tinker with monetary policy and cause a meltdown – or simply decide to take people’s bitcoins away from them, as the Central European Bank decided to do in Cyprus in early 2013. And if some part of the network goes offline for some reason, the money keeps on flowing.
2. It's easy to set up
Conventional banks make you jump through hoops simply to open a bank account. Setting up merchant accounts for payment is another Kafkaesque task, beset by bureaucracy. However, you can set up a bitcoin address in seconds, no questions asked, and with no fees payable.
3. It's anonymous
Well, kind of. Users can hold multiple bitcoin addresses, and they aren’t linked to names, addresses, or other personally identifying information. However…
4. It's completely transparent
…bitcoin stores details of every single transaction that ever happened in the network in a huge version of a general ledger, called the blockchain. The blockchain tells all.
If you have a publicly used bitcoin address, anyone can tell how many bitcoins are stored at that address. They just don’t know that it’s yours.
There are measures that people can take to make their activities more opaque on the bitcoin network, though, such as not using the same bitcoin addresses consistently, and not transferring lots of bitcoin to a single address.
5. Transaction fees are miniscule
Your bank may charge you a £10 fee for international transfers. Bitcoin doesn’t.
6. It’s fast
You can send money anywhere and it will arrive minutes later, as soon as the bitcoin network processes the payment.
7. It’s non-repudiable
When your bitcoins are sent, there’s no getting them back, unless the recipient returns them to you. They’re gone forever.

So, bitcoin has a lot going for it, in theory. But how does it work, in practice? Read more to find out how bitcoins are mined, what happens when a bitcoin transaction occurs, and how the network keeps track of everything.

SOME THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BITCOIN WALLET

If you are about to explore Bitcoin, there are a few things you should know. Bitcoin lets you exchange money in a different way than with usual banks. As such, you should take time to inform yourself before using Bitcoin for any serious transaction. Bitcoin should be treated with the same care as your regular wallet, or even more in some cases!
SECURING YOUR WALLET

Like in real life, your wallet must be secured. Bitcoin makes it possible to transfer value anywhere in a very easy way and it allows you to be in control of your money. Such great features also come with great security concerns. At the same time, Bitcoin can provide very high levels of security if used correctly. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your money. 
BITCOIN PRICE IS VOLATILE

The price of a bitcoin can unpredictably increase or decrease over a short period of time due to its young economy, novel nature, and sometimes illiquid markets. Consequently, keeping your savings with Bitcoin is not recommended at this point. Bitcoin should be seen like a high risk asset, and you should never store money that you cannot afford to lose with Bitcoin. If you receive payments with Bitcoin, many service providers can convert them to your local currency.
BITCOIN PAYMENTS ARE IRREVERSIBLE

Any transaction issued with Bitcoin cannot be reversed, they can only be refunded by the person receiving the funds. That means you should take care to do business with people and organizations you know and trust, or who have an established reputation. For their part, businesses need to keep control of the payment requests they are displaying to their customers. Bitcoin can detect typos and usually won't let you send money to an invalid address by mistake. Additional services might exist in the future to provide more choice and protection for the consumer.
BITCOIN IS NOT ANONYMOUS

Some effort is required to protect your privacy with Bitcoin. All Bitcoin transactions are stored publicly and permanently on the network, which means anyone can see the balance and transactions of any Bitcoin address. However, the identity of the user behind an address remains unknown until information is revealed during a purchase or in other circumstances. This is one reason why Bitcoin addresses should only be used once. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your privacy.
UNCONFIRMED TRANSACTIONS AREN'T SECURE
Transactions don't start out as irreversible. Instead, they get a confirmation score that indicates how hard it is to reverse them (see table). Each confirmation takes between a few seconds and 90 minutes, with 10 minutes being the average. If the transaction pays too low a fee or is otherwise atypical, getting the first confirmation can take much longer.

Confirm­ations
Lightweight wallets
0
Only safe if you trust the person paying you
1
Somewhat reliable
Mostly reliable
3
Mostly reliable
Highly reliable
6
Minimum recommendation for high-value bitcoin transfers
30
Recommendation during emergencies to allow human intervention
BITCOIN IS STILL EXPERIMENTAL
Bitcoin is an experimental new currency that is in active development. Each improvement makes Bitcoin more appealing but also reveals new challenges as Bitcoin adoption grows. During these growing pains you might encounter increased fees, slower confirmations, or even more severe issues. Be prepared for problems and consult a technical expert before making any major investments, but keep in mind that nobody can predict Bitcoin's future.
GOVERNMENT TAXES AND REGULATIONS

Bitcoin is not an official currency. That said, most jurisdictions still require you to pay income, sales, payroll, and capital gains taxes on anything that has value, including bitcoins. It is your responsibility to ensure that you adhere to tax and other legal or regulatory mandates issued by your government and/or local municipalities.

Earn Bitcoins in 8 different ways

1. Earn Bitcoins by accepting them as a means of payment

In my opinion, the best and easiest way to earn Bitcoins is to accept them as a means of payment. If you have a small business, the integration is done quickly and easily. No matter if you have a brick and mortar shop or an online business, no matter if you sell goods or services. You just have to complete the following three steps:

Get a free online Bitcoin wallet from Blockchain.com or Coinbase. If you're not sure what a Bitcoin wallet is. There are also many other providers apart from Blockchain.com or Coinbase. When you sign up with LocalBitcoins you will also get a free bitcoin wallet with a broad range of functions. Find out which works best for you. And remember, no wallet is absolutely safe, so be careful with your money. Especially make sure you keep your Bitcoins stored safely in at least 2 or 3 different places.

Display a QR-code with your Bitcoin address next to your cash register. There are two options here.

When you have your wallet, go to a section that says 'Receive Money' or 'Add funds' or something similar. There will usually be a QR-code that has your Bitcoin address encoded in it. Print out the image with the QR-code and place it next to your cash register. Your customers will typically have a Bitcoin app installed on their smartphone where they can enter the value of the purchase in USD or EUR. Their app calculates the corresponding Bitcoin value. It automatically takes the current exchange rate to get the right amount. On your wallet account you can check the confirmation of your incoming payment.

Some wallets offer a 'Receive Money' functionality. When you earn Bitcoins by accepting them as a payment method on a more regular basis it comes in handy when you use a button called 'Create Payment Request'. Here you enter the Bitcoin amount the customer has to pay and it will show the corresponding QR-code automatically. This way the customer doesn't need to enter an amount which makes the payment for them more convenient. For this method you need to calculate the Bitcoin amount from your USD or EUR price before you can enter it for the QR-code to generate.

Display the 'Bitcoin accepted here' logo at the entrance to your shop to show everybody your innovative payment integration.

That's it. It's so easy, start to earn Bitcoins by selling goods and services today! This is just a quick description how to earn Bitcoins by accepting them as a means of payment. These links are also helpful:

How to accept Bitcoin, for small businesses includes more info for online businesses

The Bitcoin Wiki Trade page shows you which other businesses already accept Bitcoin. Add your shop here to get more publicity

Coinmap is an OpenStreetMap where you can see the geographical distribution of Bitcoin accepting businesses. Add your shop here as well

There are many other lists and indexes where you can add your shop. I find the two mentioned ones to work best so far. If you have one that you think is really good and complete, contact me. I will be happy to add other links here.

2. Earn free Bitcoins by completing tasks on websites

There are many websites which offer you to earn free Bitcoins. With most of these sites, the concept is that you visit the site and just for looking at it you get a small amount of Bitcoins. The concept has something in common with watching good old free TV. You watch a lot of ads and in between you get something you actually want to see, like a film or music clips.

While this is a legitimate concept, the return on your invested time is very little. So when you earn Bitcoins from these advertising sites, the Bitcoins actually come at the cost of your time. As the saying goes 'there is no free lunch'. But see for yourself, here is a list of some of the sites that I find interesting

BitVisitor :: Earn Bitcoins for watching websites or videos. Every page is shown for five minutes. Then you can click 'Next' for confirmation and move on to the next page. What I like about this site is that payouts come within roughly an hour. This is a major advantage compared to other sites that pay Bitcoins for completing tasks. Also, you don't need an user account here, you just enter your Bitcoin address. The amount of Bitcoins you can earn here is limited though. Per five minutes you get something like µBTC 100 (that's 100 microcoins or BTC 0.00001) which means that your hourly payout is something like BTC 0.00012. That's not too much money but it is a start to make you first Satoshis and get familiar with Bitcoin. And note, payout per five minute period varies. So the above calculation only holds if the average payout per five minutes is µBTC 100.

freedigitalmoney.com :: Earn Bitcoins by getting rewards fo purchases made in Bitcoin. On this site you also don't need a user account and just have to enter your Bitcoin address to earn Bitcoins.

CoinWorker :: Earn Bitcoins by completing analytical tasks. A user account is required here. I haven't tried this service but payouts seem to be a bit higher than with the aforementioned sites.

Bitfortip :: Earn Bitcoins by answering forum questions. This is a nice service because it brings people together who are interested in Bitcoin and many other topics. At the same time it allows to pay rewards in bitcoin for answering questions. This is something that would not have been possible without a currency like Bitcoin that has low transaction fees and instant transfers

Earning Bitcoins from completing tasks on websites is a viable option to actually earn some Bitcoins, but don't expect your income to be very large. I regard it as a first step to get familiar with Bitcoin in general. Also, it is interesting to see what kind of services are enabled through frictionless money transfers.

3. Earn Bitcoins from interest payments %

If you already have some Bitcoins, put your Bitcoins to work for you. Earn Bitcoins through interest payments by lending them out.

Lend directly to someone you know. This allows you to assess personally, whether you regard the borrower as trustworthy. Then the two of you only need to agree on the terms like duration and interest rate and off you go. The drawback is, however, that you probably will not have too many acquaintances who match your amount, duration and interest rate requirements. But it's a nice way to earn Bitcoins.

Peer to peer Bitcoin lending websites with listings from various borrowers are another option.Bitbond is such a peer-to-peer lending site. Borrowers publish funding requests and you can contribute to their loan. You can fund small portions of many loans and thereby diversify default risk. Bitcoin loans usually work the same way as fiat currency loans. The borrower gets a certain amount of money over a specified time and repays the money with interest. There are two things you need to be aware of when you lend Bitcoins. The site needs to be trustworthy and the borrower needs to be trustworthy. When the site assesses the creditworthiness of their applicants the information given about borrowers can be more credible.

 A Bitcoin banking like model. Here you place your Bitcoins as a deposit with a site that pays you a fixed interest rate on these deposits. As everything here, this method has advantages and disadvantages. The good thing is, that you don't need to diversify your Bitcoins over many borrowers. You just place your Bitcoins with your Bitcoin bank and that's it. You earn Bitcoins as a steady stream of interest income. However, be very careful. In the previous case of peer to peer lending you diversify your lending activity over many borrowers. In the banking model you trust one single borrower which is the bank. If they don't do a good job in managing your Bitcoins, everything can be lost at once. That's because the bank takes your deposits and invests them in assets, the most important assets usually being loans. If they do a good job you are fine because you simply collect the interest payment. If they don't do a good job you take the hit. An there is no deposit insurance in the Bitcoin world, too.

To sum it up, Bitcoin lending is a good way to make more Bitcoins from what you already have. And please notice this disclaimer: only lend through sites that you trust. Such sites will comply with theusual requirements that you expect from non-Bitcoin related sites as well. That means they have proper terms and conditions in place, they disclose their status of incorporation and contact details. Some sites in the Bitcoin world do not do this and in the end people wonder what happened to their Bitcoins. Therefore, when you earn Bitcoins from Bitcoin lending watch who you deal with and only use Bitcoins which you can afford to lose.

4. Earn Bitcoins from mining 

Bitcoin mining is the process by which new Bitcoins are generated. When you perfom mining, your computer adds new Bitcoin transactions to the block chain (a public ledger where all Bitcoin transactions are stored) and searches for new blocks. A block is a file that has the most recent Bitcoin transactions recorded in it. When your computer discovers a new block, you receive a certain number of Bitcoins. Currently a block contains BTC 25. This number changes throughout time and gets smaller by the factor 0.5 every four years.

Since bitcoin mining has become a hardware intense and therefore expensive process, most individual miners join a so called mining pool. One of the mining pools you can conect to is BitMinter for example. By providing computing power to their pool you can earn Bitcoins from mining without the need to build your own big mining farm. There are entire communities around Bitcoin mining and besides the fact that you earn Bitcoins it's also fun. You meet new people online and get in-depth knowledge about Bitcoin as a protocol and technology.

If you want to earn Bitcoins through mining, be aware that it is a costly and time consuming process. Read the respective introductions and manuals to learn more about it. This website is a good starting point. Unless you are mining just out of curiosity and want to get to know the technology, it is important to make a cost / benefit analysis. Hardware prices, electricity costs, bitcoin difficulty and the Bitcoin value influence the profitability of Bitcoin mining. If all this seems interesting to you and you want to earn Bitcoins from mining make your first calculations on the Mining Dashboard.

5. Earn Bitcoins by getting tipped 

When you earn Bitcoins through tips, it is much like accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment. You need a wallet, a QR-code with your Bitcoin address on it and the people who can potentially give you a tip need to be aware of it. There are various places where you can receive Bitcoin tips.

Again, your shop is the first thing to start with in case you have one. It's just a bit simpler because since tips are voluntary you don't really need to check the incoming payment and the exact amount. Simply display the QR-code and check each day what came in.

With tips, the nice thing is that you don't necessarily need to have a shop. A blog for instance or any other website is sufficient. You can display the QR-code or just your Bitcoin address at the bottom of your page or wherever it seems convenient and let people decide how much they want to tip you. You can also view how this looks like in the footer of this German blog bitcoins21.

Another really cool way to get tipped online is ChangeTip. This service allows you to integrate tips on all major social networks, YouTube and GitHub. Very nice!

Imagine you have a restaurant and want to encourage your customers to tip with Bitcoins, there is this nice service: bctip is a website where you can print little paper vouchers that have a certain Bitcoin balance on them. When your customer has one of these, he or she can simply give it to you or your employees and you can redeem it like a coupon.

6. Earn Bitcoins through trading 

Some people would say that trading is a form of gambling. While there these two things have something in common, there are also fundamental differences. When you gamble (and assuming that it's a fair game) you have a certain probability of winning and losing. When you trade assets, this gets much more complex. I don't want to go into too much detail here. I just want to outline the concept how you can earn Bitcoins with trading.

The safest way to make money with trading is through arbitrage. In short, this means that you see an opportunity to buy an asset in one place for a certain price and sell it immediately at another place for a higher price. It is important that you know you can sell the asset immediately at a certain price. If this does not hold, then we are talking of speculation - or gambling if you prefer.

The Bitcoin world, in my opinion offers such arbitrage opportunities. But they are not as simple to execute as it might seem at first sight. Price differences between exchanges often come for certain reasons. The speed of fiat money transfers and access restrictions are just the most striking ones. You have to find out the concrete opportunities yourself. One place to start is this thread on Bitcoin StackExchange. Also, not every opportunity is available to everyone. Go and have a look at the price differences between exchanges and check out if you can find opportunities.

If you want to give arbitrage a try, you need to get Bitcoins almost instantly. One of the few sites where you don't need to sign up is bit4coin. If you spot an opportunity and want to act on it immediately, this is a way to get a hold of Bitcoins fast. If you manage to earn Bitcoins from arbitrage, this can be very profitable after all. But start cautiously as it really does require some experience.

The other way to earn Bitcoins from trading is simple speculation. In this case you would buy Bitcoins, wait until the price increases, then sell for a fiat currency. When the price drops again, you buy more Bitcoins and start all over. For this to work out you either need to be very lucky or capable of predicting the future.

There are people who are good traders and who can recognize patterns from price charts. But that's something very specialized and I'm not sure if I believe in this. So for me, if you want to earn Bitcoins from this form of trading it could also be categorized as gambling. And actually it's even more risky if you compare it to a fair game where you know your odds. When you speculate with assets, you can extract your odds from historical prices. But never start believing this would tell you something about the future reliably.

7. Earn Bitcoins as a regular income 

Getting your monthly paycheck in Bitcoins is probably the steadiest way to earn Bitcoins. There aren't many organisations who would pay you in Bitcoins but there are some at least. And maybe there will be more as acceptance increases continuously. Gavin Andresen, core Bitcoin developer of the Bitcoin Foundation stated in this interview that he gets paid in Bitcoins. And chances are, that when your employer accepts Bitcoins they might be willing to pay you in Bitcoin, too.

Apart from being employed by a company or a non-profit you can be self-employed and get paid in Bitcoins. Being a freelancer has multiple advantages. You can for example earn Bitcoins conveniently from home by participating in this bitcoin affiliate program.

You can also work from home for others. Here is a list of sites where you can search job offers or where you can post an offer yourself. It's a very convenient way to earn Bitcoins, because many jobs can be completed from home.

Bitcointalk Forum Services Section is another starting point to look for job listings that are paid in Bitcoins. Some of the jobs are done easily within a short amount of time so it's a good way to earn Bitcoins quickly.

Jobs 4 Bitcoins on reddit has a focus on job listings for programmers. But again, it's not purely programming and it's definitely worthwile to browse through the different offers.

BitGigs is an online job board with many diverse job offers. The variety is reall amazing so go check it out.

Coinality has a different approach by not simply listing jobs where you can earn Bitcoins, but displaying them on a map. This comes in handy when you are interested in a local job somewhere near you. The number of listings could be higher but when it keeps growing it will become more interesting.

XBTFreelancer is another job board for gigs that are paid in Bitcoin. These jobs are mostly also software related. If you have programming or other IT related skills it is therefore probably easiest for you to earn Bitcoins with your expertise.

Then of course, you can start your own Bitcoin related business and earn Bitcoins this way. Either as a fully fledged business of goods or services or you could run a website and place ads from CoinURL. If you want to start or already have a brick and mortar shop check out the earn Bitcoins downloads. The flyer shows you, how easy it is to integrate Bitcoins payments in your shop.

8. Earn Bitcoins from gambling - not suitable for everyone


To be honest, I'm not a big friend of gambling. But it is a way to earn Bitcoins so in order to make this list complete it needs to be mentioned here. However, I won't list any links to gambling sites here. It's fairly easy to research them if you are interested. And if you clicked on some of the above links you probably already came across some Bitcoin gambling sites.