
Try Bitcoin - bernatfp
http://trybtc.com
======
gojomo
_(4) A wallet is a computer file which holds Bitcoins. Bitcoins are sent
between wallets; each wallet is represented by a Bitcoin address._

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.)

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barefoot
Beautiful. The third screen appeared to be breaking on my computer though.
Clicked the next (right arrow) button once and the numbered information boxes
disappeared with some flickering without any further information displaying.
Needed to press button again to progress to next screen. Noticed similar
problems when clicking through a few times (ex: "This is your wallet's Bitcoin
address" shown below with no address displayed)

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.

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TamDenholm
I think the hardest part of "trying bitcoin" is quite simply converting any
native currency into bitcoin. The last time i looked into it from a GBP
perspective, it was a major pain in the butt.

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.

~~~
runeks
The general problem with buying bitcoins with credit cards is the fungibility
of the good you're buying. In other words, bitcoins are so fungible that
buying them with credit cards becomes a problem.

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/](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.

~~~
foxylad
Off topic... wiring DOES seem hard. I'm from NZ, where it's very common to do
an EFT payment to another bank account. We do this for paying bills, giving
money to friends, and even paying for online purchases.

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?

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reustle
I just ran through the demo and everything was great. Although, I believe I
just dumped 400 uBTC into a black hole (was given 500, donated 100, didn't
bother saving the wallet #).

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.

~~~
hngiszmo
There is not donation happening in that step and the receiving addresses are
not from any charities neither. The charities might want to take legal action
against being used in this way.

~~~
ramanujan
You are insane. No charity will accept an amount of 500 uBTC. They're probably
batching the donations and then sending them in bulk.

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elisee
This is slick, well done!

I got a 500 Internal Server Error when I clicked to sign up for Coinbase
though
([http://trybtc.com/ajax/coinbaseregister](http://trybtc.com/ajax/coinbaseregister)).
My account still got created and I managed to get it back by requesting a
password reset from Coinbase.

~~~
mjrials
Hey, thanks! We're working to fix this issue right now.

~~~
tych0
This is beautiful. Thanks for creating it :-)

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hngiszmo
WTF?? Ok, so they forced me to go to coinbase to claim my money which
according to other posts here does not work. So I started over again and
checked the charity addresses they show which are actually not related to any
charity neither do they get any donations in the progress.

I would say this is fishyfish.

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MaxGabriel
This was an amazing experience, great work! I especially like the Ocelot :)

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?

~~~
mjrials
We're still working to fix the strange Coinbase register bug... it's related
to the fact that the site currently doesn't force HTTPS (when it should). If
you load using HTTPS it works fine.

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.

------
mjrials
Hey everyone, we're currently experiencing a security breach which has
resulted in us temporarily freezing Bitcoin transactions. Because of this,
claiming your wallet at the end will not work. We hope to have this fixed in
the next hour. Thank you all for your patience.

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daurnimator
Can you add other charities? e.g. EFF?

~~~
fchollet
I second this, I would love to see EFF in the list.

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Baliw
Very nicely done! This is a great project to help raise the awareness of
Bitcoin. I'll definitely be passing this around.

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hngiszmo
Sneaky advertisement. I'm just curious and before I realize it, I gave them my
facebook ID and spammed my friends. Could work. I mean I won't spam my friends
but hey, facebook is evil, so why not make the facebook-experience for
everybody just a little worse and nag them with something actually cool.

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javindo
Hate to be the pessimist but surely this is easily abusable? From the way you
described the process of sending money from a wallet to another, there is
likely some way of using a botnet or something of the sort to run through your
site, create a wallet, send to a central wallet, repeat thousands of times?

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micah63
I'm new to the concept of Bitcoin and the part I have the hardest time with is
how do I get out? If I have Bitcoins and want to turn it back into Canadian
money, how does that work? Or does it work at all? Am I locked in? Can I only
buy tech items on a couple websites that support it?

~~~
andrewmunsell
There are a couple exchanges that will cash out your Bitcoins to another
currency-- CoinBase being one of them.

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).

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JoshTriplett
As far as I can tell, there's no way to claim the remaining bitcoins at the
end of this without creating a new coinbase account, even if you already have
one.

Given that coinbase pays for referrals, that makes sense, but it nonetheless
seems tacky.

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improv32
It's giving me weird upside down text.
[http://i.imgur.com/ikTne52.png](http://i.imgur.com/ikTne52.png) Arch Linux,
Chromium 29.0.1547.62 (219432)

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drx
Babou the ocelot was swiped from Archer the TV series:
[http://archer.wikia.com/wiki/Babou](http://archer.wikia.com/wiki/Babou)

~~~
vault_
Which was swiped from the actual life of Salvador Dalí:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_dali#Politics_and_pers...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_dali#Politics_and_personality)
;)

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Devlin_Donnelly
I recieved this error when trying to sign up for coinbase and transfer my uBTC
there:

You don't have that much - please visit the Buy/Sell page to add more funds to
your account..

Any Suggestions?

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xanderstrike
AKA Give us your facebook login in exchange for telling you about BTC.

No thanks.

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ewoodrich
drivebyacct2, if you read this, you have been hellbanned for at least the last
month.

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).

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hngiszmo
Uhm, pardon? They "recommend" coinbase to claim the 500µBTC in my wallet but
don't let me give them just any other receiving address? So for me the 2nd
screen where they say they give me 500µBTC is a lie and they are scammers.

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httpteapot
I got a `Uncaught ReferenceError: twttr is not defined`

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grigio
the drag and drop doesn't work on touch devices..

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a3voices
Someone needs to make a "Try Litecoin" now.

