From $24 to $690,000 In Four Years

In 2009 a Norwegian man bought $24 worth of bitcoins and forgot all about them.  Four years later Mr. Kristoffer Koch checked his account after reading an article and low and behold his 5,000 bitcoins were worth $690,000.  He promptly cashed in around $186,000 and bought an apartment in a sought after neighborhood in Oslo.  Read his story here.

Norwegian Man Buys Flat With Forgotten $24 Bitcoin Investment


It may be worth a look to watch the bitcoin market and get some on the dips.

By digitalart, published on 26 July 2011
Stock Image - image ID: 10051347

Bitcoins, Drugs, and The Underworld

A website called Silk Road was taken down and charges were posted yesterday to Ross Ulbricht who ran the site that allowed underworld transactions, sort of an ebay/craigslist for criminals.  The site used bitcoins as the means of exchange and allegedly made about $1.2 billion in revenues and $80 million in commissions. The site allowed the sale of guns, drugs and even assassinations. 

This definitely impacted the price of bitcoins as the price fell after the news broke but today the price has climbed back up to around $130.

Here's a news article detailing the websites activities:

http://news.yahoo.com/silk-road-website-dealt-drugs-guns-assassins-bitcoins-190640637--abc-news-topstories.html

Here's a site to check the rates on bitcoins:
http://bitcoincharts.com/

Investing in Bitcoins

I just heard about a new online currency that is being traded and you can potentially make some money just by setting up a free computer to "mine" for the currency online.  They are called "bitcoins" and they are used as inline currency to buy anything.  Some businesses have accepted them as a form of payment already.  The currency is open source and is not controlled by any entity so there is no Central Bank.  Algorithms and code serve as the foundation for the currency and it can be traded for US dollars and other currencies as well.  The current rate is $90 for one bitcoin.  It was as high as $200 a few days ago and it was at $10 a few months ago.

The great thing is you can mine for it for free.  It just takes a long while to find any online so people have come together and pooled their computer resources to find them.  When you find a batch the group splits the batch and you get a percentage based on the amount of work your computer did.  It's an interesting concept and it can't hurt to try since it's free. I set up an account today just to see what would happen.  Let me know if you have any success.

Here's the site for info:
http://www.weusecoins.com/en/

Here's a site for how to mine for them:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/08/how-to-mine-bitcoins/

Here's the site to mine for them:
https://mining.bitcoin.cz/

I signed up on Coinbase.com



Update 4-18-13
The best site that I found to generate coins I've found so far is: http://bitcoinplus.com
the mining method on the mining.bitcoin.cz site mentioned is a bit too complicated. 

Check this article as well: http://startbitcoin.com/