Amazing, yes! in many ways. Let me tell you, I have more faith in bitcoin than Federal Reserve money. I trust open-source apps, cryptography, and mathematics more than a central banker.
TREEFARMER: We got caught up here with
mining bitcoin, which gets technical; sorry about that. You don't need to mine (generate) bitcoin to use it.
WHAT IS BITCOIN?
To answer your question, a bitcoin is just data, bits on a computer, 0s and 1s. We talk about Bitcoin the software system, and then bitcoin the currency. One bitcoin currently trades for about $12 USD. One can download the
bitcoin client, install it, and then you'd have a digital bitcoin wallet and access to the Bitcoin network (allow several hours for it to sync up). There is no account to setup.
Here's a nice eBook
You Can Learn Bitcoin:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/david-r-ste...-20423608.html
http://www.coindl.com/page/item/391
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/you-...in/id569230042
And here is Scientific American:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...gains-momentum
Another fun way to learn is setup an account at
Bitmit, the eBay of bitcoin. They give you a bitcoin wallet and anything you sell puts bitcoin (BTC) into your wallet. It's a fairly new site with not a lot of users - good for buyers, maybe not so good for sellers.