Quote Originally Posted by stoneFree View Post
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.
No need to apologize to me, because I'm the one that specifically asked about the mining.
The ebook Introduction To Bitcoin Mining, found on this website, answered some of my questions.
According to that ebook, the process of "mining" bitcoins generates computing power which supports the bitcoin network and other software operations of an unspecified nature.

In the Chapter entitled What is Mining? it says:

"Bitcoin is really three things. First it is a protocol (or set of rules)
that defines how the network should operate. Second it is a
software project that implements that protocol. Third it is a network
of computers and devices running software that uses to [sic] protocol to
create and manage the Bitcoin currency.

Mining is defined in the protocol, implemented in software, and is
an essential function in managing the Bitcoin network. Mining
verifies transactions, prevents double-spending, collects transaction
fees and creates the money supply. Mining also protects the
network by piling tons of processing power on top of past
transactions.

Mining verifies transactions by evaluating them against the
transactions that happened before. Transactions cannot spend
bitcoins that do not exist or that were spent before. They must send
bitcoins to valid addresses and adhere to every rule defined by the
protocol.

With a frequency that is targeted at every 10 minutes, mining
creates new blocks from the latest transactions and produces the
amount of bitcoins defined by the current block reward (50 BTC until
late 2012). Miners also verify blocks produced by other miners to
allow the entire network to continue building on the blockchain."

It looks to me like bitcoin mining is a good way to support the computer industry.
It encourages people to buy more computer equipment to support their mining operations, without which it appears that bitcoin would not exist.

Apart from the unusual "mining" process, bitcoin looks like any other token currency to me, which can be exchanged for other useful currency, whose value depends entirely on its perceived usefulness in the minds of the users.