Had lunch with a couple of friends today and the topic turned to Bitcoins (BTC).  If you’re unfamiliar with this digital currency in addition to the obligatory wiki entry, I recommend reading Are Bitcoins The Future? from Priceonomics.

If you are interested in actually mining for new BTC I would suggest holding off, unless you own a supercomputer connected to a solar powered grid.  The reason why is that until recently it actually cost more in terms of electricity than you actually made in mining new coins.  See Bitcoin Mining Update: Power Usage Costs Across the United States (this analysis was done in July 2011 so rates are different now.)

If you are looking to buy/sell BTC I recommend creating an account at Mt. Gox which is the biggest BTC exchange globally as well as Dwolla which makes it very easy to move money from you bank account into it and get BTC from exchanges like Mt. Gox.  Once you have some BTC you need to move them into a wallet, one of the most popular is BlockChain.

And if you plan on drinking in NYC there is now a bar that accepts BTC.

Update: Meet the $2 Million Bitcoin Pizza from Hit & Run

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