Note: Bitcoin is referred to as BTC in this guide.
Hey guys! I thought i'd share some quick knowledge on Bitcoin, due to it being involved as a base currency in the credit exchange! I'll also be showing you how to get free Bitcoins, which means free credits.
First off, you need to download a bitcoin wallet. The quickest way is from bitcoin.org . Once you install and run your bitcoin wallet, it may take a few hours to download the "block chain". This is for security purposes, so just let it download. It won't affect you.
Once you recieve a notification (the bitcoin.org wallet client uses a green tick in the right-hand bottom of the client) that the block chain has finished downloading, head over to the Bitcoin Faucet. This place will give you a small amount of bitcoins to start your bitcoin adventure with - sign in with your Google Account, then open your bitcoin client, head over to the "Recieve Coins" section, and generate a new bitcoin address. Take the bitcoin address, enter it into the Faucet, and BOOM! Your bitcoins should arrive within 24 hours (It depends how long the Faucet bot takes to send), and then will take about an hour to become "Confirmed".
Once your bitcoins change from "Unconfirmed" to just being in your Total bitcoin amount, you can send them! You may want to keep them or test sending bitcoins - if you are feeling nice, send them back to the Bitcoin Faucet so that other people can test Bitcoins. The Faucet's address is 15ArtCgi3wmpQAAfYx4riaFmo4prJA4VsK.
If you have got this far, well done! By now you should know how to recieve and send bitcoins. The credit exchange hasn't been released yet, but why not stock up on bitcoins while you wait? I won't go into detail on how to buy bitcoins, but search "Dwolla" and "Mt.Gox" on Google for information on the main site used to trade bitcoins. But, I will show you how to get free bitcoins! Yep, free credits! No, this doesn't scam the warehouse...it's not blackhat. It's quite simple.
Don't waste time mining. The reward is no longer worth it. Instead, make sites pay you! Some sites will give you daily bitcoins just for visiting. They do this due to advertising revenue. The better sites include dailybitcoin and coinad. On Dailybitcoin, you can check the stats page and see what times the higher Bitcoin prizes are given out. You can get up to 1 BTC if you are lucky (really rare and around ~$6.50)! Coinad, on another note, lets you start at 0.002 BTC and refresh the page for a shot at a better prize. However, you could get a worse prize. If you are lucky, you can get up to 0.5 BTC (really rare and worth ~$3.25)!
Those 2 sites are decent, but not guaranteed to work. I doubt they'll give you enough bitcoins to let you buy something decent with credits. But third is the magical number. How many times have you given links to your friends? What about recommending a site to your friends? Or giving them the link to the latest Steam Game? Now you can get free bitcoins (=free credits) when you do this! Just sign up for CoinURL and convert your URL's into special, CoinURL links. When you give these links to friends, it will show a short advertisment before they access the site intended, and you get paid Bitcoins! For example, this link will lead you to google.com.
Example link (I used a custom name, kind of like TinyURL):
http://bit.cur.lv/BitcoinTutorialByHardMyDisk
Happy Bitcoin gaining! May your bitcoin wallet be full, your credit balance be high, and your tf2 inventory full of earbuds!
