BitCoins

Recently, I took the plunge. I decided to get into BitCoins. I think it's a very effective way of making money (and fast too). A handful of people think it's a scam and the people who are telling you this are, indeed, already investing into BitCoins. The reason they don't want you to know is because the ease it is to make money.

Let me explain what BitCoins are. BitCoins were developed by a Japanese cryptographer whos goal is to create a universal and international business-tier economy. This means he means to cut out the middle man as well as the little man. This form of economy is structured to support big business payments and transactions over the internet. So the question is: how do you get BitCoins? The answer is simple; buy them using any form of legal currency. This is where people begin to get skeptical. No, you do not pay the developers and BitCoin staff for BitCoins. That's because there is no staff! BitCoin is developed and improved by the man who started it and only runs off donations. He makes zero profit. So who do I pay for BitCoins? You pay whomever already has BitCoins for thier BitCoins. How much does one cost? It costs whatever you agree it costs. If you follow the markets for buying and selling BitCoins, each coin costs about $135 USD as of right now. Since BitCoins are relatively new (2 years old), the market for each coin fluctuates in a very predictable way. This allows for maximum profit in a short amount of time. The low for each coin is around $60 and the high being around $160. That's a $100 profit per coin! Already, I have made $643.42 profit from marketing coins. This is rediculus and cant be legal, but it is! The developer decided to go to over 62 different countries and obtain legal contracts to have BitCoins recognized as a real currency!

There arises one issue. The BitCoin economy does not have a central bank to process payments and make transactions and regulate the economy. Like most economies, each one has a single bank or orgainization which regulates the economy. For the US, the organization is the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. They are responsible for printing money and assuring its legitimacy. BitCoins do not have a central bank. Who is responsible for verifying transactions? How does BitCoins prevent conterfeit coins? The answer is simple. Anyone who wants to! Why would anyone want to do that? Like any bank around the world, each bank charges a fee for making a transaction. Banks check legitimacy of a transaction and charge a very small percentage for doing this work. Anyone who would like to verify payments and transactions using thier computer can and will get paid a small percentage. This is called BitCoin mining. Miners get a program which generates hashes for a block which assigns 25 coins to the block. Each block is so encrypted it takes roughly 10 minutes to create the block running about 35 MH/s (Mega Hashes per second). This takes a lot of computing power. If you have the PC power to handle this type of work, you will get a small percentage for checking each coin in a transaction with the block and verifying that a payment is legitimate. Miners get a very small profit but it's technically free money. If you do the math, the cost it takes to run the electric bill to run 40 MH/s for the time it takes to generate 1 BitCoin, you will have made a $40 profit. This means, if you leave your computer on, your electric bill will be paid off as well as earning a $40 profit (when the market it as $155 / BitCoin).

Eventually, BitCoins will reach a point where mining coins wont be worth it any more and then we reach the price point. This is the exact point where there are just enough coins in the economy to stimulate everyone who is in BitCoin. At this point, BitCoins are projected to cost about $1000 each. This is the primary reason why BitCoins are designed for a business aspect rather than the consumer aspect. This will take about 6 years to happen but in that time, any consumer who has collected coins are garunteed a profit as businesses will be searching out BitCoins and buying them off people to use for thier businesses and trade.

I think BitCoins are on the rise and I'm glad I'm dipping into a pool of money that's just sitting there. I urge you to do the same before it's too late.

Chico State

After driving for 11 hours, I had finally arrived at Chico State University. Unlike most schools, this one took me by surprise. Not the surrounding area, not the people, the coffee shops, or the Greek life. What really stood out to me at first glance was the amazing size of the school. It was astonishingly small. I was given a tour of the campus by a longtime friend whom is a freshman this year at CSU, Chico. We were easily able to walk across the length of the campus three or four times in under an hour. The town of Chico reflects the college both in size and appearance. Chico is a small town and has a younger, livelier crowd, which is not atypical for a college town. As soon as the lights went out, the college came a live. Music out of dorm room windows and people gathering in large crowds before disappearing into the nighttime air. Everyone in Chico is very social and laid back including the teachers. The majority of the teachers are alumni of the school and are familiar with how the school worked then as well as now. I can see myself in this environment for four years. I think there is the pressure of being independent and doing what is necessary to pass your classes but there isn't that pressure that you would find in an ivy league school. So far, out of the five schools I have applied to, this is one of the three that have replied with an acceptance. This is my choice of school so far. I don't know what I will do if San Louis Obispo replies with an acceptance. I hope to keep my options wide open.

Education System

So apparently we need to start blogging on these sites. Not a huge fan. But I seem to be able to work better in a home environment. School is just one huge distraction where everyone is self-absorbed in social media and face time with one another rather than a lesson with the teacher. In school we seem to prefer to meet with people and socialize rather than advance in the world. I'm not saying that if you socialize you will get nowhere, but I feel some priorities need to be made with the student first before any learning can be done. I think school is boring partly because the system the school boards set up is a little outdated and not as stimulating as it should be. Every class is the same: lecture, work, homework, test, and repeat. We are creatures of habit, yes, but doing the same task over and over again doesn't stimulate the brain enough into actually learning. It's no wonder students are turning to social media and functions rather than school. On Facebook, every post is unique. Each post stimulates different emotions than the last. This constant stimulation keeps people addicted to Facebook. Students party and socialize because every event is different. One party may have a fight, another, a pass-out-drunk. Alcohol and marijuana also aide the escape from the same, hellish loop of life. Each high or drunk can bring different experiences that can help with the same boring joke or the same school schedule. The school system should require a change in teaching methods for each quarter. A visual learner may not do so well in a class where the teacher simply lectures, then hands out a test. I'm sure the school board agrees everyone is different. Then they should stop treating everyone the same. They treat us as numbers than names. Each student is given a number and that's how they get lunch or check out a library book. The school computers turn everyone into a number and that's how  you sign in to do an assignment. To them, 1315004121 is the same as 1315004425. There is no way of telling who is who! How on earth can a director say, "Lets make all the classes take notes while labs and projects are optional". I learn by actually doing the task. If I mess up, I redo it until I get it right. I can't simply read notes and understand it instantly. I have to actually put my hands on it to learn. I became so well versed in building computers by actually building them. If it didn't work, I would figure out what went wrong and learn from my mistake in the future. I'm simply glad I get to move on to another school where the professors think exactly the same way as high school teachers and repeat the process for another four years.