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This is a question many people ask when they're introduced to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin sounds interesting, but if I want to use this system I will need to get some coins, otherwise, there's no way I can spend them! How can I start?

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Exchanges

You can use an online exchange such as BitStamp for US dollars, as well as many others for dollars, and other currencies.

See the wiki for a full list of ways to buy bitcoins.

Brokerage Services

Brokerage services allow you to buy or sell directly from them instead of relying on a third party to offer the trade with the exchange just taking a cut. One such service is Coinbase.

Local / In Person

You can use tools such as localbitcoins.com to find people near you who will trade cash for bitcoins. (Note, however, that localbitcoins strongly encourages you to use their service despite the fact bitcoin does not require using a 3rd party to do in person transactions)

IRC and Remote Trades

You can use bitcoin-otc's web of trust system to improve the likelihood of a successful long distance trade. This could help you do trades with people you find on IRC channels or Bitcoin Forum.

Hardware Mining

Mining bitcoins is very technical, and not for many people. Unless you already have the hardware and technical skill to set it up I would not recommend mining as a way to get bitcoins.

Accept Bitcoin

I believe by far the best way to get bitcoins is to provide goods and services for bitcoin. This stimulates the bitcoin economy which in turn makes the bitcoins you receive more valuable.

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    "By far the best way ... to provide goods and service" - best for whom? For the newcomer to bitcoin, IMO the best way for himself is to buy some. Can you edit your answer to reflect this? – ripper234 Aug 30 '11 at 22:45
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    I think by mentioning the exchanges first that is clear. I still believe that providing goods and services is the "best way." Thanks for the edits. – Joshua Kolden Aug 30 '11 at 22:58
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    You could say I recommend you to..., in order to reflect the fact that it's a personal opinion. – David Ammouial Aug 30 '11 at 23:06
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    What's wrong with the poster saying "I believe by far the best way..."? This is clearly stated as his opinion and lists another way to get BTC. – D. A. Jun 10 '13 at 20:17
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    if "trading goods or services for bitcoins", is the best way, then why don't any of the answers on this page link to where we can do this effectively? – Brad Parks Jun 22 '13 at 0:41
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+50

Basically there are five main ways of getting bitcoins:

  1. Mining
  2. Buying
  3. Offering goods and services for Bitcoin
  4. Obtaining for free through micro payment
  5. Asking a friend who already has them to give a tiny fraction for free

Let's start with mining:

first of all I have to warn that currently there is almost impossible to mine by your own. You need to have a dedicated hardware (you can see hashrate comparison here) which is really costly. Even with this dedicated software it is really a small chance (current total hashrate is > 850 Thash/s) that you will create a block.

So most probably you have to mine as a part of the pool. There are quite a lot of mining pools available, but mostly you would like to join some big pool to have a high percentage of guaranteed small payoff. Pools hashrate distribution you can find here. I by myself have tried to mine on two different mining pools : BTC Guild and bitMinter. Just my own opinion, that it is easier to start with bitminter, because they provide you with easy to use software for mining and detailed instruction.

One last word of warning: most probably if you will start mining right now with your GPU, you will spend more money on electricity than you will gain from mining. But if you are going to do this just for curiosity, it might give you some micro part of a bitcoin.

The second option is to buy bitcoins

As with mining, you have plenty of options as well. The only problem is that right now you are dealing with your own real money. So you have to be careful what to select. At some period of time there were a lot of fake bitcoins selling sites, so if I were you, I would rather go with bullet proof places:

It is also possible to find local trading partners through services such as localbitcoins.com or at Bitcoin meetups.

Offering goods and services for Bitcoin

If you already have a shop or are planning to start selling something in the near future, it is pretty easy to accept Bitcoin as payment, in fact easier than to accept Credit Cards for example. If you are worried about Bitcoin's volatility, there are different payment processors, which will convert your Bitcoin payments into your national fiat currency for a fee, usually lower than Credit Card Companies. – You can opt to keep a percentage in Bitcoin.

Obtaining for free through micro payment

Not surprisingly, but there is a lot of web-sites, where you can get bitcoins for free. Do not be overexcited by this - you can not make a fortune out of this :-). Most probably they will give you 0.000001 bitcoin for free. On most of such websites you have to watch some stuff or to other useless things. So you are exchanging your time for micro payment. In my own question on bitcoin beta, there is a list of many of such places. If you know any other place - feel free to add it.

And the last thing is to ask a friend.

Try to ask your high tech friend. There is a high chance that he already knows about bitcoin and may be have a couple of coins. He might give you a small micropayment just to try. But do not try to abuse this: there is no point of asking people in places like this to give you 0.00001 bitcoin.

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  • Thanks, this is close to what I imagined! Perhaps you could add something about offering services or goods for bitcoin, and about buying locally. Another sentence about what to look for when evaluating an exchange (e.g. differences in payments, fees and prices) would be great, too. – Murch♦ Sep 18 '13 at 14:20
  • Surely I will add it. – Salvador Dali Sep 18 '13 at 15:10
  • Since you picked up the gauntlet I threw and wrote the most generic answer on this question I am awarding the bounty to you. Would be grand if you took another look at it though, otherwise I might manage to do so in the next few days. :) – Murch♦ Sep 20 '13 at 14:52
  • Regarding the last point about begging, you could just give your friend cash or buy him a beer. Make sure you sweep his key instead of only importing it though. – jiggunjer Sep 23 '17 at 7:05
  • nice answer, though "in fact easier than to accept Credit Cards for example" - if it is so easy, how about a link to an example and/or details. – CFP Support Jan 17 '18 at 14:46
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LocalBitcoins.com is my favorite. I don't like dealing with banks and providing all of my information. Also it promotes the local economy and rewards people in your area for dealing with bitcoins.

I have bought and sold off of bitcoin users using this site, and it is great to meet them in person and get to hear about their involvement.

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    I feel most comfortable with localbitcoins. For the exchanges, there are fees for every direction you move the money in which really cuts into the exchange rate. Trading with a specific person through localbitcoins has an escrow service built into the posted rate and you get the bitcoins immediately without any further % taken out at different times. – amer Sep 20 '13 at 14:38
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This is from my answer on Money.SE:

You can set up your computer to mine for Bitcoins, you can exchange goods and services for Bitcoins, or you can purchase Bitcoins on an exchange. Some people will trade their programming or web design services for Bitcoins; others sell goods like alpaca socks in exchange for Bitcoins. The exchanges operate similarly to forex in that someone can trade say USD for Bitcoins (instead of trading USD for Euros or British pounds). According to Bitcoin Charts, the Mt. Gox exchange has by far the highest volume, but in recent months Trade Hill has gained some ground.

As for mining, computer performance matters as well as the "difficulty." The difficulty in mining fluctuates so that it becomes harder as the collective mining power increases. Mining is set up so that someone earns a block of 50 Bitcoins on average several times an hour (but this reward will decrease with time such that only 21 million are ever created). You can't ever make progress towards mining a block of 50; mining is an inherently random process. It's possible to successfully mine two blocks in short succession only to have a huge gap before successfully mining another block.

I should note that CPU mining is essentially pointless right now. On average it would take several years even for top-end CPUs to successfully mine a block. GPU mining (where the processor built into graphics cards is used) is what is popular now. Even so, it would take on average a long time to generate a block even with several GPUs. As such, many miners join mining pools where everyone shares credit when anyone successfully mines a block. This serves to decrease the variance and is will lead to a more regular flow of Bitcoins instead of long gaps followed by blocks of 50.

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    Would the downvoter care to explain what was wrong with this answer? – Michael McGowan Sep 14 '11 at 16:03
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    I don't think it is reasonable to suggest new users get into mining. It is not a cost effective way to obtain bitcoins, and it is also technically challenging. – RobKohr Jan 12 '13 at 15:26
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    @RobKohr I think that, if there were proper tutorials, mining would actually be a great way to get started with Bitcoin. You don't have to worry about being ripped off on the Internet trying to get your first Bitcoins, and it's also quite motivating for a beginner to be able to generate money with his own computer. It may not be the best way to get Bitcoins, but, as a learning experience, it's a fantastic idea. – JamesTheAwesomeDude Apr 1 '13 at 14:25
  • I agree completely that mining is the way to get started. It will give an introduction to cryptography, software & networking if you are not the CS type, and cryptographic currencies in general. It may not be possible to be profitable without ASICS or high-end GPUs, but it will give soem insights to the miners role in the ecosystem, which is not what many believe to create more bitcoins – Filip Sep 13 '13 at 17:37
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    Tradehill was closed for a period in Feb 2012 and temporary closed again on Aug 30, 21013. – Filip Sep 13 '13 at 17:55
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You can buy or sell bitcoins by connecting any U.S. bank account on Coinbase.com

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EDIT:

All of the below is now obsolete. I keep this answer in place to show the ongoing changing nature of "Bitcoinland".

In the UK I used Britcoin.co.uk

It's run by an established member of the Bitcoin forums (genjix). Trading is very light in comparison to the other exchanges, but it does accept GBP via direct bank transfer.

Of course the best way to obtain Bitcoins is to earn them in exchange for goods and services. Perhaps by offering your skills on forbitcoin.com

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  1. Mining Bitcoin : You can mine bitcoins with your PC. (GPU Required)
  2. Localbitcoins.com : Here you can find buyers / seller nearby your location.
  3. Mtgox.com : World's biggest bitcoin exchange.
  4. Virwox : Another bitcoin exchange, they also accept Paypal and Credit Cards.
  5. Bitstamp.net : Second biggest exchange after MtGox.
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Coinbase makes it very easy to buy bitcoins. They have a nice user interface, and secure protocols. The downside is their customer service is always flooded with inquiries which results in your messages for help being delayed about a week or so.
Ignore everything I have posted above. Coinbase has since blocked me simply because I changed my debit/credit cards on my coinbase account. They also keep closing my support tickets saying there is nothing they can do until I am re-verified. That must be some lame attempt at a joke as I was far from the basic tier of verification. See you guys on Gemini!

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  • Not suggested at all, verification takes forever, worst support, holding private keys of your bitcoins (not secure) ..... – Adam Mar 25 '18 at 3:27
  • Didnt even realize I had this post up anymore. Well its been changed to reflect more recent times. – enigma Mar 29 '18 at 3:09
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Mining

Miners are the main source of Bitcoins and if you are looking for high amounts you should definitely contact them, but in most cases, they have exchangers they are working with.

Exchangers

They are getting bitcoins from miners or people and offering it to traders. I'm using coinify which is easy, and you can pay using your credit card (Europe) and localbitcoins.com is also good for trading bitcoins regardless the high fees.

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  • Answers that are about specific products are not recommended, as they can become obsolete easily. Also, in this specific case the question is about generic ways to get bitcoins, not about commercial solutions. Your answer falls into the "exchange" category (i.e. as opposed to e.g. mining). – David Ammouial Apr 3 '18 at 5:08
  • The question is How do you obtain bitcoins? and that how do I obtain it. – Adam Apr 3 '18 at 6:56
  • According to the Help section, "Bitcoin Stack Exchange is not about [...] a site or software recommendation". Asking for recommendations about a good exchange site would be off-topic. In fact, the question was initially closed because of that risk, and was only reopened because it calls for generic answers as opposed to specific sites. See related meta-discussion. – David Ammouial Apr 3 '18 at 15:59
  • Sorry, I didn't read that question before I answer that question. I've improved my answer a bit, hope its really improved. – Adam Apr 3 '18 at 19:28
  • Great! To be honest I think previous answers already cover what you're saying in your answer, but it's not off-topic anymore so I've removed my downvote. :) – David Ammouial Apr 4 '18 at 2:27

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