Building the base...

Since I liked the idea of comparing the whole process of being able to buy and sell bitcoins at real time to a real time strategy game (RTS), I'm going to continue with that analogy.

If you are familiar with RTS games (and even if you're not), one of the first concept you will learn is the build order.  The order in which you build structures to establish your economy and build your army.  And as I mentioned at the last entry - building our economy is what we're about in The House of Bitjamins.

So, Build order.  What comes first?  Well, you have to be able to store bitcoins to have bitcoins right?  And how does one store bitcoins?  In a bitcoin wallet.  So many articles have been written on this, I'm not going to whip that particular dead horse.  There are multiple ways to accomplish this - but since I want real time access to the market I needed a wallet that went with me anywhere.  This lead me to research cloud based wallets, and I landed on coinbase.com.  (Its located here in the good ol US of A.  I thought that important as part of my exit strategy...  when pulling out, you want your currency to land on American soil (if you're American) right?  Why?  A legal change in another country can affect you since the bitcoin market is global - so you need a way to get your currency onto home turf and the laws of your land.

This decision is part of what is making the process slower.  But what good is money if you can't take it with you?  And if the market you play is high risk, what kind of fool are you if you can't act when you need to?  So real time and mobile.  In my opinion, those are musts.  And since coinbase provides a buy and sell service - then you have a place to move your coins and an alternate means to liquidate if something goes sideways with mt.gox (the premiere bitcoin market).

So yes, that is my first "building" in my real time strategy.  A wallet and a means to buy and sell the coins that is independent of the primary market (in real time).  Before you enter risky terrain, you should always have an exit strategy.  Right?  Since you're playing with real money - you want a way out if things go sideways don't you?  So the first thing you build is your exit strategy.

Having a local wallet is all well and good - but the way I'm going, my wallet comes with me and I have access to an alternate market.  2 birds with 1 stone.  Mmmm...  can't you sense the efficiency already?  It has a longer build time, but more diverse functionality.  Worth the wait.

With regards to security - I recommend a 2 step authentication method.  Whether you use a physical key like yubikeys or a software authenticator like google's OTP - I think its wise to put a 2nd layer of autentication that requires action from you is wise.  Hell, maybe beyond wise.  This stuff adds complexity sure - but it would prevent something ridiculous from happening like losing your phone and getting your coins robbed.  And requires 2nd tier authentification if anyone tries to log in to your account from an untrusted machine.  Part of a good exit strategy is to cover your ass, right?  To liken it to starcraft again - this is walling off the entrance to your base.  You don't want zerglings (malware, spyware and trojans) rushing in and fucking up your shit, do you?

On the other prong of the attack, I'm working on setting up my mt.gox account. A process that can take 10 days (possibly longer depending on identify validation).

So everything is slow in opening game.  Its base construction and pumping out those first units.  And here - at the end of my opening game - I should have a wallet, a backup means to buy and sell and access to the primary market and be able to interact with them in real time.

And yes I'm intentionally vague on some of this because remember what I said in my very first entry?  *YOU* have to want it.  Me describing it all in fine detail is tedious - and why would you want to read something tedious about doing something tedious?  Better to roll up your sleeves and dive in.  The sooner you start, the sooner you finish and then its behind you.  And you can get on to the mid game.  Hmm - maybe I should be comparing this to chess?  But no - chess is turn based, not real time.  So the analogy would begin to break down after the opening.

What is the moral of the story so far?  Don't assume you can see an bitcoin opportunity and just jump in - it won't work.  You'll miss the opportunity trying to enable the ability to buy.    And what you hoped would be instant will take days.  And that brings us full circle about the emphasis I've continually put on real time doesn't it?

Speaking of opportunities - I picked up a whopping .05 bitcoins this morning @ $920/coin.  Alas, since this is part of gaining 2nd tier access to coinbase, the coins won't be deposited into my wallet until next wednesday and I have to hold them 30 days to finish the process.  So who knows if this will have been a good deal in 30 days - but no matter how you slice it, I've made progress (and $.05 bitcoins at that time was a whopping $46).  And in a weird slo mo escrow kind of way - I'm in the game.  A 1 week delayed, 30 day til liquid kind of way.

Tomorrow will make day 7 since I started the mt.gox application process.  With a little luck, that'll be available to me by Monday.  I'll keep you apprised.  Slowly but surely, things will start heating up.  Mark my words.  So bear with me in the "slow and steady wins the race" part of my build.