Bitcoin for life! We explain how you can use your PC or laptop to generate bitcoins, and whether you'll ever get rich in doing so

Bitcoin is wildly confusing. And here’s the bad news: the fact you’re reading this now means you’re late to the game, and it’s going to be tough to turn a profit in Bitcoin mining. Nevertheless, if you want to try your hand at mining bitcoins, here we present the beginner's guide to generating bitcoins. Also see: How to make money from your hobby.
Following a dodgy patch in 2016, Bitcoin's value has recovered and actually surpassed the value of gold. At the time of writing one Bitcoin is equivalent to £1021.66, whereas an ounce of gold is equal to £981.89. This increase has been attributed to a surge in demand in China.
But now Bitcoin is once again said to be under threat, as BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen plans to launch his own crypto-currency within the next few months. Indeed, crypto-currencies are all the rage, with one of the latest being Ethereum which could even take Bitcoin's crown thanks to some impressive features.
Bitcoin is overhyped, Cohen told Steal This Show, and his alternative will rely on the power of pre-existing digital storage rather than mining.
"I have this plan, a slightly crazy plan, for making something that doesn't have computers burning electricity as part of its mining," Cohen said. "The short of it is what you do instead of computers burning electricity to mine you have storage space that's mining."
If you're finding yourself baffled as to what we're talking about, please let us explain.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a digital currency that operates independently of a central bank. Encryption is used to regulate both the generation of Bitcoin units and the transfer of the currency.
Bitcoin and terrorism - EU to clamp down on terrorism funding via Bitcoin
According to Reuters, the European Union will move to clamp down on this digital currency which has reportedly been used to anonymously fund terrorism - the Paris ISIS attackers reportedly had a Bitcoin wallet worth more than $3m.
EU interior and justice ministers will gather in Brussels later this week to discuss ways in which they can "strengthen controls of non-banking payment methods such as electronic/anonymous payments and virtual currencies and transfers of gold, precious metals, by pre-paid cards", according to draft conclusions of the meeting seen by Reuters.
What is Bitcoin worth?
In essence, the more bitcoins mined or ‘found’, the harder it is to ‘find’ more coins. While once it may have been possible to use a high-powered PC at home to mine Bitcoin on its own, the sheer popularity of mining Bitcoin means it’s viable only to join a pool. This is where your computer works alongside others to mine bitcoins. It’s much like [email protected] , where clusters of computers work together to try and find extra-terrestrial life. See also: The rise of Bitcoin and why you can't mine them on your own.
Without getting bogged down with the technicalities, the groups of computers in a Bitcoin pool are crunching numbers to mine a block. For every block mined, you get 25 coins.
Update March 2017: Currently each coin is worth £1507, which is almost 10 times the value it was when we originally wrote this in 2015.
How to mine Bitcoin:
Can you get rich with Bitcoin?
As we mentioned in the introduction, these days it's difficult to turn a profit mining Bitcoin. But it has been known, especially for early adopters of the virtual currency.
For example, the Guardian reports on how a Norwegian man’s $27 investment in Bitcoin turned into a $886,000 windfall four years later.
"Kristoffer Koch invested 150 kroner ($26.60) in 5,000 bitcoins in 2009, after discovering them during the course of writing a thesis on encryption. He promptly forgot about them until widespread media coverage of the anonymous, decentralised, peer-to-peer digital currency in April 2013 jogged his memory," reports the Guardian. At which point, they were worth a small fortune at $886,000.
Spring from: Techadvisor