We have greatly expanded our domains that support Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). IT Itch can now offer 148 domains that support DNSSEC which gives you much more choice if DNSSEC is a vital feature for your domain name deployment.

DNSSEC can be deployed to protect against malicious activities like cache poisoning and man-in-the-middle attacks. Digital signatures can now be added in our system to create a chain of authority for the following domain names:

.com
.in
.me
.net
.org
.name
.network
.agency
.international
.photos
.directory
.technology
.today
.support
.tips
.solutions
.company
.photography
.business
.systems
.schule
.management
.gratis
.center
.supply
.lighting
.supplies
.graphics
.exposed
.gallery
.institute
.equipment
.education
.reisen
.city
.email
.report
.parts
.industries
.tools
.properties
.care
.cleaning
.foundation
.vacations
.works
.cool
.zone
.cheap
.cards
.catering
.community
.limited
.solar
.house
.repair
.glass
.camp
.florist
.fail
.wtf
.coffee
.boutique
.bargains
.gripe
.productions
.rentals
.training
.town
.builders
.shoes
.marketing
.events
.land
.kitchen
.contractors
.construction
.plumbing
.domains
.cab
.farm
.vision
.bike
.singles
.media
.associates
.fish
.enterprises
.toys
.world
.computer
.academy
.watch
.estate
.camera
.clothing
.guru
.immo
.gifts
.guide
.life
.church
.fitness
.discount
.cash
.deals
.place
.direct
.digital
.exchange
.services
.claims
.insure
.finance
.engineering
.capital
.maison
.condos
.tienda
.dental
.surgery
.recipes
.careers
.clinic
.voyage
.villas
.diamonds
.flights
.viajes
.cruises
.limo
.expert
.codes
.financial
.holdings
.holiday
.ventures
.partners
.lease
.dating
.university
.delivery
.pizza
.restaurant
.healthcare
.furniture
.fund
.tax

Currently, you will need to put through a support request with your digital signatures if you wish to add DNSSEC to your domain. However, within the coming months we will be better integrating this feature into our customer area.

The post DNSSEC Now Available on 148 Domains! appeared first on IT Itch.

Bitcoin Black Friday Deal

Get 10% off the price of VPS Servers, Dedicated Servers and Managed Servers.

Use promo code: BLACKFRI

Offer available on Bitcoin Black Friday (November 28 2014) and can be applied to the first 3-months of use.

The post Bitcoin Black Friday appeared first on IT Itch.

Affiliate Program

Building a website with IT Itch is remarkably easy – you can buy a domain name from us, get hosting for your domain and build a simple website in a couple of hours flat. Going live is the easy part, the hard part is generating money from your website – whether it be a content-driven website or an e-commerce site, all websites have the potential to earn money if they have even a little bit of traffic.

But it doesn’t have to be hard. To help your website earn cash, IT Itch offers an affiliate program. The affiliate program rewards you for sending some of your traffic towards us and pays you cash when your referrals purchase products from our website.

You earn commission from every visitor that you send to us that purchases one of our products, be it a domain name, web hosting account or any of the other products and services that we offer.

Affiliates earn a percentage of the profits if someone clicks on the link and then purchases domain names, web hosting or any of our other items. Just place your custom affiliate link somewhere on your website and watch the money flow in.

It doesn’t matter if the users you send us don’t purchase something straight away. Our system remembers how visitors get to our website and we will still reward you if your referrals purchase something from us within 90 days of clicking your link. That’s right, if they return to our website within 3 months and make a purchase – even if it wasn’t through your affiliate link – you still get paid because you introduced us!

How do I become an affiliate?

If you are already a customer of ours, becoming an affiliate is easy. Simply log in to our website and navigate to the “Affiliates” section. Here you will be given a unique affiliate link that you can place on your website. We also provide an image link if you prefer to put something visual on your website, or you are more than welcome to provide your own custom image embedded with your affiliate link.

Do I have to be your customer to become an affiliate an earn money?

No, you don’t have to be one of our customers to take part in our affiliate program. Simply sign up at our website without buying anything and navigate to the “Affiliates” section to generate your unique link.

Do I have to have a website to be an affiliate an earn money?

No. Some of our most successful affiliates don’t even have websites at all – they have large social media followings and simply place their unique links in their social media profiles and statuses. Everyone can join in and earn money.

How do affiliate payments work?

We use a pay-per-sale arrangement. We pay an affiliate when they send us a customer who purchases something. After a successful sales, the affiliate earns a percentage of the sales as a commission. Commissions are usually paid out every 35 days.

Is there a cost to join the affiliate program?

No, there is no cost to join our affiliate program, it’s completely free.

The post Affiliate Program appeared first on IT Itch.

If you’re the type of person that likes to have total control over your online privacy and believes all internet users should be free to use the internet without government or corporate surveillance, you need Beepip. Beepip is like encrypted email but far more secure, in fact it’s completely spy-proof. It’s a brand new way of sending messages online and brings privacy and anonymity back to online communications. Your beepips can never be read by snoops and it leaves no data trails whatsoever.

The team that built Beepip believe it’s time to restore your right to privately communicate online. They believe no one should be subjected to widespread arbitrary interference with their online communications. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference, and where such laws are lacking or inadequate, or where governments or corporations are introducing laws or measures to sidestep or reduce these rights, solutions can be created to help you uphold them. Solutions to combat online surveillance are about much more broader values than hiding things—it’s about the human need for refuge against scrutiny.

The NSA and the GCHQ screwed up email for everyone. The PRISM and TEMPORA spy programmes revealed the vast appetite that government and corporate snoops have for devouring our personal communications. Like morbidly obese fat cats, they became addicted to collecting and consuming our utmost private digital thoughts—intoxicated by the fumes of our digital footprints. For them, every morsel of minuscule metadata became a banquet that must be ingested. No crumb was ever too small.

But now it’s time for a diet, a big one. The fightback to regain our digital privacy has begun, and the first tool in our arsenal is called Beepip—a rethink of how we communicate online.

The problem with email is that it’s an old technology that was never designed with privacy and anonymity in mind. A legacy of the early 90′s, email works in much the same way as old-fashioned postal mail—when you send a message it arrives at a central sorting site for processing (the central post office with snail mail and an email server for email). The trouble with these centralised processing systems is that you are ceding control of your messages to third parties—you have to trust that they won’t read your messages behind your back. But what happens when that trust is totally and utterly breached? This is exactly what’s happened with email.

Sure, you can try to protect your messages with locks, or encryption as it’s called with email, but because email always passes through a central sorting site, there are usually copies of keys that can break into your messages without your knowledge. There’s also the problem of your non-content data—even if you found a full-proof way of hiding the content of your emails, you can still never hide the sender and receiver of your emails as the central sorting site needs this information to deliver your messages. You will always leave data trails with email. Do we really need third-parties knowing who we are having private conversations with?

Beepip is different to email—it’s new, improved technology that cuts out the need for middlemen. Instead of relying on a central processing sites like a post office or email server to deliver your messages, beepips are sent directly from user to user. It’s like delivering a letter to your friend’s mailbox yourself because you know you can’t trust the postie.

Beepip uses your own computer’s power to scramble and lock your messages and then blasts your message out over the internet, straight to your recipient. Because no central server is used, there is no chance of snooping. With Beepip, you can hide the sender and receiver of the messages and stay completely anonymous. You can also send out broadcasts—messages that are sent out to any group of Beepip users that are listening. In this way, organisations or individuals can get information out to large numbers of subscribers anonymously and securely if they choose.

Beepip has an easy-to-use interface that brings cryptography and secure communication to non-expert users. It’s also less expensive than encrypted email and gives users the ability to create unlimited numbers of identities/addresses at no additional cost. Because Beepip is all about security and privacy, it does not gather any personally identifiable information and allows users to pay with bitcoin. For more information and to download Beepip visit: beepip.com.

The post Spy-Proof Messaging Service Launches: Beepip appeared first on IT Itch.

Berlin Domain

Advanced search

www.

.berlin

 

 

 

 

 

Dot Berlin is the new digital identity on the internet for people and business living and operating in Berlin. The German capital is home to more than 3.5 million people and has a lively technology scene boasting some of the most creative start-ups in Europe. A .BERLIN domain name allows the registration of short, intuitive domain names that are already taken among popular .COM and .DE endings. With a clear association to Berlin and Germany, internet users and search engines immediately recognise that a website offers products, services or information specifically targeted to Berlin residents or visitors. A Dot Berlin web address is the perfect addition to your existing domain portfolio or the best place to start if Berlin is where you are. With 1.1 million domains already registered to owners from Berlin, you’ll need to get in quick to secure your favourite Berlin internet address.

Dot Berlin Zone Info:

.BERLIN is the domain name associated with the German city of Berlin

Dot Berlin Usage:

A .BERLIN domain can be registered by any person or any company

Dot Berlin Allowed Characters:

Your .BERLIN domain must be a minimum of 3 characters in length and not exceed 63 characters. Letters, numbers and hyphens are allowed, however the hyphen cannot be at the beginning of the domain name.

Dot Berlin Restrictions:

• One of the WHOIS contacts (owner, admin or tech contact) has to have an address in Berlin.
• In order to comply with the policy of .BERLIN we kindly remind you that all Registrants that registered a .BERLIN domain name need to comply with the .BERLIN registration requirements published here

Dot Berlin Transfers:

.BERLIN domain name transfers are possible. Upon successfully transferring a domain, it is automatically renewed for one year. The registration period is extended by one year.

• After the transfer has been requested, our backend system sends a confirmation email to the Owner/Admin-C according to the WHOIS of the respective domain. In order to initiate the transfer successfully it is important, that this email is confirmed.
• After confirmation the transfer is initiated through the official registry and the losing registrar will receive the transfer request.
• The losing registrar will also send an email to the Owner/Admin-C. allowing him/her to deny the transfer. If you do not respond to the email of the losing registrar, then the transfer will get processed successfully after 5 days.

 

If the Email-Address in the WHOIS is invalid, then the transfer cannot be processed.If this is the case, then kindly contact your current registrar and ask him to update the WHOIS information accordingly.

 

Transfer notes

• A .BERLIN domain name is locked for transfers after a domain creation or a previous transfer for a period of 60 days
• A .BERLIN Domain name Transfer must be initiated with a so-called Authorisation Code, which can be obtained from the current registrar through the owner or Admin of the domain.
• Ensure that your respective domain name does not have a lock-status (REGISTRAR-LOCK or HOLD). This can be seen in the WHOIS.
  If the domain is locked, then the owner can demand that the domain will be unlocked.
• Please note that we are only allowed to initiate a gTLD transfer after confirmation of the “ICANN Form of Authorization” by the current registrant. The policies can be viewed under http://www.icann.org/transfers/

 

 

 

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The .LA domain name is that latest website domain available from IT Itch. Previously the internet top-level domain code for Laos, the .LA domain name is now being targeted and marketed to firms in Los Angeles, United States. You can register you .LA domain name at IT Itch for just $47.30 per year.

City-based web addresses are the next big trend for internet domain names with a number of new geographical addresses such as .LONDON and .NYC soon to be available for people wanting to market their websites to city dwellers.

The .LA domain address is the first city-based domain suffix available and we plan to offer new ones as they become available. The people of Los Angeles and California have already embraced the new domain extension with much enthusiasm as people realize the huge scope for new business and branding opportunities.

You don’t have to be a resident of Los Angeles or even the United States to own a .LA domain name. Anyone is eligible to register. Simply search for your .LA domain in the search box below to see if it is available for registration.

The post .LA Domain appeared first on IT Itch.

URL masking (also known as domain masking, URL hiding and stealth redirection) is a free service offered by IT Itch under our URL forwarding service.

When you register a domain name with us, we give the the option of applying URL masking when you set up your URL redirect. When used correctly, a URL mask is a powerful and helpful tool to control your domain name. Not many domain name registrars offer this service, so switch to us to start using it now.

URL Redirect

With normal web forwarding, a domain name simply redirects you to a site you have defined. So, for instance, users who type in www.domain1.com will simply be redirected to www.domain2.com.

URL Masking

URL masking is different to normal domain name forwarding. URL masking will hide the domain name of the actual website from the URL field in the web browser in favor of another domain name. Thus, like normal domain forwarding, the domain name is redirected  to another website address but unlike normal URL forwarding, the browser will keep showing your original domain name.

URL masking prevents users from seeing the actual domain website without affecting the content of the website. Domain masking is particularly useful for websites with privacy/security issues and for those with long/hard to remember URLs. Domain masking is also useful for people using free web hosting platforms like WordPress that want to use a professional looking domain name rather than a wordpress.com subdomain.

We also offer subdomain forwarding and path forwarding.

The post URL Masking appeared first on IT Itch.

One of the most popular products here at IT Itch is our privacy protection feature for domain names. This feature is a free service that we offer with domain name registration and allows customers to hide their contact details from the WHOIS register. This effectively means that IT Itch customers can create an anonymous domain and they don’t have to worry about their private details being available in a public register for all the world to see.

However, not all domain names can be made anonymous and not all domain registries support our identity protection products. Domain name registry operators are continually changing their rules and, unfortunately, many of them are requiring the unnecessary collection of more of your personal data. To give you an idea of some of the domain registries that are not supportive of privacy, we put together a black list of domains to stay away from if you are after our anonymous domain registration.

Domains Not Supporting Privacy Protection

.ASIA

.AU

.CA (you can select private WHOIS only when registering as an individual)

.CN

.DE

.ES

.EU

.IN

.NL

.NZ

.PRO

.RU

.SX

.TEL (you can select private WHOIS only when registering as an individual)

.UK (only non-trading individuals can have a private WHOIS and this can only be activated by the registrant from within a Nominet control panel)

Please note that there are also some domain registries that do support our privacy protection feature for domain names (hide your personal details in the public WHOIS database) but do not support anonymous registration. For instance, the .XXX domain registry does support our ID protection feature but they require the registrant to get verified first. Verification usually involves providing your name, address and phone number and they will give you a call to check that you are a real person.

Basically, anonymous domain name registration is becoming an increasingly tricky business and the rules are constantly changing. We do our best to keep up, but registry operators usually don’t bother to tell us when they change their rules. If you are unsure if the domain name you want to purchase can be registered anonymously or supports our privacy protection feature, get in touch and we’ll help you out.

Remember, to activate ID protection on your domain name you have you select the “ID Protection” check box upon registration. If you don’t see the check-box, the domain does not support ID protection. Also, if you don’t tick the check-box, ID protection will not be enabled.

The post Domain Name Privacy appeared first on IT Itch.

Get the flexibility and reliability of a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with the convenience, security and anonymity of bitcoin payment. With an IT Itch Bitcoin VPS, your resources can grow as your needs grow. Bitcoin VPS hosting is the perfect solution for webmasters wanting the the customisability of a dedicated server but at a fraction of the cost.

Bitcoin VPS

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What are Bitcoins?

Bitcoins are a new type of money – a ‘digital currency’ that is being increasingly used all over the world. Unlike traditional money that is printed or minted in industrial facilities, bitcoins are created by lots of people around the world running computers, using open-source software that solves complex mathematical problems. Bitcoins are the first example of a category of money called cryptocurrency where the production, transactions and issuing of the money is carried out collectively by the network of people that use it. Bitcoins are created by the people, for the people.

Who Invented Bitcoins?

A reclusive software developer that goes by the pen-name of Satoshi Nakamoto is credited with inventing the bitcoin system. His idea was to engineer an electronic payment system that relies on mathematical proof and that was independent of a central authority. His vision was to produce a currency that could be transferable electronically  – more or less instantly – and that had very low or no transaction fees. Because the bitcoin system is based on an ‘open-source’ protocol, anyone in the world is free to review the source code of the system and offer improvements and suggestions to Nakamoto’s original design. Indeed, when flaws are spotted, the community of bitcoin developers solves them, meaning that bitcoin is designed by the people to suit the needs of the people.

Who Mints the Bitcoins?

No one. The currency isn’t printed or minted like traditional currency, but instead exists in an entirely digital form. In much the same way that email replaced postal mail, Bitcoins use new technology that makes an everyday activity easier, quicker and cheaper. And because bitcoins don’t exist physically, there isn’t any chance of a shadowy central authority taking over and making its own rules with less accountability, as is the case with normal money that is often devalued when central banks simply print more money to pay for national debt.

To create bitcoins digitally, computer power is required to run a software program called a ‘bitcoin miner’. The community of people that produce the bitcoins are called ‘miners’ and anyone can join. The same network of people that produce bitcoins are also responsible for processing the transactions made with bitcoins, meaning the system has its own payment network built it.

Bitcoins come into existence when a computer running the bitcoin mining programme solves a solution to a very difficult mathematical problem whose difficulty is precisely known. The difficulty is automatically adjusted regularly so that the number of solutions found globally, by everyone, for a given unit of time is constant. Roughly every 4 years, the number of bitcoins that can be created by solving these equations reduces by 50% – resulting in a currency that is produced at a regular and predictable rate.

Is there an Unlimited Supply of Bitcoins?

No. One of the main flaws with fiat money (any money declared by a government be legal tender) is the ability of central banks to print more money whenever they want – devaluing money that is already in the system. There is a maximum limit of 21 million bitcoins built into the system, making the currency more akin to precious metals like gold that have a limited supply.

Why Use Bitcoin?

It’s fast -

When paying by cheque or wire transfer the bank will hold the money for several days until it knows that the money is really there. Bitcoin transactions, in contrast, can be instantaneous, or you can wait just 10 minutes to get the transaction confirmed by the network. Bitcoins are the fastest possible way yet invented to pay someone online.

It’s cheap -

Using the bitcoin network is free, unlike traditional payment providers and banks that charge fees for transactions or services. The bitcoin system has a voluntary fee that you can pay if you want to remunerate the people that operate the network and to speed up the transaction confirmations.

It’s open and decentralised -

Bitcoin is open source – nobody owns it and can take it away from you. Remember the Cyprus banking crisis in March 2013? Deposits larger than $100, 000 were taken away by the central bank to help pay for government debts. This can’t happen with bitcoins because there is no central authority. For people losing trust in the banking system, bitcoins offer a better alternative.

It’s secure and safe to use -

Transactions over the bitcoin network are secured using military grade cryptography and there is no way for someone else to make a fraudulent payment on your behalf. Compare this with online credit card transactions where you enter your secret information into web forms. This is a highly unsafe way to do business and it is no wonder that credit card numbers keep being stolen and fraudulent payments keep being made. So long as you keep your bitcoin wallet safe, bitcoins give you a much greater control over money and eliminates fraud.

It’s private and anonymous -

Just like with cash transactions, bitcoins offer individuals a way to pay for goods and services while protecting your identity. There is no need to give out credit card numbers or personal information when paying with bitcoins. This eliminates identity theft. While the transactions over the bitcoin network are available for everyone to see, there is no way to know where the transactions came from and where they are sent.

You don’t have to worry about inflation -

Regular currencies are subject to inflation when central banks print more money to pay for national debt. This causes the value of the currency to decrease and the price of goods and services to increase. It’s a regular problem with normal currencies but not possible in the bitcoin system because there is a limited supply of bitcoins.

You don’t need to trust middlemen -

In a conventional system, you have to trust a lot of middlemen with your money and your sensitive information. You have to trust the bank and its employees, for example, and perhaps a third-party payment processor and their employees also. With all these middlemen, there are bound to be a few unscrupulous individuals who could potentially do you harm or are out to rip you off. Not to forget, all these middlemen charge exorbitant fees for their services . Why not cut out all the middlemen altogether and instead place your trust in a decentralized system? With bitcoin, there is no need to trust any middlemen – when you send a transaction, it is digitally signed and secure. A bitcoin miner will verify the transaction, and then the transaction is completed without the merchant even needing to know who you are.

With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless.  - Satoshi Nakamoto

 

There are no chargebacks -

Bitcoins are like cash – once you spend them they are gone. Many online merchants will be very familiar with a type of credit card fraud whereby people make a purchase and then contact the credit card company to make a chargeback, effectively reversing the transaction. This can be incredibly costly for merchants, especially if the goods have been shipped, the service set-up or the cost of sales already deducted. With bitcoins, chargebacks are not possible and a person who has sent a bitcoin cannot try to retrieve them without the recipients consent.

The people own it -

All other electronic payment systems currently available are owned by large corporations and out to make huge profits. Take PayPal as an example: if the company decides to suddenly freeze your account and take all of your assets without consulting you, it is perfectly entitled to. Because you own the private key and corresponding public key that makes up your bitcoin address, there is no way for other people to take it away from you. The bitcoin system isn’t owned by a greedy corporation like PayPal, so you never need to deal with greedy corporate behaviour.

It works everywhere at any time  -

The bitcoin network is open to anyone with an internet connection and it never sleeps. Don’t worry if other people are using different bitcoin wallets or other software, since everything is based on the same technology, it all works well together.

Payments are easy on mobile phones -

Bitcoin on mobiles allows you to scan-and-pay on mobile phones. All you need to do to receive Bitcoin payments is to display the QR code in your Bitcoin wallet app and let your friend scan your mobile, or touch the two phones together (using NFC radio technology). There is no need to swipe cards, enter PIN’s or sign anything.

Where do I get Bitcoins?

There are three main ways to obtain bitcoins: either in person, online through bitcoin exchanges, or you can use a computer program called a bitcoin miner to ‘create’ bitcoins yourself. Be careful when sending money to bitcoin exchanges because you need to trust the operator not to steel your funds and that their website is safe and secure. Look for websites that are secured over SSL (i.e. have https in front of their domain name rather than just http). Websites that use extended validation SSL are the safest of all and will usually made the web browser turn green. Below is an example of a secure website that uses extended validation SSL (our website!) that shows you what to look for.

List of places to get bitcoins:

• Mt Gox – the oldest and most well known bitcoin exchange. After signing up for an account you will need to identify yourself but you will be then able to buy a large number of bitcoins.
• Bitcoinschile.cl – a bitcoin exchange where you can buy bitcoins with bank transfer (Chile only) or by Western Digital or Moneygram (US, some Europe, India, others).
• TradeBitcoin.com – find a local bitcoin trader in your area
• BitInnovate.com – a fixed priced Bitcoin exchange service in Australia. Buy Bitcoins using cash at the bank in Australia (AUD) and New Zealand (NZD) or sell Bitcoins for Australian dollars using Bank Transfer or PayPal.
• BTC-Dealer – buy bitcoins with credit card. Payment methods accepted include: OKPAY (USD), cashU (USD), Cash4WM (USD, RUB), Przelewy24 (PLN).
• Exante Bitcoin Fund – investment fund dedicated to bitcoins. The fund manages wallet security and the account can be opened in one day.
• Bitcoin Nordic – purchase bitcoins using bank transfers, cashU online payments or Danske Netbetaling – an instanst payment method for customers of Danske Bank.
• LocalBitcoins.com – In-person bitcoin trading. This website gives you the ability to find someone in your local area who trades bitcoins and to arrange and meet them in person.
• Bitcoin Wiki’s OTC – a marketplace for people to conduct over-the-counter trading in bitcoin.
• BitcoinTalk Forum’s OTC – Find a direct seller in the forum to buy and sell bitcoins with.
• CoinMama – buy bitcoins with Western Union money transfer.
• BlockChain.info SMS Phone Deposits – buy bitcoins using SMS phone deposits. Works with every mobile phone or landline and no registration or credit card required. Can only be used three times per month but there is no maximum purchase limit.
• Bitcoinary.com – online marketplace to find bitcoin traders. Built in escrow whereby the funds can be released by the bitcoin sellers only when they have received payment.
• Bit Stamp – a European Union based bitcoin marketplace
• BTC-e – A currency exchange with market for trading between bitcoins and other currencies, including the U.S. dollar, Russian ruble and other cryptocurrencies Litecoin and Namecoin. The site has Russian and English user interface translations.
• Justcoin – a bitcoin currency exchange from Norway. Supports EUR and NOK, as well as Litecoin and Ripple.
• BitBox – bitcoin exchange based in the USA. Allows trading between USD and BTC.
• VirWoX – a leading independent exchange trading virtual currencies. Currencies traded include Linden Dollars (the virtual currency used in Second Life), Avination’s C$, the Open Metaverse Currency (OMC) and bitcoins. Can convert to EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, and the other virtual currencies traded.
• Intersango – a bitcoin exchange with an escrow service.
• VirtEx- an exchange trading between bitcoins and CAD (Canadian Dollars).
• Camp BX – a platform to buy and sell bitcoins in real time using USD.
• FBTC Exchange – Dutch bitcoin exchange.
• FYB-SG – Singapore bitcoin exchange trading between BTC/SGD
• Rock Currency Exchange – a currency exchange trading between Second Life Lindens (SLL), EURO, USD and BTC.
• BitNZ – currency exchange allowing trading between bitcoins and New Zealand Dollars.
• Kapiton.se – bitcoin exchange trading between bitcoins and Swedish Kronor.
• Vircurex – exchange trading P2P digital curriencies, such as Bitcoin, Namecoin, Liteoicn, Devcoin, Geistgeld, Solidcoin, I0coin, Ixcoin, as we as Euro and US Dollars.
• Coinbase – a direct payment site offering a PayPal-style internet wallet. Ability to connect a US bank account to buy bitcoins (only available in the US).

How do bitcoin transactions work?

To send and receive bitcoins, you need a bitcoin wallet to transact with other users. A bitcoin wallet is a piece of software that you can download to your computer or mobile phone. There are also web wallets that host your bitcoins. Below is a list of bitcoin wallets:

Just like with regular wallets holding cash, it is a good idea to keep your bitcoin wallet safe and secure. Securing your wallet offline (also known as cold storage) is the safest way to store your bitcoins because it is not connected to a network where computer vulnerabilities could lurk. When storing your bitcoins on a computer connected to a network, it is best to backup your wallet and encrypt it.

The funny thing about bitcoins is that they don’t exist anywhere, even on a hard drive. There are actually no digital bitcoins held inside your bitcoin wallet, rather the wallet only records transactions between other bitcoin addresses and the balances increase and decrease in turn.

Every transaction that has ever occurred with bitcoins is stored in a ledger called the block chain. By looking at the block chain it is possible to work out the balance of every bitcoin address. However, you can use a new bitcoin address for every transaction if you have publicised your bitcoin address and are worried about others knowing your balance.

Bitcoin transactions aren’t particularly exciting to look at, containing only three pieces of information: the record of which bitcoin address was used to send the bitcoins, the amount of the transaction and the receiving bitcoin address.

To send bitcoins you need two things: a bitcoin address and a private key. Bitcoin addresses are generated randomly and are simply a sequence of letters and numbers jumbled together. Anyone can get a bitcoin address and you don’t need to fill out any paperwork or show any ID, as would be needed to set up a bank account. The private key is also a sequence of jumbled letters and numbers but unlike your bitcoin address, this is kept secret. Private keys are used to unlock bitcoin wallets and sign bitcoin transactions.

When bitcoins are sent from one wallet to another, bitcoin miners in the network verify the transaction and put it into the block chain ledger where it stays for eternity. Sometimes you must wait roughly 10 minutes for the transaction to be cleared by the network, while other merchants won’t make you wait, taking the chance that you won’t spend the same bitcoins somewhere else before the transaction confirms.

What is bitcoin mining?

Bitcoin isn’t like traditional money that is printed or minted, rather it is ‘discovered’ by computers around the world that ‘mine’ for coins by competing with each other to solve mathematical problems. Every time a computer running a bitcoin mining program successfully solves an equation, it is rewarded with a block of 25 bitcoins. When this happens, the block chain ledger is updated and everyone on the network hears about it.

It is the miners job to create new blocks of bitcoins, confirm bitcoin transactions and write them to the bitcoin ledger. Bitcoin miners keep the whole system synchronized and can be perceived like a bitcoin data center except that it has been designed to be fully decentralized with miners operating all over the world. Miners will still need to operate even when the last bitcoin is issued because processing the transactions and securing the network will still need to occur.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (the original paper by Satoshi Nakamoto)

Bitcoin videos

Andrea Castillo Discusses Bitcoin on News Channel 8

The rise of Bitcoin

Why Bitcoiners Believe in the Digital Currency

Bitcoin Curreny: has the Bubble Popped?

Make a Real Investment in Digital Currency?

Max Keiser on Bitcoin

Bitcoin 2012: Max Keiser

How Bitcoin Will End the Nation State – Jeffrey Tucker

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