You can invest if you don't mind swings and it's money you can afford to lose. You get bitcoins by trading with other people or by buying on exchanges or websites. There are exchanges where you can trade bitcoins for fiat, but it takes a little while to get set up with those, and there are also websites that will sell you bitcoins instantly but with significantly higher fees than exchanges.

You can also get bitcoins by mining them, but it's a very slow process unless you make a significant investment into hardware and even then it's often more expensive when you account for hardware depreciation and energy costs than just buying the bitcoins directly. But if you already have a graphics card, particularly one made by ATI, you can probably generate a few bitcents a day, although that will be cut roughly in half by the end of the month.

The biggest market is mtgox so that is really the trading place outside of doing arbitrage between exchanges. Fees are 0.6% I think, so pretty low.

Some trading tools.
http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/
http://mtgoxlive.com/orders

There is a way to get the mtgox feed into Sierracharts. Just google a bit.

If you don't understand the difference between investing, speculating, and trading, I would suggest not doing any of the three.

Looking for BTC for pokerstars or full tilt money. 2-3k$ worth. 500$ minimum. Not willing to send first unless you have many previous transactions, I have had many transfers and have held large amounts in bets previously. We can do it in as low increments as you'd want though. Will do it for paypal if I get absolutely no response but much more interested in pokersites...

I can swap for a vig BTC for neteller, stars, ftp and other poker sites. Just pm me.

pmed

also looking to trade pokerstars for btc

Successful swap!

Hybrid is a friend of mine and he he's how I obtain all my BTC. Very trustworthy.

Did a swap, went well and was quick.

Also did a swap with HybridTft. Went very well, decent rates and fast.

Thanks everyone still have more pm me if anyone needs help getting btc.

Just curious, what are y'all using btc for?

weed

In this order of how much total btc transactions:

Poker
Sportsbetting
Weed
Webhosting
Coffee
Cocaine

For you or for everyone? Doesn't seem like poker has all that much volume.

Lol, him personally, I don't think coffee is above cocaine either.

bought BTC from hybridtft. I sent first, he sent once it cleared. was very professional to work with.

What made you buy coffee with Bitcoin? The rest are more obvious.

Colombia package deal.

haha my list was for me personally, not for total btc economy.

http://bitbrew.net/peruvian-pick-me-up/

bitbrew was started early in the bitcoin world to be a regular retailer of a regular item such as coffee to mitigate the stigma that bitcoin was only "drugs and killing someone" (there were early sites claiming they would kill someone for USD equivalent of $20,000 in bitcoins, they received media attention but I highly doubt anyone was ever offed for btc)

I got hooked on the Peruvian Pick-me-up and it's my go-to brew now. I buy with btc each time of course.

incomplete, random order list of things I've bought directly with bitcoins:

hosting (dedicated and vps)
vpn
domains
certificates
graphic design
programming
radio advertising
online advertising (audio, text and image)
tablet pc
gift cards
cash
bank money
silver
gold
candy
honey
soap
candles
nuts
coffee
hats
shirts
buttons
stickers
donations
poker
blackjack
other gambling games

Oldish video that I happened to stumble into, does a good job explaining the general point of bitcoins imo:

http://youtu.be/QqDUHneGCOI (4 mins)

I don't really like the "promises are always broken" rhetoric, but in context he's probably right.. what's important is only that there's always potential to break them.

Revisiting this thread after a year or so. Looks like some formerly bearish 2+2ers are now bullish. Personally I just buy bitcoins when I need to use them, I don't stay invested, and I quit mining like a year and a half ago during the first big mining rush. Might mine for the winter though. It gets cold here and electricity essentially becomes lots of heat and bitcoins.

Be sure to be up to speed if your going to start mining again. Lots of changes coming up for the bitcoin community.

Reward halving coming soon. Personally I think this is already reflected in the current market price we are seeing. Anyone think the price will change because of it?