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Bitcoin: What are the different ways to make money with Bitcoin?
CD
CD
Colin Dean, Managing Consultant, Infosphere Data Explorer, IBM answered:

By "opportunities", I assume that you mean speculation opportunities.

I feel that the boat has sailed for mining, meaning that it's not a good investment to purchase mining equipment. Using a profitability calculator, such as the one available at bitcoinx.com, you can see that it takes several hundred dollars worth of mining equipment to have a profitable operation *at the start*. Profitability will decline unless the price also rises. My mining rig was netting me about 1 BTC/month at this time last year, down from 4 BTC/month at the same time in 2011. Now, I'm lucky if I'll see a BTC in a decade. Mining really is an arms race that only very serious investors with a lot of cash to risk should consider. Hosted mining encounters the same problem, but at least the logistics are easier! However, you don't have neat hardware to sell when you want to get out.

Buying Bitcoins (or other altcoins) is probably the best speculative option available presently. You can check out http://coinmarketcap.com to see some altcoins that are making moves. Be wary of anything, though, because only Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Namecoin are names I trust with certainty. The latter two are still small enough to be manipulated.

Consider also any arbitrage opportunities. It may be a 1% or 2% gain, but it's something! Do that weekly and your money will be doubled in less than a year.

Starting a business is hard, but it's probably the best bet in the long run. You could start a Bitcoin-centric business, that is, one that serves the Bitcoin community as an exchange, broker, escrow, tumbler (beware of local laws outlawing this), or protocol-centric system.

Or, you could start a business that simply accepts Bitcoin. What's the easiest way to get Bitcoin, people ask me. "Convince others to give it to you," I respond. Offer a product, even if that product is knowledge in the form of a book or pamphlet, and ask for payment in Bitcoin. There are some in the community who will support you just because you accept Bitcoin.

The trick about the business is beating others to the punch. Dropbox doesn't accept Bitcoin. Become the first online storage system to accept Bitcoin for real and you'll instantly have a community that will be interested in your service.

I rambled a bit, but I'd be happy to talk!

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