Will I make money by installing the client?
Will I make money by installing the client?
Most people who use Bitcoin don't earn anything by doing so, and the default client has no built-in way to earn Bitcoins. A small minority of people with dedicated, high-performance hardware do earn some Bitcoins by "mining" (generating new bitcoins, see What is mining?) with special software, but joining Bitcoin shouldn't be construed as being the road to riches. Most Bitcoin users get involved because they find the project conceptually interesting and don't earn anything by doing so. This is also why you won't find much speculation about the political or economic repercussions of Bitcoin anywhere on this site: Bitcoin developers owe their dedication to the project's intellectual yieldings more than to those of a monetary nature. Bitcoin is still taking its first baby steps; it may go on to do great things but right now it only has something to offer those chasing conceptually interesting projects or bleeding edge technology.