[tdw28210]

Wayne and POP,

I'm no MIT grad or expert on Bitcoin. Only read a few articles, blogs and watched a documentary. But I believe the term "mining" means husing your computing power (home PC) aka "mining rig" to help process bitcoin based transactions and update the general ledger (block chain).Miners are then paid in Bitcoin for helping process transactions. In the early days, there was not a lot of miners assisting, so they were paid more. Now each transaction pays less.

I believe there are 21 million bitcoins that can eventually be issued, don't now how many have been yet. Last quote I saw was $385 per 1 USD. And No, I don't own any.