My editors thought that the best holiday present they could give me this year was the chance to create a new bitcoin, the increasingly popular form of digital currency that uses cryptography instead of government regulation to secure transactions. Little did they know that setting up a functional mining rig--a high-end computer system designed exclusively to solve mathematical problems that yield new bitcoins--is beyond the scope of my technical prowess, not to mention our budget.
So my editors did the next best thing: they wired me money and let me buy my very own bitcoin. The plan was to use only...