ebay will accept bitcoin what do you think??

What's the Deal with Bitcoins Anyway? Bitcoins are a form of cryptocurrency that have been making the news quite often in recent months. In this video we take a look at this technology, why it's special, and what are often seen as the pros and cons of bitcoin use. The jury's still out on whether bitcoins will become ubiquitous and stand the test of time, or whether new innovations might eventually take their place. What do you think? Are bitcoins the real deal?

How to Lose Your Bitcoins (Please read, for your own sake) I really feel depressed right now. My very first client paid me 21.44 BTC last May, for 16 Avalon hashing units, and he was to send 160 Avalon chips to my assembler. Well, when Avalon failed to deliver the chips on time, he was one of the first ones to cancel his chip order, which meant that he also had to cancel his order with me. When he sent me email to cancel his order for 16 hashing units, I refunded 21.44 back to his Bitcoin address (account) in less than an hour. That was Yesterday. This morning I was worried because he hasn't said thank you or even acknowledged that he received his refund, so I sent him email. His reply sent cold shivers down my spine: "The account you refunded to is no longer active. While I am grateful for your speedy response, I do not have access to that wallet address." I replied right back: "A Bitcoin address cannot go inactive. The only way that a Bitcoin address can become useless is if its owner loses the private key. Your private key is always on the machine you used to issue a payment from that address. Do you still have that machine/device? "Here are details of the payment: https://blockchain.info/address/18GQGk21L4RdMpZLdTvXZ7XrocE9ZwKqNw "This is a big sum, and we have to retrieve it one way or another. I will help you retrieve it in whatever way I can. .." (At any rate, in order to avoid paying somebody else, I would pay back only the same address from which the payment came. So, even if he had given me a new address, he would not have gotten his refund.) He has just replied: "Thanks for your reply. I was imprecise. By inactive, I mean that the wallet in question is inaccessible. The hard drive on which it was located has been wiped and a different OS installed. According to the folks I spoke with over at #bitcoin-dev, 21BTC have been permanently orphaned in the blockchain." My final reply contains the moral to this story: "That is VERY unfortunate. That is why I keep all the keys for all my accounts in a separate storage, in a USB thumb drive, and also in a remote storage like SkyDrive. I first encrypt them using the same wallet app, and so all I need to remember is the password used to encrypt them."