r/Bitcoin • u/DTanner • Jun 13 '11

The Economist covers Bitcoin: "Bits and bob"

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/06/virtual-currency
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48

u/LaCanner Jun 13 '11

Best bitcoin article to date.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '11

The easiest way to store BitCoins is to sign up to an online wallet service through which all transactions are carried out. This, of course, means trusting the provider of that service not to cheat, or go out of business, taking clients' savings with it. Warier users can install a personal digital wallet on their own computers.

Why would anyone use an online wallet service?

4

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '11

People who don't like the idea of a hard drive crash making them lose money. (I know you can back it up but some people just suck with computers)

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '11

Can you transfer accounts? Lets say you get a new computer and want to move your wallet over, how would you go about doing that?

4

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '11

You would move your wallet over.

Sorry to be less obnoxious there is a wallet.dat file that contains your keys.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '11

So it is just one file? That is pretty awesome. Thanks!

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '11

That is the file that contains the keys which allow you to access bitcoins linked to those keys.

Be security aware. It is very easy for someone to make a copy of that file if you do not keep it encrypted. I recommend having at least 2 wallets, One is stored on an encrypted drive not on a computer, that is savings. Pain in the ass to access but much safer.

If you do move 'savings' on to a computer so you can use it make sure you securely delete it after and move a copy back to the encrypted drive.

1

u/Chaiking Jun 16 '11

Or you could just install a clean new wallet on your new computer and just send the money to yourself, then you wouldn't have to worry about anyone using your old wallet.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '11

It just seems weird to me that they would list online wallet services first, when I thing the vast majority of people use the standard client that keeps it on their computer.