Bitcoin is ripe for mass adoption in the Philippines, but only after some major hurdles can be addressed. Some of these are:

• Most Filipinos earn about PHP300 or less for a full day's work.
• Smart phones (Android & iPhone) ownership is not that prevalent with Filipinos, however it is slowly growing as their purchase price drops. Now you can get a second-hand one for about 3 to 5 days salary.
• Internet access costs PHP5 (about 10 minutes labour) per 15 minutes.
• Free WiFi is not readily available except in very limited locations in major cities.
• Most Filipinos are un-banked (cash is king) and do not trust/respect banks.
• Very few Filipinos have access to or have a credit/debit card, although those with a bank account do normally have an ATM card linked to their account(s).
• There are very few businesses in the Philippines that accept bitcoin as payment. Those few that do are mainly in Manila.

Most Filipinos are familiar with (and many use) pera padala (money remittance) businesses within the Philippines to send money between family and friends in the Philippines. Every major town and almost every small town has at least one pera padala business. These businesses accept cash, charge a fee of about 2% to 3%, and have cash available for the receiver to collect within a few minutes. Most of these remittance amounts are usually well below PHP5000 (about USD100).

The Philippines, with a population of over 100 million, is currently served by two major local bitcoin exchange businesses; coins.ph and BuyBitcoin. Both appear to be well operated, economical, and offer normal exchange services as well as some value-added services. When exchanging bitcoin into PHP, both offer bank deposits (free) and pick-up through pera padala businesses (for fee a little above what they are charged  by the para padala business).

For the short-term future, I see the main use of bitcoin in the Philippines to be for remittances into and out of the country. Intra-country use will not develop until the Filipino can see an advantage in its use over cash.

Thank you Jim618.

 I am stuck with XP due to some very specialised (and expensive) programs that I use for work that do not operate in Win7 or Win8. That being said, i have now installed a Linux distro (dual boot) that i use for my cryptocurrency transactions.

I am not sure about what files associated with my Multibit wallet need to be backed up (using Windows XP).

My current arrangement is that I have the wallet's data folder and .wallet file stored on an encrypted on-site USB memory stick. I use this on-site memory stick whenever I need to access my Multibit wallet. I have a second encrypted USB memory stick containing the same files that I store off-site. The off-site memory stick is for use if I loose access to my on-site memory stick.

When should I back up my on-site memory stick to my off-site memory stick:

• After every transaction?
• After every new receiving address is used?
• Never (the off-site backup will always be good for this wallet)?

My Multibit wallet  is only used to receive bitcoins from my clients and to send bitcoin to my cell phone for normal spending.

Thank you Andreas. Bitcoinaverage.com have expanded their offered currencies so that now all my required currencies are covered.

I use a Multibit wallet in conjunction with Keepass.

My Multibit wallet is encrypted with a very strong (and long) password generated (and saved) with Keepass. I also save my .key file backup as an attachment to the Keepass entry for my Multibit wallet.

My Keepass is secured with a good strong password (that I can remember) + keyfile. My Keepass database is stored on my Network Attached Storage (NAS) hard disk drive that is regularly backed up (including an off-site back up).

In addition, my brother has the password and keyfile to my Keepass. I regularly email to him a current copy of my Keepass data. This covers me in the event of my death.

Bitcoin Wallet limits you to 18 currency exchange rates using Bitcoin Charts rates. Bitcoin charts exchange rates limit you to about 30 different "currencies" (not all included in Bitcoin Wallet). There are approximately 150 different fiat currencies used in the world. Exchange rates for most of these currencies (including BTC) are provided by xe.com.

There is a large and growing market for bitcoin tansacations in SE Asia. The only one covered by Bitcoin Wallet is the Singapore dollar. I deal in IDR, MYR, VND and PHP with a lot of micro bitcoin transactions. At present, I have to jump out of Bitcoin Wallet and into XE to get a "current" rate.

Is it possible for Bitcoin Wallet to give an option for selecting the exchange (say Bitcoin Charts, Bitcoin Average, and XE) and then allowing the user to seclect thier desired currency from any of those available on their preferred exchange?

Thank you to the above members for your replies.

Over the past couple of years, I have accumulated a few Bitcoins that I have spread over a few PC's, tablets and a cell phone. Until this latest value increase, I was not so concerned about loosing some. How things change when your Bitcoins' value increases 10 to 20 fold!

My question relates to loosing a device that contains my Bitcoin wallet. By "loosing", I mean destroyed so that no one has access to that Bitcoin wallet.

If I have previously backuped the privates key(s) of my Bitcoin wallet and save the backup file on another device, am I able to relatively easily retrieve the Bitcoins that were in the wallet on my lost device?

I do not (yet) need to know how to do this. I just need to know if it can be done.