Keeping all your BTC on an online wallet seems to me like it could be risky. It is certainly possible for any of those services to go down, be hacked, or otherwise compromised. Read around a bit, MtGox has been hacked before (the exchange part it looked like), and other online wallet services have been hacked and had wallet info/BTC stolen.

I think following the advice in the 100% secure wallet thread is very wise: keep the BTC you are using in a public wallet, and transfer out amounts you are not going to use. As an analogy:
 You might use a checking account for your weekly/monthly bills, but the bulk of your money goes into savings/IRA/portfolio to earn interest, because it would be foolish for that money to just be sitting in your checking account doing nothing.  
For BTC, think of the online wallet as your checking account, and offline wallet as savings. However the bulk savings isn't moved for interest purposes, but for security purposes.

You don't need to even access the offline wallet to deposit BTC into it, or to even see how many BTC are in there, you only need to access your offline wallet to take out your BTC, and that should not be very often at all.

Anyone out there accepting BTCs in brick and mortar storefronts?

I am curious how you work this in with your accounting/bookkeeping.

Do you quickly convert to a recognized currency?
Do you buy products/services for your business with BTC?
How has the IRS tax reporting gone? 

Hi all!

*wave*

Wow I am shocked at how rude some of you are being, this is the newbie section, I'd certainly expect to see some odd, stupid, or obvious questions here.

Fairly new myself, and have read to wiki too, but questions still come up, which is why I am here, and just registered.

tbcoin: your first & second answer I kinda understood, but the way you worded it was sorta confusing.

memvola: ty, that was clear to me. Along with tbcoin's answer it seems fairly clear to me.


This was really uncalled for: YES this is exactly the reason we are here reading the threads and asking questions- we don't have a firm grasp on how everything works just yet!


As a newbie to bitcoins, and the bitcoin economy, I would think you all (experienced users) would want us (newbies) to learn about whats going on, how things work, etc. This comes out as questions for many of us, even after reading the wikis & guides & forums. Isn't the idea to keep this movement & economy growing?

I don't want to be afraid to ask questions, even if some people think it might be a stupid question. If I do happen to ask a stupid question, and ask a follow up, it's because I didn't exactly understand your explanation, no need to get mad!

I am here to learn, and to those of you who do answer these threads in the newbie forums: THANK YOU.
Those of you who come to insult, could you please just try to refrain from commenting.