shakethatbass

If I get paid in Bitcoins, what happens? Where do I get the money and how do I use it?

Say you have an address '1xyz987abc'. When somebody sends you some coins to this address, his program sends a short message to the bitcoin network, which is then relayed to all its nodes (users) and saved in the transaction history (called blockchain).

Now, when you want to spend any bitcoins, your program will send a short message to the bitcoin network: "I am the owner of the address 1xyz987abc; I want to transfer X coins to the address 1cba456qwe". The message will be signed by something called a "private key", a long, secret number generated along with the address itself. This ensures that you, and only you can spend your bitcoins. The message propagates throughout the network, the nodes verify it (check if there's sufficient balance on your address and that you don't try to send your coins to two or more addresses at once) and save it in blockchain... etc. etc.

What is the value of a bitcoin?

1BTC is worth exactly as much as services or goods you can purchase with it. If you don't find this answer explanatory enough, answer me this: how much is $1 worth :)?

You can currently buy around 46 dollars for one bitcoin if that's what you're asking.

How do you earn them, the website says you can earn a very small account by doing surveys, but doesnt that give spammers free reign?

You earn them like anything else you earn: you can accept them for good or services you provide. You could even beg for them, but please don't. Doing surveys is a waste of time in my opinion (and have always been, this is a way older business than Bitcoin idea itself).

Why should I trust bitcoins to be my payment method instead of Paypal? How will I explain it in the simplect terms to a non internet guy?

You could look at Bitcoin as a system similar to Paypal (in terms of how you use it, no how to works!) - you only need to know the other guy's handle to make a transcation (e-mail in case of PP, address in case of BTC). The big differences are: there's no company behind BTC that tries to earn money on it (so nobody to freeze you account, or tell you what you can and can't do with your assets), there's no way to reverse BTC transaction (once they sent, the only way to get your coins back is for the other guy to send it back) and there's no transaction's size limits (you can send as little as 0.000045 cents given current prices).

If someone sends me a bitcoin, can my ewallet be deleted by physical actions?

As I tried to explain above, only a long number called a 'private key' is stored in your wallet file, which allows you sending bitcoins from addresses that you own. If you delete this file (and have no backups, and no other means of recovery) the bitcoins will still be assigned to your addresses in the blockchain; since there's no way for anyone to prove ownership though, they'll stay that way forever, unspendable.

edit: i wouldn't cannot enlirsh, even if me live will dependented at tihs

Do you think BTC is the future?

I believe we need some kind of decentralized, p2p payment system at this point in human history. Bitcoin is just the first experiment trying to implement those concepts, and it seems to do very well by far, so yes.

Which vendor do you prefer or are you a vendor?

If by vendor you mean exchanges where you can buy bitcoins - I haven't really bought any serious amount. For selling I personally favor BitStamp, heard a lot good things about BTC-24 too.

Can I have some free BTC?

Since you were the first one to ask (I hope it doesn't violate any of the sub rules):

+tip .1btc verify

What motivated you to give away so much money to redditors instead of donating to the charities personally?

I love reddit, I love bitcoin, seemed like a natural thing to do :). Besides, I wanted as many people engaged as necessary, as I asked that anyone donating would also write a quick e-mail to the charity, explaining what bitcoin is and why should they start accepting it. Hopefully some of them put two and two together.

I know that it may seem like a waste to some of you, but hey, it's MY money :).

Sure. If you could ask, here instead of pm'ing , that way more people can benefit.

You'll get a message with further basic instructions. Visit /r/bitcoin if you want to know more!