OneWallet, the New Auction Site for Bitcoiners

For those still mourning the demise of early bitcoin auction sites like Bitmit, there is a new place to bid for a special deal with your cryptocurrency: OneWallet.io.
Like Internet auction giant eBay, OneWallet has both bidding auctions and direct sales from anyone who wishes to join as a retailer, with 620 product listings in categories including electronics, fashion, health and beauty, and home and garden after only two weeks of public activity.
As the name implies, OneWallet also functions as a digital wallet for users to store their bitcoins, even if they're not spending them on the site. The system automatically generates new wallets for merchant or buyer accounts, though all customers are free to use their existing external ones.
The new site is working in partnership with CoinsForTech.com, an established online electronics retailer that accepts bitcoin, dogecoin and litecoin, and has already processed over $500,000 in orders to 56 countries. It should be noted, however, that OneWallet for the moment accepts only bitcoin.
Both companies have the same founder, Lee Marburg, and are registered in Australia. Sellers are based in several countries so far, but can be anywhere, and generally ship worldwide.

Encouraging bitcoin use

Speaking to CoinDesk, Marburg said he built the site with Bitcoin Brisbane founder Lucas Cullen in their spare time over the past six months. Testing was conducted privately with select customers over the two months before the public launch.
One aim, he said, was to build a beginner-friendly bitcoin wallet and an avenue for people to actually use the digital currency to buy goods and services.
Marburg added:

"The second aim is to push bitcoin as an international trading tool. My experience with CoinsForTech has been hugely positive and I’ve got no doubts that bitcoin/digital currency has a huge role to play in the future of international B2B and B2C commerce. I am associated with some powerful suppliers and merchants who are not overly keen on accepting bitcoin."

OneWallet could entice these reluctant merchants with "a relatively hands-free option to get their feet wet" with bitcoin, he said, while also creating buyer demand for purchasing with bitcoin through low fees and an easy-to-use platform.
The company charges merchants 2% of the final price for every successful listing.

Building in features

Buyers on OneWallet are also protected when purchasing from any merchant with the 'BusinessVerified' badge next to its name. The company investigates any claim pertaining to a purchase from a verified seller and refunds the USD value of the purchase if the claim is successful.

Read more:
http://www.coindesk.com/meet-onewallet-new-auction-site-bitcoiners/

Why Use Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a relatively new form of currency that is just beginning to hit the mainstream, but many people still don't understand why they should make the effort to use it.
Why use bitcoin? Here are 10 good reasons why it’s worth taking the time to get involved in this virtual currency.

It’s fast

When you pay a cheque from another bank into your bank, the bank will often hold that money for several days, because it can’t trust that the funds are really available. Similarly, international wire transfers can take a relatively long time. Bitcoin transactions, however, are generally far faster. Transactions can be instantaneous if they are “zero-confirmation” transactions, meaning that the merchant takes on the risk of accepting a transaction that hasn’t yet been confirmed by the block chain. Or, they can take around 10 minutes if a merchant requires the transaction to be confirmed. That is far faster than any inter-bank transfer.

It’s cheap

What’s that you say? Your credit card transactions are instantaneous too? Well, that’s true. But your merchant (and possibly you) pay for that privilege. Some merchants will charge a fee for debit card transactions too, as they have to pay a ‘swipe fee’ for fulfilling them. Bitcoin transaction fees are minimal, or in some cases free.

Central governments can’t take it away

Remember what happened in Cyprus in March 2013? The Central Bank wanted to take back uninsured deposits larger than $100,000 to help recapitalize itself, causing huge unrest in the local population. It originally wanted to take a percentage of deposits below that figure, eating directly into family savings. That can’t happen with bitcoin. Because the currency is decentralized, you own it. No central authority has control, and so a bank can’t take it away from you. For those who find their trust in the traditional banking system unravelling, that’s a big benefit.

There are no chargebacks

Once bitcoins have been sent, they’re gone. A person who has sent bitcoins cannot try to retrieve them without the recipient’s consent. This makes it difficult to commit the kind of fraud that we often see with credit cards, in which people make a purchase and then contact the credit card company to make a chargeback, effectively reversing the transaction.

People can’t steal your information from merchants

This is a big one. Most online purchases today are made via credit cards, but in the 1920s and ’30s, when the first precursors to credit cards appeared, the Internet hadn’t yet been conceived. Credit cards were never supposed to be used online and are insecure. Online forms require you to enter all your secret information (the credit card number, expiry date, and CSV number) into a web form. It’s hard to think of a less secure way to do online business. This is why credit card numbers keep being stolen. Bitcoin transactions, however, don’t require you to give up any secret information. Instead, they use two keys: a public key, and a private one. Anyone can see the public key (which is actually your bitcoin address), but your private key is secret. When you send a bitcoin, you ‘sign’ the transaction by combining your public and private keys together, and applying a mathematical function to them. This creates a certificate that proves the transaction came from you. As long as you don’t do anything silly like publishing your private key for everyone to see, you’re safe.

Read more:
http://www.coindesk.com/information/why-use-bitcoin/