...
frankuestein just wrote:
"BTC won't be lost forever.
Some third party services, merchants or even people like you and me using a wallet like Electrum can set an expiry date for a payment request. An example of a use case could be to prevent customers from submitting payments after the quoted price is no longer valid.
That's why your bitcoins won't be lost and wallet addresses don't expire. In case you send bitcoins to a third party service like kraken or you use a payment gateway like coinbase, you'll have to follow its rules and this is not bitcoin's 'fault'."
Bitmixer.io for one has addresses that expire in 24 hours. They then DELETE the address & account info. As far as I know, that means any BTC arriving late is GONE. And that would be terrible for the unwary who might lose a big chunk of money when the blockchain is stopped-up...
I think that the point franckuestein wanted to make is that the Bitcoins are still there, at the address they were sent to. If that service deletes the private keys, well... Taking franckuestein words, "you'll have to follow their rules"
That's why it's better to do direct transactions, this way you have all the control.
@ontopic Microtransactions over the
BTCBTCBTC network are dead. Come to think that it was the micro-economy that pushed
BTCBTCBTC in the limelight during the early days, it was supposedly its bread-and-butter.