What Is The Best Bitcoin Wallet or Exchange Service?

Where is the Best Places to Buy & Trade Bit Coins?
What Wallets and Exchanges Are Certified?
How Are Merchant and Bitcoin Owners Vetted?

Bitcoin is the World's first decentralized digital monetary system and "bitcoins" are the currency units used. A decentralized system is essentially a P2P or pier to pier system versus a centrally managed system like PayPal.  The system has existed since January 3rd, 2009 and is used in every Country in the World. Bitcoins are created and controlled by advanced mathematics and cryptography, instead of by governments or banks (no government, bank, or corporation owns or controls Bitcoin). Bitcoins as a currency unit are created over time at a diminishing rate, and there will never be more than 21 million of them in existence (though they are highly divisible).

Bitcoin is different from any other payment system because:
  • It is decentralized (no group has monopoly control over it) 
  • It is not tied to US dollars or other government fiat currencies 
  • It is impossible to suffer chargebacks or frozen accounts 
  • It is (relatively) anonymous 
  • Fees are optional (you may pay to make your transactions process slightly faster)
  • Merchants can accept payments easily with hardly any fees.
Other virtual currencies do exists and are used for other services such as video games.  It will be interesting to see how this phenomenon evolves and if it will ever become commercially viable in the United States due to the enormous protection of the existing US banking laws.  China is one of the leading countries in World using and exchanging bitcoins.  The US is lagging far behind other countries in the World with adoption.  

US Governments officials and regulators will obviously be interested in stopping / regulating this for the following reasons:  
  • Cutting Off Terrorism Funding
  • Leakage of Tax Revenue 
  • Money Laundering 
  • Tax Evasion 
  • Exchange of Illegal Goods and Services
Would love to learn more about these services and would appreciate the feedback below.  Please add links and comments.