On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:46 AM, Jim <jim618@fastmail.co.uk> wrote:
For the HD version of MultiBit we are removing the import
of individual private keys entirely and only supporting HD
addresses, primarily for safety reasons.

I'd love to have the same in Bitcoin-Qt as well. Too many sob stories about people with outdated backups that lost part or all of their coins. These are much more common than fee messups.

What we should really do is:

- Use deterministic wallets. Making regular backups becomes optional (to retain label and transaction data and such) instead of mandatory.

- Don't support importing private keys. Replace the importing of private keys by a "sweep" function.

Wladimir