> The entire point of bitcoin is to avoid financial institutions? That sounds like a pretty big disadvantage compared to other forms of money that work well wit

> The entire point of bitcoin is to avoid financial institutions? That sounds like a pretty big disadvantage compared to other forms of money that work well with financial institutions. It is a huge disadvantage for some purposes, but there are plenty of advantages to avoiding financial institutions. If you want to work with financial institutions, there are plenty of ways to do that already. Go get a savings account or a mutual fund; it's not complicated. If you want to transfer money at low fees across national boundaries, or make your money harder for governments to seize, or make your money anonymous, Bitcoin can do those things better than other financial vehicles. And that's because it's not tied in with financial institutions. > A distinction without a difference as far as it relates to having all your money stolen. It's a huge difference. Humans are notoriously bad at creating secure passwords. A SPRNG-generated key is far more secure. > It makes bitcoin a poor choice for the general population since most people fall into the category of "outsiders who don't understand the tool and aren't on board with the philosophy of why Bitcoin is important" True. The same can be said of almost any investment vehicle--most people have very little understanding of most investment vehicles. I'd also say that for example futures and options are much harder to leverage well than Bitcoin. That doesn't mean they aren't useful, it means you have to know what you're doing to use them. As Warren Buffet said, "Don't invest in things you don't understand." I have no problem with people investing in Bitcoin purely for speculation to make money, but I'm also not going to cry if they make a bad investment because they can't be arsed to understand what they're investing in. I wouldn't invest in mining futures because I don't know how to leverage mining futures, and they shouldn't invest in decentralized currencies if they don't understand the implications of decentralization. If you keep your money in an exchange, you're gonna have a bad time. Lots of people (myself included) were saying this before even the Mt. Gox stuff happened, so it's not like this isn't predictable.